Guest opinion; Dr. Tim Ball
At the Paris Climate Conference of the Parties (COP21) we witnessed the biggest display of failed leadership in history from 195 countries. They established incorrect and misdirected policy based on failed and falsified science. It is a classic circular argument on a global scale. They invented the false problem of anthropogenic global warming/climate change and now they want to resolve the problem, but with a more disastrous solution.
Most countries were puppets that aspired to lead the deception but lacked the power so they contributed by serving as lackeys. Either way, all were purchased with promises of money. The majority receives money from successful countries, but all of them have an excuse for another tax. As George Bernard Shaw said,
“A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul.”
These leaders are all examples of Lord Acton’s dictum that,
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
In fact, the entire quote is even more revealing.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you add the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Obama used the Paris to advance his personal agenda regardless of the evidence. John Kerry said this when he admitted the agreement was not binding. Rules or agreements are meaningless without enforcement mechanisms. Kerry said it was unenforceable because Congress would not approve it. This allowed Obama to blame Congress when it was Russia, India, and China who wanted a non-binding agreement. Kerry knows Congress wouldn’t approve it because as a Senator he voted against the Kyoto Protocol, arguing it would cost jobs and hurt the economy. Of course that did not prevent him claiming the Paris Agreement would create jobs and economic opportunity against all evidence.
The Climate Green Fund (GCF) was a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol. As a Senator in 1997 Kerry voted against Kyoto. Technically, they did not vote directly against Kyoto. They voted on the Byrd/Hagel resolution explicitly that said the US Senate would not approve anything that harmed the US economy. Kerry and the Senators agreed 95-0 that Kyoto was harmful. Their green image was faded but intact.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) requires COP act on the science created for them by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is why the leaked emails exposing the scientific corruption were so effective in diverting them away from Kyoto at COP 15 in 2009. They recovered quickly because the following year at COP 16 in Durban they introduced the replacement GCF that became central to the Paris Conference.
What is the situation post-Paris? They created a global policy to take money from a few developed nations and give it to the developing nations. The Paris communiqué says,
Among these concerted efforts, advanced economies have formally agreed to jointly mobilize USD 100 billion per year by 2020, from a variety of sources, to address the pressing mitigation and adaptation needs of developing countries.
Governments also agreed that a major share of new multilateral, multi-billion dollar funding should be channeled through the Green Climate Fund. At the G7 Summit in June 2015, leaders emphasized GCF’s role as a key institution for global climate finance. Many developing countries, too, have explicitly expressed their expectations from the Fund in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).
The acronym INDC is bureaucratese at its best. This charade is an unnecessary waste of taxpayer’s money based on the false IPCC science exposed by the leaked emails. The falsifications continued because the public didn’t understand and as the Senator Cruz hearings demonstrated it is a widely accepted and essentially unchallenged story. The redistribution of wealth continues almost exactly as the Kyoto schemers planned. But the problem is worse than that because the money is to offset warming when all the natural mechanisms of climate change indicate the world is cooling and will get colder.
IPCC proponents realize that this is the trend so they did what they always do, produce a paper claiming another human activity is likely to make their predictions invalid. Gavin Schmidt and the NASA GISS gang did this recently in a paper titled, “Implications for climate sensitivity from the response to individual forcings.” It produced the intended headlines such as Climate change shock: Burning fossil fuels ‘COOLS planet’, says NASA” in the UK Express. Maybe they could blame the government Chemtrail program?
The final socio-economic cost of Paris is almost incalculable. For example, how do you put a value on the loss of credibility of science? What are the lost opportunities for improving the quality of life through science and technology restricted by the extremism of a few Green Luddites?
I recently participated in a Skype interview on a live Nigerian broadcast about Climate Change. I don’t know how the producer got my name, but it was immediately evident that they were not aware or welcoming of my views. Fortunately, they couldn’t shut me off because it was live. However, they did shuffle me off quickly and went to another guest. The other person, as I understand, was a representative of the Nigerian government promoting the real danger of global warming and the dire need for action – send the money.
He began his rejoinder with the phrase, “With all due respect to the good professor…” a euphemism for “What you just heard is completely wrong.” The person is saying I am not qualified to say this, but if I don’t make this argument, my job is gone. I did not hear his entire response, but it was built around the precautionary principle that even if the “good professor” is right, we should act.
Maurice Strong and the drafters of Agenda 21 anticipated such a situation when they wrote Principle 15.
Principle 15: In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
This means don’t let facts get in the way of policy. You don’t need evidence just “threats” are adequate reason. My portion of the Nigerian interview began with the host referencing the University of Notre Dame ND – Gain Country Index study that lists the countries of the world and their preparedness for climate change. Figure 1 shows those countries deemed best prepared and Figure 2 those least prepared. Others produced similar measurements and show the results in world maps (Figure 3).
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3 shows the ND – GAIN index on a world map. It shows that prepared countries are middle and high latitude while unprepared are in the tropics. Some produced similar indices but with a different emphasis (Figure 3). The map shows regions “most” or “least” at risk. In other words, they need to be the best prepared, but the ND-GAIN index shows they are the least prepared.
