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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Five Possibilities:
5. Any warming and additional atmospheric CO2 turns out to be net beneficial.
Any change, if caused by man, is by definition bad.
Or at least that’s what the environmentalists that I know keep telling me.
Who says they are the best minds?
Warmists are scoundrels or imbeciles (or both).
ToTimTheToiletMan
Your (5) is a possibility
how about my (6) CO2 greens the Earth and has no measurable effect on average temperature?
and how about a hundred other possibilities?
Dr. Curry was late to the skeptic camp and would not be described as a warmist – but maybe a luke-warmist.
Early skeptics and better minds would include:
Richard Lindzen, Pat Michaels, Sallie Baliunas, Tim Patterson, Tim Ball, Fred Singer, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Joe d’Aleo, Joe Bastardi, John Coleman, Anthony Watts, Madhav Khandekar, …. and many more.
I simply cannot understand Judy Curry. She is saying really nothing at all here — she takes no position but treats all alternatives as valid; preference is assigned only based on their support by others, not on any kind of scientific plausibility. This might be appropriate for a TV talk show host, but is this really the best we can expect of a career climate scientist?
Ms. Curry has said repeatedly that prior to 2009 she was simply accepting the IPCC “consensus” on good faith, and it was only the bad behaviour evident in the Climategate emails that changed her mind. Nothing wrong with detesting the ethics of those gentlemen — but what took her so long? How about the evidence of the missing temperature rise and of the missing tropical hot spot? The only conclusion I can make is that Ms. Curry either distrusts her own scientific judgement or lacks it altogether.
Your questions on missing temperature rise and missing hot spot are only answered after 2009, if I remember correctly.
It is equally unscientific to toss a theory because it looks like it has problems, but you cannot yet identify those problems. Many people seem to think one problem arises and it’s all over for the theory. Theories can be modified. Some people want to be sure before they make a call of “failure” on a widely accepted theory. (Also, hindsight is 20/20.)
“Theories can be modified.” While this statement is obviously true, it is currently a crime to even suggest that the AGW theory is a candidate for modification. The science is settled, they say. Frankly, I believe the theory was falsified seconds after it was proposed, by the simple fact that it is not compatible with historical climate, not to mention that the essential positive feedbacks in the theory are derived from a huge leap of speculation that is apparently derived from ‘agenda’, and not scientific observation.
If you look at the movie “The Great Global Warming Swindle” of 2007, you will see the arguments about the missing temperature rise and the missing hot spot are clearly spelled out. Satellite data sets already covered a time span of almost 30 years by then. Christy, Lindzen, and others clearly stated the scientific implications.
A theory that has been “modified” to fit the data is really a new one. But either way, I have not seen a new and/or improved global warming theory that does not require the missing tropical hot spot. What your argument amounts to is nothing but a generic “but we could still be wrong.” I’m sure at least 97% of all sceptics would support that.
“I simply cannot understand Judy Curry. She is saying really nothing at all here — she takes no position but treats all alternatives as valid;”
I think she is being very measured. She is essentially saying we don’t have enough information to say which one of the scenarios is valid. She’s right.
Although I would qualify that by saying we can probably eliminate #4, the worst-case scenario, since each new estimate of ECS is lower than the last, and there is no historic evidence of any runaway greenhouse effect in Earth’s history even though CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been much higher in the past than they are today or will ever get with human help, even if we burned every hydrocarbon on the planet.
It is not about “scenarios” but theories. We may not have enough information to say which theory is right, but we do have enough information to say which theory is wrong, which happens to be the currently dominant one. Since the theory of CAGW is wrong, and no concerning trends are present in the data, there simply is no good reason to worry about the whole issue. There are many more pressing problems to worry about than this whole climate change nonsense.
To TA
Curry contradicted herself.
She is a typical lukewarmer.
They are worse than CO2 is Evil Cult members.
Lukewarmers say the future climate is unknown
and then say they know CO2 is important
but not dangerous. So they obviously know?
(1) Curry said the 21st century climate is unknown and called it Deep Uncertainty.
Do you agree with the Curry who said that?
(2) Her next few sentences were listing four possibilities of the future climate!
Do you agree with the Curry who said that?
You can’t agree with both (1) and (2) — that would be a contradiction.
