Britain's Terrifying Global Warming Future: A beach in southern Marseille in 2009 July. Ximonic, Simo Räsänen / CC BY-SA

Bloomberg: “What Smart People Get Wrong About Climate Change Extremes”

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Bloomberg thinks we’re not scared enough of climate consequences we cannot predict. But a decision to jump at shadows would have its own serious consequences.

What Smart People Get Wrong About Climate Change Extremes

There isn’t enough appreciation of the risks associated with new weather patterns we don’t yet understand. 

By Kate Mackenzie
10 September 2021, 20:00 GMT+10

If anyone should be attuned to the real-world impacts of global warming, it’s the policy makers and business heads that have to deal with the fallout. But even the most well-intentioned can fail to grasp just how bad things could get if climate goals aren’t met.

At least that’s the impression I get. That’s why I reached out to Andy Pitman and Sonia Seneviratne, two of the world’s top experts on the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Their fields of study focus on extremes and compound events. Both worry that institutions are too focused on outcomes we can predict with high confidence. There isn’t enough appreciation of the risks associated with new weather patterns we don’t yet understand.

Warming of about 1.2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels has already had devastating consequences. “Once we get around 2°C we are getting to a climate regime which hasn’t been seen for as long as the human species has been at work,” said Seneviratne, a professor at ETH Zurich who oversaw the chapter on extremes in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The document, published every six to seven years, is the pinnacle of scientific knowledge about global warming.

The instruments are meant to estimate the effects of higher levels of warming, but “if it tells you you are resilient at 4°C, that doesn’t mean you’ll be okay. It means your analysis is crap,” he said. It’s like asking “what would happen if you jumped off a 50-meter cliff and then finding you’d land at the bottom and you’d be fine.”

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-10/what-smart-people-get-wrong-about-climate-change-extremes

Jumping at shadows means committing substantial resources to addressing a problem nobody is sure exists. Since there is a finite supply of resources, spending more on climate action means draining money from education, hospitals, police, military or infrastructure. If you spend all your money chasing phantoms, you won’t have anything left when a real crisis strikes.

What if the world does warm?

We know beyond doubt that a warmer world is survivable, that life thrives in such conditions. Some of the most prolific periods of abundance occurred in the distant past, when CO2 levels and temperatures were far higher than today.

What about the direct impact on people of warmer temperatures?

We don’t need a time machine to truly understand the impact of warmer temperatures, all we need to do is book a holiday to somewhere warm. Or move somewhere warm, like I did.

I have no doubt that if the world warmed 4C, a lot of cities would need to fix their drains and maybe change the grade of tarmac on their roads. But this wouldn’t happen all at once, it would happen over decades, as part of the normal maintenance cycle.

The main impact for most people would be nicer weather.

I live in a place where the daytime temperature for half the year hovers around 30C / 86F. And life is beautiful. Low heating bills, a big swimming pool to enjoy with friends, long outdoor evenings where it doesn’t get cold. I even get to save on water bills – most of the time when the swimming pool gets a little low, a tropical storm pops up to refill it for me.

Given substantial evidence that climate models are running way too hot, I doubt we are going to see a significant climate shift by the end of this century, or likely even by the end of the next century. Folks are still going to have to move if they want to enjoy good retirement weather.

But if the last 10,000 years of climate shifts can teach us anything, that lesson is that humans flourish when the world warms. Our civilisations rise during warm periods, like the Roman Warming or Medieval Warm Period, and falter during cold periods, like the Dark Ages or the Little Ice Age.

The end of the Little Ice Age was an exception – because the industrial revolution which occurred during the final years of the little ice age finally gave us the means to be prosperous in the face of climatic adversity.

The industrial revolution was an advance we should treasure, not regret.

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saveenergy
September 10, 2021 10:36 pm

“But if the last 10,000 years of climate shifts can teach us anything, that lesson is that humans flourish when the world warms. Our civilisations rise during warm periods, like the Roman Warming or Medieval Warm Period, and falter during cold periods, like the Dark Ages or the Little Ice Age.

The end of the Little Ice Age was an exception – because the industrial revolution which occurred during the final years of the little ice age finally gave us the means to be prosperous in the face of climatic adversity.

The industrial revolution was an advance we should treasure, not regret.”

Neatly put !

SxyxS
Reply to  saveenergy
September 11, 2021 2:38 am

During the(soon to be cancelled and called conspiracy theory) medieval warm period the world population skyrocketed as result of more farmland,longer summers and better water supply(=more evaporation ).
And the least thing the elites want is an increasing population.These guys even spent tons of money to set up the Georgia Guidestones where it is written that world population will be brought down to >500 million.

