The climate change debate has entered what we might call the “Campfire Phase”, in which the goal is to tell the scariest story. – Oren Cass (twitter)
David Wallace-Wells has a recent cover story in NYMagazine: The Uninhabitable Earth. Subtitle: Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think. The article has generated a firestorm of controversy and debate.
In terms of what is technically wrong with the NYMag article, Andy Revkin pretty much sums it up perfectly with this tweet:
Scariest stuff isn’t worst-case science; it’s bad fit of @deepuncertainty & time scales with indiv. & collective human risk/response traits.
Apart from the predictable takedowns by the AGW ‘unconvinced,’ there has been substantial resistance to the NYMag article from elements of what is usually regarded as the ‘alarmed’ contingent:
- Mann et al. in WaPo: and ECOWatch: Such rhetoric is in many ways as pernicious as outright climate change denial, for it leads us down the same path of inaction.
- Climate Feedback: Sixteen scientists analyzed the article and estimated its overall scientific credibility to be ‘low’. A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Alarmist, Imprecise/Unclear, Misleading.
- Chris Mooney in WaPo: Scientists challenge story about ‘uninhabitable Earth’
- Ars Technica: In both the popular and academic press, scientists argue against worst cases
If this reaction seems surprising to you, you are not the only ones surprised:
Ryan Maue (twitter): Privately more than one journalist told me they were afraid to push back against the NY Mag climate horrors piece.
IMO, the most interesting articles are those that defend development and discussion of worst case scenarios:
- Joseph Majkut : I for one think that worst case scenarios should be interrogated. Technically and morally.
- Joe Romm in ThinkProgress: Thus, the question remains: what is a plausible worst-case scenario for climate change this century?
- Dave Roberts in Vox: In defense of worst-case scenarios in journalism.
A few other articles with interesting points:
Fabius Maximus: After 30 years of failure to gain support of the US public for massive public policy measures to fight climate change, climate activists now double down on the tactics that have failed them for so long. This post explains why it will not work. Nor should it. Instead they should trust the IPCC and science, showing both the good and bad news.
SF Chronicle: If you honestly believe that climate change will end all life on Earth (it won’t) or lead to some dystopian hell, what policies wouldn’t you endorse to stop it?
Consensus enforcement in the Age of Trump
So, what is going with Mann et al. in trashing the alarming NYMag article?
I saw many such ‘alarmed’ articles (perhaps not as comprehensive) in the Age of Obama, spouting alarmist predictions and concerns. Further, the White House seemed to encourage this, as evidenced by the whitehouse.gov web site and the statements of Science Advisor John Holdren. I never saw any push-back on this from the consensus-enforcing scientific establishment.
In the Age of Trump, alarmism clearly doesn’t influence the policy makers; the best that consensus-enforcing scientific establishment can hope for is to enforce the not very scary IPCC consensus.
And why does this matter to them? Surely this consensus enforcement is antithetical to the scientific process and progress. It seems to be all about ‘action’ — presumably as defined by the Paris Agreement. According to Mann et al., too much alarm makes people give up on attempting ‘action.’ Never mind that the proposed actions will have a small impact on the climate (even if you believe the climate models) during the 21st century.
Others disagree, such as Weizmann and Wagner (e.g. Climate Shock), who push the alarming ‘fat tail’ argument as the rationale for ‘action’ (greater uncertainty increases the urgency for action).
Well, I suspect that neither approach will spur ‘action’ — what is needed are new technologies. Until then, people, corporations and nations will pursue their short-term economic well being.
Deep Uncertainty
In understanding climate change risk, and deciding on the ‘if’ and ‘what’ of ‘action’, we need to acknowledge that we don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will play out (Deep Uncertainty, folks). Four possibilities:
- It is possible that human-caused climate change will be swamped by much larger natural climate variability.
- It is possible/plausible that the sensitivity of the climate is on the low end of the IPCC envelope (1.0-1.5C), with a slow creep of warming superimposed on much larger natural variability.
- It is possible/plausible that the IPCC projections are actually correct (right for the wrong reasons; too much wrong with the climate models for much credibility, IMO).
