Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Christopher Reyer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one of the authors of a 2014 world bank publication “Turning down the heat: Confronting the new Climate Normal”, has claimed in an interview that economic collapse will ensure we never achieve global temperature rises of 6-8c – he expects the global economy to start to falter, after we pass 2c of warming.
According to Reyer (talking about the climate in the year 2100):
I guess it should be between three and four degrees hotter. We used to think that we were headed for +8°C, but that will never happen. We are not even on track for +6°C because economies will be collapsing long before we get there. We know that after +2°C, dangerous things start happening, and we start passing crucial tipping points, like the West Antarctica ice sheet collapse, which has reportedly already begun.
Reyer also has some doom laden predictions for the year 2050:
What will a two degrees warmer world, which we seem likely to inhabit by 2050, look like?
“Two degrees is not a picnic either. Imagine events like the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Russian heat wave which had repercussions on the global wheat market, and Hurricane Katrina, all of them happening simultaneously everywhere in the world.”
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/till-bruckner/climate-change-economy-gr_b_7056418.html
There are a few problems with these predictions. For starters, life thrived in Cretaceous period, which was around 4c warmer than today.
CO2 levels were around 1700ppm in the Cretaceous, 4x higher than today.
The Cretaceous lasted for 80 million years, so the 4c warmer, 1700ppm CO2 climate was a stable climate, by any reasonable measure. The ecosystem which gave birth to all those textbook pictures of tropical jungles and dinosaurs tramping about – that simply couldn’t have happened, in a world whose life support systems were on the brink of failure. In fact, the age of the dinosaurs didn’t fall, until a huge meteor struck the earth around 66 million years ago, and killed 3/4 of all living species.
The most productive regions of the world, food wise, are the tropics. Indonesia, with a land area of 1.9 million square kilometres, 1/5 the size of the USA, supports a population of 237 million people – many of whom survive by subsistence agriculture. If the USA had a similar climate to tropical Indonesia, it could potentially support a population of 1.8 billion people – even using the subsistence agriculture employed by many Indonesians.
Suggesting that a 4c warmer world would be a dying world of broken eco-systems and failed nations seems utterly implausible. As the Cretaceous period proves beyond reasonable doubt, as the global experience of tropical agriculture demonstrates, warm climates are incredibly abundant and supportive of living ecosystems, and humans, who evolved in the hottest climate on Earth, are well able to thrive in such environments.
Would returning CO2 to 1700ppm even cause a 4c rise in temperature? This seems doubtful to me, because the geography and geology of the modern world is different to the Cretaceous. The rise of the Himalayas, and the formation of the Antarctic circumpolar current, have consolidated our brutally cold Quaternary climate of frequent glaciations. I suspect it would take a lot more than 1700ppm to overcome these geological disadvantages, and restore a more benevolent climate, than our current ice age prone Quaternary.
If there’s an economic collapse, spending on most renewables will be put on hold.
Ain’t nuffin bogus about my chart dbstealy BTW it’s from a Greenland icecore so comparing it to Global temps is meaningless.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/c4u-chart7.png
Wow! Look at that Hokey Stick on the end of that graph. Everywhere I look nowadays I see Hokey Sticks. It’ll just be a matter of time before the World Bank begins using one as their new logo.
That chart has the instrumental record grafted onto it, and as such is utterly meaningless. The ice core records would not show short term fluctuations in temperatures. If they did, your hockey stick would be completely lost in the ‘noise’. Does this make sense to you?
spaatch
The GISP2 ice core has a temporal resolution of several decades (the IPCC says 83 years).
You have stitched a different data set with a temporal resolution of 1 year onto the end of the GISP2 data set. THAT IS “BOGUS”.
The stitching is known as “Mike’s Nature Trick” after Michael Mann who was the originator of this anti-scientific practice which only has the purpose of misleading about what data indicates.
Richard
Noted how you didn’t pull up Latitude for his claim above…hmmmm
Martin
spaatch posted ant-scientific nonsense and I explained that for onlookers who may not know about ‘Mike’s Nature Trick’.
