Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen – 1 March 2022
A Shocking Lack of Evidence for Shocking Claims
The IPCC has rushed out a new portion of the IPCC WGII Sixth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. The report itself and all of its summaries and chapters are available from the IPCC web site. I say rushed out because when I downloaded Chapter 15: Small Islands at 5:00 pm EST on February 28th, the copy I received was still marked “Accepted Version Subject to Final Edits” and “Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute”.
They are quite right to mark it “Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute” — I would have suggested expanding that to “Do Not Cite, Quote, Distribute, or Read”. But, that would be a personal opinion. I am afraid I failed to follow my own best advice and have made the mistake of reading Chapter 15: Small Islands. So, having failed to “not read” I will follow up by failing to not cite, quote or distribute potions in this Opinion essay.
DISCLAIMER: This is in the Opinion section of WUWT and I state clearly that any and all opinions in this essay are those of Kip Hansen — they are mine alone — and do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of Anthony Watts, the owners, publishers, editors or moderators of this website. Anyone with objections should direct them to me personally in the Comment section provided at the end of the essay.
When it was first suggested earlier today by email that I might write a short piece about the IPCC’s new report I dutifully pulled down copies of the sections I thought I could usefully address. I read Chapter 15: Small Islands as I have been writing about sea level rise for various organizations over the last six months. I replied as follows to that email:
”The report seems to have been written by the inmates of an insane asylum. Or maybe by beings from a far distant planet writing about the for-them exo-planet Sol-3 or by humans writing about some far distant exo-planet….”
I don’t want to be dramatic, unlike the writers (if there were any) of the IPCC report, but I could not find anything in the highlights ( the little numbered segments of the report labelled 15.3.1.2 or the like) that was:
1) not trivial – as in something that was, is and will be obvious or “simple, transparent, or immediately evident”.
2) true in the real world as we know it, or
3) if predicted or projected, actually likely to take place, at least on this planet in the foreseeable future.
This may seem like a harsh judgement but, believe me, this is mild in regards to the reality – reality being what is missing from the IPCC report’s Small Islands chapter. Oh, I’ll concede, they get some things right, such as the idea that all small islands are absolutely surrounded, on all sides, by the sea. Or, failing to not quote, “Coastal cities and rural communities on small islands have been already impacted by sea-level rise, heavy precipitation events, tropical cyclones and storm surges.” In this case, already means over the entire historical period, or always have been, as far as we can tell.
“As of 2017, an estimated 22 million people in the Caribbean live below 6 meters elevation and 50% of the Pacific’s population lives within 10 km of the coast along with ≥50% of their infrastructure concentrated within 500 meters of the coast.”
Gee, mostly true and totally trivial, except for the 22 million people part – the population of the Caribbean region has more than doubled since 1960 to 44 million. 33+ million of those people live in just three countries: Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and on just two islands, Cuba and Hispaniola. Both of these islands are mountainous and are not low-lying tropical islands. 6 million more live on Jamaica or Puerto Rico, likewise mountainous. Apparently, the authors of Chapter 15 have never visited the Caribbean or only went there on beach-hut drinking (or perhaps ganja) junkets and holidays. There is something seriously wrong with the IPCC’s math or altimetry. There is, of course, no cite or reference for the data; I suspect it is a repeat of a repeat of a repeat from some obscure report somewhere. I managed to trace the idea, but not a quote, to a sea level propaganda piece produced by ClimateCentral, a member of the climate news cabal Covering Climate Now, of course, based on RCP8.5. The actual scientific data from that report:
“Local effects and variation are generally modest in the Caribbean. For example, under a high carbon emissions scenario, Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (Riahi et al. 2007), the median 21st-century sea-level-rise projection ranges from 0.74-0.83 m [ under three feet] across 12 tide gauges in this study.”
“At the same time, the Caribbean also faces threats from chronic low-grade flooding aggravated by sea-level rise, and eventually permanent inundation due to ever higher sea levels.”