The IPCC claim global warming is almost certain, so their policies are designed for that inevitability. They also claim that the greatest warming will occur in high latitudes, so Figure 3 is incorrect. Figure 1 shows that those high latitude countries are best prepared, but that is also incorrect because they prepare for warming.
The predominant message says global warming is a potential worldwide disaster with only negative impacts. Thirty years ago global cooling was presented in a similar singular way. Lowell Ponte wrote in his 1976 book The Cooling
It is cold fact: the global cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species.
Change one word “cooling” to warming and the governments are exploiting the same fears. On the cover of The Weather Conspiracy prepared by a team of investigative journalists in 1977 it says,
What does it mean? Many of the worlds leading climatologist’s concur. We are slipping towards a new Ice Age. Why is this so? How will it affect food scarcity, rising costs? How much is it a threat to the quality of life – the very fact of our existence on this planet? What is going to happen? What can – and can’t – we do about it?
In the 1970s political pressure for action only came from a general concern about adapting and preparing for the future. In 1973, the US Office of Research and Development (ORD) was confronted with the forecasts of global cooling. Statements like Ponte’s required further research and planning. The CIA produced two reports, one titled “Potential Implications of Trends in World Population, Food Production, and Climate” (Office of Political Research – 401, August, 1974). The report notes,
“The precarious outlook for the poor and food – deficit – countries, and the enhanced role of North American agriculture in world food trade outlined above were predicated on the assumption that normal weather will prevail over the next few decades. But many climatologists warn that this assumption is questionable; some would say that it is almost certainly wrong.”
The CIA used the word climatocracy to describe the role of climate in political action. (Amusingly and perceptively, the spell checker tried to replace climatocracy with cleptocracy). Climatocracy is more applicable today. Political involvement in climate research is global and profound. Demand for action is very strong. Frighteningly, the demand is for action to deal with only one possibility based on the false assumption that today’s forecasts for the next 50 and 100 years are more accurate and certain than the belief in 1970 that cooling was inevitable. That forecast was wrong, as was every forecast the IPCC made since anthropogenic global warming became the scare in the late 1980s.
The sensible policy when you lack understanding is to do nothing. The proper course of action is for governments to face the truth and admit the science is wrong. Unfortunately, the lack of leadership they’ve already demonstrated guarantees that will not happen. They are obliged to do something in response to the hysteria they created.
There is a policy that can salvage something out of this self-inflicted chaos. It is a classic game theory challenge based on the knowledge that cooling is a much greater threat than warming, especially for middle and high latitude countries. It is important for those nations listed as “well prepared” in Figure 1 because they prepare for warming when the probability of cooling is much higher and more threatening. All nations, but especially them, must ready for cooling. If you prepare for cooling, and it warms the adaptations are much easier. If you prepare for warming and cooling occurs the adaptations are difficult and in some instances impossible. But don’t expect any such logical, rational, leadership from the Paris world leaders, they only like games they create and control to improve their image of saving the planet and humanity.
Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become more important in the eyes of more trivial men.
George Jean Nathan
Climate Change is the resurrection of the “North- South Dialogue” in the 70’s.The left will never give up on this concept.
Not much global warming around here this morning with a temperature of -18 degrees C.
mid 70’s yesterday—mid 30’s today.
I much preferred yesterday’s “climate”
What is interesting is that in Fig 3, those countries that seem to be at risk from global warming are also going to have issues soon (if they aren’t already having them) from population growth. Is population pressure morphing into global warming? As global warming did with climate change? A misplaced aid program.
Thanks Dr. Ball. Much of this is self evident to most of us here but so many of these issues are not getting any serious exposure in the rest of the world. As pressure to fund the Green Climate Fund increases, we in the developed world need to push back by de-funding all of these wasteful UN boondoggles.
I completely agree that we had better get ready for the cold and those places where it is already cold need to be especially wary. It looks like some of that is already happening, though it is in the name of global warming. How silly is that?
Bernie
It is worth the effort of the skeptic community’s intellects to anticipate and prepare for the strategic moves of the leaders of the community sustaining anthropomorphic pseudo-science focused on climate. This is a reasonable intellectual’s step in the overall role to remove the pseudo-science.
John
https://youtu.be/2SJsA7NLAaM
Thanks Robertvd I was not aware that this guy Klaus asked the UN 9/24/07 for competing IPCC Science with equal funding for and against Climate Change. What Happened https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5KqY8jRWko
I have friend who used to shovel snow in Canada. He moved to the Caribbean. He is a climate refugee.
Alx on December 27, 2015 at 9:00 am
– – – – – – –
Alx,
I would estimate ~~50% (or much much greater %) of the residents of the state of Florida are climate refugees from America’s colder northern regions.
John
It’s a debatable point depending on your definition of the term ‘refugee’ … any case your estimate is grossly inflated and detracts from your point. 5% might be nearer the mark in relation to what you’re saying. It would be more true to say 50% of the population of Florida are hispanic economic migrants.
