THE CLIMATE
CHANGE SCENE:
CHANGE SCENE:
Earth's climate has been gradually
warming, and improving, since
the 1690s, during the Little Ice
Age, when it got so cold there
were some famines in Europe.
It is most likely at least
+2 degrees C. warmer now.
More recently, including
very haphazard non-global
surface measurements
made before World War II,
the global average temperature
increased roughly + 1 degree C.
since 1880.
Since 1940, the global average
temperature, in the modern
"age of man made CO2 emissions",
based on surface measurements
that are still questionable,
increased at an average of
+0.077 degrees C. per decade,
( or +0.6 degrees C. in 78 years ).
Since 2003, the global average
temperature, based on more
accurate satellite measurements,
that are close to being global,
did not increase at all, through
the end of 2018.
THE CAST OF
CHARACTERS:
Real Scientists:
People who do not pretend
to know what the future climate
will be.
They study the past climate,
and try to explain the changes,
but there are many unanswered
questions.
Some real scientists focus on
the benefits of atmospheric
CO2 enrichment, on plant growth.
Government-Paid
"Bureaucrats" With
Science Degrees:
This is where the climate money is !
Government grants and
government salaries !
But they must believe,
and predict, that a coming
climate change catastrophe
is already in progress.
To keep their government money
flowing, they must confidently
predict future warming at
quadruple the rate of past
global warming, since 1940
( see next article )
because that's what the
UNs IPCC predicts.
To keep their government money
flowing, they must never admit
past predictions of a coming
climate catastrophe have been
wrong since the late 1950's,
and that their computer game
predictions were, on average,
almost triple the actual warming !
The "Lukewarmers"
These are scientists and ordinary
people who are confident rising
atmospheric CO2 levels cause
global warming.
They also believe the warming
will be mild, and we should do
something about it, but we
should not panic.
This seems like a moderate,
thoughtful compromise
position, but being in the
middle of the road gets
people run over by traffic
on both sides !
They are easily marginalized
by a leftist trick that I'll
describe later.
Ye Editor:
Although I have a BS degree,
I try not to BS people about
climate change !
I started reading about climate
science in 1997, as a hobby.
It took me about one day to
reject 100-year climate predictions
as wild guesses likely to be wrong.
It took me 10 years before I wrote
my first climate change article,
in 2007, and seven more years
for my next climate change article,
in 2014. Both were in my economics
and finance newsletter, ECONOMIC
LOGIC, which is another hobby.
( I also have an MBA degree )
My free economics blog, since 2008,
supports that newsletter:
I started this blog for newsletter
subscribers, to update the 2014
article. Over the next few years
I allowed others to know the URL
of this blog, as a public service.
There have been over 31,500
page views so far.
I've been retired since 2004,
at age 51, so had more time for
writing. So I eventually added three
blogs to the newsletter I have published
since 1977.
My goal:
Summarize real science
articles in simple language, and
insult leftists whenever I can,
because they lie, and mislead,
so often about climate change.
The coming climate change
catastrophe "fairy tale"
is the original fake news,
not the "Trump Russian
Collusion Delusion" !
I hope you enjoy reading.
( The narrow columns are
because I have a vision
problem, not because my
computer is broken ! )
Richard Greene,
since 1953,
Bingham Farms, Michigan
since 1987,
patiently waiting for global
warming to reach Michigan,
since 1977 !
THE SUMMARY:
Some scientists
are starting to focus
on worst case
estimates of future
climate change.
In fact, no one on Earth
knows what the future
climate will be.
And no one knows if the
average temperature
will be warmer, or colder,
100 years from now.
Past global warming
was 100% good news !
But the very smarmy
"Climate Change Cult"
always predicts
the future climate
will be 100% bad news !
So it is no surprise they
are now focusing on the
"worst case",
of the future bad news
they have
always predicted !
In fact, these
wild guess
climate predictions
have nothing to do
with real science
-- they are actually
climate astrology.
In fact, worst case estimates
are worthless, but discussing
them does give them credibility !
THE DETAILS:
There are some scientists
who believe CO2 warms the
planet, but don't agree with the
fast warming rate that the
UN's IPCC predicts.
They are often called
"lukewarmers",
and they are now
being drawn into the
"worst case debate".
Like the Climate Change Cult,
"lukewarmers" seem to ignore
actual past global warming,
which has been mild, harmless,
and beneficial for plant growth
-- 100% good news !
