Essay by Eric Worrall
“… The fact is, while not exactly picked out of a hat, the 1.5C figure is an arbitrary one. …”
Why we should forget about the 1.5C global heating target
Bill McGuire
Tue 13 Sep 2022 02.48 AESTThe goal of 1.5C by 2030 is arbitrary and now unachievable – yet working to prevent every 0.1C rise can still give us hope
Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL
Keeping the global average temperature rise (since pre-industrial times) below 1.5C is widely regarded as critical if we are to sidestep dangerous, all-pervasive climate change.
…
To have a fair chance of keeping this side of 1.5C, emissions have to fall by 45% in little more than 90 months, and I am on record as saying that this is practically impossible. But it’s worse than that. It is perfectly feasible that we will crash through the 1.5C guardrail even earlier.
…
Maybe we are too fixated with this precise temperature rise. The fact is, while not exactly picked out of a hat, the 1.5C figure is an arbitrary one. The exact level of temperature rise at which climate change becomes dangerous is simply not known. Indeed, the 33 million people displaced from their homes in Pakistan might justifiably say we have reached it already. As for tipping points, any or all of those flagged in the new research could happen at some point below 1.5C, so we may have crossed one or more already – only time will tell. Just as easily, we might need a 1.6C, 1.7C or even higher rise before the first runaway impacts of global heating are encountered.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/12/global-heating-fighting-degree-target-2030
I love the downgrade on the 1.5C limit – “… the 1.5C figure is an arbitrary one…”.
The reality is nothing bad will happen when or if we breach 1.5C. So it would be intensely embarrassing for climate alarmists if this breach occurs in the next few years, rather than decades from now, after they are all safely retired or dead.
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Back to Basics. At the failed Copenhagen COP an economist suggested 2degsC to ‘keep under’ as 3 would be too easy and 1 too difficult ie. we were there already. Before the failed Katowice COP24 the corrupt IPCC produced the ‘SR1.5’ which spent a lot of ink justifying the drop because we’d be ‘much safer’. I have read much of it. Deplorable. Transnational coercive pathways including giving up coal by 2030. Ho ho. Universally excoriated for its non-science. Prof Ray Bates of University College Dublin writing for the GWPF is particularly devastating. There is no evidence or justification for 1.5.
” The Guardian Downgrades the 1.5C Global Warming Panic ”
Rats abandoning the sinking boat!…
Rubbish – the Pakistan flood was weather.
What is a “professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards?” Take away the adjectives, and you get “professor of hazards.” Is he even scientifically trained? According to his assertions about Pakistan, if he ever was technically trained, he lost that to activism long ago.
“What is a “professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards?”
I wondered that myself. I’m wondering what climate hazards this person studies.
But in the end, 1,5 °C “Compared to What?” (cit.)
It’s like the doomsday cults who, whenever one of their “the world will end on this date” days passes, it’s never “oops, I was wrong”, it’s “Oh…I must have misread the signs, it’s actually [some new arbitrary date in the near future] that the world is going to end, so keep worshiping me and giving me money.”
+1.5 degrees C. was reached in April 1998 and February 2016 during the peak heat months of two large El Nino Pacific Ocean heat releases
Millions of people died — it was in all the newspapers!
Heh. Hyperbole much? Even while trying to tamp down on Alarmist rhetoric, they just can’t help themselves.
It’s already too late. We were doomed in 2020.
“Climate chaos predicted by CO2 study” World will have exceeded 2050 safe carbon emissions limit by 2020, scientists say. This was the Independent in 2011:
“The world will overshoot its long-term target on greenhouse gas emissions within two decades. A study has found that the average global temperature will rise above the threshold that could cause dangerous climate change during that time.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/climate-chaos-predicted-by-co2-study-1676411.html
Of course the figure then was 2 degrees C over “pre-industrial”, a movable feast, now they claim it needs to be 1.5C. Apparently it is already 1.2 C , so we have to stop the remaining 0.3C pronto. Shut everything down now.
There is no science basis for 2 degrees or 1.5 degrees. The first mention of 2 degrees was by economist William Nordhaus in 1975. In 1990, the UN AGGG (United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases), was asking for no more than a 1 degree rise in global temperature, (as if it could be controlled).
That in turn traces back to the World Climate Programme Villach Conference of 1986, and the subsequent Bellagio Conference in 1987, when some familiar names were present. That then morphed upwards into 1.5 degrees and again into 2 degrees. After Paris, 1.5 degrees is the new mantra.
This was the message in 1986/7, getting near to 40 years ago.
“As a result of the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, it is now believed that in the first half of the next century a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than any in man’s history. The role of greenhouse gases other than CO2 in changing the climate is already about as important as that of CO2.
If present trends continue, the combined concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases would be radiatively equivalent to a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels possibly as early as the 2030’s. The most advanced experiments with general circulation models of the climatic system show increases of the global mean equilibrium surface temperature for a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration, or equivalent, of between 1.5 and 4.5°C.”
“Temperature increases beyond 1.0 °C may elicit rapid, unpredictable, and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage. An absolute temperature limit of 2.0 °C can be viewed as an upper limit beyond which the risks of grave damage to ecosystems, and of non-linear responses, are expected to increase rapidly.”
“The most advanced experiments with general circulation models of the climatic system”
Computer games.
FIFY.
Auto
Everything about ClimateChange™ is basically ConfirmationBias, the Alarmist cherry-pick stories & data to fit a narrative without realising that they may also be consigning themselves & the rest of the World into further Poverty without essential FossilFuels, bar the Rich/Elites who won’t care except guarentee themselves more profit from so called ‘Renewable’ contracts.
(just some conjecture which is what we all do with varying degrees of knowledge)
The need to read the article by WIllis E. that says we are at 2.0 C and no problems, except big grain yields, etc.
Have not read comments, maybe it’s been said, but here goes-
“…while not exactly pulled out of a hat…” is likely correct, who would put a hat on their ass?
Maria Figueroa, ex-Chair of the IPCC, admitted years ago that climate change had nothing to do with the climate. It was all about wealth distribution. Why are we still talking about this phony narrative?
From the article: “To have a fair chance of keeping this side of 1.5C, emissions have to fall by 45% in little more than 90 months, and I am on record as saying that this is practically impossible. But it’s worse than that. It is perfectly feasible that we will crash through the 1.5C guardrail even earlier.”
The author presumes to know just how much the temperature will rise based on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The author doesn’t know what he is talking about. Nobody knows how much warmth a certain amount of CO2 adds to the atmosphere. The alarmist climate scientists have guesses about this but that’s all they are. And assuming they have the numbers down pat, as the author does, is just plain ignorant.
it wasn’t pulled out of a hat, but perhaps was pulled out of a particular vent on the body of the researcher
In fact the Guardian is wrong. We are easily achieving the 1.5° C target. With no help whatsoever from the crazy “climate” policies of governments.
Is their problem that we are now too close to the arbitrary 1.5C increase since pre-industrial times? Claiming that a rise of 0.5C from today’s average temperature of 14C would be a climate emergency sounds like voodoo science.
Climate Alarmists are not harmless to society, even when they are retired, they are only safe for society when they are dead.
On the bright side, CO2 will need to double before rising another 1.5C
Yawn.
In other news, Joe Biden and his denizens celebrated the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act with a party on the White House Lawn; inflation unexpectedly increased; and the DOW crashed by 1,200 points.
The Guardian and the White House are two places where objective reality simply doesn’t exist.
Since 2 C was the limit 1.6 C is safe 🙂