Reposted from the Fabius Maximus Website
By Larry Kummer, Editor / 12 September 2019
Summary: After years of tacit cooperation with climate activists, the first major climate agency may have begun to turn against their misuse of climate science. If so, this would be a big event in the climate debate. As seen in this interview with the head of the WMO. He has much to say that we need to hear.
Scientists are turning against climate activists and their scare tactics.
Excerpts from “Climate change is not yet out of control,
but the debate is.”
Interview with Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the WMO.
By Pekka Lähteenmäki in the Finnish weekly magazine Talouselämä, Sept 6.
From Finnish to English via Google Translate, so only roughly accurate!
WHO = World Meteorological Organization (their website).
{Taalas has five children.} Many people wonder if we should even have children. Will the offspring live as adults on a ruined planet? Every child and adult is a source of emissions. …
“Now we should put on the ice and ponder what is really the solution to this problem,” Taalas says on the terrace of his home in Nuuksio, Espoo. {He} does not see the basis for the apocalyptic predictions that are now in circulation. “There will be no end of this world, the world will only become gray. For some of the planet, living conditions are getting harder, but people have been living in difficult conditions.”
In his view, the Finnish debate and reporting on climate change have become too distressing. “The Finnish media atmosphere has been a cause for concern. The latest thing was that children are a negative thing. For example, I am concerned about young mothers who are living under many burdens. This adds to their load.”
“If anxiety leads to action, it is a positive thing. If it leads to a deterioration in the quality of life, that’s a bad thing.”
According to him, the solution to climate change does not require an individual to have an ascetic life or give up child labor. “The fight against climate change can be done in good spirits. Big things are done at the state level. If you start living the life of a scheme, the world will not be saved.” …
“Climate change is solved by private investment, not just public money. I believe in win-win issues. That it is economically viable to invest in climate-friendly solutions. Consumers can benefit economically and even though healthy food or exercise.” …
“The media partially feeds {the fear}. Forests and food, for example, are important issues in combating climate change, but they are not the core. Now they have gained a lot of weight.”
What would be most important now? “In Finland, as in the world, the key to solving the problem is to give up fossil energy. Abandonment of oil, coal, natural gas, and peat in Finland. That is the key.” Still, Taalas doesn’t want to downplay the importance of, say, vegetarian food. 70% of the cultivated area goes to feed, ie meat production. Feeding the growing world population requires change. “Young people have an interest in making positive decisions. You can see it from your own children. When they cook, we usually eat vegetarian food.” …
The next UN climate summit is in New York in September. “I am leading the conference science group, where we will summarize the latest scientific findings and evaluate new initiatives in different countries to combat and adapt to climate change. The aim is to raise the level of ambition in reducing emissions. If it cannot be lifted, we will move towards a 3-5 degree warming at the end of the century.” …”We also need to focus on adapting to climate change.”
Until a few years ago, climate scientists had a fierce debate with so-called skeptics who disputed the foundations and results of climate research. This has diminished, but experts are now being challenged from the other side, according to Taalas. “Experts are under attack that we should be much more radical. There are threats and extremists at the end of the world.” …“The IPCC reports are read like the Bible, seeking certain verses that justify their own extremes. It has the features of religious extremism.” …
He also does not believe that climate policy should or should be widespread into prohibitions or some form of a command economy. “In a global sense, the problem is being overcome by investing in non-fossil solutions for power generation, transport, and buildings. Land use and changes in the nutritional economy can further enhance this. The public sector has to create the framework, but the resources come mainly from elsewhere.”
The fight against climate change does not require a lower standard of living. “Economically and technically, we can do the fight. That was the message of the October IPCC report. Living with adverse effects is estimated to be 20 times more expensive than the investments needed to overcome the problem.” …
“If we look at the state of the world, excluding climate change and population growth, then we are in the best of mankind’s time in many ways: the economic, health and, for example, the position of women will never be better. …Global climate change and population growth are things that aren’t well under control, but they can also be solved.”
Update: Taalas posted a statement at the WMO website re-iterating the key points from this interview. Especially “the science-based approach is undermined when facts are taken out of context to justify extreme measures in the name of climate action..”
——————————-
Editor’s afterword
This excerpt gives only some of the great material in this interview. I recommend reading it in full (it is gated). This is the first push-back I have seen against the climate alarmists’ exaggerations and misrepresentations of science (see The Extinction Rebellion’s hysteria vs. climate science). Until now the major climate agencies have been complicit by their silence. They have been activists’ enablers.
