The international climate machine is about to achieve a new degree of alarmist absurdity, basically speeding up as they hit the wall. It is all about the Paris Climate Agreement targets and it is kind of fun to watch. Here’s how it goes.
The Agreement has a hard (and silly) target of limiting future global warming to 2.0 degrees C above what are called pre-industrial levels. But there is also a softer (and sillier) target of 1.5 degrees. As usual with international agreements, the language is vague, but all the countries say they will go for 2 but try for 1.5.
The big reason for this is money. Under the Paris Agreement the developed countries are supposed to pay the developing countries whatever it costs to hit the target. Given the goofy computer models it will be much harder, hence much more expensive, to hit the 1.5 degrees of warming target. In fact immediate drastic action is required. Hence the developing countries, which control the Paris process, get a lot more money a lot sooner.
This also raises the pseudoscientific question, what difference does this difference in targets make? Enter the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC. The Paris Agreement is owned by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change machine or simply the UNFCCC. These folks promptly tasked the IPCC with saying how much better a 1.5 degree limit would be than a 2.0 degree limit.
Interestingly this also raises the question what is wrong with the 2 degree target? After all, the global damage has to still be pretty great at 2 in order to justify the 1.5 target. This two edged fact has made some moderate alarmists nervous, but never mind. The UNFCCC is not moderate.
Not surprisingly, the IPCC was up to the job. It has put its draft 800+ page report out for expert comment. And of course they got the desired result, because the IPCC starts with its conclusion then mines the scientific literature for ways to justify it. One might call this Reverse Science, an analog to Reverse Engineering.
As Bernie Lewin explains in his new book “Searching for the Catastrophe Signal: The Origins of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” the IPCC started off in 1988 as a legitimate scientific assessment group. It initially found no conclusive evidence that humans were causing global warming. But the 1992 UNFCCC changed all of that, putting the alarmist cart far ahead of the plodding scientific horse. The IPCC was told to be alarmist or be gone and they are still here.
Here is an example of the hyper-alarmist IPCC draft findings:
“FAQ 3.2: Is a +1.5C world different to a +2C world?
Understanding the difference between 1.5C and 2C of global warming relative to the preindustrial period is central to a safe and sustainable future. Before the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, the world mostly focused on holding global warming to 2C. Yet now, new scientific literature is emerging that highlights negative impacts from a 2C or even lower global warming. There are negative impacts from a global warming of 1.5C but these are less severe than compared to a 2C increase in global temperatures.”
“Extreme events
Global warming of 2C vs 1.5C is likely to lead to more frequent and more intense hot extremes in most land regions as well as to longer warm spells. Impacts on cities at both 1.5C and 2.0C of warming would include a substantial increase in the occurrence of heatwaves compared to the present-day, with temperature related health risks being lower in some but not all cities under 1.5C of global warming.”
Note that they say that some of the damage at 2 degrees will also occur at 1.5. This is because some of the computer models say that all warming is damaging to some degree.
It should also be noted that this talk of 2 and 1.5 degrees is very misleading. The UNFCCC and IPCC both accept the goofy surface temperature statistical models, which say that we have already had one whole degree of warming. The satellites indicate that there has been little warming and that little has been natural, but this is simply ignored by the alarmists.
Thus the Paris targets are actually to limit future warming to just 1.0 or 0.5 degrees, respectively. The Paris maximum target is really 1 degree, not 2, and the preferred target is holding warming to half a degree.
No wonder that drastic action is needed (and which is simply going to happen). Given the climate models built-in high sensitivity to CO2 emissions, it is virtually impossible to limit future (computer) warming to just 0.5 degrees.
This impossibility is especially true in those models with built-in future warming coming from past emissions. Some models show a large time lag, with another 0.5 degrees of warming already “in the pipeline” as the modelers say.
This lag is known as the difference between transient climate sensitivity (TCS), which is immediate warming, and equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), which includes the lag time and can be much higher. In fact the UK Meteorological Office now says that the 1.5 degree target could be exceeded within five years.
So basically the alarmists have created a problem for themselves. They first made the models “hot,” which means highly sensitive to CO2, in order to hype the scare. Now they have made the warming-limit target impossibly low for political correctness (and revenue enhancement).
Demanding the impossible is the road to failure. Let’s hope so.
Will they take credit for global cooling?
They will try to explain it away. Recall that according to their own data we had global cooling from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s but that has not slowed them down. They claim that the cooling was due to increased pollution. This time they might say it is due to diminished solar activity, so it is merely masking the global warming which will rush back when the solar activity comes back to normal. This is also what they have done with the pause, plus adjusting it away, as NOAA has done.
Well, you’ve got access to the draft, the final AR5. What science has been brought forward supporting your claim?
“This time they might say it is due…”
Hansen and Gavin have already invoked solar cooling in advance to explain away the next pause. The lit is full of predictions of solar cooling. So it seems like a natural dodge in the making. Not sure what AR5 has to do with it.
