Madrid COP25 Briefing for Realists

The upcoming COP25 will be hosted by Chile, but held in Madrid because of the backlash in Santiago against damaging effects of costly climate policies.  The gathering had been previously cancelled by a newly elected skeptical Brazilian president. The change of venue has led to “a scale down of expectations” and participation from the Chilean side, said Mónica Araya, a former lead negotiator for Costa Rica, but the presidency’s priorities are unchanged. In the wings of the Cop25 talks, hosts Spain and Chile will push governments to join a coalition of progressive nations pledging to raise their targets in response to the 2018 over-the-top IPCC SR15 climate horror movie.  See UN Horror Show

Of course Spain is the setting for the adventures of Don Quixote ( “don key-ho-tee” ) in Cervantes’ famous novel.  The somewhat factually challenged hero charged at some windmills claiming they were enemies, and is celebrated in the English language by two idioms:

Tilting at Windmills–meaning attacking imaginary enemies, and

Quixotic (“quick-sottic”)–meaning striving for visionary ideals.

It is clear that COP climateers are similary engaged in some kind of heroic quest, like modern-day Don Quixotes. The only differences: They imagine a trace gas in the air is the enemy, and that windmills are our saviors.  See Climateers Tilting at Windmills

Four years ago French Mathematicians spoke out prior to COP21 in Paris, and their words provide a rational briefing for COP25 beginning in Madrid this weekend. In a nutshell:

Fighting Global Warming is Absurd, Costly and Pointless.

  • Absurd because of no reliable evidence that anything unusual is happening in our climate.
  • Costly because trillions of dollars are wasted on immature, inefficient technologies that serve only to make cheap, reliable energy expensive and intermittent.
  • Pointless because we do not control the weather anyway.

The prestigious Société de Calcul Mathématique (Society for Mathematical Calculation) issued a detailed 195-page White Paper that presents a blistering point-by-point critique of the key dogmas of global warming. The synopsis is blunt and extremely well documented.  Here are extracts from the opening statements of the first three chapters of the SCM White Paper with my bolds and images.

Sisyphus at work.

Chapter 1: The crusade is absurd
There is not a single fact, figure or observation that leads us to conclude that the world‘s climate is in any way ‘disturbed.’ It is variable, as it has always been, but rather less so now than during certain periods or geological eras. Modern methods are far from being able to accurately measure the planet‘s global temperature even today, so measurements made 50 or 100 years ago are even less reliable. Concentrations of CO2 vary, as they always have done; the figures that are being released are biased and dishonest. Rising sea levels are a normal phenomenon linked to upthrust buoyancy; they are nothing to do with so-called global warming. As for extreme weather events — they are no more frequent now than they have been in the past. We ourselves have processed the raw data on hurricanes….

Chapter 2: The crusade is costly
Direct aid for industries that are completely unviable (such as photovoltaics and wind turbines) but presented as ‘virtuous’ runs into billions of euros, according to recent reports published by the Cour des Comptes (French Audit Office) in 2013. But the highest cost lies in the principle of ‘energy saving,’ which is presented as especially virtuous. Since no civilization can develop when it is saving energy, ours has stopped developing: France now has more than three million people unemployed — it is the price we have to pay for our virtue….

Chapter 3: The crusade is pointless
Human beings cannot, in any event, change the climate. If we in France were to stop all industrial activity (let’s not talk about our intellectual activity, which ceased long ago), if we were to eradicate all trace of animal life, the composition of the atmosphere would not alter in any measurable, perceptible way. To explain this, let us make a comparison with the rotation of the planet: it is slowing down. To address that, we might be tempted to ask the entire population of China to run in an easterly direction. But, no matter how big China and its population are, this would have no measurable impact on the Earth‘s rotation.

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Full text in pdf format is available in English at link below:

The battle against global warming: an absurd, costly and pointless crusade
White Paper drawn up by the Société de Calcul Mathématique SA
(Mathematical Modelling Company, Corp.)

societe-de-calcul-mathematique-logo-485x174-1

A Second report was published in 2016 entitled: Global Warming and Employment, which analyzes in depth the economic destruction from ill-advised climate change policies.

The two principal themes are that jobs are disappearing and that the destructive forces are embedded in our societies.

Jobs are Disappearing discusses issues such as:

The State is incapable of devising and implementing an industrial policy.

The fundamental absurdity of the concept of sustainable development

Biofuels an especially absurd policy leading to ridiculous taxes and job losses.

EU policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% drives jobs elsewhere while being pointless: the planet has never asked for it, is completely unaware of it, and will never notice it!

The War against the Car and Road Maintenance undercuts economic mobility while destroying transportation sector jobs.

Solar and wind energy are weak, diffuse, and inconsistent, inadequate to power modern civilization.

Food production activities are attacked as being “bad for the planet.”

So-called Green jobs are entirely financed by subsidies.

The Brutalizing Whip discusses the damages to public finances and to social wealth and well-being, including these topics:

Taxes have never been so high

The Government is borrowing more and more

Dilapidated infrastructure

Instead of job creation, Relocations and Losses

The wastefulness associated with the new forms of energy

Return to the economy of an underdeveloped country

What is our predicament?
Four Horsemen are bringing down our societies:

  • The Ministry of Ecology (climate and environment);
  • Journalists;
  • Scientists;
  • Corporation Environmentalist Departments.

