Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Arizona Professor Emeritus Dr Guy McPherson thinks the world could end in the next eight years because climate change.
BEGINNING OF THE END: Natural disasters to spike because of climate change, says scientist
A SPIKE in devastating natural disasters is on the way as the planet has exceeded a “tipping point” for climate change, a leading scientist has claimed.
By SEAN MARTIN
PUBLISHED: 16:55, Mon, Jan 8, 2018
The east coast of the US continues to be ravaged by a freezing cold snap while the other side of the country has been hit by wildfires.
These are a signs of the times according to one professor, who says that the situation will only worsen in the next few years.
…
Dr McPherson said: “The latest unprecedented hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires that we have seen in 2017 are examples of profound changes in our climate system.
“These global disasters threaten energy systems, infrastructure and food supply.
“We have entered an era of exponential climate upheaval with tipping points and feedback loops pushing us over the edge whilst, all the while, governments and climate research bodies refuse to accept the gravity of our situation.
“Within the next eight years, Earth’s temperature will approach or exceed its highest temperature in the last two billion years.
“The rate of change will continue to outstrip the ability of humans and other life to adapt.”
Guy McPherson’s public views are so extreme they attract criticism from other climate alarmists. But McPherson is not alone in making extreme predictions; James Hansen, former director of NASA GISS, also predicts the world will soon become uninhabitable due to runaway global warming.
If climate models predict runaway global warming, when will this predicted runaway warming actually occur?
The answer is never, at least not for the next billion years or so. The Earth’s geological history is strong evidence that model based predictions of runaway global warming are nonsense.
During the Earth’s history, CO2 levels have exceeded 7000ppm, 17x higher than today’s CO2 levels. Many of these periods of elevated CO2 were actually quite cool (see the top of the page).
The Cretaceous, the age of the dinosaurs, experienced CO2 levels 4x higher than today – but the global temperature was only 4C warmer than today. No runaway warming occurred, despite dramatically higher natural CO2 levels and global temperatures.
If the model projections of runaway warming implausibly contradict geological history, clearly the models are wrong. There must be climate forcings at work which have been omitted or incorrectly handled by climate modellers.
The most likely candidate in my opinion for why model projections have an implausible tendency to run away from reality is the poor handling by climate models of clouds and tropical storms.
Clouds reflect sunlight back into space, but storms go a step further – they actively pump accumulated heat from the surface back into space.
Willis has produced many excellent posts about storms as heat pumps, such as How Thunderstorms Beat The Heat. Willis’ posts include data analysis which clearly demonstrate how tropical storms cap the Earth’s surface temperature, regardless of any additional greenhouse forcing.
When Dr. McPherson and James Hansen provide apocalyptic warnings about the consequences of global warming, in my opinion they are just being honest about the projections of their most extreme climate models.
It is the model predictions themselves which are wrong, because the climate model predictions on which those warnings are based are inconsistent with the Earth’s geological history.
Update (EW): fixed a typo (h/t Jim Masterson).
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He must be needing new funding.
I thik so too
The cold snap was an aberration but the fires were largely caused by excess precipitation and eco-greens messing with fire control methods.
Since the fires balanced the cold snap it would appear they’re offsetting, not cumulative conditions.
Last information I saw on wildfires, the majority are caused by the carelessness of people, not nature.
Honest!?
Which models predict, er, forecast greater wildfire frequency?
McPherson is drama queening while using alarmism rhetoric and hearsay from his infertile brain.
He’s just another climatic ambulance chaser, running in to stamp every significant weather event with the mark of human ruination, and then project doom from whatever soapbox they can muster.
“Within the next eight years, Earth’s temperature will approach or exceed its highest temperature in the last two billion years.”
Looking at the graph, he seems to be predicting 11 degrees C of warming – within the next 8 years (and the graph doesn’t show the full 2 billion years). If McPherson is not flat out lying, then he’s just plain CUKOO!
Love the illogical “latest unprecedented”.