Only the IPCC junkies at ClimateCentral could stretch the never-gonna-happen RCP8.5 predictions as far as make less than a meter into permanent inundation of the Caribbean.
Despite the near-total consensus understanding that there will be no RCP8.5 scenario in the real world (at least not on this planet), the latest IPCC report refers to RCP8.5 projections 14 times in this chapter alone.
That is all the needs to be said – the IPCC authors are still in RCP8.5 la-la-la-we’re-all-gonna-die mode. Welcome to the booby-hatch.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
See above, no apologies.
# # # # #
Anyone using RCP8.5 should br assumed to be knowingly lying.
Tom ==> Or under the care of Nurse Ratched .
After the Lobotomy.
The Nurse Ratshits of this world are real, I ran into one once & used the F&C words on her.
Steve ==> Rachet is the EU the IPCC the UN of the asylum.
Even the BBC says RCP8.5 is unrealistic!
Dave ==> They must have hired a skeptic infiltrator….
And golly, what WILL The They do when it does NOT happen?
They will claim that sanctions on NordStream2 worked!
bonbon ==> Yes, like the ozone hole, they will claim their misguided efforts actually worked “better that they expected”.
Sara ==> They will have explanations and excuses and conspiracy theories on how the fossil fuel companies have hidden the terrible destruction from the public by buying newspapers.
I do agree, they have made a huge mistake calling for such large, easily discernible effects over such short periods of time. The general public will easily notice their failures.
“The general public will easily notice their failures”
Never underestimate the ability of the general public to believe in what is manifestly (to a sceptic) untrue. Bear in mind that large segments of the general public rely on mainstream media for their information.
Smart ==> The MSM is infiltrated by a cabal organized and operating in the open.
Rename RCP8.5 from “Business-as-Usual” to “China-as-Usual”
Hilarious, excellent!
But :
“Oh, I’ll concede, they get some things right, such as the idea that all small islands are absolutely surrounded, on all sides, by the sea.”
I have to disagree with that – nearby a small island is NOT surrounded by sea when the tide is out.
Or when in a lake.
Not far away is such a lake with a few islands.
Guaranteed, that lake has not dried up since the ice age!
bonbon ==> Good heavens, they even got that wrong!
And don’t forget that some islands are not islands. The Black Isle in my old country comes to mind, and I seem to have heard that Rhode Island isn’t an island. And the Black Isle isn’t black either.
Smart ==> Even the geologists and map makers are in on it!
The IPCC is so out of touch they haven’t realised that this week is a very bad time to seek political or media attention.
One would think that during some of their meetings on various islands that they would notice recent corals currently situated a meter or two above sea level. Then, one would think an obvious question or two about this might pop into their heads.
They are living growing coral islands, doing their own thing.
The islands near me are long since deposits of once living growing sea creatures that never intended being above sea level.
I have large sample of Ordovician limestone that a friend quarried out for me which has a nautiloid (cephalopod precursor of squid/octopus) ~ half a meter long, along with shells and a piece of possible horn coral. This is from northern Saskatchewan!
Horn coral (order Rugosa), long extinct, evolved eventually into modern coral. These dang coral can travel and change as conditions demand. The severe glacial maxima of the last 3 million years showed how resilient these creatures are.
Often staying at the bottom of the Paratethys sea, happily now at 500m above sea level, corals from that warm sea make for great climbing, or so they tell me.
Gary ==> Fossil corals are found almost everywhere. Would love to see a picture of your piece.
Hi Kip, its in my unused garage now with the the doors firmly iced in! I had left it in the garden where it became grown over and had darkened with lichens (a sure sign the limestone is dolomitic- altered by MgCO3). My grandson rescued it and admonished me for it. I have to clean it up. Going on 84, I’ve become a bit negligent with such things.
I found a photo as found in the garden but only the nautiloid is clearly discernible. I can share it if you’d still like it.
