IPCC Conferences

Great News! IPCC Final Warning Now!

Posted on by Ron Clutz

OK, they’ve exaggerated before, so could be that “final” may not stick.  For anyone following climate science and politics, this is not their first rodeo (or circus, if you prefer.)  But we can hope for peace at last from the doomsters.  Chris Morrison goes into what’s unconvincing about this final warning in his Daily Sceptic article Latest UN Climate Doom Report Falsely Claims Global Temperatures Are “Highest for 125,000 Years”.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Doomsday had to be postponed for five months, but ‘pausing’ IPCC writers have finally delivered another ‘Net Zero or Else’ report highlighting increasingly improbable climate change scenarios. Every IPCC report ramps up the desperation, and this latest ‘Synthesis Report‘ known as SYR is long on opinions, attributions and modelled results, but somewhat shorter on actual scientific facts.

The latest document collates the IPCC’s sixth assessments reports (AR6) into a short format that was originally scheduled to ramp up fears ahead of last year’s COP27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh. But in May and June last year, the planet-saving authors seem to have gone on strike. A few details about the incident are referred to in recently published IPCC minutes, which record how attempts were made with the writers to “rebuild the trust required to have them end their pause in writing, and to engage in the SYR production process”. Not before time, since IPCC reports need to be agreed with large numbers of interested parties, including almost 200 member governments. ‘Settled’ science, it need hardly be added, demands a lot of happy and settled funders.

Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice

Current global temperatures are said by the IPCC to be the highest for 125,000 years, an astonishing claim given the many scientific surveys that show much higher temperatures in the recent past. It is also claimed that temperatures will rise by 0.4°C in around a decade, an interesting opinion, based presumably on surface records that can be retrospectively adjusted, but an unlikely scenario given global warming ran out of steam over two decades ago. By 2100, the IPCC says global warming could rise to 4.4°C, although things need to be moving on a bit smartish given barely 0.1°C warming in the first two decades of the century.

Satellite Global Warming Up and Down

There have been one or two concerns of late that the IPCC’s scare tactics have sent half the world doolally with climate fear, especially the impressionable young. These criticisms seem to have been taken on board. UN Secretary General Antonio ‘Code Red’ Guterres hailed SYR as a “survival guide to humanity”. All we need to do, continued the Left-wing Portuguese radical, is for all countries to bring forward their Net Zero plans by a decade. Dr. Friederike Otto from Imperial College specialises in so-called ‘attribution’ studies and the pseudoscience of claiming specific weather events are caused by the activities of humans. She helped write the latest report and was also in optimistic mood telling the BBC: “If we aim for 1.5°C and achieve 1.6°C, that is still much better than saying, it’s too late and we are doomed and I’m not even trying. And I think what this report shows very, very clearly is there is so much to win by trying.”

Extinctions Overblown

Back on Planet Reality, it might be noted that there are a number of possible disadvantages connected to removing fossil fuels, a reliable, inexpensive energy supply that powers 80% of global needs, within less than 17 years.

Starvation, death, widespread warfare, societal and economic breakdown and rampant disease being just a few that come immediately to mind.

Coastal Flooding, Not

Traditional Landing Site of Mayflower Pilgrims.

It is not difficult to see why the IPCC continues to claim current global temperatures are the highest for 125,000 years, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that shows this is untrue. The rebound rise of about 1°C seen over the last 200 years is very small, and similar changes have obviously occurred countless times in the historical and paleo past, sometimes over even shorter time periods. It is difficult to worry too much about something that seems natural and in fact is beyond the control of humans. Placing the rise in the longer context of 125,000 years and adding all manner of invented weather event attribution and ‘tipping’ point stories adds some firepower to a political narrative ultimately designed to move society towards the collectivist Net Zero agenda.

Net Zero:  Who Gains, Who Loses

The Daily Sceptic has reported on a number of science papers that track the higher temperatures in the past, in particular the period since the last ice age started to lift about 12,000 years ago. A sample can be read here, here and here.

Earlier this year, a group of European scientists published a paper analysing tree remains that suggested there was a much warmer climate in the Alps during most of the last 10,000 years.

Adjusting Temperature Records.

‘Settled’ science, it might be observed, needs consensus from the world and his wife. The recent IPCC minutes, for instance, noted that the SYR team, “should ensure policy relevance and usefulness for policymakers”. Needless to say this is not to the taste of some independent-minded scientists, especially those retired with no need to hustle for state research or Left-wing foundation funds. In fact they can be quite disobliging about the entire IPCC process. In a recent paper titled ‘Challenging “Net Zero” with Science‘, Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen of Princeton and MIT respectively called Net Zero “scientifically invalid and a threat to the lives of billions of people”. In fact they have previously dismissed the peer review system around climate change as a “joke” – pal review, not peer review, they quipped. The IPCC is “government controlled and only issues government-dictated findings”.

Sketchy Warming Evidence

Source: Real Climate Science

“Climate science is awash with manipulated data, which provides no reliable scientific evidence,” they added.

Footnote: So What Happens Next

As I said above, we’ve seen this show before.  Caleb Rossiter explains how it goes down:

For years I assigned statistics students to pick any apocalyptic climate claim in the media and trace it back through the UN reports to its genesis in a scientific study. I knew they would discover that these reports are not scientific documents based on the peer review process, but political documents “approved by governments” and intended to scare the public into supporting constraints on the production and use of energy.

A powerful publicity machine magnifies the alarm, bombarding citizens with exaggerations and claims of certainty that are proven wrong as you dig down to their underlying scientific studies:

  • Public figures, news editors, and commentators make claims that are more alarmist than what individual IPCC authors say at the release of the report.
  • Individual IPCC authors make claims at the release of the report that are more alarmist than what the official press release says.
  • The official press release makes claims that are more alarmist than what the report’s summary for policy-makers says.
  • The summary for policy-makers makes claims that are more alarmist than the various chapters of the reports.
  • The chapters of the report make claims that are more alarmist than the studies they reference in the footnotes.

More at

UN Horror Show

Climate Reparations a Lose-Lose-Lose Deal

Posted on by Ron Clutz

https://video-api.wsj.com/api-video/player/v3/iframe.html?guid=E6B05E12-0E60-4B80-A8A2-565460ABABF5

At the recently concluded UN climate summit, wealthy nations agreed to pay climate reparations to poor countries. Unfortunately, this could ultimately be a bad deal even for the recipients, if the West expects developing nations to forego fossil fuels that would help them to develop and get more resilient towards natural disasters. Bjorn Lomborg also discussed the topic on The Journal Editorial Report with Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot.

The link to the video clip of the interview is in red above, and below a lightly edited transcript of the conversation.  PG refers to Paul Gigot and BL to Bjorn Lomborg.  Transcript is in italics with my bolds and added images.

PG: The COP27 conference in Egypt wrapped up last week with President Biden signing on to a climate reparations plan. Under the agreement wealthy countries would pay into a new fund to compensate poor countries for supposed damage caused by rich country use of fossil fuels. The move represents a major reversal in U.S. policy with the Biden administration’s climate envoy John Kerry dismissing the idea just weeks ago, saying that a compensation fund was “just not happening.”

Let’s bring in Bjorn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He’s also author of the book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor and Fails to Fix the Planet.

Welcome back, Bjorn. So first of all, what do you make of climate reparations fund idea? Is it a good idea, or not?

BL: No it’s mostly a bad idea. Look, there’s a lot of different things you can think about it. But first and foremost, if you step back, we’ve been trying to solve climate, which is a real issue, for what, 30 years now. It’s the 27th Conference. And now we’re basically moving from fixing climate–Which would obviously entail, How do we get technologies out so people actually cut their carbon emissions–to now saying, no, let’s just make it about money.

The second part is, of course, this is payback for the incredible amount of exaggeration that’s been going on for the last 30 years. If you tell everyone that this is terribly dangerous and it’ll endanger basically the survival of the human race. Don’t be surprised when most people are gonna say, “Well then, you know, give me some money, for putting me in this dangerous situation.” That’s not the right way to look at this. The economic estimates show that global warming will be a problem; we’re talking about perhaps 4% of GDP by the end of the century, not a wipe out.

And then the really damaging thing is that much of this money, if it at all materializes, it will be spent on rich countries paying poor countries not to use fossil fuels. Which essentially means not developing. And of course that will leave them undeveloped. That will leave them in poverty. And why is it that these countries like Pakistan are vulnerable to flooding? Remember most of Pakistani floods came from bad governance, lots of bad infrastructure and lots of people. It’s because they’re vulnerable, because they’re poor. So leaving them poor is the worst way to help fix the problem of climate change.

