Reposted from Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog
During the recent presidential debate, a number of candidates suggested that global warming represents an existential threat to mankind, and thus requires dramatic and immediate action.
Governor Jay Inslee has been particularly generous in the use of this term, but he is not alone. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have said the same thing, as have several media outlets and environmental interest groups.
Some of these folks also claim that the window for action on climate change is closing–Jay Inslee suggests that the next president will be the last able to take effective steps. Others suggest 10 or 12 years.
But are these existential threat claims true? That is what we will examine in this blog.
An existential threat is one that threatens the very existence of mankind. Something that is a simply a challenge or an inconvenience is not an existential threat. An existential threat must have the potential to undermine the very viability of human civilization.
As described below, global warming is a serious problem and its impacts will be substantial—but in no way does it seriously threaten our species or human civilization. And with reasonable mitigation and adaptation, mankind will continue to move forward—reducing poverty, living healthier lives, and stabilizing our population.
What do current climate models tell us? These models are run under specific scenarios of emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (see figure). In one, RCP8.5, we simply continue doing what we are doing, with escalating use of coal and oil. Not much renewable energy. Many believe this scenario is too pessimistic. Much more reasonable is RCP 4.5, which has modestly increased emissions through 2040, declining after 2050. I suspect this one will be closer to reality.
The implication of these emissions on global temperature is shown below based on a collection of climate models (CMIP-5). Under the extreme scenario, the earth warms by about 4C, but for the reasonable one (RCP4.5), global warming is about 2C (3.6F). This warming will not be uniform, being greater in the polar regions, less over the eastern oceans.
You will note the temperature rise in RCP 4.5 is relatively steady through around 2045 and then starts to gradually plateau out. No sharp transitions, no falling off of a cliff, no sudden catastrophes.
I have run a large collection of high resolution climate simulations over the Northwest, driven by the aggressive RCP 8.5 scenario. As shown for Seattle’s mean annual temperature below, there is a steady rise, again with no sudden changes that would be hard to adapt to. Most NW folks will want to purchase an air conditioner for summer, but there is no threat to our existence, and winters will be more pleasant.
But what do official international and national evaluations project for the economic future?
First, let’s check the conclusions of the highly respect Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides a consensus view of many scientists and nations. Their analysis (SR15, Chapter 3) quoted a paper by Yohe (2017) that found a U.S. GDP loss of 1.2% per degree of warming, So with a 2 C global warming associated with RCP4.5, we are talking about a 2.4% loss of national income in 2100. Not a 2.4% loss from today’s levels, but 2.4% less of the substantially greater income in 2100.
What about the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment, a document heavily cited by the U.S. environmental community? Their analysis is that the damage to the U.S. economy in 2100 would be about a 1% loss (see below) This is not a 1% loss from the current U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), but a 1% loss of the substantially great GDP in 2100. We will be much richer in 2100, and will lose 1 % of our GDP because of global warming. Doesn’t sound like the end of civilization, does it?
W. D. Nordhaus, who won a Nobel Prize in economics for his study of the economic impacts of climate change, examined a large number of studies regarding the impacts of global warming on the world’s economy (see below). He and his co-author (A Moffat) found that a 2C increase in global temperatures would result in 0-1% damage to the world economy in 2100. Doubling the warming would only increase the damage to around 3%. Again, no existential threat.
Reading these numbers and considering the many reports backing them up, there clearly is no existential threat to either the U.S. or mankind from global warming, leaving one to wonder why are so many politicians, environmental activists, and lots of media are spreading this existential threat line.
And the above studies are not really considering the potential for major technical breakthroughs in energy generation (e.g., fusion), renewables energy sources, or carbon removal form the atmosphere (sequestration). I believe that such advances are inevitable, just as no one in 1950 expected that 2000 would bring personal computers, cell phones, and more.
You also have to wonder whether scientists, politicians, and environmental folks really believe the existential threat warnings they throw around. Many talk the talk, but most don’t walk the walk.
Presidential candidates with little chance of securing the nomination are flying back and forth around the country, resulting in enormous carbon footprints. Climate scientists fly more for work and pleasure than anyone. Many environmentalists oppose nuclear power, one of the technologies that could produce massive carbon-free energy. And several local Washington State environmental groups opposed a revenue-neutral, bipartisan carbon tax initiative (I-732).
Global warming is a real issue and we are going to slowly warm our planet, resulting in substantial impacts (like less snowpack in the Cascades, increased river flooding in November, drier conditions in the subtropics, loss of Arctic sea ice). But the world will be a much richer place in 2100 and mankind will find ways to adapt to many of the changes. And there is a good chance we will develop the technologies to reverse the increasing trend in greenhouse gases and eventually bring CO2 concentrations down to previous levels.
Global warming does not offer an existential threat to mankind, and politicians and decision makers only undermine their credibility and make effective action less likely by their hype and exaggeration. And their unfounded claims of future catastrophe prevents broad national consensus and hurts vulnerable people who are made anxious and fearful.
The alarmists ignore the huge benefits we have derived from the use of fossil fuels. I would not trade places with any of the kings of England in history. They all had short miserable brutish lives in comparison with mine.
The alarmists also ignore the fact that, historically, warmer is richer. link
The alarmists are history deniers.
Abundant cheap energy has enabled us to live extraordinarily comfortable lives. No one is “ignoring” that, the vast majority in the first world take it completely for granted and see it as a right. But it is not without consequence and despite the benefits those consequences are are coming home to roost. That is something you something you cannot ignore.
We are currently tracking way above RCP 4.5, and emissions are still accelerating. I promise you an abrupt 3 or 4C rise is not going to make anyone rich.
Wow, a 3 to 4C rise form Loydo’s Crystal Ball.
I am so impressed how he has the ability to accept all the old Climate propaganda and totally ignore the latest Science that suggests not only no warming but actual cooling in the immediate future.
I thought the article was excellent, very thoughtful and balanced. What I found shocking was the level of ignorance and bias in the vast majority of comments. It seems that people with a (poor) high school level of science feel confident to question the conclusions reached by the vast majority of climate scientists! I look forward to the rabid comments that will undoubtedly follow this post…
Heh????
“I promise you” …. to use the strictly technical term.
You posted a graph showing 0.76C warming/century last week you nitwit.
I don’t think so.
0.2C/decade and accelerating.
0.73 °C per century is 0.073 °C per decade, where’s the acceleration?
“0.73 °C per century is 0.073 °C per decade, where’s the acceleration?”
Yeah, and that’s according to a bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick chart which exaggerates the warming.
Here’s the UAH satellite chart which shows the year 1998 to be 0.1C cooler than 2016 (the Hottest Year Evah!, which is actually a statistical tie with 1998). As you can see 1998 is a significant year with all other subsequent years being cooler than 1998 except for the year 2016.
Compare the UAH chart to the bogus, bastadized Hockey Stick chart. You should notice that the “Keepers of the Data” decided they needed to “adjust” 1998 into insignificance. This way they could claim that 2012 was the “Hottest Year Evah!, and then they did the same for 2013, and the same for 2014 and 2015 and 2016 (the only legitimate candidate).
The bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick chart cooled to insignificance the decade of the 1930’s, which was just as warm as today, and the year 1998. They did both in order to fool the public into believing the Earth is experiencing unprededented warming caused by CO2 and that the temperatures have been getting hotter and hotter and hotter for decades.
They couldn’t say all that bilge about the 21st Century warming if they had to use the UAH chart as a guide which puts the lie to all their claims of unprecendented warming in the 21st century.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_July_2019_v6.jpg
How is it possible to not be able to divide by ten?
There really is a level below “special kind of stupid”, and that would be – climate alarmist.
The problem is the warming stopped in 1999 which is a paradox. The satellite data is not contaminated with the urban heat effect and is more difficult for the cult of CAGW to adjust to create a hockey stick.
CAGW if was real it should be doing it’s little radiation thing in the atmosphere, 24/7, rather than disappear for 19 years.
If CAGW was real we would see temperature increase as a little wiggly line that goes up, rather than the warming coming to an end.
If CAGW was real there would have been no cooling in the 1970s.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1999/every
The IPCC models are zero help in predicting the future as, it is fact that it is possible to unequivocally prove, using geological observations, that humans did not cause the majority of the increase in atmospheric CO2.
Like most of Loydo’s “facts” this one is also not true.
Divide by 10, multiply by 10. Why are you quibbling over details, we have a planet to save.
If you need a /sarc tag for that, you really need to get out more.
Thats the 100 year trend. The trend over the last decade or two is higher.
?w=640
We have the effects of the most recent decade of (accelerating) emissions still in the pipline (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/3/031001) and another 0.5C degree of aerosol masking (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076079).
Only the blinkered and wilfully ignorant could fail to see tempeature rise is clearly accelerating. That graph is 6 years out of date so probably higher again.
Oh wait, some here think its cooling…good luck with that.
Since last week, it’s dropped to 0.73 °C per century.
These are just averages anyway. They have no physical meaning for any particular place on Earth. According to the NOAA GHCN Monthly summaries, 2000 stations in the US show insignificant warming or slight cooling; 6000 stations show insignificant or slight warming. The contiguous US shows only 0.5 C of warming over the past 119 years.
The 52 GSN stations that showed July 2019 as the warmest July ever are scattered across the Earth; certainly there’s no pattern observable.
People just get too worked up about these global averages.