Doug on December 30, 2015 at 10:23 pm
– – – – – –
Doug,
Refugees indeed. It is probably more like 2/3 of FL moved there over the past century for climate benefits.
I do not understand your racial remark.
John
OK John.
First I did not intend to make a racist remark, and in fact it is not racist. Hispanics are not a racial group but a demographic one including several racial sub-groups. As a counterpoint to your first remark I suggested it would be more accurate to say 50% (using the same number you put forward) of Florida’s population were economic migrants from Hispanic countries. As a matter of fact neither suggestion is anywhere near the truth, and my point is that it detracts from your argument if you use unfounded or spurious numbers.
The actual Hispanic or Latino population of Florida is 24.1% according to official US census data.
A high proportion of the Hispanic or Latino population are immigrants, many of whom came to Florida for a better economic life, not for a better climate. This is consistent with a high ratio of foreign-born residents of Florida (19.4%). Florida also has a substantial 16.8% black population, mostly born in Florida, many of whose ancestors came to America not by choice but by force, certainly not for the climate.
You suggested in your first point that more than half of Florida’s population are climate refugees, I simply wished to point out that your estimate was rather exaggerated, suggesting an alternative estimate of 5% that might be more realistic, depending on how you define refugee status. Even 5% would be a substantial overestimate in my opinion. Strictly speaking, climate refugees might be defined as people who have had to move away from their home and livelihood due to a real risk to their life and wellbeing as a result of extreme climatic events (weather-related natural disasters) or extreme climatic conditions (whether existing or changing). The largest groups of ‘climate refugees’ worldwide are people displaced by floods and droughts.
Same is true in the USA historically, refugees from the 1930’s ‘dust bowl’ drought, numerous Mississippi floods, Hurricane Katrina, tornados, etc. As far as I’m aware very few people have lost their homes and livelihoods to inundation by snow or ice, although this may very well happen in future centuries or millennia if the world becomes much colder and glaciers and ice caps advance into populated areas.
Now you have amended your phraseology, saying 2/3 of Florida moved there over the past century for ‘climate benefits’. That is very different from claiming them to be refugees! Sure Florida is a great place to live with a great climate and economy, which is really all you intended to say, perhaps, just that people prefer warm pleasant tropical and sub-tropical climates such as that enjoyed by Florida, and therefore maybe a little climatic warming would not be a bad thing, at least in the American context;
However I would still say your use of exaggerated erroneous numbers detracts from your point. To say that over 50% of Florida’s population are climate refugees, or otherwise 2/3 of Florida moved there over the past century for climate benefits, is patently ridiculous. For a start we already have 40.9% of the population represented by Hispanic, Latino, and Black demographic groups, and adding small numbers of Asians and other demographic groups, according to the census not much more than half of Florida’s population (55.8%) are non-Hispanic, non-Latino whites (mostly Americans and some Canadians and Europeans) some of whom (a small proportion) certainly did choose to move to Florida for its fine climate. How many really fit this description? Well Florida’s birth rate is around 11 to 11.5%, which is a little lower in the white demographic group (10.3%) compared to 14.5% in the non-white demographic groups.
19.4% of the population are foreign born, therefore 80.6% were born in America, no doubt the great majority of them were actually born in Florida and did not move there for climate benefits, although some of their ancestors may have done. So you can’t really put an accurate number on this but the absolute maximum would be about 4%, which is suggested by the difference between the white and non-white birth rates cited above, which is probably partially a representation of a real difference in birth rates for families in these demographic groups and partially a representation of a higher proportion of older, mostly white people from colder states in the USA, or from Canada or Europe, who chose to retire in Florida.
There is an important point to this discourse, which is to remind all of us not to use numbers without foundation when making any point or putting forward any argument. Wrong numbers will detract from your argument and damage your credibility. This is exactly what has happened to the CAGW alarmist campaign, as real data and statistics have shown their shrill scare-mongering and exaggerated numbers to have been unfounded in truth.
Now let’s close this little diversion from the real debate here and concentrate on the right climate data, and what this means for our future social political and economic wellbeing.
You are focusing on Central American “climate refugees” fleeing north from some assumed climate disaster occurring further south. Re-read the original comments, and all responses between now and that one, but substitute Northern American “climate refugees” fleeing the frozen winters to go to a warmer FL climate that also happens to have better economic conditions.
The writer is (slightly exaggerting to make his point. But! Many millions have moved south to FL to get away from the harse climate up north. Many many millions more trying to make a shorter seasonal move – even more important. Those millions of seasonal moves show that we want to go ANYWHERE to a warmer winter and a cooler summer, despite the expense and hassles of moving twice a year.
Those coming north? 99.7% are economic moves: Coming to get a better life (more welfare, more work, more freedoms, more opportunity.) Most moving are illegals, the wait for legal immigration is 7-10 years. The south and central American illegal immigration is NOT climate related in any way.
Thanks RA Cook. Please read my post through to the end. Hopefully my point will become clear.
No further comment.
