Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Greens are fretting that we may be about crash through their arbitrary 1.5C global warming “limit”. But what will they do, when nothing bad happens?
As Earth Swelters, Global Warming Target in Danger
The Earth is so hot this year that a limit for global warming agreed by world leaders at a climate summit in Paris just a few months ago is in danger of being breached.
In December, almost 200 nations agreed a radical shift away from fossil fuels with a goal of limiting a rise in average global temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times while “pursuing efforts” for 1.5°C (2.7°F).
But 2016 is on track to be the hottest year on record, also buoyed by a natural El Niño event warming the Pacific, according to the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization. The first six months were a sweltering 1.3°C above pre-industrial times.
“It opens a Pandora’s box,” said Oliver Geden, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “The future debate about temperature targets will be about overshoot.”
Many climate scientists say the Paris targets are likely to be breached in the coming decades, shifting debate onto whether it will be possible to turn down the global thermostat.
Read more: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/as-earth-swelters-global-warming-target-in-danger-20597
Leaving aside the increasingly likely possibility that temperatures will continue falling back to average, or possibly further, I actually enjoy when we cross hyped up green lines in the sand.
The green movement has a terrible problem with “tipping points” and “limits”. If they set the bar too high, catastrophe is way to distant for anyone to care about. Greens set the tipping point bar too low, their credibility is damaged when nothing bad happens.
The green tipping point dilemma reminds me something horror fiction author Stephen King once said, in his story and essay collection Danse Macabre;
What’s behind the door or lurking at the top of the stairs is never as frightening as the door or the staircase itself. And because of this, comes the paradox: the artistic work of horror is almost always a disappointment. It is the classic no-win situation. You can scare people with the unknown for a long, long time (the classic example, as Bill Nolan also pointed out, is the Jacques Tourneur film with Dana Andrews, Curse of the Demon but sooner or later, as in poker, you have to turn your down cards up. You have to open the door and show the audience what’s behind it. And if what happens to be behind it is a bug, not ten but a hundred feet tall, the audience heaves a sigh of relief (or utters a scream of relief) and thinks, “A bug a hundred feet tall is pretty horrible, but I can deal with that. I was afraid it might be a thousand feet tall”….
Stephen King himself sadly appears to support climate initiatives. We can but hope that one day the great writer will recognise a poorly constructed narrative and badly executed plotline for what it is.
From the article: “The first six months were a sweltering 1.3°C above pre-industrial times.”
Where did you get this “pre-industrial times” temperature number? From NASA and NOAA? Don’t make me laugh.
So “the earth” is so hot this year the greens think something catastrophic is going to happen to the climate.
Down here in the southern part of Australia we have had our coldest winter for perhaps 25 years.
Oh wait a minute – we are in the southern hemisphere, and that doesnt matter.
“The first six months were a sweltering 1.3°C above pre-industrial times …”.
==============================
What a load of tosh.
The current global average temperatures are estimates and no-one knows what the “pre-industrial” global average was, except that it was probably as cold as this interglacial has got.
The Central England surface air temperature series, “the longest existing meteorological record” shows that average summer temperatures have barely moved since 1650:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CentralEnglandTempSince1659%201100pixel.gif
Looks like they have been dropping since about 2010. Another reason for the result of the Brexit vote?
I’m glad they figured out a way to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Bless their little hearts.
Now, would these all-powerful World Overlords please turn their attention to limiting my heating and cooling bills to under $60/month?
(While they’re at it, would hurt them any to get my cable/internet bill down to about $25/month, and I keep the premium channels?)
Thanks in advance, World Overlords.
The lower troposphere temperatures in July (still influenced by last year’s Super-El Nino) are only +0.469C and +0.389C. They will fall another 0.3C over the next three months based on how they react to the ENSO.
http://data.remss.com/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_3.txt
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/tltglhmam_6.0beta5.txt
These datasets, the lower troposphere are “supposed” to be increasing 1.3 times as fast as the surface according to the theory and the climate models.
