Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Former Cato institute vice president Jerry Taylor thinks that we should act on climate change because, even if the science is far from certain, the downside risk of ignoring climate change is too great to accept.
What Changed My Mind About Climate Change?
Risk management is not a binary choice.by JERRY TAYLOR
MAY 21, 2019 5:56 AMI spent the better part of my professional life (1991-2014) working at a libertarian think tank—the Cato Institute—arguing against climate action. As Cato’s director of Natural Resource Studies (and later, as a senior fellow and eventually vice president), I maintained that, while climate change was real, the impacts would likely prove rather modest and that the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions would greatly exceed the benefits.
I changed my mind about that, however, because (among other things) I changed my mind about risk management.
If we think about climate risks in the same fashion we think about risks in other contexts, we should most certainly hedge—and hedge aggressively—by removing fossil fuels from the economy as quickly as possible.
…
When asked why I changed my mind about federal climate policy, this is a large part of my answer. Building an argument against climate action upon a forceful claim about the most likely outcome of greenhouse gas emissions is to build an argument upon analytic sand.
You don’t have to believe with all your heart that the worst-case scenario is sure to happen. You just have to understand that it is one possible outcome. And that we should not be making policy based on an assumption that we are certain of this or that outcome.
When it comes to managing large-scale risks, straight-forward economics suggests that we ought to take climate change very seriously.
…
Read more: https://thebulwark.com/what-changed-my-mind-about-climate-change/
The problem with Jerry’s argument is you could build a similar case for taking action against witches.
Consider the following false logic; Our understanding of the universe is imperfect, so we can’t categorically rule out the possibility of witchcraft. You don’t have to believe with all your heart that the worst case scenario – that witches exist and contribute mightily to human suffering – is sure to be the case. But it would be insane to ignore the risk that some of our fellow humans have sold their souls.
Why would you reject this argument for taking action against witchcraft? For the same reason you should reject taking worst case climate scenarios seriously.
There is no observational evidence that there is a real problem, nor is there any shred of paleo-climate evidence that moderately elevated CO2 levels are associated with major negative consequences.
Money spent “acting” on climate change cannot be spent on hospitals or schools or clean drinking water or food or helping poor people.
Given the vast cost of any meaningful CO2 reduction, it would be insane to commit such resources on the basis of the wild predictions of deeply flawed models, without the support of observational evidence which confirms that we do indeed have a problem.
Good analogy with witchcraft.
As far as persons selling their souls, perhaps Jerry Taylor noted how much money the green blob has, and decided to adopt the Precautionary Principle.
Tom: Agreed on the analogy with witchcraft.
I would like to also draw a parallel here with the participation of children in both today’s CO2 witch hunt and the Salem witch hunts in 1692:
https://thetrialsofsalem.weebly.com/children.html
“…The mayhem that was to become the Salem Witch Trials started when three young girls, Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam, Jr. began to act out in a strange, unexplainable way. These behaviors thought to be caused by the supernatural were just a way for teenagers to act out for attention and rebel against the suppression of their Puritan society.”
In the Salem witch hunts, the children were believed to be affected by witchcraft just as today’s children believe they are or will be affected seriously by climate change.
Secondly, I used to be libertarian. It has become obvious that Taylor has abandoned libertarian philosophy for the almighty dollar. Money speaks louder than Libertarianism.
A similar but more modern witchcraft analogy occurred just a few years ago in Elizabeth City, North Carolina with the Little Rascals day care center. “Recovered memories”, now a discredited phenomena, led to accusations against some of the staff for all kinds of perversions, sexual, UFO related, and otherwise, leading to imprisonment of many. Just another example of the consequences of the precautionary principle. Add to that the high cost of nuclear power plants, brought to you by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who’s only job is to apply the precautionary principle to all aspects of nuclear power plants without balancing cost against gain. Sense and judgement have no traction these days.
While I’m in agreement in spirit, I don’t like the witchcraft analogy. Apples and bowling balls ( as one of Tony Sopsrano’s gang put it so nicely some years ago now, although obviously in another context. There is some science behind the CAGW position, however flawed and purposely exaggerated. One thing is clear, while the cost of climate change could be mild to terrible to even possibly a net benefit, the cost of moving away from fossil fuels is certain to be catastrophic.
Sprenger and Kramer and King James of Scotland and England all thought they had good evidence for witchcraft. Considering all the confessions they had for Satanism, transvection, and crop failure, they were acting in all good faith, by their standards.
There is more than a little reason to think that rising levels of CO2 and warmer temps will be anywhere between somewhat and hugely beneficial, and little if any rational basis for thinking that either of these things will cause any problems at all.
The only evidence for witchcraft was correlation. Bad things happened, these old lady’s happened to be nearby.
The only evidence for AGW is also correlation. It got warmer, CO2 happened to be nearby.
The evidence is not something we have to wait for. Significant amounts of CO2 were emitted from about 1950. Consider the past 69 years an experiment run in real time.
Where is the warming?
We have had the BS excuse of “sulphate sun blocking” in the first 30 years flung around as if it is true, yet the “blocking” was much worse in China in the nineties which is now claimed to have produced warming.
So let’s skip to the present: CO2 is well up and the temperature is not. Redoubling the rate is going to bring us nowhere near the global temperature in 5000 BC. Farming will really benefit, though. We Al need food.
From the article: “….by removing fossil fuels from the economy as quickly as possible.”
Yeah, well, I vote to do it as quickly as the next 150 years as viable alternatives become available. Why? Because what we have now as technologies are hopelessly inadequate and for the greatest part, don’t reduce CO2 meaningfully, if that was even a good thing.
After one or two more revolutions in physics, power generation will be a breeze.
We have bigger fish to fry: representative international governance is essential to prevent war permanently. The risks of war are far greater than modelled risks of “global heating”, judging by the observations of the past three score and nine.
