Posted on 09/13/2016 2:24:50 PM PDT by Kaslin
The planet is doomed unless humans achieve zero net “carbon” emissions within 40 years—and maybe even if we do.
That’s the word from eleven co-authors, led by Johan Rockstöm of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, of a pseudo-scientific screed published August 24 in Earth’s Future, an open-access online journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Here’s the abstract:
The scale of the decarbonisation challenge to meet the Paris Agreement is underplayed in the public arena. It will require precipitous emission reductions and a new carbon sink on the scale of the ocean sink within 40 years. Even then, the world is extremely likely to overshoot. A catastrophic failure of policy, for example waiting another decade for transformative policy and full commitments to fossil-free economies, will have irreversible and deleterious repercussions for humanity's remaining time on Earth. Only a global zero carbon roadmap will put the world on a course to phase-out greenhouse gas emissions and create the essential carbon sinks for Earth-system stability, without which, world prosperity is not possible.
And here’s why the article’s a pseudo-scientific screed:
First, the computer climate models on which predictions of rapid warming from enhanced atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration are based “run hot,” simulating two to three times the warming actually observed over relevant periods—during which non-anthropogenic causes probably accounted for some and could have accounted for all the observed warming—and therefore provide no rational basis for predicting future GAT.
Second, nobody—but nobody—has demonstrated scientifically that global average temperature (GAT) no more than 2°C above the pre-industrial average (the limit aimed for by the Paris agreement) is optimal, or that GAT higher than that will even be net harmful, let alone catastrophic.
Third, the aim of “Earth-system stability” is scientifically absurd—undefined, unnatural, and unachievable. Natural systems—especially coupled non-linear chaotic fluid-dynamic systems like Earth’s climate—are not, never have been, and never will be stable. Nobody knows what “Earth-system stability” would look like. Climate change is Earth’s natural state; climate stability is science fiction.
Fourth, saying that “waiting another decade for transformative policy and full commitments to fossil-free economies” would be a “catastrophic failure of policy” with “irreversible and deleterious repercussions for humanity’s remaining time on Earth” is sheer fearmongering without a shred of scientific evidence. Even ice ages aren’t “irreversible”; no empirical evidence (as opposed to modeled hypotheses) suggests that a warmer Earth is worse for humans than a cooler Earth; and human history tells us the opposite. “Warmer periods are called optima because for human civilization, and much of nature, warm is better than cold,” writes Michael Hart in Hubris: The Troubling Science, Economics, and Politics of Climate Change (Kindle location 3197).
Fifth, even if real scientific investigation (which doesn’t stop with modeling but tests models by empirical observation) could tell us that, say, falling 50 percent short of net zero “carbon” emissions would raise GAT by, say, 3°C and that that, in turn, would cause significant harms, that wouldn’t tell us how we ought to respond. Empirical science tries to describe the way the world works. It doesn’t—it can’t—tell us what we ought, morally, to do in response.
While science can inform policymakers, it can’t determine policy. Policymakers must do cost/benefit analysis, taking into account tradeoffs, such as balancing risks from climate change against those from poverty, and as Hans von Storch points out, “judgments of the value of costs versus benefits is [sic] a highly subjective, value-laden calculation.”
Sufficiently wealthy people can thrive in any climate and are better protected against all extreme weather events than poor people. If human health and longevity are a significant aim of policy, then the increasing prosperity facilitated by the energy derived from GHG-releasing hydrocarbon fuels will outweigh the increased climate-related risks even if the climate alarmists are right.
As Indur Goklany has shown, even assuming that the climate models on which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) accurately predict (rather than exaggerate by 2 to 3 times) the warming effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere, people the world over, and especially in developing countries, will be wealthier in warmer than in cooler scenarios, making them less vulnerable than today to all risks—including those related to climate.
Full implementation of all nations’ commitments under the Paris agreement, at a cost of $1–2 trillion annually from 2030 onward, would, as Björn Lomborg calculates even while assuming the IPCC’s exaggerated estimates of CO2’s warming effect, reduce GAT in 2100 by just 0.17°C, an amount too little to have significant impact.
Rockstöm and his co-authors are a prime example of what Roger Pielke Jr. calls “stealth issue advocates,” a role “characterized by the expert who seeks to hide his/her advocacy behind a facade of science.” Stealth advocacy, Pielke says, is “the fastest route to pathologically politicizing science. It is also what gives scientists as advocates a bad name.”
Needless to say she plans to charge the taxpayers for it.
FUHILLARY ROTTEN CLINTON
Well they brought it back in the 70’s!