- It is possible that AGW and natural variability could conspire to cause catastrophic outcomes
We can’t put probabilities on these possible scenarios, the uncertainties are too deep. We can speculate as to the relative likelihoods of these scenarios, but we don’t know, and there will be widespread disagreement. The negotiated IPCC consensus notwithstanding, I don’t regard #3 as any more likely than #2. There are some that regard #1 as the most likely outcome. Apart from advocacy groups hyping alarm, there has not been much serious attention paid to #4.
The IPCC consensus enforcers focus on #3. #2 is the lukewarm position. Michael Mann seems to regard consideration of #1, #2, #4 as ‘pernicious.’
I regard consideration of #1, #2, #4 as absolutely essential for both furthering scientific understanding and for understanding the risks from climate change. #2 gets a fair amount of play from the lukewarmer community (see especially Pat Michael’s book).
#1 and #4 are arguably the most interesting from the perspective of science, and also in terms of understanding the risks. Elements of natural climate variability are active areas of research; what is missing is a synthesis and assessment (something I’ve proposed for red team).
That leaves #4 as not having any serious scientific focus, beyond dystopian articles by journalists and cli-fi novels (and fat tail speculations by economists). #4 deserves some serious scientific attention.
A few additional tweets from Joseph Makjut:
- This isnt about scaring people into action or not but thinking hard about what climate change might look like and who it might hurt.
- Likewise, we should interrogate the scenarios where climate change is rather benign. What-up lukewarmers!?!
- Keeping multiple versions of the future world in your head is hard, but wisdom comes from considering them all.
Back to ‘action.’ The Weitzmann fat tail argument says greater uncertainty increases the urgency of ‘action’ (Taleb is a fan of this argument). I’ve discussed the problems with this argument previously:
- Worst case scenario versus fat tail
- Climate sensitivity: lopping off the fat tail
- Tall tales and fat tails
The point is this. Climate variability and change (whatever the direction or cause) has socioeconomic impacts, and it is useful to ponder the possibilities, independently of ‘action’ on CO2 emissions.
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Climate scare story’s are keeping me awake at night.
Ecologist Guy McPherson —a doomist cult hero who insists that exponential climate change likely will render human beings and all other species extinct within 10 years.
Guy McPherson, July 16, 2017.
I’m glad he did. I would not be happy if a man with such a misled passion would have explosives, ammunition, or guns. A pen is too much.
The MSM’s willingness to tout catastrophic greenhouse gas warming is leading us to a situation where we may end up with a series of crazy unabombers attacking the society which they think is too republican.
“I’ll briefly mention that I gave up everything — including all money, prestige, and relationships :”
And his SANITY !!
Is it right that G. McPherson gave all that up in June 2007?
And yet we’re here?
Just asking.
Auto
“Ecologist” Guy McPherson is a fool.
All life will be extinct in eight years.
Only a fool like him would claim 10 years.
There’s a big difference between 8 years and 10 years.
Two years.
Where do those leftists come up with their numbers?
From a phone book?
All these cultish, outlandish horror stories might be designed to make the mere liars and lunatics seem middle of the road.
Climate scare stories put me to sleep.
Climate scare stories make me laugh.
I don’t even bother reading climate scare stories.
Come on, admit it – you didn’t either
Ok I’ll admit it, I usually don’t read them much anymore. There does not seem to be anything new in them, it’s the same ol’ same ol’. Glaciers are melting, polar bears are swimming, Florida is flooding, methane is rising, yada, yada..
What’s fun though is the usual flurry of scare stories that appear in the MSM just prior to an IPCC climate meeting somewhere. It’s like clockwork.
Klem
Light bedtime reading, so the little kiddies go to sleep.
No more.
No less.
Auto
Switch to decaf coffee rub for your grilled steak.
TD
If n o t /Sarc [probably you are /SARC, but not sure] . . . .
May I recommend a modicum of red wine?
No keeping awake at nights thereafter!
Maybe not solving the ‘problem’ (as perceived by some) – but you get some sleep.
Modicum = enough so you will sleep.
c1.5 litres. For some.
Enjoy one you like, and sleep well!
Auto
Auto: Sounds like you’ve been doing some “testing”.