Let’s deal with real risks.
What makes you think that “representative international governance” would “prevent war” any better than representative national governance prevented war in the US in the 1860’s, in Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, or in Syria today? Civil war is often the bloodiest type of war. The trend since WWII is to separate even the tiniest scrap of territory for independence. They get to wear their big-boy pants at the UN.
Big government is the enemy of freedom, not it’s friend, and there is no government bigger than a one world government.
pokerguy, “There is some science behind the CAGW position…”
No, there isn’t.
Climate models have no predictive value. None. Whatever.
The whole CAGW thing is an extraordinary example of incompetence as a communicable disease.
Climate models don’t predict the climate.
Paleo-temperature reconstructions do not reconstruct temperature.
The global air temperature record is so full of systematic error as to say nothing about air temperature.
The physics community stands silent and the National Academy promotes falsehoods.
“While I’m in agreement in spirit, I don’t like the witchcraft analogy”
Nah we need to spend all climate changey dough on asteroid defence and I’m just the man to head up the peak UN IPAD body having consulted the supreme pendulum in conjunction with the true crystals-
https://moonstonegypsyau.com/
A better analogy would point out the author is asking people to become religious. Without evidence, people worship gods. May as well – just in case wink* wink*.
Gnashing dentures in a firey human soup for quite a long while should be avoided.
Old Aztecs had to sacrifice a peron every day so that the Sun would rise again. Do we really want to risk the life without Sun? The tradition has to be resurrected immediately. Would it be in the best interest of the (wo)mankind?
The Precautionary Principle. Speaking of analytic sand …
A better analogy than witchcraft would be a possible ice age.
“A better analogy than witchcraft would be a possible ice age.” Exactly. The costs to humankind of entering an ice age are enormous compared to a warm period. Applying the precautionary principle means we have to pump out as much CO2 as possible, no matter the alleged costs.
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2019/05/17/special-edition-global-warming/
done last week, definitively.
Our ancestors did take action against witches. That’s why standard witchcraft isn’t much of a problem these days.
Now that he’s switched sides, Jerry Taylor is raking in the big bucks. He earns more than a quarter of a million dollars per year at his “nonprofit” organization, the Niskanen Center:
https://niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/The-Niskanen-Center-Inc_2017_PublicInspectionTaxDocuments_US.pdf
How many of the climate activists who called him a “paid climate denier,” when his paycheck came from the Cato Institute, now call him a “paid climate alarmist” or similar?
Right. Not even one.
Hypocrites, the lot of them.
Nice digging Dave.
Compensation for 7 employees making 6-figure salaries went up by $1million from the prior to current year in that 2017 statement.
Quite clear Mr Taylor decided to jump on the Green gravy train in 2014 and ride it while saying “Screw you America, I’m gettin’ mine.” And then joined the Swamp in DC and let the GreenSlime money interests consume him. No doubt he also assumed Hillary would follow Obama.
I make no judgement about Mr. Taylor’s motives or sincerity. But I do judge the people who accuse climate realists of being “paid climate deniers,” while giving a pass to climate activists with their noses in the trough:
Most of the time, if examining the evidence causes someone to shift his opinion about climate change, the shift is in the opposite direction. Case in point, David Siegel:
http://climatecurious.com
…and this guy:
https://www.quora.com/Did-30-000-scientists-declare-that-climate-change-is-a-hoax/answer/Dave-Burton-2/comment/92882367
I seriously doubt coral can be harmed by any warming from anthropogenic CO2. Coral has been around for 350 millions years. Highly adaptable, and it can grow fast in rising and falling of +/- 2m/century seas of glacial onsets and melts.
The biggest threat in my mind of higher CO2 and higher CO2 is the Alarmists memes will keep collapsing causing them to argue for more socialism.
Resisting socialism’s siren call of Free Stuff paid for with OPM to solve a “non-problem” of climate change, climate change solutions that now include SJW positions of reparations and feminism issues, is the problem we face now.
They don’t know their “fixes” will affect the climate let only not being certain of their Climate “science”. This will very likely be like smashing your thumb with a hammer to mitigate migraine headaches. You can’t be certain what causes the migraine but that smashed thumb will be very real and unnecessary pain.
They don’t even know the beginning of this, as they surely are extreme calculator-dodgers.
In fact, a calculator is to an alarmist as a silver cross is to a vampire.
Yes, a nice analogy.
The general “civilian” alarmist will also freely admit to comprehending little science, yet claim to be able to distinguish which scientists are correct and which are not by simply counting up the numbers on each side of the debate.
Then we need to take immediate action against Thanos now!
And most of the climate psychopaths :
We must help polar bears feed because they will be very hungry this summer !
Snap your fingers. That will fix it.
“You don’t have to believe with all your heart that the worst-case scenario is sure to happen. You just have to understand that it is one possible outcome. And that we should not be making policy based on an assumption that we are certain of this or that outcome.
When it comes to managing large-scale risks, straight-forward economics suggests that we ought to take X very seriously.”
Substitue for X:
climate ‘disaster’ – hot
climate ‘disaster’ – cold
Asteroid (or comet) collision
Solar instability (output, flares, storms, etc)
Megavolcano eruption (e.g., Yellowstone)
Viral pandemic
Massive California earthquake (with tsunamis wiping out Pac-Asia)
Thermonuclear disaster (war or accident)
Massive crop failures (for any reason)
Global economic collapse
Extraterrestrial invasion
Actually, looking at that list, the extraterrestrial invasion concerns me the least (simply too improbable), but all the others are more concerning than climate disaster – hot. I think we could adapt to a warmer climate with minimal damage. The others appear to me to be far more devastating.
stom
You can add antibiotic failure to your list as cases are already appearing in which infections are proving wholly resistant to all the antibiotics we have.
