Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; A pair of researchers from the Norwegian Business School have produced a climate prognosis so profoundly depressing even Katharine Hayhoe has publicly complained about it.
Just Stopping Emissions May No Longer Be Enough to Stop Global Warming
Researchers argue that it’s time to invest in aggressive carbon capture
Earlier this year, the Earth saw a huge dip in carbon emissions as nations around the globe locked down to slow the spread of the coronavirus. It offered a glimpse into what the world might look like if we took drastic steps to reduce our carbon emissions to slow the spread of global warming: For a brief moment, smog-choked cities around the world had clear skies.
But according to a new modeling study published in Scientific Reports today, even if we made such drastic reductions permanent, it would still not be enough. The study suggests that if we stopped all human-made greenhouse gas emissions immediately, the Earth’s temperatures would continue to rise because of self-sustaining melting ice and permafrost. These “feedback loops” — in which melting ice causes less sunlight to be reflected back into space, which in turn raises temperatures and causes more ice melt — have already been set into motion, the researchers argue.
Humanity “is beyond the point-of-no-return when it comes to halt the melting of the permafrost using greenhouse gas cuts as the single tool,” Jørgen Randers, PhD, professor emeritus of climate strategy at BI Norwegian Business School and lead author of the study, tells Future Human in an email. That’s not to say we should give up on reducing emissions: Rather, Randers says that the world “should accelerate its effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions (in order to postpone as much as possible the temperature rise) and start developing the technologies for large scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.”
…
Read more: https://futurehuman.medium.com/were-past-the-point-of-no-return-on-global-warming-scientists-warn-6779aaf4ed2b
The abstract of the study;
An earth system model shows self-sustained melting of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020
Jorgen Randers & Ulrich Goluke
Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 18456 (2020) Cite this article
Abstract
The risk of points-of-no-return, which, once surpassed lock the world into new dynamics, have been discussed for decades. Recently, there have been warnings that some of these tipping points are coming closer and are too dangerous to be disregarded. In this paper we report that in the ESCIMO climate model the world is already past a point-of-no-return for global warming. In ESCIMO we observe self-sustained melting of the permafrost for hundreds of years, even if global society stops all emissions of man-made GHGs immediately. We encourage other model builders to explore our discovery in their (bigger) models, and report on their findings. The melting (in ESCIMO) is the result of a continuing self-sustained rise in the global temperature. This warming is the combined effect of three physical processes: (1) declining surface albedo (driven by melting of the Arctic ice cover), (2) increasing amounts of water vapour in the atmosphere (driven by higher temperatures), and (3) changes in the concentrations of the GHG in the atmosphere (driven by the absorption of CO2 in biomass and oceans, and emission of carbon (CH4 and CO2) from melting permafrost). This self-sustained, in the sense of no further GHG emissions, melting process (in ESCIMO) is a causally determined, physical process that evolves over time. It starts with the man-made warming up to the 1950s, leading to a rise in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere—further lifting the temperature, causing increasing release of carbon from melting permafrost, and simultaneously a decline in the surface albedo as the ice and snow covers melts. To stop the self-sustained warming in ESCIMO, enormous amounts of CO2 have to be extracted from the atmosphere.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75481-z
Why was Hayhoe so upset about a climate study which says we’re all doomed?
It appears that people have to think climate change is enough of a problem to be motivated to act, but if the message is too depressing, supporters could lose interest and lapse into apathy.
In the comments. so far, these “brilliant” perfessers (according to their resumes) , trying to save the world from climate change doom, were described with the following non-scientific terms:
“climate alarmists”
“spewing scumbags”
“lying bed wetters”
“retards”
I object to use of the term “retards”
Richard Greene
Official Spokesman: Retards of America
… also a “short bus” driver and
executive washroom attendant
for even-numbered stalls
***Moderator Bait***
Unfortunately, most of the terms applied are appropriate.
Hayhoe is saying what I’ve been saying for a while – that is – We are in imminent danger of doing something sooo dumb as to extinguish ourselves.
(I would and always have, further that with the reason why. The reliance of sugar in our diet. We are behaving like drunks because of the stuff)
But Hoho excels herself – she is leading the charge in doom-mongering.
Especially with the Interweb creating an epic high-speed system of Chinese Whispering where everyone feels compelled to expand on what has been previously said
Just before the interweb is switched off (its the only *real* solution) have a look at this= what will probably happen in a Biden/Harris/Cortez world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzoX7zEZ6h4
Holy Cow, the US has printed $3 Trillion *just* to cope with Covid.
Work it out, what would a single daily tablet containing Vitamins B, D plus Zinc and Magnesium cost?
Even if just for the over 40’s at maybe10 cents per day?
Regarding Hayhoe’s doomerism/point of no return using the one cigarette analogy, a better one would be: Jeffry Toobin is one Zoom stroke past the point of no return.
