Guest essay by Eric Worrall
If we behave we won’t have to accept a full command economy to save the planet.
On climate change, it’s time to start panicking
The crisis over global warming warrants an unparalleled response
MATTHEW ROZSA
AUGUST 5, 2018 11:30PM (UTC)It is time for us to panic about global warming. Indeed, a proper state of panic is long overdue.
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“I would place a price on carbon,” Michael E. Mann, a Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, told Salon by email. “Whether this takes the form of a carbon tax (a revenue-neutral carbon tax? fee and dividend? cap-and-trade?), I leave that to the policymakers to determine as long as they accept, as the premise for policy, what the science has to say about the reality and threat of climate change. The price on carbon needs to be set such that it leads to a reduction in carbon emissions of several percent a year for the next few decades. If we do that, we can avoid a catastrophic 2C (~3.5 F) warming of the planet.”
He also rejected the idea promoted by many on the left that a lasting solution to global warming is impossible under a free-market capitalist economic system.
“I’m unconvinced that is true,” Mann explained. “In the past, market mechanisms for pricing environmental externalities have worked. We acted on acid rain and ozone depletion within a market economy framework. The real problem, in my view, isn’t the nature of our economic system, it’s the way that special interests and plutocrats have blocked the sort of common-sense market approaches to dealing with environmental problems that were once supported by democrats and republicans alike. The problem is the moral and ethical rot that now lies at the very center of the republican establishment, the lack of good faith and the total sellout to special interests and plutocrats.”
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Read more: https://www.salon.com/2018/08/05/on-climate-change-its-time-to-start-panicking
Capitalism and Democracy still has an opportunity to prove itself worthy. Mann is happy for the people’s representatives to decide the exact form of the carbon burden Mann and his friends have demanded we accept.
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There is no “climate change to be solved.”
The climate is just fine. The same as usual, give or take a natural fluctuation. According to the latest research, all human contribution to the claimed warming of 0.8 degree Celsius since 1880 has been a mere 0.02 degree Celsius [1], all the rest, 0.78 degree Celsius, NATURAL.
According to data for the past 8000 years, extracted from ice cores, the natural centennial variability of global temperatures is 0.98+/-0.27 degree Celsius per century [2]. Over the past century, the observed temperature variation has been LESS (!) not more than the natural variability. Over the past 8000 years, global temperature has been changing by about 1 degree Celsius on average EVERY century, not just the last one.
“Climate” is the greatest hoax of the 20th and 21st centuries. The whole shebang is a patent lie. The very notion of “climate” is so ill-defined, it is a purposely chosen vehicle of deception and corruption. There is no such a thing really as “climate.” There is “weather.” There is average weather for a given location, there is weather today, there is weather as it was 100 years ago. It changes all the time, from day to day, from season to season, from year to year, from decade to decade, from century to century, from millennium to millennium.
The question is, do people affect the weather (not much if at all) and do they make it better or worse (it depends on what you like).
It’s all a heap of leftist nonsense.
[1] https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/aabac6
[2] https://doi.org/10.1260/0958-305X.26.3.417
Things were different back in the day.
Socialism is victorious
The arrogance of climate alarmists knows no bounds. Without a shred of real world data that supports their position, they would have the world embark on a multi-trillion-dollar effort to change the long-term climate of the earth. And all that is needed is a carbon tax. Gimme a break!
The problem is the analyses of the long-term climate models that are said to justify human intervention to modify the long-term climate of the planet are demonstrably flawed. It would follow that decisions made from theses analyses would be the wrong decisions.
Probability distributions of possible future earth temperatures have two tails. A correct analysis of the distributions must consider the entire distribution, not just the high value tail. Researchers uniformly ignore the low-probability, high consequence cooling event in their calculations. Temperature databases and GCMs are not sufficiently robust to estimate with high certainty whether, long-term temperatures will be too hot or too cold.
The adverse consequences of a radically warming earth are no greater than the adverse consequences of a radically cooling earth. Policies appropriate for the warming case, e.g., reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, would be diametrically opposite to those appropriate for the cooling case, e.g., spread soot on the polar ice sheets. Under this reality, promulgating environmental regulations with too little information is illogical and likely disastrous for humanity. The likely damage from acting on the wrong premise, a warming or a cooling planet, nullifies arguments for either action until the science is right. The goal of climate research should be to successfully predict global mean temperatures within a range of values that is narrow enough to prudently guide public policy decisions. That cannot be done now.
Climate change researchers have failed to adequately communicate the degree of uncertainty of predicted long-term temperatures and its importance on determining when and how mankind should try to mitigate predicted extreme climate change threats. At best, current technology can only predict future temperatures within a wide range of values that is not sufficient to warrant spending trillions of dollars and go down the wrong road.
Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, one can conclude that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero, If the future is anything line the past warming and cooling cycles will continue and longer term warm periods and cooler periods will continue as the current interglacial period gradually ends and the new ice age gradually begins to develop. The whole process will take tens of thousands of years and mankind does not have the power to change it. At best all we can do is adapt to the gradually changing climate. This is all a matter of science.
No, Mikee wants to keep ripping off capitalism whilst still spewing the same lies and sh*t he has throughout his entire adult life. Time to necklace this enemy of the human race!
So, Mann’s idea is for the government to create a new saleable commodity literally out of thin air and apply a value to it? Just applying a tax, isn’t a capitalist free market idea. Is there also going to be a CO2 Fort Knox where the country’s CO2 reserves will be stored? The free market has already decided that CO2 is nearly worthless as every carbon market has shown by failing miserably.
Mann demonstrates that his understanding of economics is just as great as his understanding of science. Acting on “acid rain” and “ozone depletion” with legislative mandates is not free market economics.
Yes Steyer, Gore, Soros etc., etc. have sold us out and serk to use deception and fear to enrich themselves and their cronies….
Oh, Mann wasn’t apoligizing?
Never mind….
Somebody must advice Micheal Mann to go round the African countries and see the condition of meteorological observatories and then present his hockey stick based on the experience.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
“It is time for us to panic about global warming” – it certainly is – but only for the fanatics like Mann.
He says “such that it leads to a reduction in carbon emissions of several percent a year for the next few decades. If we do that, we can avoid a catastrophic destruction of my reputation…er…. I mean a 2C (~3.5 F) warming of the planet”
Manipulated. As in adjustments. You can always use raw data, which is laughable. Any idea why other climate scientists and other disciplines have found the same curve? Chinese hoax?
Adjustments are proper and necessary.
https://judithcurry.com/2014/07/07/understanding-adjustments-to-temperature-data/
The question for all these furiously alarmed people is always the same, and its unanswerable (for them).
China is emitting a good third of global CO2 emissions. The developing world, is emitting about another third.
That is two thirds of the total being emitted outside the Western industrialized countries. Then we have the US, which is doing about one seventh of the global total.
So the question is: do you want the US to introduce measures to reduce its emissions?
Or do you want the countries that are doing two thirds of the global emissions to reduce as well?
The story the alarmists are trying to tell goes like this.
We have a resort hotels which is putting raw sewage into a local river, and its causing epidemics of cholera and other illnesses. It accounts for about one third of the discharges. So some of the other hotels, who are altogether also doing about one third of the discharges, get together and agree it has to be stopped, and propose to eliminate their discharges totally. They turn to the hotel as ask what it can do.
The reply is that we have invested in desalination plants, as our visitor numbers increase we we are going to lower discharges per visitor. And we didn’t discharge as much in the past as you lot. So we are going to keep right on discharging the same tonnage of sewage, in fact we will be increasing.
Oh good, say the others. Glad to know you are doing your bit.
Meanwhile the cholera epidemics continue, and when you turn around and ask the negotiators why they are not being tougher on the biggest emitter of all, they tell you these guys are leading the area in the fight against raw sewage discharges, and that their desalination efforts are magnificent. Tonnage? What are you talking tonnage for?
What about the epidemics? Oh, yes, we were worried about them. But anyway, the important thing is for the rest of us to stop discharging.
Its totally corrupt.
Very nice of him. Capitalism (and a democratic government of laws) gave him a chance to pursue his career. Unfortunately he blew it. Only in a rich country, fueled by capitalism, can someone with his family background pursue a career in which he contributes nothing positive to civilization, and yet he gets paid handsomely for it.
Capitalism can’t solve “Climate Change” because capitalism deals in facts and Mann’s brand of “Climate Change” is based on falsehoods.
Perhaps Mann should advocate for communism or socialism to solve “Climate Change” because the two are based on similar factual inexactitudes.
Well, for starters, it appears mr. mann has an incandescent bulb over his table.
Global warming is caused by government funding of these whack jobs. If mann was cleaning bathrooms at McDonalds global warming would be much less of a problem.
So, if we don’t “voluntarily” submit to government control of our lives, then the government will FORCE us to submit to government control of our lives. Sorry, I don’t see the difference. It’s not voluntary at all if opting out triggers the mandatory clause.
Mann needs to read up on capitalism. Just because “market forces” are utilized does not mean the policy is consistent with “a free-market capitalist economic system”. Taxes, by definition, are anti-free market. A necessary evil, to be sure, but nevertheless contrary to the very idea of a FREE MARKET. ANY POLICY that results in a different outcome than a free market would result in is, by definition, NOT a free market policy.
Now depending on one’s world view, a deviation from the free-market capitalist system is not necessarily a bad thing. (In my world view, it IS necessarily a bad thing, but I’m speaking generally.) But intellectual honesty requires that when you DO deviate from the free-market capitalist system, you ACKNOWLEDGE the deviation. You don’t get to pretend you’re a die-hard devotee of Adam Smith while you defecate all over “The Wealth of Nations”.