By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: There has been a daily drumbeat of dark climate news to accompany the IPCC’s new report, “Global Warming of 1.5 °C.” Millions of people are terrified that climate change will wreck or destroy the world. Here is some information they probably do not know, because journalists do not mention it.
“Paleoclimatological Context and Reference Level
of the 2°C and 1.5°C Paris Agreement Long-Term Temperature Limits“
By Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt.
Frontiers of Earth Science, 17 December 2017.
Abstract
This paper is ungated, and well worth reading in full for anyone interested in climate change – one of the key policy questions of our time.
“The Paris Agreement adopted in December 2015 during the COP21 conference stipulates that the increase in the global average temperature is to be kept well below 2°C above “pre-industrial levels” and that efforts are pursued to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above “pre-industrial levels.” In order to further increase public acceptance of these limits it is important to transparently place the target levels and their baselines in a paleoclimatic context of the past 150,000 years (Last Interglacial, LIG) and in particular of the last 10,000 years (Holocene; Present Interglacial, PIG).
“Intense paleoclimatological research of the past decade has firmed up that pre-industrial temperatures have been highly variable which needs to be reflected in the pre-industrial climate baseline definitions. The currently used reference level 1850–1900 represents the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA). The LIA represents the coldest phase of the last 10,000 years when mean temperatures deviated strongly negatively from the Holocene average and which therefore are hard to justify as a representative pre-industrial baseline. The temperature level reached during the interval 1940–1970 may serve as a better reference level as it appears to roughly correspond to the average pre-industrial temperature of the past two millennia.
“Placing the climate limits in an enlarged paleoclimatic context will help to demonstrate that the chosen climate targets are valid and represent dangerous extremes of the known natural range of Holocene temperature variability.”
Origin of two-degree climate change target.
The two-degree climate change target was first proposed by economist William Nordhaus in 1975 (here and refined here) with almost no basis in the physical sciences and no peer-review by physical scientists. It was pushed by papers from political and advocacy groups. Since then scientists have learned much about the temperature range of the Holocene.
“The Pleistocene comprises of the last 2.6 million years and is characterized by an alternation of cold glacial and warm interglacial phases. A typical glacial/interglacial cycle lasts 100,000 years, whereby the cold phase usually takes 90% of the time while the interglacial phases make up only 10% of the cycle. The cyclicity is controlled by Milankovitch Earth’s orbital cycles. The Last interglacial (LIG) is the Eemian …which occurred 126,000–115,000 years ago. …LIG temperatures have likely been 1.2°C above the most recent temperatures averaged over 1998–2016. …LIG already exceeded the 1.5°C climate limit by 0.5°C while it just about reached the upper limit of the 2°C temperature target. LIG temperatures correspond roughly with the upper end of the tolerable temperature window cited by the WBGU (German Advisory Council for Global Change, 1995). …
“After the end of the last glacial period, temperatures during the early Holocene started to increase again and reached a maximum during the mid-Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM), an exceptionally warm period 8,000 to 5,000 years before present (BP). Alternative names for this phase are Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) and Atlantic Period. The warm period is considered a result of Milankovitch Earth’s orbital effects, in particular changes in earth axial tilt and distance to the sun (e.g., Otto-Bliesner et al., 2016). Global average temperature during the HTM was generally warmer than today. An exact quantification of the HTM warming and its comparison to modern temperatures has unfortunately not yet been achieved and requires additional data and detailed correlation effort. …
“Following the HTM, long-term cooling commenced around 4,000 years BP, representing the onset of the Neoglaciation which culminated in the Little Ice Age 1400–1850 AD. Superimposed on the long-term cooling trend are natural temperature fluctuations, which differ somewhat in the various global reconstructions …). In several of these reconstructions pre-industrial phases occur during which temperatures have reached a similar intensity as today. Likewise, the pre-industrial average temperature for the period 0–1850 AD varies in the different reconstructions (Figure 2). …”
Pre-Industrial Temperature Variability.