1.5L!
You been spying on me?
The fact that Deep Uncertainty is a thing today is itself a strong condemnation of the lack of progress by warmists.
They constantly tell us their field goes back 150 years. If they can’t deliver anything better than Deep Uncertainty after that very long period of study, they are either grossly incompetent or studying a fundamentally flawed belief or both.
Their mantra seems to be ‘We must act now because based on the glacial pace of progress thus far we simply don’t have time to wait around for any substantive discoveries.’
The science was already bad. Now the scare story has become bad as well. The end is neigh. Of both, I mean.
“The end is neigh”
neigh ????
What’s horses got to do with it ? 😉
It’s explained here:
To Andy G:
Those steaming piles of horse and other farm animal digestive waste products
are obviously the primary cause of global warming,
along with the white water vapor from chimneys at power plants
that you always see at the start of climate change doom stories on TV.
They only show the chimneys because steaming horse
hockey pucks are not very appealing on TV.
Even skeptics sort of agree with this theory.
When they read climate change doom articles
I always hear them repeatedly mumbling bullshirt,
which, of course, is a cause of global warming.
You could look this up.
Every epoch has his “Earth’s End” prophets: Lately we had “2012 Maya end of Time”.
No wonder that many people believe in it.
PS: Don’t compare with the Christian “End of the World”, because in this case “World” is not “Earth” but “wickedness”.
No, they use the equally stupid phrase “end times”, with nothing to support it besides fairy tales.
“greater uncertainty increases the urgency of ‘action’”
I don’t know about you, but greater uncertainty tends to make me act more cautiously. It slows down my desire to take urgent action until more facts are known. How is it even possible to determine what actions to take when you are uncertain that your actions won’t make things worse? I just don’t see how anyone could feel an urgency to act unless they are reasonably confident that their actions will do some good. Greater uncertainty should never result in greater confidence. Maybe that’s why Gore, DiCaprio, and other global-warming preachers only talk about taking urgent action and do nothing to reduce their own carbon footprints. They don’t want to put their own lifestyles at risk. They want you to do that. So in my experience, greater uncertainty does not increase the urgency of ‘action’. It only increases the urgency of preaching.
Amen Louis!
So once the science was settled, they needed to unsettle it. Maybe ECS is 6K? 8K? Then we need to jump to action? Right?
The problem is uncertainty means uncertainty in many directions. It means uncertainty on
* how much the policy will cost – and not only in money but lives,
* how much difference will that policy make, and
* how much ROI you’d get – again in money and lives.
If we could say there is an uncertainty on ECS between 5K and 200K (a Stephen Hawking’esque “the Earth is going to change to Venus-like” argument), THEN you’d act to put CO2 down as much as possible, but EVEN then, you’d need to take the best solution money can buy.
So there is never urgency for action before analysing what is efficient. Incidentally, many of the policies suggested by CAGW-ppl are putting pressure on urgency over efficiency. To put it bluntly, they want to use much money almost anywhere instead of using money efficiently to deal with the problem – which appears not necessarily to be much of a problem.
In the meantime, they cause huge (yuuge) collateral damage by action before estimating the consequences. Like, shut down nuclear and use solar, which is turn basically just increases coal use. Or use wind, at the cost of clearing down forests and using more coal to keep the grid up.
The end game of urgency always seems to be something involving reducing the human population to 1B or less. So if we need to get rid of 6B through extreme austerity, absolute control of human activity etc, we might as well live it up instead and risk the final 1B.
Ditto that ‘Amen”! I particularly liked: “Greater uncertainty should never result in greater confidence.” We live in a world where the obvious becomes a sublime revelation!
The less we know, the more we want to do stuff…………like shorten the time to the next ice age……
Deep Uncertainty => Precautionary Principle =>
“Don’t just stand there, do something” => Lemmings
Nat. Geo, Discovery have many apocalyptic stories like that all the time too.
When will we have the rebound?
The scariest thing is the extent to which the ruling classes everywhere have leapt to endorse what is at best convenient possibility and at worst a convenient lie.
The illusion that they are perhaps a little vain and incompetent, and self serving, but underneath basically mindful of their duty to the electorates has been smashed in the last 30 years.