So this will leave the world worse off, and of course leave rich countries with a huge bill.

PG: I find your arguments compelling, Bjorn, but then why did the Europeans decide, in the first instance, to change their minds on this, to go ahead and endorse this reparations fund. And that isolated the U.S., which I gather felt then they couldn’t be isolated and had to go along. Why did the Europeans insist on this?

BL: It’s hard to tell. My gut feeling, and I wasn’t there, my gut feeling is they realized that nothing was coming out of the Sharm El-Sheikh meeting of the COP 27. So we need to have some sort of success. So let’s say yes to this, which the developing world was very strongly pushing. Look if you go to all of these meeting, and virtually nothing comes out of it; if there’s the possibility of getting trillions out of it, I can understand why a lot of leaders would sign up for basically free money.

But the reality is, much of this could end up not happening, because remember the U.S. Congress has to appropriate: That does not seem plausible. The New York Times said, “We now have a fund but there is no money in it. So it seems likely this will not come true. Most countries are not feeling very flush right now. I can’t imagine most countries saying, “ Sure, let ‘s pay another couple of trillion dollars to the developing world.

First and foremost let’s remember that if this actually happened, it would likely prevent poor countries from using fossil fuels, which is one of the key ways to get out of poverty. Remember China dramatically industrialized by using lots and lots of fossil fuels, and almost lifted a billion people out of poverty. That’s an amazing achievement. And most people in the developing world want to do the exact same thing. So in a sense, we are setting all of ourselves up for really bad outcomes in the future.

PG: There’s kind of a guilt tax quality to this, where the West is supposed to pay for the sin of having actually developed first, and for being prosperous in part by using fossil fuels. But China isn’t tapped to pay into this fund at all. And it’s building coal plants at a rapid pace, to the point where its projected new plants are going to dwarf all of the U.S. current coal production by 2025. How can China remain out of all of this?

BL: Well, first of all, because that would be really convenient for China. They are categorized as a developing country in the UNFCCC agreement that encompasses the COP negotiations. And of course, it you’re China, you wanna stay that way. I think it’s also fair to say that China has still only historically emitted only about half of what the U.S. or Europe has done. So there is some justification to this. But we have to very clearly separate the fact that you could make the argument that a little bit of reparations make philosophical sense.

But if you start in letting that genie out of the bottle, you’ll make the whole conversation about that, and forgetting to actually fix climate change.

Which is about making green energy much cheaper in the future through innovation. That’s what we should be focusing on if we actually want to fix this. And secondly, you’ll also have this situation where India, China and almost everyone else is not going to pay into this potentially enormous cost.

Summation

Climate reparations is a move in which rich nations lose, poor nations lose and energy innovation loses,  And as noted previously, the winners will be lawyers and accountants, as well as sovereign hydrocarbon producers.

Climate Loss and Damage, Legal House of Cards

 

 

 

Climate Truth Science Soundbites

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The climate realists at Creative Society have put together a short video with pithy statements skewering the CO2 theory of climate change.  Above is the video and below a transcript with exhibits and the speakers’ identities.

Dr. Harold Burnett
Over time the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have radically fluctuated throughout the earth’s geologic history. They have been in the past as much as 5000 parts per million. Currently they are about 420 parts per million. So over long periods of time they have fluctuated, but in general they have fallen.

Gregory Wrightstone
There doesn’t seem to be any correlation whatsoever with increasing CO2 and temperature. And in fact one of the things we’re being asked to believe is that our modern temperatures are unusual and unprecedented, as thought we’ve never seen temperatures like this in thousands of years. That’s just not the case.

Prof. Ole Ellestad
We have a map showing temperature changes over the last 11,000 years. These are Greenland ice cores and we can see a thousand years ago, about 2000 years ago and about 3000 years ago we had warm periods. And everything indicates that these were periods of global warming.

Hans Borge
It was long before man-made CO2 emissions had any considerable volume. Therefore we know that the natural variability can be large.

Jan-Eric Solheim
In this graph we also show what the IPCC does. It prolongs more or less this curve going to infinite.  So it becomes warmer and warmer because of the CO2 release or climate. And that’s what we think is wrong. Our prediction is that it will soon start Cooling and we have to be prepared for that.

Gregory Wrightstone
The warming trend we’re in right now though started more than 300 years ago. But again 250 years of warming took place before we started adding CO2. But we’re asked to believe that those natural forces that have been driving temperatures since the dawn of time suddenly ceased in the 20th century.

Hans Borge
CO2 is a gas that has very little effect on the climate. The IPCC models assume that the higher the CO2 level, the higher the water vapor level, and water vapor is a gas with the greatest impact on the climate. But the assumption that the more CO2, the more water vapor, has never been proved.

Jan-Eric Solheim
With some colleagues I have done experiments to see if CO2 can heat or carry heat. So we have built small greenhouses and tried to heat it by the sun outside or inside with artificial heating. We were able to show that carbon dioxide stops radiation, but we were not able to show any heating. So it’s a mystery how CO2 cannot heat, but what can heat is the water.

Gregory Wrightstone
The water vapor temperature changes first and then CO2 levels follow that. It’s not the other way around. If man increasing CO2 is going to drive temperature, CO2 should change first and then temperature should change.

Jan-Eric Solheim
The blue curve is the temperature of the sea that is the ocean surface temperatures. The red is the land temperature which we get in this case from HadCRUT, which is an official temperature series. First comes the change in the sea temperature, a little bit later the land temperature (red) and then about one year, 10 or 11 months the carbon dioxide changes. And when temperature at the sea surface goes down, the carbon dioxide goes down 10 or 11 months later.

Hans Borge
Well let me show you another table that might tell you a little bit about the CO2 content. Take a look:  there are 3 000 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere and the total man-made emissions per year are 20 to 30 billion tons. But if you look at the ocean, it has far more CO2. So the exchange of CO2 between the ocean and the atmosphere totally overshadows human activity.

Jan-Eric Solheim
So a more detailed analysis telling that this red part here is apparently what anthropogenic yes or mankind produced carbon dioxide, which is about three percent of the increase from 1960. But nature produces the rest, this variable curve here. So 97 percent of the increase comes from nature, according to these scientists.

Prof. Ole Ellestad
The IPCC also claims that the sun has no effect on us. It’s a great paradox; not clear how they arrive at that. Moreover today we see that the warming is happening not only on our planet but also on other planets and on the moon too, where there’s a completely different atmosphere that has nothing to do with CO2. So clearly there is a sun factor which is missing in their model.

Gregory Wrightstone
Well, the iIPCC if you look back on their charter it was formed to present the data that supports warming. They weren’t tasked to provide all the data. They started with an assumption and went from there. So if that’s their task, they’re doing a darn good job at it. You better have some good science behind you, and it’s just not there.

Dr. Harold Burnett
The world’s governments through the UN formed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Now you would think that would be studying climate change, but they specified that you study the human causes of climate change. So they ruled out all natural factors. They said no no: we’re not going to study whether the sun plays a role; we’re not going to study whether volcanoes play a role; we’re not going to study whether ocean current shifts play a role. And we really don’t understand clouds, so we’re not going to count them much. What we’re going to study is human CO2 emissions because that’s what we can get a handle on.

That’s not the way science is supposed to work. If you make faulty or incomplete assumptions, your models are going to be weak, because they’re only as good as the accuracy of the stuff that’s put in them. Now climate models have failed to accurately reflect past temperatures; they fail to accurately represent present temperatures; but we’re told we can trust their projections of future temperatures.  That doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

Gregory Wrightstone
If on the other hand, you like the scientific process, we’re not getting much data out there. Dr Will Happer is our chairman here at the CO2 coalition and he’s got a paper that he and Dr. Van Wijngaarden have done on climate sensitivities. They’re not able to get it in any prestigious journals, yet it’s a landmark study. They need to shut people like me down: I was just banned on linkedin, which should be a professional network, a social media network. I don’t talk those things that are controversial; I post scientific facts, and they were being removed. And they came back and said: No, you’re done. We don’t allow that kind of information on linkedin.

Prof. Ole Ellestad
This debate is so violent that if you go to the media you can express your opinion, but you will be strongly criticized, and then you won’t really have an opportunity to defend yourself. But most importantly, you won’t get into the media with your first articles.