If the 21st century climate is really “Deep Uncertainty”,
then no one knows how many possibilities there are for the 21st century,
and no one know what all the possibilities are …
beyond saying there’s no way to predict whether more CO2
will be associated with future cooling, future warming
or a steady temperature
BECAUSE WE HAD ALL THREE happen
in the past from 1940 to 2015,
as CO2 was in a rising trend:
In the “era of manmade CO2” since 1940, we had:
(a) Negative correlation of CO2 and temperature from 1940 to 1975,
(b) Positive correlation of CO2 and temperature from 1975 to 2000, and
(c) No correlation of CO2 and temperature from 2000 to 2015
No conclusions are possible from (a), (b) and (c) beyond saying the future
climate is unknown, and unknowable until we understand exactly what causes
climate change … and even then the future climate may not be predictable.
I am with you, Mr. Palmer. I do not understand her defense of worst case scenario discussions in the context of climate change.
Sometimes it is appropriate.
At a National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans (I believe the year was 2003), the emergency management planners for the host city gave a presentation of a worst case hurricane scenario for the city of New Orleans. Of course it would be a powerful major hurricane, but they emphasized that the track of the storm would be more important. They presented a path that would bring some wind damage first, but the real damage would occur when the storm moved north. They said the winds would be diminishing when Lake Pontchartrain would breach the levies and much of the city would flood. Two years later, Katrina was not as powerful as their worst case scenario storm, but it took the worst case scenario path, and things unfolded much like they predicted.
In the case of hurricanes, worst case scenarios have value, largely because our concept of a hurricane is well defined. We know what they are. We have lots of evidence of what they can do. We know the limits of wind, rain and water associated with hurricanes. We do not speculate about category 9 hurricanes, or storm surges of 87 feet, or rainfall amounts of 200 inches, or a widespread outbreak of sharknados. Based on what we know about hurricanes, we can make good policy choices to deal with them. (It doesn’t mean we do, but we could!)
AGW has far deeper uncertainty. We have no history of it. Heck, we don’t even know if will be generally bad, good or if it will happen at all! In such a situation, worst case scenarios have no limit! They could be everything from Venus-like temperatures with sulfuric acid rain to…well…sharknados! Consequently, there is no legitimate value in discussing worst case scenarios, outside of some late-night, post nerd party entertainment. Worst case scenarios are certainly not something to talk about with the public or around politicians. They are worse than worthless in developing policy. They are dangerous!
With such uncertainty, the cost/benefit of planning for worst case scenarios goes infinite on the cost side very quickly, while the benefit side remains little more than speculation. The prudent thing to do would be to determine the most likely scenario based on real world observations, then slowly ramp up policy adjustments based on that determination. It has taken almost 30 years to make those observations, but it is becoming more obvious day by day that the most likely scenario for AGW is ‘not much’ and ‘mostly beneficial’. Now that is some solid information for building useful policy!
The hurricane comparison is spot on. This kind of reality-based worst-case planning can be very successful — see for example the Dutch Delta works, which were designed to withstand a once-in-a-thousand-years storm surge.
There are other problems that one might address in the same manner. For example, history knows of several major volcanic eruptions that caused global crop failures. How can we prepare to keep the world’s population fed through such an episode? That would make a lot more sense than the charade of the Paris treaty, which will reward third world dictators who pretend to “fight climate change” with gilded toilet seats.
To JClerk:
New Orleans flooded once before, I believe in 1927, due to a massive rainfall in the region.
The same below sea level areas of the city flooded then … that flooded again in 2005.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927
In the decades before 2005 there were several efforts to shore up the levees that were blocked
by environmentalists.I read about that in 2005 but don’t remember much more.
The obvious problem is building on land below sea level that is so close to the sea!
The second problem is rebuilding everything after you’ve learned your lesson (in 1927)
Came across a great and perhaps relevant quote the other day:
“In fact, most of what passes today for liberal progressivism is not reality-based. The modern progressive occupies what Walter Lippmann called a pseudo-environment, a fictionalised version of reality, to which the all-pervasiveness of social media and the internet directly contribute. That’s why when the real world intrudes – the election of Donald Trump or Brexit – they react so violently and irrationally.”
