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.
Prof. Mann refers to essential plant food as “pollution”? Hey Mikey, how about focussing on some real pollution, like where rivers catch on fire? Or people burn carcinogenic garbage? No payoff there? Hypocrite!
We fixed that stuff. But the environmentalists didn’t fold their tent and go away. It’s almost as if they really didn’t care about the environment, and just wanted to use it to get people to accept socialism.
Go figure.
Surely if the science is settled and it’s CO2 what done it, then the objective should be to stop CO2 concentration in the atmosphere reaching 4xx ppm. Answer please: How many more ppm of CO2 will be catastrophic, end of the species etc.
If, back in 1850 CO2 was 300 ppm, and now it’s 400 ppm, and temperatures have risen by 1 degree C, has that increase been catastrophic? Was the world a better place back then? Can someone please explain how a further 0.5 C of warming warrants the declaration of a climate emergency? If it’s a true global emergency, then emergency actions should commence now: no more flying, driving only on alternate days, cancel nighttime sporting events etc.
“If, back in 1850 CO2 was 300 ppm, and now it’s 400 ppm, and temperatures have risen by 1 degree C, has that increase been catastrophic? Was the world a better place back then? Can someone please explain how a further 0.5 C of warming warrants the declaration of a climate emergency?”
If that one degree C increase is measured up to Feb. 2016, the last current temperature highpoint, then we have to subtract 0.5C from that figure because the temperatures have cooled about 0.4C since Feb. 2016. Global temperatures have cooled for over three years even though CO2 has increased. So the last three years have moved us farther away from this so-called climate disaster, and have also shown us a period of time when the CO2 levels are increasing but the global temperatures are decreasing.
The UAH satellite chart:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_June_2019_v6.jpg
“…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 from the paper is an autopsy of a failed theory. They had a holistic theory with math and science. Shredded by nature’s whimsy, they abandoned the science and clung to the political part where Western civilization and its economic might have to be destroyed by shuttering fossil fuels, killing democracy and ushering in global governance. Now its employment of naked terror – a last ditch effort as foundations of the Plan crumble.
Conspirators who want to salvage reputations by backing away from the spittle-flecked end-of-worlders are definitely a ‘tell’ that time has run out. Any policy change will do so they can step ahead of the parade to take credit for a cooling world that certainly is a 50-50 proposition left to its natural fate. Very soon, the first papers will be coming out from these guys decentralizing the CO2 control knob.
The climate alarmists set short deadlines for a very good reason — they themselves have figured out the climate will soon cool for the intermediate future. By calling for immediate and drastic measures, a cooling climate will only confirm their original global warming message.
The parade has made a turn, so they are frantically trying to get back in front.
The alarmists are getting desperate now check this latest new piece of fear mongering from one of their prime alarmists again from Hollywood.
The old adage bulls*** baffles brains was never more in evidence than in this speech from Harrison Ford.
What a pathetic world of virtue merchants we have allowed to evolve, simply because no one called them out until now.
Not only do these celebrity sermons connect unconnectable dots they connect and reconnect dots all over the page until the page looks like the vapor trail of a golf ball teed up in a ateam filled tile bathroom. These sermons from some of the worst offenders of carbon based fuel usage is enough to dull the sensiblities of the most patient among us. It makes sane people want to scream STFU and SitTFDown.
A better link to the Harrison Ford sermon for extinction rebellion.
http://marriageanchors.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/hqdefault-1.jpg
Reminded me of the same thing:
“Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs… Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. – Matt 23:29 NLT”
“hypocrite. A hypocrite preaches one thing, and does another.
The word hypocrite is rooted in the Greek word hypokrites, which means “stage actor, pretender, dissembler. – Vocabulary.com”
“The Greek word took on an extended meaning to refer to any person who was wearing a figurative mask and pretending to be someone or something they were not. This sense was taken… to refer to someone who pretends to be morally good or pious in order to deceive others. – Merriam Webster”
Rod Evans July 27, 2019 at 3:18 pm
Did you read any of the comments under your You Tube link?
Harrison Ford owns 10 aeroplanes including at least one private jets.
Says he spends more time flying than driving.
Writing on The Conversation On April 19 last, Dr. Miles Allen tried to wind back the Extinction Rebellion hysteria-
“ Why Protestors should be wary of ‘12 years to climate doom’ rhetoric.”
He stated that whether the publications warned of 12 years to prevent disaster or that disaster would occur after 12 years, both were wrong.
As Dr. Allen and Mike Hulme and others are now observing, the genie is out of the bottle.
Dr. Allen noted that when young activists reach 2030 and there is no cataclysm they will be left with bitterness for being hoaxed.( that last expression is mine but that is the point he makes).
The shorter Mike on Public Admin 101:
The last thing you want to start talking about in the public circus is deadlines and meeting KPIs guys.
Won’t the USA be in the midst of a presidential election in approximately 14 months? These people of the green blob aren’t even trying to look non-political anymore.
The global warming industry is a for profit business designed to steal peoples money with hopes of no resistance .
The climate crisis deadlines follow the same logic of a business plan falling behind schedule .
The ring leaders get frustrated and increasingly impatient eventually producing utter nonsense claims like
the science is settled , the arctic will be ice free in 10 years and a whole list of climate Armageddon fiction .
There has been a ton of money stolen by the lead con-men but their greed just can’t be squelched
because they are sociopaths .
The lies just get more careless and the media laps them up . We went from earth has 12 years to 18 months in weeks .
When I read:
“by the recent emergence of a youth climate movement”
I immediately thought of the Hit1er Youth Movement. Is it just me or do others feel history repeating itself with the rise of authoritarian viewpoints and politics?
The Hit1er Youth movement turned a generation of children in Germany into N**zis. As my son has pointed out to me, his generation of millenials has received continual indoctrination in climate change propaganda throughout his education, with MSM and governments now churning out more at after increasing levels of hype.
The similarity of the Hit1er Youth Movement with ever more radical organisations such as Extinction Rebellion is starting to become quite evident and I think quite worrying. Rational thought and debate are now impossible – sceptics are “deniers” and believers are now on the road to saving the planet, for which any action is permitted and nothing is forbidden it would seem.