“These are just averages anyway. They have no physical meaning for any particular place on Earth. ”
I’ve been saying that for years. They’re not only averages, they’re averages of anomalies most of the time. Doubly meaningless. Anyone who presents a single line on a graph to represent “global temperature”, is presenting a lie.
The word missing from the article is ecology. We live on six inches of topsoil that provides the basis for all life on earth (and we have lost a third of that in the past 50 years due to industrial agriculture). The delicate balance of plants and animals is what sustains our agriculture and food. With climate instability the biodiversity and biomass damage could cause our ability to feed ourselves to collapse rapidly. Quanitifying this is difficult, it is a complex system. But that is the mechanism that concerns many scientists. It is not so much the climate changing but its effects on the delicate balance of nature. Farmers are all too aware of this threat, they know all too well what happens when nature goes awry, you ask them if they are worried about climate change. You ask biologists if they are worried. That is why the precautionary conservative approach is increasingly being accepted as the wise response to climate science.
No farmer I know is worried about climate change. In fact, this harvest year is on track to set another record global grain harvest. Those that are worried are the ones that have bought into the lie that the Earth is going to become a cinder because of ever increasing maximum temperatures. The truth is that the *average* temperature is going up because of moderating minimum temperatures and that is a GOOD THING for farmers. Longer growing seasons and bumper crops are a benefit, not a problem. More food for more people.
We need to stop listening to those that tell us the average temperature has gone up 0.01defF each year. First, it’s an average and tells you almost nothing about reality. Second, it is so far inside the error band for temperature measurement that no one knows if it is actual reality or not.
Actually, you should listen to those guys, because they are right. The world is getting warmer, and averages are important, because they allow you to see, in a simple, clear fashion that the world is getting warmer. A forest of statistics from thousands of weather stations would be difficult to understand without averaging the numbers.
Ken, “Actually, you should listen to those guys, because they are right. The world is getting warmer, and averages are important, because they allow you to see, in a simple, clear fashion that the world is getting warmer. ”
Averages tell you nothing. Can you tell me if the average is going up because maximum temperatures are going up or because minimum temperatures are going up? Maximum temps going up have a detrimental effect on grains – yet we continue to see consecutive global grain harvests happening in the past decade. Kind of makes you question if maximum temps are going up doesn’t it?
If minimum temperatures are going up that is probably a good thing for the globe. It means longer growing seasons and fewer deaths from freezing. It means less heating costs for the average person and therefore fewer emissions of CO2.
“A forest of statistics from thousands of weather stations would be difficult to understand without averaging the numbers.”
You have to pick the right numbers to average. Averaging Tmax and Tmin for each station and then taking the averages of those averages loses all kinds of information that is important. You can’t tell if it is just one or two regions that are causing the average to go up or if it is the entire globe. You can’t tell if it is Tmax or Tmin that is going up. As the noted physicists Freeman Dyson has pointed out the global average temperature alone can’t even tell you if the Earth’s environment is getting worse or better for mankind!
The CAGW crowd would like you to believe that their global average temperature is bringing on catastrophe for mankind – but life is never that simple.
Both maximum and minimum temperatures are going up. There are charts to prove it. I’ll see if I can find them. It is also worth noting that glaciers in temperate latitudes (Alps, Rockies, Sierra Nevada etc) are more susceptible to summer warming rather than winter warming (winters in the high mountains are still plenty cold enough for snowfall). The dramatic shrinkage in the glaciers – accelerating in recent years – is clear evidence of hotter summers.
Ken,
Maximum temperatures are not going up across much of the globe. If you take a sampling of the monthly cooling degree days across the globe (CDD’s are directly impacted by maximum temperatures) you will find that over the past three years CDD’s are going down. In addition, if maximum temperatures are *rising* then you would expect to see more and more record high temperatures around the globe – yet we are seeing fewer annual record highs set today than we saw in the 30’s and 90’s.
We are also seeing fewer record lows being set, an indicator that minimum temperatures are indeed warming.
go here for some backup: wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/14/newly-found-weather-records-show-1930s-as-being-far-worse-than-the-present-for-extreme-weather/
Ya, lol…. I bet when Global warming /Climate change “wears off” that will be the next big scare! That we have exhausted our dirt & gonna run out of food.
Loydo says “I promise you an abrupt 3 or 4C rise is not going to make anyone rich.”
Those in the renewable industries and the politicians and bureaucrats will do just fine.
Chicken little you really do have more to fear from falling skies than rising global surface temperatures. And when the day comes (not necessarily in you lifetime) that mother of all asteroids is about to mark that end of days event be thankful for the quality of life you have lived thanks to fossil fuels.
You seem to be suffering from the delusion that CO2 and temperature are directly correlated. Since there is little proof of this I’d say you’re barking up the wrong tree. Once we have an idea of A-Reliable sensitivity measure then perhaps we can begin using the Data ACCURATELY in models
Falling temperatures and CO2 levels falling below their 280 ppm pre-industrial levels would have certainly been a mankind EXISTENTIAL threat. We are fortunate things went the right direction.
I experience a 25-30C rise every year from winter to summer. OK, I’m far from rich but, Loydo, you are talking complete shit (as usual).
I just experienced a 4C rise in the temperature in my kitchen here in N. California in the last hour. Excuse me while I go write my last will and testament.
Perhaps go easy on the promises, they aren’t worth very much from you Loydo lets go with you believe or predicting or you expect.
I know a few beach, air conditioning and swimming economies that will be much richer with 3-4 degree warmer.
Have you read NOTHING about the fraud that’s been perpetrated by NOAA, NASA, etc?
Do you have ANY understanding of science? Where do your forecasts originate?
Perhaps you’ve not noticed the repeated failure of EVERY ‘catastrophe’ forecast…
Loydo: “…I promise you an abrupt 3 or 4C rise is not going to make anyone rich…”
Have you read NOTHING about the fraud that’s been perpetrated by NOAA, NASA, etc?
Do you have ANY understanding of science? Where do your forecasts originate?
Perhaps you’ve not noticed the repeated failure of EVERY ‘catastrophe’ forecast…
Loydo: “…I promise you an abrupt 3 or 4C rise is not going to make anyone rich…”
Have you read NOTHING about the fraud that’s been perpetrated by NOAA, NASA, etc?
Do you have ANY understanding of science? Where do your forecasts originate?
Perhaps you’ve not noticed the repeated failure of EVERY ‘catastrophe’ forecast…
“But it is not without consequence and despite the benefits those consequences are are coming home to roost. That is something you something you cannot ignore.”
No, that’s something you cannot prove. You are speculating on what might happen based on no evidence that I can see.
Actually, he is speculating on results he cannot prove (negative events due to warmer temps), dependent upon a condition he has no evidence for (increasing CO2 will raise average temps several degrees).
That’s speculation squared.
Don’t be talking silly Loydo, …… just 2 or 3 summers of a “3 or 4C rise” in average temperatures in the upper mid-latitudes of the eastern US, north of the Mason-Dixon Line, would make several HVAC installer rich ….. as well as boost the profits of manufacturers of “air conditioners”.
The only “consequence” that troubles me in the least is the catastrophic proliferation of whining hypocritical leftist scolds like you, Loydo.
An abrupt 3 to 4C rise in temperature is not going to happen. Not even the sainted IPCC is stupid enough to try and make such a ridiculous claim.
Regardless, even if it did happen, the world would still be cooler than it has been for most of the last 10,000 years.
‘I promise you an abrupt 3 or 4C rise is not going to make anyone rich.’
But telling scary stories about it sure has, hasn’t it?
What makes you think “We are currently tracking way above RCP 4.5…”?
Here are values for global CO2 emissions from energy and cement:
http://tntcat.iiasa.ac.at:8787/RcpDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=download
From the RCP 4.5 spreadsheet (row 18), here are the world CO2 emissions in GtC (billions of metric tonnes of carbon):
2010 = 9.518
2020 = 10.212
2030 = 11.170
2040 = 11.537
2050 = 11.280
2060 = 9.585
According to the Global Carbon Project, emissions in 2018 were 10.1 GtC…just slightly below the 10.212 GtC projected in RCP 4.5 for 2020.
Further, under RCP 4.5, emissions are projected to increase from 2020 to 2030, and to increase again from 2030 to 2040. It is very unlikely that global emissions will continue increasing for 20+ years. So in 10-20 years, it should be clear that RCP 4.5 will overestimate emissions in the 21st century.
P.S. Approximately 13 years ago, I predicted that global CO2 emissions for this century would total 712 GtC (with emissions peaking by 2030). The RCP 4.5 scenario projects total emission for this century at 828 GtC. It’s going to be close, but I think my prediction will be more accurate:
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2017/07/mark-bahner-vs-wigley-and-raper-science-2001-vs-ipcc-rcps.html
I’m just restating what NASA & solar satellite data has said. Here are 2 of hundreds articles:
https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-warns-long-cold-winter-could-hit-space-in-months-bringing-record-low-temperatures.amp
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144489/arctic-weather-plunges-into-north-america?src=eoa-iotd
This comment does not seem to be related to my comment about whether emissions are tracking significantly above the RCP 4.5 scenario. I think you may have erroneously hit “reply” to my comment.
Queen Victoria did alright and you can self-identify these days….
Oh really? Are you ignoring the latest NASA, NOAA and many other top scientists all over the world say according to the latest satellite data, it is going to get cold starting this winter & last till 2055…
Real cold! & just like “Global Warming” it’s all related to the solar cycle. In fact, if you take the El Niño data out of the equation, Earth’s Temps are normal! ” That is a direct quote from NASA!