I saw – and see – no reason to “pull up Latitude for his claim above”, and you state no such reason. So, I am at a loss to understand why you have “noted” that I did not do it.
Richard
I understand the 83 years applies to the most recent years. The resolution for most of the chart is much coarser.
David A:
Yes, I know, but that adds to and does not distract from my point which – as you say – is understated for data most distant in the past.
Richard
This dispute could be settled quickly if spaatch provided the raw spreadsheet data entries up to 2010, or the links to said.
One only has to see what happened in Russia when the USSR collapsed. It wasnt a pretty sight. Not one tree in Petersburg was left standing. Abandoned buildings were stripped of anything that could burn. Alcohol abuse was rampant, and the population numbers started to fall (a lot of suicides, crime, etc)
What they propose doing, would readily bring about all the things that they say global warming would do to the most poor and underprivileged, as well as the elderly and children. I suppose the plan must be to put them out of their misery long before it happens.
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/20595?hc_location=ufi
I think we need to fund a study to examine the question: Why do 97% of climatologists appear to suffer from [trimmed]?
Wow, seriously? The d-word (the one associated with urgent and frequent visits to the bathroom) has been banned now? What’s up with that?
When they came for my words…
The most dire predictions one can make with a logical extension of the basic information given for the CO2 contribution to the overall claimed greenhouse effect is a logarithmic decreasing progression that falls below the 0.8C increase of temperature correlated to the 120ppm rise in CO2 observed in the last century and a half.
This is not rocket science, but simple arithmetic that any bonehead scientist should be unable to counter.
The contribution of CO2 to the 33C claimed natural greenhouse effect is given as “between 9% to 26%” of it. Taking the 9% figure (as it predicts the highest rise in temperature in the range from today) we get 2.97C contribution of the 33C at a pre industrial level of 280ppm. This is equivalent to 0.01061C per 1ppm of CO2. The 0.8C observed increase in temperature for the extra 120ppm gives a value of 0.00667C per ppm which is roughly 63% less. So the maximum increase in temperature for the next 120ppm would be 63% of 0.8C or roughly 0.5C
Draw a graph, even expert scientists who need overly complicated and convoluted gobbledegook to keep their status can’t fail to ignore this simple proof that their Pre-conceived Hypothesis Disorders are not required!
Economic collapse … and global thermonuclear war … will ensure that we have global cooling.
The UN has already stated their goal is the collapse of Capitalism. Agenda 21 spells it out. The IPCC has also stated it’s not really about temperature but instead about facilitating the take down of Capitalism by eliminating fossil fuel use. I doubt the world will allow that to occur. Forests disappearing as people burn them to create energy will be the first unintended consequence. Think Haiti. I’m probably too old to see what becomes of this well orchestrated attempt at ideology implementation but I’m confidant the people will figure it out.
I am always amused by stories like this. Scientists seems to be able to construct models that replicate physical processes so as to project climate into the future. I know, I know, just let that last statement ride. My point is, using these models in a economic or ecological context seem to assume some sort of steady state. That we as human beings or animals in the wild are not going to adapt, but migrate, crawl into a ball and give up. Humans and nature are resilient. We will adapt. We collectively made it out of the last ice age didn’t we? Butterflies and fish for example. They will (as we are told) be forced to move looking for smaller and smaller acceptable habitats, eventually to go extinct. Sorry, I don’t buy that. Some species may move, some will go extinct as they do already. They will be replaced by other species better suited to the niche made available. But others will stay put and adapt.
Even in the face of an economic collapse, climate induced or not, we will adapt and rebuild.
To paraphrase: Life in the most tightly controlled environment of light, temperature, pressure, etc, will do as it damn well pleases.
So what’s it gonna be? Catastrophic global warming causes economic collapse, or economic collapse prevents catastrophic global warming? How about: False predictions cause economic collapse followed by catastrophic global cooling?
I await your substantive and well-cited answers with bated breath.