Steps required to recover from this demise:

  • Go back to the basic rules of research.
  • Go back to the basic rules of law
  • Do not trust international organizations
  • Leave the planet alone
  • Beware of any premature optimism

Conclusion

Climate lemmings

The real question is this: how have policymakers managed to make such absurd decisions, to blinker themselves to such a degree, when so many means of scientific investigation are available? The answer is simple: as soon as something is seen as being green, as being good for the planet, all discussion comes to an end and any scientific analysis becomes pointless or counterproductive. The policymakers will not listen to anyone or anything; they take all sorts of hasty, contradictory, damaging and absurd decisions. When will they finally be held to account?

Footnote:

The above cartoon image of climate talks includes water rising over politicians’ feet.  But actual observations made in Fiji (presiding over 2017 talks in Bonn) show sea levels are stable (link below).

Fear Not For Fiji

In 2016 SCM issued a report Global Temperatures Available data and critical analysis

It is a valuable description of the temperature metrics and issues regarding climate analysis.   They conclude:

None of the information on global temperatures is of any scientific value, and it should not
be used as a basis for any policy decisions. It is perfectly clear that:

  • there are far too few temperature sensors to give us a picture of the planet’s temperature;
  • we do not know what such a temperature might mean because nobody has given it
    any specific physical significance;
  • the data have been subject to much dissimulation and manipulation. There is a
    clear will not to mention anything that might be reassuring, and to highlight things
    that are presented as worrying;
  • despite all this, direct use of the available figures does not indicate any genuine
    trend towards global warming!

7 comments

  1. oiltranslator · November 30, 2019

    Canada’s 1918 war movie “The Heart of Humanity” includes a depiction of German combatants pushing women before them and holding up children tied to poles as human shields while invading a French town. Greta Thunburg is the current human shield for ecological national socialism.

    Like

  2. oldbrew · December 2, 2019

    Reblogged this on Tallbloke's Talkshop and commented:
    The annual game of chase-your-own-tail kicks off once again.

    Like

  3. Byron L Trackwell · December 2, 2019

    “Emissions have only risen, hitting a new high of 55.3 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2018. The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2019 finds that even all unconditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement are implemented, we are still on course for a 3.2°C temperature rise.” Quoted from Emissions Gap Report 2019, November 2019, Foreword XIII, s/Inger Andersen Executive Director United Nations Environment Programme.

    Using GtCO2 equivalent is a means to steer away from GtCO2 (without the equivalent) as any scientific guidance to GW policy makers requires the unit GtCO2. In order to reach GW of 3.2°C on IPCC’s impossible doomsday Representative Concentration Pathway which is RCP8.5, Man’s current CO2 emissions which are around 40 GtCO2 annually would have to gradually increase year by year by the year 2075 to 900 GtCO2 annually for reaching a GW of 3.2°C. There is nowhere not enough oil, gas and coal reserves on the planet for such a thing to happen. 900 is 22.5 times 40.

    Stating the world is still on course for a ridiculous 3.2°C temperature rise is extortion for not sharing the fundamental GW geophysics concerning Global Warming. Instead ridiculous Climate Change exaggerated numbers under the color of UN/IPCC/UNEP is a distortion and an extortion for sidestepping the optimum socioeconomic solution to Global Warming as to keep it hidden from the people and policy makers in order to clamp down on the free enterprise of Energy. With fundamental GW geophysics, it is easily shown that America and the World can continue their modern economic development for the next decade without any rushed and forced economical devastating CO2 emission reduction:

    See: https://www.facebook.com/groups/928926293947772/permalink/1376529825854081/

    Like

  4. jelorenzo · December 2, 2019

    Ron,

    Very nice post, as usual. Just a comment. The cartoon picturing Don Quixote is not accurate. In the famous book the windmills were not dragons but giants. I have translated the beginning of that chapter because is very entertaining and right to the point in a second up-to-date reading

    “Of the good event that the courageous Don Quixote had in the frightful and never imagined adventure of the windmills, with other events worthy of happy remembrance
    In this they discovered thirty or forty windmills in that field; and, as Don Quixote saw them, he said to his squire:

    – Ventura is guiding our things better than we would wish; because do you see there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty, or few more, untamed giants are discovered with whom I intend to fight and take away all lives, with whose spoils we will begin to enrich ?; **that this is a good war, and it is a great service of God to remove such a bad seed from the face of the earth**.

    Therefore Don Quixote was the first to engage the fight against windmills, though not for the reasons that we are now fighting the windmills. Don Quixote and Cervantes were visionaries !!

    Like

    • Ron Clutz · December 2, 2019

      Thanks for commenting JEL, and for the clarification. As you note there is a fight against modern windmills (some in the UK call them “prayer wheels”). Maybe Don Quixote would have more success in our time:

      Like

  5. kakatoa · December 8, 2019

    Ron,
    Do you think D. Wojick’s suggested change in DOE’s structure- .
    “My proposal is to re-establish the Office of Policy Analysis (OPA) in DOE’s massive Office of Science (SC).”………
    would help reduce the number of unfounded and or ineffective decisions that you highlighted-

    “The real question is this: how have policymakers managed to make such absurd decisions, to blinker themselves to such a degree, when so many means of scientific investigation are available?”

    Ref-
    https://judithcurry.com/2019/11/23/week-in-review-science-edition-113/#comment-903701
    “David Wojick | November 29, 2019 at 3:28 pm | Reply

    Like

    • Ron Clutz · December 8, 2019

      kakatoa, the authors gave the answer to that question, one to which I agree. The problem is knee-jerk green virtue-signalling. And naive green beliefs are enforced by PC applied by the four horsemen. So this cannot be resisted by another bureaucratic agency. The whole blob has to be disavowed and defunded. Trump has the gumption to do it, but has been resisted by the swamp so far.

      Like

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