The only difference between medieval warming and (hypothetical )current warming is,
that even the dumbest scientist would eventually get to the conclusion that medieval warming did not benefit everyone all around the world as result of changes in weather patterns and cloud movements.
But in terms of AGW any warming is negative for all regions and countries around the world.(while in the real world the earth got greener by 5% and record after record in terms of crop yields were broken)

There is no: Wait and observe to see wether warming is good or bad for country xyz,as the chances should be around 50:50.
It’s only:warming is always bad(which is very strange for a science that feared global cooling(the only dangerous thing about climate are it’s scientist who went from one extreme to the other) the most just a few decades ag0).
The only reason they do consider from time to time warming may have positive effects is political strategy :to throw a bone to the plebs,to make themselves apear neutral and to create an excuse they can use in 2027 when they are accused of being biased they can always claim that they showed the benefits of warming on june 21st 2014,but they wont mention that 99.99% of the time they did the opposite.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  SxyxS
September 11, 2021 2:17 pm

I would hazard that warming is good/bad is not even a 50:50 chance, it’s more like 80% of the world’s countries will see positive benefits, while only 20% will see negative impacts. Or it could even go higher, like 97%! Yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket…! Maybe it will be 80% of the world’s population…?

MarkW
Reply to  saveenergy
September 11, 2021 9:00 am

One difference between the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age is technology.
During the dark ages, civilizations collapsed.
During the Little Ice Age, lots of people died, but civilization itself did not collapse.

Better housing, enlarged trade networks, better farming technology. Better technology made it possible for more to survive the worsening weather.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  MarkW
September 11, 2021 2:19 pm

With the industrial revolution and so drastically improved transportation, this old World could well get through another Little Ice Age with the only impact is the sale of fur coats. No starvation, because food can be transported anywhere, etc., etc.

H.R.
September 10, 2021 10:38 pm

That was one fine essay, Eric. It’s hard to refute a boots-on-the-ground, money-where-your-mouth-is argument.



Yeah, would someone please remind me why I leave my stone and stucco home in the North, where the temperature does cartwheels around the freezing mark and is often below 10 (F), and I leave the thermostat at 63(F) to keep the pipes and plants from freezing for a climate that averages about 75(F) with the odd mid-60s and mid-80s (F)?

I think I’m a Climate Refugee, but not the way the IpeeCC defines it.


P.S. Why do I meet so many nice Canadians, Minnesotans, and Michiganders where I Winter? Somebody give me a hint; genetic, cultural, what?

We have something in common, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. 🤷‍♂️
😜

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  H.R.
September 10, 2021 11:18 pm

Hard to say, without knowing where you winter.

Rod Evans
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
September 11, 2021 1:33 pm

Well Jeff, I am guessing it isn’t anywhere in the UK.:)

H.R.
Reply to  Rod Evans
September 11, 2021 3:48 pm

By golly! You’ve got me pegged, Rod. My wife is a Glaswegian, though. Which explains why we don’t Winter there. 😁

Didn’t want to specify Florida because there are a bunch of climate refugees in Arizona, Florida, Alabama too.

Mumbles McGuirck
Reply to  H.R.
September 11, 2021 6:48 am

“We have something in common, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

Doncha know, it’s the funny way you talk, eh? ‘Specially if’n you’re upta Hallendale Beach. Ja?

H.R.
Reply to  Mumbles McGuirck
September 11, 2021 3:41 pm

Gulf side!

bill Johnston
Reply to  H.R.
September 11, 2021 6:58 am

Wet your finger and stick it out the window. Does it get really cold? There’s your answer.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  H.R.
September 11, 2021 2:21 pm

A disgustingly large RV belching plenty of *eeeevil* CO2? For the record, if I needed to be a climate refugee after your model, it would be with a trailer RV pulled by my 3/4 ton pick-up truck with the 6.4 liter gasoline fired engine. But I live in central to north central Alabama, where snow on the ground is not even an annual event, though it does happen from time to time.

H.R.
Reply to  Red94ViperRT10
September 11, 2021 3:42 pm

42′ 5th wheel. Cummins turbodiesel. 😁

Jeff Alberts
September 10, 2021 11:17 pm

Supposedly, the “devastating impacts” we’ve already seen is a changing jet stream.

According to Wikipedia, we’ve only really been studying them in earnest since about WWII. So, how do we know what’s happening now isn’t perfectly typical?

As usual with climate science, we suddenly start hyper scrutinizing something, and seem surprised at what we find. The likelihood that nothing out of the ordinary is happening never seems to cross their minds. We just discovered it, therefore any variation must be BAD!

bill Johnston
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
September 11, 2021 7:00 am

Which reminds me of the blind man describing an elephant.

michael hart
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
September 11, 2021 12:27 pm

I recall reading earlier IPCC projections were actually for net positive effects for several decades yet. There are indeed no “devastating impacts”. The statistics of big-ticket weather events are largely unchanged or even improved.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
September 11, 2021 2:25 pm

Pretty much like that dreaded “Hole in the Ozone Layer” always existed, and its size has always varied from time to time.

accordionsrule
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
September 11, 2021 11:38 pm

What’s unprecedented is the geomagnetic excursion.
The SH early winter jetstream looks plenty healthy to me.

michel
September 10, 2021 11:33 pm

An absolutely extraordinary piece on Ars Technica, may be worth an article here, about the bill before the House to eliminate natural gas use in the US.