All I can cite on the above is my experience that the weather here in Illinois hillbilly country is about the same as it was in the 60’s when I was young (and knew much more than I apparently do now). My humble knowledge as a concerned farmer only brings me to ask questions and air my perceptions to test their validity in his forum. I too, am concerned for my progeny’s welfare and the condition of this planet, but I suspect that the inconvenient truth we are being sold is all too convenient for the megalomaniacs who posit it.
Dawtgtomis,
That perspective doesn’t work well for me mainly because I’d lived in three different states, very different climates by the time I was 10, and never more than 10 years at a stretch since I was 18. Where I live now (Berkeley, CA) is where I began, and the locals who have been here the whole time that the morning fog burns off earlier than it did when I was born. I tease them about their confirmation bias, but it turns out there’s some literature support for their anecdotal observations. Yet, whether CO2 is wot dunnit is not something I’d personally conclude with confidence.
In sum, my anecdotal experience is that I can’t trust ’em, so I don’t.
Something which grates on me in this debate in general is that my POV is often seen as “save the planet”, as that’s the stereotypical leftist greenie battle cry. As the citations in the head post attest, the science is quite clear that “the planet” has had “worse”. My concern is first and foremost myself, then family, friends, neighbours, fellow citizens, fellow humans — in short, my own species. To the extent that we rely on the biosphere and the other species it supports, our job as apex predator is to ensure that it can continue to support enough stuff for us to eat.
Megalomaniacs don’t go as far down the concern chain as I do, they stop at self with maybe some concern for family. I imagine the very well-heeled ones don’t worry about progeny, that’s why God created trust funds after all. Thing is, I find rich and powerful self-centereds on both sides of the debate. Out of that I get a zero-sum argument.
Tiebreaker for me is literature. What it says is:
1) Even without CO2, global cooling is not in our near future. A la Milankovitch theory we’re actually a few hundred years away from a very gradual natural warming, and hundreds of thousands of years from the point where another ice age would set in.
2) Humans are influencing climate; since 1950 well over half of the observed global temperature trend has been attributed to us. Estimates vary widely, debate even amongst consensus researchers can be contentious — no more so than when it comes to what the future holds.
I’m fairly confident in (1), almost absolutely. (2) I’m very much uneasy about because of the future uncertainty. My position is that we know what’s in the present and the rear-view mirror better than anything, prudence suggests that pushing our luck with the uncertain future isn’t in our collective best interests.
Not being one who is prone to panic, I don’t call for wrecking the present economy to save the future economy. Only panicky herd followers would propose something so logically ridiculous; unfortunately that particular contingent seems to have an outsized voice which the opposition is all too happy to further amplify by way of ridicule — rightfully so, IMO.
Problem is that process also runs in reverse, and we get an angry, stressful stalemate. That frustrates the hell out of me.
What a freaking idiot. Typical leftist a-hole. A dry lake lowers all boats. I’ve never seen group of people so imprisoned by a mindset that they only see poverty as salvation. Unbelievable!!
First of all, the physics and empirical evidence now show a doubling of CO2 will only generate a total of 0.5C~1.0C of CO2 induced warming by 2100 (plus or minus whatever the Sun and natural variability decide to do over the next 85 years)…
Second, the Medieval Warming Period is estimated to have been 2C warmer than now (Rosenthal et al 2013). During the MWP, the European population doubled and crop yields set records for the time. When the Medieval climate started to cool during the Wolf Grand Solar Minimum (1280~1350), famines were common and brutal winters wiped out 15% of the European population, which was followed by the Bubonic Plague (1346~52), which wiped out another 30~50% of Europe’s population…
It’s cold that kills. Not life giving warmth..
Warmer temperatures generate: extend growing seasons, increase arable land in Northern latitudes, increase precipitation, less severe winters, increased plant CO2 fertilization from ocean CO2 outgassing, and less severe weather from reduced latitudinal temperature variance.
For you history aficionados, the cooling climate following the MWP was partially responsible for ending the feudal system in Europe. The depopulation caused by the cold climate and the Bubonic plague forced huge migrations of farmers to depopulated regions, thus nullifying the feudal laws which prohibited farmers from moving off their Lord’s lands.