Look it up! There are lots of articles on this but you better hurry cuz main stream media is calling NASA a liar & removing these articles from the internet!
P. S. Google “NASA predicts cooling temperatures”.
If you include the quote marks the results include only this story. 🙂 Otherwise there are lots of hits. They say things like, “Why isn’t the mainstream media reporting on this?”
Many stories note a record two year cooling. The thing is that the UAH data shows many similar changes in global temperature. link I wouldn’t get too excited yet.
The word missing from the article is ecology. We live on six inches of topsoil that provides the basis for all life on earth (and we have lost a third of that in the past 50 years due to industrial agriculture). The delicate balance of plants and animals is what sustains our agriculture and food. With climate instability the biodiversity and biomass damage could cause our ability to feed ourselves to collapse rapidly. Quanitifying this is difficult, it is a complex system. But that is the mechanism that concerns many scientists. It is not so much the climate changing but its effects on the delicate balance of nature. Farmers are all too aware of this threat, they know all too well what happens when nature goes awry, you ask them if they are worried about climate change. You ask biologists if they are worried. That is why the precautionary conservative approach is increasingly being accepted as the wise response to climate science.
“Much more reasonable is RCP 4.5, which has modestly increased emissions through 2040, declining after 2050. “
It may be more reasonable. But it has to be achieved, and we are not on course to do that.
Excellent.
Spare us the nonsense.
Wait Griff and Loydo told me we were transitioning to the great renewable dream because it was so much cheaper. Now Nick says we are not transitioning to the low carbon future? This is the problem they never seem to have the same story.
Loydo told you no such thing. How about you just speak for yourself.
You guys flip-flop more than one can keep track of. Right so let me record that Loydo is in the we aren’t going to achieve emission controls camp and no millions of Electric cars and China and Germany going to save us.
So emission control is off the table what is your Plan B Loydo, I would hate to put words in your mouth?
Except that the actual effect of business as usual as prescribed by the laws of physics is the low end of the RCP2.6 scenario based on the average effect each W/m^2 from the Sun UNIFORMLY has on the surface. The only possible way for the effect of the next W/m^2 of solar energy after reflection (the IPCC’s nonsensical definition of forcing) to be larger than this is if the climate system can somehow differentiate the next W/m^2 of solar forcing from the 240 W/m^2 already arriving so that the effect of the next one can be at least 3x larger than the effect of the average solar W/m^2.
Nick:
You still haven’t explained how this is possible without violating the known laws of physics. You must be able to explain this in order to justify your position. Otherwise, you’re obsessing about something that the laws of physics precludes!
This error by the IPCC that results in a wildly over-estimated effect from CO2 emissions that’s so blatantly obvious anyone with any kind of scientific degree that can not comprehend this most basic consequence of Conservation of Energy should return their diploma.
Broken models accepted as the result of confirmation bias can not override COE! If you want to try and claim that COE is not being violated, you need to show some proof. Simply saying so is not proof nor are the results from demonstrably broken models.
Temperature and sea level rise measurements show we are actually in the RCP 2.6 range, while doing effectively nothing to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions. Demonstrating that the assumptions about climate sensitivity and the projections are as wrong as wrong can be.
“Temperature and sea level rise measurements show we are actually in the RCP 2.6 range”
Cliff disagrees. Are you looking other data? If so can you provide a link please.
Sure, from actual measured temperatures and sea level rise, not model projections.
Global temperature:
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/
Analysis of global temperature:
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/
Global sea level rise (satellite):
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Global sea level rise (tide gauge):
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/tide-gauge-sea-level
Global sea level rise (satellite & tide gauge):
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
When you look at measurements and project from them (if recent trends continue), we’re in the RCP 2.6 range. Only the spectacularly inaccurate CMIP climate projections show anything different.
Keep in mind, all of you, it is very bad form to attach any kind of calculated trend line to a temperature chart. The data simply is not suited to it since it has built in trends at several level and long term persistance.
Because human emissions do not materially raise the atmospheric content of CO2 the week to poor correlation of CO2 to temp is not a result of our emissions. See Harde 2019 and Berry 2019. As shown in ( https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/19/co2responsiveness/ ) the idea that Representative Concentration Pathways are a function of human emissions is flawed so that part of the models is also erroneous.
What the HELL is 1bp.blogspot.com? Why is it a dead link – just a dumping ground for any Photoshopped graph you want to upload? Your “sources” are laughable!
Oh, got it: it’s Google’s image server domain. In other words, anyone with a Google account can upload anything they want and copy the URL, which will begin with 1.bp, 2.bp, etc.
Stuff your graph. Maybe I’ll print it out and put it in the bottom of our budgie’s cage.
The GDP has increased during warming periods and sometimes stabilised or decreased during cooling periods, but the latter usually down to war or conflict.
There is no evidence with any link with increasing global temperatures and decreasing GDP. Only the alarmist political procedures to ruin the economy by high taxes may cause this. The UK already have this on their agenda to become carbon net zero by 2050.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-becomes-first-major-economy-to-pass-net-zero-emissions-law
(1.bp.blogspot etc)
The graph GDP v T(F) guessing that this may happen is alarmist nonsense based on only these, past and present. Unless the one producing this graph knows attempting carbon net zero will ruin the economy in such a short time and have deliberately failed to include this important reasoning.
The reason why the IPCC et al have got their projections wrong is because they assume that water provides a net POSITIVE feedback to the GHE , when in fact it is NEGATIVE.
This results in too high a value of Sensitivity which plagues the modelling software.
At phase change (evaporation) of water, absorbed radiation is converted to Latent Heat rather than to an increase in temperature. This Latent Heat then, due to its buoyancy rises through the atmosphere to dissipate its energy partly to space. Thus cancelling out the GHE.
In scientific parlance the coefficient “K” in the Planck equation dF = K*dT is virtually zero at this phase change situation and this “K” is in fact the sensitivity factor.
There is a lot of water in the atmosphere continuingly changing its phase and unless this taken into account in calculating the Global Sensitivity an error will result and, it appears HAS resulted.
It is only half the story and thus incomplete and incorrect to say that water, in it’s three phases, warms OR cools.
Water moderates.
Both, at the same time.
Less hot in the day, in Summer, in hot places and hot weather.
Less cold in the night, in the Winter, in cold places and cold weather.
A warmer and thus a more humid atmosphere and ocean is a moderator of temperature and of weather.
This is clear from both recent measurements and from the geological record of past conditions.
Both the measurements and the geologic record demonstrate as clearly that CO2 is not directly correlated and thus not causative to increases in temp.
For those of us who live next to the Atlantic Ocean we see confirmation of your point every day. My office is 10 miles inland and invariably it is cooler at home during the summer and cooler at the office in winter.
This is still part of the story because the ENSO for example and sunlight in the Tropics increases water vapor and cools the ocean surface and atmosphere on a monthly basis throughout the year affecting nearly 50% of the planets surface. This scenario occurs because it is summer all year round affecting a large part of the planet. The thunderstorms forming in this mechanism is natures way of significant negative feedback that occurs all year round. With this mechanism affecting such a large area it is fair to say that this is a general rule where water behaves as an negative feedback. When something moderates it moves in an opposite direction that describes it as an negative feedback.
It is fair to say that water is a negative feedback in all scenario’s.
Just look at our planet and at history:
-Where there is more water, in the air or at the surface, temperatures are more moderate, with less diurnal variation, less seasonal variation, and less year to year variation.
-Where there is less water, there is more variance, diurnally, seasonally, and from year to year.
This is true geographically and temporally.
And it is always true.
Things change, and always have and always will.
We do not control the weather, and never have and never will.
What we, people, plants, animals, life in general, is adapt.
Always have, and always need to, and always will.
And we all, plants, animals, and people, always survive.
That is what we do.
Always have, always need to, and always will.
Those who fear change or that are incapable or refuse to change, are not the adaptable ones, are not the survivors.
And never will be.
“The reason why the IPCC et al have got their projections wrong …”
The underlying reason is that the scientific truth is an existential threat to the IPCC and UNFCCC. They use projection to claim that the existential threat is their fake warming from CO2 emissions and the lemmings fall in line ready to jump off the cliff where the real existential threat are the proposed remedies they say are required to mitigate their fake reason to exist.
Horst schist! This graph is from NCA4. I overlaid HadCRUT4 and UAH v6.0 on it…
“Horst schist!”
That graph is of temperatures. Which RCP we follow depends on what we emit. Our decisions.
But in any case, it doesn’t show anything useful. The RCP predictions are indistinguishable within the short time range of the overlap of observation and predictions. Further muddied by the overwriting of everything with the erratic observation of a different region (UAH).
The only graph that matters is of temperatures.
Here’s just RCP4.5 with UAH baseline-adjusted to match surface data,
The greenhouse effect occurs in the troposphere, not at airports.
Here’s the same RCP4.5 plot with HadCRUT4…
Linear regression since 1976 lands right in the middle of RCP4.5 in 2100.
“The greenhouse effect occurs in the troposphere, not at airports.”
Good one! That made me laugh. 🙂
“The greenhouse effect occurs in the troposphere, not at airports.”
This short and sweet observation gets my upvote.
We should be thankful that the only graph that matters is temperatures.
If CO2 had gone down instead of up, that graph would have mattered most, and really would be an existential threat to life on earth.
