Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Former NASA GISS Chairman James Hansen has suggested that Switzerland is safest place to be, if you want to maximise your chances of surviving climate change.
According to The Atlantic;
Scientists warn that extreme weather will get worse and huge swaths of coastal cities will be submerged by ever-more-acidic oceans. All of which raises a question: If climate change continues at this pace, is anywhere going to be safe?
“Switzerland would be a good guess,” said James Hansen, the director of climate science at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Hansen’s latest climate study warns that climate change is actually happening faster than computer models previously predicted. He and more than a dozen co-authors found that sea levels could rise at least 10 feet in the next 50 years. Slate points out that although the study isn’t yet peer-reviewed, Hansen is “known for being alarmist and also right.”
Okay, so. Switzerland might be a desirable place to live—certainly in general, but also as a way to avoid the effects of climate change—for a few reasons: It’s landlocked, which means it’s buffered from rising sea levels. And officials in Switzerland appear to be taking climate-related threats seriously—which is not the case in much of the rest of the world. …
Switzerland of course has other potential advantages for the world’s climate elite. The famously impenetrable Swiss banking system, and their protective attitude towards wealthy foreigners residing within their borders, should maximise the difficulties for anyone who ever comes looking for a refund, for all that climate cash some leading alarmists have accumulated over the years.
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Of course, Switzerland is also expected to benefit from the theoretical changes of AGW – a lot more land would become viable farmland, for example, and the expanded growing season could give them a huge bonus in crop and livestock production.
…but we’re supposed to pretend that can’t happen, right?
…more land would become viable farmland…but we’re supposed to pretend that can’t happen, right?
And the Alps will be known for their fruited plains.
: > )
The Swiss Alps are believe to have been virtually glacier free during the Roman Warm Period
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/paper-finds-alps-were-nearly-ice-free.html
Roman silver mines are either still above the snow line or have just become accessible again.
Many Swiss villages were crushed by advancing glaciers from the late 16th Century but started to thaw out again around 1750 according to Gordon Manley of CET fame. That is the process that is continuing to this day
I compiled this graphic of the major glacier advances and recessions over the last 1000 years from information supplied by E Roy Ladurie and C Pfister amongst others.. It should be seen as a guide, but not exact, as all sorts of factors affect glacier change.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9qkeglbck7h2fc/revised%20glaciers.docx?dl=0
You may need a drop box account to view it. If anyone wants a copy sent directly to them please email me. Address on my climatereasondotcom web site
tonyb
The famous impenetrable Swiss banking system is shot full of holes courtesy of the USA IRS.
So just what would Hansen’s Hallucinations do to Australia ? I would rather take my chances of not getting flooded out, in Australia. And Australia has far more resources.
Just imagine if global warming melted all of those Swiss glaciers etc.
Being land locked means you are in a basin, which can fill up with water.
There’s no assurance that Switzerland can’t possibly flood.
g
Indeed, Hannibal would have been unable to cross the alps with his elephants had conditions been as they are today. In Roman times there was less glacification and snow.
Just as San Francisco is now known for it’s pained fruits.
Great place to go to with a Little Ice Age coming………
These swivel eyed alarmists will be coming across to the public more and more like a deranged doomsday cult. I expect the MSM to start slowly distancing themselves once the Paris junkets are up..
I suspect that they know that Paris will be their last hoorah…
That is the cause of the absolutely over-the-top stupidity we are seeing from many of the usual suspects.
Switzerland? Really? Why not Upstate NY where I live? It is a lot better climate, if these oceans were to rise, it would be prime living space unlike Switzerland which isn’t. I bet these lunatic warm freaks think Tibet would be the only place not underwater in their ‘super warm earth’ fairytale so why doesn’t Hansen move there?
Even if all the ice were to melt, there is no way oceans will rise that much to matter to 80% of the land masses. But then, most humans live right on the ocean’s edge and this is where property values are the highest.
We don’t want alarmists staying here in the U.S. For their “end-times,” let them “flee to the mountains” elsewhere. Although as I understand it, to buy a house in Switzerland in most villages is up to the local people, who can be quite discriminatory.
John Ringo posits that Switzerland is also the best place to survive an alien invasion, given their armed and militarized populace and defensible geography. Perhaps Hansen isn’t telling us everything he knows; he’s from NASA after all!
Defensible from what; an invasion of locusts ??
Upstate NY?
No way. American chocolate and American beer are rubbish. Switzerland is way better on both counts. Great knives, too.
(But a bayonet charge by the Swiss Army would be a shambles.)
American micro-beers are OK.
