Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study claims that people who live in tropical climates can’t be as productive as people who live in temperate climates – that 13c (55F) is the optimum temperature for human productivity. In the press release, the researchers further claim that warmer temperatures lead to poorer school results and more violence.
The abstract of the study;
Growing evidence demonstrates that climatic conditions can have a profound impact on the functioning of modern human societies, but effects on economic activity appear inconsistent. Fundamental productive elements of modern economies, such as workers and crops, exhibit highly non-linear responses to local temperature even in wealthy countries. In contrast, aggregate macroeconomic productivity of entire wealthy countries is reported not to respond to temperature, while poor countries respond only linearly. Resolving this conflict between micro and macro observations is critical to understanding the role of wealth in coupled human–natural systems and to anticipating the global impact of climate change. Here we unify these seemingly contradictory results by accounting for non-linearity at the macro scale. We show that overall economic productivity is non-linear in temperature for all countries, with productivity peaking at an annual average temperature of 13 °C and declining strongly at higher temperatures. The relationship is globally generalizable, unchanged since 1960, and apparent for agricultural and non-agricultural activity in both rich and poor countries. These results provide the first evidence that economic activity in all regions is coupled to the global climate and establish a new empirical foundation for modelling economic loss in response to climate change, with important implications. If future adaptation mimics past adaptation, unmitigated warming is expected to reshape the global economy by reducing average global incomes roughly 23% by 2100 and widening global income inequality, relative to scenarios without climate change. In contrast to prior estimates, expected global losses are approximately linear in global mean temperature, with median losses many times larger than leading models indicate.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature15725.html
According to the Washington Post;
Culling together economic and temperature data for over 100 wealthy and poorer countries alike over 50 years, the researchers assert that the optimum temperature for human productivity is seems to be around 13 degrees Celsius or roughly 55 degrees Fahrenheit, as an annual average for a particular place. Once things get a lot hotter than that, the researchers add, economic productivity declines “strongly.”
“The relationship is globally generalizable, unchanged since 1960, and apparent for agricultural and non-agricultural activity in both rich and poor countries,” write the authors, led by Marshall Burke of Stanford’s Department of Earth System Science, who call their study “the first evidence that economic activity in all regions is coupled to the global climate.” Burke published the study with Solomon Hsiang and Edward Miguel, economists at the University of California, Berkeley.
…
Assuming this relationship between temperature and productivity is correct, that naturally leads to deep questions about its cause. The researchers locate them in two chief places: agriculture and people. In relation to rising temperature, Burke says, “We see that agricultural productivity declines, labor productivity declines, kids do worse on tests, and we see more violence.”
…
However, the new work has already drawn criticism — University of Sussex economist Richard Tol called it “hugely problematic” in an email to the Post — so it remains to be seen what other researchers make of the work.
Even if we accept the study at face value, according to the abstract, unmitigated warming is expected to reshape the global economy by reducing average global incomes roughly 23% by 2100 and widening global income inequality, relative to scenarios without climate change.
Given that the global economy is growing at around 1% per annum per capita, a simple projection still yields a 130% increase in per capita income by 2100 under BAU. A 23% reduction to a 130% gain doesn’t seem such a big deal, in the scheme of things.
(1 + 0.01)85 years = 2.3
2.3 (230%) – the original 100% = 130% gain
I’m concerned that this study may be ignoring a lot of political and historical context. If an equivalent study was performed in the age of the Roman Empire, when much of the world’s economic activity centred on warm countries like Italy and Egypt, it seems likely that the calculated “optimum economic temperature” would have been significantly higher than 13c (55F)
However the simplest criticism of the study is the irrefutable fact that humans are physiologically optimised to extreme tropical conditions.
How would you feel, right now, if you took all your clothes off outdoors? You might feel embarrassed – but that is a cultural response. What you would most likely feel is cold, unless it was a hot day.