The existing “pre-industrial” baseline used are the average temperature estimates for 1850–1900. This is the end of the Little Ice Age, the coldest period during the last 10,000 years. It is an inappropriate basis for setting a public policy target, and a number that misrepresents the public about the history and dynamics of climate change.
“Pre-industrial temperatures have undergone marked natural variations at every possible time-scale. Definition of an 1850–1900 ‘pre-industrial’ reference level is therefore simplistic and does not do justice to the significant natural dynamics of the pre-industrial temperature development. Unfortunately, key reports on the climate limits refer to the pre-industrial temperature as if it had been static during past millennia. …”
Choice and Paleoclimatic Context of Chosen Baseline Value.
“The baseline of the climate limit was defined by World Bank (2014) and UNFCCC (2015) {AKA the Paris Climate Agreement} as the temperature average 1850–1900. Notably, this period marks the end of the Little Ice Age, the latter representing the coldest phase of the entire last 10,000 years (Figures 1, 2). More recently, Hawkins et al. (2017) suggested 1720–1800 as pre-industrial baseline period, which however lies even closer to the coldest phase of the Little Ice Age (Figure 2). The choice of a baseline near the lower extreme of a variable parameter is uncommon in science. An average over a longer pre-industrial interval capturing several natural temperature fluctuations appears more adequate. Suitable averaging time windows may be e.g., the last 1000 years, 2000 years or 10,000 years, always excluding the last 150 years due to anthropogenic influence. …”
The authors’ conclusions.
“Pre-industrial temperatures have been more variable than previously thought which needs to be reflected in the baseline definitions of climate targets as part of the Paris Agreement. The currently used reference level represents the end of the Little Ice Age, the coldest phase of the entire last 10,000 years. The temperature value of this reference level deviates strongly negatively from the Holocene average temperature and therefore is hard to justify as a pre-industrial baseline. A better reference level may be equivalent to 1940–1970, when temperatures were reached that correspond to the pre-industrial global mean temperature of the past two millennia. …”
My thoughts about this important topic.
(1) About the temperature record.
The authors rely on the major published temperature reconstructions. From up in the peanut gallery, it looks to me that Steve McInyre’s criticism of them are devastating and disqualify them for use in setting public policy goals. See his posts on the latest reconstruction here and here.
Reconstruction of the temperature record is foundational information for public policy debate. The operation of these projects is paradigmatic of the state of climate science today: adequate academic science, but grossly inadequate for the public policy need. These reconstructions need more funding, involvement of a wider pool of experts, and vastly improved external review and supervision. It would be some of the best money the US government spent next year. The results might revitalized the policy machinery.
(2) The policy measures necessary to meet the 1.5C or 2C targets.
The targets are unrealistic. They require either devastating measures (e.g., carbon taxes at high levels that would disrupt the global economy) or technology that does not now exist (e.g., bio-energy with carbon capture and storage). Several experts have pointed this out, such as Oliver Geden (presentation, gated paper), Glen Peters (gated paper), and Roger Pielke Jr.
For More Information
See the new IPCC report: “Global Warming of 1.5 °C.” SR15 differs from AR15 on one major way: it assume +1.5°C over pre-industrial creates Armageddon. That’s odd, since we are already at 1°C over (much of that is natural warming). To understand the origin of these “red lines” see “The Invention of the Two-Degree Target” in Der Spiegel.
For an excellent introduction to carbon budgets and temperature targets, see this article at Carbon Brief.
The excerpts from the paper are cited in accordance with its stated copyright provisions.
For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate change and these posts about the climate wars…
- Important: climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- We can end the climate policy wars: demand a test of the models.
- A candid climate scientist explains how to fix the debate.
It’s all about the CO2.
A number of years ago we decided we wanted to help the coal industry keep their jobs and their communities. We have developed a Carbon Capture Utilization System that will remove over 90% of the CO2 out of combusted coal exhaust and transform it into useful-saleable products. To us this CO2 from combusted coal is $$$$$$$
And there is more. There are a lot of particulates that can be recovered/removed and sold. There is a lot of waste heat energy to be recovered and utilized. Take the heat out and water is created, a lot of water. The coal ash has a bigger purpose to help fight forest fires.
