WE WERE WRONG, CLIMATE SCIENTISTS CONCEDE
- Ben Webster, The Times
Catastrophic impacts of climate change can still be avoided, according to scientists who have admitted they were too pessimistic about the chances of limiting global warming.
The world has warmed more slowly than had been predicted by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions on average temperature, research has found.
New forecasts suggest that the world has a better chance than claimed of meeting the goal set by the Paris Agreement on climate change of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The study, published in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience, makes clear that rapid reductions in emissions will still be required but suggests that the world has more time to make the necessary changes.
Michael Grubb, professor of international energy and climate change at University College London and one of the study’s authors, admitted that his previous prediction had been wrong.
He stated during the climate summit in Paris in December 2015:
“All the evidence from the past 15 years leads me to conclude that actually delivering 1.5C is simply incompatible with democracy.”
Speaking to The Times, he said: “When the facts change, I change my mind, as Keynes said.
“It’s still likely to be very difficult to achieve these kind of changes quickly enough but we are in a better place than I thought.”
Professor Grubb said that the new assessment was good news for small island states in the Pacific, such as the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, which could be inundated by rising seas if the average temperature rose by more than 1.5C.
“Pacific islands are less doomed than we thought,” he said.
Professor Grubb added that other factors also pointed to more optimism on climate change, including China reducing its growth in emissions much faster than predicted and the cost of offshore wind farms falling steeply in the UK.
He said:
“We’re in the midst of an energy revolution and it’s happening faster than we thought, which makes it much more credible for governments to tighten the offer they put on the table at Paris.”
The study found that a group of computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had predicted a more rapid temperature increase than had actually occurred.
The global average temperature has risen by about 0.9C since pre-industrial times but there was a slowdown in the rate of warming for 15 years before 2014.
Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford and another author of the paper, said:
“We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven’t seen that in the observations.”
He said that the group of about a dozen computer models, produced by government research institutes and universities around the world, had been assembled a decade ago “so it’s not that surprising that it’s starting to divert a little bit from observations”.
He said that too many of the models used “were on the hot side”, meaning they forecast too much warming.
According to the models, keeping the average temperature increase below 1.5C would mean the world could afford to emit only about 70 billion tonnes of carbon after 2015. At the current rate of emissions, this so-called “carbon budget” would be used up in three to five years’ time.
Under the new assessment , the world can emit another 240 billion tonnes and still have a reasonable chance of keeping the temperature increase below 1.5C.
“That’s about 20 years of emissions before temperatures are likely to cross 1.5C,” Professor Allen said.
If you can, do keep an eye on the Rossby waves that make up the jet stream. When they become rather convoluted as they are right now, thanks to Irma, we have silly weather differences.
Snow in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming Nevada, and Utah is not unusual for this time of year and welcome since some of the communities near the snows depend on the snowpack for water.
But in the Midwest, we should be seeing fall temperatures creep in, and thanks to Irma’s bad temper, we’re not. That old cow has pushed warm air up my way, and it’s annoying me. I don’t know whether to put my summer clothes away, or just keep everything out until we get some snow. It’s annoying me.
I will have to sacrifice a wheel of brie, some crusty peasant bread and a bottle of Tuscan red to Shu, the Egyptian god of the atmosphere, and ask him to fix it.
In Wyoming, we keep our summer and winter clothes out year round. It’s easier that way.
The AhHa! moment arrived, when the alarmists realize they have oversold the doom and everyone has chosen to party in their remaining short time before the planet burns up. What to do? Quick, say we were wrong, that it’s not as serious as we thought, but it’s STILL REALLY serious and we know for sure this time what we are talking about. It may convince a few naive folks, but anyone who can really think will realize this is a desperate attempt to cover for the fact that their science never really existed and they oversold the whole doomsday-by-SUV idea. It screams of incompetence and desperation.
Chuckle. Reminds me of the “Fusion Constant” joke among the nuclear energy crowd: Commercialization of fusion technology was always 20 years ahead!.
The next stage after they admit that they were exaggerating the effects of CO2 is the stage when they admit that the effects of increased CO2 are actually beneficial to the planet, men, animals, and plants.
Delingpole’s take:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/19/delingpole-climate-alarmists-finally-admit-we-were-wrong-about-global-warming/
How come he gets to use the inclusive “we” — do 97% of climate scientists agree with him? Why can’t a skeptical scientist use the inclusive “we”?
Just saw this on the Climate Council (Tim Flannery’s outfit) website “……Climate Councillor and ecologist, Professor Lesley Hughes said Australia’s hottest winter in history was related to worsening climate change……”. “…..we will continue to see many more hot winters, just like this, as global temperatures rise…..”.
Ah it was the hottest winter for Maximum Temperatures for a start and within the report we find it was the fifth warmest winter on average temperatures.
The article then goes on to blame climate change and makes the normal fear mongering babble such as this gem – “……Climate Change made Australia’s warmest winter on record an astounding 60 times more likely……” (than what??? and please supply the calculation).