We all wear clothes, for comfort, style, and most importantly, to protect ourselves from the cold. Even in my home town on the edge of the tropics, certainly in winter, and for at least part of the Summer, people have to wear clothes, otherwise they get uncomfortably cold.
If you become too hot, such as when performing outdoor physical labour on a hot day, you can adjust your clothing to optimise your body temperature, say by swapping a long sleeve shirt for a t-shirt, wearing shorts, or in extreme cases by peeling down to not much clothing at all. I’ve mowed a large hilly multi-acre lawn with a petrol push mower, on days when the temperature exceeded 110F (45c). I’ll spare you the image of what I was wearing on those days.
My point is, humans are physiologically well adjusted to handling very hot weather, without adverse effects, providing we are acclimatised, providing we stay hydrated, and providing we dress appropriately for the weather. In any climate cooler than the extreme tropics where humans evolved, we have to wear clothes pretty much continuously, to protect ourselves from the cold.
Suggesting that productivity inevitably drops off, as we approach our physiological optimum environmental temperature, in my opinion is just plain silly.
As for the productivity of other plants and animals on which we depend, tropical countries are characterised by their superabundance of natural life, including food plants and animals. Some staple crops such as oats might like it cold – but there is plenty of edible farm produce which thrives in the heat.
This was discussed by the authors at a live event at the World Bank back in September.
http://live.worldbank.org/Global-Non-Linear-Effect-of-Temperature-on-Economic-Production
Thank you for the link.
He presented the figures and data in this currently published article. He also answered questions after his presentation and certainly presented the other variables that may, in certain cases, deviate from his general conclusions regarding the impact of higher temperature.
This is my first time listening to how an economist is looking at productivity with temperature.
I enjoyed his presentation and saved the link.
Thanks again.
I think of this as the Peggy Tong speculation, since I first heard it mooted by Peggy. (I met her when I was at the U of Adelaide in the 1960s. She was an absolutely gorgeous Malaysian student, whom I totally failed to get off with.) Shortly after hearing it from her, I found a late 19th century version. But even the brain-boggling beauty of Peggy was not sufficient to stop me from doubting it. If cooler climates are so beneficial, why did so many civilizations grow up in hotter climes, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and Central America?
Here’s a US map of ground temps, deep enough to be the average air temp. A comfortable band (per the paper’s claim), goes through the middle of the country. It seems to do a decent job of dividing hot climate from cold.
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Cooling/US-ground-temps.gif
Thanks for the average-temperature map; interesting.
As for dividing hot climate from cold, I suppose there’s a sense in which you’re right. Still, the map seems to place Topeka and Portland, Oregon, in the same class, whereas I’m guessing that few people would mistake a Topeka winter for a winter in Portland.
After a few weeks, their summers are probably distinguishable, too.
I’ve never been to the 4 corners location of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, & Arizona. Based on the temperature driver, this spot ought to be one fantastic hub of economic activity, probably one of the most productive in the entire country.
But then again mebbe temperature is not the main driver in human productivity (I would say it is not a statistical driver at all but I don’t want to be labeled a denier).
Whah, can’t think none when it’s hot. Jessibel, fetch me another mint julep.
Seriously, humans are children of the Pleistocene and we have this ridiculous notion that an ice age is a normal and desirable condition for the planet. Not. Throughout earth history ice ages have been occasions for mass extinctions and mayhem. Our particular ice age is no exception.
Ah, Climatic Determinism, an idea dating back as far as Hippocrates. Some notions never die, it seems.
I assume airline ticket sales were not used in this study as it would have shown that the local climate in Maui is far preferred over Tristan Da Cunha.
Jeepers…..wimps….I have worked and flown planes in -50C……without windchill. I think the whole world should be +60F.
