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).
I read that PHD’s theory, it”s very scary
The fact that global warming is affecting my life,
The original intention and starting point of the Paris agreement is good, encouraging people to low-carbon and green development, without any mistakes in itself.
However, I am 25 years old, and it is possible that my life will be spent in fear. If these things do not happen when I am old, I will definitely take the following actions.
1: find the professor’s grave and pull out the whip.
2: find the body of the former NASA administrator and whip the corpse.
3: bringing the IPCC to the United States federal court, I think they are guilty of more crimes than the nazis in world war ii.
Hmmmm
I wonder if he’d bet his pension that the world will end within 8 years…
I hope he’s prepared to eat crow.
What DO you have against crows?????
Quoting Eric Worrall
A question to ponder ………….
Does anyone know of any other person, other than myself, who has ever considered the possibility that “The Age of the Dinosaurs” (Cretaceous Period) ……. came and went …. simply because of the fact that ……. “4x higher CO2 levels” and “4C warmer surface temperatures” ……. also came and went?
Thus, to wit:
High atmospheric CO2 levels and warm surface temperatures = great “green” biomass growing conditions.
Great “green” biomass growing conditions = tremendous increase in herbivore body sizes and populations.
Tremendous increase in herbivore populations = tremendous increase in prey animal body sizes and populations.
And then the warm surface temperatures started decreasing and the atmospheric CO2 followed suite.
And the rest is fossil and geologic history.
““The Age of the Dinosaurs” (Cretaceous Period) ……. came and went”
Because a large asteriod struck the Earth during that time.
TA – January 9, 2018 at 9:34 am
TA, you are simply mimicking junk science insinuations n’ speculations, to wit:
And TA, there is absolutely no way to prove that the asteroid “strike” particulate actually “blocked” solar irradiance, …… plus the fact that the Deccan Traps volcanism most probably put 10X as much particulate into the atmosphere than did your cited asteroid strike.
Read for yourself @ur momisugly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps
You left out the part about the predators of the Big Herbivore (down, Dinny! Good boy!) increased in size along with the increased size of their prey. Was it cause and effect, or was it effect (enlarged herbivore size) and cause (enlarged predator size)?
Sara – January 9, 2018 at 10:45 am
NAH, that was included in my post, to wit:
Sam stated above: “Tremendous increase in herbivore (body sizes and) populations = tremendous increase in prey animal body sizes and populations.”
Sara – January 9, 2018 at 10:45 am
Sara, ….. HA, …… it matters not which way you state it.
Cause n’ effect ……. or …… effect n’ cause, …… the end results are the same.
Great quantities of easily accessible and highly “nutritional” food sources is a primary “driver” of plant and animal body size. (which is also the cause of present day human obesity problems).
And Sara, it was those …… “great quantities of easily accessible and highly “nutritional” AQUATIC food sources” that was the “driver” of the evolutionary changes in a member of the Family of Great Apes, ……. the species known as Homo sapien sapiens.
Cheers
Thank you, Sam. Much better reference there!
He is wrong. Those in the know realize that Apophis is going to hit the Earth in 2036 and that will end it all. Fortunately I will be so old I won’t realize what is happening and won’t care.
No, no, no. The Space Needle that just passed through the solar system was a warning that Planet 9 (Erda or something like that) is going to yank Earth and change its orbit just enough to make Earth leave the Solar System behind. Try to keep up!
According to this link provided by John Hulquist above, the number of Magnitude earthquakes 4.0 or greater has been less every year, from 16,674 in 2014, to 12,527 in 2016. How is that unprecedented?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_2017
Peter
‘Fewer in the historic record than e-vahhh before’ [since 2014 . . .].
Fixed it for you?
Auto
McFearsome needs to get a grip on reality. It’s always curious what motivates people to become so apocalyptic in their pronouncements. It’s one thing to have nagging worries about the future, quite another to obsess over it.
McPherson has not learned the most important lesson of Climate Science; never make an unfounded assertion on a timeline that expires before you do.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
I’ll have to add that one to my tag line file.
He’s obviously not running for office on the scare monger ticket with that basic mistake.
Hot off the press from (Pseudo) Scientific American
Climate Change May Have Helped Spark Iran’s Protests
One of Iran’s biggest economic challenges has been a cycle of extreme droughts that began in the 1990s
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-may-have-helped-spark-iran-rsquo-s-protests/
Similarities to Syria are striking. Even the worst drought years more than doubled food production of the 1960s, but population more than tripled. Neither government is willing to take money out of the oppression and terror budget to fund water/agricultural projects. Maybe Australia could sell them some slightly (if at all) used desalination plants.
I wonder if Iran is like a lot of the Middle East where the first 5000 years of desertification were natural, but the last 30 are caused by CO2.