Your first comment said, “..they might say it is due to diminished solar activity..”.
Now you say “..already invoked solar cooling in advance..”
Seems you need to get your story straight.
And support it.
With quotes. With details like when and where.
“..lit is full of predictions of solar cooling…”
Said without a single point of evidence.
Wonder why.
Chapter 8 Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf
It’s all smoke and mirrors along with a lot of computer modeling, right or wrong, and hyper UN socialism; basically fear mongering guess work with cooked data (climate gate). I’m sure old socialist Georgie Soros and his UN, EU and US minions and sheeple are involved. Someone once said; “a lie repeated enough will eventually become the truth”. If I remember, it was V. Lenin, the god father of the former USSR.
In the works .
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The crackpots are preparing arguments to blame the return of the hiatus on global warming .
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Same as they did on the unexpected colder winters of the past two decades across the northern hemisphere .
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Panic is setting in as the data matches the solar and ocean current cycles ,showing no relation to CO2 elevation .
Demanding the impossible is the standard practice of the left. “To Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible” https://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/to-be-realistic-demand-the-impossible-toward-a-visionary-left
the starting point is important as the max range of warming.
as they have set the starting point at the ‘pre-industrial’ level, which means 1850, well, we already have 1,5 degree of warming!
they like to call it ‘pre-industrial’ because it leads people to think that all the warming we had from 1800 is caused by the industrialization. in reality, the mankind has probably started having an impact on the climate from 1950. Nobody has ever suggested that the warming from 1850-1950 has been caused by human activity. and that’s 1 degree of warming!
Actually the idea that the warming before 1950 was not human caused is relatively recent. As I recall the IPCC only retreated to this position in AR4.
Plus the whole idea of limiting post-industrial warming to 2.0 or 1.5 degrees more or less assumes that all of the warming is human caused. How else can the developing countries claim that the developed countries must compensate them for the damages caused by all of the warming?
Have read about climate modelling out of the U.K. and Russia that shows Earth has actually entered a global cooling period (as of 2007) of perhaps a century or more . . . plausibly leading us into another mini-ice-age. It has a lot to do with identifying the cycles of our sun.
No you are misinformed. The planet is not entering a “global cooling period”.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/graph_data/Global_Mean_Estimates_based_on_Land_and_Ocean_Data/graph.html
Ever considered that you may be misinformed?
Manorly did cite a source. Can you?
What evidence can you bring forward that Ian5’s source is not accurate?
I provided a current plot of NOAA GHCN v3, ERSST v5 and SCAR data that clearly refutes the ridiculous suggestion that we are “entering a global cooling period”. If you have some science to offer share away.
Ian5: Don’t tell Hansen and Gavin that coming cooling is ridiculous, since they just posited it as a distinct possibility. But past data tells us nothing about future temperature. There is now a fairly large literature on the prospect of at least some cooling. Perhaps you have not seen it.
For example:
https://timesofsandiego.com/tech/2018/02/05/scripps-cooling-sun-may-partially-offset-climate-change-by-humans/?utm_source=Media&utm_campaign=b0e0284b3b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8f98a37810-b0e0284b3b-36452217
Read it directly from the Scripps Institute; the study does not support your misleading narrative whatsoever.
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/reduced-energy-sun-might-occur-mid-century-now-scientists-know-how-much
“The cooling effect of a grand minimum is only a fraction of the warming effect caused by the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere”
The evidence seems to point to D.W. only seeing the words ‘solar’ and ‘offset’ in the newspaper article title……
Oh? The title of the article?
Cooling Sun May Partially Offset Climate Change by Humans
Did you miss a word there?
May
Did you miss a word there?
Partially
Massive snowfall in Germany, snowing in Morocco, Arabian Desert temperature declining, ocean temperatures dropping, our sun going into a cyclical period of dormancy in terms of sunspot activity, and so on and so forth.
Study of Greenland ice provides a 2500 year perspective indicating we headed into a mini-ice-age as happened from the mid 1300’s to the mid 1800’s; and the data from the 1200 or so floating buoys around the world’s oceans are likewise showing a cooling trend, and have been for some time. Climate models suggest increasing frequency of, and greater damage from, violent storms is the result of global cooling, not warming . . . and so on and so forth.
Greenland was originally named that for a reason. Centuries ago Greenland was void of most of present day perpetual ice. Iceland exist in a constant geothermal zone (the mid Atlantic Riff) that is capable of producing their entire civilization’s source of steam generated electricity. Maybe Greenland should be named Iceland and vice versa.
No, you are confused. The occurrence of single regionally-specific climate events are not how we measure global temperature trends.
Thank-you for the revelations you have afforded me, and I suppose many others reading these interactions. So many phrases come to mind, chief among them “none so blind as those who will not see”. What is in it for you to be so dismissive not only of current conditions but of the growing number of credible counterpoints to climate change models that predict an onward march of global warming?
“…the growing number of credible counterpoints to climate change models that predict an onward march of global warming?”