What emerges is a political class ruled by incompetence, greed, vanity, and corruption who will stop at nothing – not even all out war – to advance whatever narrow interests they have using whatever ideological justification is most convenient.
This is a class that not only has no idea what the truth is, but doesn’t actually care, either. In politics truth is whatever people can be persuaded to believe it is, and all that matters is plausible deniability and the emotional narrative.
And even intelligent people who should no better have fallen for the philosophic trap of equating ‘truth is relative to culture’ to mean ‘truth is whatever our culture says it is’ hence the massive dependence on magic thinking and double think that pervades the whole Left ideosphere.
Society may be changed by what people believe, and for sure it is being changed as one more piece of politically correct crapology becomes the latest Thing We Must Not Challenge for fear of upsetting some precious minority or other.
Oddly enough climate change itself offers the solution. Despite what we may believe, the climate is likely to be whatever it will be.
The Green Cnuts may sit there commanding the tides to remain as they will, but they will ebb and flow regardless.
The ruling classes want to bathe in the limelight of ‘saving the world’. It makes them look virtuous and caring, and it garnishes votes. They will only stop jumping on the climate bandwagon, when doing so results in derision from the majority of the proletariat, and a loss of votes.
This video is a remake of the successful ’90s BBC comedy series ‘Yes Minister’, which poked fun at the establishment. But the BBC cancelled the new series, when they saw that it might poke fun at the climate lobby. The BBC can and will poke fun at anything and everything, except:… a. Climate. b. lsIam.
For our American cousins – when the ‘prime minister’ adopts a deep and guttral voice, that is an immitation of Winston Churchill.
R
Was this particular episode ever aired in the UK ? If so, what year would that have been ?
Thanks in advance. I’ll be using it whatever.
Where we are at is described by Thomas Frank in Listen Liberal! We have a Democrat elite who will believe any crap spouted by any other of their ilk, because they are experts doncha know.
The reason these folks are willing to believe incomprehensible mumbo jumbo is that they were trained to do so by the postmodern ‘scholars’ (sic) who infest our academies of higher learning. link
This infestation is a result of the long march through the institutions. It was deliberate. In a way it’s our own fault because we were warned about the effects of excessive liberalism.
The infestation also redefined the concept of “critical thinking”. Now you think critically if you think the “correct” thoughts and come to the “correct” conclusions. Reflection, analysis and criticism are for what the bad people think.
Green Cnuts (? ) spelling?
Cnut the Great … when I was a puppy we referred to him as King Canute.
Leon Smith:
Socialists have over promised entitlements and government bureaucrat pensions,
which are more like legal Ponzi schemes, depending on continuing population growth to
keep the schemes going.
The population growth slowdown in US, Europe, China and especially Japan,
is making it very hard to finance all the promises.
One new source of government revenues might be new taxes
on private sector / corporate energy use.
The new taxes would be claimed to be needed to “save the earth”
(but are really needed to bail out entitlement programs and underfunded
government pensions)
So we now have 97% agreement that we have Deep Uncertainty?
Yet this alarmism ignores that fact that the biosphere was much more productive during the Jurassic, when CO2 concentrations were 2,000 ppm. And as Co2 declined throughout the Cretaceous, so the size if the fauna also declined. It is entirely possible that the huge size of the dinosaurs was achieved and sustained by high CO2 concentrations, which allowed for much greater flora (food) production.
Thus history demonstrates that high CO2 concentrations are good for the Earth and its biosphere, and that these foam-at-the-mouth alarmists are completely deluded and wrong. And yet these charIatans still try to claim the moral high ground with their baseless alarmism.
R
“It is entirely possible that the huge size of the dinosaurs was achieved and sustained by high CO2 concentrations”
So we are going to have a rising sea level AND dinosaurs?!?!
It is worse than we thought!!