Just had an eerie thought. What if climate nutter scientist wanna-be’s discovered a way to create a global climate of 55º everywhere in the world. The climate optimum according to the consensus. What would that do to crop yields? Corn would crater. Say goodbye to potatoes and tomatoes. Probably kale would survive just because nobody likes it as woould bean sprouts, but I’m pretty sure our feed crops would fail along with fed stock. Is this story a harbinger of an alarmist designer world where the excess people just die off and cease to be a problem? I think it is, and I’m not ready for a world without bananas and Kona coffee.
Crops such as barley, oats, potatoes, wheat as well as bother root crops do just fine. Soft fruits suffer from frost damage but berries grow just fine in Scotland.
Average temperature in Southern England range from 19C in summer to 6C in winter and crop yields are pretty good.
Well dp, we might get to try out that kind of growing season temperature during the next few decades, if the historical effects of the Dalton minimum are repeated.
The City-State of Singapore is nearly on the equator and has a year round average temperature of about 27 degrees C. Singapore is one of the most successful, wealthiest, hardest working, and best administered City-States in the World. This reveals that the basis of this most recent CAGW Fable is, yet again, nonsense, probably racist nonsense, too.
Sadly the bozos involved in producing and refereeing this self-styled “study” would dismiss your argument as cherry-picking a counter example. I suspect that these idiots are genuinely too thick to see that their own conclusions are ideologically driven donkey-shit.
Kruger-Dunning in action.
“We show that overall economic productivity is non-linear in temperature for all countries, with productivity peaking at an annual average temperature of 13 °C and declining strongly at higher temperatures. The relationship is globally generalizable, unchanged since 1960, and apparent for agricultural and non-agricultural activity in both rich and poor countries.”
From a cultural and prosperity perspective, Australia and New Zealand are very similar. Australia’s average annual temperature at 17.3°C is significantly above the 13°C claimed optimum, while New Zealand’s average annual temperature at 12.2°C is close to the claimed optimum. However, contrary to the claims in the paper, Australia’s economic productivity is about 30% better than New Zealand’s !
In Australia is meaningless. The averaged figure of temps between the topical north and say Tasmania is 17.3c?? So another go at averaging the temp of your head in an oven at 100c and your feet in a freezer at 0c and saying 50c is just perfect?
I agree – the average is meaningless, and that is likely to be true for many countries. But that is what the authors have chosen to measure – the “average annual temperature of a country”. I chose an example that counter-demonstrates their claim.
That’s ’cause of all the Kiwis are in Oz, and NZ is full of Aussies.
NZ is not full of Aussies. But Aussies in NZ are granted PR after two years (Caveat; it was true about 5-10 years ago. Rules may have changed since) by default. Either way, Aussies get to apply for PERMANENT residency, WITHOUT having to apply for any other kind of migrant visa such as in Aus, general skills. However, since Feb 26th 2001, NZ’ers arriving after that date are temporary residents in Aus on a 444 category visa, granted upon entry, revoked upon exit. You can thank Helen Clark for that!
So, NZ’res are second class “residents” and pay full tax when working. A child born to a NZ’er here in Aus is a “NZ’er”, and thus is a “temporary resident”. Go figure!
Woah! All that from a penal colony.
And that is an average calculated from ~112 ground based devices (Some ever used before the 21st century). That is 1 for every 68,500 square kilometers of the landmass Aus.
Most of the comments here have been about temperature, but you really need to look at the other variable in their equation – GDP. For the U.S. it is a fake number.
For 2014 total Fed Govmt spending = $3,504 Billion of which $483 Billion was borrowed. $483/17,420 = 2.77% of GDP is the Fed’s spending borrowed money out of 2014’s 2.4% growth.
For 2013 total Fed Govmt spending = $3,509 Billion of which $690 Billion was borrowed. $690/$14,100 = 4.9% of GDP is the Fed’s spending borrowed money out of 2013’s 2% growth.
http://www.heritage.org/multimedia/infographic/2014/12/the-federal-budget-1994-2014
Since the Feds spent this money, that means 2.77 percent and 4.9 of our GDP was spending borrowed money and shows up as current growth in GDP. When it is paid back, it is not considered GDP and no effect is made. So not only are the Feds putting your kids and grandkids in debt, they are stealing their GDP growth.