Lol. Ben Shapiro now uses the word “Toobining” a lot on his radio show.
“Recently, there have been warnings that some of these tipping points are coming closer and are too dangerous to be disregarded.”
I took the highest authority at their word and we were all doomed after 2000-
https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
So why are they continually bothering the children with this adult dooming stuff as it’s best we remain calm and let the little ones enjoy the time they have left. Who the Hell upset Greta like that as I thought we’d all agreed it was not on after the exploding schoolkiddies and dropping polar bears off skyscrapers was giving them nightmares unnecessarily. There needs to be harsh penalties for child abuse with the dooming.
Of course the Progressives don’t like this line of thinking. It eliminates their excuse for escalating their war on the middle class.
Let’s party.
*See On the Beach reference above
“It appears that people have to think climate change is enough of a problem to be motivated to act, but if the message is too depressing, supporters could lose interest and lapse into apathy.”
More like it appears that if they push the nonsense so hard that everyone will start doubting any of it is legitimate.
Smells like self preservation more than complaints of doomerism.
Hayhoe herself claimed permanent drought (Doomerish for the midwest land owners)
Na, its a Schism, somebody not adhering to the Orthodox doctrine as prescribed by the Climate Theocracy.
How Dare They!!
Cant have people thinking independently, who knows where that would lead!
Great news! Since…obviously…climate research grant money is no longer needed, we will be able to invest those $Billions into retraining the thousands of climate experts who will be in need of jobs. Perhaps learning to write code?
Wait, wait, wait! . . . I was assured by that brilliant climate scientist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that I would (as of today) still have about 10.25 years left before the world entered the path of unrecoverable catastrophic climate change.
Why should I believe this study by two professors from a Norwegian Business School over the pronouncements of AOC?
I say, for the next ten years, let’s party on! Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to provide the funds.
The Twits are funny. You have this one, shown in the article:
And clicking through to TWITter (against my better judgement), the Twits are denigrating the model that was used. Even MannTastic says their future projections are worthless.
Where have we heard all that before? No no no, THESE models are good and wonderful, but that one is nonsense.
It is indeed an echo chamber in there, since they block anyone who disagrees with them.
It’s also ironic that this Jess Phoenix person (if that is her real name), complains of a “deeply flawed” study, then looks to the likes of Michael Mann, creator of many deeply flawed studies, for help.
Cognitive Dissonance.
They have ineffectively calibrated the fear they’ve instilled by raising and raising the doom predictions and so everyone will just tune them out.
The oceans have now started to cool after the lengthy El Nino dominated period of 2014-2020. This will likely continue if it follows the trends of previous La Nina events.
https://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2014/to/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2014/to:2018.1/trend
It seems reasonable we could return to the at least the same level as 2018 by February. If we then continue the cooling the big question will be how far do we drop. Alarmists have been using ENSO based warming to hype record warm years and 2021 could see a major drop.
Will alarmism continue? Of course it will. They will just use something different.
Typical bunch of ridiculous fear-mongering verbal garbage.
Climate change dictionary
for climate change trained parrots:
2018 = “existential threat”
2019 = “worse than we thought”
2020 = “worse than worse than we thought”
2021 = “hopeless”
2022 = “more hopeless than we thought”
2023 = “worse than more hopeless than we thought”
2024 = “almost no life left on the planet”,
except Donald Trump, running for president again.
President of nothing.
2025 = “the end” (Trump wins)
Note:
Never smile, or burst out laughing,
when informing others of the coming
climate crisis (2019),
disaster (2020),
apocalypse (2021)
armageddon (2022)
annihilation (2023)
holocaust (2024)
A weather guy in NZ (James Renwick) reckons these findings are implausible because it disagrees with other models.
Maybe that’s the plan – publish some _really_ outlandish ‘findings’ to make some slightly less outlandish findings more plausible.
Others have dismissed the study because the model isn’t complicated enough. I would have thought a better reason to dismiss it would be because it doesn’t predict actual observations accurately.
Me, I wonder if it’s just agreeing with a lot of climate realists – it’s basically saying that reducing human CO2 emissions won’t change the climate, isn’t it?
Renwick is the President of the NZ chapter of Climate Alarmism bedwetters.
Oh good! Since it’s already too late to save humanity and the planet, we can stop wasting money and effort on it and just enjoy wealth, prosperity and warm weather.
Name one person who has lost a job, been publicly attacked and humiliated, threatened with physical harm, had those punishments extended to family and friends …
For pro-CO2 Warming extremism ?
What do they have to lose ??
A degree +/- 20, 40, 60 degree swings in a good year. Don’t be green, go green, clear the Green blight.
Like all the green/PC/SJW hand wringing issues, nobody really wants to say we should give up or really try and “fix” anything because then the gravy train stops. The hand wringing angst and the grievances will continue ad nauseum, with the only common thread being lots of money required, lots of other peoples money for green new deals, reparations, compensation, pork barrelling and free stuff in general.