You know what’s even worse than dinosaurs and sea level rise? Dinosaurs in fighter jets!
http://calvinandhobbes.wikia.com/wiki/File:Tyrannosaurs_in_F-14s.png
🙂
rip
Interesting that suggestions of a looming Grand Solar Minimum are starting to receive press coverage. See: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/07/16/will-sun-put-brakes-on-global-warming.html
Interesting that the response is that it will not overwhelm CAGW, despite the fact that a decline of ‘a fraction of 1%’ caused the Maunder Minimum. Yet current anthropogenic forcing is ‘a fraction of 1%’ – about one sixth of the solar constant. Doesn’t seem plausible.
Did you notice the very large sunspot? Sunspots were few but very large during the Maunder Minimum.
The astrophys guys have been working on models of solar physics for decades so surely they can tell us precisely what old Sol is going to do by now. They might even have a shot at that but what they won’t be doing is hurling hysterical quasi-religious invective at anyone who doesn’t automatically accept the output from their modelling efforts as gospel.
I think the 1%, or 0.1% is not the important part. The important part is probably a change in the cloud cover, which is possible after the shielding effect of solar wind weakens giving more high-energy cosmic radiation into low atmosphere. Some people did try to laugh Svensmark under the table, but it appears he is not totally wrong. The most energetic cosmic rays have a lot of energy so they can cause showers of ionization in the atmosphere. IPCC could make a model of them, and prove this theory is not inconsistent with the climate change. Snark.
First, induce fear. Then comes the shakedown.
Don’t fall for the trick guys. Four years is nothing and they reckon Trump will be outed (and I think he will unless he gets the runs on the board – and of course that is part of the incredible obstructionism we see) and then they can ramp the fear up again.
I am nearly seventy and I can tell you the thirties and below belief this tripe. They will have to be shown that it is carp (can’t get me there mod). Unfortunately if we do cool the death toll will educate them.
Sad but true – there is a long row to hoe!!!
If you don’t believe it in your thirties, you have no heart. If you still believe it in your fourties, you have no brain. Who said this originally, no idea, but it holds well on leftism. The CAGW will only die when climate cools enough. May take a while.
It won’t die then either. The Australians have been in a state of near mental implosion while clutching their pearls and passing round the smelling salts over their perceived imminent complete death of the barrier reef for as long as I can recall.
If it cools then the climate crazies will simply transition that to carbon dioxide caused via a simple sign change and on it will go. They are like the Nazgûl. They won’t ever stop and are incredibly difficult to bring down.
These quotes make for good storytelling but popular myth has falsely attributed them to Winston Churchill
Conservative by the Time You’re 35
‘If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.’
A bit like everyone should be a Socialist at 19 (and I sort of was – now that is commitment!)) and no one should be at 40, or whatever the quote correctly attributed is..
I am just saying that I have been slapped down as silly and irrelevant from the younger generations as I know I did as well. My Father was one of the most stupid people I have ever met – until I started saying the same things some decades later.
You are right Hugs “it may take a while”. I just hope Trump and Brexit get on with it and the rest will follow. The “rest” can’t afford to be in this card game without the good old USA and GB.. Merkel sure as hell can’t afford it any more.
After living through “Snowball Earth” and “Nuclear Winter” scare the public into submission stories of the 70’s, I remember them all being wrong. If you believe the bible, this has been going on for 6500 years. This BS has to stop.
Who remembers when scientists said that cars going faster than 60mph will kill the occupents?
SF Chronicle: If you honestly believe that climate change will end all life on Earth (it won’t) or lead to some dystopian hell, what policies wouldn’t you endorse to stop it?
Easy answer. I wouldn’t endorse policies that harm people and haven’t a snowballs chance in dystopian hell of working.
Climate Alarmism, despite the virtue signalling by the likes of Mann, and Revkin does serve a useful function for the Climatist narrative, by making their sober by comparison claims seem reasonable. It is all part and parcel to “communicating climate change” to the masses. We have seen this apparent pulling away from Alarmism before. It is all a ruse to lull people. The end goal is always convincing the masses to “take action” on climate.
Once more my input, it is the best I can come up with so far
With no Paris agreement, will death rates increase?
From an Issue paper by Juanita Constible, Natural Resources Defense Council:
KILLER SUMMER HEAT:
PARIS AGREEMENT COMPLIANCE COULD AVERT HUNDREDS
OF THOUSANDS OF NEEDLESS DEATHS IN AMERICA’S CITIES.