Our Motto: Waste Is Not Waste If It Has A Purpose, and Sidel has given a purpose to combusted coal exhaust.
Another crazy scheme. The atmosphere needs more CO2 NOT less. Shame on you.
It’s not just another crazy scheme, Sid keeps popping up to push this ponzi scheme, he’s up to at least a dozen appearances already.
The early investors need more suckers so they can get their money out.
For every wild hair alarmists dream up, there’s some else who wants to get paid exploiting it.
Sid,
The real question is whether or not there’s more $$$ from selling the CO2 then it costs to extract and store it. Otherwise, what’s the point. If your rational for losing money is to mitigate CO2 induced climate change, then you’re either being fooled or are fooling yourself. I can see the rationalization for removing things other than CO2 and water from the combustion products, as the byproducts tend to be harmful to life and constitute real pollutants while CO2 and water are both beneficial to the biosphere, moreover; if you really are worried about the GHG effect, then the water vapor is at least as potent as the CO2, if not more so.
“The operation of these projects is paradigmatic of the state of climate science today: adequate academic science,”
Mr Kummer You have got to be joking with us skeptics with the above statement. The whole climate industry should be shut down. 97% of it is a complete fraud. There are some honest climate scientists around. Maybe 3% Lindzen, Soon, Curry, Corbin, Clark, Essex, Happer, …etc to name a few but interestingly they are all skeptics. In fact almost all of them will say that man made global warming is the biggest fraud to ever be perpetuated and both sets of climategate emails back this opinion up. Despite your repeated attempts to assuage us skeptics that the clmate scientists are not bad guys, any of your arguments don’t wash. I am not pulling any punches here because as you well know there hasn’t been 1 iota of credible evidence that CAGW exists. Actually there hasnt been 1 iota of evidence that AGW exists. You well know that almost every day this site has an article on a recent paper that we skeptics are easily able to pull apart as completely fraudulent. The situation is so bad that now there is a spreading strike by high school students in Australia who refuse to go to school because they think that their government isn’t doing enough to combat global warming. I call it global warming because the term “climate change” is fraudulent. Even if global warming was true, Australia couldnt stop it because China and India have been given a free pass. They know it is a fraud and they hope we shut down all our industries because of it. Electricity rates are so high in Australia now, that many comapnies are leaving in droves. Countries like Australia are going down the tubes because of people like you who have bought into this fraud. Absolute madness.
I totally agree Alan. The gulf between informed opinion (even just reasonably informed like myself) and the kind of people who sustain ridiculous ideas like the student strike is so vast, it seems almost impossible to imagine the slightest chance of the ”climate mad” confronting reality.
Excellent response and summation, Alan!
The same goes for your response to the snake oil CO₂ claim.
Well said Allen, it is a wonderfully remarkable and absolute madness.
I live in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). Sometimes you have to swallow your pride and go with the flow. Perception trumps reality. I’ve just been elected to the board of our condo. It’s a pretty “ritzy” outfit and I’ve noticed with this group (along with my wife) the alarmist narrative (severe weather, melting cryosphere, rising seas, acid oceans, desertification, fire, floods, species extinction, cats and dogs living together….etc.) is not in question.
So I’m staying quiet. Actually I find it a laughing matter…people just don’t want to know the truth, and never will, when an understanding of basic physics is required…specifically the 2nd law of thermodynamics, Newton’s third law of motion and the climatic significance of the CO2 molecule’s radiative properties.
Oh well…time will tell.
All luke warmers Alan.
Not skeptics at all, they all ”believe” in the underlying scam of the RGHE.
Nova most especially is a herder, a gate-keeper of RGHE just like Dr Roy and Monkton et al.
The only thing they doubt is the amount of radiative forcing.
Really now, unless someone agrees with you that CO2 can’t have any impact on climate, they are in on the scam?