Even if we humans are forced to decrease future emissions by a lot, how are we going to measure the supposed benefit if we cannot see a measured change in the atmosphere?
Remember, van Wjngaarden and Happer, with careful measurement, have shown in a recent preprint that CO2 in the air is saturated in it’s ability to produce significantly more heat if it’s concentration changes. This applies to both more and less CO2 in the air than the current level. If nothing else changes, like water vapour, CO2 is no longer a control know for global temperatures and indeed, it might not have been since the start of the industrial revolution.
A saturated gas, as they describe, is a dead horse for claims of affecting temperature. Scientists know this. Many are too scared to discuss it.
It is not only voting systems that are under a cloud of dishonesty. Geoff S
As regards the climate, my personal philosophy is, what me worry.
Incidentally, the original slogan in Mad Magazine was “what me worry.” No punctuation, including a question mark or even a period. The literal translation was, why should I worry? I’m a little pedantic on this point. In fact, I care about that silly slogan than I do about climate alarmism. I do not care about global warming at all.
The paper has now been retracted
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/506655-eco-alarmists-climate-change-message/
Phil,
Thanks. Some Reports are calling it a “clarification” (!).
This appeared in the Brisbane Courier Mail today-
“Climate Clarified.
A Top scientific journal that claimed global warming may already be unstoppable has been forced to issue a clarification after being accused of potentially causing “unnecessary despair”.
Scientific Reports sought to publicise a study by Norwegian scientists with a doom laden press release headlined “ Ending greenhouse gas emissions may not stop global warming.”
Strongly criticised by leading British scientists, the journal issued a revised press release admitting the prediction was based on a particular computer model, and said the results should be tested by “alternative models”.
I am sure the last thing “leading British scientists” want the public to hear is that we are beyond saving the planet.
Something of a death sentence for an entire profession.
A retraction is taking back something incorrect.
A clarification is making a statement or situation less confused and more comprehensible.
As the criticisms were that the study was wrong, retraction would seem more appropriate.
Herbert
You’re right, the RT article exaggerated by saying it had been “withdrawn”. It’s own source the UK Times said only a “clarification” had been issued.
But I checked Scientific Reports and the paper is fully available, I could find no clarification.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75481-z
The reality is that there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. For those that believe in the radiant greenhouse effect, in terms of greenhouse gases, the primary greenhouse gas in H2O. Molecule per molecule, H2O is a stronger absorber of IR than is CO2 and on average there is 50 times more H2O in our atmosphere than CO2 The added effect of CO2 must be trivial so removing it is not going to result in any cooling. If they really want to lower the amount of greenhouse gases in out atmosphere they need to concentrate on the major culprit, H2O. Lots of luck lowering global H2O emissions Maybe they can cover all bodies of water and wet ground all over the globe with plastic and not allow agricultural uses of H20 to decrease H2O emissions.
During the previous interglacial period, the Eemian, temperatures were warmer than today with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels yet no climate tipping point was ever reached and the previous interglacial period was followed by the last ice age. The warmest part of the current interglacial period, the Holocene optimum, has long passed without any kind of climate tipping point. Receding glaciers have revealed remnants of forests that grew during the Holocene Optimum 3 million years ago CO2 levels were higher than today and it was significantly warmer and look what happened.
The AGW conjecture is based on only partial science and is severely flawed. For example the AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gases in the Earths atmosphere. Such a greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere , or anywhere else in the solar system for that matter. The radiant greenhouse effect is nothing but science fiction so thence the AGW conjecture is nothing but science fiction as well. So the study that we are talking about is nothing more than science fiction.
The reality is that there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. For those that believe in the radiant greenhouse effect, in terms of greenhouse gases, the primary greenhouse gas in H2O’
all of that is absolutely untrue.
No, what I am saying is absolutely true. For example, if CO2 really affected climate then the increase in CO2 over that past 30 years should have caused at least a measurable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened. Molecule per molecule, H2O is a stronger IR absorber than is CO2 and on average there is roughly 50 times more H2O in our atmosphere than is CO2. As a feedback, H2O is a net coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere as evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly lower than the dry lapse rate in the troposphere. Any additional H2O added to the atmosphere because of CO2 warming must have a cooling effect. A doubling of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere will slightly decrease the dry lapse rate in the Troposphere. This cooling effect alone lowers estimates of the climate sensitivity of CO2 by more than a factor of 20. In the paleoclimate record there is evidence that warmer temperatures cause more CO2 to enter the atmosphere but there is no evidence that the added CO2 enhances warming.
This was from 1989……
UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.
He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.”
…….we are now 20 years beyond the 10 years of opportunity, I guess that puts us beyond, beyond human control.
Norwegians. Beautiful but dumb.
Some of them, surely. But not all of us, hopefully.