I am not an accredited scientist, just a 75 year old whose schooling and interests are for facts and truths.
The question posed but never explained is, ” what does this mean to me?” We and you will never win the argument until we can gain the simple understanding of the truth. All the power hungry warped minds, for ever part of the human race, will use the simple expedient of ” fear” .
Those of us who have an understanding of what is being perpetrated must do more than expose the short term ” clutches” of those seeking money for ” research” . It will take much courage and determination to bring understanding to all citizens.
I wish I knew how! It must be done. We face a great peril.
FEAR is what it’s all about. It’s being used to sell everything today–EVERYTHING that includes giving up personal common sense and autonomy and ceding same to “experts” who will take your money and tell you what to do.
Those billions being given to under-developed nations is to create customers for the developed world, not competition. It is fascism (before it was redefined) in its prettiest dress. The unholy trinity of government, industry, and military. To that we add corrupted science (a bastard child of corrupt government).
As a small business operator for thirty eight years I have had to problem solve with the most cost efevtive solutions. I have never understood why the answer isn’t to prepare for both possibilities of a warmer or a cooler climate. With better insulation, reliable power, water and even some green energy, we’ll be equipped to cope with whaever nature throws our way. Trying to control it or affect it with co2 reduction seems a waste of money and effort. But then again I do understand it’s political, not rational.
At last a straightforward view in which common sense prevails! Thanks John.
This one small paragraph embodies the voice of reason and pragmatism that should be the dominant influence on policy-making decisions in relation to climate variability and change, but unfortunately it remains that of a seemingly quiet and often silent majority who tend to stay in the audience and fear to take to the stage in the theatre of politics, and common sense pragmatism is not in the interests of any of the money-and-fame-motivated ‘scientists’ who clamour for ‘climate disaster’ research funding, or any of the power-and-popularity-hungry politicians who have hijacked and coerced the whole emotionally-driven catastrophist environmentalist movement into supporting this farcical hoax that CAGW scaremongers have been trying to foist on us for the past 30 years ever since the other lot who failed to convince us that the world was under imminent threat of a new ice-age back in the 1970s.
In both cases the same alarmist and sensationalist language was used to try to push an extremist point of view underwritten by bad science. The whole CAGW campaign is built on the psychological ‘Fear of Disaster and Death’ syndrome that has been exploited by people in positions of power and influence to dominate population groups throughout history. The CAGW campaign has, through the irresponsible and cynical use of grossly exaggerated short-term trends in manipulated climatic data, successfully misled the public and many politicians into believing the hoax and actually taking major political and economic decisions under the influence of this misguided belief. The politicisation of science and mainstream science’s dependence upon politically controlled funding has very seriously compromised scientific integrity in this whole debacle, but again this is nothing new. The history of civilisation is littered with examples of erroneous ‘consensus’ views or belief structures that dominated society and always attempted to subdue opposition and crush true scientific endeavour and it is largely if not only through the bravery and conviction of scientific heretics that science has been able to advance us to our present state of endangered enlightenment.
The ‘warmists’ say the science is settled and incontrovertible with a 97% consensus, but this is only a measure of the degree of misinformation being promulgated by the socio-political movement that has arisen on the back of the CAGW scare. In fact the science is by no means settled and there is no consensus.
The article we are commenting on here is headed ‘THERE IS NO CLIMATE CHANGE DISASTER EXCEPT THE ONE GOVERNMENTS CREATED’ It laments the political corruption of climate science through the foundation and actions of the IPCC and outlines the foundation of the Green Climate Fund through the several stages of IPCCs on-going campaign for political power and influence and the pitfalls of the politicisation of science…
The whole bureaucracy that has been set up on the back of this hoax is now massively funded by tax-payers money and has graduated from hoax to fraud. Vested interests are by now too great to deny and dissenting voices, of which there are many, are subdued and silenced, or ridiculed with the object of discrediting anyone who tries to stand up for truth and scientific integrity. Terms such as ‘climate denier’ are used to brand the heretics and cast them out of the populist movement that moves on relentlessly like a runaway train committed and confined to the tracks already laid by alarmist propagandists despite the increasingly obvious evidence that they are wrong.
Dissenting voices have nevertheless managed to coalesce into various nuclei of rational resistance one of which is this particular site, ‘Watts Up With That’, and another, ‘The Right Climate Stuff’, which was founded by a group of retired NASA scientists and has gathered a growing band of professional supporters and contributors in all the fields of Earth Sciences, Planetary Science, Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics, which seeks to bring scientific rigour and rationality back to the fore and have some counterbalancing political influences to defuse the CAGW bomb.
The Right Climate Stuff recently published their scientific findings and analysis presenting a properly balanced view of the real global warming ‘threat’, which is actually no threat at all compared to other much more immediate issues impacting on the state of humanity and the planetary environment.