“Last year alone, our country experienced 22 major natural disasters costing Americans a record-shattering $95 billion in damages—figures that represent more than double the historical average but which still don’t reflect the cost of lost jobs or the trauma of families losing their homes,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told The New York Times. “The climate crisis is here, and the cost of inaction is already staggering.”

These people actually seem to think that reducing or eliminating natural gas use in the US will in some way reduce what they think is an increase in extreme weather events!

Completely insane. The flip side of science denial, the invention of crazed fantasies which are alleged to be scientifically justified.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/heres-how-the-us-will-tackle-climate-change-with-the-3-5t-reconciliation-bill/

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  michel
September 11, 2021 12:18 am

Completely insane. The flip side of science denial, the invention of crazed fantasies which are alleged to be scientifically justified.

Ironically, people are being gaslighted.

Rusty
Reply to  michel
September 11, 2021 3:29 am

Inflation, greater prosperity and a larger number of people per areas will mean damages will be higher.

michel
Reply to  Rusty
September 11, 2021 6:03 am

Damages may be higher. What will eliminating US natural gas do to lessen their frequency?

This is the usual line: do something that can have no effect on the alleged problem, even if the problem is real, which it is not.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  michel
September 11, 2021 2:29 pm

So they want to kill off as many poor people as possible, as rapidly as possible? If they were to eliminate natural gas use, we would have to make up for it by burning more coal at the power plant, rather than burning about a third as much (BTU-wise) natural gas in each local furnace.

MarkW
Reply to  Rusty
September 11, 2021 9:10 am

Bloomberg claims to be an economist. YOu think he would know that.

Retired_Engineer_Jim
Reply to  michel
September 11, 2021 9:05 am

“… which the bill defines as anything producing less than 0.1 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, …”

0.1 metric tons of CO2 PER WHAT? Can’t we get legislators who are actually numerate?

September 10, 2021 11:54 pm

The attitude of our political and climate science establishment is exactly the same as my attitude at the age of 5 years old or so when I first took an interest in weather having started to notice weather variability on a day to day basis.
I knew nothing at all about weather and so assumed that it was infinitely variable rather than constrained within quite narrow natural limits.
On seeing anything new I constantly expected something unprecedented and for a few years that seemed to happen because my experience was very limited.
After a while as familiarity grew I found that my hopes and expectations of seeing something new we’re constantly being frustrated.
On reading about past weather and natural climate variability I found that nothing unprecedented was ever happening and that my lack of knowledge and experience was the sole cause of my frequent expectation of experiencing something unusual.
We are effectively entrusting our response to weather variability to the equivalent of 5 year old children and may well destroy our civilisation as a result.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Stephen Wilde
September 11, 2021 2:32 pm

I didn’t see snow on my place of residence until I was 13. That winter it snowed 3 times. By the 3rd the school didn’t even close. Oh don’t fault them for closing school after the first, there was a layer of ice under the snow that made it nearly impossible to even drive in a straight line. Even though the Texas Gulf Coast coastal savanna is disgustingly flat, many drivers found enough incline to strand their vehicle and have to call for a tow.

Chaswarnertoo
September 11, 2021 12:11 am

Not very smart people, surely? If they believe Warmists’ guff.

Pamela Matlack-Klein
Reply to  Chaswarnertoo
September 11, 2021 5:16 am

One can be very smart and still believe in nonsense. Look at all the people who believe in homeopathic medicine and astrology.

Mr.
Reply to  Pamela Matlack-Klein
September 11, 2021 9:12 am

Or average global climate conditions.

gbaikie
September 11, 2021 12:42 am

–What Smart People Get Wrong About Climate Change Extremes
There isn’t enough appreciation of the risks associated with new weather patterns we don’t yet understand. 
By Kate Mackenzie

She is dumb.
Does she expect a government to do anything about her “ new weather patterns”
Maybe she thinks politicians are smart people getting it wrong.
Politicians have always been stupid and evil. And they will continue to not represent the people voted for them.
Governor Cuomo is same creature as Bill Clinton and Obama. They all are feminists.

SxyxS
Reply to  gbaikie
September 11, 2021 2:56 am

She is not dumb.
She makes a living as climate advisor and wants to keep her useless well paid job ,by declaring that even smart people are too dumb to understand climate while only a chosen few do.
Which is just part of big brothers most important strategy:

” The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final and most essential command”

George Orwell 1984

Considering how much bipolar and other mental disorders have increased as result of cognitive dissonance because the things promoted by MSM do not match with the observed reality of the individual,
it is safe to assume that the essential command has already been accepted by huge parts of the population.

Chaswarnertoo
Reply to  SxyxS
September 11, 2021 3:01 am

Just the sheeple.