Sorry, David, but “temperature” is precisely the least meaningful thing to be graphed. The Earth is in a radiative energy balance, not a temperature balance. Energy can be absorbed or dissipated with phase changes and no temperature change. Energy radiation exchange depends on K^4, not on degrees C or F. Plots of changes in averages of averages of average temperatures are the least informative data that can be presented.
hiskorr,
Yes, temperature is meaningless relative to a linear energy balance where only the relationships between W/m^2 matters. The relevant sensitivity is the amplification of each average W/m^2 of solar input into 1.62 W/m^2 of average surface emissions. Even monthly averages for slices of latitude are within +/- 10% of this while yearly averages are well within 5%. When multiple years are averaged together, it converges even tighter. This ratio is demonstrably constant across slices of latitude from pole to pole and is maintained by each slice as the seasons vary, thus this ratio is completely independent of the instantaneous or average temperature, solar forcing a slice receives or its emissions. Considering temperature as the output only decouples the model from the requirements of COE adding the wiggle room necessary to claim what’s otherwise impossible.
This linear ratio corresponds to the reciprocal of the emissivity of an equivalent gray body model of the Earth whose temperature is the average temperature of the surface and whose emissions are the average of the planet which in the steady state is equal to the average solar input. The equivalent emissivity becomes 1/1.62 = 0.62. Given the constant nature of this ratio, a simple gray body model is a far better predictor of the planets behavior than the many thousands of lines of spaghetti FORTRAN code that the IPCC and its self serving consensus relies on.
The sensitivity of an ideal gray body is given exactly as 1/(4eoT^3), where e is the emissivity and o is the SB constant. When you plug in the average temperature of the planet of 288K and an emissivity of 0.62, the sensitivity becomes 0.29C per W/m^2 which is well below the IPCC’s lower bound of 0.4C per W/m^2. When you apply 0.29C to the 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing said to arise from doubling CO2 from 280ppm to 560ppm, (recently increased to 4 W/m^2), the result is 0.96C (1.16@4 W/m^2 of equivalent forcing). If we do nothing about CO2 and the planet’s future is already at the low end of the best hoped case if we do whatever we can to limit CO2 emissions, what’s the point?
“That graph is of temperatures. Which RCP we follow depends on what we emit. Our decisions.”
Mr. Stokes, what the global temperature does it is more likely to depend on the Mater Terra; we humans just happen to be a transient minor nuisance.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CT4-GMF.htm
Nick, you are begging the question that the models behind the RCP scenarios is correct, mostly that they have the ECS correct. It would appear that the IPCC does not.
“Which RCP we follow depends on what we emit.”
Not according to measurements. Our emissions and CO2 saturation are increasing at the RCP 8.5 rate. Temperature and sea level rise are in the RCP 2.6 range. The CMIP climate projections overstate “climate sensitivity”, which is obvious even in the Technical Summary of IPCC AR5 (2013):
All the dire climate scenarios come from computer models. Observations paint a much different and rather unexciting picture.
It’s really a graph of expected future CO2 level versus time, with an assumed temperature superimposed on it based on an ECS that the IPCC claims is between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees C per CO2 doubling. So a very effective graphical device for masking what is not known.
“The RCP predictions are indistinguishable within the short time range of the overlap of observation and predictions. ”
Exactly, and this is the wiggle room they give themselves to claim what’s otherwise precluded by the laws of physics. At least you acknowledge that they are just ‘predictions’, as in I predict that I’ll break the bank in Vegas. All you need to do now is acknowledge that there are other predictions based on solid analysis and confirmed with unambiguous data that predict significantly different results confirming that the best course of action relative to CO2 emissions is to stop obsessing about them and worry about real environmental issues instead.
Use of vague claims based upon the ever unreliable climate models where temperature anomalies appear to predict high temperature increases…?
An absurdity.
They’re singing the same song they’ve been hyping for over thirty years. All they’ve changed is to become more strident and shrill…
The alleged dangers are always decades away, and failures for those dangers to arise as time passes, they just move the same goalposts further away in time.
Warm periods are Climate Optimums where all wildlife prospers. Those fantasized “future dangers” are delusional ravings by doomsters.
It is ridiculous to keep giving money to green groups or climate alarmists. Let the doomsters return to proselytizing by wearing sandwich boards claiming “Repent, the end is near”.
Carbon dioxide enriched atmosphere has improved all plant life including our crops and improved Earth’s climate to the benefit of all Earth’s creatures.
This!
Nick you should talk with China I am sure you can convince them 😉
Meanwhile I hope we don’t have our 3rd brutal winter in a row. Did you know that last November I went ice fishing in November? That has never happened in my 50 years….fluke I guess.
I remain skeptical
Global warming means it gets colder!
If anything is different from last year, CO2 caused it.
“It may be more reasonable [RCP 4.5]. But it has to be achieved, and we are not on course to do that.”
Well now, you are talking about two things here, I think: An increase in CO2 and I infer, an increase in temperatures as a result.
The reality is that CO2 is increasing but the temperatures are cooling.
Unreasonable 8.5 (“evil” fossil fuel people win out and we burn everything), unreasonable 2.6 (“good” greens win out and return the world to the Middle Ages), or “reasonable” 4.5 (civilization adapts as the cost of the current energy generation method increases) – it does not matter. The “models” are beautiful examples of mathematics and computer programming – and complete garbage out (which is not strange, as the garbage that comes out is now actually being used to create the garbage going in – now THERE is a real “runaway feed back scenario”).
RCP 4.5, which shows a moderate increase of about 1.5 degrees in temperature by 2050, may be reasonable, but it has yet to be achieved, and we are not on course for that much of an increase.
We are indeed on a course to RCP 4.5 or very similar emissions. From my comments above:
What level does the global 2 meter temperature have to reduce to, to call the whole illusion off. That is, we were wrong.
Or will they simply say that it should be lower and CO2 is preventing the temperature going lower.
Regards
Hansen already has that covered. He claimed a while back that there was a possiblity the Earth would experience a decade or so of cooling, but that it didn’t mean that CO2 wasn’t heating up the atmosphere and eventually the warming would resume.
Whatever pops up, they have an explanation for it.
And yet Cliff still gets called a “denier”
They are loopy, the CAGW disciples.
Cliff is clearly deluded. He actually seems to believe the climate models can predict the future climate, although it is impossible to do this (as the IPCC has stated) and the models have predicted around three times greater warming than actually occurred. He also ignores the massive benefits of increased CO2 (the greening of Earth) and a slightly warmer climate. History clearly shows that mankind prospers when it’s warmer and suffers when it’s colder.
The difference is that he is slightly less deluded than the other morons.
Chris
Agreed.
At the heart of the warmista delusion, is the idea that a warmer world is an unmitigated catastrophe, for sure and no doubt.
This is truly the base of the entire edifice of climate alarmism.
And yet it is the single factor, the one issue, for which there is literally zero evidence, and absolutely no objective case to be made for it being so.
And yet it is not even part of the discussion the vast majority of the time.
Even many so-called skeptics seem willing to accept it is so, at face value and for no apparent reason.
Everything else is built upon this myth.
It has to be given and taken as axiomatic, because it is impossible to offer arguments for why anyone ought to believe it.
If warming is not dangerous, but in fact to be hoped for and welcomed, then there is no reason to demonize CO2, no reason to ignore the huge benefits of increasing the amount of the basic building block of the entire biosphere.
No reason to ignore all that is ignored, to exaggerate all that is exaggerated, and no reason to make up all the nonsense that is made up.
Warmth, moisture and CO2 are the three things that we need to survive on our sun baked rock.
Less warmth causes less moisture and less CO2 to be available, and life suffers tremendously, to the point of near extinction.
We see this in places and at times, even now, and even more so in the recent geological past.
Where there is sufficient of all three, life explodes in abundance.
Warmth is teetering on the edge of being insufficient, and CO2 was near the level where all life will begin to be extinguished.
Anyone who fails to recognize that these things are true is either a moron or is being willfully ignorant.
The evidence, so abundant it constitutes proof, is everywhere and all around us, to anyone who opens their eyes.
One has to ignore an awful lot to be a warmista.
Pretty much everything.
Cliff is definitely not a skeptic. Credulous would be a better description. I think he is well-meaning but he is completely off-base on CAGW. He has confused speculation for evidence. He’s not alone. There are millions like him out there.
Credulous indeed when he considers the IPCC as “well respected”.
Tom, your comprehension of what Cliff wrote in this piece is vastly different from mine.
My take on his stance was essentially – “there is no ‘C’ to be attached to AGW”
(and iirc, he also asserts that many regions will benefit greatly from any projected warming)
Mr. wrote: “Tom, your comprehension of what Cliff wrote in this piece is vastly different from mine.
My take on his stance was essentially – “there is no ‘C’ to be attached to AGW”
Cliff wrote this in the article: “As described below, global warming is a serious problem and its impacts will be substantial—but in no way does it seriously threaten our species or human civilization.”
Well, I guess that depends on what one considers to be a catastrophe. As you can see from Cliff’s quote above, he says global warming is a serious problem and its impact will be substantial. That would be my definition of a catastrophe. It doesn’t have to rise to the level of being civilization ending to be a catastrophe.
CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) in my definition would be anything harmful that was exacerbated by the weather behaving beyond the bounds of the weather in the past. I would consider any harm done by the weather within those bounds to not be attributed to CO2 in the atmosphere.