Hans Borge
This is what we see now in the academic world, for example at universities. Academic freedom is so endangered. I have to say that many people who joined the ranks of climate realists do so when they retire; because until retirement they just don’t dare. Researchers who claim something different don’t get grants; they don’t have their say in either published media or in edited journals.

Dr. Harold Burnett
First off you’re having a difficult time getting published because journals won’t hear it. Well, that affects your tenure track position and your colleagues are frowning at you. And you’re not getting government grants because government doesn’t give grants to study natural factors for climate change or to study things that prove humans aren’t causing climate change. Because government has a motive: expanding its its reach. I know researchers who’ve left the field because they feel like they can’t give their honest assessment and get it either published or get tenure.

Prof. Ole Ellestad
Climate and environment are often lumped together. But being against climate doesn’t mean being against the environment. That is, we are not against climate, but we are skeptical of CO2, which is not the same as being skeptical of the environment. So important environmental issues should be discussed and resolved.

Dr. Harold Burnett
That subsurface volcanic activity in Antarctica and even in parts of Greenland and Iceland are contributing to the melting of the glaciers there. That is not controlled by CO2. We don’t control the ocean currents; we don’t control the magnetism of the earth’s magnetic poles and how it shifts or can shift over time. We don’t control our orbit.

We don’t control those things and they’re really what’s driving things. That’s why we should study them, because they’re really what’s driving climate change. And if we think it’s bad, we should know that too.

I want an adaptable society. An adaptable society is one that does not lock us into solving the wrong problem.

 

Lomborg & Peterson: COP27 Proposing Insane Emissions Policies

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan Peterson wrote in The Telegraph Pushing the same old climate policies at COP27 is simply insane.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

After decades of failure to curb emissions, let’s accept that capitalist investment is not the problem: it’s the solution

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This famous quote – often misattributed to Albert Einstein – might very well become the unofficial motto of the UN Climate Change Conference in Egypt, the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (Cop27).

Global CO₂ emissions have kept increasing since the world’s nations first committed to rein in climate change at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 – despite dozens of climate summits and the global climate agreements struck in Kyoto and Paris. This is the case, once again, in 2022, when we will collectively set a new emissions record. While rich countries increasingly promise draconian cuts (and then generally backtrack, as they import huge amounts of oil, gas and coal to save their citizens from energy poverty, as they have done most recently to address the current energy crisis), most of the future emissions will come from the currently poorer countries in Asia and Africa, as they power their climb out of abject poverty.

In the previous ten years, the world has focused more on remediating climate change than ever before. Despite this, we are not achieving anything, although no shortage of money has been wasted. In a surprisingly honest review of climate policies, the UN revealed a “lost decade”: The report found that it couldn’t tell the difference between what has happened and a world that adopted no new climate policies since 2005.

Consider that: all those climate summits and grandiose promises – all that expense and trouble – and no measurable difference whatsoever.

This state of affairs is unsurprising, unfortunately, because today’s renewable energy sources have two big problems. First, they occupy a vast amount of space, often displacing nature: replacing a square yard of a gas-fired power plant requires 73 square yards of solar panels, 239 square yards of on-shore wind turbines, or an astonishing 6,000 square yards of biomass. One study found that the United States would have to devote a land area four times the size of the United Kingdom to “clean power” to fulfill President Biden’s promise of a carbon-free economy by 2050.

Land in grey required for wind farms to power London UK, solar panels covering the yellow space.

Second – and of even greater importance – the two renewable energy technologies favoured by the vast majority of environmental activists are intermittent or unreliable. Solar energy simply isn’t produced when it is overcast or at nighttime. Wind energy requires a breeze. We are often told by green energy boosters that wind and solar energy are cheaper than fossil fuels. At best, that is only true when the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining. On a windless, dark night, the cost of wind and solar power rises to the infinite.

It is for such reasons that it is deeply misleading (although highly convenient) to compare the energy costs of wind or solar to fossil fuels only when it is windy and sunny. It is also important to note that since all solar energy is sold at essentially the same time (when the sun is up and shining), its value drops dramatically. When solar reaches 30% market share in California, as one study revealed, it loses two-thirds of its value.

Furthermore: because modern societies require 24 hours of non-stop power, backup is not optional – and that means reliance on fossil fuels, when there’s no sun or wind. As more solar and wind is introduced, moreover, fossil fuel backups become ever more expensive as they offer their services for fewer hours, to produce the necessary return on capital. And what of batteries? Globally, we have battery storage with the current capacity to store one minute and 15 seconds of the world’s electricity consumption. And that problem will not be ameliorated soon – even by 2030, global batteries will only cover less than 11 minutes of the global electricity consumption.

The scale of the challenge

All of this shows just the problems with moving electricity away from fossil fuel. When Biden promises ambitiously that all of America’s electricity will come from renewable sources by 2035, he is addressing the comparatively simple part of the climate challenge. Electricity constitutes just 19% of total energy use. We’re far further behind in developing solutions for agriculture, manufacturing, construction, and transportation. Of these, the latter is most often discussed by environmentalists and virtue-signaling politicians, who insist that a solution is already at hand: electric vehicles. Despite massive subsidies, however, just 1.4% of cars globally are electric, and that number is not going up quickly. The Biden Administration itself estimates that battery-electric cars will make up less than 10 percent of total US automobile stock – by 2050.

The scenario for the entire world is that less than one-fifth of all global cars will be battery-electric by 2050. We should remember, as well, that we do not yet have electric tractors, or heavy trucks, or airplanes, or ships – and that means that all the fossil fuel infrastructure that allows such machinery to operate will have to stay intact for our supply chains to continue their necessary operations.

And our current turbo-charge on electric cars will have very little impact on climate. The International Energy Agency estimates that the world would produce 231 million fewer tons of C02 if we achieve all our ambitious stated transport electrification targets in this decade. This reduction will lower global temperatures by one-ten thousandth of a degree Celsius (0.0001°C) by the end of the century, according to the UN’s own Climate Panel’s model.

Tackling climate change with current technology is essentially impossible.

This means that climate policy-makers tinker at the margins, offering deceptive solutions, and morally grandstanding. This pattern has repeated for three decades. Most of the promises made in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and in Kyoto in 1997 were disregarded. A 2018 study found that only 17 of the 157 countries that pledged emissions cuts in Paris passed laws mandating the required action. Which nations? Algeria, Canada, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, North Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Montenegro, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Samoa, Singapore, and Tonga. These are not the nations that will change global emissions. Even if every country did everything promised in the original Paris agreement, the emission cuts by 2030 would constitute just 1% of what is necessary to keep temperature rising under the 2°C target.

Failure, however, has not made politicians or the people they serve more careful and or more adamant about searching for better solutions. Instead, they (we) have doubled down, making ever-more ludicrous but emotionally attractive pledges, despite zero chance of either their implementation or their success if implemented. Attempting to implement the much-heralded and oft-trumpeted vision of a zero C02-emission world – whether by 2035 or 2050 – would be so ruinously expensive that extensive gilets-jaunes-style riots are certain long before the “goal” is reached.

A different approach

If we do care about fixing this challenge, we need to change course. Pretending that the proper technological answer currently exists, and is not being implemented because we lack conviction and willpower is reckless and misleading. Worse, it stops us from pursuing real solutions to the many problems that confront us – only one of which is climate change.

Dozens of the world’s top climate economists and three Nobel Laureates in Economics evaluated a whole gamut of climate solutions for the think tank Copenhagen Consensus. If we continued to do what the EU has been doing – cutting carbon with a mix of market and planning diktats – means spending one pound to avoid a mere three pence of long-term climate damage. That’s partly because cutting CO₂ output in the rich and already efficiently-producing EU is impractically expensive, and partly because EU climate policies are much more inefficient than necessary (the EU prefers using wind and solar, for example, to cut a ton of CO₂, over the more efficient option of switching from coal to natural gas).

The Nobel laureates and climate economists instead determined that investment in green innovation comprised the best long-term investment. Why? Consider how the world worried over starvation in the 1960-70s. If we had approached that problem like we are approaching climate remediation, we would have required the rich to eat less, while serving their leftovers to the poor. That would have failed – as our current approaches will fail – disastrously. What worked instead? The Green Revolution: the innovative development of higher-yielding crops. We thereby increased world grain production by 250% between 1950 and 1984, raising the calorie intake of the world’s poorest people and reducing the incidence of serious famines.

