I deleted a few paragraphs that did not add to the main point, one including this false claim: "The last two decades have seen little actual global warming despite higher levels of mostly naturally produced CO2 entering the atmosphere.". The rest of the article was good enough to be here. If I had written the article, I would have mentioned that +1.5 degrees C. was reached for one month in 1998, also in the last month of 2015 and in the first month of 2016. All three months were affected by temporary heat peaks caused by unusually large El Nino Pacific Ocean heat releases, more properly called ENSO, not related to CO2.
Ye Editor
"We’re publishing a guest post today by journalist Chris Morrison about the 1.5°C target, the climate change models and the way in which ambitious politicians, self-described ‘scientists’ and rent-seeking industrialists have leapt on the bandwagon to end all bandwagons.
Politics, not science, lies behind the drive to keep global temperatures to 1.5°C.
Not the thoughts of your correspondent, but the clear implication of words spoken in 2010 by the so-called father of 2°C, an earlier IPCC target, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.
Interviewed by the Der Speigel, Mr Schellnhuber, the IPCC lead author and at the time Angela Merkel’s Climate Adviser, was asked why he had imposed the “magical limit” to which all countries must slavishly adhere.
He said: “Politicians like to have clear targets and a simple number is easier to handle.”
Of course, the push to net zero and the ‘settled’ science that is claimed to support the move is political.
... “The fingerprint of climate change is detected from any single day in the observed global record since early 2012, and since 1999 on the basis of a year of data,” reports Professor Knutti.
Possibly with Messrs Rowlatt, Harrabin and Snow in mind, the academic notes that this opens broader perspectives for “modifying the climate change narrative”.
In his view “global climate change is now detected instantaneously”.
It might not surprise that Professor Knutti is a specialist in climate models and most of his interesting speculations derive from interpreting their results.
Many activist academics argue that despite never having produced an accurate forecast in almost 40 years of operation, the models are still fit for purpose.
Writing in the Spectator last week, the senior NASA climate adviser Gavin Schmidt said it was important to realise that most outcomes “depend on the overall trend and not the fine scale details of any given models”.
Presumably, these mere details don’t now include a requirement to provide an accurate forecast, despite the fact that the world is being forced to net zero on the basis of the modelers’ guesses.
Neither is it clear what “trend” Mr Schmidt is talking about.
Gigantic guesses of course lie at the heart of climate models.
Nobody knows what effect doubling atmospheric CO2 has on the temperature of the Earth.
The scientific answer is not so much settled as unknown, so modelers speculate on the actual sensitivity by picking a number up to 6°C.
Ten years ago Professor Knutti addressed this problem, admitting:
“The quest to determine climate sensitivity has now been going on for decades, with disturbingly little progress in narrowing the large uncertainty range.”
What a difference a decade can make in the modelers’ world.
From admitting the fundamental flaw that lies at the heart of climate modeling to being able to show long term trends in the climate from just one day of weather.
This is progress indeed, sure to gladden the hearts of all green journalists and politicians along with a vast modern army of self-identifying ‘scientists’ and rent-seeking industrialists.
Declaring climate change is no longer a political issue gives free rein to BBC activists such as Justin Rowlatt to promote their own views on suitable energy sources.
But it comes at the expense of holding the Prime Minister to account for some of his increasingly outlandish environmental suggestions,
in particular his interview statement that 70% of the world’s coral will be destroyed at 1.5°C warming. At 2°C, he added, all of it will be gone.
Given that the 1.5°C figure already includes the 1.1°C warming seen since the early 1800s, it is difficult to see how a small increase in air temperature will destroy most of the world’s coral.
Surely Mr Johnson was not just making it up as he went along?
It would have been worth Mr Rowlatt’s time to press the matter given that tropical coral grows happily in waters between 24°C and 32°C.
The findings of Professor Peter Ridd, who has spent 40 years studying the Great Barrier Reef, suggest that coral bleaches with sudden temporary changes of temperature caused by natural weather oscillations such as El Nino.
The Reef is likely to stay intact since most of the coral is located in water at the lower range of these supposedly dangerous temperatures.
You can dispute Professor Ridd’s findings but you cannot just write them out of the dialogue as the BBC and all mainstream broadcasters are now doing.
Everything about climate, the science and promoted solutions is political. ... "