Cliff assumes CO2 is going to heat up the atmosphere to the point that it will cause serious problems by making weather more extreme than in the past. That’s CAGW.
The Earth’s weather is really going to have to kick up a catastrophic storm to exceed what has happened in the past. Everything so far is within the bounds of the weather we have had in the past.
Nothing to see here. It was just as warm in the recent past as it is today. That means there is no unprecedented warming today, which means there is no CAGW today. Relax.
Here’s an unmodified chart from Nigeria that shows it was just as warm in the past as it is today:
Tom, I think you, Cliff and I are somewhat on the same page, 🙂
As the late George Carlin said –
“ Save the Planet! We can’t even look after ourselves.”
If there is an existential threat from climate change, which I do not for a moment believe, it appears to be beyond the wit of mankind to do anything productive to head it off.
I say this notwithstanding the fact that we have been able to stave off nuclear war for 70 plus years.
Economics, the “dismal science,” as some wise old head once noted (it could have been John Stuart Mill, but I don’t remember for sure), is hardly a basis for making predictions of ANY kind. Especially because it is extremely hard to predict what future GDP would be assuming the previous level of CO2 had remained around what it was, say, in 1960 (for the sake of argument I pick that date). Such an exercise as that which Nordhaus and Nicholas Stern (who has been even more gloomy than Nordhaus, of course) engage in amounts to sheer, highly useless speculation.
It also doesn’t even consider what the GDP WILL be if the kinds of draconian measures a charlatan such as Jay Inslee is proposing – and I don’t have to be an economist to tell you that it won’t be very good in both the short term AND the long term if there is a move towards enacting the Green New Deal into law.
Predicting economic outcomes 30 years from now is just as bad if not worse than predicting what the weather and the climate will be in the same time span.
The only thing that offers an existential threat to mankind at present is the hysterical posturing of the Climate Alamists and the Global Warmistas. Historically, the warmer the World gets, the richer and more secure it becomes.
It reminds me of Ehrlich and The Population Bomb.
“I don’t know how India could possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.” I.e. India going from 400 million population in 1960 to 600 million. Population of India now? About 1.2 billion.
The left is spectacularly wrong again and again and again.
Global warming has been rebranded as climate change. Because warming wasn’t happening like they said it would.
And the climate apostles; Gore, Trudeau, DeCaprio, et al, continue to fly off in private jets, to vacation in WARMER places. Now that really indicates a crisis!
We live in most of the most benign periods of climate in human history …
Lived. Abrupt climatic change is now your future.
The Hockey Stick lives.
Yep, the COOLING trend is on its way !
That is one funny graph.
Just for humour plot average temperature from any source you like against it on same times and extreme vertical scale 🙂
Average temperature? Now that’s all made up!
How?
2/3 of the warming is instantaneous (it’s already happened) and the other 1/3 will occur slowly over hundreds of years.
And the 2/3 of the warming that’s already happened has barely lifted us out of The Ice Age Cometh…
Loydo the only way temperature can increase in a gas is for the molecules to increase translation velocity. Please explain how CO2 causes this to happen.
By absorbing certain frequencies of infrared radiation and transferring the energy to other molecules.
“By absorbing certain frequencies of infrared radiation and transferring the energy to other molecules.”
And what happens to those “other molecules” once they are heated?
Does hot air rise?
What happens to rising hot air?
That’s one heck of a data exaggeration: ~50 ppm / 1200 years.
Loydo
Even the most ardent alarmists acknowledge that temperature theoretically should increase proportionately to the logarithm of the CO2 concentration. And then you show us a graph with the actual concentration as your proof of an “abrupt climatic change.” What kind of a function do you get when you take the logarithm of an exponential?
We are not certain about the climate sensitivity, and recent work suggests that the 3 deg Charney estimate is at least 2 or 3 time higher than what it actually is.
There is controversy about whether the CO2 concentration is the result of warming or the cause of warming, yet you implicitly accept that CO2 causes warming.
But, you assume that everything is known well enough that you can predict what the future holds. You display the confidence of someone in possession of Holy Scriptures that ordain the future. That is one step removed from superstition!
Once again, models trump data.
Since there is no empirical evidence that it is actually warming, and in fact is becoming noticeably cooler, it is past time to say goodbye to the ridiculous notion that CO2 is even remotely related to the weather.
Since the mythical ‘global warming’ is complete nonsense, it is obvious that the whole thing is nothing but an illusion that has fascinated gullible idiots.
“and in fact is becoming noticeably cooler,”
Who told you this?
Why do you think that the Atmosphere has contracted?
If it is warming it is supposed to expand, not contract!
Is there a site which keeps track of height changes in the atmosphere?
The only way to real direct way to measure it is to lower a satellite down until it starts dragging on it. So generally expansion is picked up more often because low earth orbit satellite operators become aware of the drag. Not sure if there is a public version of the height but those operators would track the height.
Curious. We have people in leadership roles who claim that the planet is on the brink of destruction.
Yet by their policy prescriptions we see that they fear the end of the world less than they fear nuclear power. Some of these people in leadership roles are running for President of the US. There is something very, very wrong here, and it is not the climate.
“There is something very, very wrong here, and it is not the climate.”
I think what we are seeing is how easy it is for even intelligent people to live full-time in a false reality.
And of course, they have a lot of help because the Leftwing Media is constantly creating and extending these false realities. It also has a lot to do with people seeing what they want to see instead of seeing what is really there.
This is what happens to people who choose to be informed by emotion and feelings, and not by facts, logic, or what is objectively true.
They feel.
And that is their reality.
You want climate change? I’ve got yur climate change right heeya! The global average temperature has increased a few degrees F. since a colder period several centuries ago when London’s Thames river at times froze over, rising to just over 58 degrees F. And during the recently concluded century the average increased modestly over a couple of decades from 1920-1940 and again — to a remarkably similar degree — from 1980-2000, with a slight decline between those two elevations and little real action overall since. Sound like grist for hysteria to you?
Moreover each of those up-trended averages over the past century were substantial geographically only in higher temperate/subarctic latitudes of the earth’s northern hemisphere. And if you bust those consolidated averages back to their constituent high and low daily measurements, you will then notice the great secret of how little the highs have varied over all that time even as the changing nightly lows led to most of the influence on those averages (to the slight nightly relief of Canadians, Scandinavians, and Siberians). Equatorial temperatures have also been notably steady the whole while. Certainly no soaring changes in the highs themselves over the decades, but don’t tell anybody as it’s bound to spoil the most lucrative scam of our lifetimes.
As long as there’s easy money, any credo goes. Promise paradise for those wealthy enough to avoid hell and the masses will be glad to pour more than the little they have.
So let’s hear this classic while we can still afford a coffee:
https://youtu.be/E1Inw-0lqY4
“Much more reasonable is RCP 4.5, which has modestly increased emissions through 2040, declining after 2050. I suspect this one will be closer to reality.”
First, it is my impression that RCP 8.5 describes a far more dire world than “…we simply continue doing what we are doing, with escalating use of coal and oil. Not much renewable energy”. Second, it seems very unrealisitic to imagine a reduction of emissions from 2050. The global increase in population, and hopefully an improvement of living conditions for the developing nations will work against this. Third, more emissions will not even be a “serious issue” as the headline says.
The comments on Cliff’s blog are interesting. I respect Cliff a lot. Imagine what he has to put up with where he lives for maintaining his scientific integrity.
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-global-warming-existential-threat.html
The simple facts are these:
after the clean air acts and the global cooling scare we saw a short period of modest warming.
Otherwise, nothing has happened (except the cooling toward the 1970s).
There is NOTHING at all to be concerned about
“Is Global Warming an Existential Threat? Probably Not, But Still a Serious Issue.”
No it is not an existential threat, nor even a serious issue – it is scientific and political fraud.
We wrote in 2002 and I still strongly support this statement:
Reference 1:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
Almost two decades later I still have the same opinion:
Reference 2:
“14. The scientific reality is that increasing atmospheric CO2 will cause increased plant and crop yields, and possibly some minor, beneficial global warming.
There will be no catastrophic warming and no significant increase in chaotic weather resulting from increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
…
20. Global warming / climate change mania will eventually cease, but this will probably take time – climate extremism has strong support.
Global warming / climate change alarmism is the most expensive and the most lucrative scientific error in history. There is ample evidence of fraud.
Epilogue
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
Reference: “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”, Charles Mackay, 1841.”
REFERENCES:
1 – DEBATE ON THE KYOTO ACCORD
The PEGG, November 2002, reprinted in edited form at their request by several other professional journals, the Globe and Mail and La Presse in translation, by Sallie Baliunas, Tim Patterson and Allan MacRae.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
2- CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., P.Eng., June 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
Sooo how come these so called models do not match reality. That seems to be conveniently not mentioned.
Time proven strategy for Life:
The surest way to know what to do is to do the opposite of whatever the US Democrats are preaching.
Thus Climate Change can be safely ignored.
Joel O’Bryan: “The surest way to know what to do is to do the opposite of whatever the US Democrats are preaching.”
Joel, I’m trying to think of an instance where that wasn’t true, but I keep coming up with….. nuttin’.
I’ll admit I can’t recall every proposal advanced by, and every piece of legislation passed by the Regressive Party, but nothing positive jumps out at me.
Neither is it a serious issue.
I’ve always said that a global average temperature is a meaningless figure that tells us nothing useful. I’m amazed it hasn’t been torn apart by statisticians.