Derg
Reply to  Chaswarnertoo
September 11, 2021 3:06 am

Stormtroopers 😉

Pamela Matlack-Klein
Reply to  SxyxS
September 11, 2021 5:25 am

If she accepts a big salary for knowingly spreading phony climate alarm then she is not a very nice person and there are some ugly words that could legitimately be applied to her…. If she actually believes the lies she is spreading then she is stupid!

Gordon A. Dressler
Reply to  SxyxS
September 11, 2021 7:59 am

The excerpts of Kate Mackenzie’s Bloomberg article, provided in the above WUWT article, clearly show she is auditioning for a consulting job with the IPCC . . . I mean just look at this paragraph of hers:
“Warming of about 1.2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels has already had devastating consequences. ‘Once we get around 2°C we are getting to a climate regime which hasn’t been seen for as long as the human species has been at work,’ said Seneviratne, a professor at ETH Zurich who oversaw the chapter on extremes in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The document, published every six to seven years, is the pinnacle of scientific knowledge about global warming.”

I’m wondering exactly how many people have seen “devastating consequences” from global warming—all of 1.2 °C—since the start of industrialization, an interval of about 260 years?

I’m wondering exactly how many people consider IPPC reports as the “pinnacle of scientific knowledge about global warming”? If IPCC is a pinnacle of anything, it is that of scientific misinformation.

Kate must surely enjoy the two moons on her planet.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Gordon A. Dressler
September 11, 2021 2:37 pm

Well, my version indicated a link to the “…devastating consequences…” claptrap. I dare not click on it, I’m sure I would be overwhelmed by bulls*** and probably strain an eye roll muscle.

gbaikie
Reply to  SxyxS
September 11, 2021 2:18 pm

She is dumb. She is Dem, all Dems are dumb {except smarter ones which strangely, want to be Dems, but the Dems hate them. Give a name of a smart Dem {who is not hated by other dems}.
{if you are dem hated by other dems, you aren’t really a dem}

Ron Long
Reply to  gbaikie
September 11, 2021 5:17 am

Here is a large problem, Kate Mackenzie is not actually dumb, she is obviously of slightly above average intelligence, education, and professional success. How can she be so blind and misguided? When we see the CAGW crowd going off on theories presented as scientific fact, one big problem is that some percentage of them actually believe what they are saying (the others have gotten themselves a ticket on the gravy train and they ae going to ride it to the end of the tracks). What a difficult enigma.

starzmom
Reply to  Ron Long
September 11, 2021 7:24 am

I have a smart son (an engineer–you would think he would know better) who buys into this claptrap. It is all in the appeal to authority as he refuses to look at actual data–it is tainted by bias he says, but never explains why one bias is bad but the other good.

Mr.
Reply to  starzmom
September 11, 2021 9:20 am

My experience of the younger generations is that they conform religiously to their peer positions.

Social rejection for them is a punishment worth sacrificing any amount of personal integrity for.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Ron Long
September 11, 2021 2:38 pm

…theories presented as scientific fact…

I fear these catastrophe notions are way short of a “theory” and even a few bricks short of a full-load “hypothesis”.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  gbaikie
September 11, 2021 9:06 am

“Does she expect a government to do anything about her “ new weather patterns””

I would say to her: What new weather patterns?”

She is seeing things that are not there.

Dave Fair
Reply to  gbaikie
September 11, 2021 11:51 am

I assume you meant “misogynists'” instead of “feminists.”

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  gbaikie
September 11, 2021 2:34 pm

Sounds like everyone needs a good dose of my mother’s advice: keep some money in the bank for emergencies. There, Climate Crisis solved. Everyone go back to work, on something productive.

The Dark Lord
September 11, 2021 1:11 am

I worked directly for Bloomberg for several years … he should never use the words “smart people” in a sentence unless he is refering to others who actually are smart … he is of average intelligence, is an insecure, small minded petty man with very few skills … yes he’s a billionaire, but not a smart one … I doubt very much that this Bloomberg writer is any smarter than her boss …

Derg
Reply to  The Dark Lord
September 11, 2021 3:08 am

I really enjoyed Trump imitating Bloomberg by crouching behind the podium so you could barely see his head…Trump was funny. Bloomberg was not.

Pamela Matlack-Klein
Reply to  The Dark Lord
September 11, 2021 5:30 am

Interesting assessment of Bloomberg. It is pretty much what I think of him as well and I never met the man, it is just the attitude he radiates.

Chris Hanley
September 11, 2021 1:48 am

“Warming of about 1.2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels has already had devastating consequences …”
The purported linear global surface temperature trend for the longest thermometer record is less than 1C.
Once we get around 2°C we are getting to a climate regime which hasn’t been seen for as long as the human species has been at work …”.
No-one can know what past global temperatures were to a necessary resolution to make that claim.