These are people in live in bubbles separated from what most people experience – areas such as academia and government for example – where you live on taxes or on payments once or twice or more removed from actual value-creation, where extremely unimportant concerns of a tiny number of people (say which bathroom a person can use when they us a public bathroom) assume huge importance, and huge significance. These bubbles filled almost entirely with like-minded individuals and are self-policing in terms of what can be said and what can be thought.
“…These are people in live in bubbles separated from what most people experience – areas such as academia and government for example…”
These people actually think they know what is best for the rest of us. Mostly they are unelected and sit in Ivory Towers so remote from the public that it is almost inconceivable.
Drain the swamp please and do it quickly!!!!
The tower of Isengard surrounded by what Merry Brandybuck described as “a dreary mess” comes to mind. Heck, those chapters of Two Towers are basically a fantasy-version of “failed progressivist projects 101”. Complete with the chief architect indignantly playing the victim at the end.
How are 1 and 2 different? Size of ECS? Probability?
bunji wrote: “How are 1 and 2 different? Size of ECS?”
Yes.
bunji: “Probability?”
About equal for #1 and #2, imo.
David Wallace-Wells just did a feverish CYA on twitter after some notable climate scientists poo-pooed his science fantasy piece. Reading it’s like watching water boil, but it’s kind of worth it to see how butt hurt he got. I guess one of those at the top of his twitter is him..
https://twitter.com/dwallacewells
I did not mean for that large screen grab to happen – I just posted the link.
No need to apologize. I don’t think I’m alone in preferring the screen grab.
Thank you for all of it. I saw this article posted on MSN homepage, read it and LOL. The comment string was encouraging (I don’t know if it was msn or New York Mag) because 2/3ds of them were critical. Didn’t need my comment, most readers saw through this nonsense on stilts. To see the twit above saying it was thrown together at last minute but 6 mos research? You can’t get this far from reality in a mere 6 mos. I also looked for it the next day, could not find it on msn home page, thought it might have been taken down by msn after recognizing how this stuff boomerangs back at the cause.
I wonder if the Wallace-Wells piece was a straw man, purposely exaggerating the threat in order to allow the “regular” climate apocalypse crowd an opportunity to deny it and appear reasonable. I would not put it past this crowd. At the same time, it works to spin up the fear in the gullible and is marvelous “click bait”. Clever. There’s a (self-serving) poll out from the Yale “Program on Climate Change Communication” that finds 39 percent of people in the US believe that humans will go extinct due to climate change! Such ignorance. The fear mongering is working. It’s very sad to watch the effect on young people.
http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-change-american-mind-may-2017/
Oh, Wallace-Wells has now annotated his piece based on additional information in interviews with climate clingers like the Michaels (Mann and Oppenheimer). It’s become quite a nice cottage industry.
http://nymag.com/author/David%20Wallace-Wells/
Infuriating. An embarrassment to a once noble enterprise.
So growing from a small group learning about the wonders of radiative physics we now have a world wide social mania, a growing black hole of money and policy, the destruction of critical thinking, politicians and other openly talking about how to enslave and drastically limit freedom and reduce populations.
And nothing special is happening in the climate.
People jumping on Hawking or that silly bit of fiction dressed up as “journalism”.
Where were these people when Hansen got away with claiming Earth would turn into Venus…he started that delusional tripe years ago.
Where were people standing up to Mann when he was pushing his ridiculous hockey stick?
Where were people condemning Santer for calling for violence against skeptics?
What about at least pointing out that the calls for “crimes against humanity” trials for skeptics was a wee bit over the top?
Now suddenly the climate profiteers and scammers are jumping on a stage prop in a wheel chair with a machine voice repeating Hansen’s spew and a magazine article no worse than what National Geographic has put on their front cover?
Strange days indeed.
Whatever the impact of CO2 on climate, you can’t beat the carbon cycle. You may fight against it, but you can’t win. Since it’s powered by the sun (via photosynthesis), it’s the only ultimate power source that is sustainable in the long run. The CO2 that it releases into the atmosphere is a requirement for all plant life on earth, and hence all life on earth. The high-energy-density fossil fuels that it creates are the only practical power sources capable of sustaining advanced modern societies powerful enough to do anything significant in the world. If you oppose the carbon cycle, you will eventually become irrelevant and die off. If you embrace the carbon cycle, you can develop technologies that feed the world, cure diseases, explore earth and outer space, and lead meaningful lives. The choice is yours.