Their advice is neatly summarised in the paragraph quoted below…
BOUNDING GHG CLIMATE SENSITIVITY FOR USE IN REGULATORY DECISIONS
‘Using the new Transient Climate Sensitivity (TCS) metric, we demonstrate that burning all remaining economically recoverable fossil fuel reserves on earth cannot raise global average surface temperatures more than 1.2o C above current levels. This AGW limit results from the much lower climate sensitivity range defined by TCS for the next 300 years, and a necessary market-driven transition to alternative fuels caused by escalating fossil fuel prices that result from dwindling world-wide reserves and rising energy demand of growing economies. This transition must begin before 2080 to meet energy demand, and should be completed by 2150 when alternative fuels will be more economical than recovery of any remaining fossil fuels. We demonstrate use of the GHG TCS metric that has an upper bound of 1.6o C, to compute “worst case” transient global temperature rise from all GHG for a realistic atmospheric CO2 scenario, where the concentration rises from the present value of 397 to a maximum of 600 in 2130 due to dwindling, more expensive fossil fuel use, and then declines back to below current levels by 2300.’
There it is folks, the ultimate perspective on the size of our total impact on climate. If we burn all the remaining fossil fuels on the planet we might just manage to warm the Earth by a degree or maybe 1.6 degrees… and our political leaders are committing themselves to saving us from this disaster by spending trillions of dollars to prevent a rise in AGW beyond 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Well! it’s already a fete accomplis! We need not impose any tax or spend any money or change the status quo at all, in order to come home under target! At the end of it all the warmists, having driven unfounded fear into the hearts and minds of the politicians and the general populace and having misappropriated trillions of dollars in funding, will walk away from it all congratulating themselves on a great scam and all of us on a great triumph.
This is the extent of the real disaster folks, it is a shameless and harmful fraud being perpetrated on all of us and the worst affected as always are the poorest of the poor, while the whole scam creates boundless opportunities for the rich to make themselves richer.
‘The sky will fall on your heads!’ they have repeatedly screamed in alarm, ‘stop polluting the atmosphere with CO2! Stop what you are doing! Run! Hide! Give us all your money and we will try to stop this disaster from happening!’ knowing full well all the while that no such disaster is ever likely to happen; at least not as a result of our impact on the global climate.
They have used SELECTED AND MANIPULATED DATA, ALARMIST LANGUAGE, EMOTIVE ISSUES, and DELIBERATE MISINFORMATION to dupe the well-intentioned public and well-intentioned politicians into believing their scare and having successfully done so, thereby winning power and influence, they appear to have won a temporary victory through the use of POLITICAL INFLUENCE and PEER PRESSURE, to overrun their critics and seize control of a huge share of the global economic pie, thereby actually diverting much needed funding from much more imminent and pressing needs in the developing world and depriving millions of people of access to basic resources and opportunities such as coal and cheap electricity.
If all the trillions of dollars being committed to fighting this CAGW folly were committed today to writing off third-world debt and ACTUALLY ACHIEVING the MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (remember them?) and the SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (2015) immeasurably greater good could be achieved for the benefit of humankind and indeed for the planet.
Two key provisions, to ensure everyone has access to supplies of safe drinking water, and to provide access to electricity, would cost far less than the ‘Global Warming Defence Strategy’ and would accomplish far more to bring greater welfare, opportunity, and economic equity to the people of this world.
It is quite ridiculous that the IPCC and UNDP (MDG & SDG) are both administered by bureaucracies under the aegis of the United Nations and yet to a very great extent they are not communicating common goals and one is undermining the other.
It is time to stop this madness. The IPCC should be immediately unplugged from the funding stream that they have misappropriated and it should be disbanded. Scientists and politicians alike, who have deliberately exaggerated the scare should be prosecuted for bad ethics and criminal deception with intent to defraud. The funds we have already committed to this non-cause should be diverted to direct poverty alleviation measures and working towards sustainable development and the solving of a fast approaching WATER, FOOD AND ENERGY NEXUS, which if not addressed now will do infinitely more harm than a degree or two of temporary warming of the global climate.
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is good for Earth to have this gas in the atmosphere at levels between 300 to 1,000 ppm. Higher CO2 at double, triple or even 7 times today’s levels do not present any threat to the global environment at all, but lower levels do. CO2 is plant food. Plants cannot survive in an atmosphere with CO2 levels below about 180ppm and during the recent ice ages Earth was dangerously close to this critical threshold. Levels up to 1,000 ppm are good for enhanced plant growth and food production. This increased productivity is an observed phenomenon of the 20th Century rise on CO2 levels.
I am not advocating the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels, and in fact I agree strongly that the present scale of burning of fossil fuels must be reduced and phased out before the resources are completely consumed, not because of global warming but for much more relevant and real reasons. Hydrocarbon resources must be conserved for the long term sustainability of the petrochemical, plastics and pharmaceutical industries, and for essential fuels to sustain efficient food production far into the future.