That CO2 traps heat isn’t in doubt, how much it traps is.
Show us where atmospheric CO2 has been measured to “trap heat”
It hasn’t been measured… because it doesn’t
Any absorbed IR is immediately thermalised to the rest of the atmosphere and dealt with as part of normal atmospheric processes.
No “heat” is trapped anywhere by atmospheric CO2.
The IPCC assumes that each CO2 molecule has the heat capacity to store a photon of energy at the 15 micron wavelength at atmospheric average sea surface temperatures. It does not. The heat capacity of a single CO2 molecule absorbing at the 15 micron wavelength at atmospheric surface temperature and pressure is 6.135 x 10^-23 joules /K, which is smaller than the amount of energy of that 1 photon (1.325 x 10^ -20 joules) at 15 micron wavelength. Only at a temperature of around -80C does the CO2 molecule have enough heat capacity to store a photon of energy coming from the earth surface at that wavelength. SO THEREFORE THERE IS NO BACK RADIATION FROM CO2. The only back radiation is from clouds. Clouds are water vapour and dust particles.
THE WHOLE BASIS FOR AGW IS FALSE.
You think too shallowly. Yes, energy is thermalized and then dealt with. Part of the “dealing with” involves re-radiation.
As long as the amount of energy entering the system remains a constant, total energy within the system will be determined by how long it takes that energy that is input, to leave the system. More CO2 increases that time.
Radiating gases radiate heat son, you cannot trap heat.
”That CO2 traps heat isn’t in doubt, how much it traps is.”
It’s a hypothesis you bald faced liar, not even theory because it doesn’t meet the criteria.
Now anyone who doesn’t agree with you is a liar.
Nice way to avoid dealing with any facts that contradict what you want to believe.
Sorry Gary, but you can’t radiate heat. What we call heat (in science) is just the average energy density of an object due to the kinetic motion of it’s molecules. What people call “heat” can vary, but does include radiated energy via IR photons. It doesn’t help anybody in a scientific discussion to conflate these terms.
It is a fact that if you alter a gas to make it more difficult for IR photons to escape, then you will increase the average energy density of that gas, compared to the unaltered state. In this way one could say that they are “trapping more heat”, but that’s a bit misleading IMHO.
If the current interglacial ends,
that’s a real problem.
A degree or two of warming or cooling
over a century, during an interglacial,
is just harmless variations
no one would even notice
if not for the braying leftists trying to scare
everyone into wanting more powerful
central governments (they think that’s
the solution for every problem) to save the
planet for the children (which is just leftist BS).
The term “pre-industrial” in the context of an always changing climate is meaningless.
Tasfay Martinov
“pre-industrial”
This is pre-industrial, which I’m sure is what you were saying.
http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg
Not to be confused with pre-IPCC or pre-Trump. /s
Until we know for near certainty what caused the LIA, (and the Dark ages 1000 years before that) and how long perhaps there is until a repeat of that savage 500 years of cold climate, we should not be worrying about a 1.5-2 degree C rise above the LIA cold in global average temps. If the long term cooling trend in the Holocene started 4000 years ago and each optimum every 1000 years or so have average temps that are lower than before, and the cooling LIA’s times become much colder over time as appears the case, then we know with certainty what direction our planet is heading. Hopefully we are still hundreds of years away from the next significant cooling similar to the last LIA. At some point, when one of these LIA events stick, then we have the start of a full blown ice age and the interglacial is over. Hopefully this is still thousands of years away.
A repeat or worse of another LIA in our long term future, or even a cooling to what we were at 1850 at the end of the last LIA represents far greater threat to humanity than any small beneficial warming of 1.5-2 degrees C. We can adapt to any warming of practically any magnitude, but there is likely little adaptation for all multiple billions of humanity in a seriously colder climate similar to the last LIA. Which is why all of this concern about any net warming by AGW is just madness.
i agree. And the paleo reconstructions vary so much, there is no real assurance that present temperatures are not as high as the Medieval Warm, or the Roman, let alone the HCO.