They wouldn’t likely do that as they have all been issued automatic weapons.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/switzerland.asp
there used to be a map of the US and what parts of the states would be covered in water. Does anyone have a link to this wonderful map.? I would like to get some high land at a good price and wait for the water and the high value ocean front views….
Hansen and his followers won’t ever “move there” because they know Al Gore will snap up all the prime waterfront real estate as soon as they are vacated and the prices go down. Haha
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
“… Hansen is “known for being alarmist and also right.””
Really?
Hansen’s a loon. Pure and simple. He’s also deceptive to the max.
Yeah, but he is unique in that he is a loon in a powerful position.
Oh, wait …
never mind.
/grin
In the spirit of the Darwin Award to recognize outstanding contributions in removing deleterious traits from the gene pool, there should be an Ehrlich award to recognize those whose prediction records remove them from the credibility pool.
Nice one, particularly considering that “ehrlich” means “honest” in German.
Duzzatmean that Kentucky Fried Chicken, truly is fing-erlick-en good ??
g
No just means Kant Fu***** Cook…
Isn’t the President one who must also be removed from the credibility pool?
“You can keep your Dr. …”
The last time we had abrupt climate change; didn’t Switzerland lose a few villages to advancing ice?
Last summer I saw it snow in the Swiss Alps in August at and above the 7,000 foot level.
That must have been rotten snow.
And when sea level rises you can have ocean-front property with a mountain view at the same time.
well those mountains would be re categorized as rolling hills, when th sea level really rises.
Do you think we’ll all fit?
+ 1000
Roughly calculated, the world population could fit on the arable land and each person would have about 30 square feet of space.
Area [sq mi] x 640 acres/sq mi x 43,560 sq ft/acre x 0.67 [% arable land]
;^D
The Swiss are very anal about being neat & tidy – so no junked cars/farm relics/scrap lumber/etc. can accumulate around ones place. The Swiss even tell jokes on themselves about their fastidiousness.
Not relevant – for most of us our bank balances wouldn’t be large enough to be let in.
Switzerland so that is where ‘Dr Dooms’ secret lair will be , only its ha sort of given it location away now .
how about the himalayas? nice and warm by then and no glaciers.
Yeah, but yeti.
How do they taste?
Yeti: goes good with fava beans and a nice chianti……
With all those people it will tip over, right.
@ur momisugly jeff, +1000 ROFLMAO ( but which way will it tip? into France or Austria which is the same landscape and a lot cheaper!).
Rising sea levels, won`t happen here.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3175090/Good-transfer-business-Football-boss-Harry-Redknapp-makes-4million-profit-Sandbanks-home-s-selling-got-6million-new-one-s-buying.html
Precisely! Why did Al Gore buy $4M worth of sea-front property if he believes sea-level is going to rise 20ft by 2100?
There must be some secret compensation fund to be handed out to all those whose houses become submerged under the rising oceans!
‘Ever more acidic oceans’? Would those be the ones that will be slightly less alkaline than they are at the moment? Good that the Swiss are taking climate change seriously so that any ‘global warming’ will stop at their borders because they are the good guys, right?
I can see a flaw in this argument. If the oceans are going to boil away, I reckon sea levels aren’t actually going to rise. You didn’t think of that did you Jim ? Loser.
It’s that problematic, unsustainable transition period between melting and vaporization that’s going to cause all the unprecedented
“He and more than a dozen co-authors found that sea levels could rise at least 10 feet in the next 50 years”
What does that even mean? Sea levels COULD rise AT LEAST 10 feet…it’s logically inconsistent…if you are using a hypothetical, you should include the possible upper bound. But using the term AT LEAST indicates that that’s the minimum and therefore a definitive WILL is more logical within the context. For me the most bizarre thing about “climate change” is that it turns otherwise intelligent people (presumably the writer for The Atlantic) into incoherent fools.
Good catch.
If it’s going to rise 10 feet in the next fifty years, it’s going to have to start chugging, because the pace it’s been on for the past several decades is good for only half a foot.
its even worse than that, the article says by 2050 and we are already in 2015 so they only have 35 years left. That’s 3.4 inches each year, give or take. Since we aren’t eve hitting 3.4mm per year (unless you include data tampering numbers) we are off by more than 3.3 inches per year.
Even during the meltwater pulses at the beginning of the current interglacial, sea level never rose as fast as Hansen’s nitwit fantasies delude him into thinking will happen.
Check on maximum rate of melt and hence rise.
I recall that “they” now mislead us by ignoring the subsidence of the sea floor so that actually the sea level does not rise as much relative to the surrounding land mass unless you live close to places like Houston where the land mass is sinking because of pumping out all the water.
