By Rob Bradley writing at IER
“If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit [between now and] the year 2025 to 2050…. The rise in global temperature is predicted to … caus[e] sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.”
— Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun.” New York Times, June 24, 1988.
It has been 30 years since the alarm bell was sounded for manmade global warming caused by modern industrial society. And predictions made on that day—and ever since—continue to be falsified in the real world.
The predictions made by climate scientist James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer back in 1988—and reported as model projected by journalist Philip Shabecoff—constitute yet another exaggerated Malthusian scare, joining those of the population bomb (Paul Ehrlich), resource exhaustion (Club of Rome), Peak Oil (M. King Hubbert), and global cooling (John Holdren).
Erroneous Predictive Scares
Consider the opening global warming salvo (quoted above). Dire predictions of global warming and sea-level rise are well on their way to being falsified—and by a lot, not a little. Meanwhile, a CO2-led global greening has occurred, and climate-related deaths have plummeted as industrialization and prosperity have overcome statism in many areas of the world.
Take the mid-point of the above’s predicted warming, six degrees. At the thirty-year mark, how is it looking? The increase is about one degree—and largely holding (the much-discussed “pause” or “warming hiatus”). And remember, the world has naturally warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age to the present, a good thing if climate economists are to be believed.
Turning to sea-level rise, the exaggeration appears greater. Both before and after the 1980s, decadal sea-level rise has been a few inches. And it has not been appreciably accelerating. “The rate of sea level rise during the period ~1925–1960 is as large as the rate of sea level rise the past few decades, noted climate scientist Judith Curry. “Human emissions of CO2 mostly grew after 1950; so, humans don’t seem to be to blame for the early 20th century sea level rise, nor for the sea level rise in the 19th and late 18th centuries.”
The sky-is-falling pitch went from bad to worse when scientist James Hansen was joined by politician Al Gore. Sea levels could rise twenty feet, claimed Gore in his 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, a prediction that has brought rebuke even from those sympathetic to the climate cause.
Now-or-Never Exaggerations
In the same book/movie, Al Gore prophesied that unless the world dramatically reduced greenhouse gasses, we would hit a “point of no return.” In his book review of Gore’s effort, James Hansen unequivocally stated: “We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.”
Time is up on Gore’s “point of no return” and Hansen’s “critical tipping point.” But neither has owned up to their exaggeration or made new predictions—as if they will suddenly be proven right.
Another scare-and-hide prediction came from Rajendra Pachauri. While head of a United Nations climate panel, he pleaded that without drastic action before 2012, it would be too late to save the planet. In the same year, Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, predicted “global disaster” from the demise of Arctic sea ice in four years. He too, has gone quiet.
Nothing new, back in the late 1980s, the UN claimed that if global warming were not checked by 2000, rising sea levels would wash entire countries away
There is some levity in the charade. In 2009, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown predicted that the world had only 50 days to save the planet from global warming. But fifty days, six months, and eight years later, the earth seems fine.
Climate Hysteria hits Trump
The Democratic Party Platform heading into the 2016 election compared the fight against global warming to World War II. “World War III is well and truly underway,” declared Bill McKibben in the New Republic. “And we are losing.” Those opposed to a new “war effort” were compared to everything from Nazis to Holocaust deniers.
Heading into the 2016 election, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson warned that “a vote for Trump is a vote for climate catastrophe.” In Mother Jones, professor Michael Klare similarly argued that “electing green-minded leaders, stopping climate deniers (or ignorers) from capturing high office, and opposing fossil fueled ultranationalism is the only realistic path to a habitable planet.”
Trump won the election, and the shrill got shriller. “Donald Trump’s climate policies would create dozens of failed states south of the U.S. border and around the world,” opined Joe Romm at Think Progress. “It would be a world where everyone eventually becomes a veteran, a refugee, or a casualty of war.”
At Vox, Brad Plumer joined in:
Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States…. We’re at risk of departing from the stable climatic conditions that sustained civilization for thousands of years and lurching into the unknown. The world’s poorest countries, in particular, are ill-equipped to handle this disruption.
Renewable energy researcher John Abraham contended that Trump’s election means we’ve “missed our last off-ramp on the road to catastrophic climate change.” Not to be outdone, academic Noam Chomsky argued that Trump is aiding “the destruction of organized human life.”
Falsified Alarms, Compromised Science
If science is prediction, the Malthusian science of sustainability is pseudo-science. But worse, by not fessing up, by doubling down on doom, the scientific program has been compromised.
“In their efforts to promote their ‘cause,’” Judith Curry told Congress, “the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem.” She continued:
This behavior risks destroying science’s reputation for honesty. It is this objectivity and honesty which gives science a privileged seat at the table. Without this objectivity and honesty, scientists become regarded as another lobbyist group.
Even DC-establishment environmentalists have worried about a backfire. In 2007, two mainstream climate scientists warned against the “Hollywoodization” of their discipline. They complained about “a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.” To which Al Gore (the guilty party) responded: “I am trying to communicate the essence [of global warming] in the lay language that I understand.”
“There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language,” remarked Environmental Defense Fund’s Fred Krupp in 2011. “In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can’t take the attitude that we have all the answers.”