Especially considering that none of the weather activities he is talking about are “unprecedented”.
Those who cry wolf constantly hear new and different sounds of them from afar.
More likely news medication.
Sorry new medication.
Don’t you hate predictive spelling?
Yez!
Yesterday!
Good One Bittertwist!. The propagandists have been a little under the weather so far this winter.
An unintended but applicable and appropriate noun, when used in reference to climate dictators. They need it badly.
Bitter,
Whatever medication he is taking – I’d like some for Friday night!
Auto
Auto, I don’t understand why you would want to be incapable of rational thought and babbling like an idiot on any night, any particular reason for a Friday? 🙂
SteveT
… all total crap.
Hurricane crap is flushed here — https://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/climatic-phenomena-pages/extreme-weather-page/
Earthquakes? — well, first of all, I did not think that earthquakes were even considered an aspect of CLIMATE, and so this is double crap. As such, the earthquake crap is doubly flushed here — http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/research/earthquakeActivity.html
Wildfire crap is flushed here — https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/03/wildfires-separating-demagoguery-from-the-science/
Given all this, I think that “emeritus”, in this instance, should be spelled “i-g-n-o-r-a-m-u-s”. And the news agency publishing this crap should be cited for marketing false information.
McPherson is a fool !
The world is going to end in seven years.
My calculation uses no computers.
Only a slide rule — an aluminum slide rule
not affected by magnetism.
You can double check work done
with a slide rule.
You can’t double check computers.
Too complicated
Where does he come up with eight years?
Probably pulled the number out of a hat.
Or maybe two feet lower.
Knows how to get attention though.
Why he gets attention here I don’t know
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
He’s trying to fart two feet ‘igher than ‘is arse.
Eight years is probably a P.O.O.M.A. number, that is, a preliminary order of magnitude approximation.
Don’t laugh, these people have a complicit media on their side. And they will push anything that saves their face.
Spend your retirement now.
Sent from my iPad
>
Have you met my wife?
Paul, honey, I’m spending my retirement in creative endeavors along with trying to find out if any new and previously unseen birds will visit my feeding station. What are you doing?
I read that and was wondering what type of ‘scientist’ he was. His article reads like a believer in Gaia like. I can project to this dude the idea that “Gaia is mad and the world for humans is at it’s tipping point and we are doomed” all while using normal weather events at proof. But now I get it since his CV starts with ecology and ends with evolutionary biology with a ‘fixation’ on extinction events.
This guy has at least an excuse for his religious belief. Hanson has less of an excuse.
(imo)
Since he’s in Arizona, sounds like the guy has been pickin’ and eatin’ some of those “cactus” buttons out in the Sonoran desert. In plain language, he’s trippin’.
Sooo you think we’ve reached a tripping point???
Probably near Phoenix, a graduate of Astrological Institute, an accredited school of upper education. They even teach you how to use computer models to predict your fate. So many similarities to climate science that I suspect a strong connection.
I wonder if all astrologers predict we all die in eight years? That would be the final proof.
2026. I wish he’d predicted the day so I could stand outside and watch the world come to an end. Instead, I’ll have to look out the window every morning to see if it’s still there. Oh, wait, I kind of do that now, except I’m looking for snow. I love snow, and I’m retired, so I don’t have to go out in it – unless I want to. And I always want to. Drive in it (slide around in it), make snow angels, snowmen. Fortunately, I live in the country, so only the neighbor’s dogs notice me.
Just who says he is a “leading scientist”??
He looks behind him.
Sees a large crown with pitchforks.
Thinks he is leading.
Is this guy the director of Biosphere 2? Or has he just been out in the sun too long?
What happens when you stand ankle deep in bullspit too long. Especially in the desert.
We’ve reached a tipping point of idiot academics.
Excellent! I may not always cite you, but I will quote you!
As long as the royalty checks keep coming….
Back in the day, guys like this used to just wear or carry the signs saying “The end is nigh” and let it go at that. Now they just see end-of-the-world signs around every corner.