It has never been about the temperature or sea sea level rise or any of the other ridiculous claims that the warmists make. It is however all about power and I’m not talking about electricity it’s about the One World socialist government, it has never been about anything else.
“What do current climate models tell us? ”
To hide the decline ? Just a guess.
Karabbar of 12 the August says it all.
There are two factors, which both religions and politicians have been saying for hundreds of years.
First we must have something with which to frighten people with.
Second, we must then offer them a solution, just as long as they them
do what we want them to do…
Its all about power as usual.
Meanwhile the Earth is getting Greener, and most people are both
slowly getting richer and happier.
MJE VK5ELL
Over half a century from Paul Ehrlich’s preposterous Population Bomb (1968), amply refuted junk-science Climatίstas have pushed their communo-fascist, Luddite sociopathic One World “save the planet” hidden agenda, immune to any objective or even rational debate, via GISS/NASA, the UN IPCC, innumerable complicit academic/media/political doctrinaires. Raking in tax monies, crony kleptarchs’ Grand Theft solar-panel fields and windfarms blight landscapes, endanger wildlife, provide zero benefit at incredibly wastrel, immiserating cost.
In context of Australia’s Robert Holmes (2017), Denmark’s Henrik Svensmark (2005), Russia’s Valentina Zharkova (2016 – ’18), we repeat the following long-established factual reprise: Per 102-kiloyear Pleistocene Ice Ages cyclically recurring since Late Pliocene times, interspersed with median 12,250-year interstadial remissions, Earth’s latest Holocene Interglacial Epoch ended in 12,250 + 3,500 – 14,400 = AD 1350 (Roman calendar, skewed 1,500 years by the cometary-meteoritic Younger Dryas “cold shock” of 11,950 – 10,450 YBP).
Coincident with Kamchatka’s strato-volcano Kambalny Eruption plus a 70-year sunspot minimum from AD 1350 – 1420 which erased near 66% of Earth’s global population (!) through famine and disease, the subsequent 500-year Little Ice Age (LIA) ended c. AD 1850/1890, succeeded by the current 140-year “amplitude compression” temperature rebound through AD 2030.
Pending another 70+ year “dead sun” Grand Solar Minimum through AD 2100, similar to that of 1645 – 1715, astro-geophysical phenomena from axial precession to sunspot-levels and an in-progress Geomagnetic Pole Reversal give odds of 80 : 20 that by c. 2350 – 2500 long-term Global Cooling will precipitate a new round of Pleistocene glaciations covering 70% of Earth’s habitable landmasses with ice sheets two miles thick.
I was unconvinced by the article at “global warming is a serious problem and its impacts will be substantial” and then, in scrolling down happened to notice the “highly respected” IPCC. Double unplus good.
David Chappell
When I read the line “… conclusions of the highly respect Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) …” I thought that because of the grammar it was a typo’ and “respect” should be replaced with “suspect.”
From the article: “As described below, global warming is a serious problem and its impacts will be substantial”
There is no evidence to support these claims. Not very scientific.
“An existential threat must have the potential to undermine the very viability of human civilization.”
Socialism and Democrats willing to undemine the U.S. Constitution are an existential threat to the United States.
The bottom line is, warming is good for humans, cooling is catastrophic for humans. It always has been, it always will be.
Global warming would be great if we could keep it going forever … unfortunately, cooling is coming. It is only a matter of when .. it could already be starting now.
The climate alarmists always refuse to consider the benefits of warming, they focus only on the miniscule negative effects of warming that only impact a handful of tiny segments of the biosphere.
Repeat after me: Warming is GOOD, cooling is BAD.
Well, that’s two-thirds of shat I have been saying for a couple of decades:
Warm, good. Cold, baf. Gore, idiot.
“leaving one to wonder why are so many politicians, environmental activists, and lots of media are spreading this existential threat line.”
Because they have no qualms about lying to further their political agendas.
… probably mostly because the word “existential” is a fancy BBC word, like “jingoistic” , “misogynistic”, and such. Elitists and phony-elitists can practice saying it for its use at cocktail parties, thereby sounding like they’re in the know.
From the article: “And several local Washington State environmental groups opposed a revenue-neutral, bipartisan carbon tax initiative (I-732).”
Revenue neutral. Right. I sense some gullibilty on this person’s part.
AGW IS an existential threat. Not the temperature rise, the politics and destruction that are masked by the claims of temperature rising. It does present a threat—to demand humanity devolved to the 14th century, millions die and the overlords live in comfort with their slaves providing everything they need. If overturning centuries of progress is not an existential threat, I don’t know what is.
It’s a behavior-based extinction mechanism.
Existential threat is just nonsense, of course. There’s nothing in the impact literature to support such a claim. The earth has already survived and thrived under much warmer conditions with much higher CO2; and given Antartica’s current location and physical limits on extracting fossil fuels there is no chance of getting there. Man adapts to a vast range of temperatures and climate, there is *no* plausible increase in temperatures that could be an existential threat.
That the warming is a “serious threat” is more plausible, but far from proven. We’ve already seen about 1C of warming from late 19th century levels, and the effect may be net beneficial even apart from the clearly positive CO2 fertilization effect. Not only has the warming not been catastrophic, it hasn’t even been mildly annoying. Even with the research heavily tilted towards looking for negative effects, the estimates show a future world much richer than our current one, just somewhat less rich than it would be without the additional warming.
The biggest danger from warming is actually growth-inhibiting policies supposedly designed to combat AGW. De-industrialization on the scale needed to achieve zero admissions would extract a terrible toll in human suffering, and would leave us much more vulnerable to the extreme weather that has *always* happened and will continue to happen.
We would be vastly worse off today if our predecessors had decided to leave coal and oil in the ground, fearful of sending demon CO2 in the atmosphere. They also would have been vastly worse off.
From the article: “Global warming is a real issue and we are going to slowly warm our planet, resulting in substantial impacts (like less snowpack in the Cascades, increased river flooding in November, drier conditions in the subtropics, loss of Arctic sea ice).”
The author has no evidence to backup any of those claims. They are pure speculation. That’s all CAGW climate science is: Pure Speculation. It’s pathetic!
CO2 will ALWAYs be a very, very minor player in any alleged warming. That is because it is invisible to 92% of what the earth radiates. Adding more CO2 will NEVER change that. CO2 will always just absorb in three different frequencies, only two of which are in the thermal range.
The point being CO2 is NOT the issue. Almost everything else we do is an issue, though. Adapt or die and we need to change
CO2 is the control mechanism that the government wants to have in order to tax everything that emits it both living and non living objects. If you control CO2 you control everything.
I don’t care, I don’t worry. I enjoy life as it is. Although, life seems better in a warmer world.
Alarmist propaganda light – why?
But.. it is all just guesswork!
Were the great Mark Twain still alive he would have said that
“there are lies, damned lies, statistics and computer models”
Get rid of the models, just come out with the truth: Global Socialism is the goal. 10 years from now when we can’t plant until July, I guess we will still be hearing about the sky falling.
This is the kind of non-scientific BS the alarmist crowd pushes. RCP 8.5 is the worst case scenario, not the business as usual scenario. He needs to retract his blog in its entirety.
All of this talk about “warming” is based on an “average” global temperature. That average tells us absolutely nothing about what is happening in reality. If that increase in the average global temperature is due to higher nighttime temperatures it is very beneficial. It is higher maximum temperatures that hurt agriculture and human survival. And it is not obvious that maximum temperatures are going up at all, in fact much of the evidence shows that maximum temperatures are actually moderating. Higher nighttime temperatures means less heating required, i.e. lower emissions. Lower maximum temperatures means less air conditioning, again lower emissions. Those are *good* things!
Supposedly July 2019 was the hottest month ever. Yet, when I took the data for the 991 GSN stations from NOAA and averaged out all of the July temperatures for all 991 stations, only 52 of them showed July 2019 as the hottest month. That’s just a tad over 5% of the stations. In France, where The Great Heat Wave of the Century occurred, none of the stations recorded July 2019 as the hottest month, and only one had it even at #2. A couple of stations had it all the way down around 8th place.
There more analysis to be done with that data set.
Did a little more work with the data yesterday. Rather than fiddling about with anomalies, I calculated the average July temperatures for each station since 1900, and ranked each year for each station. Since I’m only comparing a station to itself, there’s no need of any anomaly calculations.
I used the GSN stations again, with gave me 993 for the world. Of those, only 104 stations, or 11% of the total, showed July 2019 as its #1 warmest year. Almost as many showed July 2018 as its warmest year, which lead me to check to be sure these stations had data for 2019; they did. July 2006 was another really big year for warmth, at around 8% of stations reporting that as their hottest year.
The rest of the stations’ hot years were scattered over 70 years or so, making me even more skeptical of any global effect at all. The stations that did report July 2019 as their warmest year are scattered across the globe, with a noticeable concentration in SE Australia. Good on ya, BoM!
Looking at those results, I’d guess that a few stations had a good scorching heat wave, and the outlier temps were enough to push the global average up and over. I’ll take a deep dive on those stations’ temps later todayl.
So how many months can you find that were warmer than July 2019?