If it’s too late to do anything, can we go ahead and defund the alarmists now?
Is defunding someone not “do anything”? from the government standpoint defunding something is more work then funding something.
Don’t send your kids to that bastion of climate cult faith.
I can’t think of a single person in history who became popular by predicting that the future is going to be just fine?
+1
All the complaints about about these nutty “scientists,” and politicians, will make them go away, nor will using reason to refute them, make them stop, unless a huge legal action is taken against them that strips them of money, and position. Lock up Chicken Little and end “The Sound the Hare heard,” once and for all. This is no different them other kinds of fake science, preying on human society. Strip them of all credibility by making it a criminal charge to teach lies.
We have come so far as a species. In the mid 1600s we burned women as witches to improve the weather. Now we are going to burn SUVs.
All the complaints about about these nutty “scientists,” and politicians, will not make them go away, nor will using reason to refute them, make them stop, unless a huge legal action is taken against them that strips them of money, and position. Lock up Chicken Little and end “The Sound the Hare heard,” once and for all. This is no different then other kinds of fake science, preying on human society for gain. Strip them of all credibility by making it a criminal charge to teach lies and collude to do so.
On the contrary, the more insanity and the louder rant makes them irrelevant faster and undermines anyone and any idea associated with them. It works like that in long election seasons also as the deep cracks of personality flaws and purpose come out. The megaphone holder is the last one to recognize this and the same goes for the media props that amplify it.
“On the contrary, the more insanity and the louder rant makes them irrelevant faster and undermines anyone and any idea associated with them.”
In any other line of inquiry, yes.
But this has shown no sign of being true regarding warmista alarmists,
Rotting from the inside out is sometimes hard to spot. Just ask the Soviets, Saddam’s defense ministry, and Vatican bankers.
Is this McPherson fellow trying to form another one of those cult groups so that he can talk people into living in an enclosed compound and lock the gates, or into murdering people in mass quantities? Who else has done that?
Oh, yeah – Jim Jones – Jonestown. The Heavens Gate group waiting for aliens to come and get them. Maduro, down in Venezuela. The Kims, since the truce that stopped the Korean War. Mao Tse-Tong. Pol Pot. Ho Chi Minh. Lenin/Stalin. Hitler. And those are just a few.
Seriously, I sometimes wonder if maybe the Amish have been smarter than the rest of us. They already know how to do everything from scratch. They probably know more about soil, weather, and crops than any of these geniuses who get grants and preach “doom on you” to gullible audiences.
I have seldom been as disgusted with con artists as I am now, and that’s ALL these climate yo-yos and hysterics-promoting twits are.
Sure it is desert nutjob
Meanwhile back on earth:
WSJ……
Air cargo shipments are soaring due to surging demand for rapid delivery of everything from smartphones to paper towels.
As online shoppers come to expect faster home delivery, passenger jets and dedicated cargo planes are picking up more kinds of cargo traditionally carried by container ships, trains and trucks. Global airfreight traffic climbed almost 9% year-over-year in November as a jump in e-commerce orders supercharged the holiday rush, according to cargo data provider WorldACD. Rates for airfreight were up 17% annually that month.
Strong global economic growth also is spurring demand for goods long ferried by air, such as automotive and manufacturing parts. The dual surge is creating some of the stiffest competition for air-cargo space in years, and prompting companies to search for older, idle jets to convert into freighters.
Damn that horrible Trump!
Hasn’t McPherson been warning 10 year extinction for 10 years?
At least we won’t have to wait long to prove he’s off his rocker…
He left out mudslides in California. How careless
What, in only eight years?
Does this guy who predicted this have some terminal disease that will kill him before that?
Oh, wait…I forgot…being completely wrong about predictions in the field of your life’s work is consequence free in climate science.
I thought I had read of this nitwit before. I searched my file of silly eco-chondriac quotes and up-pop this one —
“Global climate change threatens our species with extinction by mid-century if we do not terminate the industrial economy soon. Unchecked, western civilization drives us to one of two outcomes, and perhaps both: (1) Destruction of the living planet on which we depend for our survival, and/or (2) Runaway greenhouse and therefore the near-term extinction of our species. Why would we want to sustain such a system? It is immoral and homicidal. The industrial economy enslaves us, drives us insane, and kills us in myriad ways. We need a living planet. Everything else is less important than the living planet on which we depend for our very lives.” — Guy R. McPherson, Professor Emeritus University of Arizona School of Natural Resources & the Environment and Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, In 2009 at the height of a productive career, McPherson left the university to prepare for collapse. He now lives in an off-grid, straw-bale house where he puts into practice his lifelong interest in sustainable living via organic gardening, raising small animals for eggs and milk, and working with members of his rural community.