In a similar manner, I think the collapse of the CAGW hypothesis will be partially responsible for ending the Big Government system, as it will expose the inherent dangers when Big Government policies based on flawed agendas go awry.
This is hilarious — a German “expert” not realising it was a German climate scientist who lays claim to the invention of the 2C figure for it to be used in political speeches
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-catastrophe-a-superstorm-for-global-warming-research-a-686697-8.html
( Look at the last in the series of articles)
Even IF (big IF) pCO2 continued its 2 ppm/yr increase, we are 650 years away from 1700 ppm. By then (if as some posters here are correct), the sun may be in another Maunder-like minimum. We would need all the warmth we could muster to prevent 50% of the world’s population from dying off.
Of course that 5 billion human die-off is what the Agenda 21 eco-terrorists want.
Eric Worrall,
That’s one of them there open secrets in literature, innit.
Those silly paleoclimatologists, always undermining their own arguments being so honest about stuff they find poking around in ice cores and benthic ocean sediments. I say fire the lot of them for daring to do good science!
Mmm. Well in freshman biology, our prof taught us some evolution. One key concept there is that it takes awhile, and that when environmental changes happen relatively rapidly — big volcano goes off or a huge hunk of rock smacks into the planet — that lots of things die, not just from the initial trauma of the event, but because the “normal” bounds of the previous equilibrium exceed so many organisms’ ability to cope with new conditions AND evolutionary processes aren’t fast enough to adapt to them.
In sophomore biology, our prof — different guy this time — taught us even more evolution. One thing he had us do was go out and by the old Maxis game SimLife for DOS and fiddle with it, then write an essay about what we learned. One option in the game was “Natural Disasters” — forest fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, the aforementioned meteors and volcanoes … and Man.
Always gives me a chuckle when I think on it. At any rate, it’s not just the scalar values of these parameters which matter. However, if you insist we go there note that surface dwelling fauna during the Cretaceous was dominated by reptilian and amphibian species, many quite large. Most mammal species were relatively quite small, and also quite rare. Fast-forward to now and ponder that the mix is quite a bit different, and consider where it is we find most of the large reptilian and amphibian species vs. where mammals tend to do best.
Oh, and sea levels were quite a bit higher as there was little to no polar ice to speak of:
http://www.esa.org/esablog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/pangaea.jpg
Not the best direct comparison because obviously the continents weren’t in the same configuration as they are today. It might occur to those of us reading from the US that corn, wheat, potatoes and soybeans probably wouldn’t grow so well under a few tens of meters of salt water. But that’s more a one- to five-thousand year problem … and you’re right, we’ll probably all have woken up and figured out how to lick this by then.
Well, assuming of course that we figure out how to replace fossil fuels when we do eventually run out of them, which, uh, seems to be the largest perceived existential threat here. Maybe folks half a millennium from now will be smarter than we are today, but from where I’m sitting I’m ain’t quite sure about that. Really pissed off seems at least as likely.
Quite right Brandon. I sit around all day thinking about how my forebears screwed up the world for me. If you’re worried about the opinion of your future generations 5 centuries from now then don’t breed. It might improve the human stock.
It helps that our ancestors didn’t have access to nuclear weapons. If those don’t get us, I can certainly see widespread conventional warfare still making a pretty big dent, and frankly that’s the biggest risk I see in my crystal ball, AGW or no.
I don’t have kids, don’t plan on having them but I am a professional uncle. And yes, if you really must know, a large part of that decision is based on my genetics. By my reckoning, my ethical circuits work as well as any, maybe better than most (it’s hard to tell) and because of that I wouldn’t wish some of the other ones on my worst enemy.
You move from CO2 the demon gas to future generations running out of fossil fuel and cursing us. Then you go on about nuclear weapons and conventional warfare. Then you top it off with your medical problems.
Cheer up Brandon, there is light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an oncoming train.