Instrumental temperature trends vary a lot over short periods. Proxy temperature reconstructions have various degrees of low pass filtering. That filtering is not even guaranteed to be linear. They won’t reflect the sharp maxima and minima visible in the instrumental record. Bore holes, in particular, …
That’s why it’s a no-no to tack instrumental temperatures onto the proxy record.
Given the motivated nature of alarmist thinking, I simply don’t trust their reconstructions.
Exactly. This is socially propelled “science”, not careful inquiry by the professionally curious. To write it off as some kind of ‘madness’ is low resolution thinking. This is ‘crazy like a fox’ social manipulation for a concocted effect, plainly lacking the telltale equanimity that accompanies a transparency about what is verifiable and what greater part remains unknown and speculative.
Very few people know that the 2.0 deg C figure is fake – pulled out of thin air by an economist. Just as fake is the 1.5 Deg C figure which I believe resulted from a rookie becoming expert Environment Minister McKenna who went to Paris a month after her election and proposed the 2.0 be lowered to 1.5.
It is sad to see that the media, politicians and pseudo-scientists have embraced this number as gospel.
When someone starts preaching to me about CAGW I ask them two questions which they cannot answer.
1) Show me one scientific study which measures the amount of warming caused by CO2 and 2) Show me the scientific study which proves warming in excess of 1.5 or 2.0 Deg c will cause runaway warming.
have yet to receive a response.
Gerald Machnee
Ah Ha!……My very favourite question.
I’m not a scientist, nor even educated but I have yet to find the answer to the question that turned me sceptical:
Where are the empirical field studies which convincingly demonstrate that atmospheric CO2 causes the planet to warm?
After 40 years of claims that it does, as far as I can gather there are none. There should be dozens, but not one, ever.
Ask it of an alarmist and they set their own pants on fire and dive into the nearest puddle.
No wonder you went into policing.
”I’m not a scientist, nor even educated ”
Hotscot that wasnt sarc, just p-take… be lucky.
Of course there is empirical data, you just choose not to believe it.
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
Chris
That would be the discredited study which measured temperature from the depths of a La Niña to the peaks of an El Niño, both of which are acknowledged as weather anomalies and nothing at all to do with climate change. Even the IPCC acknowledges that.
It’s you misleading yourself because were this study credible it would be plastered all over the MSM every day, trumpeted as a triumph, but it’s not.
Blind faith is not a prerequisite of climate science. It took me a single search term in Google when it was published to establish it was bad science. Not just accidentally bad but deliberately misleading.
And in 40 years of alarmism, that’s it? That’s the only piece of evidence available to demonstrate CO2 warms the planet, a bit of very bad science.
So whose deluded here Chris? I may not be educated but at least I had the gumption to test this hypothesis, and at the first attempt it broke.
The only number with science behind it is MIT’s 153°F.
And yet, ‘,climate change’ DOES happen, HAS happened, and WILL happen again, as it is determined by Earth’s orbit around the Sun, its axial relationship to the Sun during orbit, and solar activity; NONE of which man can control or influence in any manner.
Plus rather a lot!!
Auto
I fear a Younger Dryas .
Coeur de Lion
Might I suggest probably not meaningful in our lifetime, but we might see the start.
An excellent article, thank you.
Today’s article at No Tricks Zone identifies that ALL atmospheric gases are green house gases.
http://notrickszone.com/2018/11/12/real-world-spectral-measurements-show-the-greenhouse-theory-is-wrong-all-gases-are-ghgs/
Regards
That is about the dumbest junk I have ever seen written.
The Raman effect is very very very weak it is used usually to isolate up chemical markers and it relies totally upon electric dipole-electric dipole polarizability of the molecule. It tells you less than nothing about the vast majorities of the interactions in the media. Lets start with the basic even if you assume there are is no greenhouse effect, it ignores Rayleigh scattering which is one of the predominant effects operating. The author doesn’t even realize he needs to quantify how many Raman interactions there are to how many others.