What is the real number considering under sea subsidence is real?
He and more than a dozen co-authors… – well, they all had to add their little bit
“well, they all had to add their little bit”
Well looking at the value of SLR and the predicted value, maybe they summed each author’s prediction instead of averaging?
Why don’t they require each co-author to separately write the part that (s)he is solely responsible for creating/ researching/ discovering/ explaining/ whatever .
When I see a paper that has more than two named authors, I wonder if any of them actually wrote any of it.
A Jewish friend of mine, made her living writing papers in English, on the subject of ” The Oil Weapon . ” and similar vein, for Saudi Arabian, and Iranian students who were working on degrees at SoCal schools. She charged them handsomely.
g
It means that 40% of the Greenland ice sheet would have to melt in 50 years at a time when it looks like we’ve reached a low in the Arctic sea ice melt.
Trust me, the Swiss banking system is gate more penetrable these days. Banks are running scared and have to report all accounts, even safety deposit boxes. Taxes are also deducted of you cannot, or do not (in time) , provide evidence that they should not be. Other countries look much better for a tax haven.
You’re right. But it’s not just the Swiss banking system that’s getting more penetrable these days. All banking systems are getting more penetrable. Google FATCA. If any dumb..ss move by Washington would encourage the world to move away from the US dollar as a world currency it will have been FATCA. Even the Chinese and Russian banks are complying with FATCA – for now. You see, supporters of the Obama administration claim that the deal with Iran was the best that could have been done because the sanctions regime would have ultimately broken down, yet they’ve gotten world compliance with bank reporting for nothing more important than collecting … taxes?
Sitting in my room, with my but freezing off in the coldest winter than I can remember in decades, watching the news that snow is falling at sea level in Tasmania. Wind coming off the ever growing Antarctic ice shelf.
I won’t be going to Switzerland, the glaciers has this nasty habit of squashing villages when mini ice ages occur.
It’s like a bit big isn’t it.
Try the Italian Riviera. They are more interested in ice cream than climate change.
+1
I’m not particularly a fan of the climate, but Switzerland is near the top of the list of my places to resettle if the USA becomes (politically) unlivable. They have sensible tax policies, sensible health care policies, everybody owns guns and they generally lack our politics of resentment, politics of victimhood and they are strongly free-market oriented.
I actually like Australia better, but politically, Switzerland is a good choice. But don’t expect to just wade across the border of either country and be given instant asylum. (That’s a metaphor, people.) Both countries also have immigration laws designed to protect their citizens and their national interests.
Giving Hansen asylum sounds about right.
Insert the word “insane.”
Good luck. Just what makes you think they will let you in.
My little sister lived there for years, but was never permitted to get Swiss citizenship. And they speak French anyway, and that would be a no-no for me.
As for their vaunted medical care. My sister had the benefit of that care, and it cost her, her life when a “professor” at the fancy ” hopital ” messed up a little experiment of his.
g
I sojourned there one ski season. I wasn’t fond of the beer. I liked German beer more.
As for language, there are four (4) official languages: German, Italian, French and Romansh with German being the most common (2/3). English is taught in school at an early age. Most Swiss speak 5 or 6 languages. One of my lady friends spoke all four official languages, plus English, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese. Many Swiss in the tourist industry have many languages.
I have trouble with English and my French is lousy, but I greatly admire those people who seem to be able to compartmentalize their brains into different languages. It is interesting to have dreams in more than one language. Now that is something to study.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland
What happened to Anarctica.
Britain’s top scientist at the time, Sir David King, once said Antarctica would be the only habitable continent.
Right on.
The Polar regions are the new Mecca for those of the Scientism/Gaian/CAGW cult.
Why Antarctica will soon be the only place to live – literally
Sunday 02 May 2004
Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.
Monday 16 January 2006
James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years
We are in a fool’s climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/01/global-warming-versus-climate-change/#comment-580680
Was this just before Lovelock went into reverse? http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/04/03/green-guru-james-lovelock-on-climate-change-i-dont-think-anybody-really-knows-whats-happening-they-just-guess-lovelock-reverses-himself-on-global-warming/
Arctic? At least they will be able to subsist on mosquitoes. If it warms up by 5 deg C it will be possible to grow maize from here to, say, halfway to Coppermine. That would be great, except for the bears.
And speaking of bears, the late spring frost this year just about wiped out the blueberries so the bears are hungry and roaming into people-land way too soon for comfort. The raspberries were very poor as well. Flowers and fruits are about a month early: points to another very bad winter coming. Come o-o-on El Nino!