Personally I also worry the terrific progress in reducing malaria may come to nought if the parasite adapts yet again to our efforts to eliminate it.
Eric is dead right to say we are wasting billions on an unproven hysteria and not on things which really are harming people now and which we can actually do something about.
…or using Taylor’s logic
we should all kill ourselves…because death is certain
You forgot volcanic island flank collapse and consequent mega-tsunami. Has happened many times in the past.
Or a really big hurricane like the one in 1780. If that happened today casualties would probably reach seven figures.
The Precautionary Principle they have developed to reverse CO2 is backwards…it should be that we won’t do anything to harm our economy and way of life until we have 100% proof that this future state of climate is both happening, and dangerous. So far, the climate is so benign that it is supporting 7.6 billion people on the good Earth, in part due to the CO2 we do have in the atmosphere. If there is anything we should fear about any long term climate change, it should be fear of a long term cooling trend as that would certainly be catastrophic to humanity. We shouldn’t kneecap our western economy to allow China and India to gain predominately infinite growth, since that is a bridge too far. Nor should we couch this CAGW movement as a Marxist wealth redistribution scheme, or as a way to seize power from democratically elected nations. If we cripple our economy and way of life now with this extreme disruption to our economy, then we won’t have the money to make these improvements as they are needed to deal with ongoing long term natural climate change into the long term future. Understanding and predicting natural climate change should be a prerequisite to any radical intervention to our way of life or the economy.
If any monies are to be spent on ‘climate change’, then it should be first for things that are ultimately required anyway, like general flood protection or building a sea wall defence to protect cities from the worst of a storm surge. Or tap vast supplies of fresh water to insulate against drought and improve present day agriculture, perhaps in conjunction with flood control. Just these items alone make up the majority of any doomsday climate change nonsense that is being peddled by the alarmists. These are things that will need doing in the future anyway, so planning and developing a long term strategy to strengthen and protect our infrastructure is a long term investment that will pay dividends to us and future generations.
Michael Crichton also argued that point about the Precautionary Principle.
Dr Crichton wrote in his Author’s Message at the end of State of Fear:
– The “precautionary principle,” properly applied, forbids the the precautionary principle. It is self-contradictory. The precautionary principle therefore cannot be spoken of in terms that are too harsh.
The man was true genius and visionary. And compared to Dr Crichton insight and genius intellect, Mr Taylor is but a mere carnival barker looking to score a quick buck from gullible bystanders.
It is no wonder the GreenSlime desperately wanted the famous, respected, and popular Dr. Crichton dead. And then cheered when he unexpectedly died of a lymphoma.
+100
So in your minds science fiction trumps science.
Models? LOL
“We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”
– Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations
on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.
– Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The models are convenient fictions
that provide something very useful.”
– Dr David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University
I see you found C3headlines and copied their contextomies. I do not know which is worse; their intellectual dishonesty or your plagiarism.
Your delusions trump everything Jack, except maybe your denial of what your team is up to, even when they spell it out. You are a joke, Jack! LOL
I’d say the worst part is the unmitigated whining from Jack Dale
If you do not want your assertions scrutinized, do not post them on a public forum.
He’s like a batting practice pitcher who only throws hanging curveballs… 😉
Jack Dale, you’ve just proven you haven’t got a mind with that asinine accusation.
No, science fiction explains science fiction.
There never was any science behind the myth that CO2 was harmful.
Anyone else notice that Jack doesn’t even try to refute the statements of his side.
Instead he just insults those who show his own lack of clothes.
Jack, when did blatant whining become “scrutiny”?
I suggest you do some research on plagiarism, Jack Dale, before exposing your misunderstandings. Quoting small amounts of text, within quotation marks, while citing the original sources is NOT plagiarism. See https://www.plagiarism.org/article/what-is-plagiarism
Yet another thing that JD considers himself an expert in, but isn’t.
Ralph, Don’t confuse him with facts while he’s being superior and gloating about it.
Or…. Don’t interrupt an enemy while he’s making a mistake. Sun Tzu
Not Sun Tzu.
just some short French guy:-D
n’interromps jamais ton ennemi lorsqu’il commet une erreur
michael
Napoleon Bonaparte was not all that short for his generation of Frenchmen. Cartoons of him as a malevolent dwarf by the British and Austrians were war propaganda.
Pretty much most of what Dr Crichton wrote about the Greenslime in his 2004 State of Fear novel has come to fruition in 2019. The lightning thing was sorta out there, but all the characters he portrayed, pretty much spot on.
The Left is desperate to silence anyone who speaks out against their climate religion. Including you Jack.
Jack,
You ignorant fool. It takes a great deal of work and intelligence to write a good science fiction novel. Besides people like Dr. Crichton, I would like to point out Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Dr. Carl Sagan, just to name a few. Any one of them could have debated circles around you. Did it never occur to you that in order to write a good science fiction novel that one must have a good education in science?
I didn’t know Trump did science, but I know he has a good line in fiction, and he claims a “genius” level IQ.
When the Precautionary Principle was explained to to me; probably decades before some of these geniuses were born, it was indeed 180 degrees away from Taylors definition; to paraphrase:
If you have a serious problem, refrain from taking drastic action until you are sure the cure is not worse than the disease.
You’re right, George. For me, the precautionary principle is “Look before you leap,” and that includes your version. If you want to go further with the cure/disease analogy, you can use the Hippocratic oath, “First, do no harm.”
Yet in the alarmist definition, which I found in a UK government document from 2002, the purpose of the principle is: “to create an impetus to take a decision notwithstanding scientific uncertainty about the nature and extent of the risk.” And they want to use it “even if the likelihood of harm is remote.”
Summary – We don’t understand what’s happening, so we should spend trillions and end civilization as we know it.