Most recently, Elizabeth Arnold, longtime climate reporter for National Public Radio, warned that too much “fear and gloom,” leading to “apocalypse fatigue,” should be replaced by a message of “hope” and “solutions” lest the public disengage. But taxes and statism don’t sound good either.
Conclusion
If the climate problem is exaggerated, that issue should be demoted. Enter an unstated agenda of deindustrialization and a quest for money and power that otherwise might be beyond reach of the climate campaigners. It all gets back to what Tim Wirth, then US Senator from Colorado, stated at the beginning of the climate alarm:
We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.
“Right thing” in terms of economic and environmental policy? That’s a fallacy to explode on another day.
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When every outcome proves that your hypothesis is correct then you are no longer dealing with science. It’s then more appropriately called religion. Just look around our planet today–right now, at this very moment–record snowfalls (Canada) and record heat (USA and Europe). Simultaneous events, so take your pick.
Solar activity, massive volcanic activity, earth quakes, Milankovitch Cycles (planet tilt/wobble, orbital cycles)…and today we are also hundreds/thousands of years late (overdue) with our planet’s normal polar flip (North becomes South and vice versa), a relatively frequent event for our sun (5 times in my lifetime). Are these signals that we are about to “go normal” and flip? What happens then?
So what’s your plan and how do you propose we “fix” all that which has been going on for the past 4.6 billion years? What’s the cure? Burn less oil and coal? Corks for cows?
I’m LMFAO.
Socialist governments are broke – they needed an excuse to raise taxes on the sheeple and they concocted this scheme to ‘balance the communist books’.
I haven’t heard about Tim Wirth in a long time. My luck just ran out.
Stimulating discussions are a good thing. I wish that I had a pumping well in my back yard.
The neighbors would complain but, I would say, “drill your own damn well.”
We humans always need a boogy man to fear. In our yearning, we lose sight over the big picture.
We are a planet orbiting a star that controls the ebb and flow of our climate, sea level, glaciers, and quantity of sea ice. We are arrogant to think that we have any effect at all on what the “climate” is doing . Of course there is money to be made by scaring people into giving others control over what we drive, consume, eat, and breathe. Don’t believe these hoaxers!
I say, “don’t worry, enjoy the ride as we orbit our star at 18.5 miles per second!
I distinctly recall “peak coal” talk when I was in grade school…world was going to run out in my lifetime. Now there’s about a 450-year supply.
Since the ocean levels and temperatures have been rising naturally since the last ice age any attempt to make them appear to be accelerating is wishful thinking not science.
Humbly and respectfully reposted, a Wattsupwiththat wikipoem:
I will make only one prediction and that is that CO2 will continue to rise at about 1 PPM per year for the next 2 decades. Given that China and India have said they are not going to stop using it there is little doubt that will happen IMHO.
We are at a great juncture where the predictions of the CO2 scientists are going up by 0.25 – 1.5 C and the cyclical scientists are predicting the opposite. They both can’t be correct but they both could be wrong.
Keep your scorecards updated and hold their feet to the fire folks. It’s going to be a fun 2 decades.
CO2 has risen steadily for the past 20 years, with practically no global warming, other than associated with El Nino events. Before that, it rose steadily for ~20 years with slight global warming. Before that, it rose for ~30 years with pronounced global cooling.
Since no correlation, no causation. The AGW hypothesis has been repeatedly shown false. Indeed, it was born falsified, since the scare in the 1970s was global cooling, despite three decades of CO2 increases.
There is a reason for that. CO2 has close to zero effect when it comes to warming.
What are the photon absorption bands of CO2?
What are the photon absorption bands of water vapor?
What is the overlap?
What does it mean?
BTW i came here from Real Clear Politics.
As no doubt you know, the overlap is substantial, but not 100%.
A curious fact is that at the South Pole, where the effect of CO2 should be most pronounced, there being so little H2O in the air, there has been no warming for the whole temperature record there.
CO2 might theoretically have some effect higher in the atmosphere, where there is less H2O. But its GHE has clearly been, at best, exaggerated by consensus “climate science”, ie GIGO computer gamers and the data-adjusting book cookers who love them.
quote:
==========
David Middleton touched on this toward the end of his post (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/oil-where-did-it-come-from/) .
However, I think he dodged the real question.
The key puzzle for me is the origin of kerogen. Once we have kerogen, I think the theory of how it is cooked into shorter-chain hydrocarbons at shallow depths is sound. But we can’t explain the origin of oil without getting to the origin of kerogen.
The biogenic theory of oil essentially begins with sugar molecules. How do we start with sugar molecules with equal ratios of carbon and oxygen, strip them of their oxygen content, and get them to oligomerize or polymerize into 1,000-Dalton chains — particularly when the thermodynamics says that at depths shallower than 100km, the chemistry should proceed in the opposite direction toward oxidation and decomposition?
–Todd “Ike” Kiefer
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/01/a-tale-of-two-sigmoids/#comment-1995645
==========
David Middleton also believes in water divining.
