maxparrish
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2005
- Messages
- 2,262
- Location
- SF Bay Area
- Basic Beliefs
- Libertarian-Conservative, Agnostic.
Folks on the far right might totally deny man's influence on global warming and climate change (e.g. Limbaugh), but that does not mean the left is correct on the scope of public policy "problem" or their demanded policy "solutions". There are (at least) a five questions that need to be answered before the world invests tens of trillions into wind-mill charging.
First, how likely is it that the world will undergo dramatic temperature rise over the foreseeable future?
Second, how likely is it that it will result in dramatic climate change?
Third, how likely is it that it will cause substantive net harm, rather than being a 'wash', or even beneficial?
Four, how likely is it that we know how to fix it, and if it is worth it?
Last, how likely is it that it is going to be solved given international politics?
Even if we were 75% certainty for each step, the likelihood that this is worth the "investment" is very low. It's only about a 23 percent chance it will have been worthwhile. And the reality is that WE DON'T have certainty percentages anywhere close to 75%. At best (sequentially for each question) it is 50, 50, 33, 20, 10 meaning there is a microscopic .165% chance that spending tens of trillions over several decades will be worthwhile. EVEN if the IPCC best guess were accurate, do you really think lowering world temperature rise a half degree centigrade in 2100 will make a big difference?
Matt Ridley, former science editor of the Economist, mirrors my view:
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-implications-of-lower-climate-sensitivity.aspx
Climate alarmism shares a commonality with WMD alarmism, it is based on speculative fears, imagination, and highly uncertain evidence. And like WMD alarmism, not only do we know what we don't know (and that's alot), we don't know how much we don't know.
First, how likely is it that the world will undergo dramatic temperature rise over the foreseeable future?
Second, how likely is it that it will result in dramatic climate change?
Third, how likely is it that it will cause substantive net harm, rather than being a 'wash', or even beneficial?
Four, how likely is it that we know how to fix it, and if it is worth it?
Last, how likely is it that it is going to be solved given international politics?
Even if we were 75% certainty for each step, the likelihood that this is worth the "investment" is very low. It's only about a 23 percent chance it will have been worthwhile. And the reality is that WE DON'T have certainty percentages anywhere close to 75%. At best (sequentially for each question) it is 50, 50, 33, 20, 10 meaning there is a microscopic .165% chance that spending tens of trillions over several decades will be worthwhile. EVEN if the IPCC best guess were accurate, do you really think lowering world temperature rise a half degree centigrade in 2100 will make a big difference?
Matt Ridley, former science editor of the Economist, mirrors my view:
Yesterday saw the publication of a paper in a prestigious journal, Nature Geoscience, from a high-profile international team led by Oxford scientists. The contributors include 14 lead authors of the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific report; two are lead authors of the crucial chapter 10: professors Myles Allen and Gabriele Hegerl.
So this study is about as authoritative as you can get. It uses the most robust method, of analyzing the Earth’s heat budget over the past hundred years or so, to estimate a “transient climate response” — the amount of warming that, with rising emissions, the world is likely to experience by the time carbon dioxide levels have doubled since pre-industrial times.
The most likely estimate is 1.3C. Even if we reach doubled carbon dioxide in just 50 years, we can expect the world to be about two-thirds of a degree warmer than it is now, maybe a bit more if other greenhouse gases increase too. That is to say, up until my teenage children reach retirement age, they will have experienced further warming at about the same rate as I have experienced since I was at school.
At this rate, it will be the last decades of this century before global warming does net harm. As the economist Bjørn Lomborg recently summarized the economic consensus: “Economic models show that the overall impact of a moderate warming (1-2C) will be beneficial [so] global warming is a net benefit now and will likely stay so till about 2070.”
Now contrast the new result with the Met Office’s flagship climate model, the one that ministers and their advisers place most faith in. Called HadGEM2-ES, it expects a transient climate response of 2.5C, or almost double the best estimate that the Oxford team has just published. Indeed, the latter’s study concludes that it is more than 95 per cent certain that the response is below 2C, considerably short of the Met Office model’s estimate.
Why trust the new results rather than the Met Office model? The new study not only uses the most robust method, but joins several other observationally based studies from the past year that also find lower climate sensitivity than complex climate models exhibit.
Notice that this new understanding is consistent with what we have actually experienced: about 0.1C per decade over the past 50 years. The most remarkable thing about the recent milestone of 0.04 per cent carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (400 parts per million) is that it comes after 15 years of no net warming at all.
The new paper also fits the known physics of the greenhouse effect, which predicts a warming of 1.1C for a doubling of carbon dioxide. Only unverified assumptions by modellers about the added effects of water vapour and clouds have allowed politicians and activists to claim that a much higher number fits the laws of physics. Only now-disproven claims about how much the sulphur pollution in the air was masking the warming enabled them to reconcile their claims with the actual data.
It is true that the “transient climate response” is not the end of the story and that the gradual warming of the oceans means that there would be more warming in the pipeline even if we stopped increasing carbon dioxide levels after doubling them. But given the advance of nuclear and solar technology, there is now a good chance we will have decarbonised the economy before any net harm has been done.
In an insightful new book, The Age of Global Warming, Rupert Darwall makes the point that “in believing scientists and politicians can solve the problems of a far distant future, the tangible needs of the present are neglected”. The strong possibility that climate change will be slow and harmless must be taken seriously before we damage more lives, landscapes and livelihoods in its name.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-implications-of-lower-climate-sensitivity.aspx
Climate alarmism shares a commonality with WMD alarmism, it is based on speculative fears, imagination, and highly uncertain evidence. And like WMD alarmism, not only do we know what we don't know (and that's alot), we don't know how much we don't know.