- About the corruption of climate science.
- The noble corruption of climate science.
- See how climate science becomes alarmist propaganda.
What changed?
After the publication in 2013 of the IPCC’s AR5 report, many US climate activists and some climate scientists criticized the IPCC as “too conservative” (e.g., see Inside Climate News, The Daily Climate, and Yale’s Environment 360). With activists’ adoption of extreme doomster views, such as the Extinction Rebellion, they moved into open opposition to mainstream science. See this year’s hot leftist book: Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy
The pushback began against activists blaming AGW for every severe hurricane. First, with NOAA’s statement on hurricanes and climate change. It said that there was no clear trend in frequency or strength. Second, with the recent publication of two papers by the distinguished international group of scientists of the WMO Task Team on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change Assessment: “Detection and Attribution” and “Projected Response to Anthropogenic Warming.” They found no signal showing a human influence on hurricanes – yet. See Dr. Curry’s analysis of these.
Now the head of one of the world’s major climate agencies has taken a public stand against activists. This might be a major inflection point in the so-far dysfunctional debate about the public policy response to climate change. Perhaps we will take the simple first step: prepare for the repeat of past extreme weather instead of bickering about predictions of climate change.
About Petteri Taalas
Taalas is the highest ranked Finn in the UN. He was recently elected to run the United Nations Special Organization for Weather, Climate and Water (WMO).
He has a PhD in Meteorology, been an author of over 50 peer-reviewed papers on atmospheric chemistry and climate change. He has been a senior manager of science agencies since 2003. See his bios at the WMO. and at Wikipedia.
For More Information
Ideas! See my recommended books and films at Amazon.
Hat tip on this story to the Epoch Times.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate change. Also, see all posts about uncertainties in climate science, and especially these …
- Important: climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- Activists hope that fake news about droughts will win.
- Listening to climate doomsters makes our situation worse.
- How fast is the world warming? Is it burning?
- Look at the trends in extreme weather & see the state of the world.
- How journalists helped wreck the climate debate.
Alarmists don’t want you to read this book
To learn more about the state of climate change see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change
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Larry, do you really think this guy presents a moderating stance from the climate alarmists??
Quote.
“The aim is to raise the level of ambition in reducing emissions. If it cannot be lifted, we will move towards a 3-5 degree warming at the end of the century.” …”We also need to focus on adapting to climate change.”
Does that statement from Taalas sound like someone who is even remotely realistic in their projections? What are these emissions he refers to? If it is CO2 (just guessing) then the chief of scientific opinion at the UN is as far removed from scientific reality as the rest of the alarmist brigade.
A moderate climate alarmist is still a climate alarmist. Are we supposed to cheer because he sounds a bit less shrill? The man is still advocating public policies that will wipe out most of the advances of the last 150 years and plunge us into a world wide depression that will cause massive suffering and death on a scale not seen since the two world wars. All based on a theory that’s so incomplete it can’t make any valid predictions about future climate states. So who’s the crazy one here?
I share others view that this is not in fact a moderate statement. He is just trying to normalize extreme statements by criticizing the wild nonsensical ones that are obviously wrong. He still clings to computers models and extreme scenarios and pays little obvious attention to actual satellite temperature and sea level observational data.
“In Finland, as in the world, the key to solving the problem is to give up fossil energy. Abandonment of oil, coal, natural gas, and peat in Finland. That is the key.”
So this is just the ‘hard cheese’ no panic version of the same agenda. That’s impotent news.
Hi Jean,
Good point. I suggest we already have considerable understanding of what drives millennial-scale weather and climate. Details are summarized below.
I think we are getting to a point where solar activity can be predicted for years or even decades – not my area of expertise.
There are a few components that we could improve upon – for example:
– A good longer-term predictive method (timing and magnitude) of El Nino/La Nina events. Theodor Landscheidt had some success. Others?
Best personal regards, Allan
Selected references:
CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., P.Eng. (ret.), June 15, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
ABSTRACT
Global warming alarmism, which falsely assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming, is disproved – essentially, it assumes that the future is causing the past. In reality, atmospheric CO2 changes lag global temperature changes at all measured time scales.
Nino34 Area Sea Surface Temperature changes, then tropical humidity changes, then atmospheric temperature changes, then CO2 changes.