+1
I think it is more accurate to state it this way than that: Nothing which is in any way unusual is occurring with the weather, and added CO2 is causing the Earth to green up and crops to grow faster and more easily, so spending any money at all to “fight” a nonexistent problem is dumb, and spending vast amounts of time and money is insane and counterproductive.
I think we understand weather just fine. It is predictions that are beyond our ken. In fact it may well be the case that it will never be possible to predict the weather decades in advance, especially with insufficient input precision, accuracy, number and distribution of data points, and computing power.
I do agree that no one has sufficient understanding, let alone verification of such, of all of the relevant factors when it comes to how the atmosphere changes over time.
Imagine there are no people. Imagine a planet where the sea level is about five to 40 meters (16 to 131 feet) higher than normal. Imagine a planet that is hotter and wetter. Imagine, worldwide, it’s roughly 3 to 4 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today. And the North and South poles are even warmer still – as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than today.
Welcome to the Pliocene. That was the Earth about three to five million years ago, very different to the Earth we inhabit now. But in at least one respect it was rather similar. This is the last time that carbon dioxide (CO2) levels were as high as they are today.
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/7/graphic-carbon-dioxide-hits-new-high/
And that was just 400 ppm, not 415 ppm as it is currently.
Imagine an ice age.
They already did imagine one!
Science News magazine, 1975…
1974 TIME magazine article…
The full text of the article can be accessed through Steve Goddard’s Real Science.
1973 Newsweek article…
Dan Gainor compiled a great timeline of media alarmism (both warming and cooling) in his Fire and Ice essay.
This 1975 magazine cover and article were very real…
Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics was a 1977 National Academies publication. It featured what appears to be the same temperature graph, clearly demonstrating a mid-20th century cooling trend…
The mid-20th Century cooling trend is clearly present in the instrumental record, at least in the northern hemisphere…
According to the models Gorebal Warming saved us from The Ice Age Cometh…
The imagination of today’s climate scientists saved us from the imaginations of 1970’s climate scientists.
Science was 6:1 warming:cooling in the 70’s.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
The MSm got it really wrong.
” Steve Goddard’s Real Science” = oxymoron
JD, you are either trying gaslighting or have fallen prey to revisionist history yourself. As an old fart (63) I remember the popular media and such sources as Scientific American. It was cooling they were predicting, not warming.
Yes, you remember MSM, you do not remember science. Read the BAMS article.
Science in the 1970’s…
Historical geology…
Meteorology…
Physical geography…
Science in 1963…
From the full paper…
So, way back in 1963, we knew exactly what we know today:
The entire theory of climatic changes by CO2 variations is questionable.
6 times more paper on warming. Read the BAMS paper.
In the opinions of the authors of the BAMS paper… vs the actual text from actual textbooks from the 1970’s and the actual texts from news articles from the 1970’s and actual scientific papers written in the 1960’s and 1970’s. A review of an expanded inventory of papers from 1965-1979 yielded somewhat different results.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/19/the-1970s-global-cooling-consensus-was-not-a-myth/
The degree to which there was or wasn’t a consensus is irrelevant. Compared to today, there were very few papers being written on climate change in the 1970’s. The lack of attention to global warming in the textbooks and the media focus of attention on an imminent ice age didn’t materialize out of thin air.
Tony is right, Jack is wrong. I remember it. In the 1970s the “consensus” was that the threat was cooling, not warming.
The twin threats of global cooling and acid rain were the reasons that building extremely tall chimneys was abandoned as the primary approach for ground level air pollution abatement from power plants and factories, in favor of (much more expensive) “scrubbers.”
Here’s a 1974 TIME Magazine article entitled, “Another Ice Age?”
https://sealevel.info/climate/Time_6-24-1974.html
Here’s the original copy, on Time’s web site:
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
Here’s a 1974 CIA Report on climate change entitled, A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems, which summarized expert opinion of the day:
http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf
The dreaded climate threat then was global cooling, rather than warming. Here’s an excerpt, from the Summary:
The grim climate to which we were thought to be returning was the Little Ice Age. “Boreal” means cold:
boreal. adj. Relating to or characteristic of the climatic zone south of the Arctic, especially the cold temperate region dominated by taiga and forests of birch, poplar, and conifers…
Fortunately, the consensus (and TIME, and the CIA) were wrong. The cooling trend bottomed out about five years later. Since then, the climate has been modestly warming, and the “agricultural-optimum” temperatures have been maintained.
Jack Daly, the mental image you project is that of a small child with fingers pressed into ears, chanting “lalalalalalalalalala…”
Plus you are just plain wrong.
Jack, sorry but the paper you referenced has been shown to be nonsense (aka propaganda).
https://notrickszone.com/285-papers-70s-cooling-1/
Those deriding Jack Dale should have a heart and show more compassion. It must be horrible for him to have his entire worldview contradicted by actual facts.
Jack
Science was 6 warming, 283 cooling in the 70´s.
Try to get your numbers right. I´ve heard this “but there WAS papers for warming” before many times. I know that argument. 6.
Now go and play football with other 12 years old. Stop now, you stupid troll!
Imagine the role of CO2 in the Carbon Cycle of Life.
Where’s the Pliocene climate then?
Just wait a bit. Meanwhile, study up on system lag.
There is no lag in the Transient Climate Response (>80% of the warming)…
Something like 90% of the response to more CO2 should show up in less than 5 years. We’ve been increasing CO2 for over 80 years. We’ve also been increasing CO2 pretty steadily over the last 25 years, yet the only warming during that period was a massive El Nino.
We have been “waiting” for over 30 years, Jack, while one global warming alarmist prediction after another failed, one after the other.
In fact, the record of being completely wrong every single time they open their mouths is a rather amazing and highly unlikely outcome, and yet, here we are.