So you took these errant prognostications from thirty years ago as proof that climate science is a fraud? What a stupid and worthless premise. Those date from an era when climate science was in its infancy. Of course they’re wrong. However, the science and modeling of climate is much better now and the newer predictions are matching observations more closely. Guess what, they’re still very worrying. Remember, past performance has little to do with future results. This article is journalism at its worst.
First, many of these predictions were made less than a decade ago. Secondly, please tell us a prediction which has not failed. Finally, please tell us what would disprove your belief that Man is causing a significant climate change.
“Finally, please tell us what would disprove your belief that Man is causing a significant climate change.”
I predict you will not get an answer from Miss M to that question. For those like Miss M blind belief is all they have, they cannot image anything that would show their belief to be mistaken. Which mean what they believe in is not science because in science theories can be falsified, which is what your question is really asking: i.e. “what would it take to falsify the theory?”
Miss M, science is predictive. If a theory makes a prediction, and that prediction fails, it means the theory is a failure. If we can’t judge a theory on it’s ability to make predictions then it is *not* science.
When every testable prediction made in the past has failed, why should anyone believe they’ve got it right this time? Particularly when those who made the failed predictions, the same ones making the new predictions, refuse to acknowledge their past failures?
Peak oil is a complete joke. We will never run out of oil, never. Oil is simply a hydrocarbon. There is absolutely no shortage of hydrogen or carbon, and as long as you those building blocks you will never run out of fuel. The Fischer Tropsche Process can turn just about any carbon source into fuel, and it is commercially viable and has been in use since WWII.
The reason the alarmists are always wrong is because there model is wrong. No amount of propaganda will turn a lie into the truth.
Isolating the Impact of CO2 on Atmospheric Temperatures; Conclusion is CO2 has No Measurable Impact
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/isolating-the-impact-of-co2-on-atmospheric-temperatures-conclusion-is-co2-has-no-measurable-impact/
To deny that climate change is happening is to deny the facts that:
– fact. the last 3 years were the warmest ever record dating back to when accurate global temperature records began (19 century).
– fact – there is no warming hiatus that deniers clam. 1997-1998 was an El Nino warm period but has been far surpassed by heating in recent years.,
– fact the last decade was the warmest ever recorded.
– fact. arctic sea ice has diminished by at least 30 % since satellite records began starting in 1979.
– fact warming in the high arctic is accelerating and is as much as 3C warmer than the long term average
– global ocean temps have increased by as much a .3 c since measurements began in 1969. Early climate change models didn’t predict that much of the excess heat produced due to global warming would be taken up by the oceans.
-fact . Greenland and antarctic ice sheets are melting at accelerating rates. Ice cover is at historical lows.
and on and on.
-fact., Extreme weather and fire.
There should be records kept to identify the deniers so that future inhabitants of the earth can hold their legacy and estates accountable. let their children know that they helped cause the existential threat that humans face. History will forever record the names of those who out of pure self serving greed denied, in the face of overwhelming facts and evidence, against the unequivocal science as stated by virtually every qualified, climate scientist Denied for their egotistical ends, willfully ignorant, out of evil intent.
Fact: you know nothing about climate, science, research, history, or free speech.
A geophysicist told me oil is analogous to human blood. The earth didn’t stop it’s processes just because we started driving cars. So no finite pool of oil to deplete.
On my last business trip, i was tuned into the flight thing that tracks location, altitude speed, time, etc. It also had the temperature. At 11000 meters it’s -50 degrees Fahrenheit. In a universal context im thankful for our thin little blanket
Oil is produced on geological time scales, but we are taking it out much faster than that. You seem to like (flawed) analogies, so here’s one: If I cut one of your arteries, your body will continue to make more blood, so does that make you immune to bleeding out? Of course not. So it doesn’t matter that oil is still being created, there will come a time when all the oil that is left is not economical to extract. THAT is the point that it is “depleted”. And long before that point it will get progressively more expensive, forcing us to utilize other energy resources, probably coal and nuclear, so that when oil is effectively depleted, we won’t need it as an energy source anymore.
This makes your argument moot.
A flawed analogy is assuming we’ve cut into the earths artery. I for one consider humans like an ant colony or a flea infestation to the earth. We have a long way to go before we suck this dog dry.
Just due to the pro climate change crowd wants to throw us in jail, talk over us, silence us in itself proves that climate change, and all the lexiston before it, and everything that will come after it is all a huge farce to get your vote, all liberals can’t win on ” Policy “, the have to create a ” Boogie man “, as well to enrich the powers to be because just like a religion, give me your your money and I’ll make sure we combat the effects of climate change, and throw the anti-climate change deniers to jail
Good article, and didn’t even bring up the fact that “scientist” were caught fabricating evidence several times.
Let the facts determine scientific outcomes. The educated know when we are being lied to
As fun as all of these example are, they ultimately miss the target by a wide margin. If there is a tipping point, it is inevitable that we will be ridiculing the prediction of it at the very moment that we pass it (and probably even beyond that). That’s the nature of this type of process. Think of the Rice and Chessboard scenario: the poor wise man’s claim seems preposterous until you start working through the implications or the logistics of the rice delivery.