Gary ==> Email to my first name at i4.net Thanks!
They would have noticed if their heads hadn’t been lodged in someplace where the sun doesn’t shine.
Scissor ==> There has been so much written on the islands, study after study shows despite continuing SLR the coral islands have mostly grown, not been washed away or submerged.
If IPCC is looking for more funding, they should see what Ukraine just demanded – cancellation of $57 billion foreign debt.
There goes the funding.
Meanwhile Germany is in full coal mode again.
See how fast existential threats throw law out the window? Remember the Cuba Missile Crisis? So how long will Carbon ‘law’ last I wonder?
Oh come on Ukraine is just a tiff between fraternal chums. Existentialthreat is the fact that the weather is getting critically, life blastingly, nuclear option, more balmy by the hour . Why, I saw a daffodil today. But wait a minute It is St David’s Day.
Nuke flowers are called mushrooms.
That’s what flower-power means to the nazi’s in Kiev.
Beat this for non-linearity :
Poland resumes Baltic Pipeline to Norway, scrapped in 2019, after NordStream2 stop.
And that is just Ukraine denazification Day 4 !
IPCC – to the back of the class and write Carbon 1 million times.
M Courtney ==> Yeah, hit a bad spot in the news cycle they did….
They are making very Kerry merry with that which is not veri-fiable., on jerry – built cherry-picked ramshackle assumptions in order to bury truth under wery wery weary woke nonsense. The Bean Man who makes Mister Bean look like a genius had to PUTIN his moronic Ten cents worth . If Ukraine your neck and look up you can see the sky falling under the weight of climatocracy invasion.
Alastair ==> berry punny!
20 yrs ago or so, worked in NOAA. Sat through meetings where the news was that our ‘best’ scientists were predicting 7m of rise by 2100. Catchy marketing phrase when converted to feet – 21′ by 2100. Being in Charleston, SC, it was trivially easy to look at the water level station in our harbor and see that rise was wobbling along around 3mm/yr, as it always has. Also, trivially easy to look at the marsh line and see no appreciable acceleration. I asked my colleagues where they were getting the alarming data. After a decade of exemplary performance, ‘was made (as the British say) redundant. Since then, the alarming predictions have slowly been incrementally reduced to the point we’re now approaching the realm of natural variability. How long can this charade continue? John Kerry lives at the water’s edge on Martha’s Vineyard. The Obamas live right down the road, at the water’s edge. The Obamas are reportedly building a new place in Hawaii, at the water’s edge. Even the Goracle lives within a block of some California beach cliffs. How long can this charade be maintained?
Ptolemy’s earth-at-the-center charade lasted 1000 years.
Today with internet it could last a full election epicycle, sorry cycle!
John ==> About 30 years, so far.
Interesting Phrase “the best scientists” I think it means the most alarmist least data oriented morons that can get tenure thanks to their mates hoisting them up the ladder. Distinguished Professor Michael Mann is one as are Sir Patrick Vallance,Chief scientist to the British Government
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Vallance ,
and Prof Stephen Belcher, the chief scientist at the Met Office.
Vallance is a doctor and virologist and may or may not know a thing or two about Wuhan Flu but he certainly knows diddly – squat about atmospheric physics .
Belcher is a professional alarMaoist who lies in the teeth of the data that his own organisation produces
This unholy pair along with the unicorn-loving fragrant Carrie Simmons led Boris Jonnson by the balls into his present dreamy windy climatic idiocy.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/02/uk-pm-boris-johnson-duped-by-uk-activists-climate-slides-climate-depots-point-by-point-rebuttal-to-help-deprogram-the-propaganda-johnson-absorbed/
As always, people’s actions reveal their true beliefs and intentions, not their words. Kerry, Obama, and the other multi-millionaires living in expensive beachfront property know perfectly well that the sea-level scare is garbage for frightening the proles like us.