And people questioning Trump’s mental health believe this .
McPherson is bat-schist crazy…
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=iS5UWqHCFuXAjwSHoqv4Cg&sjs=3&q=Guy+McPherson&oq=Guy+McPherson&gs_l=mobile-gws-hp.12..0l5.1475.1475.0.2139.2.1.0.1.1.0.137.137.0j1.1.0….0…1.2.64.mobile-gws-hp..0.2.178.3..41.0.-p9gKX0luXE
I like the CO2-Temperature graph. Although, if I did it again, I’d leave the Jurassic-Cretaceous ice age out.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/26/co2-ice-cores-vs-plant-stomata/
David, I was just going to say that, I’ve dealt with him before.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a definitive Google result before. The guy appears to write an “end of the world in 10 years book”… every year.
We’re two years into his 10 year countdown, he said 10 years in 2016…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/25/arizona-professor-forget-climate-humans-dont-have-10-years/
The time frame varies, but he’s been cranking out doomsday predictions since at least 2012…
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/15082/
https://guymcpherson.com/2012/06/were-done/
Nah It’s just a Griff sockpuppet .. remember the artic sea ice has all gone.
What is truly scary about this story is this crackpot has a professorship and presumably tenure at a real university.
No, he’s an emeritus.
From his teaching page
“But I expected students to ponder politically incorrect information in the class, so after the 2006 offering I was banned from teaching it, along with all other courses in my home department”
Sounds like he met some resistance.
” Emeritus ”
In university speak, means he is out to pasture — with a mighty thank you from the school’s board of regents. This may be an honor, or it may be of the sort “thank god and Greyhound” he’s gone.
Of interest is that in the Roman legions, when a person was no longer useful he was pushed aside — emertitus.
My Latin was brief and I didn’t learn much more than Luna meant Moon.
Perhaps someone can explain this better.
Emeritus: “e” meaning “out of”, and “meritus” meaning “ought to be”
It sounds like he was indeed pushed aside.
Yes and he assumed the troll identity Griff on WUWT.
“emeritus” was (for romans) preterit for verb “emereo” : to earn, to deserve
meaning “deserved”, and specifically
* got a retirement pension
* ended, finished, no longer in (mlitary) service. Veteran.
Emeritus? I’d say closure to an emu. First cousin of the ostrich.
I had the misfortune to accidently attend one of his AGW sermons,
some years ago (maybe five …). From the atmosphere in the room,
the rest of his audience were in Church and he was a visiting Prelate.
To not be lynched by those hanging on his every word, nor to tempt
them into such action, I chose to be civil and let him alone.
A few sentences into his speech, he declared it was too late
“the methane hydrate trigger has been pulled.” Eh?
On what evidence?
Well, so far we are still here. And the methane hydrates seem to be still
doing what it is that methane hydrates do, as in yesterday’s article (It’s
`tomorrow’ where I am). So much for the ‘methane bomb’ – study
finds methane hydrate dissociation…’not caused by climate change’
And it’s too late again! This time we’re all gonna die in eight years time!
It’s really comforting to see he does such thorough literature searches and
bases his assertions on solidly grounded evidence, evincing True Scholarship.
</sarc>
Amazing….people like this get away with it too….consistently
Yeah we need more meddling kids.
Especially with a history of wrong predictions
David said: “McPherson is bat-schist crazy…”
No I disagree, that’s just how McPherson ‘struts’
In person he is quite Gneiss. Allbeit dumb as a box on Gneiss.
It’s panic time for the doomsayers. They know the AMO will be turning neg in the next few years, and then the jig will be up.
rh you overestimate their knowledge if you think doomsayers even know what the AMO is!!
This guy is a complete joke! He is quoted as actually saying this:
“The latest unprecedented hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires that we have seen in 2017 are examples of profound changes in our climate system.”
Nothing unprecedented about the latest hurricanes or wildfires and… wait for it… earthquakes!!!