Many "lukewarmers"
don't seem to know
the future climate
can't be predicted.
How many more decades
of wrong predictions
are needed to prove that ?
Some "lukewarmers"
are now participating
in the "worst case debate".
What they are missing,
and I have to assume
because they're
not very bright,
is what I see as the
potential worst case:
Misinterpreting
beneficial
global warming
as "dangerous,
overreacting to it,
and causing very
serious economic
and health problems
for all the people
living on our planet
right now !
The "Green Ordeal"
is the best example
of a potential gross
overreaction to a
non-existent
climate problem !
Trying to implement
the "Green Ordeal"
would be a real
'existential threat'
to the US economy !
If the "Green Ordeal's"
unaffordable cost, and
economic disruption,
is not the most likely
climate change
"worst case",
then I don't know
what is !
MIT Professor
Richard S. Lindzen, PhD,
( Atmospheric Sciences ),
had summed up
what I am trying to say,
ten years ago, in 2009
( his huge sentence is
reformatted for easier
understanding ):
“Future generations
will wonder,
in bemused amazement,
that the early
twenty-first century’s
developed world,
went into
a hysterical panic,
over a
globally averaged
temperature increase,
of a few tenths
of a degree,
and, on the basis of
gross exaggerations,
of highly uncertain
computer projections,
combined into
implausible chains
of inference,
proceeded to
contemplate
a roll-back
of the industrial age.”
Richard S. Lindzen, in 2009
MIT Professor of Atmospheric Sciences,
member of the National Academy of Sciences,
and former lead author, U.N. Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
There are too many assumptions
behind the leftist predictions
of a coming climate change
catastrophe -- predictions
that started with Roger Revelle
in the late 1950s.
The predictions start
with the assumption
that rising CO2 levels
MUST cause
global warming,
and atmospheric
CO2 levels
MUST 'control'
the average
temperature
of our planet:
- There are lab experiments
that suggest CO2 should
cause warming in the
troposphere,
but
- There are also temperature
measurements, since 1940,
that reflect a declining, or
flat, average temperature
trend, two thirds of the time,
as CO2 levels continuously
increased.
That means the science
is unclear, not settled.
And that's why the Climate
Change Cult won't debate
the science -- they cut off
all debate with character
attacks ( "climate denier"! ),
and false science claims
( "the science is settled" ! ).
Cult members
merely assume
CO2 causes a lot of
global warming,
and focus on
scary predictions
of a coming climate
change catastrophe.
That focus started with
"professer" Al Gore
in the 1990s.
Al Gore's actual poor college grades,
for the two simple science courses he took:
- Natural Sciences 6 (Man's Place in Nature) = grade of "D"
- Natural Sciences 118 = grade of "C+"
Source: The Washington Post, 2000
And it accelerated
until 2018.
Now our latest, greatest
"climate perfesser",
Alexandria
Occasionally
Coherent,
shifted the attention,
by publicizing the
current version
of the Green Party's
decade-old
"Green Ordeal".
So now the underlying
science is assumed
to be correct, and the
coming climate change
catastrophe is ALSO
assumed to be correct.
They've jumped two steps
up the "assumption ladder",
and now debate is avoided
about those first two steps,
by launching the usual
character attacks.
There are scientists
who "believe in"
the coming
climate catastrophe,
simple because
they have to believe it
if they want to keep
getting government
grants and paychecks !
There are also scientists
who don't believe in a
coming climate catastrophe,
but they are only willing
to debate how much
warming CO2 will cause,
not the minimal
underlying science.
Some call them "lukewarmers".
Climate Change
Cult members
can easily marginalize
climate "lukewarmers"
by invoking their 'glorious'
Precautionary Principle,
which they made up
out of thin air,
to convince people
that climate change
MUST be considered
to be a coming disaster,
because the world
can't afford to wait,
and see that they
were right all along !
"Lukewarmers" skip the first step
of the assumption ladder, by refusing
to debate the very little real science
( only simple closed system lab experiments ),
supporting climate change claims.
Now, some "lukewarmers"
have skipped the second step
of the assumption ladder,
by discussing the
worst case estimates,
of how bad the future
climate change crisis
will be.
In fact, worst case estimates
are worthless, but discussing
them can give them credibility !
"Lukewarmers" are starting
to debate worst case estimates,
in spite of the fact that no one
knows whether the future climate
will be warmer, or cooler.