So, … , there is just a lot of “boy crying wolf” from the climate change community. The parable tells us that people will eventually understand that the wolf story / climate change exaggeration is just so much bunk.
AWG is not Gay … It’s FABULOUS!
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjrxqP77L_OAhUTzmMKHfgLD-oQtwIIHjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DNGhqGbRNBz4&usg=AFQjCNG_aXTBn3eMX8h6T9gB744dDU2b0Q&sig2=AFQOHmarJGAUR8sXG489gQ
Ha ha
Alarmists are in a dilemma…
Alarmists’ first CAGW global warming estimates went as high as 10C by 2100, which was simply ridiculous and generated peals of laughter from anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of science..
To maintain a modicum of “credibility” and to prevent the CAGW hypothesis from quickly being disconfirmed by estimates exceeding reality by more than 2 standard deviations, alarmist quickly started moving the goal posts lower: 6C, 5C, 4C, 3C, 2C, and now 1.5C
The problem alarmists now face is that their original proposal was to waste $76 trillion (UN estimate) to keep global warming below 2C by 2100…. As it stands now, using the revised low-end estimate of 1.5C, we could waste ZERO $trillion and still be below the original target of below 2C…
Now the alarmists’ agenda is to create the impression that even 1.5C of global warming by 2100 is catastrophic… The only problem is that during past Warming Periods (Holocene Maximum, Minoan, Roman and Medieval) global temps were all 1.5C~2C warmer than now, and represented periods of tremendous economic, population, technological and societal achievement and growth, coupled with the additional problem of CO2 emissions not being responsible for past Warming Periods…
Alarmists also face the additional problem of trying to convince people that the tremendous benefits of: increased crop yields, global greening, increased arable land in Northern latitudes, increased tree-line, less severe winters, earlier springs, longer growing seasons, less frost loss, increased plant drought resistance from higher CO2 levels, slightly warmer global temps and the CO2 fertilization processes are all somehow……catastrophic benefits (a dichotomy of terms)….
For all intents and purposes, CAGW has already been shown to be a disconfirmed hypothesis. NONE of CAGW’s catastrophic projections have come even CLOSE to reflecting reality and already exceed the criteria necessary for formal hypothetical disconfirmation under the rules of the scientific method.
To paraphrase Nietzsche– CAGW IS DEAD…
You are correct of course. But the uninformed masses don’t know that.
The Alarmists can simply keep repeating their talking points with the aid of the media and get their way. An empirical basis for their claims is not necessary and that’s our problem.
It’s a war of perception and we’re loosing.
Paleological temperature records and the Stefan-Boltzman law tells us that there are no tipping points to a higher temperature regime from the present regime. Any increases in temperature from present require the negative feedback of an inordinate increase in forcing. The Quaternary glaciation shows a two state climate regime with the major portion of time spent in the cool phase. “Scientists” espousing tipping points to a warmer regime are simply crackpots with Jim Hansen being the shining example of disgrace to the profession.
There is no evidence of “positive feedbacks” increasing warming in an inter-glacial period.
The only evidence of “positive feedbacks” are for cooling from an inter-glacial or warming from a glacial of which the only one to concern us is “runaway cooling”.
As for temperatures – the surface temperature is now just a figment of someone’s grant-induced imagination.
“Jim Hansen being the shining example of disgrace to the profession.”
I couldn’t agree with you more. I completely lost respect for him when he tried to defend is late 1980’s model showing a “Scenario A” described to Congress as – in his own words – a “business as usual” scenario that turned out out to be wildly inaccurate. In response to Crichton and Michaels saying that this model was 600% off, Hansen tried to represent that his original paper described scenario A as a “worst case” scenario by claiming that the paper referred to it as being “on the high side of reality.”