Innovative thinkers tackled the problem head-on, instead of tinkering around the edges. Innovation meant producing more with less, instead of requiring people to make do, with less. Would-be and even genuinely looming catastrophes have been continually pushed aside throughout human history because of innovation and technological development. Innovation gave us security and prosperity, and continues to drive the growth and the increased efficiency of the world’s largest economies.

In general, unfortunately, investment in long-term innovation is underfunded because it is hard for private investors to capture benefits. In areas where long-term innovation on the private front can be underfunded (because of difficulties of monetising benefits in a sufficiently short time frame), public investment and support is often warranted. A recent example – and a stellar success on the climate innovation front? The ten-year $10 billion US public investment in shale gas, which originated under President George W. Bush. Remarkably, this was not planned as part of the policy of climate change remediation. Nonetheless, it led the way for a production surge (with all the attendant economic benefits, particularly for the poor) that allowed natural gas to become cheaper than the dirtier coal it partially replaced. Energy derived from natural gas produces approximately half the CO₂ of coal. The consequence? The US has the best record of C02 emission reduction of any country in the past decade – and simultaneously reduced its reliance on foreign suppliers of uncertain reliability and cost.
Investing in innovation

Everyone, in principle, agrees that we should be spending much more on R&D. However, the fraction of rich countries’ GDP actually invested into R&D has halved since the 1980s. Why? Putting up inefficient solar panels and wind turbines offers the opportunity for good photo ops, and allows those who lead to convince us of their dedication to action, while funding researchers requires a more subtle and mature understanding and approach. We might remember, however, when considering such things, that our economic stability and opportunity is now at serious risk, and we are simultaneously not currently doing the planet any favors.

According to the Copenhagen Consensus Nobel Laureates, we should increase our current spending five-fold, to $100 billion per year. This doesn’t mean that in total we should spend more. We already devote $600 billion per year to financing ineffective climate remediation strategies. We could instead take a mere sixth of that poorly spent money and direct it toward the most effective means of addressing our problems.

A genuine innovation-led response would require the consideration of multiple solutions. We should improve today’s technologies rather than erecting currently inefficient turbines and solar panels. We should devote more attention to nuclear fission (perhaps in the form of modular reactors), and continue to explore fusion, hydrogen generation from water, and more. The geneticist who spearheaded development of the first draft sequence of the human genome – a technological tour-de-force, completed far earlier and at less cost than originally estimated – makes the case for research into algae that produces oil, grown on the ocean surface. Because such algae simply converts sunlight and CO₂ to oil, when producing it, burning it would be CO₂-free. Oil algae are far from cost-effective now, but researching this and many other solutions is not only inexpensive but offers our best opportunity to find real breakthrough technologies.

If we innovate the price of green energy down below fossil fuels, everyone will switch. This would be a far better solution, particularly for the poor, than increasing the cost of fossil fuel to the point of general penury to disincentivise use. The Copenhagen Consensus experts calculated returns from green energy R&D at eleven pounds for every pound invested – hundreds of times more effective than current climate policies.

Finding the breakthroughs that will power the rest of the 21st century could require a decade, or it could take four. But no other genuine solutions beckon, and we have already had three decades of spectacular failure pursuing the policies that are currently in place. We know that the world leaders gathered at COP27 won’t solve the problems that beset us with the same empty promises offered twenty-six times previously. Are we doing the same thing yet again? Remember the definition of insanity…

But innovation beckons, as it has so reliably in the past. We have better options, and ignore them at the cost of our economy, our opportunity, and the environment.

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg is President of the Copenhagen Consensus and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His latest book is “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.” A collection of his writings for the Telegraph can be found here.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, and the author of three books: “Maps of Meaning: the Architecture of Belief”, “12 Rules for Life: an Antidote to Chaos” and “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life”. A collection of his writings for the Telegraph can be found here.

Climate Loss and Damage, Legal House of Cards

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The big news out of COP27 Sharm El-Sheikh concerns funding for climate “loss and damage.”

Reuters  At COP27, climate ‘loss and damage’ funding makes it on the table

Columbia Climate School Loss and Damage: What Is It, and Will There Be Progress at COP27?

CarbonBrief COP27: Why is addressing ‘loss and damage’ crucial for climate justice?

Etc., Etc., Etc.

Mike Hulme explained the house of cards underlying the claims for compensation from extreme weather loss and damage.  He addressed this directly in his 2016 article Can (and Should) “Loss and Damage” be Attributed to Climate Change?.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

One of the outcomes of the eighteenth negotiating session of the Conference of the Parties (COP18) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Doha last December, was the agreement to establish institutional arrangements to “address loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change.” This opens up new possibilities for allocating international climate adaptation finance to developing countries. A meeting this week in Bonn (25–27 February), co-organized by the UN University Institute for Environmental and Human Security and the Loss and Damage in Vulnerable Countries Initiative, is bringing together various scholars and policymakers to consider how this decision might be implemented, possibly by as early as 2015.

At the heart of the loss and damage (L&D) agenda is the idea of attribution—that specific losses and damages in developing countries can be “associated with the impacts of climate change,” where “climate change” means human-caused alterations to climate. It is therefore not just any L&D that qualify for financial assistance under the Convention; it is L&D attributable to or “associated with” a very specific causal pathway.

Developing countries face some serious difficulties—at best, ambiguities—
with this approach to directing climate adaptation finance.

This is particularly so given the argument that the new science of weather attribution opens the possibility for a framework of legal liability for L&D, which has recently gained prominence (see here and here). Weather attribution science seeks to generate model-based estimates of the likelihood that human influence on the climate caused specific weather extremes.

Weather attribution should not, however, be used to make the funding of climate adaptation in developing countries dependent on proving liability for weather extremes.

There are four specific problems with using the post-Doha negotiations on L&D to advance the legal liability paradigm for climate adaptation. First, with what level of confidence can it be shown that specific weather or climate hazards in particular places are caused by anthropogenic climate change, as opposed to a naturally varying climate? Weather attribution scientists claim that such knowledge is achievable, but this knowledge will be partial, probabilistic, and open to contestation in the courts.

Second, even if such scientific claims were defendable, how will we define “anthropogenic?” Weather attribution science—if it is to be used to support a legal liability paradigm—needs to be capable of distinguishing between the meteorological effects of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and those from land use change, and between the effects of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, black carbon (soot), and aerosol emissions. Each of these sources and types of climate-altering agents implicates different social and political actors and interests, so to establish liability in the courts, any given weather or climate hazard would need to be broken down into a profile of multiple fractional attributions. This adds a further layer of complexity and contestation to the approach.

Third, L&D may often be as much—or more—a function of levels of social and infrastructural development as it is a function of weather or climate hazard. Whether or not an atmospheric hazard is (partially) attributable to a liable human actor or institution is hardly the determining factor on the extent of the L&D. A legal liability framework based on attribution science promotes a “pollutionist approach” to climate adaptation and human welfare rather than a “developmentalist approach.” Under a pollutionist approach, adaptation is primarily about avoiding the dangers of human-induced climate change rather than building human resilience to a range of weather risks irrespective of cause. This approach has very specific political ramifications, serving some interests rather than others (e.g., technocratic and centralized control of adaptation funding over values-centered and decentralized control).

Finally, if such a legal framework were to be adopted, then what account should be taken of “gains and benefits” that might accrue to developing countries as a result of the impacts of climate change? Not all changes in weather and climate hazard as a result of human influence are detrimental to human welfare, and the principle of symmetry would demand that a full cost-benefit analysis lie at the heart of such a legal framework. This introduces another tier of complexity and contestation.

Following Doha and the COP18, the loss and damage agenda now has institutional force, and the coming months and years will see rounds of technical and political negotiation about how it may be put into operation. This agenda, however, should not place climate adaptation funding into the framework of legal liability backed by the new science of weather attribution.

Hulme goes more deeply into the Loss and Damage difficulties in his 2014 paper Attributing Weather Extremes to ‘Climate Change’: a Review.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

In this third and final review I survey the nascent science of extreme weather event attribution. The article proceeds by examining the field in four stages: motivations for extreme weather attribution, methods of attribution, some example case studies and the politics of weather event Attribution.

Hulme concludes by discussing the political hunger for scientific proof in support of policy actions.