Chaswarnertoo
Reply to  Chris Hanley
September 11, 2021 3:03 am

Um. Yes we can. Hippos in the Thames in the Eemian. All those evil Neanderthals with their V8s and jet planes….

Pamela Matlack-Klein
Reply to  Chris Hanley
September 11, 2021 5:32 am

Just where are these “devastating consequences” happening?

DMacKenzie
Reply to  Pamela Matlack-Klein
September 11, 2021 8:10 am

Always much worse than imaginable where its hard to go see for yourself….. in Polar bear country, Amazon Jungle, Pacific garbage gyre, Great Barrier Reef…..

Mr.
Reply to  DMacKenzie
September 11, 2021 9:27 am

But selected photos are always presented to illustrate the “crisis” claims, so you don’t need to go see for yourself.

We should all be more grateful for the efforts these researchers put in to ‘educate’ us about the “climate crisis”.

(where IS that /sarc symbol on my keypad?)

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Mr.
September 11, 2021 2:42 pm

It’s not a symbol, it’s a font.

Pamela Matlack-Klein
Reply to  DMacKenzie
September 11, 2021 12:28 pm

Ha! I have visited some remote areas doing Sea Level research. Guess what, no devastating consequences.

Mr.
Reply to  Pamela Matlack-Klein
September 11, 2021 2:40 pm

‘Fess up, Pamela.
You know that low tide shoreline you looked at was 3mm higher than when you saw it a year earlier 🤣

Paul Johnson
Reply to  Chris Hanley
September 11, 2021 6:30 am

How do people become “the world’s top experts on the most catastrophic effects of climate change.”? It seems to be by making the most outlandish claims and then being anointed as experts by a gullible and agenda-driven media.  

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Paul Johnson
September 11, 2021 2:44 pm

I was told, as a person gets more education, they become more specialized. In other words, they know more and more about less and less. Seems they have achieved that 1/∞ level of specialization.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Chris Hanley
September 11, 2021 2:40 pm

…and the more I hear about that longest thermometer record the more I become convinced it is tainted by UHI, “adjustments”, or both.

Matthew Sykes
September 11, 2021 1:54 am

You are quite right, we know a few degrees of warming is beneficial to all life, as is more CO2. The entire CAGW story is built on the lie that climate change is bad, it isnt.

Pamela Matlack-Klein
Reply to  Matthew Sykes
September 11, 2021 5:38 am

It is worse than saying climate change is bad, they are trying to tell us that colder is better and warmer is bad! If warm were so bad, why do millions of people choose to vacation in much warmer climes? Why do people heat their homes when colder is so much better for humankind? This warmer is bad, colder is good rationale has never made sense to me when its adherents first started it 30 odd years ago. Just after they stopped yapping about the horror of the rapidly-approaching ice age!

Humanity has thousands of years of demonstrating that a warmer world is ever so much better for people than a colder one. Don’t any of these clowns ever study history?

Rich Davis
Reply to  Matthew Sykes
September 11, 2021 5:48 am

You’re a glass half full man, I see. But cooling and little ice ages and big ice ages? I call that bad climate change.

The irony is that glaciation will come eventually. Today we are trying desperately to prevent better climate. When the glaciers start to advance, what has happened in the past 30 years would be hailed as a hopeful trend. Insanity reigns.

Ed Zuiderwijk
September 11, 2021 2:14 am

It takes a special mindset to produce nonsense such as Kate’s. Not only is it full of factual errors (devastating consequences?) it is presented in sloppy gobbledigook (levels of warming??). The key to this kind of reporting is the ‘impression’ of the second paragraph. An arts graduate lecturing on physics. Only at Bloomberg.

Chaswarnertoo
Reply to  Ed Zuiderwijk
September 11, 2021 3:05 am

Special needs?

TonyL
September 11, 2021 2:28 am

Take a moment and study the picture at the top of the article. Notice the caption.
Britain’s Terrifying Global Warming Future:

That should strike fear and terror into anybody’s heart.
That’s right – The Touristo Hoards.
They come like a plague of zombies. They get everywhere. They are on the beaches, downtown, in the shopping centers and in the restaurants and nightclubs. Horribly dressed and toting cameras galore, they come at you, implacable and unstoppable. Then come the resort hotels and the tour buses everywhere. The Touristas wave their credit cards and attack the shopping centers shouting their terrifying battle cry: Chaaarge It!
Nobody deserves this fate.

Small seacoast towns are most at risk of climate change but are not alone by any means. There a few things we can do to prepare for climate change.
1) Survey your town, categorize all ways in, including roads, rail, and sea.
2) Establish a defensible perimeter. Make the hard choices about what must be defended and what is outside the perimeter and cannot be defended.
3) Fortify the perimeter, remember “defense in depth”.

Good Luck, friends.

Ed Zuiderwijk
Reply to  TonyL
September 11, 2021 3:02 am

That looks like a plan.