I went back and found that paper. Hansen took his own words out of context. What he said in the paper was that because scenario A relied on continued exponential growth of GHG emissions, that it “must eventually be on the high side of reality” when resource constraints started limiting that exponential growth, i..e way down the road in the future – not in the first 20 years.
Maybe more significantly, he tried to defend the accuracy of the paper by simply comparing the actual temperatures in the 20 years since the model was published to “scenario B” which assumed only linear growth in GHG emissions, but he made no effort to show that the CO2 emissions during that interval were limited to linear growth. The measured temperatures were actually bouncing around between what was predicted for scenario B and for scenario C which assumed GHG emissions reductions beyond anything then even contemplated. This over the interval where the U.S. was going through rapid growth through the 90s during the Clinton administration, and also the early 2000s (with the exception of the dot-com bust that lasted about a year). China and India were were also ramping up their industrialization. So a mere comparison between the scenario B temps and the measured temps over the next 20 years was a useless comparison.
Moreover, this was Hansen’s model and as I recall he was sill working for NASA at the time he was trying to defend it. In the late 1980s he couldn’t have known what the future emissions were going to be, or how many volcanic eruptions there would have been, but in the early 2000s we certainly did. All he had to do was dust the model off the shelf and use the historical data as an input to the model (without changing any of the parameters) and see how accurate it was in retrospect. He didn’t do that. I can only assume that it is because he knew the effort would be a miserable failure.
Every temperature reconstruction on geological time scales I’ve seen shows that current temperatures are well below the maximum or “optimum” for the current interglacial, and also above the minimum. They show that the current interglacial is cooler than the last one, and actually cooler than all but maybe one in the last ice age. See this link, for example. https://kaiserscience.wordpress.com/earth-science/weather/ice-ages/
If there was such a tipping point on temperatures during interglacials, wouldn’t we have seen evidence of it in this record? Obviously, no climate scientist has actually demonstrated the existence of such tipping points, unless I missed an apocalypse or two while I was studying in college. There doesn’t seem to be any, well – scientific – evidence of the existence of tipping points anywhere near the temperatures we’re at.
So I tend to think that the best evidence there is that climate alarmism is NOT about science, is when the climate “scientists” babble about tipping points.
Isn’t it about time these nincompoops were called ‘climate variability deniers’??
After all, the one thing that 100% of the human race should be able to agree about is that climate is variable.
The discussion then comes to what constitutes natural variability:
1. in a year.
2. In a decade.
3. In a century.
4. In a millennium.
Really, one year being 3C above average is just one year. Unless it stays like that for 10 years or more, it’s just climate variability.
Denying that variability exists is the greatest crime of all, in my book…….
Let’s keep reminding everyone that this original global warming doomsday prediction from 1969 has already been passed.
And nothing has happened. Sea level rise and temperature rise for the entire period were comparable with 1915 to 1945.
Here is the specific alarmist warning from the 1969 Whitehouse memo:
“There is widespread agreement that carbon dioxide content will rise 25 percent by 2000.
This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”
How long can they keep postponing the same prediction?
It’s like deja vu, all over again.
http://motls.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/nixon-was-told-sea-level-would-rise-by.html
Goodbye Washington.
And to think, they keep telling us that no good will come from global warming.
Yeah, so we get hurricanes and tidal waves and droughts etc – BUT…it’s a price worth paying, I feel.
“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!”
“We didn’t die.”
“I meant eventually.”
I thought 400ppm atmospheric CO2 was the tipping point?
Did they redefine it because the world didn’t burst into flames when we passed that earlier this year?
I love that image: CO2 reaches a trigger point and the atmosphere bursts into flame!
Must be all the methane from all the B.S.
Thermalization explains why CO2 has no significant influence on climate.
Increasing water vapor is countering and perhaps preventing the expected global temperature decline from blank sun & decline in net ocean cycle temperature (R^2 = 0.98 since before 1900). http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
Switching from coal to natural gas adds water vapor.
