Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
Politicians from around the globe gather annually in the UNFCCC meetings so they can propose and fail to come to worthwhile agreements on how to limit global warming and its impacts. Year in, year out, same thing. For the results of the most recent failed gathering, see the WattsUpWithThat post GWPF Welcomes Non-Binding And Toothless UN Climate Deal. One of the primary factors that drive the politicians is an attempt to limit global warming to 2-deg C above preindustrial values, where preindustrial is considered the mid-to-late 1800s.
But where did that 2 deg C limit come from?
Some people might be surprised to discover that it started with a Professor of Economics, Dr. William Nordhaus of Yale, back in 1970s, not from a comprehensive analysis of climate, weather, sea levels and so on by climate scientists. At least that’s what was presented in a blog post that has gained attention around the blogosphere.
The blog post is Two degrees: The history of climate change’s ‘speed limit’ by Mat Hope & Rosamund Pearce at ClimateCentral TheCarbonBrief. They write:
In the 1970s, Yale professor William Nordhaus alluded to the danger of passing a threshold of two degrees in a pair of now famous papers, suggesting that warming of more than two degrees would push the climate beyond the limits humans were [sic] familiar with:
And they quote Nordhaus:
“According to most sources the range of variation between between distinct climatic regimes is on the order of ±5°C, and at present time the global climate is at the high end of this range. If there were global temperatures more than 2° of 3° above the current average temperature, this would take the climate outside of the range of observations which have been made over the last several hundred thousand years.”
Hope and Pearce then note how James Hansen discussed “dangerous” climate change during his 1988 presentation to Congress, but didn’t present a threshold, and that it wasn’t until 1990 that there was a study to support the 2-deg limit. It came from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), in their report Responding to Climate Change: Tools for Policy Development [Part 1 of 2]. As noted in its introduction, it was:
…devoted to three specific aspects of the issues involved in developing policies for responding to climate change.
Oddly, the First IPCC Assessment Report was published a year later and it was inconclusive, inasmuch as the scientists could not differentiate between manmade and natural warming.
Hope and Pearce’s post at ClimateCentral TheCarbonBrief then run through the remaining history of studies working to support the 2-deg limit, one first presented by an economist.
That brings us to the post here by Pierre Gosselin at the NoTrickZone. It includes a number of quotes from members of the climate science community about the 2-deg C limit. My favorite is the translation of a speech by Dr. Hans von Storch, in which von Storch is reported to have said in 2011 (my boldface):
We are in a time where scientists and politicians claim, or at least suggest, the science, in the form of the IPCC, or the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), has shown that the 2°C target is scientifically mandatory, and is thus no longer a political question that has to be negotiated by society, but rather a target that policymakers only must execute – quasi an order. However the IPCC has never in any way presented the 2°C target as mandatory. Rather this was done by a few scientists, or shall I say: politicians disguised as scientists.
That reminded me of a quote from Dr. Richard Lindzen, an Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology (emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A recent April, 2014 presentation to the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) by Dr. Lindzen can be found on YouTube here. Early in the presentation, Dr. Lindzen states:
…it should be recognized that the basis for a climate that is highly sensitive to added greenhouse gasses is solely the computer models. The relation of this sensitivity to catastrophe, moreover, does not even emerge from the models, but rather from the fervid imagination of climate activists.
The following is the graph being used as the feature image at WUWT.
Oh forgot to thank Bob Tisdale.
Thank you Bob, for your always good work..:-)
cheers
So at +1.99C we’re living in a lush paradise and at +2.01 we’re doomed?
Really? This is just so, how you say, stupid?
[img]http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/medium/climate_alarmist_view.jpg[/img]
rgbatduke
December 17, 2014 at 9:31 am
“Whoa, dude, you really need to study some history….”
rgb, you are a one-of-a-kind-all-in-one type of guy! Your history lesson was no less expert and erudite than your physcis/math contributions here. Bravo!
I added a bit to the discussion on 2C up thread probably too high up to get noticed. Let’s not forget that we have had hammered into our heads that the polar regions are the recipients of most of the warming through polar amplification. This means that a 2C increase would largely be distributed north of 60, and I presume, in the south polar region, south of 60. The tropical convergence zone seems to have an SST maximum of 31C because of evaporative and convective cooliing. Okay, Greenland, northern Canada Siberia and Antarctica would rise 6-8C leaving the temperate zones with perhaps 0.5 to 0.8C rise.
jimmi_the_dalek December 16, 2014 at 5:06 pm “There are plenty of vineyards in England now. There are even one or two in Scotland.”
http://www.englishwineproducers.co.uk/vineyards/vineyard-search/
“Richards in Vancouver December 16, 2014 at 7:47 pm NONE of the grapes presently growing in Britain are the strains that flourished there during the Roman occupation.” (Almost said “currently growing”. Caught it just in time!)