Well put, MikeW.
“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.”
no, the point is this:
Having dropped the context you make an illogical statement which can neither be proven nor falsified.
To correct this deficiency, first answer these questions:
‘Useful’? To whom?
‘Useful’? For what purpose?
Answer those and you got the filling and the secret sauce for a nothingburger with man mayo.
If you manage to winkle anything out of that, then answer this one: ‘At whose expense?’
Why not just cut to the last page of the fiction and spare the rest of the sales pitch?
I think the “Deep Uncertainty” is entering the picture from the alarmist side. All their predictions are falling apart. Their subterfuges are becoming apparent. They are being exposed. And there’s only more bad news to come in the future for them as the temperatures do not cooperate with their speculation.
The futures of the alarmist CAGW promoters is looking Deeply Uncertain.
Every bit as stupid as the fears are the warmist’s proposed solutions. If they had spent 1% of their time outlining a rational technological pathway to lower carbon emissions, they might actually achieve something. One would say, considering their apparent disbelief in the practicality of electric cars (they need “massive subsidies” – total BS) , and their seeming total ignorance of the revolutionary smaller, modular, boringly safe and very cheap, molten salt reactors, then they
would see no need for demanding “action”, which amounts to nothing more than errecting ugly wind turbines and installing solar panels, both unreliable power sources quite capable of toxifying the grid. Of course the solar roof owners expect their non-solar neighbors to pay most of their installation expenses, as well as paying top dollar to those same neighbors when they dump their unused solar power onto the grid, causing an increase in per unit costs of the power not produced by renewables, by lowering their capacity. We need policies used by some states that forbid dumping power onto the grid unless it can be put under the control of the grid and can produce power “on demand” At the very least, payments of that unwanted power should reflect the low quality of that power.
I suspect some of this alarmism is intentional to make it appear current alarmists are more conservative. It is getting harder and harder to deny the lack of warming seen in UAH satellite data and now CFSR data is showing no bump up in temperatures after the recent El Nino even though Nino 3.4 is showing weak El Nino conditions.
Now they will claim the “scientists” were never alarmist but action is still needed because the results are still devastating even though not an extinction event. It is so easy to see through these propaganda events with just a little thought.
The Alarmists should take a page from Game of Thrones, and like Ned Stark, constantly remind people that “Summer is Coming”. Or, Drought is Coming; better yet, Desertification is Coming.
I am sorry but i thought the David Wallace-Wells written article was anti-science propaganda. We are entering into an era as scientists and engineers where the speculators and instigators are turning people’s thoughts against science. Misstating facts in the manner Mr. Wallace-Wells does to prove that “Alarmist” are not “Scientists” is almost criminal… but will be excused by the far left who might just include people who are devotees of the an organization dedicated to removing “humanocentric” damage from the universe.
What does this mean for National Review and Mark Stein? In light of this post and https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/20/the-new-consensus-on-global-warming-a-shocking-admission-by-team-climate/, what is Mann doing? Does this back peddling not dramatically weaken his legal case against Stein and NR? Stein and NR essentially accused him of exaggerating the warming. Now, he’s moving toward the same position?
This is really scary planet 10’C warmer than now with higher levels of CO2 than now.
At the beginning of the Eocene, the high temperatures and warm oceans created a moist, balmy environment, with forests spreading throughout the Earth from pole to pole. Apart from the driest deserts, Earth must have been entirely covered in forests.
Polar forests were quite extensive. Fossils and even preserved remains of trees such as swamp cypress and dawn redwood from the Eocene have been found on Ellesmere Island in the Arctic. Even at that time, Ellesmere Island was only a few degrees in latitude further south than it is today. Fossils of subtropical and even tropical trees and plants from the Eocene have also been found in Greenland and Alaska. Tropical rainforests grew as far north as northern North America and Europe.
Palm trees were growing as far north as Alaska and northern Europe during the early Eocene, although they became less abundant as the climate cooled. Dawn redwoods were far more extensive as well.
Extreme Weather happens. There’s no evidence there’s more Extreme Weather in the past century or more intense Extreme Weather. One would think there should be consensus to build protective infrastructure under any conditions.
