Keeping the populace alarmed by the climate change hobgoblin, now increasingly imaginary.

[maxparrish]

While the climate-nestas have been relentlessly preaching ever more lurid images of imminent climate catastrophe, and praising the administrations efforts to end cheap power from fossil fuels, the politicians have not noticed that the science has moved on. It seems the "put up" or shut up day for climate change models is now approaching. After 18 years of increasingly non-predictive model failure and stable temperatures, time is running out for the alarmists - they have almost run out of excuses.

http://judithcurry.com/2014/10/09/my-op-ed-in-the-wall-street-journal-is-now-online/

Judith Curry, a long-time 'global warmer' climatologist has slowly evolved her views. More than a decade ago she started carefully reading skeptic blogs, in particular climate audit, and kept an open mind. At this point she, like many others, are no longer supporting the alarmist meme and believe warming is occurring, but at a rate below that of most model predictions.

The Global Warming Statistical Meltdown

At the recent United Nations Climate Summit, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that “Without significant cuts in emissions by all countries, and in key sectors, the window of opportunity to stay within less than 2 degrees [of warming] will soon close forever.” Actually, this window of opportunity may remain open for quite some time. A growing body of evidence suggests that the climate is less sensitive to increases in carbon-dioxide emissions than policy makers generally assume—and that the need for reductions in such emissions is less urgent....

In its most optimistic projections, which assume a substantial decline in emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the “dangerous” level might never be reached. In its most extreme, pessimistic projections, which assume heavy use of coal and rapid population growth, the threshold could be exceeded as early as 2040. But these projections reflect the effects of rising emissions on temperatures simulated by climate models, which are being challenged by recent observations.

Human-caused warming depends not only on increases in greenhouse gases but also on how “sensitive” the climate is to these increases. Climate sensitivity is defined as the global surface warming that occurs when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles. If climate sensitivity is high, then we can expect substantial warming in the coming century as emissions continue to increase. If climate sensitivity is low, then future warming will be substantially lower, and it may be several generations before we reach what the U.N. considers a dangerous level, even with high emissions.

The IPCC’s latest report (published in 2013) concluded that the actual change in 70 years if carbon-dioxide concentrations double, called the transient climate response, is likely in the range of 1 to 2.5 degrees Celsius. Most climate models have transient climate response values exceeding 1.8 degrees Celsius. But the IPCC report notes the substantial discrepancy between recent observation-based estimates of climate sensitivity and estimates from climate models.

Nicholas Lewis and I have just published a study in Climate Dynamics that shows the best estimate for transient climate response is 1.33 degrees Celsius with a likely range of 1.05-1.80 degrees Celsius. Using an observation-based energy-balance approach, our calculations used the same data for the effects on the Earth’s energy balance of changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols and other drivers of climate change given by the IPCC’s latest report.

We also estimated what the long-term warming from a doubling of carbon-dioxide concentrations would be, once the deep ocean had warmed up. Our estimates of sensitivity, both over a 70-year time-frame and long term, are far lower than the average values of sensitivity determined from global climate models that are used for warming projections. Also our ranges are narrower, with far lower upper limits than reported by the IPCC’s latest report. Even our upper limits lie below the average values of climate models.

Our paper is not an outlier. More than a dozen other observation-based studies have found climate sensitivity values lower than those determined using global climate models, including recent papers published in Environmentrics (2012), Nature Geoscience (2013) and Earth Systems Dynamics (2014). These new climate sensitivity estimates add to the growing evidence that climate models are running “too hot.” Moreover, the estimates in these empirical studies are being borne out by the much-discussed “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming—the period since 1998 during which global average surface temperatures have not significantly increased.

This pause in warming is at odds with the 2007 IPCC report, which expected warming to increase at a rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade in the early 21st century. The warming hiatus, combined with assessments that the climate-model sensitivities are too high, raises serious questions as to whether the climate-model projections of 21st century temperatures are fit for making public policy decisions....

And remember the old alarmist excuse that the temperature increases are hidden in the deep ocean currents?

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4321

NASA Study Finds Earth’s Ocean Abyss Has Not Warmed

The cold waters of Earth’s deep ocean have not warmed measurably since 2005, according to a new NASA study, leaving unsolved the mystery of why global warming appears to have slowed in recent years.

Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, analyzed satellite and direct ocean temperature data from 2005 to 2013 and found the ocean abyss below 1.24 miles (1,995 meters) has not warmed measurably. Study coauthor Josh Willis of JPL said these findings do not throw suspicion on climate change itself.

“The sea level is still rising,” Willis noted. “We’re just trying to understand the nitty-gritty details.”

In the 21st century, greenhouse gases have continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, just as they did in the 20th century, but global average surface air temperatures have stopped rising in tandem with the gases. The temperature of the top half of the world’s ocean — above the 1.24-mile mark — is still climbing, but not fast enough to account for the stalled air temperatures. (Emphasis added.)