What of actual climate change? Well a one or two degree rise in global average temperatures is nothing to worry about, even 3 to 5 degrees would do very little harm and would probably bring about greater good through enhanced forest growth and food production thanks to the elevation of carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. Climate has always been changing throughout the history of the Earth, and always due to natural or astrophysical causes that we cannot influence one iota. Ocean Currents (controlled by Continental Drift, the Coriolis effect due to Earth’s rotation, and thermo-haline circulation), Volcanic Activity and occasional asteroid impacts, Orbital perturbations (Milankovic Cycles) Solar luminosity, sunspot cycles, cycles and sudden changes in the Solar and Terrestrial Magnetic Fields all have strong influences on the dynamics of Earth’s atmosphere that we cannot change.
If you want to predict the future don’t rely on misguided assumptive computer models, but look to all of the real data that records the past 4.5 billion-year history of the Earth environment. In past geological periods the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was many times higher than it is today and life evolved and thrived in great diversity, surviving extreme events that caused mass extinctions and allowed new evolutionary paths to develop. Throughout time the global climate changed radically through phases with different characteristics. In our present time we are in the Holocene, a warm interglacial period that represents part of the Pleistocene, an epoch of cyclical climate variability with long ice ages and short interglacial periods every 100,000 years or so. Carbon di-oxide levels in the atmosphere at Pleistocene present are lower than at any time in the Earth’s past except perhaps the mid to late Carboniferous period when there were also ice ages. Examination of the pattern of Pleistocene glacial cycles recorded in the ice-core data, and many other proxies, shows that we are ALREADY past the peak of the Holocene interglacial period and are due for a decline into the next ice age any time soon… If a little temporary global warming can stave off that inevitable future a little longer, it’s not a bad thing, but we must in the longer term prepare ourselves for a cold future that is likely to last about 60,000 to 80,000 years before the next Natural Global Warming cycle.
[Long message.
…” ‘The Right Climate Stuff’, which was founded by a group of retired NASA scientists and has gathered a growing band of professional supporters and contributors in all the fields of Earth Sciences, Planetary Science, Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics” Thank you for the info about that web site. .mod]
What happened did the book publisher turn you down?
Very funny Bill,
So what your considered opinion about all this climate panic?
Actually, Paris was an enormous and very positive breakthrough. It consisted of two parts, neither “enforceable.” So we can ignore the expected garbage about reducing emissions, thus strangling the life of Earth.
More important by far was an agreement to promote healthier soils by regenerative agriculture. I have said several times on WUWT that only some of the increased carbon dioxide in the air is coming from fuels. Most is coming from poison-based agriculture (and dams) killing enormous quantities of soil organisms. That was the actual environmental disaster in the first place.
Reducing soil fertility is obviously not sustainable in the long run, and now the greens are finally catching on to something that is actually GOOD for “the environment” (biosphere) and is also do-able and practical. It will even help the economy more than it will hurt it. We can put our shoulder to the wheel now, and work WITH them.
Now, I dearly love a good fight, and I am sure that many of you do, too. But I also like to WIN and dropping the antagonism is how to do that. Helping the greens actually heal the biosphere is what will make them RIGHT enough to take an honest look at the real science about temperatures.
For sure.
I am gonna line right up alongside a bunch of eco-nasties who have lied for financial gain and for power over me for the last 5 decades, now they accidentally get something right, I should forget their dishonesty and corruption?
Fools and bandits have no friends.
I doubt,”More important by far was an agreement to promote healthier soils by regenerative agriculture.”
Empty words from useless parasites,seldom produce anything good for productive society.
As for;”Helping the greens actually heal the biosphere is what will make them RIGHT enough to take an honest look at the real science about temperatures.”
The greens are the problem,emotionally saturated fools, they refuse to learn enough science to understand any biosphere, they feel.
Their chosen “solutions” have done real harm and solved nothing.
Arrogant and ignorant, they have chosen their path.
By being willing to lie to further their cause, they have doomed their cause..
I do not love a “good fight”, I fight to win, if I must fight at all.
In war, with an aggressor who attacks without reason or rationality, there are no rules.
Nor is compromise possible.
Stupid really cannot be fixed.
This type of ‘nobody could possibly be against this‘ statement is normally the prelude to draconian regulation, much like EPA’s clean water regulations. I would imagine that ‘regenerative agriculture‘ will be defined and it will disallow standard farming practices based on weak science from decades ago with no supporting data. The UK Environment Authority’s ‘Making Space for Water’ sounded like saving wetlands for birds but became flood the farms and villages on the Somerset Levels.
I admire the clarity of Dr. Ball’s writing. Clarity is the mark of an honest man.
Eugene WR Gallun
Practicing what one preaches is another, I feel, Eugene, and you just hit both those marks it seems to me.
“Figure 3 shows the ND – GAIN index on a world map. It shows that prepared countries are middle and high latitude while unprepared are in the tropics …”.
==========================
If figure 3 can be taken seriously it also shows there is a correlation between GDP per cap. and ‘preparedness’ which is what climate rationalists have been saying all along viz. the best defence against climate change of any kind is economic development which requires the supply of affordable reliable energy for the entire population.