“shifting debate onto whether it will be possible to turn down the global thermostat.” That’s the debate all along. Can humans actually control the temperature on earth?
Steven King defined a successful writer as one who made a lot of money. If he makes a lot of money pushing climate change, there’s no reason to change since that makes him successful by his own definition. He’s well-suited to climate change pushing—it’s all about the money.
During the Mesozoic, a period lasting over 180 million years, earth’s average temperature was 8 to 12 C higher than today, CO2 was more than ten times higher than now, yet life flourished pole to pole, and a tipping point was never reached. These facts are not in dispute, nor are they ever considered relevant by the Disasters-R-Us crowd.
Richard :
I think it would be more correct to point out that the temperature was on AVERAGE 8-12 C higher. I mention this because the tropics were no hotter than today, or only slightly so. The average was spread into the Arctic Ocean where crocs roamed. It is obvious that there is a thunderstorm feedback that prevents the wet tropics from running the sea temperature above 32 C. So the only way for the average to rise is to bring the cold regions up. In the case of the Arctic the ocean reached something like 20 C.
We….as organized countries and political economies….are way past the tipping point in terms of the number, influence, budget-clout of people who now depend on paychecks and power as bureaucrats, academics, scientists, scribes, lobbyists, activists, institutions, subsidy opportunists, lawyers, prosecutors, elected officials, and various crossbreeds of these. Only spectacular, sensational failures will make even a dent in the self-perpetuating, parasitic machine this has become.
We are also over the tipping point for serviceable debt and productivity. Next up for the world is a massive economic depression caused by high debt. I don’t believe it’s avoidable without ditching the war on CO2.
The best thing about the reaching of a climate tipping point is that by definition it’s a point of no return. This means that any funds to reverse the situation will be a waste of time. Because we are now all doomed we may as well spend the money we were going to spend trying to stop climate change on something useful.
yep, don’t worry, load up the SUV, drive to the beach and fire up the wood grill, crack a cold one, recline back and watch the world end…..
Is it just me or has anyone noticed the more money offered to study this “problem” the more dire the predictions have become?
It seems that from the point of view of the powers that be behind the IPCC, “tipping points” may well be passé – well, at least at this point in time.
Readers may recall that one of the “outcomes” of the Paris gathering of the great and the good was the decision to task the IPCC with providing a report on the implications of a 1.5°C “target”.
It seems that the new, improved Chair of the IPCC was quite happy for the IPCC to take on this task. On Aug. 15 – 18 they’ll be having a “scoping meeting” in Geneva to flush out the options. Rest assured that WG1 participants will be armed with a fascinating 15 page Background Document (pdf) to inspire and/or guide – you may take your pick – their deliberations.
Here are some of my findings of mentions during a perusal of this masterpiece of bureaucratic bafflegab:
tipping points – 0
carbon dioxide – 1
other carbon combinations/variants – 19
transform* (a perennial UN fave) – 21
sustain* – 37
global – 41
1.5°C – 62
Amazing, eh?!
Climate alarmism is tied to pension fund asset value.
Thats why they need to keep producing these alarmist articles, to keep the value of assets tied to climate change high. Thats why we hear about 2030 and 2050, when the pensions will mature.
They cant backtrack now because pension funds all around the world will collapse.
A new word is added to the vocabulary of fright: “overshoot” as in:
“The future debate about temperature targets will be about overshoot.”
But no, mate, the future debate will be about how to undo the damage brought on by 4 decades of scaremongering.
OK, fine, I like to see more than one side of a debate. You deniers realize you better be right? Sorry, I suspect your honesty. You are either whistling past your own grave yard or are paid shills. If your are wrong, you will be the first to go to the guillotines when it becomes obvious that we’ve past the point of no return. Sure the oceans can absorb heat for a 1000+ years. Arctic Methane is going to kill you.
[??? .mod]
Fortunately Mr. Turner, the only thing YOU risk in being wrong is embarrassment, and no one ever died from that.
