Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate Scientist Mike Hulme has stirred a hornets nest by suggesting setting climate deadlines is counterproductive, because when the deadlines are missed people point and laugh.
Why setting a climate deadline is dangerous
The publication of the IPCC Special Report on global warming of 1.5C paved the way for the rise of the political rhetoric of setting a fixed deadline for decisive actions on climate change. However, the dangers of such deadline rhetoric suggest the need for the IPCC to take responsibility for its report and openly challenge the credibility of such a deadline.
Shinichiro Asayama, Rob Bellamy, Oliver Geden, Warren Pearce and Mike Hulme
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This rise of ‘climate deadline-ism’ is, in some ways, a product of long-standing scientific (and political) endeavours to quantify what is ‘dangerous’ climate change. First articulated as a peak temperature target, this was then converted to a finite carbon budget and is now expressed as a fixed deadline after which policy interventions are deemed to be ‘too late’. This discursive translation of danger may help to increase a sense of urgency, as evidenced by the recent emergence of a youth climate movement. However, it also creates the condition in which a climate emergency is being rashly declared, a move that could lead to politically dangerous consequences.
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A more fundamental problem with deadline-ism is that it might incite cynical, cry-wolf responses and undermine the credibility of climate science when an anticipated disaster does not happen. The imagery of deadlines and countdown clocks offers an illusory cliff-edge after which the world heads inevitably to its imminent demise. It promulgates the imaginary of extinction and the collapse of civilization. The impacts of climate change are more likely to be intermittent, slow and gradual.
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Read more: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0543-4 (Free access available from the link on Mike Hulme’s website)
The response from the climate alarm community has been less than enthusiastic. For example, from Think Progress;
We don’t have 12 years to save the climate. We have 14 months.
The deadline for protecting our children from a ruined climate is close at hand.
JOE ROMMJUL 26, 2019, 8:00 AM…
Into this discussion over rhetoric comes a new article in journal Nature Climate Change, “Why setting a climate deadline is dangerous.” In it, scholars from Japan, the U.K., and Germany argue “a 2030 deadline arises from political (mis)use of science in setting an artificial deadline.”
The article is deeply flawed. For instance, the authors write of the IPCC’s “estimate of the remaining time to reach 1.5°C — a likely range of 12–34 years from 2018. This is where the ‘12 years’ rhetoric originates.”But that’s not accurate. The ’12 years’ rhetoric does not originate from the fact that we might hit 1.5 degrees Celcius in 2030. It originates from the fact that if we don’t make very deep cuts by 2030, we have no possible chance of keeping below 1.5 degrees — and if we don’t make deep cuts by 2030 we are going to blow past 2 degrees.
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ThinkProgress asked Dr. Mann to comment on this new article about deadlines. “We should of course be as clear as possible about what we mean when we talk dangerous warming limits and pathways for limiting warming below them,” he wrote in an email.
“But saying there should be no targets or timelines at all is really just giving a free pass to polluters,” he added. “It’s a welcome message to the forces of denial and delay.” And those forces currently control the highest office in the land.
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Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/we-dont-have-12-years-to-save-the-climate-we-have-14-months-71401316dbc4/
Deadlines have been a feature of climate politics since 1989, when the UN predicted disaster if global warming is not checked by the year 2000.
Deadlines make great theatre.
But as Mike Hulme points out, deadlines can come back to haunt you, when the alleged terrifying consequences of ignoring the deadline fail to manifest.
sorry people…too much water over the dam already
once you make a total idiot out of yourself…..it’s really hard to convince people you’re not
We skeptics should encourage more climate deadlines from the alarmists. they work in our favor.
RIP: Dead deadlines!
…CO2 is not “pollution”…..Period….
The AGW fraud will be totally exposed in 3 years and 4 months.
It is time to again bring up Stephen Schneider’s 30 year old remarks which undoubtedly influenced generations of “climate scientists”, especially those in the self named group “the Cause”.
It is my opinion that his acolytes took the last sentence as seriously as a Monty Python “Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”
I printed this in full because a lot of his apologists claim the sentence had been taken out of context.
Maybe we should start circulating the list of failed predictions. If nothing else it would give people a laugh. And in the UK at the moment we are in desperate need of something to laugh about
A deadline,especially a near term deadline is almost as valuable as a falsifiable theory.
So Hume is basically saying no replicable science and no short term deadlines,as either will expose us.
Shades of Vroomfondel & Majikthise.
However these learned gentlepersons are too late, the entire meme of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change,AKA Global Warming is already a comedy.
People already point and laugh.
The 30 years of weather equals climate is being quietly buried.
The hysterical claims of “extreme heat” are alienating ever more citizens.
The desperation of the Cult of Calamitous Climate is growing daily, the weather is not cooperating,the cries of “Wolf” are old.
The Emperors parade daily in their obese nakedness.12 months to Doomsday.
This attempt to stampede the masses for profit and power is fading away,it will not end well as the mob is vindictive and quite capable of revenge.
The “Frightened Scientists” may discover that they were not frightened enough.
Hume will live in infamy,if history remembers his empty prattlings at all.