“Be afraid, be very afraid…
< add climate doom message here
< add emotional tug here
< appeal to people’s better nature here – eg £3 per month etc
Etc
There should be a mental health warning with msm news. Too much of it leads to climate anxiety….
It could even make you Kranky!
Thanks, Kip. Would be hilarious if not so unfortunately motivating to the GND types like AOC.
Rud ==> Reading even one little chapter made me very cranky. I may have gotten a little out of line. At least I didn’t need to resort to any words replaced by symbols like %$(#!*$ idiots.
Anybody that doesn’t get truly angry about their tax money going to the government to produce propaganda is somebody that uses his head to simply hold up his eyeballs. [Old joke about the purpose of a boxer’s head.]
The only true vacuum is the empty space between GND-ears, so the IPCC Report is literally going nowhere.
Thank you, Kip.
You are performing a valuable public service.
John ==> Maybe I can use that to reduce my sentence when the Thought Police have me arrested….?
Nope. Your sentence will be Public Works Restoration, on all those little islands, with a chain-gang of skeptics.
bonbon ==> You mean I will have to rebuild all those resort hotels built on shifting sand?
Maybe you’ll have to hang out, just in case. Save me a spot, will you?
D.J. ==> You got it — I’ll be just to the left of the tiki bar.
St. Vincent, Dominica, Martinique and Grenada ain’t going to disappear beneath the waves anytime soon.
I suppose Marie Galante, Anegada, Anguilla and a couple of the Bahamas could go under (in ~400+ years) but you can be forgiven for presuming that might provide just enough time for evacuation!
Thanks again for the work you do.
John ==> Want to assignment to do some historical satellite views to see if any of those smaller lower islands have suffered any area loss? We have sat photos going back to at least 1990 or so.
most of these amount to arguing “if people don’t apply their brakes, all of the cars currently traveling on highways at high speed will crash” and then estimating tens of billions of dollars in damage and millions dead
true as far as it goes, but…
TallDave ==> The whole IPCC thing has drifted off the edge into insanity.
The language of Climate Hysteria has reached such a fever pitch that they are running out of Alarmist language. Soon, they will have to invent their own.
Bruce ==> Give it some more thought…they already have! Ocean Acidification, Climate Tipping Points, Climate Feedback, Climate Crisis —
hey readers, help me out here!
Climatologists should follow meteorologists – they solved this decades ago :
Plenty of play there!
Adapted from https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/weather/name-every-met-office-storm-23186874
Global Heating
Existential Threat
Unprecedented Event
Clyde ==> Yup….lots of examples available.
Kip, it occurred to me tonight that when advocates for some action have to invent pejorative names for something — like “ghost guns” — it is because they don’t have compelling arguments, and have to resort to subliminal appeal to people’s emotions.
Clyde ==> Controlling language controls thought. He who can wins the word war has a huge advantage in the minds war.
We really should junk the UN. Futile in the face of real aggression and pandering to the Davos Greta-ocracy idiocy . They really do want to reset us all to their woeful globalist dystopia. The trouble is when you try a reboot on society sometimes it just stays dead.
Alastair ==> The UN is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy like the worst-thing-ever-invented, the EU. worse than MRSA.
Kip,
Calling the EU the “worst thing ever invented” seems like a complete inversion of reality. It has provided for free trade across western Europe allowed free movement of people across 21 countries, not to mention bringing France and Germany closer together which after two world wars in the first half of the 20th century is a remarkable achievement.
Suppose I called Washington a “self-perpetuating bureaucracy” and the USA one of the worst things ever invented? Surely all those formerly independent states would be better off without an additional layer of bureaucracy.
Izaak ==> Well, as always, opinions vary. Listen, if you like the rules and policies they impose, vote to keep them in office….oh, sorry….
Kip,
The EU is democratic. There are direct elections to the EU parliament and the council of europe consists of ministers of each country all of whom were democratically elected and who vote on each measure. So there are plenty of ways to vote out measures and people that you don’t like.