Lets put this in layman terms, it assumes that what you are seeing with a Raman effect test is indicative of the whole sample, which is a bit like taking a sample at a KKK meeting and then extrapolating it to build a world population study. See the problem.
The stupid it burns.
“Intense paleoclimatological research of the past decade has firmed up that pre-industrial temperatures have been highly variable
No. Palaeontology research has been carried out continuously for generations since the discovery in the 19th century by Agassis of prior ice ages and the glacial fingerprint in alpine ranges. It has been pursued for more than a century like any normal scientific field, by women and men motivated and inspired to uncover the truth about earth’s past.
Until now, that is.
Now that has all changed.
Now the science-media-political blok has decided / decreed that it is expedient for palaeoclimatology to be exterminated. The current major international “palaeo-climate” project, called PAGES2, has as its objective the destruction of both the former practice of palaeoclimatology research and the annihilation of memory of any of the results of such pure curiosity driven science with such inconvenient politically incorrect discoveries of former massive natural climate variability. PAGES2 operates only to support the fraudulent conclusions of the discredited Mann et al. Yamal hockey stick study. The tactic is simply to “dilute” any real climate proxy data with so much worthless proxy data with no climate signal that the result is a homogenised flat-line stasis, the politically pre-ordained finding of this project. The purpose is for any previous climate historic data to either be re-analysed to death or, where possible, actually physically destroyed. Read Steve MacIntyre’s articles on the Antarctic Law Dome C data for an example of this.
“Pre-industrial temperatures have been more variable than previously thought
Wrong. Real curiosity-driven scientists have always known (Agassis, Wegener, Lamb etc..) that climate has been highly variable on multiple fractal timescales and amplitudes. The only people who forgot this fact were career scientists who decided to sacrifice their curiosity into the world and its workings for the sake of political belief and agenda.
Human nature is such that politics will always eventually return to the place where real curiosity into the truth about the world, and human nature, is dangerous.
I warned about this rewriting of the past, months ago in WUWT. You are right. Mann is indeed coordinating this. The climategate emails were analyzed by a network analyzer. It showed that Michael Mann incredibly runs the show and coordinates with all the fraudulent government climate agencies around the world. Mann does have an enemy though on the alarmist side. It is Richard Muller of Berkeley. After the hockey stick fiasco, Muller had enough pull to get his own temperature data collection system. Unfortunately he is too cowardly to admit that the whole thing is a hoax. Because if he does that, Berkeley will shunt him out and his career will be finished. So for now, Muller is playing along with the meme. In the long run, I don’t know Muller personally, so I cannot predict whether he will ever turn skeptic when he retires.
I always recommend reading Cook et al’s paper.
It explains in detail how they mangled statistics to arrive at a 97% consensus.
And it clearly demonstrates the bona fides of those who push the CAGW hoax.
CO2 does not cause climate change. It is the climate that determines the rate of change of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
There is a statistically significant correlation between the Oceanic Nino Index and the annual rate of change of CO2 at the Cape Grim Station in Northwest Tasmania. Yet the Cape Grim station is 8,360 km from the centre of the Niño 3.4 region and 4505km south of the Equator.
As the Equatorial zone has the greatest average temperature, it may be the source of the major proportion of the atmospheric CO2 concentration which then spreads towards the Poles as has been proposed in earlier studies reported in :
https://www.climateauditor.com
The CO2 concentration is increasing with time because the Equatorial temperature has been high enough to produce a positive CO2 rate of change, possibly generated by the myriad life forms populating the zone. If so, then the rate of change of CO2 may not reduce to zero until the temperature falls to a critical value, possibly 0°C when water freezes and is no longer available to life.
The CO2 concentration displays a consistent seasonal variation known to be generated by biological sources. It is thus reasonable to suspect that its underlying near-linear trend is also generated from biological sources whereby changes in climate such as warmer and wetter conditions may increase the population of the biological sources thereby generating CO2 at a greater rate. This difference is apparent from a comparison between the myriad of life forms in the Equatorial zone and the lack of life at the Poles.