However, the Climate Hysterics are especially indifferent to infrastructure— dams, dykes, reservoirs and water management, sea walls etc… Their main mission is to shut down industry and pauperize the population.
“There’s no evidence there’s more Extreme Weather in the past century or more intense Extreme Weather”
Actually there is during the 19th and 20th centuries in the US . Hotter weather (1930s), extreme flooding (eg, Great Flood of 1862) …
Send your complaints to the IPCC… AR5 WG-1 (ch2) and SREX explicitly state there is no compelling evidence of an increase in hurricanes, floods, droughts etc over the past century.
Dr. Curry, I think your ordering, 1 to 4, also matches the likelihood. A human-induced factor small enough to be swamped by natural variability is the only possibility so far demonstrated by hard evidence. Everything else is theory.
#2, moderate warming caused by humans, is 2nd most likely mostly because it is the closest one to #1. And it’s the only other plausible scenario on the list.
As usual, these discussions dance around the “why should we care” question. There is plenty of reason to think that moderate warming is a good thing. There is plenty of reason to believe that mitigation activities will be both more effective and more economical than any effort to actually control the climate. And this approach minimizes the ill effects while embracing the positive.
“Greater uncertainty argues for greater action” is literally insane. No one could live their life as though that is true, no society could survive acting as though that is true.
A very measured review by Dr Curry. Where I would quibble is that the green movement has had a strong strain of “campfire story” ever since “Silent Spring”–i.e. very near the beginning. There has been a general reluctance to report on the testing of various scary models that proved to be very unlikely, as with most of Rachel Carson’s excercise in conciousness raising.
I have my own theory of climate change, taking uncertainty into account. (Note: taxpayer money was used to develop this hypothesis – I am retired receiving civil service and military pensions, as well as Social Security – but none will be needed to test it.)
According to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, there are limits to what can be measured accurately and that the observer affects the outcome by measuring it. In addition, according to Quantum Physics experiments, the world becomes “real” only when you try to measure what is going on. My hypothesis is that humans cause climate change by attempting to measure it. Test this hypothesis by stopping all efforts to determine what climate change is occurring. If I am right, everything will be fine and we will save enormous amounts of tax dollars (and private money) that can be used to address real problems. As I am pretty old, I assume my Nobel Prize will be awarded long after I am dead.
A Triple Dipper, SRI?!?
Actually quadruple. I get a small pension from a defense contractor from which I retired after working on government contracts.
To: South Rhubarb Independent:
“My hypothesis is that humans cause climate change by attempting to measure it.”
You may be on to something.
Humans ignored climate change for centuries
and look at all the progress and prosperity
and improvements in our health and longevity
when we had no climate change boogeymen to distract us.
Half the so-called “warming” could easily be attributed to humans (excluding CO2).
Maybe more “human causes” of climate change than natural causes?
… considering all the human “adjustments” to the data,
and the wild guess “infilling”,
and the urban heat island effect,
and 1880s thermometers that tended to read low,
and almost no southern hemisphere data for many decades,
and measuring oceans with buckets, drunk sailors, and thermometers?
and the government bureaucrat desire to have more warming,
so their predictions will be “proven” right,
and who can stop them there bureaucrats rom cooking the books
when they “own” all the actuals?
And whose to say that “average temperature”
is really a good measurement of the climate?
And anyone who gets a goobermint pension,
a military pension, and Social Security,
should be investigated,
or asked for a loan.
As I have always held a security clearance since I was sworn into the Navy as a plebe at the Naval Academy, I have been investigated, every five years. And yes, my education was paid for by taxpayers, even my two master’s degrees, which were obtained under the GI Bill.
My wife and I are planning an addition for our home, so we are not able to provide any loans at this time.
On the other hand, I am educated enough and smart enough to see what is really going on.
Stephen Schneider said scientists needed to invent scary scenarios to get attention. Yet to see a single warmista say he was wrong.
Correct Michael.. and that’s why there’s no need for Red Team- Blue Team… the majority of headline Climate Science is outright data fraud and manipulation. Just fire the High Priests and make an attempt at fact-based science research.
“It is possible/plausible that the sensitivity of the climate is on the low end of the IPCC envelope (1.0-1.5C),”
Correction. It is CERTAIN that the sensitivity of the climate is below the low end of the IPCC envelope.