What growing number of counterpoints? Your statement is inconsistent with the actual literature. Also, you need not simply focus on the many excellent climate model projections. Look closely at the observed data. The scientific evidence for warming of the planet’s climate system is unequivocal.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/CUSTOM_GRAPHS/e83a0750-faf9-4813-88e6-ed5558e948a7/graph.html
“…credible counterpoints…”
Bwahahahaha.
Deniers wouldnt know what a credible counterpoint looked like.
Credible enough for you?
The Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th Century and was followed by increasing solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age that started in the mid 1300’s and lasted through the mid 1800’s.
You are the one “misinformed” .
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The Earth has been in a cooling period since 8.3 kya .
Nope. Global temperatures are clearly on the uptick. Inform yourself by looking it up: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/
David is at it again, promoting yet another rubbish source.
Written by Bernie Lewin, who has no climate science credentials whatsoever. Hasn’t published a single peer-reviewed article in any scientific journal. Nothing.
Book published by the global warming policy forum, founded by disinformation professional Nigel Lawson. Written to intentionally mislead and misinform.
Examples of why he is wrong?
Perhaps Al Gore ,or, Bill The End is Nye would be more palatable ?
The article references the writings of non-scientist Bernie Lewin and his extreme views. If you don’t like the writings of Gore or Nye you are free to criticize them.
Lewin’s book is history, so not something to publish in a scientific journal, not that matters. I personally watched most of what he says happen and he is mostly correct.
Your excuse is that Lewin’s book is history. Yet his silly book and amateurish website are full of unscientific claims and misinformation. You are fully aware of this but your goal is to mislead and confuse readers. Dishonest.
There are some lengthy excerpts here, plus almost 400 comments.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/01/03/manufacturing-consensus-the-early-history-of-the-ipcc/
I see nothing silly about it. Much of what he reports I have personally observed.
Here is something I wrote when the TAR came out, the first fully alarmist IPCC report.
https://www.john-daly.com/guests/un_ipcc.htm
Regarding peer reviewed scientific journals, these are edited (that is, controlled) by and written by academics, the overwhelming majority of whom are left wingers. In the climate change debate case this determines the journal’s content, which is uniformly alarmist.
Many years ago I was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon and the left wing bias was stifling, to say the least. I developed a way to diagram complex issues, which I called the issue tree. See the little text I used in my classes here:
http://www.stemed.info/reports/Wojick_Issue_Analysis_txt.pdf
I accepted issue tree diagrams instead of essays and for this I was called a “fascist mind controller” by one of my left wing colleagues. Actually analyzing issues is anathema to these folks and it shows in the climate debate. They prefer ad hominems and arguments from (their) authority. One side fits all. I soon left to work with industry executives who value understanding complex issues.
Ian and Robert will not accept your argument about the bias in journals and institutions of higher learning as you have rightly pointed out. They don’t even understand the science of AGW yet they want to try and discredit those of us who can see that the whole AGW scenario is built upon a house of cards. Their science can’t show it as real. All they can do is make assertions that it is without providing one experiment that can justify their phony theory.
“…the whole AGW scenario is built upon a house of cards”
>> Your usual silly and extreme conspiracy rubbish rejected by virtually every US and international scientific academy the world over. It is you that is making intentionally, misleading unsubstantiated assertions.
Not true. You can’t cite 1 experiment that validates AGW. All you can do is call on authority as your proof. Those organizations aren’t experts either. My statement stands until you can show it wrong. Call it “rubbish” all you like. We know you haven’t a clue.
ICYMI
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming/radiativeforcing/jcr:content/articleContent/columnbootstrap_3/column0/image.scale.small.jpg/1374179490960.jpg
Radiative Forcing
ACS Climate Science Toolkit | How Atmospheric Warming Works
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming/radiativeforcing.html
There’s no such thing as “greenhouse gases” and even less of “long-lived greenhouse gases”.
The graph has no foundation in empirical data, besides it lack for example cloud cover, cosmic radiation and cyclical ocean oscillations.
Shock Paper Cites Formula That Precisely Calculates Planetary Temps WITHOUT Greenhouse Effect, CO2 – CO2 Climate Sensitivity So Low It’s ‘Impossible To Detect Or Measure In The Real Atmosphere’
http://www.newscats.org/?p=13539
If there really was a “greenhouse effect” it would be possible to measure it, no such empirical data exist.
.. but hey, alarmists do not need empirical data, or evidence, because it is not about science, facts, CO2., or logic, it’s not even about the climate, – it’s all about the money!
Environmentalists Push Global Wealth Redistribution
http://www.newscats.org/?p=13587
That is why alarmists, read: COMMUNISTS – are immune when it comes to facts.
“There’s no such thing as “greenhouse gases” and even less of “long-lived greenhouse gases”.”
“…newscats…”
“…alarmists, read: COMMUNISTS…”
You can’t refute what he wrote. Figures.