When you have indoctrinated the several young generations, they are too ignorant to understand that all these past deadlines have come and gone without any matching results. Then you get this Greta kid and all the young people swoon and begin having mental disorders caused by this blatant nonsense. And it goes downhill.
So when will the MSM list all the failed CC deadlines? Not enough time or print space?
So many people set so many deadlines for so many things the public doesn’t remember them. The public also knows from long experience that deadlines come and go without much consequence, either in terms of disaster or impact on deadline-setters. The only exception might be for cult leaders who predict the end of the world, but their publicity is meant for mockery not serious consideration.
A rift is clearly developing between the nervous climate scientists who still want to salvage their reputations, and the carnival barking “jornalists” and their bedfellow liar pseudo-scientists who long ago chucked to the trash heap their honesty and science ethics as unnecessary baggage.
Oh no I hope they don’t ever stop making deadlines and ridiculous predictions.
It’s one of the best ways to convert thoughtful fence sitters out of scientism and into actual science.
Those deadlines always remind me of some apocalyptic cults that predict the end of the world to the day and then find all kinds of flimsy excuses why it did not happen. Cry Wolf too many times and people are not going to listen to you anymore. Why does it still work in Climate Change? Well, so far people had a feeling that they could have the cake and eat it. Now they start to find out that this crap is really expensive and their lives go to the dumpers as a result. Expect more of a backlash.
It was always a bad tactic to allow science (meteorology) to be upstaged by a doomsday cult driven politics and by self-promoters like Gore, McKibben, Hansen, etc.
Now they’re shedding crocodile tears about credibility?
Missed deadlines and bad predictions don’t carry a heavy price because they are directed at low attention span audiences to begin with. Add to that a near monopoly in the media for running cover up operations and cold shoulder news blackout on missed calls. We are dealing with political long shot snipers here and one win out many is more valuable to them in over reach policy deals and bad leadership set in motion than hundreds of misfires.
Can anyone name the groups, communes, and leaders of groups that predicted end of world doom (mostly on the west coast)? That’s not counting Jim Jones but he did come out of California.
So, around 1850 at the end of the LIA, average world temperatures were 1 to 1.5C lower than today. As we rebound from the LIA we have recovered approximately 1 degree C of warming. Why is this considered to be unusual or alarming? Within the context of climate change and the current climate hysteria I simply cannot understand why a moderately warmer climate after the LIA ended is of any great concern. Surely, it is mostly beneficial? Data tells us that the MWP was warmer than today and so was the Roman Warm Period. I am nor a scientist or a mathematician but I can only conclude based upon logic that this is a manufactured crisis.
If the climate hasn’t got 1.0°C warmer by 2025 Climate Change is over!
Only 6 years to Save the Hypothesis!
“…But as Mike Hulme points out, deadlines can come back to haunt you, when the alleged terrifying consequences of ignoring the deadline fail to manifest…”
They just say that the alleged terrifying consequences are in the pipeline…
The phrase …. “Hoist with his (their) own petard” is a phrase that comes to mind on reading this. William Shakespeare used it in Hamlet and it is still proverbial.
It promulgates the imaginary of extinction….
I suppose he intended to repeat imagery, but somehow he got it right. :>)
The Climate Change community, just like the other parts of the green blob, have been making doomsday predictions since the early 1970’s, with the scenario changing from cooling to warming. Mostly, the predicted changes have not exceeded the range of temperatures before 1940, at least in the US.
Well, it’s bad news in the UK for climate change alarmists and their 2030 apocalypse rant but good news for the rest of us. Andrea Leadsom has been appointed Secretary for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
In 2011 Leadsom wrote in a highly-critical article for the Conservative Home think-tank: “Whilst I accept that onshore wind has its part to play in generating renewable energy, I conclude that the benefits of onshore wind have been hugely exaggerated by the developers who stand to make huge sums from the taxpayer incentives.”
She added: “It used to be the case that criticising onshore wind energy led to being denounced as a ‘climate change denier’. I sincerely hope those days are over …”
Leadsom is familiar to the UK sector after completing a stint as energy minister in 2015 and 2016, when she helped steer through legislation taking onshore wind out of the national support mechanism, and championed the role of fracking-based gas extraction.
She has previously claimed turbines are inefficient and have an unacceptable impact in local communities.
https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/1828429/onshore-wind-critic-leadsom-is-new-uk-energy-secretary
Oh, Happy Days!
Leo Smith …
If the climate hasn’t got 1.0°C warmer by 2025 Climate Change is over!
It will get 1.0° warmer on “paper”. NASA’s GISSTEMP alters 20-30% of it’s monthly Land Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) every month. From May to June of this year, of the 1674 monthly entries since January 1880, 566 were changed. Here’s an example of what that looks like:
That chart is nearly four years old, but it hasn’t changed much. All the changes to 1980 data and later have been upwards. Most of the older data has been decreased. This goes on every month. Here’e the Link to the latest LOTI release:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v4/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
“Climate deadlines” are silly, political theater whose sole purpose is to ramp up alarm amongst the clueless, brainwashed and brainless sheople, in a last-ditch effort to prop up a dying, extremely dangerous to all humanity ideology.