 

[bilby]

What a load of horseshit.

Study coauthor Josh Willis of JPL said these findings do not throw suspicion on climate change itself

But a random right-wing poster on a discussion board knows better than the authors of the papers he cites, and uses them to throw suspicion on climate change? Give us a break.

When the stuff you quote to support your position explicitly doesn't support your position, you really are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

 

[maxparrish]

What a load of horseshit.

Study coauthor Josh Willis of JPL said these findings do not throw suspicion on climate change itself

But a random right-wing poster on a discussion board knows better than the authors of the papers he cites, and uses them to throw suspicion on climate change? Give us a break.

When the stuff you quote to support your position explicitly doesn't support your position, you really are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Correct, the "stuff" I quoted does not support your straw man, but it does support my stated position. These findings don't throw suspicion on climate change per se', recent papers throw deep suspicion on the pace and degree of global warming. In other words, the lurid alarmism of climate change is very likely overstated due to failing IPCC models, and hypothesis about 'deep ocean warming' being disputed by actual data.

A case of alarmists making a mountain out of a midden pile - no matter how much the faithful wish to deny it.

PS: you might start here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-014-2342-y

 

[bilby]

What a load of horseshit.



But a random right-wing poster on a discussion board knows better than the authors of the papers he cites, and uses them to throw suspicion on climate change? Give us a break.

When the stuff you quote to support your position explicitly doesn't support your position, you really are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Correct, the "stuff" I quoted does not support your straw man, but it does support my stated position. These findings don't throw suspicion on climate change per se', they throw deep suspicion on the pace and degree of global warming. In other words, the lurid alarmism of climate change is very likely overstated due to failing IPCC models.

A case of alarmists making a mountain out of a midden pile.

What 'straw man'? I don't think that means what I think you think it means.

Surely you are not going to claim that 'throw[ing] suspicion on climate change' is a mischaracterisation of someone's position when that position is titled "Keeping the populace alarmed by the climate change hobgoblin, now increasingly imaginary". If that is not 'throw[ing] suspicion on climate change', then W.T. fuck is it?

 

[maxparrish]

Correct, the "stuff" I quoted does not support your straw man, but it does support my stated position. These findings don't throw suspicion on climate change per se', they throw deep suspicion on the pace and degree of global warming. In other words, the lurid alarmism of climate change is very likely overstated due to failing IPCC models.

A case of alarmists making a mountain out of a midden pile.

What 'straw man'? I don't think that means what I think you think it means.

Surely you are not going to claim that 'throw[ing] suspicion on climate change' is a mischaracterisation of someone's position when that position is titled "Keeping the populace alarmed by the climate change hobgoblin, now increasingly imaginary". If that is not 'throw[ing] suspicion on climate change', then W.T. fuck is it?

It's throwing suspicion on keeping the populace alarmed using climate change as a hobgoblin, one that is increasingly imaginary. There are positions between denial and catastrophic alarmism, in case that did not occur to you.

 

[bilby]

What 'straw man'? I don't think that means what I think you think it means.

Surely you are not going to claim that 'throw[ing] suspicion on climate change' is a mischaracterisation of someone's position when that position is titled "Keeping the populace alarmed by the climate change hobgoblin, now increasingly imaginary". If that is not 'throw[ing] suspicion on climate change', then W.T. fuck is it?

It's throwing suspicion on keeping the populace alarmed using climate change as a hobgoblin, one that is increasingly imaginary. There are positions between denial and catastrophic alarmism, in case that did not occur to you.

'imaginary' isn't one of those positions, in case that did not occur to you.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Credible? No.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/curry-ohc-corrections.html

 

[maxparrish]

It's throwing suspicion on keeping the populace alarmed using climate change as a hobgoblin, one that is increasingly imaginary. There are positions between denial and catastrophic alarmism, in case that did not occur to you.

'imaginary' isn't one of those positions, in case that did not occur to you.

What does occur to me is how instructive about a particular mindset it is. For example, if you read a quip that says "the Wall Street hobgoblin is increasingly imaginary", would you actually think the author means that wall street does not exist? And then if read two paragraphs that explain why Wall street is not a hobgoblin, would you still think that the author is denying the existence of Wall Street?

In any event, your response is typical of a common but simple-minded stereotype in climatnists, that climate change equals catastrophe, and any denial of looming climate catastrophe is a denial of climate change itself.

 

[bilby]

'imaginary' isn't one of those positions, in case that did not occur to you.

What does occur to me is how instructive about a particular mindset it is. For example, if you read a quip that says "the Wall Street hobgoblin is increasingly imaginary", you actually think the author means that wall street does not exist? And you then read two paragraphs that explain why Wall street is not a hobgoblin, and you still think that the author is denying the existence of Wall Street?