In 2019,
Still waiting.
Still listening to you jackasses being wrong and smug.
Only now you are costing us money.
Only now you have miseducated generations of kids.
Only now you are scaring young people into committing suiciding and poisoning themselves with drugs in higher numbers than ever before in history.
All while nothing changes, the weather is the same as it ever was, and warmistas pretend they know shit from shinola.
Just wait a bit. Meanwhile, study up on system lag.
Or better, you could study up on the non-sequitur fallacy.
Unless you’re already familiar . . .
Yup. And Yellowstone went up 1st time round about then.
Might could again.
Watcha goan do ’bout it, homes?
During the last 350 years Yellowstone has had regular 60 year periodic oscillations ( link ), the regularity I have not come across in any other set of the data.
What is graphed there, vukcevic? (What are the units of the vertical scale?)
It is change in the surface magnetic field intensity. Long term and slow changes are due to variability in the intensity of global field. In shorter term there is an effect from solar activity via geomagnetic storms (22 year component) and finally changes in the magma movements.
The near surface magma is not magnetic, its temperature is well above Curie point, however temperature of the lithosphere above slowly decreases towards the surface. Any movement or temperature changes of the magma below will be reflected in the depth of lithosphere (rich in the iron compounds) and therefore volume of the magnetised material below Curie point at any moment in time. Units are nT, with 100nT commensurate with strength of an average geomagnetic storm in the polar region, the recent GM storm widely publicized
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/13/three-solar-storms-headed-for-earth/
was graded as a severe (by BGS) at 200nT (as measured at Tromso, Norway)
MegaCattle with tons of Rib Eye! Bring it on!
The Pliocene is just more evidence that CO2 has jack schist to do with temperatures…
Some authors have suggested that the continual rising of the Himalayas reached a “critical” altitude about 5 million years ago (sufficient to influence atmospheric wind patterns), which contributed to the generally-cooler temps since then. (Does anyone else remember this?)
As well as the aforementioned rising of the Isthmus of Panama (within the same timeframe).
Too many people are “hung up” on the notion that CO2 is the “only” climate driver. (I call that “Single-Cause Attribution”)
One of my most influential Geology profs taught us about T. C. Chamberlin’s “Multiple Working Hypotheses”, 42 years ago, i.e., I was taught to be a skeptic. Sadly, I have only heard one Geologist mention “Multiple Working Hypotheses” in the field (perhaps others used it without explaining it to others).
And I do remember “global cooling” (due to atmospheric “opacity” due to particulates) being mentioned, then.
I should have mentioned the Himalayas.
Now you know of at least two geologists who had Chamberlin’s Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses drummed into his head in college… I don’t know how someone could be a geologist without it.
http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/railsback_chamberlin.html
…. more like ‘Pillockcene’ if the climatiers get their way.
And what conclusion are you to draw from a world where the CO2 concentration is LOWER (400 compared to 415), yet WARMER (5.4 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit). Perhaps that the relationship of CO2 to temperature is not what some think?
Jack, it seems like a fair argument against CO2 as the main cause of warming in the Pilocene, and against the global warming alarmist scenarios. If the earth had lower CO2 levels and yet was much warmer, then it wasn’t CO2 which caused the warming, so what was it?
so are you saying that we should have already been experiencing Pliocene climate? So, why are we not?
I agree Jack, Climate Change is all about imagination.
I think an ice age would have been a better comparison since we’ve been there done that.
However there is very little to suggest that the Pliocene climate was due to the 400 ppm CO2.
It is easy to name a dozen intervals when CO2 was about 400 ppm, but with vastly different climates. The Berriasian, the Valanginian, the Early Paleocene and the Early Eocene for example.
The most likely “culprit” was the efficiency of ocean heat transport… The closure of the Panama Seaway was probably the main driver in the rapid cooling from the Pliocene into the Pleistocene.
“Imagine a planet where the sea level is about five to 40 meters (16 to 131 feet) higher than normal.”
You have this backwards.
If one were to consider what level of the ocean is “normal”, one would logically look at the level that has prevailed for the majority of the time.
Earth has very rarely been as deadly cold as now, and vast amounts of frozen water have rarely been locked up in ice sheets and glaciers, ergo normal sea level is the one that exists when the ice sheets have melted.
Imagine something else instead: Imagine a world with abundant life from pole to pole, with no huge expanses of deadly and permanently frozen wastelands.
The fact that Jack considers the bottom of the Little Ice Age to be “normal” tells us all we need to know about his perspective.
Normal depends on specific perspective;
” …. The only normal one is Jack-Jack, and he’s not even toilet trained!”
Turned out that, despite appearances, Jack wasn’t normal after all (but still wasn’t toilet trained).
Really Jack, that’s the best you can do?
Please tell me how a few tenths of a degree is going to kill all the people, when temperatures 3 to 5C higher not only didn’t end humanity but was a time of unprecedented growth.
Really, 5 to 40 meters? Even the sainted IPCC doesn’t get that apocalyptic. Once again, where’s the science that says that a few tenths of a degree is going to result in that much SLR.
Imagine a world that’s warmer and wetter. I’d love to, such a world would be a lot better for most plants and animals.
Jack, Jack, Jack, you know as well as everyone that there were significant geographic differences between the world of 3 to 5 million years ago and today. Yet, like most acolytes you want to ignore everything other than CO2. I would like to believe that you aren’t actually stupid enough to believe the crap you are laying down, so I can only conclude that you are being paid to lie.
‘And that was just 400 ppm, not 415 ppm as it is currently.’
So… I guess it was something else causing all that, huh?
Because it ain’t like that NOW, is it?
Ah yes, Pascal’s Dilemma. I have always assumed that if this was taken seriously, our churches would be overflowing with climate scientists. And yet, they are not.