Maybe Prof Grubb should stay clear of Prof Hughes lest they come to blows.
Try some actual data about some Australian capital cities. Officials claim our heat waves are longer, hotter and more frequent.
Temperature data from the BOM does not support longer, hotter or more frequent in most instances studied here.
Officials who claim hotter, longer, more frequent are simply not telling the truth.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/are_heatwaves_hotter.pdf
It seems to me that their estimates of ECS and TCR might still be a little too high.
From the study:
“We refer to ‘climate response’ as a specified combination of the TCR and ECS
throughout this paper. Our median estimate climate response (TCR = 1.6 ◦C, ECS
= 2.6 ◦C) is defined as the median of log-normal distributions consistent with
IPCC-AR5 likely bounds on the TCR and ECS (TCR: 1.0–2.5 ◦C; ECS: 1.5–4.5 ◦C).
From this, the likely above/below values are found from the 33rd and 67th
percentiles of the distribution (TCR: 1.3–1.9 ◦C; ECS: 2.0–3.3 ◦C). The median TCR
of this log-normal distribution is significantly lower than in the IPCC-AR5 ESM
ensemble but is more consistent with observed warming to date than many
ensemble members (see Supplementary Methods), indicative of the multiple lines
of evidence used to derive the IPCC-AR5 uncertainty ranges. Although IPCC-AR5
did not explicitly support a specific distribution, there is some theoretical
justification50 for a log-normal distribution for a scaling parameter like the TCR.
Reconciling the IPCC-AR5 best estimate of attributable warming trend over
1951–2010 with the best-estimate effective radiative forcing requires a
best-estimate TCR near to 1.6 ◦C under the simple climate model used here,
consistent with a log-normal distribution. As a sensitivity study, we also assume a
Gaussian distribution for the TCR (see Supplementary Methods) that raises the
2015 attributable warming to 1.0 ◦C but only marginally affects the remaining
carbon budget for a 1.5 ◦C warming above pre-industrial (the likely below budget is
reduced to 240 GtC).”
Still doomed, but less so.
When I hear, among other things, that to keep the planet from warming 2C, the US would have to totally stop using fossil fuels by 2040, and that China and India would have to not only halt their emissions by 2020 but also immediately reverse them thereafter, I realize how improbable getting temperatures under control is in the first place. And that’s assuming these estimate are correct because it could easily be that the forces of nature are too powerful for any man-made efforts to influence regardless of what we do. The problem is that those who stand to profit by the global warming fight don’t want to face these realities.
“The world has warmed more slowly than had been predicted by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions on average temperature, research has found.”
Gasp! No! Models wrong? Say it ain’t so! Who’d have thought it! No-one ever suggested such a thing before. Unimaginable. Etc.
Looks like Michael Grubb, professor of international energy and climate change at University College London is a climate change denier™.
Just another end-of-the-world-cult looking for money, so the proclaimed we-are-doomed-day is postponed since they still want our money. A new postponement is lurking behind every new we-are-all-doomed-day, until there are no suckers left.
Climate Scientists should learn from Yogi Berra:
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Here’s a prediction for you:
• Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh. “Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.”
When climate scientists are strong enough to face the reality that they have been wrong, they should be allowed to “back out quietly…without having their professional careers ruined”.
But it’s a tough call handing back all those Nobels-
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/give-them-a-prize-for-inflating-the-resume/news-story/99d1b11478fa0195093a89ada4482bda
“New forecasts suggest that the world has a better chance than claimed of meeting the goal set by the Paris Agreement on climate change of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.”
Too late. The world has already warmed by 1.5 C since 1750 and our climate is better now than in the Little Ice Age. Change your goal to emitting more CO2 to prevent another little ice age
http://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/decadal-with-forcing-small.png
Of course the big logical problem with their admission is that if CO2 has less of an effect than previously thought then we can do even less to limit global warming than previously thought.
I mean DEEERRP! Right?!!!
The scariest part of global climate warming change is not the 1.5 degree temp increase. It’s the ease with which some people are willing to discard our freedoms. “Incompatible with democracy” Is an ominous sign of authoritarian power. I remember reading about one scientist calling outright for a “climate dictator.” And as history shows nothing could possibly go wrong with that!
And another country is about to sign up to the IPCC Paris Climate Agreement. The US sceptic community needs to start getting real about AGW – because the ROW is:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/21/nicaragua-sign-paris-agreement-leaving-united-states-alone-syria/
The people of the world should launch a class action lawsuit against these so called climate scientists who’s false scientific claims have cost humanity TRILLIONS of dollars of lost wealth!
I honestly and truly agree with your comments. But how would you prove how you personally lost income because of their lies? Therein lays the problem with the court where evidence must be presented.
Could be many ways to calculate. For one, my energy stocks have been lowered in value by every regulation/tax designed to fight CO2. Also, could take $$ spent divided by # of people in the country to see what it is costing each person. I know without a doubt, my wealth and standard of living has been negatively impacted by these people.