The EU is certainly not perfect. However it is a lot better than not having the EU and certainly it is a long way from being “worst thing ever invented”. Freedom of movement for example has allowed thousands of people from across Europe to move to other countries to find a better paying job and better life for themselves and their families. What is not to like?
Izaak ==> I am glad the EU has a fan — however, having a different opinion, I am not a fan, I might even be an anti-fan. That;s the wonderful thing about opinions — they vary from person to person.
I don’t like the United Nations either. But like so many things, there are some itty-bitty bits of the UN that do good work, apparently because even the UN bureaucracy can’t control things like doctors and nurses that just want to help people.
Kip,
You still haven’t provided any evidence to back up your assertion that it is the “worst thing ever”. All it seems is that you don’t like bureaucracy. But even there the example of the UK leaving the EU shows that the EU reduces bureaucracy. The UK has had to hire 50000 new civil servants to do what the EU use to do and if you replicate that across all 27 different EU countries you can see that actually the EU reduces bureaucracy overall.
Izaak ==> Are you employed by the EU? Or just a fan?
Kip,
Just a fan. Having lived and worked in the EU for over a decade I can see its benefits and its faults. On the plus side for example compare the current relationship between France and Germany with that in the early part of the 20th Century. Or look at how being in the EU made peace in Northern Island a lot easier thanks to free movement across the border. And when it expanded to eastern Europe look at the improvement in the living standards of the countries there. I have friends and colleagues from around Europe all of whom I would have never met without freedom of movement that has enriched everybody’s lives.
There are certainly downsides to being in the EU as for example Greece found out during the financial crisis of 2008 when it was unable to devalue its currency. Similarly the EU itself feels remote and faceless to many people (especially those who don’t speak a foreign language). But that is a long way from making it the worst thing ever.
Again you have still not listed a single negative thing about the EU to justify your assertion. So just what is it that you object to? The idea of democratic nations joining together to work together?
Allowing people to move freely between different counties in search of a better life?
Izaak ==> I don’t intend to to defend my opinion in this forum. This is CliSci class. Catch me in a more appropriate setting.
Where?
Quite a lot not to like. It places strain on local services that had no plans for sudden increase in demand, places strain on housing, pushes wages down for the lower paid, results in significant outflows of cash as money is sent ‘home’, brings in foreign criminal gangs. As for democratic, give me a break. The worst thing ever? No, but bad enough.
Dave,
Most of those apply to any large country. Look at rural depopulation in places like the US or Australia. People leave the countryside due to a lack of jobs move to cities putting strain on housing etc.
And there is also of course a flip side. People in the EU can leave a region of low wages to move to a region with higher wages. So the next effect is actually to raise wages. Outflows of cash from rich regions is matched by an inflow of cash to poorer regions (all within the EU so the net flow is zero). As for criminal gangs there is little evidence for a rise in crime due to the EU. The UK for example had plenty of criminals before being in the EU and even more after leaving it.
And what is undemocratic about the EU? It is run by a combination of directly elected members of the EU parliament and the council of ministers where every country gets a representation. Voting is done via qualified majority voting in most cases so that measures can only pass if ministers representing a majority of the EU population approve.
Mongrel breeds
Geoff,
glad to know your basic objection is just plain racist bullshit.
Izaak, I must agree with your view that the EU is not the WORST thing ever invented.
The Washington DC “swamp” would take the gold for that.
Silver would go to the UN, and the EU would take the bronze.
Mr. ==> Ah, allowing a wider spread of WORSTness….I like it.
Sadly Kip, these days the topic warrants a sticky post. ):
Mr. ==> Meaning, trivial or not actionable? Don’t get the inference….(long time since I worked in an office).
Real the DC swamp is the worst thing ever? Would you really put countries like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, somalia etc ahead of the DC swamp? Bureaucracy is necessary and serves to protect the average citizen from large companies, the rich, oppressive governments etc.