I can literally think of hundreds of things that are very likely to happen long before climate change kills us all. And yet I see no big rush to address those either.
My biggest problem with Pascal’s Wager was that it doesn’t tell you WHICH Religion you should be ‘betting’ on.
I mean, logically your best bet would be to follow ALL the religions. And since we’re talking precautionary principle here, that includes even the really unlikely ones, like Discordia, Pastafarian, Raëlians, etc.
Now, some people may think this would be too difficult. I mean, we can’t even get all the variations of Christianity to work together, or them with the variations of Islam or Judaism, despite them all having a lot in common (and probably all sharing the same God). How can we hope to reconcile all those with systems that worship OTHER Gods? Or MULTIPLE gods? Or even no God at all?
I’ve thought long and hard about this, and eventually I came to a conclusion. By reading the holy works of many belief systems I’ve come to the conclusion that the Gods of most religions are largely more concerned that you not worship the WRONG way, namely the way depicted by the other major Religions. Heretics are always hated far more then unbelievers, who are hated more then the mearly Agnostic. So the true precautionary principle would state that your best bet is to follow NONE OF THEM. Because isn’t it better to believe Nothing them to be wrong?
~¿~
(actually I’m Infinitive Christian, in part because I don’t think faith should be based on game theory. Luckily my God is a forgiving one. He even forgives people for not knowing which ‘True’ religion they were supposed to guess was the right one.)
A distracted and pretty much disinterested God is indeed smiling down upon us from his place in the clouds, although I am not so sure he has a long grey beard. (Or dreadlocks made of pasta, for that matter.)
But below us, it is turtles.
All the way down.
https://image.myanimelist.net/ui/9EJEfZOID2Jf88GEpEwuRlO6iYAHXxkzgSlTmWowSpUbRkJkegvsUeAandoJuesKo_5oq2sJ4TnB6unYdaGwqWFbnexAG0k1ZtLuJwl2KoG6kEjgp-Bl3UFTwD4gofKl5K_pAuEKgZH2DBzCanX5jQ
^¿^
This column gets to the very heart of the issue: What actions are justified based on what we know?
More spending on monitoring the weather and studying the climate? Absolutely.
Support to create models, and study historical climate. 100% on board.
Decarbonize the global economy at a huge cost? Not even close.
Advertising programs to convince alarmists to switch to a diet based on insect-protein? You bet.
Many of the proposals, such as wind power and wealth transfers, make no rational sense under ANY scenario.
Steve
“More spending on monitoring the weather and studying the climate? Absolutely.
Support to create models, and study historical climate. 100% on board.”
That is exactly what I said 30 years ago. That led us here.
Thousands of jobs depend on the possibility of a problem. How many of them will report the non-existence of the problem?
So here we are.
Personally, I think that Witches are a greater problem than Global Warming/Climate Change and that more money should be spent on studying Witches and all the money not spent on investigating Climate Change/Global Warming should fund schools and hospitals. The large amount left over after that can be given back to taxpayers.
Do we get to pick which witch we get to study?
https://pixabay.com/photos/witch-gothic-goth-dark-portrait-3202467/
Straight forward economics strongly urges us to do nothing on climate change but continue to invest in infrastructure resilience and economic growth.
You have to be moron to think that if we stopped burning fossil fuels today, that somehow major hurricanes would cease to occur, or other extreme weather would stop, or that SLR would reverse. The biggest threat to ecosystems and the environment is poor population. Sub-Sahara Africa today is the prime example of what poverty, poaching, and environmental destruction brings.
China needs the Congo to be in chaos so that its companies can continue to exploit and strip its resources at a fraction of their value for return to China for refining.
As far as worst case scenarios go, Mr Taylor seems to fail to appreciate the sick mind of a Progressive and the unending “never-enough” needs of rentseeking pseudoscientists. If we achieved some goal to address a worst-case scenario, the Left always invents an even worse case scenario. They are doing it right now in CMIP6 with a scenario that will make RCP8.5-doomsters blush with envy.
The best choice to to “Just Say No” to these Leftist children and their magical thinking. Yes, they’ll have temper tantrums as they do everyday with Trump. But then that all the more reason to just ignore them and not abet their behavior, which just gets reinforces more of that childish behavior.
Clearly Mr Worrall is clearly unfamiliar with the “Cautionary Principle.” He probably has no house insurance and does not wear a seat belt whole in a moving car.
[?? .mod]
It’s the Precautionary Principle… And it would prevent Eric from buying a house or driving a car because he might crash the car into the house.
See that, Jack? David just gave you an opportunity to learn. Try and make the most of it.
“And it would prevent Eric from buying a house or driving a car because he might crash the car into the house.”
Having a house and driving a car are pretty much unavoidable (the first is an imperative).
However insurance – for the house at least (in the UK car insurance is a legal requirement) – is optional.
How many would do without it?
And why would that be?
Insurance is to the precautionary principle as condoms are to abstinence.
Jack´s father didn´t understand precautionary principle.
The cost of insurance is related to relative risk.
On the other hand the cost of cutting CO2 levels is trillions of times greater than even the worst case risk.
Actually a better analogy would be to say, ‘we think you might develop heart-disease someday, so we’re just gonna hook you up with a government-mandated artificial baboon heart – but don’t worry, ALL our crony peer-review says it works fine.
Because we’re trying to help.
Jack Dale
Rather, your abuse of the Precautionary Principle holds that, because tornadoes have struck around my house, I must bulldoze the entire city I live in and move all of the houses and stores and hospitals and buildings down below ground, with adequate food, water and air stored inside each shelter for 6 months, because the power and water might also be out after a tornado for 6 months.
The worst case scenario is NOT temps rising a couple of degrees; it’s temps falling a couple of degrees. The mass extinction that would occur in the resulting ice age would dwarf anything any global warming alarmist has predicted.