Alex,
Noooo, there I was musing about why you seem to think it is your great-great-great-great-great grandkids will be any more intellectually suited to figure out how to replace fossil fuels with something else than you presently are. Especially in an economy with even greater demand and ever-dwindling supply.
If you don’t think we’re our own worst existential threat, perhaps you should read more history.
Here’s a clue, genius: if you don’t want me to talk about my personal life, don’t bring it up to begin with.
Dare I even ask?
You got one thing right there. You called me a genius
Brandon, I am curious. You criticisms of the post here are, IMV, labored and lacking direction.
The claims about which the author of the post writes are clearly ludicrous. Do you support them?
Brandon
Disappointed not to hear from you. Afraid I will call you out about your ‘medical condition’? I suggest you don’t use the line ‘professional uncle’ – sounds creepy.
‘Here’s a clue, genius: if you don’t want me to talk about my personal life, don’t bring it up to begin with.’
You’ve used that line before. Time to get a new script writer. It’s a little lame when you ‘cut and paste’ your old stuff.
Happy baiting in the future. One day you may become a ‘master baiter’.
David A,
“Labored” is a matter of personal opinion, not much I can do for you there. This post is my main thesis: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/14/claim-economic-collapse-will-prevent-catastrophic-global-warming/#comment-1907311
What specific points do you find muddled or otherwise invalid? With which, if any, do you agree?
I don’t accept your sweeping a priori that Christopher Reyer’s claims are “clearly ludicrous”. I think it’s ludicrous that you’d say such a thing.
Here’s a specific: We know that after +2°C, dangerous things start happening, and we start passing crucial tipping points, like the West Antarctica ice sheet collapse, which has reportedly already begun.
Call me dubious on that one, with prejudice. I think it’s a bad statement:
1) We don’t “know” what will happen, all we can do is estimate.
2) +2°C is a policy-drawn line in the sand, not a magical physical threshold.
3) Have we passed the WAIS critical tipping point or not? It’s ambiguous as stated, isn’t it?
My short answer to your yes/no question is: not implausible, needs to be tightened up.
Alex,
Disappointed there wasn’t much to respond to.
lol, no. I do find it somewhat amusing that you apparently can’t decide whether we should talk about my personal life or not.
My nephews’ parents rather like it.
We could always talk about that light at the end of the tunnel you mentioned a few posts back, and thereby spare you the boredom of me describing my belly button lint.
Alex,
Whoops, missed one:
“Stepping stone to master debater” is too obvious … my scriptwriter informs me the best response is:
Quid pro quo
Ta.
@ur momisugly Brandon,
Really classy.
“We know that after +2°C, dangerous things start happening, and we start passing crucial tipping points, like the West Antarctica ice sheet collapse, which has reportedly already begun.”
Jeez, we know NOTHING like he is claiming, tipping points do not exist or we would have tipped long ago, as the Medieval Warm Period was that much warmer and all the Warm Periods before that. And the West Antacrtic ice sheet is not collapsing—it is doing nothing unusual. Wow, was a total eggplant.
Bzzzt! Independent thought crime in sector 7.
“the Medieval Warm Period was that much warmer and all the Warm Periods before that” Bzzzzt – Wrong!!, the MWP was not 2°C warmer than now.
Spaatch– Almost all temperature proxies show the Medieval Warming Period was a global event AND was approximately 2C warmer than now.
Read Rothenthal et al 2013:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/new-paper-shows-medieval-warm-period-was-global-in-scope/
The CAGW warmunists were ultimately unsuccessful in trying to rewrite climate history by trying to eliminate the MWP; a major fail…
““the Medieval Warm Period was that much warmer and all the Warm Periods before that” Bzzzzt – Wrong!!, the MWP was not 2°C warmer than now.”
A bold statement which will surprise a few on both sides of the AGW debate . Can you quote recent sources for that assertion?
Doom is the new Hope.
And when we get past this, Hope will be the new Doom (for alarmists anyway. They can’t abide optimism and want our collective spirit crushed).
Wouldn’t genocide be justified given the dire situation the planet is in?
What do we call the anti-human zealots?