“All of this talk about “warming” is based on an “average” global temperature. That average tells us absolutely nothing about what is happening in reality. If that increase in the average global temperature is due to higher nighttime temperatures it is very beneficial. It is higher maximum temperatures that hurt agriculture and human survival. And it is not obvious that maximum temperatures are going up at all,”
We should use regional surface temperature charts instead of conjuring up a global average temperature, and we should use Tmax charts as the regional charts. Using Tmax regional charts it is obvious that temperatures in the recent past, within the lifetime of currently living human beings, were just as warm then as they are today. What this means is that there has been no unprecedented warming in the human-caused CO2 age, and this means there is no Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, and therefore there is no climate crisis to worry about;
And with Climategate and the obvious manipulation of the official global surface temperature record, we cannot trust this fraudlent data and so we must fall back on unmodified regional surface temperature charts to find the real temperature profile of the globe. If all regional charts agree that it was just as warm in the past as now, and they do, then that’s all we need to know. We don’t need a global average temperature to determine if it is warmer today than in the past, especially a fraudlent one.
Regional Tmax charts:
US chart:
China chart:
India chart:
Norway chart:
Australia chart:
I’m not wondering at all.
“leaving one to wonder why are so many politicians, environmental activists, and lots of media are spreading this existential threat line.”
Global warming/ Climate change is like all other topics which get the lying zealots & hacks making up crap or parroting the latest bunk.
Environmentalists do so across the entire spectrum from forests to local street runoff. The climate crusade just happens to carry most all other enviro-movements.
But pick any topic and it’s off to the races to distort.
It’s the same with education, land use, transportation etc. It’s quite remarkable how much institutionalized deceit their is. No surprise it is more often than not the same people, or type of people, pitching the contrived hogwash.
Overwhelmingly it is the left, who by their nature, know it all and insist on making every issue a mission they must command.
One of the items I check frequently is the ENSO chart included in this site.
The rebound in the temp anomaly over the last year or so reached around +.75 early in the year.
Now it is at +.22 and as is said in the financial markets–seems to have rolled over.
Implying that this warming influence could be diminishing.
This is likely not included in the models of hysteria.
Which would include the talisman charts of dread that Lloydo relies upon.
The First Panzer Division advancing across Belgium and France was an “existential threat” and then we had to decide what we were going to do about it, Britain chose to fight to the death.
Modern day Politicians are totally useless. There is no threat, only in the minds of believers!
Warmer Is Better! More rain, longer growing seasons, more bio-productivity, more wealth, more happiness.
The most productive ag lands in the US are also the warmest. Doesn’t anybody know where their food comes from? Almost all our crops are tropical in origin. Heck, humans are tropical in origin.
Sea levels have been rising for 17.5 ky and yet that hasn’t cramped civilization one bit. Current rise rate is the least since the LGM passed. Big whoop.
Besides I thought existential meant beatniks all turn into cockroaches. When did the language change? Ridiculous inflammatory commie/fascist political rhetoric seems to be the main problem facing society today…
The CONCEPT of global warming is an existential threat, because if we take it too seriously, then we will screw ourselves as a developing civilization.
The real threat is from the false nature of the idea itself and the ill conceived translation of the falsehood into ill conceived actions, which could cause much degradation.
Robert, exactly. The question itself, Is Global Warming an Existential Threat? is a “leading question” as the lawyers say.
Warmist Robert Walker’s ‘Nature’ comment, dated 7/24/19, ‘Should IPCC Openly Challenge ‘Only 12 Years to Save Planet’ Deadline Rhetoric?’ was reprinted at science20.com. He makes a very good, if a bit prolix, case for CC/GW being a serious but not existential issue. Warmist politicians, especially, should read it.
I just stumbled across an article on Axios. The headline reads….”Scientists can’t agree on how fast our universe is expanding….
What the hell happened to the good old scientific consensus? I thought that’s how science was supposed to work? Does consensus based science only apply to climate studies and not astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, etc? If not, why?
Why not come to a consensus based upon what most physicists believe and demand that the “deniers” resign their positions, and if they don’t, fire them? Why isn’t the media up in arms demanding as much?
https://www.axios.com/space-hubble-c…b4efd9f78.html
I’m so confused….not really.
The IPCC general circulation models have a hundred different variables to tune which explains how the cult of CAGW can be 100% incorrect.
The scam started with the so-called one-dimensional back of the envelope calculation of how much warming to expect for a doubling of CO2 the cult opened with 1.5C and then countered with 1.2C due to an error.
The 1.2C for a doubling of CO2 assumed there is no increase in convection cooling which is done by freezing the lapse rate for the calculation. If the calculation is redone with a reduced lapse rate of only 3% the warming for a doubling of CO2 drops from 1.2C to around 0.2C.
Statistically the majority of CO2 molecules before they can emit a photon transfer their energy to the surrounding gas.
An increase in CO2 therefore increases the convection cooling in the atmosphere which in turn will cause a reduction in the so-called lapse rate which is the change in temperature with elevation in the atmosphere.
An increase in convection cooling due to a reduction in the lapse rate would of course offset the greenhouse gas warming.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2015/07/collapse-of-agw-theory-of-ipcc-most.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B74u5vgGLaWoOEJhcUZBNzFBd3M/view?pli=1
Here are a few additional things that the presidential candidates should be aware of:
The AGW conjecture seems quite plausible at first but looking at it in more detail one realizes that the AGW conjecture is based on only partial science, is full of holes, and cannot be adequately defended. For example in Al Gore’s first movie he shows a chart of how CO2 has correlated with temperature over the past 600K years. His claim was that the chart shows that more CO2 causes warming. But looking at the data in more detail that temperature leads CO2 so that a warmer climate causes more CO2 to enter the atmosphere. The CO2 comes from the oceans. When the oceans warm up they cannot hold as much CO2 so they release it to the atmosphere. When the temperature of the oceans decreases they take up CO2. According to Al Gore’s chart, if CO2 were the climate temperature control knob it should really be much warmer than it actually is. The truth is that there is no evidence in the paleoclimate record that CO2 has any effect on climate.
For those that believe in greenhouse gas theory, the primary greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere is H2O and not CO2. Molecule per molecule, H2O is a stronger absorber of IR radiation than is CO2 and there is so much more of it in the Earth’ atmosphere than is CO2. H2O averages roughly 2% compared to CO2’s .04% H2O levels also rise much more rapidly in the Earth’s atmosphere than does CO2 on a regular bases. There has been concern that CO2 based warming will cause more H2O to enter the atmosphere which will in turn cause more warming because H2O is the primary greenhouse gas responsible for most of the radiant greenhouse effect. The H2O molecule in our environment does not care where the warming comes from and will increase in atmospheric concentrations as temperatures rise. We live in a water world. Most of the surface of the Earth involves some form of H2O so any global warming is going to cause more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes more global warming which causes even more global warming and so forth until the oceans have boiled away and both the Earth’s surface temperature and surface pressure is greater than it is on Venus. Atmospheric H2O rate of change is much greater than that of CO2. CO2 will increase as the entire volume of the oceans warm but H2O increases as a function of ocean surface warming. So if greenhouse gases are capable of causing tipping points, situations where temperatures either increase or decrease catastrophically and out of control then just because of H2O we should see such catastrophes happening quite often in the paleoclimate record but that is not the case. It is not the case because, in reality higher concentrations of greenhouse gases do not cause warming. If they did then the real concern should be with H2O and not CO2. In terms of how greenhouse gases cause global warming, The AGW conjecture has got it wrong. The Earth’s climate system does not work that way.
The reality is that, based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we are experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is really zero.
For those who believe in the radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands in the Earth’s atmosphere, the total radiant greenhouse effect is dominated by H2O so much so that changes in CO2 have virtually no effect on the total radiant greenhouse effect. But even if they could somehow stop the Earth’s climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue because they are part of the current climate. So there is no payoff. We do not even know what the optimum climate is let alone how to achieve it.
The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands. A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of heat trapping greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass limits cooling by convection. It is entirely a convective greenhouse effect that keeps a real greenhouse warm. So too on Earth where instead of glass, gravity limits cooling by convection. As derived from first principals, the Earth’s convective greenhouse effect, which is a function of gravity and the heat capacity of the atmosphere, keeps the surface of the Earth on average 33 degrees C warmer than it would otherwise be. 33 degrees C is the amount of warming as derived from first principals and 33 degrees C is what has been measured. Additional warming caused by an additional radiant greenhouse effect has not been detected. The convective greenhouse effect has been found to exist on all planets with thick atmospheres. A radiant greenhouse effect has not been detected anywhere in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is nothing but science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is science fiction as well.
Supporters of the AGW conjecture use “scientific consensus” as an argument to support the AGW conjecture’s validity. In all the science related classes that I took in college, consensus was never given as a reason to believe in what we were being taught. There must be a lot of problems with the theory if consensus has to be one of the supporting arguments. But the reality is that there is no consensus as to the validity of the AGW conjecture.. It is all speculation. Scientists never registered and voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture, But if they had it would have been meaningless because science is not a democracy. The laws of science are not some sort of legislation. Scientific theories are not validated by a voting process.
The climate simulations that the IPCC makes use of are too flawed to have any credibility at all. They basically started with a weather simulation but increased both the spatial and temporal interval so that they could simulate climate in finite time. That increase in spatial and temporal may have made the simulations at least marginally unstable so that results may be much more of a function of the inherent instability rather then true climate physics. Based on only climate physics, the simulations failed to follow the past so parameterization, a form of fudge factors was added so the results may be much more a function of the parameterization then climate physics. No longer based on climate physics the simulations have become not much better than make believe. The simulations have hard coded in them that CO2 causes warming hence they beg the question as to whether CO2 causes warming and hence are quite useless. So all climate papers that involve use of these faulty climate simulations are of no value and should be withdrawn.