Have anthropogenic CO2 emission already prevented such a nightmare? Some climatologists think so.
So, given the precautionary principle, isn’t it imperative that we do everything possible to prevent another ice age?
Any ice age is 10’s of thousands of years in the future. The effects of warming are with the next few generations.
Philip D. Gingerich. Temporal Scaling of Carbon Emission and Accumulation Rates: Modern Anthropogenic Emissions Compared to Estimates of PETM-Onset Accumulation. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 2019; DOI: 10.1029/2018PA003379
Too fracking funny. More evidence that CO2 has Jack Schist to do with temperatures.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/18/140-years-to-a-new-petm-another-petm-chicken-little-of-the-sea-epic-fail/
We had a lot of fun with “Dr” Gingerich’s so called paper just a couple of days ago.
Surprised you managed to miss it.
Particularly since I hat tipped him for it… 😉
“Any ice age is 10’s of thousands of years in the future. ”
-Jack Dale
Jack Dale – “Any ice age is 10’s of thousands of years in the future.”
How do you know that? Could that be because of anthropogenic CO2?
This interglacial is already unusually long. That’s why some climatologists suggest we’ve already prevented (or delayed) the next ice age.
The astronomical decision to end the Holocene has already been taken, as there is a lag of ~6,500 years between cause and effect in Milankovitch forcing. The planet committed to a new glaciation when the summer energy at 70°N with a threshold of 250 W/m2 went below 4.96 GJ/m2. This line was crossed 1,500 years ago, and there is no going back. See:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/08/14/nature-unbound-x-the-next-glaciation/
Particularly figure 139.
The long interglacial hypothesis is wrong in several of its assumptions and should be rejected.
The faith in CO2 will not keep the ice from coming. Although glacial inception is still 1,000-4,000 years away, there will be serious cooling in the coming centuries and the precautionary principle requires we start preparing for what would be the worst catastrophe ever for humankind.
Jack,
No rational person insures where the cost of insurance exceeds the cost of possible damages. Just ask Bjorn Lomberg, an economist who accepts the man made climate change script but dared to question the “precautionary principle” rational for trashing the western economy. Of course he was vilified for deviating from the full five alarm climate disaster porn message.
It’s worse than that.
We also did an audit of the forecasting procedures used for two papers that were designed to support proposed regulation related to protecting polar bears – leg “3” of the stool. On average, these procedures violated 85% of the 90 relevant principles.
The warming alarmists have not demonstrated the predictive validity of their procedures. Instead, their argument for predictive validity is based on their claim that nearly all scientists agree with the forecasts. Such an appeal to “voting” is contrary to the scientific method. It is also incorrect.
We conducted a validation test of the IPCC forecasts based on the assumption that there would be no interventions. This test found that the errors for IPCC model long-term forecasts (91 to 100 years in the future) were 12.6 times larger than those from an evidence-based “no change” model.
Based on our analyses, we concluded that the global warming alarm is an anti-scientific political movement.
We then turned to the “structured analogies” method to forecast the likely outcomes of this movement. In this ongoing study, we have, to date, identified 26 historical alarmist movements. None of the forecasts for the analogous alarms proved correct. In the 25 alarms that called for government intervention, the government impost regulations in 23. None of the 23 interventions was effective and harm was caused by 20 of them.
http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/hearings/Report%20for%20Congressional%20hearing-R14%20%282%29%20armstrong%20update.pdf
Robert – see your misconception? You used the word ‘rational’.
Dealing with Progressives in general and greenies in particular you just have accept that rationality is not a factor.
I think it is a better analogy to assume a house with a replacement cost of $400,000 and an insurance policy costing $500,000 per year. Still wise to buy the insurance? That should be a stretch, even for an alarmist.
The seat belt comparison makes no sense unless the comparison is supplied by someone who only advocates low cost, low disruption responses to climate change. The benefits of seat belts are established by decades of statistics across hundreds of millions of drivers. The cost of use is trivial.
Wearing a seatbelt has very little ‘cost’, and the benefit (while unlikely to be needed for the average driver) is potentially large. Therfore the seatbelt has good cost/benefit.
An alternative to wearing a seat belt it to reduce the speed limit to 10mph. The benefit (from an accident/injury perspective) is even greater then the seatbelt, but the cost would be astronomical. Travel times would be 5X longer on average. Our entire civilization would have to be reworked.
Now assume that a political group wanted to mandate that all vehicles be driven backwards to prevent injuries. No matter how much they claim that dangerous vehicle accidents are on the rise, or what statistics they show that accidents in vehicles that are being driven backwards result in fewer injuries, it won’t change the fact that their ‘solution’ is both a terrible idea and doesn’t have a good cost/benefit.
These is where we are with the Climate Faithful. Not only do they want us to spend vast resources against a low possibility of disaster, they want us to spend them on solutions that are unlikely to work.
~¿~
As espoused by the acolytes, the precautionary principle is more akin to buying meteorite insurance for your house.
Jack Dale
Something you overlook is the cost of insurance. It would not be logical to buy insurance if it cost more than the replacement value of the house.
You would do well to read the following paper by Chauncey Starr:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1985.tb00158.x
Using your analogy Jack, and the logic and application of the precautionary principle as reinvented by climate alarmists, we would all call the fire department to drench our house and chop holes in the roof anytime we stepped out for the day, in case a fire started. And trade our cars in for bicycles.
“…we should most certainly hedge—and hedge aggressively—by removing fossil fuels from the economy as quickly as possible.”
That’s not hedging. That’s jumping off a cliff.
Anyone who believes the correct action is to “Hedge” by removing Fossil Fuels from the economy has the Moral Obligation to act upon it by no longer making use of anything and everything that uses Fossil Fuels in it’s creation or use.