Pamela Matlack-Klein
Reply to  TonyL
September 11, 2021 5:41 am

Never forget, tourists being money and leave it behind when they go home. Their kiddos don’t need to be educated, they use very few local resources, and generally stay only a fortnight or less.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  TonyL
September 11, 2021 2:48 pm

All those shorts and sandals with black dress socks below a beer belly overhang! Horrors!

Greg
September 11, 2021 2:46 am

Carbon neutral is like jumpting off a 50ft just in case there’s tiger behind you.

Chaswarnertoo
Reply to  Greg
September 11, 2021 3:03 am

When you don’t live in India.

Joao Martins
September 11, 2021 3:00 am

Great essay, Eric!

Rusty
September 11, 2021 3:27 am

It’s disingenuous to claim 1.5°C of temperature rise is due to human activity when the start point for that rise is a naturally occurring low temperature (little ice age).

Once that’s taken into account then the rest can safely be dismissed.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Rusty
September 11, 2021 9:15 am

They also need to take into account that the temperatures have cooled by about 0.5C since the highpoint of the 21st century, the year 2016.

comment image

MarkW
Reply to  Rusty
September 11, 2021 10:39 am

Especially when there is solid evidence that the temperature for most of the last 10 to 15 thousand years, has been warmer than that 1.5C mark.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  MarkW
September 11, 2021 2:50 pm

…and in light of that “temperature record” having been corrupted by UHI and “adjustments”.

Geoff Sherrington
September 11, 2021 3:34 am

Here in Australia, we have reworked the historical temperature record by inserting the official data from Commonwealth Year Books from the 1950s. These were the best quality available at the time they were printed.
The best we can find by simple number comparison is that Australia warmed only 0.6 deg C from before 1931, compared to 2000-21, not the official current wisdom of
the BoM’s estimate of a 1.44 deg C mean increase from 1910 to 2021, based on the 104 non-urban ACORN stations as BOM define them. 
It is a rather good adjustment that turns 0.6 deg C into 1.44 deg C.
Kinda turns a pleasant small change into a global apocalyptic threat, just by adjustment of measurements.
Why is this allowed to proceed?
Geoff S

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Geoff Sherrington
September 11, 2021 9:19 am

“Why is this allowed to proceed?”

Good question.

Mr.
Reply to  Geoff Sherrington
September 11, 2021 9:40 am

Who benefits from directed manipulation of data?

In the climate caper, my money would be on those whose chosen profession would be a barely noticed backwater, unless they found a way to make it seem that their work was a critical plank in saving the planet from certain doom.

“Sexing things up” I believe the practice is called.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Geoff Sherrington
September 11, 2021 2:52 pm

And in the U.S., if you take only the non-urban sites, the trend line is virtually flat-line, i.e., it’s neither warming nor cooling. Yet. Where have I seen that? Is that posted on Not A Lot of People Know That website? I’m sure it’s available somewhere.

Gerald
September 11, 2021 4:31 am

“We know beyond doubt that a warmer world is survivable, that life thrives in such conditions.”

Absolutely right. I’ve already posted the link to the Austrian Institute of meteorology (ZAMG) and their “climate section”. Here it is again:
https://www.zamg.ac.at/cms/de/klima/klima-aktuell/klimamonitoring/?param=t&period=period-y-2020&ref=1

What you see is the comparison of 2020 with the temp-average of 1961-1990 and as you can see 2020 was warmer by +2,1 °C , 2019 by +2,3°C and 2018 even by +2,5°C

So clearly above the +2°C target set by the global climate policy as maximum limit to avoid catastrophic consequences. But in reality there are none. The crops since the 60/70s have doubled or trippled, there is no mass extinction of animals or plants, no increase in floods, storms or fire. Summers got hotter and winters milder, but we can still go for skiing in winter and the retreating glaciers release pieces of tree trunks. I wonder where they come from. Because actual tree survival limit is some hundred meters below and as far as I understood biology trees don’t walk some hundred meters up a mountain and jump into a glacier before they die.

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Gerald
September 11, 2021 2:55 pm

…trees … walk some hundred meters up a mountain and jump into a glacier…

Oh, dear Lord! Now there’s something else to worry about!

Philip
September 11, 2021 4:36 am

Seriously. Just how bad can things get if we do nothing about something that isn’t?

Mike Edwards
September 11, 2021 4:39 am

The main impact for most people would be nicer weather.”

How do you know that?

Given that a sizeable chunk of the human population lives in China and in India, and surrounding lands, do you have a particular insight into the impact of a warmer climate on those folks, for example?

Pamela Matlack-Klein
Reply to  Eric Worrall
September 11, 2021 5:45 am

It would be lovely to be living in the Holocene Optimum! I really need to get working on my time machine again….

John Garrett
September 11, 2021 5:04 am

Mike Bloomberg started his career as a paid liar and noisemaker (i.e., salesman) for the infamously corrupt and dishonest firm of Salomon Brothers (see Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker).