LOL. Bring on the full tilt ridicule. Well deserved.
That caught my eye, too. I don’t remember hearing of any earthquakes in 2017, and I still haven’t heard an explanation of how earthquakes are caused by climate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_2017
De heap-big warmy make dirt go jiggle-jiggle…
Yes, Valley Fever will do that to them at times.
I’m not worried. Aliens will save us.
At least, predicting the end within 8 years means he gets to see whether he is right or wrong. I wonder what he will feel in the latter case.
Of course, and on the other hand, Hansen is well practised in seeing his predictions fail!
I doubt he’ll even notice when his predictions fail. He apearntly was predicting the collapse of civilization in ten years from Peak Oil back in the early 2000’s.
By 2025 he will have latched onto whatever the new Leftist scare is, like most of the Climate Faithful. And on and on.
Population Bomb
Silent Spring
Global Cooling
Nuclear Radiation
Acid Rain
Ozone Hole
Peak Oil
Global Warming
Ocean Acidification
Extreme Weather
~¿~
I wouldn’t worry–Oprah is supposed to be the next president!
OMG!
You forgot exploding silicone breast implants.
Very dangerous !
Could poke an eye out !
This is a real threat,
not junk science.
He’s breaking the basic laws of doom-mongering.
The apocalypse should be sufficiently close to be scary. But it should be sufficiently distant so that when the time comes everyone will have forgotten about it.
Chris
You mean we only have to fund this drivel for another 8 years?
Typo alert:
>>
But McPherson is not along in making extreme predictions;
<<
Replacing “along” with “alone” would make more sense.
Jim
Fixed, thanks.
Never have so many humans, over 7 billion, been this close to extinction.
Oh right, from eating too much and exhaustion from all the crop yield gains. Or it’s the beer joint in Tucson with nothing else to do.
Well its call going to happen in 8 years .what a plonker ,
Does he put. up any actual proof or is he just trying to scare the population .
There is no proof that Co2 will cause very much warming at all .
The global warming is just a theory that rely s on positive feed backs as the of doubling CO2 can not raise the worlds temperature more than 1.2 C.on its own without positive feed backs to amplify warming and these people know this is true.
Here are a few trivial facts .
The hottest temperature recorded at the south pole was -12.3 C .so its going to be along time before there is any melting there. .
The highest temperature recorded in Iceland was 30.5C and that was in 1939
The tip of the Antarctic peninsula recorded a high of 17.5C in 2015 and big thing was made of that BUT the tip of the Antarctic peninsula is the same degrees south as Iceland is north , well close
He’s the academic equivalent of a troll. He says silly things, and the internet quotes/reviles him. He doesn’t care which, as long as he gets the attention he is starved for. He can’t get it based on science, so he says ridiculous things.
How people like this guy gain standing as an expert in anything is beyond comprehension. I guess you need to be this loony to buy into junk science and the loonier one is, the more junk they blindly accept.
Oh well, too late now. Might as well enjoy the V8 while I can.
“Might as well enjoy the V8 while I can.”
ditto !! 🙂
And, as I’m in NSW.. and its summer
… full blast air-conditioning 🙂
WOW! I cuuda had a V8
It’s not too late. You’ve got about 8 years but get your purchase in quick.
Why stick with a V8 when you can get a V16 that will go in to a Bently?
A V8 does have a distinctive note though. Mind you, so does a Merlin……..
From 15s to have an involuntary shiver go down the spine….
The Merlin was a fantastic engine. The best of the best water cooled in it’s era but IMO nothing matches the sound and feel of those round air cooled Radial engines and the 18 cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-2800 double Wasp was the king of those type engines in the WW II era powering the F6F Hellcat, F4U Corsair, and P-47 thunderbolt.
Jones, that video has a redundant title. There is no such thing as a ‘Not’ Great Sounding Merlin Engine.
H/T to David Middleton.
I followed his link and surfed over to Rational Wiki.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Guy_McPherson
Here are some gems from there:
Where have we heard this kind of thing before?