Now look at some of the fudging going on with other factors going into GDP, since all growth over the last years has been on borrowed money.
In this chart, PCE dwarfs everything else. If you just look at the BEA’s numbers you see that personal consumption expenditures in the second quarter were running at a $10 trillion annual rate, 70.7% of the $14.1 trillion GDP figure.
But when you actually look at the detailed breakdown of PCE, you get a much different picture. I divided PCE into five categories
The first category includes household spending on goods and services which are primarily domestically-produced. That would be things like food, recreation, haircuts, utilities, legal fees, airplanes, auto repair, and so forth.
This category—roughly $4.3 trillion, or 30% of GDP—is all ‘pocketbook’ expense. Households lay out money, which primarily goes to support domestic production and employment.
Second category: Import-intensive goods. These are items such as clothing, personal computers, cell phones, televisions, toys, sporting goods, cars, gasoline, and so forth. These are items where a substantial amount of production is done abroad, either directly or indirectly.
For such import-intensive goods, a $1 of consumer spending does not correspond to a $1 of domestic activity. If you buy a shirt or a laptop which is made overseas, much of your money supports economic activity in China or Taiwan, not the U.S. This category is worth $1.7 trillion, or 12% of GDP.
Third category of PCE—“imputed services.” What this means is that the BEA assigns a number to certain economic activities, even though no money actually changes hands. The two most important imputed services are “imputed rental of owner-occupied nonfarm housing” and “financial services furnished without payment”. Respectively, these are the money you supposedly pay yourself to live in your own home, and the money you supposedly pay the bank for such services as free checking (by accepting lower or no interest on your demand deposits).
This category—worth $1.5 trillion or 11% of GDP
Are you saying you didn’t know that over 10% of GDP is a rent payment on the portion of your paid for house? It does.
category—healthcare goods and services, including hospitals, drugs, doctors, nursing homes, and health insurance. Because of the vagaries of national income accounting, most of the money that the government pays for Medicare and Medicaid, and that businesses pay for employer health insurance, shows up in the PCE category.
To put it another way—if Medicare pays the hospital $25 K for your father’s knee replacement, that money shows up as personal consumption expenditures. If your company health plan pays $30K for the birth of your son—that counts as PCE, even though you never see the money.
The healthcare category totals roughly $2 trillion, or 15% of GDP. But in fact, only about (roughly!) 15% of healthcare spending is “out of pocket”. The rest comes from government or through employee health plans.
final catch-all category, which I have labeled “social services, religious activities, R&D, and other similar activities.” This category includes spending by religious groups, such as the Catholic Church. It includes community food and housing relief. It includes R&D spending by private educational institutions, like Harvard. It includes social advocacy groups, like Greenpeace. It includes (I’m relatively sure) spending by political parties—Democrats and Republicans alike.
In other words, this wonderful category—totaling about $400 billion, or 3% of GDP—includes all sorts of spending which could be described as “social” rather than “individual”. And it’s funded by individuals, government, charitable contributions, and investment income.
So when I added this all up, I got that households actually lay out about $5.5 trillion a year which drives domestic economic activities—about 40% of GDP.
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/08/get_it_straight.html
Only Government accounting has more made up numbers than AGW & cimate change.
DD More Debt is a form of modern day slavery, once indebted man will sell his soul to hold on to their shiny new trinkets. How long before China and America come to blows over this debt ? http://moneymorning.com/2015/06/10/breaking-u-s-debt-to-china-will-destroy-the-u-s-dollar/
Here in Australia we used to work to live ,now we live to work. The move the Matrix springs to mind.
Are these people really scientists and has the profession sunk so low in reality or is this a media distortion?
Have they not even seen the reports on immigrants from various places and seen that the dominant factor in their education based on purely average figures here is the racial background with Asians working extremely hard and the Africans really making little or no effort compared to the typical UK child?