In any event, your response is typical of a common but simple-minded stereotype, that climate change equals catastrophe, and any denial of looming climate catastrophe is a denial of climate change itself.

Oh dear, oh dear. You really can't have someone opposing your position without casting them as an extremist, can you?

No, I do not subscribe to any extremist position; As far as I can tell, global warming will cause a few major problems, and a huge number of minor ones, but I doubt that it will be truly catastrophic. Of course, it doesn't need to be in order to be worth doing something about.

Doing nothing isn't viable, because it will inevitably cost more than doing something to reduce CO₂ emissions - such as replacing coal fired power plants with nuclear plants.

Using a quote that explicitly says "these findings do not throw suspicion on climate change itself" to support an OP that is quite obviously trying to do just that is deceitful; denying it when called on it is not helping any, and nor is trying to change the subject or to accuse me of extremism.

If you have a point to make, make it. If you wanted to say 'Climate change will cause problems, but will likely not be as bad as the worst predictions suggested', then you could have done so. And I would have agreed with you.

But instead you played a classic propaganda trick of denigrating your opponents in a manner designed to give you plausible deniability if called upon to support your position; You introduced climate change in the most derogatory and dismissive manner possible, with a clear subtext that it is only a fool who believes it exists; and having sown the seed of doubt with any undecided observers, you are happy to back-track towards a more reasonable position if challenged.

There are three main positions on climate change: The rabid right-wing nuts who think it is an imaginary hobgoblin; the rabid left-wing treehuggers who run around crying that the sky is falling; and the people who look at the facts and try to work out the best predictions of what will happen, and come up with ideas to mitigate any problems that seem likely to arise.

The people in that middle ground are, of course, treated by both of the extreme sides as the enemy; while at the same time, both sets of extremists try to paint themselves as the 'real' moderates.

Well you might be able to fool your friends; and you might be able to fool yourself, but you are not fooling me.

 

[repoman]

The Climate Change that we have set in motion is irreversible on a human civilization timeline. This will have a lot of zigs and zags along the way.

However, the effects of it will only truly unfold after we get our teeth kicked in by resource scarcity and population (consuming as we do now) overshoot. We should worry about these problems instead.

 

[bilby]

The Climate Change that we have set in motion is irreversible on a human civilization timeline. This will have a lot of zigs and zags along the way.

However, the effects of it will only truly unfold after we get our teeth kicked in by resource scarcity and population (consuming as we do now) overshoot. We should worry about these problems instead.

The only possible long-term solution to the population problem would be to invent some kind of tablet that women could take that would stop them from conceiving. If we do that, the problem will disappear about 80 to 100 years later, (allowing a few decades for the thing to get world-wide uptake, and another few for demographic lag).

Once this solution is invented and set in motion, it will become unstoppable; Only the most backward and uneducated parts of the world will not use it, and if wealth and education levels in the third world can be improved even slightly on an ongoing basis, the population problem will cease to exist.

Fortunately we did all that back in the 1960s. Give it another 30 or 40 years, and population will be stable at about 10 billion.

Few resources are truly scarce; Helium is just about the only one that we need worry about. Everything else is still here, and we just need to do better at recycling it. Recycling requires energy, and energy needs to be made without generating lots of CO₂ if we want a fairly stable climate (which we do); the solution is to use fission, solar, wind, tidal, hydro, geothermal and perhaps fusion power, rather than burning coal, gas or oil.

Worrying about problems that are already solved is wasteful. Let's not worry about population, let's worry about getting clean energy in large quantities, which will solve both the climate change and the resource scarcity problems.

 

[bleubird]

I have a coworker that tries to debunk evolution.Just so happens he found jesus at an evangelical church.Anything that is not Biblical some how denies jesus.He has a personal motive to deny evolution.
I see climate change denial the same way.
Sadly, the denial is mostly motivated by money/greed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Few resources are truly scarce; Helium is just about the only one that we need worry about. Everything else is still here, and we just need to do better at recycling it. Recycling requires energy, and energy needs to be made without generating lots of CO₂ if we want a fairly stable climate (which we do); the solution is to use fission, solar, wind, tidal, hydro, geothermal and perhaps fusion power, rather than burning coal, gas or oil.

Except recycling doesn't work very well on things that are used in low quantities.

Worrying about problems that are already solved is wasteful. Let's not worry about population, let's worry about getting clean energy in large quantities, which will solve both the climate change and the resource scarcity problems.

I wouldn't say it will solve the resource scarcity problem but it will certainly take a big bite out of it.

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I have a coworker that tries to debunk evolution.Just so happens he found jesus at an evangelical church.Anything that is not Biblical some how denies jesus.He has a personal motive to deny evolution.
I see climate change denial the same way.
Sadly, the denial is mostly motivated by money/greed.

I disagree--while the people behind the denial are motivated by greed I think a lot of the deniers have fallen for the story and they think they're objecting to unreasonable fearmongering.