Perhaps you should try reading Popper’s “Open Society and its enemies”. You would have a very different view.
China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, somalia etc are the effects of cancers on society like the Washington DC swamp, the UN, the EU etc etc.
Bureaucracies ALWAYS deteriorate into perpetuation of their own self-serving agendas as their only raison d’être.
I would love to see your reasoning there. Can you explain how China which existed for centuries before the formation of the USA is caused by Washington?
As just one recent example Izaak, the Washington swamp facilitated and funded the development of “gain of function” virus development at the Wuhan (China) laboratory, from where it was spread to the entire world, killing millions.
If you want to enlighten yourself, read the expose that Senator Robert Kennedy Jnr (D) recently published about how the swamp conspired to have the CCP carry out the “gain of function” virus capability.
Mr.
There is no evidence the COVID-19 spread from the lab in Wuhan. The best evidence suggests that it was natural and that the first cases started in/near the wetlab. See the link below for the latest.
https://www.biospace.com/article/new-studies-support-wuhan-wet-market-as-origin-of-covid-19/
Izaak Walton
I very much agree with you, that the chance of the virus coming out of the Wuhan lab, is same as the chance of that virus coming out of any other modern sophisticated lab anywhere in the world.
But the “origin” of that virus is not natural… by any standard.
Is not even a result of some random trial and error.
That virus is not a result of mutation, either as in purely natural or domestic.
It is a product of fine and very high resolution cut and paste tailoring… following an intellectual design.
Mutation, natural or otherwise. can not produce such a virus.
It can not produce a successful “chimera” “life specie”.
The legacy of this novel virus also brinks up to question the assumed explanations for the other cross species (human viruses).
Making all of them explanations look very arbitrary in nature… at this stage.
cheers
Death is necessary too. That doen’t mean one has to like it.
IW,
Some of my career was in bureaucracy (RAAF, CSIRO) the rest in free enterprise.
I n the free part, colleagues and I took a small resources company to one of the largest in Australia, by the careful application of science to discover a number of new mines that powered corporate growth.
Our biggest problem was fighting oppressive bureaucracy. We were producing tens of billion dollars of new wealth for the Nation, while bureaucrats were taking it from us and speing it on what bureaucrats do, mostly expanding their staff and importance while working out novel ways to curb free enterprise.
Through bureaucratic bastardry we had emerging new mines taken from us without compensation to pay for the UN to take away some of our proud sovereignty through stealing land control via the world heritage concept. Other times we were stopped from our work by giving land title to aborigines or declaring land to be reserved for nation defence. We lost billions from this spiteful action, or more accurately the Nation lost the wealth and the bureaucracy multiplied by rtaking our profits.
And you, Isaac, have the gall to praise bureaucracy, possibly because you were never bright enough to realise that you were the lead in the saddle. That is rich. How much new wealth did you contribute to your nation? Are you, in retirement, going to be able to say that you put into your country far more than you ever took out?
Geoff S
Geoff,
no one in Australia has given land title to Aborigines. The high court has recognised that native title existed and was not destroyed when the UK invaded. If you start mining on somebody else’s land you should not expect to profit from your theft.
Izaac, that is so wrong that i wonder about your sanity as well as motive.
Read the Aboriginal lamd Rights Act (NT) 1976, Internet words “In December 1976 the federal parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act. It was the first legislation in Australia that enabled First Nations peoples to claim land rights for Country where traditional ownership could be proven”.
Its effect was to prevent mining on large expanses of Australia. Economic losses way exceeded benefits.
The UK “invaded”? Mining is ‘theft’? What planet are you on, Izaak?
Look, on bureaucratic excess, how would you handle a (true) letter like this? (My wording is approximate but accurate).
“Advice given to you by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) on (date, several years before) related to the taxation treatment of certain trading actions for exported uranium minerals. The ATO has reviewed our advice that proceeds would be free of taxation. We now find that our advice was wrong and that tax is payable. Accordingly we enclose an invoice for the payment of $50 million, payable in (30, maybe 60?) days. Failure to comply comprises an offence under the ATO Act for which the maximum punishment is XXXX.”