CO2 is not an energy source so the only way that it can cause warming is to increase the insulating properties of the atmosphere. If the thermal insulating properties of the atmosphere were increased from what they are today then temperature should decrease more rapidly with altitude than it does today. So if CO2 really affected climate, one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measurable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. The increase in CO2 over the past 30 years has not caused a change in the thermal insulating properties of the atmosphere hence additional warming caused by an increase in CO2 has not been observed.
An initial calculation of the climate sensitivity of CO2, performed decades ago, based on radiametric considerations, came up with 1.2 degrees C which is for a doubling of CO2. not including feedback effects Most feel that 1.2 degrees C is not significant so they like to include H2O positive feedback which causes an amplification of roughly 3. They are not really sure what the feedback factor is so the IPCC publishes a wide range of possible for the climate sensitivity of CO2 when only one value can be true. The logic is that CO2 based warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes even more warming because H2O is really the primary greenhouse gas. But what the AGW conjecture ignores is the fact that H2O is also a primary cooling agent in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface, which is mostly some form of H2O to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. The over all cooling effects of H2O are evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate which is a cooling effect. Hence H2O must provide a cooling effect and hence provides negative feedback which means that H2O tends to retard any CO2 based warming. The negative feedback provided by H2O has made the Earth’s climate inherently stable as is has been for at least the past 500 million years, enough for life to evolve because we are here. Based on temperature measurements since 1850, if all the measured temperature change were caused by Mankind’s adding CO2 to the atmosphere, one group of scientists found that the climate sensitivity of CO2 could not be more than 1.2 degrees C including feedbacks which they regarded as not really significant. So 1.2 degrees C should be a worst case value. A researcher from Japan pointed out that the original calculations of the climate sensitivity of CO2 failed to include that fact that a doubling of CO2 would cause a slight decrease in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere which is a cooling effect and reduces the climate sensitivity of CO2 by more than a factor of 20, reducing the climate sensitivity of CO2 to less than .06 degrees C which is totally insignificant.
In summary there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the AGW conjecture and its possible consequences are all invalid. it is all a matter of science. So instead of wasting time and money trying to control something that mankind does not have the power to control, we should be instead concentration on problems that we do have the power to solve like population, the economy, and the over all betterment of Mankind and the Earth that live on.
Sorry, I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy nor ‘high resolution climate simulations.’
Some threat!
– Agriculture yields are up- https://ourworldindata.org/yields-and-land-use-in-agriculture#yields-since-1960.
Poverty has decreased- https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts.
Life expectancy has increased- https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy.
Deaths from weather related disasters have declined- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-disaster-death-rates?time=1900..2018.
Oh and the planet and deserts are greening from the increase in CO2- https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth/
Here is an additional question about which the presidential candidates should make us aware of their knowledge and/or opinions:
Does an existential threat IMPLY certainty?
IOW: is this “coming existential man-made disaster”, that is, one with some significant measure of magnitude, inevitable … at least, within some practical time frame?
Or, is there significant room for error in such predictions?
Note: I for one, when not seeing probability estimates presented with such claims … as quickly as possible, run away from these types. There is no discussing such uncertainty matters with zeolots and/or cultists.
In the meantime, for our readers [if there are any reading this post, haha]: please, if able, I for one would like to see some longer-term weather and/or climate predictions — for which, ahead of time, a “proper” theory had been made available — where such predictions actually did come true.
One example would be good — such would be a start — but, with the stakes which are said to be at risk; existential, in this matter — we MUST do better than the 1-off successful prediction; we must do much better.
In all history of mankind, or even of life on Earth, the lifeform that was able to adapt to new circumstances thrived and the one that tried to hang on to the old ways died. That’s true for life and is called evolution today. Life does not want evolution – it wants to go on doing what it has done since the dawn of time. But that would mean that we would not have evolved further than bacteria. Environmental pressures forced them to get better. Same thing for civilization. Look at Ancient Mesopotamian history and you will see the evolution into city-states and empires just to see them crumble when new, more innovative invaders replaced the old Stalwarts. The Bronze Age collapse was a cleanout and turned out to be an evolutionary jump. We will adapt to any change in climate – we have no choice as its planetary forces and not mankind that drives this. And we will all be better for it.
What the Warmers lobby seem unable to understand is that our weather is mostly influenced by the vast Oceans and Sea..
Some 71 % of the Earths surface is covered by salt water, plus then add the water on the land areas.
Only when the Oceans start to warm will the weather start to change , and such a change may well be beneficial to life on Earth.
A lot of the land in the Northern hemisphere is too cold to be cultivated so a few degrees of warmth would be good.
Anyway such a possible change is in the far future, lets just hope that its warmth and not cold in that future.
MJE VK5ELL
If global warming is an existential threat to mankind, then how the heck did we survive the Holocene Optimum when temperatures were 3 to 5C warmer than they are today?
CO2 emission have risen about 1.6 ppm per year since the 1960’s.
CO2 with 2 ppm per year until the year 2100 is an increase of 162 ppm from today = 577 ppm.
CO2 with 3 ppm per year until the year 2100 is an increase of 243 ppm from today = 658 ppm.
I don’t see CO2 levels increasing any more than 3 ppm per year taking into account further increases from China and India during this period.
Therefore RCP 4.5 fits the expected trend in future CO2 global level rises.
The temperatures ranges with each RCP are exaggerated greatly and with CO2 being logarithmic.
RCP 2.6 = ~0.3c
RCP 4.5 = ~1.3c
RCP 6.0 =~1.8c
RCP 8.5 (1000ppm) =~2.0c
These are based on CO2 levels and global temperatures observed already, but take all warming blamed on human CO2emssions.
Therefore these are the maximum worse case scenario’s and will be very likely smaller.
So stripping out rhetoric we can boil all this down thus:
Climate, regardless of who or what is causing it, is predicted to have a 1% or maybe 2% impact on global GDP over the coming decades. This of course becomes way less certain the further into the future any “crystal ball” tries to envisage.
There is little to no proof that human Co2 (or any other Co2) is having any significant impact on global climate.
Activists obsessed with this relatively recently invented end-of-the-world-cult-theory want to spend AT LEAST 4% of GLOBAL GDP in a vain attempt to fix this non problem.
Their expensive non-solutions to the non-problem won’t fix the climate or the environment, but will surely hurt the poor and anyone not living on the cult fuelled government grants gravy-train!
Seems sensible. NOT.
Global Warming by the CO2 model is just so much hokum. What seems to be missing in the CO2 warming side of things is there is a lot of CO2 moving around the biosphere as CO2 in the atmosphere.
CO2 in the air is not a static molecule. Plants remove it very effectively and covert CO2 into more plant life and O2, via photosynthesis… One can flood the air with CO2 and plants will respond in kind by removing it to return the CO2 level back to about 4 molecules per 10,000 air molecules — basically a rare gas.
CO2’s static concentration in the air is at about the same concentration as the biggest idiot of any entire high school student body… Probably most folks at the high school will never will know this crazy person… Thinking they can win a tug of war with the rest of the student body — yeah, that’s about as silly as thinking 4 molecules of CO2 can significantly move the other 10,000 air molecules…
However, the reality is there’s lots of CO2 entering the air via fossil fuel use, huge forest fires, and volcanic activity… And the CO2 in the air remains about the same… However, according to NASA, the planet is greening…. More CO2 is being converted into plant life, soon to be followed by other life forms feeding on plant life…
For example, in the recent years there’s been several large forest fires in North America that put out lots of CO2, which floated around the globe and was converted into trees in the Amazon, or corn in Ohio…. Cycle of life thing… So get over it.
There’s no existential threat going on, other than the ignorance and gullibility of those who have never been trained in common biological, chemical and physical sciences. Instead millions have been bamboozled by political science Chicken Little types who’s goal is to scare folks into giving up their liberty to control their own lives and property to a bunch of numbnuts Chicken Littles…
“Global warming is a real issue…”
Wrong. It is a made-up one based on the lie that it is primarily man-made, and that it is dangerous. It is a fantasy, like a child’s belief in the boogeyman. The climate isn’t the problem; it’s the people pushing the CAGW Big Lie that are the problem.
“I agree that global warming is an existential threat and I propose that we should immediately close all borders, build a wall, and ban people (especially celebrities and politicians) from using cars, planes, or any modern technology. Then we immediately declare war on China and the Third World. We shall form the Earth Legion. Fanatical warriors dedicated to Mother Earth, which everyone knows is so weak and pathetic that it needs to be protected from the most powerful force in the universe: mankind. These fanatical warriors, led by warrior activists will gladly die for their Goddess. Their sacrifices will be great but necessary. I’m sure Greta Thunberg and other woke Earth worshippers will gladly lead the charge against Chinese machineguns. Their fanaticism will inspire the troops! After all, this IS an existential crisis! Life or Death. If we don’t do this, we all die… Hey where are you all going!? I thought we agreed that this is an emergency?”
I’m much more concerned about the existential threat of major policy mistakes for advocacy/agenda science with excuses on the back end like “Who could have known?” from the heyday of Edward Markey.
I don’t see any emergency in the taxpayer funded data systems like satellite global temp data and automated ocean buoy data. Instead I see cycles without humans.
energy sources, or carbon removal form the atmosphere –> energy sources, or carbon removal from the atmosphere