The velocity dCO2/dt changes ~contemporaneously with global temperature changes and CO2 changes occur ~9 months later (MacRae 2008).
The process that causes the ~9-month average lag of CO2 changes after temperature changes is hypothesized and supported by observations.
The ~9-month lag, +/- several months, averages 1/4 of the full-period duration of the variable global temperature cycle, which averages ~3 years.
Based on the above observations, global temperatures drive atmospheric CO2 concentrations much more than CO2 drives temperature.
Climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 must be very low, less than ~1C/(2*CO2) and probably much less.
There will be no catastrophic warming and no significant increase in chaotic weather due to increasing CO2 concentrations.
Increasing atmospheric CO2 clearly causes significantly improved crop yields, and may cause minor, beneficial global warming.
Atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high, it is too low for optimal plant growth and alarmingly low for the survival of carbon-based terrestrial life.
Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc may also increase atmospheric CO2. The increase of CO2 is clearly beneficial.
“Green energy” schemes are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy, primarily because of the fatal flaw of intermittency.
There is no widely-available, cost-effective means of solving the flaw of intermittency in grid-connected wind and solar power generation.
Electric grids have been destabilized, electricity costs have soared and Excess Winter Deaths have increased due to green energy schemes.
__________________________________
PRESENTATION OF EVIDENCE SUGGESTING TEMPERATURE DRIVES ATMOSPHERIC CO2 MORE THAN CO2 DRIVES TEMPERATURE
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., P.Eng. (ret.), June 13, 2015
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record.
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
Note: This is better expressed as “Atmospheric CO2 changes lag temperature changes at all measured time scales.”
4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.
7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.
8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA and about 10,000 in Canada.
9. Green energy schemes have needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electrical grid reliability and contributed to increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor.
10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
– Allan MacRae, Calgary, June 12, 2015
What happens when the cold comes, polar ice expands, and growing seasons are shortened? Will the answer be “We need more CO2!”
Yooper asked:
What happens when the cold comes, polar ice expands, and growing seasons are shortened? Will the answer be “We need more CO2!”
Answer:
Probably no – the warmists will shift seamlessly from “CO2 causes catastrophic global warming!” to “CO2 causes catastrophic global cooling!” – both blatant falsehoods are equally acceptable to the extreme left, who lie about everything – and their idiot acolytes will actually believe them!
“does not require an individual to have an ascetic life or give up child labor.”
I wholeheartedly agree! Everyone deserves a few frills in life & if I have to kick these kids in the ass to get a little work done around here once in a while, that’s OK, too.
Slip of the tongue will get you every time.
“For some of the planet, living conditions are getting harder, but people have been living in difficult conditions.”
For which people on the planet are living conditions getting harder as a result of climate change? Statements like this are thrown out as solid fact, and without any substantiation whatsoever.
On a related note, would it be possible to take action against AOC under Article 240 of the Penal Code for:
Falsely reporting an incident in the third degree related to sea level rise in Florida?
A person is guilty of falsely reporting an incident in the third degree when, knowing the information reported, conveyed or circulated to be false or baseless, he or she:
1. Initiates or circulates a false report or warning of an alleged occurrence or impending occurrence of a crime, catastrophe or emergency under circumstances in which it is not unlikely that public alarm or
inconvenience will result; or
2. Reports, by word or action, to an official or quasi-official agency or organization having the function of dealing with emergencies involving danger to life or property, an alleged occurrence or impending
occurrence of a catastrophe or emergency which did not in fact occur or does not in fact exist; or etc.
Just a thought.
ABOVE: “This is the first push-back I have seen against the climate alarmists’ exaggerations and misrepresentations of science”
I missed the part where he pushed back against alarmists’ . He is advocating the same activism and policy and is only asking that the rhetoric be changed.
ABOVE: “Scientists are turning against climate activists and their scare tactics.”
If someone has examples of scientist(S) turning against climate activists, I would appreciate seeing those examples. Mr Taalas pushing back against scare tactics, is a party of one.
“According to him, the solution to climate change does not require an individual to have an ascetic life or give up child labor. ”
Wha? I’m guessing this interview is just a really bad overall translation.
I wish I could accurately describe my conclusion about the WMO people I met when I worked in Manhattan. I basically conclude that these people, in the late 1980s, and this is the best way I can characterize it, were disconnected from reality. It seems to have gotten much worse. But, the U.N, like government service, is rife with people who treat money as if it is Monopoly money. They are communist organizations, and as such, the disconnect from the real, working, successful world is striking.