Productivity is measured in terms of value of product that means that technological superiority is the dominant factor anyway.
Could it also be that people take more holidays in good weather as well might just have a tiny bit to do with it as well?
Talk about facile over simplification based on pre conditioned ideas. this is possibly the most pathetic research in a long time from the clips reported here.
Average annual temperatures by country, and their per capita GDP ranking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_yearly_temperature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita
Countries with 3-bears-optimum average temperature (12 C – 14 C) and corresponding per capita GDP ranking:
12.6 C Afghanistan- 161
11.95 C Azerbaijan- 68
13.45 C Italy- 32
13.55 C Monaco- ???
13.05 C Myanmar- 134
13.3 C Spain- 33
12.05 C Uzbekistan- 127
Countries with highest per capita GDP ranking, and their average annual temperatures:
1- Qatar 27.1 C
2- Luxembourg 8.65 C
3- Singapore 26.45 C
4- Kuwait 25.35 C
5- Brunei 26.85 C
6- Norway 1.5 C
7- UAE 27 C
Based on this data, the correlation between average annual temperature and per capita GDP is:
dead certain
absolutely settled
highly predictive
🙂
Problem is in most areas where you might have an average of 55F over a year, you are stuck shoveling snow and scrapping ice for half a year…
Yeah, but there is usually at least one or two weeks in Spring that are absolutely gorgeous, no?
And there is October!
A 2004 Cornell University study says 77 F (25 C) is the optimum temperature for office worker productivity.
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2004/10/warm-offices-linked-fewer-typing-errors-higher-productivity
My 75% Swedish genes tell me that’s a ridiculous claim and remind me I turn on my office fan around 74-75F.
OTOH, in my software engineering career, I’ve found my productivity was coupled to my Coca-Cola intake. Near as I could figure, such mental work needs sugar (brain fuel), caffeine (stimulation), and cold (cooling). CMU, MIT, and Stanford all discovered Coke is it. Pepsi isn’t, I concluded Coke tastes enough better so I could drink 3-4 bottles per day without getting tired of it.
“a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems”, Paul Erdős
Depends on humidity. 77 and 100% humidity, line we have at night in Summer here in Florida, is very very hot and sticky.
77 with 50% relative humidity… is very pleasant.
Giving a temp alone is meaningless.
Living 50 miles north of St. Louis i can identify with any combination of temp & RH. We get just about everything (short of full-fledged hurricanes) sometime during the year, depending on originated from.
Right now we are getting resort conditions, 55-80F and low humidity. After being well surplussed with rainfall early in the growing season we are now on the drought map. It’s a perfect harvest and the dryers are unneeded, saving tons of CO2 not burning gas. My corn field yielded around 60 bushels/acre this year.
I think it’s a brilliant scientific breakthrough. It’s well known that queenslanders are stupid, and get stupider and stupider the further north you go. The right temperature is Sydney, north shore. But why are Tasmanians so stupid? It needs a bit more work.
Bob Brown. “My fellow earthicans”! LOL
Hey, as keeper of http://www.john-daly.com/ I must protest. OTOH, didn’t start there:
These researchers took the question “What is the correct or ideal global temperature?” & snaffled 55ºF I can tell you from personal experience that working outside when it’s just 12.77778ºC is downright chilly, because it could also be raining or it could be sunny, but either way, the economists at the University of California, Berkeley were not on the money with their paper.
Take a good look at your skin and what you will see are lots of tiny pores , those are sweat glad’s which human developed that they could regulate their heat , these where an evolutionary adaption designed to help cope with life in a ‘warm environment’ form which they originated.
Then ask yourself the question , although planet wide is it the cold areas of the warm areas which have seen most human development and to this day in which environment do we find the highest human populations , something that can only occur if environmental conditions are favourable?
Maybe sweat glands to you.
To me, I am gladder when they are not sweating.