This is the type of bureaucratic bastardry that you seem to not know or not care about the harm, the ways in which inventive minds (there are some bright ones, not so stupid) create ways to steal income from producers of wealth to fund their armchair expansions. No change in law happened, this was just unelected bureaucrats greedy for growth.
This is relevant to Kip’s essay about organised ignorance, because we now have a Reserve Bank whose deputy Governor tours the country giving speeches about the uregency of combat for the global existential climate change threat now in progress.
https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2021/sp-dg-2021-10-14.html
Geoff S
Geoff,
Again the operational words is “where traditional ownership could be proven” or in other words the land always belonged to the Aboriginals and if they could prove continual ownership of the land then it was their by right.
And of course the UK invaded (or technically England invaded). Unless of course you believe in the myth of “Terra Nullius” which allowed the English government to claim procession because the land was uninhabitated. So what else would you call it?
Finally I never said that mining was theft. I said that if you starting mining on somebody else’s land then don’t be surprised if they get you to stop.
As I understand it, Native Americans did not have a concept of individual ownership of land. There was a concept of collective ownership of “hunting grounds,” surface rights, that they defended against other tribes. Further, it is my understanding that at least sometimes different tribes would share resources like flint, obsidian, copper, ocher, or pipestone.
The resources underground like gold, tin, uranium, lead, etc., required a technology they didn’t possess. Why would they value it enough to lay claim to it? Europeans held, as intellectual property, the knowledge to extract mineral resources from underground. Should they be prevented from taking something that the occupants of the ground did not value and didn’t know how to obtain?
I’d be surprised if things were any different with the Australian Aborigines.
As an analogy, some people find value in ‘dumpster diving,’ retrieving things that others have thrown away. Should ‘dumpster diving’ be outlawed because someone who once owned something is still claiming it as their property? It would seem to me that they have implicitly renounced any claim to it once it is thrown away.
If the Aborigines never laid claim to mineral resources, why should those with the ability to use them pay them for it?
You are correct – insofar as both had admirable goals at their founding. Both also evolved (and are still evolving) into tyrannies that don’t even have the slight justification of being competent, thanks to petty autocrats concentrating more and more power into the central government.
But the EU is still the worst invention – because the founders didn’t even TRY to prevent that evolution in the agreements. What required more than a century in the USA for the vermin to accomplish came about in less than five decades in Europe.
writing observer ==> Well, someone agrees with me. Thanks.
Sigh. Unfortunately, @Kip, I must acknowledge myself a fool. For arguing with someone whose definition of “democratic” is the one used in “Democratic People’s Republic.”
That is just plain nonsense. Every recent treaty that changes the EU has made it more democratic. The EU parliament which is direcly elected now has a much bigger say than previously while at the council level more and more decisions are made on the basis of a qualified majority vote which means that proposals are only accepted if countries that vote for it represent a majority of citizens. Both are examples of the system becoming more democratic. The presidency revolves around every country every 6 months giving all countries a change to lead. Again that is democracy in action not tyranny.
It makes as much sense to call the EU a tyranny as it does to call the Federal Government of Australia a tyranny for example.
And again worst invention is ridiculous. The EU is not perfect and has a lot of flaws. But there are a lot of things that are a lot worse. Take a look at the 180 odd countries in the world and think about ranking them in order of where you would prefer to live. Would you really place the 27 countries that are in the EU at the bottom of the list?
Very democratic when an unelected and unremovable bureaucrat in Brussels – or Washington, DC – dictates how large of a teakettle you may have.
Bureaucrats making regulations is not undemocratic but rather it is how modern democracies work. Elected representatives set policies and pass laws that give authority to bureaucrats to set regulations that implement the policies.