But Hulme et al. (2011) show why such ambitious claims are unlikely to be realised. Investment in climate adaptation, they claim, is most needed “… where vulnerability to meteorological hazard is high, not where meteorological hazards are most attributable to human influence” (p.765). Extreme weather attribution says nothing about how damages are attributable to meteorological hazard as opposed to exposure to risk; it says nothing about the complex political, social and economic structures which mediate physical hazards.

And separating weather into two categories — ‘human-caused’ weather and ‘tough-luck’ weather – raises practical and ethical concerns about any subsequent investment allocation guidelines which excluded the victims of ‘tough-luck weather’ from benefiting from adaptation funds.

Contrary to the claims of some weather attribution scientists, the loss and damage agenda of the UNFCCC, as it is currently emerging, makes no distinction between ‘human-caused’ and ‘tough-luck’ weather. “Loss and damage impacts fall along a continuum, ranging from ‘events’ associated with variability around current climatic norms (e.g., weather-related natural hazards) to [slow-onset] ‘processes’ associated with future anticipated changes in climatic norms” (Warner et al., 2012:21). Although definitions and protocols have not yet been formally ratified, it seems unlikely that there will be a role for the sort of forensic science being offered by extreme weather attribution science.

Synopsis of this paper is at X-Weathermen are Back!

Integrated Storm Activity Annually over the Continental U.S. (ISAAC)

See also Data vs. Models #3: Disasters

 

 

 

 

UN’s Imaginary Planet

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A banner advertising the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, U.K., on Oct. 20, 2021. PHOTO BY IAN FORSYTH/BLOOMBERG FILES

William Watson writes at Financial Post What planet do UN carbon-fighters live on? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

If current trends continue, the chance of the world hitting the UN’s goals are slim to none

One of the biggest news stories in Quebec this week is the partial closing of the Louis Hippolyte-Lafontaine tunnel, a major commuting artery under the St. Lawrence River, for what are termed “urgent” repairs. Half the tunnel’s lanes will be closed for three years — though that’s probably optimistic. Montreal’s brand-spanking-new light rail system, which for some reason the people who run the public pension plan think will be a big money-maker for them, recently had its opening delayed until next spring. In Quebec, big projects delays are like winter snow: simply assumed.

Though big for the affected commuters, these are tiny projects for the world. Yet they’ll take three years. Slowly, very slowly, does seem to be the way things work in many parts of the world these days. (Is there, by the way, a more aptly named figure than former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly, whose approach to the truckers’ incursion seems to have been the opposite of speedy — and therefore of course very, very Ottawa?)

The tunnel, the bridge and the Réseau express métropolitain LRT came to mind as I scrolled through the latest edition of the United Nation Environment Programme’s (UNEP) update on the progress — or, in its view, shameful lack of progress — the world has made decarbonizing itself.

Judging by the 2½ pages of acknowledgements, this annual “Emissions Gap Report” is an immense undertaking by all sorts of committed people from universities, the UNEP itself and organizations such as the Bezos Earth Fund, the International Council on Clean Transportation, the ClimateWorks Foundation and so on. IKEA itself gets a shout-out for contributions from its foundation.

Not all the carbon news is bad. In a lovely set of graphs — production values, as always at the UN, are world-class — the team reports on how each G20 country is doing on its 2050 target (or NDC: nationally determined contribution). The arrow emerging from Canada’s trend points downward and to the right, heading for what looks like an exact bull’s eye with our commitment. If we do what we’ve said we’ll do — though that’s obviously a big if — we’ll get there. The EU27, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia (though its aim is off by a few years) are in essentially the same situation.

But other countries are not, including five that already account for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. Thus the arrows for China, India, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia are headed skyward, soaring to levels far above their 2060 (not 2050) commitments. Maybe a decade or two of rapid economic growth will persuade them they’re now rich enough to go after carbon. But if current trends continue, the chance of the world hitting the UN’s goals are slim to none.

Which leads to a lot of foot-stamping scolding on the part of the emissions-gap team. Watching 20th-century international hockey, we Canadians were always shocked that Soviet coaches evidently thought they could get more out of their players by haranguing them on the bench after a lousy play. For some reason, the UN folk don’t seem to understand that being harangued puts most people off.

LULUCF refers to emissions from land use and forestry, which can be in addition or subtraction.

Yet the report argues what we need is “wide-ranging, large-scale, rapid and systemic transformation” in order to reach the goal of a two-degree, let alone 1.5-degree, increase in average global temperatures. “Is it a tall order to transform our systems in just eight years?” asks the executive director of UNEP, apparently with a straight face. “Yes,” she concedes, “but we must try.” And so the report goes on to provide a long list of imperatives for governments, industry and (they get their own chapter) bankers.

We all understand that ardent environmentalists are driven by their love for the planet. But which planet exactly do they live on? In the part of planet earth I live on (and love, too, in my own conservative way), it takes three years to perform “urgent” repairs on an important tunnel — and it probably took at least as many to clear the decision to go ahead. Yet here are apparently intelligent and certainly well-educated people saying the world must turn its agricultural sector upside down, or at least get a good start on doing so, in just eight years.

Figure 6.2 Food systems emissions trajectory and mitigation potentials by transformation domain

Societies do undergo radical transformations. The other day I found myself talking to a speaker, telling it which radio station to play. We of a certain age are living quite differently than we did as children. But people only make these big transformations voluntarily, when new technologies or ideas come along that are self-evidently desirable and appear worth spending money on.

That would not be the case with a precipitate, top-down overhaul
of our agricultural and industrial systems.

We’ve only just figured out how to feed eight-billion people. What happens to a billion or two of them if the grand agricultural experiment the UN wants us all to try doesn’t work out? Environmentalists always say this is the only planet we’ve got. It is indeed. But that means there’s nowhere else to import food from if global experiments go wrong.

Radio Waves Over UN False Alarms

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Tuesday I was interviewed on the radio regarding my rebutting UN False Alarms.  The image is a screen capture, and I didn’t know how to extract the audio file or embed the radio page.  With some help from my grandson, you can hear my segment below (a few commercials included).

The interview is also on the station website linked below.  My segment begins at 34:40 to the end

https://www.am1100theflag.com/show-episodes/48391-5-24-22-the-chris-berg-show?fbclid=IwAR3H1QsRKzveHDxOjf152b_49glhwX1I0zOSSXUvxm_pcuIIWGWauQBOWW0

Post Discussed in Interview Above

The Climate Crisis du jour comes from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) public relations (PR) announcement Four key climate change indicators break records in 2021. 

As we shall see, each of them, along with other WMO claims, depends on first buying the story of global warming/climate change, and then looking at the world in a myopic, lop-sided way to confirm an alarmist POV.  Below are discussions of the main points from this latest attempt to monger fear in support of the IPCC agenda.

Sea Level Rise is Accelerating!  Not.

WMO says: Global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021, after increasing at an average 4.5 mm per year over the period 2013 -2021. This is more than double the rate of between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets. This has major implications for hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers and increases vulnerability to tropical cyclones.

WMO Proof:
Rational Response

Altimetry Estimates Are Unreliable
Tidal Gauges show slow, steady coastal rise
Land subsiding or rebounding Makes Local Differences

The claim of accelerating sea level rise depends on estimates from satellites regarding the entire ocean, such as this one:

There was an adjustment made to the dataset, and the “acceleration” comes by starting from the dip in 2013.  Moreover, this is a highly processed reconstruction that is contradicted by tidal gauge measurements at the coastlines where people live and where the issue matters.  For example, take New York City, where J. Hansen predicted flooding by 2009:

Already in 2021, observations have diverged greatly from the model-projected sea level rise, and there are many other examples confirming this. And do remember the longer range perspective on sea levels:

Earth’s Cryosphere is Melting!  Not.

WMO Says:  Cryosphere: Although the glaciological year 2020-2021 saw less melting than in recent years, there is a clear trend towards an acceleration of mass loss on multi-decadal timescales. On average, the world’s reference glaciers have thinned by 33.5 meters (ice-equivalent) since 1950, with 76% of this thinning since 1980. 2021 was a particularly punishing year for glaciers in Canada and the US Northwest with record ice mass loss as a result of heatwaves and fires in June and July. Greenland experienced an exceptional mid-August melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at Summit Station, the highest point on the ice sheet at an altitude of 3 216 m.

Rational Response

The warning about coastal flooding is based on fears that the sea will rise because frozen water will be added to the current ocean volume.  A lot of reporting claims Arctic Sea Ice is retreating, not mentioning this is drift ice, floating on water, and thus not a threat to increase water volume.  Even so, the quasi-60 year cycle of Arctic ice extents has been flat since it’s most recent bottom in 2007.