The climate action plan is based on a 1.5C carbon budget
The 1.5C carbon budget is based on the TCRE transient climate response to cumulative emissions
The TCRE is based on a spurious correlation.
It’s a house of cards.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/06/tcre/
Chaamjamal, you should submit this brillant research as an article here at WUWT. Monckton’s treatise was the bust to climate sensitivity and your treatise is the bust to Transient Climate Response to Cumulative Emissions. Absolutely brillant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So what will the alarmists come up with next?
Alan Tomalty
The IPCC periodically comes up with ‘BOO……!’
Isn’t that good enough for you?
When Southern Greenland becomes closer to what it must have been in 1100-1200 AD to support those pastoral Norse colonies, then I’ll believe that the present is as warm as then.
Same for the Mesa Verde plateau (in the US 4 Corners area) that supported 400 years of population growth with maize crops, that collapsed in drought and likely cold in 1275 AD.
Paleo reconstructions just ignore all the evidence from other areas – history, archaeology, literature an all the rest. I remember a few years ago the BBC going on and on about how a retreating glacier in Greenland showed alarming warming whilst the same report showed pictures of the Viking artifacts the retreat uncovered.
This paper is worthwhile, IF AND ONLY IF, there are scientific reasons for the global warming/climate change scare.
On the other hand, this paper has little value if the real basis for the global warming/climate change scare is to move on to a global supranational socialist governance, as Margaret Thatcher suggested in STATECRAFT–in other words, an expansion of the European Union to a Global Union.
Cheers,
Bob
Bob,
Your comment (attributed to Thatcher) that the eventual supranational state/governance will be socialist is commonly made but, I think, incomplete. As Oxford academic Dieter Helm has pointed out in Ref. 1, we should follow the money, “Climate change policies are a magnet for rent-seeking lobbyists and vested interests – especially those associated with current renewables and nuclear.”
Thus it seems that those usually associated with the right of the political spectrum are doing very well from the current dispensation.
As a further example, Helm also says, “But it would be too great a compliment to the green political movement to give them all the credit for the [EU’s] Renewables Directive. They have been aided and abetted by industrial interests for whom renewables represent a very large pork barrel. Subsidies attract industry, and with guaranteed contracts and political support, major European companies began to sing the greens’ tune. Siemens led the way in Germany … The renewables lobby groups grew in size and influence, and the lobbying became overt, loud and very effective, funded by the companies that stand to gain most from the subsidies.”
Thus it seems that, unsurprisingly, political cureents from the right are also very much in play at present.
Reference
1. Diter Helm, “The Carbon Crunch”, Yale, revised & updated, 2015, especially at pages xii and 103.
Regards,
Idiot_Wind.
Thankyou, Idiot_Wind for pointing out the utter failure of big oil to come to the aid of skeptics.
If they really sponsored research on climate and used their resources to disseminate such findings, the current crop of climatologists would howl their heads off , but at least there would be a counterweight that would influence the MSM. Their silence is effectively collusion with the CAGW crazies. Shame on them.
I really don’t think that “millions of people are terrified that climate change will destroy the world” – as you start off saying. Fact is that there are a few simpletons, children and childlike souls in our western world only who fit into that category. To the rest of us, say 97% of us, the problem is not a problem in our daily lives – most of us haven’t even heard about it. Our daily lives present enough worries to occupy our time.
Unfortunately I disagree if the current hysteria I am seeing across social media anything to go by. Many many highly suggestible people are guying into the hype wholesale, because it dovetails so very nicely with other social justice movements such as feminism and the re=popularisation of socialism.
If the winters everywhere were less cold than before,
wouldn’t the +1.5 C in mean global temperature be
reached? And why should anyone worry if winters
everywhere were less cold than before?
If what they really mean is that we should avoid
maximum temps increasing to a level 1.5 C higher
than some benchmark, then they should say so.