No fossil fueled cars, trucks, boats or planes
No fossil fuel transported foods or goods
No fossil fuel produced electricity and no grid sourced electricity as .80% of grid sourced energy is created by fossil fuels
No rubber tires
No petrol chemicals
No synthetics
No plastics
No cell phones
etc….
China, India, and the rest of the developing world control CO2 emissions, now and into the future. Even if these emissions were a problem (which, of course, they’re not), we couldn’t do a thing about it. I think the Aussies just made that point, loud and clear.
That thinking assumes there is no risk to taking “action”. The risk is we sacrifice all the gains we’ve made in bringing people out of poverty in the last 40 years.
My friendly opponent in a Golf grudge match could take out insurance costing $100,000 against a wager of say $1,000 that I don’t win the game with 3 Holes-In-One, because a Sims version of me did 3 Holes-In-One in a simulation of my games based on previous ones against different opponents just so he would ensure he would ‘win the game’ somehow.
[Feel free to correct or expand my example of the ludicrous GND schemes]
Eric ==> Can’t say that I agree with you — Taylor’s reasoning is the same as mine for no longer riding motorcycles — which I greatly enjoyed as a young man (my first vehicle was a motorcycle at 15 1/2 — and I still have recurring dreams of riding the deserts of California in nothing but swim trunks and sunglasses. But now, with more years behind me than I wish to admit to, I consider motorcycle riding simply too dangerous — far exceeding my risk-benefit ratio.
Nothing wrong with Taylor personally deciding that his fear of “Bad Things The Climate Might Do” exceeds his personal ability to accept those risks.
I have exposed by own understandings on the topic here at WUWT in my two-essay series “Why I Don’t Deny: Confessions of a Climate Skeptic” Parts 1 and 2.
In my opinion, after following the topic since the early two thousand noughts…..is that we should take all reasonable No Regrets actions and throw money at Nuclear (fusion or modern fission). It is silly to still be “burning stuff” for energy.
Bjorn Lomberg is on the same page as you, Kip, if I remember correctly.
Motorcycle accidents are real events. CAGW is fiction that only exists in models and the minds of doomers, and it has zero relationship with reality.
…. don’t forget the kleptocrats and the other assorted taxation thieves and hucksters, and the cognitive dissonance-ridden scientists and others who can’t bear to admit they were wrong in their strident pronouncements, now embarrassing.
It also was a real event when I was in the emergency room once and everyone in it except for me (about 40 people) had been in a motorcycle accident, not one person was there due to climate change.
As a lifelong veteran of emergency rooms from north to south and east to west across the US, I have to say that the odds of everyone in one being there from such a cause is incredibly unlikely.
Group Ride + Drunk Driver = Lots Wrecked Bikers.
Happened to an old friend of mine. They were on a Poker Run and were stopped at a light when a drunk in a large pickup failed to stop, and plowed right into the back of them. At least a dozen people injured, including several couples who were riding double. Luckily no one was killed, though several were close calls.
~¿~
Everything in life is a risk:benefits calculation.
Except that with the climate alarmists, they demand there be no consideration of the benefits of fossil fuel use or of CO2 increases on increased productivity of the biosphere.
Doing so allows the denominator in the calculation to approach zero. The no matter the what does or doesn’t come to pass on the risk claims, the assessment always goes to the extreme on action for risk avoidance.
I don’t have a motorcycle because both my parents are still alive and I’m their only child left. I can’t do that to them with such high risk behavior. Tucson Arizona motorists killed two local motorcyclists just this past Sunday in separate accidents. Tucson drivers kill an average of 1 motorcyclist a week.
Nothing silly about using the cheapest form of energy available.
Unless you simply hate people and want them to suffer.
When we file exploration and development plans to drill wells in the Gulf of Mexico, we have to include a “worst case discharge” calculation.
https://www.boem.gov/Worst-Case-Discharge-Determination/
We don’t drill wells with the expectation that the rig will explode, sink into the ocean and the oil & gas will flow directly out of the wellhead in an uncontrolled manner… But we make this calculation because the government tells us to. It doesn’t help to prevent blowouts. It doesn’t help to control blowouts. It doesn’t help to clean up the oil after blowouts. I think it’s because it took too long to figure out how much to fine BP for the Macondo oil spill.
BP’s Macondo blowout had an estimated total flow rate of 50,000 to 70,000 BOE/d (oil and gas). That’s a much higher flow rate than if the well was properly completed and flowing into a pipeline at a rate that maximized total recovery. When LLOG successfully completed their well in the Macondo reservoir, they brought it on at about 13,500 BOE/d.
RCP8.5 is like an imaginary version of WCD.
Taylor is either a liar or a fool. In either case his views are not worth reporting. His position, if it can be called that, is logically and intellectually absurd. The Cato Institute is and has been for years something of a comedy sketch, even when they are not walking the plank like Taylor.
Mr. Tayler shouldt stop immediately to drive a car, to fly or even to cross a road, viewing the worstcase scenarios of these activities.
Death by medical errors not to forget 😀
I prefer to abide by Mark Twain’s sage observation –
I used to believe in trees. Their beauty. Their shade. Their contribution to the air.
But then I realized how many people could be killed by falling tree limbs, and I decided that the best course of action was to rid the planet of all trees.
Spoken like a true Dwarven warrior.
^¿^
To be fair, witch hunts, and warlock trials, are trendy, even urbane, today.
The worst case scenario is all plant life on Planet Earth is enriched by more atmospheric CO2. More robust plants produce higher yields to feed humans and all animals, with less fertilizer and irrigation required. If the planet is warmed 2F, more fertile soils become available for crop production and human habitation.
It’s too horrible to even consider, isn’t it? “Oh, the humanity…”