The sensitivity of an ideal BB at 255K is about 0.3C per W/m^2 and already below the IPCC lower limit of 0.4C per W/m^2. This is given EXACTLY by the slope of the SB relationship 1/(4eoT^3) (e emissivity == 1 and o is SB the constant = 5.67E-8 W/m^2 per K^4).
Rather than the 240 W/m^2 that would be emitted by an ideal BB receiving an average of 240 W/m^2 from the Sun, the Earth surface in direct equilibrium with the SUN emits on average about 390 W/m^2 or about 1.6 W/m^2 of emissions per W/m^2 of input from the Sun. Owing to the T^4 relationship between emissions and temperature, each degree of warmth requires exponentially more incident power to sustain, thus the sensitivity to incremental input energy is necessarily less than that of an ideal BB receiving the same amount of incident energy. QED
…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…
So ignore the issue of whether something is realistic/true or not…the issue is that it doesn’t incite action. From an alleged scientist.
Ms. Curry wrote:
“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:”
Ms. Curry is not very bright.
She correctly states “we don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will play out”
Then she offers us “four possibilities”.
Huh? That’s a non sequitur.
“we don’t know”, but she’s got it narrowed down to only “four possibilities”.
If “we don’t know” is true, then we also don’t know how many possibilities there are!
Ms. Curry s obviously not very bright.
She apparently believed the IPCC until about eight years ago.
That’s not very bright.
She takes a lot of heat from smarmy leftists.
That’s one point in her favor.
I hope she stays away from colleges and universities
and starts being more of a skeptic about EVERYTHING
that people claim they know about climate science,
especially the “lukewarmers”.
Climate science is a mystery with lots of questions and few answers
— that’s why we get so many grossly inaccurate “it’s different this time”
predictions of the future climate, that bear no resemblance
to what actually happened since 1940,
and nearly always turn out to be wrong:
In the “era of manmade CO2” since 1940, we had:
(a) Negative correlation of CO2 and temperature
from 1940 to 1975,
(b) Positive correlation of CO2 and temperature
from 1975 to 2000, and
(c) No correlation of CO2 and temperature
from 2000 to 2015.
The lukewarmers believe (b) is correct for the future.
Why they don’t pick (a) or (c) I don’t know.
Lukewarmers imply they “know” CO2 controls the climate,
but unlike the CO2 is Evil Cult, they say CO2 is not dangerous.
Some may say there are natural causes of climate change too,
but CO2 is still important.
To be bright in the field of climate science you have to say
you don’t know what causes climate change, and you have
no idea if lab experiments with CO2 tell us much about the
effect of CO2, including feedbacks, in real life.
To be bright in the field of climate science you have to say
adding CO2 to the air is greening the Earth and accelerating
growth of C3 plants used as food by animal and humans.
And putting less CO2 in the air would slow that good news!
That good news from CO2 is supported by satellite data and hundreds,
if not thousands, of conclusive lab experiments on plant growth.
If there is any bad news from adding CO2 to the air,
please offer proof right now — — nothing unusual
has happened to the climate since 1940
— in fact the second half of the twentieth century
was very much like the first half of the twentieth century.
To be bright in the field of climate science you have to observe
what the government bureaucrat scientists are really saying,
and tell people their explanations of climate change are hard to believe:
(a) Natural climate change for 4.5 billion years,
(b) 1940: Natural climate change “dies”,
(c) 1940: Man made aerosols take over as “the climate controller”,
(d) 1975: Man made aerosols “die”,
(e) 1975: Man made CO2 takes over as “the climate controller”,
(f) 2000: Man made CO2 “falls asleep”
(g) 2015 / 2016: ENSO “El Nino” takes over as “the climate controller”
To be really bright about the climate, you need no science degrees,
but you do need to at least observe the “local” climate where you live over time.
Did anyone notice, simply by going outside, that the present climate is wonderful,
and did anyone notice its been getting better for many decades?
So when smarmy leftists claim a climate catastrophe has been in progress since 1975,
your personal experiences should tell you they have no idea what they are talking about,
and are just making wild guesses about the future that are very likely to be wrong.
Been here, done that one, as I posted in another WUWT blog article about a week or so ago, but, hey, now that Judith Curry ‘s got my back, allow me a redux:
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