Lots of people have already died because the alarmists have made food and energy more expensive.
@ur momisugly MarkW:
I trust that Mr. Turner is one of the “illiterati,” rather than someone in a position of authority, knowledge OR experience. As such, I responded to him as an uninformed individual, rather than as an influential member of the “Climate Liberation Fanatical Front (CLiFF).”
His outburst was nothing more than a heart-felt (if unfounded), emotional (if unfounded) rant directed at a (perceived) threat; I responded in kind.
There is no evidence that the oceans are warming.
The myth of arctic methane (why the capitalization there?) has been refuted multiple times.
Face it. There is not a shred of evidence to support your religion.
PS: What about the 10’s of thousands who have already died because of anti-CO2 policies? Don’t you and your co-religionists bear any responsibility there?
I have difficulty deciding if this comment is meant to be sarcastic. I guess not. Since it’s really not very warm out these days, I’m happy to accept Mr. Turner’s ‘bet’ and raise him by one firing squad.
“[Y]ou will be the first to go to the guillotines when it becomes obvious that we’ve past (sic) the point of no return. Sure the oceans can absorb heat for a 1000+ years.”
Think that through a little more carefully. No hurry – you have plenty of time to figure it out.
Ah well John, look on the bright side. Better the Arctic methane gets us than we drop like flies from Antarctic weather-
http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/nsw-flu-related-deaths-triple-in-2016/ar-BBvFrJo?li=AAabC8j&ocid=spartandhp
“shifting debate onto whether it will be possible to turn down the global thermostat”
and what shall we do when we discover that there is no such thing as a global thermostat?
. I am sorry if this seems pessimistic but so far in spite of the caterwauling of AGWers the unstated truth is that temperature change has been GOOD for the world. The IPCC admitted this. Up to 1.5C they said was positive but they don’t admit how positive it is. We know now that agricultural productivity has been boosted by at least 20% by the CO2 we’ve put in during the last 50 years. Satellites prove this and peer-reviewed scientific articles show this. Not that we’d need that. Greenhouses for decades have been using enhanced CO2 to generate double the productivity up to 1400ppm of CO2. So, does it take a couple science studies to show that boosting co2 would up plant productivity?
During this 1.3C or whatever they want to claim from the last 200 years of civilization, life has gotten incredibly better for humans. Study after study shows more people die in the cold than the warmth and that whatever incredibly small and irrelevant effects of warmer temperatures they describe as the “damage already occurring” it is trivial compared to the gains we’ve gotten from improved weather and co2.
We are told of islands that will sink and all kinds of “effects” but ask someone to name these effects and you’ll get a bunch of completely confusing nonsense. If you say well, the co2 we’ve put in has generated massive improved agriculture which has saved millions of people’s lives you will get stunned disbelief and demialism. They will deny that has happened. That it is insignificant. Really? 20% increase in productivity of plants? Trivial? This 1.5C is so much crap. It was 2.0C and we’ve seen the effects of global warming are far less than they originally thought so it is more likely 4,0C that you’d see the negatives they are projecting for 1.5C.
It was a couple years ago when the AGWers realized that they would never hit the 2.0C change from 200 years ago so they worked to change the effects becoming negative from 2.0 to 1.5 because they knew the sensitivity was no way going to get them to 2.0C. They conspired to modify the number which is an arbitrary number with no factual basis.
Why are we using 200 years ago when it is incredibly clear that until 1945 no significant amount of co2 was being produced by man? Because if you count temperature change since we’ve been pouring co2 into the atmosphere the number is 0.7C (assuming you use their doubled land temperatures) or 0.35C if you use satellite records (extended to 1945 with reasonable assumptions). Saying that 1.0C is a dangerous number rather than 1.5C is harder case to make to people. How could 1C make such a huge difference? Of course it would also raise the sensitivity to their fudged climate adjustments which double global warming since 1945.