Rational Wiki also has a list of some of his predictions:
In 2007 McPherson predicted the USA’s trucking industry would collapse by 2012 due to peak oil, quickly followed by the interstate highway system.
In 2008 he predicted the end of civilization by 2018 due to peak oil, “If you’re alive in a decade, it will be because you’ve figured out how to forage locally.”
In 2012 he predicted that global warming will kill much of humanity by 2020.
In 2016 he predicted that humanity and most lifeforms will be extinct due to global warming by mid-2026.
In 2017 he predicted that global temperatures would be 6 C above baseline in mid 2018 and that Earth would have no atmosphere by the 2050s.
Looney Tunes!
Did Griff attend his lectures? – Jus’ arskin’
Oh, you’re bad!
Um, Griff, did you?
I’ve learnt how to forage locally, it’s at my local supermarket which I get to by my petrol car and I love it – modern life is wonderful and we just have to ignore the green doom mongers who wNt to destroy the health, happiness and progress made in th3 last two hundred years.
Hmmm… the guy is 57. So 57 + 8 = 65. Under the Arizona State Retirement System, the retirement age is 65 years.
So basically he can make this prediction and when it blows up in his face, he will no longer care. Could all just be an amazing coincidence of course. 😉
” the retirement age is 65 years”
He is retired now. He is a Professor Emeritus.
Don’t know about AZ, but I’ll guess there really isn’t a university retirement requirement by age, and certainly not age 65. That’s a useless number that came via railroad workers and got cobbled into US Social Security. Even therein it is mostly historical.
Anyone that needs proof that the MSM is biased to promote that use of fossil fuel causes “Climate Change” needs to read this. I object to the notion that “scientists” are only agreeing with the model output, and not the model. BS.
You just gotta love insane Leftists… Bless their hearts…
Too bad IPCC’s 2013 AR5 Report admits NO discernible trends in frequency nor severity in severe weather incidents over the past 50~100 years for: hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, tornadoes, droughts, floods, tropical storms, subtropical storms, thunderstorms and hail:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/03/pielke-jr-agrees-extreme-weather-to-climate-connection-is-a-dead-issue/
I hope the lunatic Left continues with these hilarious apocalyptic climate predictions as they will just cause the blowback against the Left to be that much more epic once the CAGW ho@x is laughed at in about 5 years after global temps show a cooling trend from: the PDO/AMO both being in their respective 30-year cool cycles, and a 50~75 year Grand Solar Minimum starting from 2020.
Leftists have lost their minds…
“I told you, harvesting the planet’s core is suicide!”
From wiki :- In May 2009, McPherson began transitioning to living on an off-grid homestead in southern New Mexico.
If he is so worried about climate change surely it would be more appropriate to live off grid in Alaska wouldn’t it?
Wait a minute; hotter than any time in the last 2 BILLION years? Even hotter than during the Permian Extinction, when the Deccan Traps exploded in volcanic fury? Even hotter than when the asteroid collided with Earth to fry all the cuddly little dinosaurs?
Balderdash.
we’re even nowhere near the Emian interglacial temperature nor the Holocene optimum temps…. all Paleoclimatology reports show that the holocene is a less spiky one of the colder interglacials of the last 400000 years….
Predicting things eight years out is really foolish. Both you and the people who heard your prediction are likely to be around. Skillful predictors always put off doomsday until some time when they and the audience will be safely dead. A century out is usually pretty safe.
Not all predictors push it way out there. I remember during my college years a preacher predicting the end of the earth. It was the same day as my best college buddy’s wedding. He was hoping the rapture would be put it off until after consummation. I think that was in August 1976.
There was no rapture. The preacher came on the radio and apologized to his listeners. He said he had demonstrated extreme hubris in predicting a date the Bible explicitly said could not be predicted. As a result, he was leaving the ministry and radio… and I haven’t heard of him since.
An honest preacher. A member of the 1%. Maybe.