We didn’t seem to be bothered by “cold” back then so it was resurrected as “hot” and put into grade school curriculum. And that worked!!!!
One of the essays I read discussed the effect of the Himalayas on our temperature. Cold air from Siberia comes down hits the mountains and bounces back to form our jet stream. Interesting.
Absolutely true. Worse, there simply isn't enough weather information available to allow accurate worldwide temperature calculations. Vast areas of the globe lack weather instrumentation. AGW's just another element in the globalist/socialist swindle designed to rob productive societies to enrich the indolent or backward.
Here are my additional questions:
1. Tell me why climate change is a bad thing.
2. Who makes money from climate change hysteria? (Al Bore. Politicians. Crony capitalists like Solyndra. Media. Climate change “scientists”)
3. How much money (taxpayer dollars) has been spent to enrich those who make money from climate change hysteria.
4. Related to your question 3, are we currently getting warmer? How much of that increase can seriously be attributed to human activity?
4.a. If the earth were getting colder and we were in danger of entering another ice age, would you advocate a massive increase in burning of fossil fuels? If not, why not? You claim that is causing the earth to warm, so wouldn’t it stand to reason that if the earth were cooling we could slow or stop it by burning lots of fossils fuels? How big an effect do you think we would have?
5. Given the myriad problems that humanity faces, where is climate change on the scale of importance? Why do you rank it there?
6. Given the fact that there is a limit to our time and our money, how much money do you think is reasonable to spend on climate change relative to the other problems we face? Is it more important than pouring money into government education programs? 0vomitcare? Welfare programs?
7. Given the track record of government intervention on issues like poverty, education, and health insurance, what makes you think that government programs and another vast government bureaucracy would make any difference?
8. In the event that the government did create a huge bureaucracy to deal with climate change, what would be its goal? When would that bureaucracy be disbanded because it was no longer needed? Never?
Yeah, and I turned 75 a little bit over 5 weeks ago and I am surprised that I have not frozen to death. Although I do remember one very cold Winter as a child, but then Spring came again, summer than Autumn and Winter and the four seasons repeating themselves over and over.
If the situation were dire, the green movement would repudiate the hucksters who live by conspicuous consumption and do not lead by example.
I’m going to guess that every person signing onto this is over the age of 45 and will be likely dead when 40 years rolls around to prove them wrong.
quote “The planet is doomed unless humans achieve zero net “carbon” emissions within 40 years”
Heck... I thought Al Gore said we were doomed 15 years ago? Heck... I keep getting confused by “when” we are supposedly doomed!
The loons on the left are just as stupid as the far right morons walking around downtown screaming the end is near! repent!
I think their whole purpose is to confuse us. So I suggest to ignore them.
It will take generations to rid us of these weasels.
I’m a year older....76. The days of canals in Holland freezing will return. There is a cycle in cold and warm Earth Temperatures. Of course these changes have only to do with the Sun’s temperatures. We might not be here to skate on the canals but our grandchildren have that chance.
OMG, I had a summer job as a laborer, unloading tractor trailer loads of asbestos to use for a school’s fireproof roofing. 80 pound bags to stack seven layers of seven on pallets that would then be carried to the mixing machines and pumped up to the roof. Tough work and I am happy to say I do not have any signs of respiratory problems. ASBESTOS!!
That is possible, but that mean ice age is going to return.
“Sufficiently wealthy people can thrive in any climate and are better protected against all extreme weather events than poor people”
Sufficiently wealthy people can thrive with any energy cost increases and are better protected against all extreme governmental energy taxing and/or rationing than poor people.
I fell for that crap science over the last 50 years when ice cores from all over the globe shows consistent alternating cycles of extreme warmth and ice ages for the last 400,000 years at least...
There have been five ice-ages in the last half-million years.
There is evidence to suggest that 600 million years ago the entire planet was covered by ice.
“I’m going to guess that every person signing onto this is over the age of 45 and will be likely dead when 40 years rolls around to prove them wrong.”
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When I first heard about mankind produced “catastrophes” that some activists predicted would destroy us in 20 or 40 years, I was in my teens. I have lived past that time now and mankind is still living well.
Check out “Malthusian Catastrophe” for an early form of the alarmism that politicians and wannabe scholars now practice on a regular basis, and then look back the last 50 years for many examples, one of them being . The most glaring characteristic of many politicians is that they seek power and control, power and control. Espousing and catering to a prediction of catastrophe has become the easiest route for them to obtain that.
Giving away your liberty and exchanging it for the chains they wish to put on you is always a bad idea.
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