In the nearly forty years since 1980 when the Global Warming hysteria started, we have noticed that nearly nothing has changed in the climate but that there has been a serious crisis in the public debate on the subject of the climate accompanied by serious disregard for consequences by the Warmistas advocating counterproductive climate mitigation measures. This reached its crescendo recently with a Swedish academic endorsing a return to cannibalism.
Which is doing nothing for their cause, believe me! The big question is, WHY don’t we de-fund all these think tanks, NGO grifters, and especially the UN? Why are the taxpayers of the Western world paying these charlatans to crank out this drivel?
This guy has not moderated a whit.
Back about twenty years ago, when I first started researching this subject, I found myself on a ‘warmest disaster site’, can’t remember which one. There were many predictions of disasters, just scant years in the future. Some were outrageous.
I made what I thought was a reasonable comment, something like: I think it best to be careful with predictions of disasters happening in the near future. There is the danger that global warming is occurring, and will one day cause serious problems. If you predict disasters, though, and they don’t happen as predicted, the result will be loss of credibility, and no one will believe in potential future problems, even if global warming is confirmed.
I was excoriated by other commenters, and censored from making future comments (I only made that one comment).
Well, twenty years have passed with no climate disasters. What can they do but admit that some of the rhetoric has been over the top, but global warming really, really, really is bad, and we must mend our ways or disasters really, really will happen someday?
He is merely trying to walk back the failed predictions to maintain credibility, and continue pressing for the same drastic actions. He should be held to explain what negative impacts he still believes will happen should we continue using fossil fuels.
They will still be have the climate change debate in 50 years time.
As long as the hockey stick is the holy grail of the IPCC, we are doomed. Just had a nice experience in Bogota with warm nights with clouds, cold nights with clear skies.
rakman,
“As long as the hockey stick is the holy grail of the IPCC, we are doomed.”
It’s not, it was removed from the IPCC report some time ago. How long ago, I’m not sure.
They relied on it heavily early on. It gave them false legitimacy.
Apparently he has now withdrawn his comments; can’t imagine why
As a Finn, I do not trust the guy at all. He is a former head of the FMI, Finnish Meteorological Institute, and he is an extreme, rewarded political alarmist in disquise. He has been misleading Finns himself in the Finnish media, so now he must again have something nasty in his back pocket. Even before, and during his reign in the FMI, measuring stations were replaced with ones close to the hot spots,( their flagship station in Käpylä, Helsinki is surrounded by asphalt parking lots, buildings and bare rock hill), only two stations are still operational that have been in the same place for a century or so. Those show clearly that Finland is now at the same temperature as it was in the late 1930:s. No “double arctic warming” for 80 + years. As Taalas is now trying a new approach to brainwash people, that is sounding less alarmist but hiding alarmist agenda inside sentences, we must be prepared for this new alarmist tactic. The propaganda is still there, just made to soud like moderate. Do not trust these “former alarmists”. They are still on a mission.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
–The Who
“Same as it ever was.”
–The Talking Heads
Even if Petteri Taalas is serious about dialing back the cries of wolf, he still lives in the Green New Deal Cultural Revolution Energy Fantasyland.
It’s like replacing Stalin with Trotsky.
Did he mention that Finland is building a new nuclear power plant? It is being provided by Rosatom.
A lower standard of living has already been occurring for many already because of high energy prices caused by the fight against imaginary evil climate change.
There has been no known living adverse effects with nothing usually about climate going on, so this is a hideous claim. Therefore normal weather events costing 20 times more expensive than 50-100 trillion, who’s maths?
For the US it was expected to be at least 4.5 trillion by 2030, so will extreme weather caused by droughts, hurricanes and floods etc cost the country at least 100 trillion? Hurricanes, droughts and floods will still happen even when the 4.5 trillion has been spent. Why are some people that still support extreme activist views so far from reality when even trying to tone it down?
In Finland CO2 emissions are 0.13% of the world’s total, so it will have zero affect. Giving up all of these will lead to many more deaths in Finland during winter because there is no viable energy replacement to achieve this goal without building nuclear plants.
“WHO = World Meteorological Organization”
Wouldn’t that be WMO?? I thought WHO was World Health Organization…
I hope all you 2 brains both wound be lonely BE proud for frighting all our young children and there family life kids come home from school brain washed and starting fights with there family sad