Take speed limits for example. Do you think the speed limit on every stretch of road in the country should be set by legislation passed by parliament or should politicians set a goal of making roads safer and give civil servants the authority to set speed limits appropriately?
And if you don’t like the size of your teakettle you have democratic means to change it. You can lobby your local MP, form a new political party etc.
Just let me know when the ocean starts to extend beyond the shore. Then I’ll be worried.
Hoyt ==> Good heavens! Did you miss the memo? You are supposed to be virtually (maybe literally) worried to death by now.
In Ireland Cara Augustenborg, Professor of Environmental Policy at University College Dublin was hyping the sea level rise in anticipation of the report.
All the coastal areas [of Ireland] are at risk
The rate of sea level rise globally is happening at about two and a half times the rate it was in the last century.
So we’re seeing an acceleration of this across the globe.
Is this woman not familiar with spring tides especially when they are accompanied with storms? It is thrilling to see the awesome power of the sea during these storms.
Does she not know that there has been a rise of about 0.5 inches per decade in the earlier 20th century which has risen to 0.8 inches? This would mean that the human contribution to sea level rise may be in the vicinity of 3 inches per century.
Is she aware that it is very difficult to measure global sea level rise and empirical observations do not support a panic reaction?
This kind of alarmism can only come from a woke ninny.
Michael ==> well, the Dublin tide gauge record is very interesting. Something wonky there alright, but I’d need to do some real digging to find out what’s going on there.
see:
VLM is about 0.2 mm/yr, not enough to account for the oddities. I suspect subsidence of the tide gauge structure itself.
Michael ==> I have dug in on Dublin Port SLR. You must read:
https://os.copernicus.org/preprints/os-2020-81/os-2020-81.pdf
Thanks Kip.
I glanced at the study and it appears to overlook other factors relating to sea level rise – factors that even if we magically were able to have 100% renewables would not stop this rise. I think the most pressing need is not Dublin but population centers along the West coast of Ireland
I greatly admire what the Dutch have done to adapt – I remember my teacher telling us in the fifties about the flooding – and believe that we can adapt to all climate conditions at a small fraction of the cost of trying to engineer climates.
Mike ==> No need for you to do a deep dive into that par — but what it shows is that there is something funny going on with Dublin and sea level. They had to try to sort it out using three different tide gauges.
I guess there could be a tidal gauge closer than Newlyn, UK, but it is in the region and likely to be affected by the same oceanic dynamics. It seems stable, as do most locations where there are long term records available. The report referenced by Kip indicates no subsidence which is commonly found where there are high levels of RSLR. There are some gauges that have been affected by groundwater withdrawals but this appears not to be one.
Another interesting case. Of which there are many across the globe.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=170-161
Thanks Kip for another informative post. Always enjoy them.
cerescokid ==> The Newlyn case is the rule, Dub;in is an odd exception. So, I suspect you are right, someone needs to dig in and check out what is going on in Dublin — and the most likely is unrecorded and unaccounted for subsidence.
I think the only way to rein in the United Nations and IPCC in particular is to tie financing to the accuracy of their predictions. If their predictions are off by fifty percent then their funding is cut by fifty percent. If their predictions are off by two or three hundred percent then the United Nations turns their funds over to the United States since we provide the majority of their funding.
Bob ==> If we keep calling them out for their errors and mis-steps, lies, etc, the public will lose faith in them.
Never give up!
Never surrender!
Name that Ship’s Captain!
I say rushed out because when I downloaded Chapter 15: Small Islands at 5:00 pm EST on February 28th, the copy I received was still marked “Accepted Version Subject to Final Edits” and “Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute”.
Stop the press doomsters as we have a late entry-
‘A strange phenomenon’: new island in Papua New Guinea prompts territorial dispute (msn.com)
Strange phenomenon my ass!
observa ==> Good catching that in the news….and you are right, that’s exactly hw little sand and gravel bars become islands. They last until the are built up or are washed away.