The Earth is made up of 3/4 water. The deep oceans are absorbing the heat. As far as the cold and polar vortex. Imagine a lot of ice in a glass of warm Coca Cola that was just poured. The ice dissipates the heat as it is displaced. Spreading the heat with cold until there is no more ice left to cool it. The same as a tornado or hurricane. The oceans warm all summer for hurricanes to form. Then cool all winter. Warm and cold air displace each other starting a spin in the atmosphere. Displacing each other as in a battle for space The same for polar vortexes. Warm air from the equators where the sun hits more directly going north pushing or displacing the cold air south as it melts more of the ice to dissipate the warm energy. Until there isn’t any ice left like in the glass of coke. You can see more surface ice from the spread of the cold air as it’s pushed out. But it’s not as thick as it once was. It’s melting like that ice cube in your glass. Or like spring in Canada. The oceans absorb a lot of energy and spread it around. That’s why it’s hard to see to conveyor belt. But you know it’s there. Just like it took millions of years to store carbon dioxide drop by drop as plants absorb carbon dioxide and grow. Then they die off storing some of it a drop at a time. MILLIONS of years is hard to fathom. Count to a million once number by number. It will take you over two weeks. Try it. Then imagine 100 million years. We are releasing those carbons in 200 years. The same carbons that the Earth had in the atmosphere when it was a lot hotter before carbon was stored by living plants.
Would you pour a barrel of oil into a swimming pool and swim? Then why burn it and pour it into the pool of Earth’s atmosphere? Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean that magically it’s not there. Billions of tons of carbon being released each year. Use common sense. But common sense isn’t that common. There wasn’t an infrastructure for oil at one time. We do have the technology to get us away from burning carbons now. But $$$ and greed prevent it. Ask yourself why oil companies would buy battery patents? Hmmm.
http://www.mensjournal.com/travel/cities/the-petro-spa-20130501
The surface of the earth is ~70% water by area but by no means is 3/4 of the earth made up of water. Please learn the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide.
“Count to a million once number by number. It will take you over two weeks. Try it. Then imagine 100 million years. We are releasing those carbons in 200 years.”
Actually, you’re a little bit off; it would take about 11 1/2 days. But, your example is useful. CO2 is currently measured, at the high end, at 400ppm. If you or I were to count to 400 we’d get there in a wee bit over 6 1/2 minutes. I think we can all agree that over a time span of close to two weeks that six and a half minutes is likely to be inconsequential. So, what is your point? These are not large numbers. And, yearly human contribution is about 3ppm. If you counted to three you’d get there in, well, three seconds: Tiny. No, we’re not releasing those carbons in 200 years.
“Would you pour a barrel of oil into a swimming pool and swim?”
Of course not. But, I don’t think I’d give it one second’s thought if someone poured a couple of shot glasses of oil in it. Your example of a barrel is way over the top. A backyard pool is about 10,000 gallons. A gallon is 128 ounces. At 3ppm it would be the same as about the 3 one and a half ounce shot glasses I use for a dry gin martini. I’d never notice that martini in the pool anymore than I’d notice the oil.
You seem like a nice guy. Save your energy for the real problems in life: things like making rent or mortgage payments on time; surviving a job layoff; or your girlfriend telling you that all her orgasms were fake and it would satisfy her to watch you spontaneously combust. And fix yourself a good martini by the poolside.
Agree! Most of the politicians present at COP21 didn’t know much about climate change: http://oceansgovernclimate.com/climate-a-creation-of-corrupted-people-cop21/. And I’m sure that in few months those agreements made there will be broken. It’s a never ending story.
I think it’s time to brand them with a flag with a green swastika surrounded with a field of bullshit brown.
Dr. Ball states, “The proper course of action is for governments to face the truth and admit the science is wrong.”
I don’t think the science was actually wrong. The distortion of the data and the politically driven interpretations were wrong but for the most part, the “true” science has been fairly accurate “if” we look at all the data.
Selectively choosing which data to accept and then only after it had been politically massaged has been the real problem, not the science.
The only science they got right is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and the extra CO2 we’ve added could have caused some warming. Of course, to them, that’s a catastrophe and we’ll destroy our planet if we don’t stop.
These countries have real problems. Poverty, AIDs, Milaria, War, Lack of clean water, lack of education, lack of health care, lack or infrastructure, lack of badly needed social services, starvation and the list goes on and on and on. Anyone that thinks the main problem these countries face is beyond clueless. These countries spending money of climate change represents the greatest allocations or resources in the history of man. What a joke, and what a waste.
This clip says it all:
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=35m29s
“co2islife
December 27, 2015 at 12:45 pm”
In 2006 I stood at the ruins of a tomb on a hill just outside Axum, Ethiopia. I was told that roughly 40kms north east-ish was the disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea. All I could see, as far as my eyes could, was desert. This border has been in dispute for many many years, even hundreds maybe, and I thought to myself “Why?”.
It seems to me that humans will always be in dispute, throwing rocks and pointed sticks at each other. And throwing rocks is an analogy used to describe the Voyager missions. So far, those “rocks” have been the farthest thrown.