At Salomon, Bloomberg was immersed in a culture of deceit and intellectual dishonesty (e.g., John Meriwether, John Gutfreund).

Mike is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and I doubt that he’s ever bothered to examine the nitty, gritty details purporting to underlie the “Catastrophic/dangerous, CO2-driven anthropogenic global warming/climate change” CONJECTURE.

StephenP
Reply to  John Garrett
September 11, 2021 5:38 am

Does Mr Bloomberg lead a Net Zero lifestyle?
If not, why not?
Surely he should be leading by example.
Buying offsets just won’t wash, it is the modern equivalent of purchasing Mediaeval indulgences.

BallBounces
September 11, 2021 5:46 am

Knowing God is in his heaven helps alleviate irrational fears.

Doonman
Reply to  BallBounces
September 11, 2021 7:19 am

As my aunt used to say when asked why she went to church to pray, “It gives me comfort.”

Doonman
September 11, 2021 7:01 am

Warming of about 1.2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels has already had devastating consequences.

I know. I no longer need to buy or grow San Francisco Fog tomatoes. All that genetic selection and UC Davis research wasted.

Mark BLR
September 11, 2021 7:08 am

That’s why I reached out to Andy Pitman and Sonia Seneviratne, two of the world’s top experts on the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

… Seneviratne, a professor at ETH Zurich who oversaw the chapter on extremes in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The document, published every six to seven years, is the pinnacle of scientific knowledge about global warming.

A pity she didn’t read section 1.6.1.4, “The likelihood of reference scenarios, scenario uncertainty and storylines”, page 1-110, then :

When exploring various climate futures, scenarios with no, or no additional, climate policies are often referred to as ‘baseline’ or ‘reference scenarios’ (Section 1.6.1.1; Annex VII: Glossary). Among the five core scenarios used most in this report, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 are explicit ‘no-climate-policy’ scenarios (Gidden et al., 2019; Cross-Chapter Box 1.4, Table 1), assuming a carbon price of zero. These future ‘baseline’ scenarios are hence counterfactuals that include less climate policies compared to ‘business-as-usual’ scenarios – given that ‘business-as-usual’ scenarios could be understood to imply a continuation of existing climate policies. Generally, future scenarios are meant to cover a broad range of plausible futures, due for example to unforeseen discontinuities in development pathways (Raskin and Swart, 2020), or to large uncertainties in underlying long-term projections of economic drivers (Christensen et al., 2018). However, the likelihood of high emission scenarios such as RCP8.5 or SSP5-8.5 is considered low in light of recent developments in the energy sector (Hausfather and Peters, 2020a, 2020b). Studies that consider possible future emission trends in the absence of additional climate policies, such as the recent IEA 2020 World Energy Outlook ‘stated policy’ scenario (International Energy Agency, 2020), project approximately constant fossil and industrial CO2 emissions out to 2070, approximately in line with the medium RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and SSP2-4.5 scenarios (Hausfather and Peters, 2020b) and the 2030 global emission levels that are pledged as part of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement (Section 1.2.2; (Fawcett et al., 2015; Rogelj et al., 2016; UNFCCC, 2016; IPCC, 2018).

Those “five core scenarios used most in” AR6 are, from “most catastrophic” to “most optimistic”, SSP5-8.5, SSP3-7.0, SSP2-4.5, SSP1-2.6 and SSP1-1.9.

Even the IPCC agrees with you that the “most catastrophic” emissions pathway is actually a “counterfactual” figment of the scenario producers imaginations.

Unless, of course, the “pledges” — from the original 2015/6 NDCs, not the 2020/1/2 ones for COP-26 that are supposed to be a “progression beyond [their current NDC] and reflect [their] highest possible ambition” — made by politicians about what their countries “will” do to reduce CO2 emissions “by 2050/2060” should be taken with a very large pinch of salt …

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Mark BLR
September 11, 2021 9:25 am

“I reached out to Andy Pitman and Sonia Seneviratne, two of the world’s top experts on the most catastrophic effects of climate change.”

Didn’t we have an alarmist complaining here the other day that there was no CAGW, it was just AGW, and the “C” was just made up by skeptics?

Here is a journalist using the term. It appears we even have experts in this field. Skeptics did all that?

Red94ViperRT10
Reply to  Mark BLR
September 11, 2021 3:00 pm

…scenarios with no, or no additional, climate policies are often referred to as ‘baseline’ or ‘reference scenarios’…

Which confirms right there, this entire IPCC Climate Assessment document is activist in nature, attempting to influence and push a desired policy, rather than scientific.

Gordon A. Dressler
September 11, 2021 7:25 am

From the above article:

“That’s why I reached out to Andy Pitman and Sonia Seneviratne, two of the world’s top experts on the most catastrophic effects of climate change.”

Who and who?

starzmom
September 11, 2021 7:31 am

The worst part of the photo above is the large number of people enjoying the sunny beach. but I guess many people like warm sunny beaches.