I guess mine are sweat not-so-glads.
Auto spell correct can really ruin a good ribbing.
OK. I Know The Klymit Change Research Hall Of Fame Stupidity Section Is getting overcrowded so we shall put this one in The New and Gobsmackingly Stupid Section and there it goes. Rockets to Number One and with a Bullet.
” I’m concerned that this study may be ignoring a lot of political and historical context. If an equivalent study was performed in the age of the Roman Empire, when much of the world’s economic activity centred on warm countries like Italy and Egypt, it seems likely that the calculated “optimum economic temperature” would have been significantly higher than 13c (55F) ”
Yes, the causes are cultural, a factor they seem to have inexplicably missed. Long before Rome got going, Western civilization started in hot places, the Nile and Tigris valleys, and the most advanced nations remained in a bubble around north Africa and the Middle East, then Turkey and Greece (as measured by writing and cities), for a couple of thousand years even before the rise of the Etruscans (precursor to the Romans).
If we “believe” “Lucy” ~4.5ya is a root ancestor, in a region very warm (Northern Kenya/Southern Ethiopia today) then warm was good.
Nobody lives in an “average temperature” climate.
An average is made up of, well, numbers. So is the concept of a “climate”, is also made up.
There are some elevated cloud forests where the temp is nearly constant, day and night, year round.
Think Costa Rica.
A more accurate study would compare productivity in San Francisco or Seattle with San Diego or Los Angeles. I bet there is almost no difference.
Stupidity and make work of the highest order.
This must be why a warm country like Australia has a lower GDP/capita than a relatively cold country like my Slovenia! People just get lazy in warm weather!
Ooops, but it’s the way around: Australia (46,550 US$) has a HIGHER GDP/capita then Slovenia (29,867 US$). Ah, but that’s an anomaly.
This was the basis of the old “White Australia Policy” a century ago .
Racist propaganda.
In rich successful Singapore, the research showed the temperature was 75DegF
The study may be flawed, but not for the reasons you give.
1) If you want to minimise the impact the economic cost of temperature rise by saying the economy is growing anyway, you can do exactly the same for the costs of mitigating temperature rise. So what if carbon taxes cause a reduction of 23% GDP by 2100 if we are growing at 1% per year?
2) Conditions that are optimum for pre-industrial man are not necessarily optimum for industrialised production. The argument that we don’t need clothes when it is warm categorically does not mean that people are not more productive when it is mild. Looking at the average temperature map posted by P. Wayne Townsend above, the optimum runs through Europe, Japan, China and the USA. Italy looks to be smack in the optimum zone, so the Roman empire may (or may not) have had the same optimum temperature, but it was probably not too far off.
3) Look at what they did. This was “a historical, economic analysis that culls data from 166 countries over half a century, analyzing GDP per capita against temperature fluctuations that the countries experienced.” This is absolutely not saying individuals work best at 13°C. So any talk about setting thermostats has just missed the point completely. Also picking out exceptions does not invalidate the conclusion. Sure, Singapore does well, but that does not invalidate the conclusion that, all else equal, it would do even better economically if it were a little bit cooler.
4) The conclusion comes with a very important caveat: “If future adaptation mimics past adaptation…” There is a big IF there. It seems quite likely that if we compare adaptation from ancient Egypt to current day, then probably adaptation in the distant past was not the same as adaptation in more recent history. This study looked at pretty recent history. Even if their study is totally valid, future productivity may not follow the same path. However, something fairly important would have to change to get us off the current adaptation course.
I agree with you.
I came to the same conclusions after listening to his presentation at the World Bank using the link given above by Stephen Hales.
http://live.worldbank.org/Global-Non-Linear-Effect-of-Temperature-on-Economic-Production
Comments presented here on this article are complete nonsense.
No, rd50, comments here are not “complete nonsense”.
You want nonsense, listen to the alarmist cult. You will get your fill of nonsense.