The last 542 million years of substantial atmospheric CO2 with no sustained temperature change is compelling evidence CO2, in spite of being a ghg, has no effect on climate. This is documented in a peer reviewed paper at Energy & Environment, Volume 26, No. 5, 2015, 841-845 and also at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com which also discloses the two factors that do cause reported average global temperature change (sunspot number is the only independent variable). The match between calculated and measured is 97% since before 1900
The ENSO regions are starting to show signs of an end to the warmth. The regions could turn negative by February, if the solar conditions keep on as they have been doing.
The problem faced with an above average cooling period has to do with not having adequate food storage capabilities to make it through a period of multiple years of a reduced crop output in the NH. In that respect the world is in great danger from such a scenario. The only proper way to address the danger would be through preemptive storing of food stocks for the proverbial rainy day, as well as having adequate fossil fuel reserves on hand. Once the cooling sets in, it will then be too late to easily remedy the problem.
Thanks for another great post, Dr Ball. It seems to me that we need to amend the quote to: “A government with the policy to rob Peter and Paul can be assured of the support of both Peter and Paul.” How this has been achieved by COP21 Paris is by a meaningless and seemingly harmless agreement that lays the groundwork for continuing government robbery and ‘Cap and Trade’ that churns bad money about with added fraud but has no effect on the Climate, at all.
But…but…the standard reply to the medieval warm period is that it really only affected Northern Hemisphere regional areas. So it stands to reason that the least prepared (which seems to be primarily in the Southern Hemisphere) for any kind of modern warming need not worry, nor apply for recompense?
Of course, it could also be that the Southern Hemisphere WAS affected by the medieval warm period but such evidence was suppressed in order to toe the Mannian Message Line in the Sand? Nah. Couldn’t happen.
Shame on you for even hinting.
The Minion, the Roman and the Medieval Warm Periods were all only Northern Hemisphere (along with the Little Ice Age)?
If the Hockey Stick etc. show that Global Warming started when Mr. Scrooge first let Bob Cratchit put that extra lump of coal on the fire, then where’s the evidence that the Southern Hemisphere was doing the opposite during those times to keep the Globe’s temperature level?
If they had it, they’d be shouting it.
OOPS!
“The Minion,”
Should be
“The Minoan”
(I don’t think Gru and his little twinkies had anything to do with it.8-)
“Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become more important in the eyes of more trivial men.”
A society can survive getting a lot of things wrong. But if it gets its politics wrong, the results are usually catastrophic for its population.
I have been living in what is classed as a tropical paradise for the last 10 years. 600 000 people visit the region every year for the tropical weather and is classed as one the most desired tourist destinations in Australia. As well, this area is not connected to the grid so every person that lives here are on solar, hydro or generator. So I live in an area that is a greenhouse climate. Terrible! If the population here was 20 000 there would be mains power (blackouts) and it would be classed as a disaster area every year from disastrous flooding due to probable inept government infrastructure…the fact there are only around 1200 permanent residents who manage their own situation and preparedness for weather events means we cope. Warming or cooling you are at the mercy of your local environment/climate and council planning…do your own research and be aware of your own possible extreme situations be it fire, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. All I know is that a lot of people around the world would be happier with a warmer temperature and if it gets colder everyone will want to move here (Nooooooo!) Bring on the warmth. 🙂
Politics is only the diversion of trivial men if powerful others ensure that political processes become irrevocably gridlocked, static, tribally partisan and controlled by minority, hyper-powerful interests.
The more important question is whether humanity is ever capable of that not being so?
Clearly, the hyper-rich wish it to be so, so that they can remain hyper-rich by acting in untrammelled ways.
Clearly, ‘climate change’ has trivialised politics and attracted sycophants, blowhards, blusterers and charlatans.
But actually, preparing professionally for changes in climate through the judicious mobilisation of cost-effective solutions is one of the highest callings of proper politics.
Perhaps you guys would like to ask the billionaire extortionists, the darker parts of the security services and any others who seek to foist biddable, blackmail able mouthpieces into senior positions of political power, in order that whole nations can be subverted, infantilised, subjugated and demoralised through never-ending implementation of bad solutions benefitting the rich and powerful?
Let’s be clear about one thing: the only way the current false climate dogma is being allowed to proliferate is because very rich, very powerful interests consider it in their interests that it does so.
Let’s also be clear that I’m not being anti-capitalist or pro-socialist by saying that, since I have no evidence that those who might mobilise millions of ordinary citizens would behave more professionally in this sphere either.
I’m just saying that plenty of multibillionaires are betting considerable fractions of their very sizeable ranches in ‘climate change’.
And multibillionaires tend to have a track record of playing to win, not being too bothered if a few people get hurt on the way.
Please provide a list of ‘multibillionaires’ – “not being too bothered if a few people get hurt on the way.”
You could start with The Bilderberg group, The Club of Rome and The Committee of 300. Then read the definition of Malthusian and some of the works of Ehrlich and Holdren.
“ You will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the buying public” not sure who said this but those in power pushing the climate change agenda believe this with all their heart. Seems to me that in the past as well as the future humanity is destine to live where “ misunderstanding rules the world”.
H.L. Menken