John F Hultquist
Reply to  starzmom
September 11, 2021 8:46 am

A real problem in the world is the growing number of large people.
Some can be seen in that photo, but if you search-up ‘ obese Americans ‘ you will get a better idea of the problem. [ I used the images tab on DuckDuckGo.]

Michael in Dublin
September 11, 2021 7:31 am

Does Bloomberg actually believe all the hogwash they publish or are they so ideologically blinded by their fixation on what they believe is correct and all other views wrong?

MarkW
Reply to  Michael in Dublin
September 11, 2021 2:01 pm

Living the low carbon lifestyle is for the little people.

Solar Mutant Ninjaneer
September 11, 2021 7:35 am

I was hoping to find out what “smart people,” like most of the visitors to this site, get wrong. The Bloomberg article did not answer that. It seemed that their main point is if we do not understand something, like a change in weather patterns, we must fear it. That does not strike me as something “smart people” should do?

Bruce Cobb
September 11, 2021 8:26 am

That reminds me of an article I’ve been meaning to write called: “What Smart People Get Wrong About Space Aliens, Zombies, and Demons”. For starters, you never really know which is which because of their shapeshifting abilities. It’s much, much worse than we thought.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
September 11, 2021 2:03 pm

What rubbish, Bruce!

Everyone knows that zombies are not shape-shifters. That’s primary school material.

And not all aliens shift shape, either. In fact, only 56.712% of alien species are mutamorphological, according to the latest poll of ancient alien theorists as reported on the History channel. So that’s like almost half. Don’t you believe in The Science ™?

It’s the demons we really need to worry about of course. They are invisible most of the time and models prove that there may be more demons today than at any time in the last 22 million years.

Shhesh, do you just throw things out without any evidence? If we want nonsense pulled out of hind quarters we have griff and Loydo for that.

MarkW
September 11, 2021 8:54 am

Warming of about 1.2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels has already had devastating consequences.

So devastating that nobody can find any evidence of it.

spending more on climate action means draining money from education, hospitals, police, military or infrastructure

Leftists have no use for education, police and the military.

Olen
September 11, 2021 10:00 am

The only people who disappear in the forest are the incredibly intelligent and the incredibly unintelligent. The rest of us have nothing to fear.

Same with global warming.

Danley Wolfe
September 11, 2021 10:28 am

This reminds me of the classic Indonesian Wayang puppet shows which are local religious, superstitious / spiritual in nature. The puppet shows were performed to ward off unsuspecting intrusion or invasion of the spirit people… watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivNTjE53VsI
So one might conclude that the climate tree huggers are acting out spiritual shadow plays and in a sense that might be getting close … climate tree huggers lack the intellectual competence and ability to differentiate between what seems like it could be from what is scientifically verifiable in the sense of Popper, or Feinman i.e., following the Scientific Method of drawing conclusions vs. reacting on your feelings of risk avoidance. But also misrepresenting data to support one’s feelings about risk avoidance when one cannot draw conclusion is also known as scientific dishonesty and simply chasing a “cause” because it gives a sense of satisfaction or accomplishment … that’s not science and it is better called b**l s**l.

Gunga Din
September 11, 2021 12:14 pm

There isn’t enough appreciation of the risks associated with new weather patterns we don’t yet understand. 

“New” weather patterns? That you don’t understand?

  1. What’s “new” about them? They’ve happened before.
  2. We don’t “understand” them? I thought “the science is settled”? How could we NOT understand them? Perhaps the CGAW political-science is wrong?
  3. If the CGAW political-science is NOT wrong, then why hasn’t ANY of the claims made actually happened? Maybe the hypothesis the models were based on was wrong to begin with? 
Red94ViperRT10
September 11, 2021 2:13 pm

This is starting to sound like, the crystal ball says you will be in a car accident tomorrow, which will destroy your car. So you should trade in your old clunker today on a brand new car today to replace it. …? But wait, if the crystal ball is right, won’t I still be in a wreck tomorrow? So it will be my new car that gets destroyed, not my old clunker? Science Denier! Science Denier!!!

Ulric Lyons
September 11, 2021 6:37 pm

Alarmists would have us believe that in the last 150 years we have dangerously shifted the climate away from 10,000 years of relatively stable climate. The reality is the last 150 years have been one of the more stable climatic periods of the Holocene, because of less colder periods.

n.n
September 11, 2021 6:48 pm

Earth-based climates are extreme, with irregular intervals of calm detachment. Let us bray (sic) that Gaia doesn’t plan (pun intended) to change her choice (pun intended) and deem life, human life, to be a “burden”, and in a depraved state of mind, pass summary judgment on the colorful clumps of cells that occupy Her.

ResourceGuy
September 12, 2021 10:43 am

What humans at all education levels get wrong frequently is straight-line thinking, but that is fundamentally wrong on a planet with cyclic climate.

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