There has been NO global warming for almost twenty years now! That fact flatly contradicts everything the climate alarmist crowd has been claiming, and this ’13º’ claim is just more of the same pseudo-science.
The biosphere is now at the cold end of the geologic temperature record:
http://www.kogagrove.org/sams/agw/images/paleomap.png
For a hundred million years the planet was 10ºC warmer than now. Life evolved in much warmer temperatures, just like life evolved in much higher CO2 concentrations.
This 13º nonsense is just a continuation of the Narrative. They will ‘Say Anything’ to promote the debunked global warming scare. But intelligent, rational readers who think for themselves know that the planet is continuing one of the mildest global temperature records ever recorded.
A change in global T of only 0.7ºC is almost completely unknown in the entire geologic record. It’s hardly a wiggle! That is as close to flat as anyone can find. What do they want? A 0.00ºC change??
You know what? If that 0.00ºC change had happened, they would find some way to claim it was caused by global warming. That’s how ridiculous their arguments have become.
The whole “carbon” scare is based on a giant head fake: they will take any event, and twist it around to try and show that something must be done!! Nonsense. Real world observations show conclusively that human CO2 emissions simply do not matter:
In any other field of science, if those putting forth a conjecture such as “CO2=AGW” had been that wrong, for that many years, they would be laughed out of their laboratory and their university. Their alarmist predictions have failed miserably; all of them. No exceptions.
So now some grant chasing prevaricators are claiming that a degree or two of temperature makes a big difference. That unproven, preposterous claim is plainly ridiculous. Many commenters here have pointed out civilizations and cities in warm regions that falsify that claim. As Albert Einstein said, being wrong once is enough to falsify a claim. But the alarmist crowd has been wrong repeatedly. In fact, they have never been right about any of their scary scenarios.
Climate alarmists have never made a scary prediction that has come true, from Polar bears to accelerating SL rise to toad decimations to runaway global warming itself. And they completely disregard the past century, which was as as close to a “Goldilocks” climate as anything in the entire geological record:
http://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2015/10/Global-2-copy.jpg
They’re lying, folks. They’re lying for money, for political power, and for self-aggrandizement. But their motives don’t really matter. What matters is that they are lying. Remember: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. You can’t trust them any more.
I understand well paid scientists lying for those reasons; they’ve sold their souls for money. But what I cannot understand are the lemmings posting in support of nonsense like this ridiculous claim.
What do they get out of it? Money? No.
Power? As if. Those fellow travelers will be jettisoned and/or eliminated as soon as their useful-fool function is no longer needed.
Self-aggrandizement? Here?! They are properly ridiculed here for trying to promote something no one has even been able to measure! You can’t be much more foollish than to try and argue for something on the internet’s Best Science site that can’t even be quantified.
No wonder the climate alarmist clique — which used to be willing to debate its position — now hides out from any fair, moderated debate in a neutral venue. They’ve lost every debate they ever entered, but at least they used to be willing to try.
But no more. Because they lost all their past debates, charlatans like Mann and Trenberth hide out in their ivory tower, happy to let the eco-lemmings do their debating for them.
Can you imagine how hard they would be spanked in public if they debated now? Mann, Trenberth, and anyone on their side would be thoroughly humiliated trying to argue that the ‘runaway global warming’ scare is still happening.
Kevin Trenberth is even claiming that the Scientific Methoid must be turned upside-down, and that skeptics must now be forced to prove a negative: that the onus of the climate Null Hypothesis should be on skeptics, instead of on those actually promoting his ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ conjecture. Feynman, Langmuir, Popper, Crichton, and even Kuhn would be spinning in their graves at the current perversion of ‘climate science’.
So instead, they have their clueless lemmings argue for them. That way they can distance themselves from the same enviro-crowd when the heat is turned up.
