BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union government leaders declined on Friday to set tougher targets for fighting climate change, dashing hopes they would inject momentum into a United Nations climate conference in Chile in December.
At a two-day EU summit in Brussels, which was largely dominated by Brexit, discussion on climate was relegated to the last agenda item and took less than 15 minutes.
“The existential threat posed by climate change requires enhanced ambition and increased climate action by the EU and at global level,” read the final statement by the leaders.
The bloc aimed to “finalize its guidance on the EU’s long-term strategy on climate change at its December meeting.”
That means the EU will not bring more ambitious climate change-fighting objectives to the U.N. gathering in Santiago on Dec. 2-13, part of a process to check signatories’ progress toward implementing the 2015 Paris accords.
Beyond the cautious wording of Friday’s EU communique lurks deep divisions over climate strategy within the 28-nation bloc, whose standing goal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
HT/Willie Soon
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Some European leaders start to understand that if they slap more of the same crap onto their electorate, they won’t be leaders for long anymore. The very people they represent will give them the boot. In Austria, we have seen lately through an affair that has nothing to do with Climate Change how quickly things can change and one of the most popular politicians of the country became one of the most reviled in mere months.
It’s not difficult to show that CO2, although increasing, has little to do with our current warming. It’s also easy to show that the Medieval Warming Period (1.000 years-ago) was global and at least as warm as it is now, and this can be demonstrated without controversial models or dubious statistical machinations. Alarmists, rather than recognizing the value of historical data (earlier global warming information), have for unexplained reasons based their computer projections on a cherry-picked short-term correlation between CO2 and temperature from 1975 to the 2000s. (That warming period is bracketed by a cooling between 1945 and 1975 as CO2 was steadily increasing, and by the IPCC acknowledgement that there was a temperature “hiatus” in the 2000s while CO2 continued to increase.)
The only other indication favoring CO2 as causing warming is related to experiments showing that when CO2 is added to a closed container, the container temperature increases somewhat. However, the open atmosphere is hardly a closed container. Satellites detect heat escaping to space and closed containers do not experience planetary-level feedbacks.
The proponents of anthropogenic-caused global warming invariably DENY that the Medieval Warming Period was global and likely warmer than it is now. The alarmists acknowledge only that Europe experienced the MWP. (They had no choice – climate in that region during the MWP is too well documented!) Alarmists apparently take this unjustifiable position because their computer models cannot explain any of these earlier global warmings. Their computer models depend heavily on increasing CO2 level, even more so on yet another ASSUMPTION – that water vapor feedback is the actual culprit, causing 2 to 3 times the temperature increase supposedly brought on by the increase in CO2. They also apparently ignore the fact that the supposed heating influence of CO2 diminishes very quickly as CO2 level increases and CO2 has already doubled 8 times.
The global temperature increase during the MWP, as well as during the earlier global warmings, was not due to CO2 because there was no increase in CO2 during those periods. The problem for alarmists is that it becomes obvious that perhaps our current warming (such as it is) may also be due to NATURAL climate variation. That, of course, conflicts with Mann’s hockey stick graph. Mann recently lost a suit he brought against Dr. Tim Ball years ago. Ball had apparently implied that some of Mann’s work was fraudulent. Mann succeeded in delaying dismissal of that suit by agreeing to provide his “work”, on or before the revised termination date, but apparently did not supply his data by the extended date. Man has been ordered to pay Ball’s $700k in legal expenses. (How does this suit differ from a legal harassment suit?) The top IPCC paleoclimatologist agrees that Mann’s hockey stick papers are wrong! Mann claims some of his work is proprietary but there are a few others who claim to have matched Mann’s hockey stick. Presumably their “work” is available, so what’s proprietary about Mann’s work? Why should anyone believe a supposed scientist’s work if he with-holds the basis for his conclusions?
https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/10/top-ipccs-paleoclimatologist-agrees.html
Without bothering to argue further about the dubious (and controversial) process employed by Mann to generate his hockey stick graph it can be debunked by demonstrating that the MWP was indeed global and at least as warm as now. While that proves nothing directly about the cause of our current warming (such as it is) it speaks loudly about the credibility of the folks who continue to DENY that the MWP was global and at least as warm as now. The link below provides, among other things, an MWP global study. It also rebuts the various alarmist “talking points”.
https://principia-scientific.org/empirical-evidence-refutes-greenhouse-gas-theory/
The question remains. Why in the world did the alarmists choose CO2 as the culprit when there is no evidence that CO2, a trace gas, has ever, even over geologic periods when CO2 was 10 to 20 times higher, had any impact on our planet’s temperature? There was obviously some uncertainty. There was almost immediate skepticism voiced by credible researchers about Mann’s process. Phil Jones, one of the prominent alarmist early players, publicly stated that if the MWP was global and as warm as now, then that was a “different ballgame”. Nonetheless, alarmists decided instead to blame human activity and that pretty much necessitates denying that the MWP was global and at least as warm as now.
It’s obvious now, if not then, that a more thorough investigation of the earlier global warmings was necessary, particularly the MWP, before resorting to pure speculation about CO2.
Some time ago Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist and his associates, offered a theory which makes use of, and explains, the historical data. Svensmark’s theory proposes that sun activity modulates the level of a relatively steady stream of cosmic rays intent on penetrating the lower atmosphere. (CERN certified some time ago that cosmic rays may influence the level of cloud cover.) Until very recently we have, for some time, been experiencing a high level of sun activity. During such an active period the level of cloud coverage drops because fewer cosmic rays penetrate the solar wind. With less cloud cover more sun energy reaches the earth surface so it becomes warmer. However, a very low level of sun activity is now underway. If the sun remains inactive for a significant period, Svensmark’s theory predicts more cloud cover, hence a cooler earth. CO2 plays no part in Svensmark’s theory.
At this stage of the game, whether or not Svensmark’s theory holds up, it appears that serious attention needs to be directed to historical data. If earlier global warmings cannot be explained why should we believe speculation about future climamte? Since CO2 increase was the only possible link between human activity and global warming, it appears that human activity (apart from its impact on Urban Heat Islands) plays no part in global warming. The matter of increasing CO2 should be left to such disciplines as botanists and health researchers rather than climatologists.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/07/what-if-there-is-no-climate-emergency/