Typical of Hansen to just throw out an impractical idea. A person can’t just decide to live in Switzerland. My family has a legacy for 18 generations, My Father was born in Fribourg, but because I was born in Michigan, and my Mother is from Spain, I had to jump through hoops to establish Residency and then Citizenship.
Soooo, if you’re from the Midwest is that Montreux?
I can’t believe the real scientific community remains silent. Climate “Science” will drag everyone down with it. Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. The sea level increases about 3mm/yr, and that rate has remained unchanged for over 100 years, and has actually been falling.
http://s90.photobucket.com/user/dhm1353/media/Climate%20Change/CU2.png.html
The ocean pH also hasn’t been changing, and is well buffered to accommodate any new CO2.
http://jo.nova.s3.amazonaws.com/graph/ocean/acidification/mwacompilationofglobalocean_phjan82014.jpg
Hard to tell by the scale of this graph, but it seems like even meltwater pulse 1A was about twenty meters in over a thousand years…or less than seven feet per century.
And that may be overestimating the rate.
Anyone? Yes? No?
For yuks, Google: “Energy in Switzerland”. Some energy highlights, pertaining to that alpine Shangri-la, that are at a somewhat jarring contrast with the Atlantic’s utopian vision of Switzerland as a monolithic land of yodeling, Heidi-look-alike, neat-and-tidy, eco-conscious, carbon-phobe, Gaia-freak watch-makers:
-85% of Switzerland’s energy use is of fossil-fuel and nuclear origin, imported from other countries.
-Electricity consumed in Switzerland produces 7 times the CO2 emissions of electricity produced in Switzerland.
-“Switzerland exports “clean” energy causing emissions of 0.1 million tonnes of CO2 and imports “dirty” electricity causing emissions of 5 million tonnes of CO2.”
So I’d say that the “attaboy” that the “Atlantic” offered to Switzerland is full of more holes (yep! I know you see it comin’!) than a wedge of SWISS CHEESE!!!
P. S. If all those fossil fuel and nuclear power plants that currently supply 85% of Switzerland’s energy use are suddenly lost to the rising seas, then will Switzerland have any operating airports left that can handle the massive, private-jet, CO2-spew congestion that will inevitably develop as Hansen and all those brazen-hypocrite, carbon-piggy, “greenwashed”-hustler creep-outs, he knows, simultaneously push the panic-button and en-masse execute their “Operation Cuckoo-Clock” bug-out plans? I mean, like, I can’t help but wonder if our betters have really thought this whole deal out.
You may keep your feet dry (if Jimbo is right) by moving to Switzerland, but you will suffer death by boredom instead. A number of hedge funds that moved operations from London to Swtzerland in recent years are reportedly moving back because they can’t retain staff. Reason Zurich and Geneva are just too boring to live in.
Zurich is uptight and Geneva is mellow, don’t confuse either one with the kind of run-of-the-mill boring that you get in places like Pittsburgh and Indianapolis. In contrast, London is a real-time pinball game using humans as both bumpers and balls. Personally my wife and I prefer Geneva, our 26 year old daughter thinks it’s “OK for old people, London is a lot more fun”
And yes, I have spent more than an airport stop-over in each of the aforementioned cities.
You missed Lugano. Your daughter would love it there.
I liked the trains in Geneva, in my two weeks there; except it was difficult to get on them.
I had to stand on the opposite side of the track from the platform, and duck across the rails at the last second, just to avoid the swarm of tobacco drug addicts who were taking their last puff, as they stepped onto the train, and were already lit up as they took their first step off.
Must be some reason for all those junkies in Geneva; maybe it’s the ” Nations .”
Is not Switzerland the land of the cuckoo clock? Therefore, this makes James Hansen’s recommendation perfectly sound, in a twisted kind of way.
Truly. This guy has all the imprimatur of the local freak going around ranting that Godzilla is Coming! and will get you, too! Personally, I don’t think anyone pays the slightest attention to this stuff, at least in the USA. The AGW train has sailed, folks . . . and nobody gives a phoof!
Is the rate of rising hysteria and moronic claims directly proportional to the time left before the meeting of the self-righteous, hypocritical delusion fest in Paris?
Why doesn’t Hansen practice what he preaches and spare the USA of his presence and move to Switzerland now?
Yup; and I’m making popcorn and waiting to see how Obama-sama manages to squirm out of any concrete actions after his Big Speech the other day. At this juncture he sounds like an utter moron, parroting this nonsense; you’d think he’d have ONE advisior, somewhere, who knows the facts and would tell him to just shut up!
Climageddon Theater must go on.