Humaphobes?
Dangerous!
Aliens
environmentalists?
World Bank also published in 2013 June “Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional impacts and case for Resilience” warns that by the 2040s, India will see a significant reduction in crop yields because of extreme heat. This story was published by a Daily Newspaper “Deccan Chronicle” from Hyderabad, India on 20th June 2013. Along with this published my counter to the article of World Bank “Too much heat over global warming” by saying Andhra Pradesh [a state in India] receives rainfall in two monsoons. So far, there is no change in monsoon onset pattern or monsoon rainfall pattern.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Not to be disagreeable but the Cretaceous was far from an idyllic 80my flat line interlude from the vagaries of paleoclimate.
This graphic goes all the way back to the beginning of the Permian. The Cretaceous temperatures were a sine wave, or thereabouts. Sea level followed, but lest we get on our thermosteric high horse a somewhat more impressive heat wave in the Permian was accompanied by a sea level drop.
The arrogance of the Potsdam followers of the one true path astonishes yet again.
What we actually know, really ain’t that much.
Agreed. The point is that it was as least as ecologically active an age as today, most likely much more so.
Economic Collapse is a specialty of the World Bank. They know all about it. Where ever its prescription is applied, economic performance subsides and poverty grows.
Note that Reyer is a geographer who specializes in modelling trees. He has never written about the economic impact of climate change, and seems unaware that his remarks are at odds with the most pessimistic estimates published in the peer-reviewed literature.
” …we start passing crucial tipping points, like the West Antarctica ice sheet collapse, which has reportedly already begun….”
==============================================
Reyer displays his “iggerrance.”
Fire up a volcano under an ice sheet and guess what happens?
The volcano goes out? … No.
The ice starts melting ? … Yes.
The ice melts fast? … Yes
Glacier flow rate increases? … Yes.
Until the volcano goes out.
The West Antarctic ice sheet in question (Thwaites Glacier, Pine Bay etc)l sits on top of an active volcanic field, which is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. If it melts, it melts. That melting has absolutely nothing to do with CO2, or AGW and no `tipping point’ prevention can possibly work. It’s like whipping a dead horse to make it get up and work.
Exactly ^^
Christopher Reyer would like to publish all his tax returns online.
Before he wants to inflict unnecessary hardship on all of humanity.
Perhaps Mr Reyer would be happier living under Tyranny in war torn Iraq and Syria under the Islamic State or just try and survive in the slums of Mumbai or Rio or Johannesburg or Detroit or perhaps he,s just anti human without empathy.
“Plenty to eat where she lived”
==============================
“She” most likely didn’t live in Milford Sound. Much of its present geography and formation is as a result of glacial action over the last 2 million years during the current Ice Age. Milford Sound is not actually a `Sound’ but a fiord. Its on the Western side of the South Island of New Zealand about three quarters of the way down.
“She” not only died out in the Big Extinction 66 million years ago, “she” probably didn’t live in New Zealand, at all, ever but there is little evidence for that either way. Fossil finds are rare in NZ.
Tyrannosaurus lived throughout what is now western North America, which then was an island continent named Laramidia. I understand something was recently found in Mongolia which may have extended their range. Carnivorous Theropod dinosaurs were present in NZ way back when, but probably not T-Rex.
Still, it’s a good looking picture! And Milford Sound is a “Must See” place if you do visit NZ.
T-Rex lived in
Yeah I know… 🙂 And the grass is a bit dodgy as well – though there is some debate about the age of grass. But it made a nice composite when I stuck the pics together…
If you had used alpine tussock, it would have looked more interesting and, maybe, even more authentic! 🙂
You want to reduce population and destroy prosperity, production and technology? Ok you can start by killing your own children or not having kids while throwing away your phone, tv, car and even your petroleum-based plastic products, you can’t live in a house with modern materials or travel by any vehicle unless it’s a horse and cart, but since you’re against domestication of animals and they fart evil methane anyway that’s probably a no-go.
What?….it only applies to OTHER people…ooooooooooooohhhhhhhh I see…OK.