Actually jimmi_the_dalek, there are four known vineyards in Scotland. But the industry is largely southern England, 365 vineyards in SE, South Central and SW England, 207 in the rest of England, Scotland and Wales.
Richards, I recognize four of the grape varieties grown in England as being varieties also grown in Australia – the producer of the world’s best wines. Perhaps the rest of the UK varieties are special cold climate grape varieties – although I admit in Australia we do have grapes grown in cold climate areas.
But the UK climate is good for beer – far better than Australian beer which has to be drunk cold so you don’t notice the taste. OK, I admit that on a really hot day, a glass of Australian beer (cannot name the best variety, I think, on this site) goes down well.
A friend of mine visited UK some years ago, but she reckoned the British wines were not as good as the Ozzie wines. When I left UK in 1965, I can’t remember any British wines being produced, too cold. We do have cold weather vineyards though here on the NSW Northern tablelands and they are very nice, even an organic wine producer. Lovely reds.
First off A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL, AT LEAST IN THE NH YOU COULD GET A WHITE CHRISTMAS! We don’t in Australia but still have a roast dinner and hot Christmas pub. Although in Armidale we rarely go over 30 C, and one summer had snow, on 23rd December. (1987 I think) Just sago snow. Temps dropped, and we lit fires.
However, I found an old New Science magazine dated 16th November 1991 N0.1795.
On page No.7. An article by guess who? David Parker of the Meteorological Office Hadley Centre for climate research and Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit of UEA.
They say ‘the first half of this year was as warm as the same period in 1990, but the second half has cooled slightly, perhaps because of the shading effect of the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines…’ They go on to say, that The Earth has shown pronounced warming since the start of the 1980s. The decade was 0.2 C warmer than the average for 1950 – 1980 and around 0.5 C warmer than a century ago….then they go on to say ‘…..Warm years have often coincided with an oscillation of the oceans and winds in the Pacific Ocean known as El Nino, in which warm waters spread out across the tropical oceans. Cooler years follow either La Nina events ….. in which cool waters cover the tropical pacific or major volcanic eruptions. The complete data for 1991 will be included in a new report from the UNIPCC to be agreed in February. (1992?) It will strengthen the case of those scientists who believe that the warming of the past decade is a clear sign that the accumulate of greenhouses gases such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere is raising temperatures ….’ Written by Fred Pearse
How the heck could they come to that conclusion? To me it is contradictory? But 1992 a long way off wasn’t it from Al Gore’s Nobel prize.
Aniow have a gudCrissie, as we Ozzies say. (Well not me but the Ockers do?)
The post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/10/comment-on-mcleans-paper-late-twentieth.html
provides estimates of the timing and amplitude of the likely coming cooling. The main emergent phenomena for human time scales of interest is the 1000 year quasi-periodicity in the temperature data. Forecasts which ignore this obvious periodicity are really worthless and can be safely ignored.
A few points to combat ridiculous climate alarm and any de-carbonisation policies
The last millennium 1000 – 2000 AD was the coldest of the whole of our currently benign Holocene epoch. At about 10,000 years long, the Holocene is coming towards its end. Then there will be an inevitable slide into the next real ice age, whether this millennium or the next.
According to ice core records, the Holocene “optimum” 8000 years ago was about 3degC warmer than at present. The previous Eemian interglacial epoch peaked at a much higher temperature than has ever occurred in our current Holocene. Hippopotami thrived in the Rhine Delta.
The world survived these overheating disasters.
see
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/the-temperature-context/
Richard Tol confirms that any modest negative effects of warming could only ever begin at ~+2degC.
And anyway +2degC can never be attained with added CO2 because of the diminishing effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas with its increasing concentration.
see:
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/the-diminishing-influence-of-increasing-carbon-dioxide-co2-on-temperature/
And take note of what sensible academics have said in formal testimony:
Professor Judith Curry’s of Georgia Institute of Technology Congressional testimony 14/1/2014:
“Motivated by the precautionary principle to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change, attempts to modify the climate through reducing CO2 emissions may turn out to be futile. The stagnation in greenhouse warming observed over the past 15+ years demonstrates that CO2 is not a control knob on climate variability on decadal time scales.”
Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT UK parliament committee testimony 28/1/2014 on IPCC AR5:
“Whatever the UK decides to do will have no impact on your climate, but will have a profound impact on your economy. (You are) Trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem by taking actions that you know will hurt your economy.”
Mr. Hoskins, thx for the comment and the links to your work. Especially appreciate the cost comparison for CGT v Renewables. Economic suicide explained and the US / EPA is tone deaf. Merry Christmas.