Is this claim true?
I am a climate realist, that means I look at the totality of what is happening to the climate with increasing CO2 levels, and what it means for our future.
Climate alarmists and IPCC believe that the thermal response to increasing CO2 is a feedback gain from increasing water vapor that results from higher temperatures, leading to much higher temperatures. Current climate model averages indicate a temperature rise of 4.7 C by 2100 if nothing is done, 4.65 C if U.S keeps all its Paris commitments and 4.53 C if all countries keep their part of the agreement. In all cases, with or without Paris agreement we are headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
As the chart indicates, implementing all of the Paris agreement will delay the end of mankind as we know it by at most 4 years.
Myself and quite a few scientists, meteorologists, but mostly engineers believe the feedback loop in nature is far more complicated than that, in fact, there is a large negative feedback in the system, preventing a temperature runaway, and we have the observations to prove it. The negative feedback manifests itself in 2 ways: Inorganic feedback and organic feedback: https://lenbilen.com/2017/07/02/with-no-paris-agreement-will-death-rates-increase/
You ask a good question.
If the temperature rises everywhere (which is not the case for the USA over the past 100 years) there will be two sorts of ‘attributions’ claimable using the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) numbers. One is that the number of premature deaths statistically attributable to an increase in temperature (heat wave) will increase and second, the number of premature deaths statistically attributable to a cold snap will decrease. In every case you can find, heat wave deaths are exceeded by cold snap deaths, but this should not be the focus of our attention. The bigger story is that chronic underheating is responsible for far more premature deaths than the two other combined. Many millions will be positively affected by a reduction in this risk.
Anyone living in a continental or ‘moderate’ climate country has a problem of heating living spaces for part of the year. The young, elderly and ill are at disproportionate risk from chronic underheating. It is important to remember that the ‘deaths’ spoken of in the piece are ‘premature deaths’ and are ‘attributed’ on the basis of the GBD assessment process. They are not speaking of ‘actual’ deaths or deaths avoided.
Further, it is not a statistically valid step to take a risk assessed for a population cohort that is already dead and project it onto a different, future cohort living in a different age. In other words, any claim for avoiding future deaths is not valid if it was based on the GBD numbers. Because something is statistically ‘attributable’ in an arguably valid manner does not automatically mean it is ‘avoidable’ for a different, future population. There are too many confounding factors and too little data to sustain such a claim.
Remember this when anyone tells you how many climate-related deaths can be avoided by….. They are pulling your leg while talking through their hat. Repeat after me: attributable does not mean avoidable.
It’s not the absolute temperature of the heat wave that kills people, but the magnitude of change from the norm.
Getting in the mid-90’s in the northeast, constitutes a heat wave that kills people in the northeast.
Yet in the southwest, they don’t start taking off the jackets till the temperatures get to the mid-80’s.
It’s all what you are used to.
Even if the CO2 scare stories were accurate, both the “normal” temperature and the “heat wave” temperatures are going to increase.
19th century Antarctic expeditions would stay in the area for years at a time (usually forced to when their ships became icebound). According to the account in South, the men of the Endurance expedition got so used to the climate that they often worked shirtless in “summer” temperatures of around 0F.
Crisper in Waterloo
CO2 is invisible to sunlight and has little effect on daytime high temperatures
CO2 may slow nighttime cooling enough to make the night time low temperature somewhat warmer
That may add up to a slightly higher average temperature, from slightly warmer nights
Or maybe the effect of CO2 is really too small to measure or notice.
CO2 greens the earth and accelerate growth of C3 plants that people and animals eat.
That has to be good news for people who don’t get enough to eat now.
@ur momisugly drednicolson It’s the humidity or lack thereof. In Colorado if one is being physically active, a tee shirt in the 20°’s (F) is plenty.
Well-said Crispin
Joe d’Aleo and I had written a paper on Excess Winter Mortality based on other evidence when the major Lancet study was published, so we revised our paper to include that excellent study. Our summary reads:
“Cold weather kills. Throughout history and in modern times, many more people succumb to cold exposure than to hot weather, as evidenced in a wide range of cold and warm climates.