More pertinent is the concerns raised over land-based ice that does have the potential to add water to the ocean.  For perspective, consider this:

To consider the impact of the above ice sheet melting, compare the thickness of the Laurentide ice sheet with some of our civilization’s landmarks (H/T RiC Communications):

With much ado about any retreat of land glaciers, no matter how small or short-lived, many people are unaware of the natural range of glacier fluctuations.  For example, alpine glaciers:

Amid numerous periods of warming and cooling, hidden is the fact that Alpine glaciers were much smaller in the past, as evidenced by higher tree lines previous to the modern era.

The great majority of land ice is located firstly upon Antarctica, and secondly on Greenland.  While there are fluctuations up and down, the trend is far from certain, and very small compared to the mass of these two ice sheets.

A recent study by Bamber et al. provides perspectives on the amplitude of ice sheet changes:

Here the realities are obvious 99% of the world land ice is on top of Antarctica (88%) and Greenland (11%). All the fuss in the media above concerns fluctuations in less than 1% of glacier mass. Secondly, the bottom line is should present melt rates continue ( a big if ) the world would lose 3% of land ice in 1000 years. Note also the wide range of estimates of the smallest category of glaciers, and also the uncertain reported volume change for East Antarctica. Note that the melt rates are for 2012 to 2016, leaving out lower previous rates and periods when ice mass gained.

Global Temperatures are Going Ever Higher!  Not.

WMO says:  The global annual mean temperature in 2021 was around 1.11 ±0.13 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, less warm than some recent years owing to cooling La Niña conditions at the start and end of the year. The most recent seven years, 2015 to 2021, are the seven warmest years on record. 

Rational Response:

Seen in the context of annual ranges of temperatures, a rise of 1 degree Celsius over 150 years would escape our notice were it not for alarmists constantly beating drums about it.

The geological and paleontological evidence overwhelmingly says that today’s average global temperature of about 15 degrees C and CO2 concentrations of 420 ppm are nothing to fret about. Even if they rise to about 17–18 degrees C and 500–600 ppm by the end of the century, it may well balance or improve the lot of mankind.

After all, bursts of civilization during the last 10,000 years uniformly occurred during the red portions of the graph below. The aforementioned river civilizations—the Minoan, the Greco-Roman era, the Medieval flowering, and the industrial and technological revolutions of the present era. At the same time, the several lapses into the dark ages happened when the climate turned colder (blue).

And that’s only logical. When it’s warmer and wetter, growing seasons are longer, and crop yields are better—regardless of the agricultural technology and practices of the moment. And it’s better for human and community health, too—most of the deadly plagues of history have occurred in colder climates, such as the Black Death of 1344–1350.

Greenhouse Gases Higher Than Ever!  Not.

WMO says: Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149% of the pre-industrial level. Data from specific locations indicate that they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, with monthly average CO2 at Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021, and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.

Rational Response:

The Radiative effect from increasing CO2 has been saturated, so that the next doubling from 400 to 800 ppm will barely affect temperatures.  From William Happer presentation:

Schwarzschild was the theorist who first figured out how the real Earth, including the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, radiates to space. That is described by the jagged black line. The important point here is the red line. This is what Earth would radiate to space if you were to double the CO2 concentration from today’s value. Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference. The gap hardly changes.

Yet, the Climate Crisis Narrative employs two deceptive devices which are contradicted by earth’s climate history:

a. Planetary temperatures have been far higher than today, both long ago (over 600 million years) and recently (last 10,000 years) with no doomsday loop occurring.

b. It is claimed global warming is a one-way street from rising GHGs, when in fact higher CO2 concentrations are a consequence and by-product, not a driver and cause, of the current naturally rising temperatures.

The alleged harm from CO2 is from warming, and the warming observed is much, much less than predictions. In fact, warming as small as we are observing is almost certainly beneficial. It gives slightly longer growing seasons. You can ripen crops a little bit further north than you could before. So, there is completely good news in terms of the temperature directly. But there is even better news. By standards of geological history, plants have been living in a CO2 famine during our current geological period.

The Ocean Is Turning Acid! Not.

WMO says: Ocean acidification. The ocean absorbs around 23% of the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. This reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification, which threatens organisms and ecosystem services, and hence food security, tourism and coastal protection. As the pH of the ocean decreases, its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere also declines. The IPCC concluded that “there is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26,000 years and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.”

Rational Response

Firstly ocean pH varies greatly on all time scales.  From US Senate testimony:

“In the oceans, major climate warming and cooling and pH (ocean pH about 8.1) changes are a fact of life, whether it is over a few years as in an El Niño, over decades as in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation, or over a few hours as a burst of upwelling (pH about 7.59-7.8) appears or a storm brings acidic rainwater (pH about 4-6) into an estuary.”

Secondly, sea life is adapted to changing pH, and some prefer more acidic levels.  IPCC has ignored extensive research showing positive impacts on marine life from lower pH. These studies are catalogued at CO2 Science with this summary:

There are numerous observations of improvement in calcification of disparate marine life in realistic rates of PH change due to increased CO2.

“In the final graphical representations of the information contained in our Ocean Acidification Database, we have plotted the averages of all responses to seawater acidification (produced by additions of both HCl and CO2) for all five of the life characteristics of the various marine organisms that we have analyzed over the five pH reduction ranges that we discuss in our Description of the Ocean Acidification Database Tables, which pH ranges we illustrate in the figure below.”

“The most striking feature of Figure 11 is the great preponderance of data located in positive territory, which suggests that, on the whole, marine organisms likely will not be harmed to any significant degree by the expected decline in oceanic pH. If anything, in fact, the results suggest that the world’s marine life may actually slightly benefit from the pH decline.”

Finally,  massive mineral deposits ensure our ocean will remain non-acidic in coming centuries.  At Patrick Moore observed:

“It is a fact that people who have saltwater aquariums sometimes add CO2 to the water in order to increase coral growth and to increase plant growth. The truth is CO2 is the most important food for all life on Earth, including marine life. It is the main food for photosynthetic plankton (algae), which in turn is the food for the entire food chain in the sea.”

Summary:

The claim that the surface-water of the oceans has declined in pH from 8.2 to 8.1, since the industrial revolution, is based on sparse, contradictory evidence, at least some of which is problematic computer modeling. Some areas of the oceans, not subject to algal blooms or upwelling, may be experiencing slightly lower pH values than were common before the industrial revolution. However, forecasts for ‘average’ future pH values are likely exaggerated and of debatable consequences. The effects of alkaline buffering and stabilizing biological feedback loops seem to be underappreciated by those who carelessly throw around the inaccurate term “ocean acidification.”

Footnote on Climate Hype

Alarming claims are usually detected because they involve myopia, an error in perception, combined with lop-sided judgment weighing proportional significance of factors.

  1. CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.

Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”

2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.

Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”

To avoid myopia, pay attention to the temporal and spatial contexts for effects discussed.  To avoid lop-sided judgment, pay attention to the impact of factors proportional to the baseline inertia of climate system components.

Radio Interview Re UN False Alarms

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Yesterday I was interviewed on the radio regarding my rebutting UN False Alarms.  The image is a screen capture, and I don’t know how to extract the audio file or embed the radio page.  But you can listen to the interview by following the link below.  My segment begins at 34:40 to the end (a few commercials included)

https://www.am1100theflag.com/show-episodes/48391-5-24-22-the-chris-berg-show?fbclid=IwAR3H1QsRKzveHDxOjf152b_49glhwX1I0zOSSXUvxm_pcuIIWGWauQBOWW0

Post Discussed in Interview Above

The Climate Crisis du jour comes from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) public relations (PR) announcement Four key climate change indicators break records in 2021. 

As we shall see, each of them, along with other WMO claims, depends on first buying the story of global warming/climate change, and then looking at the world in a myopic, lop-sided way to confirm an alarmist POV.  Below are discussions of the main points from this latest attempt to monger fear in support of the IPCC agenda.

Sea Level Rise is Accelerating!  Not.

WMO says: Global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021, after increasing at an average 4.5 mm per year over the period 2013 -2021. This is more than double the rate of between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets. This has major implications for hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers and increases vulnerability to tropical cyclones.