With each passing report (and breath), it becomes less and less unreasonable to associate the practices and results of the IPCC with the word ‘fraud’. Steve McIntyre’s recent efforts to shine a light into the darkness of PAGES2K demonstrates how it gets worse. Not just a continuance of the cherrypicking of treemometers and the truncation or inversion of data series, but of the filtering-out of ALL negatively-correlated treemometers and of the flaky reason for keeping a hockey-stick shaped sediment series when the uptick begins the very year a dam was built there.
The attempts at indoctrination over the subject continue (one of my daughters has a project on the topic in English of all subjects), but thankfully in the internet age she has a rounded view and doesn’t swallow the alarmism. Thanks for playing your part in the democratisation of information on both the shoddy work behind the hysteria and its practitioners.
Kummer believes in man made global warming. He doesn’t deserve any thanks.
Let’s change the language – instead of talking about 1-5-2.0 degrees C above “pre-industrial” times, let’s quote today’s average global temperature as 16 degrees C. Now let the “climate scientists” explain how an increase to 16.5 degrees C can be catastrophic, and let them provide the cost/benefit analysis of de-industrialising the western world by slashing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning.
Robber
November 12, 2018 at 6:50 pm
Let’s change the language – instead of talking about 1-5-2.0 degrees C above “pre-industrial” times, let’s quote today’s average global temperature as 16 degrees C.
-Let’s quote it at 15°C, like NASA does in 2018:
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/
Then let’s prevent the warmists adjusting figures, moving baselines and then saying there’s no such thing as an average gobal temperature to begin with.
Play them at their own fake games.
Here is an interesting tidbit about recent weather patterns in Northern California. Last week temps dipped one night to within one degree F of the record for that day. Today temps rose to tie the daily high temp. In past years I had always puzzled over why high and low records were often seen occurring in the same months or days. This pattern occurrs dmost often during a cold trend as can be noted when looking at historical records.
For instance today’s high tied record was last set in 1959. The low from last week which came close to tying the daily was also from 1959. Interesting, no? …http://www.intellicast.com/Local/History.aspx?location=USCA0307
Interesting yes! I have wondered about the same thing. ( and noticed the same high/low records occurring at the same time. I will look more closely at those figures when I have time.
Fall and spring are very unstable times of year when it comes to weather. The jet stream has a tendency to wander a lot and either bring air from much closer to the poles, or much closer to the equator, than can be found at other times of the year.
Moving the goalposts is a classic tactic of fraudsters. First it was 2.5 degrees, then 2, then suddenly becomes 1.5 degrees. The massive financial punishments (ie TRILLIONS going to the fraudsters) were set when the “limit” was a far-flung thing. Now, THEIR “limit” is around the corner. They will get us to sign on the dotted line to give them TRILLIONS before we wake up that it is a fraud- an epic fraud.
High Treason
IMHO they are doing exactly as I predicted when they cut warming expectations to 2°C from 2.5°C but they are presenting it differently.
The first reduction was made when they had to finally admit observed temperatures were barely reaching their lowest computer generated model predictions.
The latest cut to 1.5°C is the same admission but they have tacked on the scare story that, “It’s worse than we thought” to fudge it. Had they reduced it without the ridiculous scare tactic the public would simply have seen it for what it is, a slowly deflating balloon.
Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, has a very interesting and relevant post.
If you go to “Coffee with Scott Adams” on YouTube and find ‘episode 297’
I think it is quite good.
For fabiusmaximus there’s still a need to “win the debate”.
fabiusmaximus recommends doing like
Alley:
communication consists only of talking — not listening. Then follows a long digression, leading to this:
“These are maps on a survey that was done by the Yale climate communications people on how the public views climate change …”
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reading fabiusmaximus is a waste of time.
Kummer is one of those guys who believes that virtue is to be found in the middle, not the extremes.
As such, he has a desperate desire to be seen as part of the middle.
As a result whenever he criticizes one side, he quickly turns around and declares that “the other side does it to”. Even if he can’t come up with any evidence to support such a claim.
why did the last ice age melt so quickly? 40 days and 40 nights of rain? or what, then?
iron brian