Evidence is provided from a study of 74 million deaths in thirteen cold and warm countries including Thailand and Brazil, and studies of the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, Australia and Canada.
Contrary to popular belief, Earth is colder-than-optimum for human survival. A warmer world, such as was experienced during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, is expected to lower winter deaths and a colder world like the Little Ice Age will increase winter mortality, absent adaptive measures.
These conclusions have been known for many decades, based on national mortality statistics.”
Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather September 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
At one point, that ridiculous article says that by 2100 sea level may rise by 4 foot, and then says that 600 million people live within 10 metres of sea level. Are we not supposed to notice the absurdity of that comparison?
For those who may not be up to speed on their Imperial/metric conversion, 10 meters is a couple inches short of 33 feet.
So the alternative with the most data to support it is:
Not much bad will happen from so called “climate change”.
Yet this scenario is attacked when it is not ignored.
By the way Mann getting away with pretending he has not been a fear monger is so funny.
hanter:
There are no data to support ANY prediction of the future climate.
It will get warmer, colder, or stay the same.
We’ve had 30 years of climate predictions to teach us
that humans can’t predict the climate,
or anything else.
Earthquake of 6.6 degrees on Bering Island.
Strong shock in Montana.
http://quakes.globalincidentmap.com/#
There is a strong geomagnetic storm.
Please Help! Trying to find a ‘safe-room’. All resources confirm ‘NO VACANCY’.
P.S. Also running low on crayons.
Can’t send crayons over the net, but hope this helps:
For some reason, I found this hysterically funny! I as still laughing every time I glance at the label on the x-axis!
I like your chart, phil. 🙂
Thanks for the perfectly named HELPFUL CHART. By the way, the roman numerals at the end of the Yes, Prime Minister clip show that the episode was produced in 2013. I’m not sure it ever aired, and the series was killed quickly.
The Helpful Chart Ensemble!
Beauuuutiful!
Thank you phil. Based on your chart, I see that we’re getting better agreement among the CMIP model ensembles now. Good to know. 😉
Can one can average all the outputs, like they do for failed climate models?
If Heller shows us the pre-adjustment “helpful chart”, will Mr. Stokes determine that Phil’s chart is the one to rely on? I’d mention Mosher, but he would only drive by.
Helpful chart
Proof that no one knows what they are talking about
when they predict the future climate !
I’d like to see worst case analysis of wind and solar electricity. How big a battery will be needed?
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. All in, IIRC it’s about $2/W-hr. For grins and giggles, calculate the cost to store 1 hours output from a 1,000 MW power plant.
Bigger than a bread-box.
Much much bigger.
If you have to build a battery too big to carry, you’re defeating the purpose of a battery. (The advantage of batteries is portability, not storage.)
I think M Simon was thinking specifically about grid-scale storage.
Of the four scenarios of “Deep Uncertainty”, only number 4 requires immediate, drastic action. The others give time frames of decades to forever to provide solutions. Only a few, mostly uninformed, crisis mongers actually even believe number four. That gives most rational people decades to solve the problem, if it even exists.
There are already plausible (though fraught with costs and unintended consequences) solutions to numbers 3 and 4. A short list includes carbon sequestration, altering earth’s albedo in dozens of different ways, dramatic economic disruption, and more. With decades to find non disruptive solutions, I have no doubt that the ingenuity of mankind can find them, if necessary. I happen to believe they’re not necessary, but there is no doubt in my mind that a wait and see position is best, for now. There are too many scientific facts known today that make the “Chicken Little” approach unfounded.
Repent and be saved, you sinner!
(and send $$$ to the collection plate against Gorebal Warming!,
..the leaders/bishops/priests/ego-builders need cash)
Extract of David Wallace-Wells from the NYMagazine
Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.
Horrifically inhospitable?
Last I checked, large parts of the Earth are already ‘horrifically inhospitable’, generally because they are way too cold.
The deep oceans are horrifically inhospitable. However neither global warming or global cooling is going to do anything about that.
The worst manmade environmental catastrophe ever, Chernobyl, is full of surprises in that domain
There’s even colonies of rad-resistant bacteria growing inside the reactor itself.