We do know the global
average temperature
has increased since the
"era of man made
CO2 emissions" began,
in roughly 1940.
The actual warming rate
since 1940 has been
+0.077 degrees C. per decade,
or +0.77 degrees C. in 100 years.
( see next article for details ).
If that rate of warming
continued for the next 100 years,
the average global temperature
would be up a harmless
+0.77 degrees C. in 2119 !
There's no reason to expect
a faster warming rate,
because the expected
incremental greenhouse
warming effect of CO2
declines rapidly as CO2
levels increase.
Even if actual warming
in the next 100 years
was double the
global warming rate
of the past 78 years,
that would mean
+1.54 degrees C.
of global warming
in the next 100 years
-- also harmless --
and not much more than
the claimed +1 degree C.
of global warming
we've actually had
since 1880, 138 years ago,
if you trust the haphazard
measurements (I don't).
There is no logical reason
to speculate about
a future warming rate
of triple or quadruple
the past warming rate
since 1940.
Yet the IPCC, since 1990,
has predicted a future warming
rate of +3 degrees C. per century,
almost quadruple the actual
+0.77 degree C. warming rate
since 1940 !
And they compound that
excessive warming prediction,
with a worst case prediction
of a huge CO2 growth rate
of a huge CO2 growth rate
( aka RCP8.5 ), that is
much faster than the actual
CO2 level rise in the past
few decades !
We have a lot of experience
with actual global warming.
We discovered that natural
climate change can be huge.
20,000 years ago, Chicago,
Detroit ,and 95% of Canada,
were covered by thick glaciers.
They melted in 10,000 years.
To the best of our knowledge,
prior episodes of global warming
never exceeded a warming rate
of +0.1 degree C. per decade.
Nevertheless, the IPCC,
has always predicted
+0.3 degrees C. per decade
of global warming over the
next century.
The physics of exactly
what causes climate change
is unknown, so the future
average temperature
is also unknown.
The ending date of the current
mild climate Holocene
interglacial is also unknown.
With two huge unknowns,
there's no logical way to
predict if the future climate
will be warmer or colder,
not to mention predicting
the actual future average
temperature.
The "lukewarmers" seem to
ignore those unknowns too,
perhaps because they are
reluctant to tell the truth:
Real climate science
has many unanswered
questions !
In our world today,
people who earn
a science degree,
and then say:
"I don't know", or
"We don't know",
will be ignored,
even though
those are the
correct answers
for predictions
of the future climate !
A worst case warming rate
of CO2 can be estimated
by assuming CO2 caused
ALL of the global warming
after 1975
( with no scientific proof
that ANY of the warming was
actually caused by CO2. )
That worst case
CO2 warming
estimate would be
a warming rate
of less than
+ 1 degree C.
per century,
even if CO2 levels
rise +3 ppm per year
( 50% faster than the
current growth rate
of + 2 ppm per year ).
So there is no
logical reason
to assume
a worst case
of more than
+1 degree C. of
global warming
per century.
Unfortunately, the
Climate Change Cult
does not care about logical,
reasonable assumptions.
Why should they?
They've been making
very wrong climate
change predictions
to get attention, and
government funding,
since the late 1950s.
The mainstream media ignores
their wrong predictions.
Schools don't teach about
their wrong predictions.
Essentially, government bureaucrats
with science degrees get paid for
scary, wrong climate predictions,
just like some scientists were paid
to predict that cigarettes were safe !
Participating in any discussion, or
debate, about "worst case future
climate change", implies that humans
are capable of estimating what
the future climate will be, or could be.
Catastrophic
Man Made
Climate Change
is a political game,
not real science.
It is intended to scare people,
and promote more government
power over the private sector,
as a solution to a (fake) problem.
For some Cult members,
climate change alarmism
is used to promote the
redistribution of wealth,
and communism.
( see quotes below )
"Lukewarmers" who participate
in any discussion of "worst case
climate change" are not behaving
as skeptics, and promoting real science !
Wild guesses of the future climate
are NOT real science !
"No matter if the science is all phony ... Climate change (provides) the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."
Christine Stewart,
Canadian environmental minister
We've already had too much economic growth in th US. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure."
Paul Ehrlich,
"green guru"
“ … developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
Ottmar Edenhofer
Professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin, co-chair of Working group III of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Deputy Director and Chief Economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg, Germany.
"To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest."
Stephen Schneider,
climate alarmist,
from the October 1989 Discover magazine