As many readers have pointed out over the past several years, the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ scam is the biggest hoax in human history. Its purpose has nothing whatever to do with science. Rather, it is a means to an end: ‘carbon’ taxes, world government, and Plato’s ideal society, with the elite (including those same scientists, and your ‘World Bankers’) ruling over the subservient military, and all of them ruling over what the old Sovs called the ‘proletariat’. And folks, you are the intended proles.
2 + 2 = 5… if you believe.
*/rant*
The True Believer
Hoffer
A good reread.
Again paraphrasing
Followers in the mass movement are seduced not to a new truth but to the illusion of a new truth. The seduction is a result of unfulfilled happiness. Anything, to divert from the previous failed happiness.
Done paraphrasing
So why now ?
Why a suck into the new mass movement ?
Could it be that the up in coming leaders born and raised of the most prosperous time ever grew disillusioned with what wealth brought ?
Swinging like a pendulum running away from its reflection it rejects the prosperity of its youth and embraces the opposite in a manic attempt to be happy ?
dbstealy – Your post is right on the button!
DB, let me know if you decide to run for President.
dbstealy’s comments are right off topic, even if they are on the button. What was human productivity over the period shown in the geological temperature graph?
seaice,
No, they’re not off topic — as we see from the subsequent comments. You just don’t like having the plain truth force-fed to you.
And here is the winner for most often abused fallacy category (the frog also saw it)
“seaice:
dbstealy’s comments are right off topic, even if they are on the button. What was human productivity over the period shown in the geological temperature graph?
DB replies
seaice,
No, they’re not off topic — as we see from the subsequent comments. You just don’t like having the plain truth force-fed to you.”
Correlation is not causation (CnC).
It’s as if a sickness has infected the population. Never seen anything like it in my lifetime. It’s seemingly everywhere.
It’s often accompanied by its friend ad hominem. He typically shows up after you try to treat the CnC with pressure to provide replicable evidence. Takes on versions of this :
“Oh yeah, you don’t care about mankind like I do. Your a heartless prick who isn’t interested in others.”
Where do you go with that type of repeated pattern ?
The post is about human productivity. A graph showing global temperatures going back 4.6 billion years is not relevant when modern humans have only been around for a few tens of thousands of years. The graph cannot say anything about optimum temperature for human productivity because humans were not around for most of it.
Knute, can you clarify the CnC fallacy demonstrated in your quotes?
Seaice
I made my comment based on the general pattern of conversation concerning CAGW.
Your science based example is a good one. There are others. I am in agreement with your example. Do you still want further articulation from me ?
Ultimately, what I think you’ll see is a conceptual phrase called “insitutionalized disparity”. Effectively, thru codification, a protected class will be able to assert that the disparity in their standard of living is due to their CO2 production burden (as opposed to consumption). This is an extension of the correlation not causation fallacy that I referenced.
It is not a matter of being flawed or not. It doesn’t matter if it is perfectly true. This paper hits the sweet spot of being so incredibly and insultingly stupid that anybody with half a brain will not be able to raise an eyebrow muscle in response. For them, to attempt an explanation would be to commit existential suicide. The slightest illumination of this level of puerility dangerously exposes the thoughtful to the risk of psychosis due to the direct contact with the absurdity of reality.
I don’t understand how it can be unimportant if the paper is pefectly true. My interest is broadly truth seeking. If this is true, then it is important.
seaice, in this case, the truth of the matter and its importance are mutually exclusive by definition. If there really truly, absolutely, positively is a correlation between global “average” temperature and economic activity then all bets are off. Forget everything you ever knew about anything at all and buy a thermometer! Sincerely, faithfully Scott W Bennett 😉
Scott Wilmot Bennett. “If there really truly, absolutely, positively is a correlation between global “average” temperature and economic activity then all bets are off.” I don’t quite know where you are coming from. If the paper it true, then there is such a correlation; you claim that would mean “all bets are off”. How can it then not matter if the paper is true?
Do you mean that the paper is unimportant because it obviously is not true?
The planet has a fever. Spring Fever.