WMO Proof:
Rational Response

Altimetry Estimates Are Unreliable
Tidal Gauges show slow, steady coastal rise
Land subsiding or rebounding Makes Local Differences

The claim of accelerating sea level rise depends on estimates from satellites regarding the entire ocean, such as this one:

There was an adjustment made to the dataset, and the “acceleration” comes by starting from the dip in 2013.  Moreover, this is a highly processed reconstruction that is contradicted by tidal gauge measurements at the coastlines where people live and where the issue matters.  For example, take New York City, where J. Hansen predicted flooding by 2009:

Already in 2021, observations have diverged greatly from the model-projected sea level rise, and there are many other examples confirming this. And do remember the longer range perspective on sea levels:

Earth’s Cryosphere is Melting!  Not.

WMO Says:  Cryosphere: Although the glaciological year 2020-2021 saw less melting than in recent years, there is a clear trend towards an acceleration of mass loss on multi-decadal timescales. On average, the world’s reference glaciers have thinned by 33.5 meters (ice-equivalent) since 1950, with 76% of this thinning since 1980. 2021 was a particularly punishing year for glaciers in Canada and the US Northwest with record ice mass loss as a result of heatwaves and fires in June and July. Greenland experienced an exceptional mid-August melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at Summit Station, the highest point on the ice sheet at an altitude of 3 216 m.

Rational Response

The warning about coastal flooding is based on fears that the sea will rise because frozen water will be added to the current ocean volume.  A lot of reporting claims Arctic Sea Ice is retreating, not mentioning this is drift ice, floating on water, and thus not a threat to increase water volume.  Even so, the quasi-60 year cycle of Arctic ice extents has been flat since it’s most recent bottom in 2007.

More pertinent is the concerns raised over land-based ice that does have the potential to add water to the ocean.  For perspective, consider this:

To consider the impact of the above ice sheet melting, compare the thickness of the Laurentide ice sheet with some of our civilization’s landmarks (H/T RiC Communications):

With much ado about any retreat of land glaciers, no matter how small or short-lived, many people are unaware of the natural range of glacier fluctuations.  For example, alpine glaciers:

Amid numerous periods of warming and cooling, hidden is the fact that Alpine glaciers were much smaller in the past, as evidenced by higher tree lines previous to the modern era.

The great majority of land ice is located firstly upon Antarctica, and secondly on Greenland.  While there are fluctuations up and down, the trend is far from certain, and very small compared to the mass of these two ice sheets.

A recent study by Bamber et al. provides perspectives on the amplitude of ice sheet changes:

Here the realities are obvious 99% of the world land ice is on top of Antarctica (88%) and Greenland (11%). All the fuss in the media above concerns fluctuations in less than 1% of glacier mass. Secondly, the bottom line is should present melt rates continue ( a big if ) the world would lose 3% of land ice in 1000 years. Note also the wide range of estimates of the smallest category of glaciers, and also the uncertain reported volume change for East Antarctica. Note that the melt rates are for 2012 to 2016, leaving out lower previous rates and periods when ice mass gained.

Global Temperatures are Going Ever Higher!  Not.

WMO says:  The global annual mean temperature in 2021 was around 1.11 ±0.13 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, less warm than some recent years owing to cooling La Niña conditions at the start and end of the year. The most recent seven years, 2015 to 2021, are the seven warmest years on record. 

Rational Response:

Seen in the context of annual ranges of temperatures, a rise of 1 degree Celsius over 150 years would escape our notice were it not for alarmists constantly beating drums about it.

The geological and paleontological evidence overwhelmingly says that today’s average global temperature of about 15 degrees C and CO2 concentrations of 420 ppm are nothing to fret about. Even if they rise to about 17–18 degrees C and 500–600 ppm by the end of the century, it may well balance or improve the lot of mankind.

After all, bursts of civilization during the last 10,000 years uniformly occurred during the red portions of the graph below. The aforementioned river civilizations—the Minoan, the Greco-Roman era, the Medieval flowering, and the industrial and technological revolutions of the present era. At the same time, the several lapses into the dark ages happened when the climate turned colder (blue).

And that’s only logical. When it’s warmer and wetter, growing seasons are longer, and crop yields are better—regardless of the agricultural technology and practices of the moment. And it’s better for human and community health, too—most of the deadly plagues of history have occurred in colder climates, such as the Black Death of 1344–1350.

Greenhouse Gases Higher Than Ever!  Not.

WMO says: Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149% of the pre-industrial level. Data from specific locations indicate that they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, with monthly average CO2 at Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021, and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.

Rational Response:

The Radiative effect from increasing CO2 has been saturated, so that the next doubling from 400 to 800 ppm will barely affect temperatures.  From William Happer presentation:

Schwarzschild was the theorist who first figured out how the real Earth, including the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, radiates to space. That is described by the jagged black line. The important point here is the red line. This is what Earth would radiate to space if you were to double the CO2 concentration from today’s value. Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference. The gap hardly changes.

Yet, the Climate Crisis Narrative employs two deceptive devices which are contradicted by earth’s climate history:

a. Planetary temperatures have been far higher than today, both long ago (over 600 million years) and recently (last 10,000 years) with no doomsday loop occurring.

b. It is claimed global warming is a one-way street from rising GHGs, when in fact higher CO2 concentrations are a consequence and by-product, not a driver and cause, of the current naturally rising temperatures.

The alleged harm from CO2 is from warming, and the warming observed is much, much less than predictions. In fact, warming as small as we are observing is almost certainly beneficial. It gives slightly longer growing seasons. You can ripen crops a little bit further north than you could before. So, there is completely good news in terms of the temperature directly. But there is even better news. By standards of geological history, plants have been living in a CO2 famine during our current geological period.

The Ocean Is Turning Acid! Not.

WMO says: Ocean acidification. The ocean absorbs around 23% of the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. This reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification, which threatens organisms and ecosystem services, and hence food security, tourism and coastal protection. As the pH of the ocean decreases, its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere also declines. The IPCC concluded that “there is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26,000 years and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.”

Rational Response

Firstly ocean pH varies greatly on all time scales.  From US Senate testimony:

“In the oceans, major climate warming and cooling and pH (ocean pH about 8.1) changes are a fact of life, whether it is over a few years as in an El Niño, over decades as in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation, or over a few hours as a burst of upwelling (pH about 7.59-7.8) appears or a storm brings acidic rainwater (pH about 4-6) into an estuary.”

Secondly, sea life is adapted to changing pH, and some prefer more acidic levels.  IPCC has ignored extensive research showing positive impacts on marine life from lower pH. These studies are catalogued at CO2 Science with this summary:

There are numerous observations of improvement in calcification of disparate marine life in realistic rates of PH change due to increased CO2.

“In the final graphical representations of the information contained in our Ocean Acidification Database, we have plotted the averages of all responses to seawater acidification (produced by additions of both HCl and CO2) for all five of the life characteristics of the various marine organisms that we have analyzed over the five pH reduction ranges that we discuss in our Description of the Ocean Acidification Database Tables, which pH ranges we illustrate in the figure below.”

“The most striking feature of Figure 11 is the great preponderance of data located in positive territory, which suggests that, on the whole, marine organisms likely will not be harmed to any significant degree by the expected decline in oceanic pH. If anything, in fact, the results suggest that the world’s marine life may actually slightly benefit from the pH decline.”

Finally,  massive mineral deposits ensure our ocean will remain non-acidic in coming centuries.  At Patrick Moore observed:

“It is a fact that people who have saltwater aquariums sometimes add CO2 to the water in order to increase coral growth and to increase plant growth. The truth is CO2 is the most important food for all life on Earth, including marine life. It is the main food for photosynthetic plankton (algae), which in turn is the food for the entire food chain in the sea.”

Summary:

The claim that the surface-water of the oceans has declined in pH from 8.2 to 8.1, since the industrial revolution, is based on sparse, contradictory evidence, at least some of which is problematic computer modeling. Some areas of the oceans, not subject to algal blooms or upwelling, may be experiencing slightly lower pH values than were common before the industrial revolution. However, forecasts for ‘average’ future pH values are likely exaggerated and of debatable consequences. The effects of alkaline buffering and stabilizing biological feedback loops seem to be underappreciated by those who carelessly throw around the inaccurate term “ocean acidification.”

Footnote on Climate Hype

Alarming claims are usually detected because they involve myopia, an error in perception, combined with lop-sided judgment weighing proportional significance of factors.

  1. CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.

Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”

2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.

Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”

To avoid myopia, pay attention to the temporal and spatial contexts for effects discussed.  To avoid lop-sided judgment, pay attention to the impact of factors proportional to the baseline inertia of climate system components.

UN False Alarms from Key Climate Indicators

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

The Climate Crisis du jour comes from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) public relations (PR) announcement Four key climate change indicators break records in 2021. 

As we shall see, each of them, along with other WMO claims, depends on first buying the story of global warming/climate change, and then looking at the world in a myopic, lop-sided way to confirm an alarmist POV.  Below are discussions of the main points from this latest attempt to monger fear in support of the IPCC agenda.

Sea Level Rise is Accelerating!  Not.

WMO says: Global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021, after increasing at an average 4.5 mm per year over the period 2013 -2021. This is more than double the rate of between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets. This has major implications for hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers and increases vulnerability to tropical cyclones.

WMO Proof:
Rational Response

Altimetry Estimates Are Unreliable
Tidal Gauges show slow, steady coastal rise
Land subsiding or rebounding Makes Local Differences

The claim of accelerating sea level rise depends on estimates from satellites regarding the entire ocean, such as this one:

There was an adjustment made to the dataset, and the “acceleration” comes by starting from the dip in 2013.  Moreover, this is a highly processed reconstruction that is contradicted by tidal gauge measurements at the coastlines where people live and where the issue matters.  For example, take New York City, where J. Hansen predicted flooding by 2009:

Already in 2021, observations have diverged greatly from the model-projected sea level rise, and there are many other examples confirming this. And do remember the longer range perspective on sea levels:

Earth’s Cryosphere is Melting!  Not.

WMO Says:  Cryosphere: Although the glaciological year 2020-2021 saw less melting than in recent years, there is a clear trend towards an acceleration of mass loss on multi-decadal timescales. On average, the world’s reference glaciers have thinned by 33.5 meters (ice-equivalent) since 1950, with 76% of this thinning since 1980. 2021 was a particularly punishing year for glaciers in Canada and the US Northwest with record ice mass loss as a result of heatwaves and fires in June and July. Greenland experienced an exceptional mid-August melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at Summit Station, the highest point on the ice sheet at an altitude of 3 216 m.

Rational Response

The warning about coastal flooding is based on fears that the sea will rise because frozen water will be added to the current ocean volume.  A lot of reporting claims Arctic Sea Ice is retreating, not mentioning this is drift ice, floating on water, and thus not a threat to increase water volume.  Even so, the quasi-60 year cycle of Arctic ice extents has been flat since it’s most recent bottom in 2007.

More pertinent is the concerns raised over land-based ice that does have the potential to add water to the ocean.  For perspective, consider this:

To consider the impact of the above ice sheet melting, compare the thickness of the Laurentide ice sheet with some of our civilization’s landmarks (H/T RiC Communications):

With much ado about any retreat of land glaciers, no matter how small or short-lived, many people are unaware of the natural range of glacier fluctuations.  For example, alpine glaciers:

Amid numerous periods of warming and cooling, hidden is the fact that Alpine glaciers were much smaller in the past, as evidenced by higher tree lines previous to the modern era.

The great majority of land ice is located firstly upon Antarctica, and secondly on Greenland.  While there are fluctuations up and down, the trend is far from certain, and very small compared to the mass of these two ice sheets.

A recent study by Bamber et al. provides perspectives on the amplitude of ice sheet changes:

Here the realities are obvious 99% of the world land ice is on top of Antarctica (88%) and Greenland (11%). All the fuss in the media above concerns fluctuations in less than 1% of glacier mass. Secondly, the bottom line is should present melt rates continue ( a big if ) the world would lose 3% of land ice in 1000 years. Note also the wide range of estimates of the smallest category of glaciers, and also the uncertain reported volume change for East Antarctica. Note that the melt rates are for 2012 to 2016, leaving out lower previous rates and periods when ice mass gained.

Global Temperatures are Going Ever Higher!  Not.

WMO says:  The global annual mean temperature in 2021 was around 1.11 ±0.13 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, less warm than some recent years owing to cooling La Niña conditions at the start and end of the year. The most recent seven years, 2015 to 2021, are the seven warmest years on record. 

Rational Response:

Seen in the context of annual ranges of temperatures, a rise of 1 degree Celsius over 150 years would escape our notice were it not for alarmists constantly beating drums about it.

The geological and paleontological evidence overwhelmingly says that today’s average global temperature of about 15 degrees C and CO2 concentrations of 420 ppm are nothing to fret about. Even if they rise to about 17–18 degrees C and 500–600 ppm by the end of the century, it may well balance or improve the lot of mankind.

After all, bursts of civilization during the last 10,000 years uniformly occurred during the red portions of the graph below. The aforementioned river civilizations—the Minoan, the Greco-Roman era, the Medieval flowering, and the industrial and technological revolutions of the present era. At the same time, the several lapses into the dark ages happened when the climate turned colder (blue).

And that’s only logical. When it’s warmer and wetter, growing seasons are longer, and crop yields are better—regardless of the agricultural technology and practices of the moment. And it’s better for human and community health, too—most of the deadly plagues of history have occurred in colder climates, such as the Black Death of 1344–1350.

Greenhouse Gases Higher Than Ever!  Not.

WMO says: Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149% of the pre-industrial level. Data from specific locations indicate that they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, with monthly average CO2 at Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021, and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.

Rational Response:

The Radiative effect from increasing CO2 has been saturated, so that the next doubling from 400 to 800 ppm will barely affect temperatures.  From William Happer presentation:

Schwarzschild was the theorist who first figured out how the real Earth, including the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, radiates to space. That is described by the jagged black line. The important point here is the red line. This is what Earth would radiate to space if you were to double the CO2 concentration from today’s value. Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference. The gap hardly changes.

Yet, the Climate Crisis Narrative employs two deceptive devices which are contradicted by earth’s climate history:

a. Planetary temperatures have been far higher than today, both long ago (over 600 million years) and recently (last 10,000 years) with no doomsday loop occurring.

b. It is claimed global warming is a one-way street from rising GHGs, when in fact higher CO2 concentrations are a consequence and by-product, not a driver and cause, of the current naturally rising temperatures.

The alleged harm from CO2 is from warming, and the warming observed is much, much less than predictions. In fact, warming as small as we are observing is almost certainly beneficial. It gives slightly longer growing seasons. You can ripen crops a little bit further north than you could before. So, there is completely good news in terms of the temperature directly. But there is even better news. By standards of geological history, plants have been living in a CO2 famine during our current geological period.

The Ocean Is Turning Acid! Not.

WMO says: Ocean acidification. The ocean absorbs around 23% of the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. This reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification, which threatens organisms and ecosystem services, and hence food security, tourism and coastal protection. As the pH of the ocean decreases, its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere also declines. The IPCC concluded that “there is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26,000 years and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.”

Rational Response

Firstly ocean pH varies greatly on all time scales.  From US Senate testimony:

“In the oceans, major climate warming and cooling and pH (ocean pH about 8.1) changes are a fact of life, whether it is over a few years as in an El Niño, over decades as in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation, or over a few hours as a burst of upwelling (pH about 7.59-7.8) appears or a storm brings acidic rainwater (pH about 4-6) into an estuary.”

Secondly, sea life is adapted to changing pH, and some prefer more acidic levels.  IPCC has ignored extensive research showing positive impacts on marine life from lower pH. These studies are catalogued at CO2 Science with this summary:

There are numerous observations of improvement in calcification of disparate marine life in realistic rates of PH change due to increased CO2.

“In the final graphical representations of the information contained in our Ocean Acidification Database, we have plotted the averages of all responses to seawater acidification (produced by additions of both HCl and CO2) for all five of the life characteristics of the various marine organisms that we have analyzed over the five pH reduction ranges that we discuss in our Description of the Ocean Acidification Database Tables, which pH ranges we illustrate in the figure below.”

“The most striking feature of Figure 11 is the great preponderance of data located in positive territory, which suggests that, on the whole, marine organisms likely will not be harmed to any significant degree by the expected decline in oceanic pH. If anything, in fact, the results suggest that the world’s marine life may actually slightly benefit from the pH decline.”

Finally,  massive mineral deposits ensure our ocean will remain non-acidic in coming centuries.  At Patrick Moore observed:

“It is a fact that people who have saltwater aquariums sometimes add CO2 to the water in order to increase coral growth and to increase plant growth. The truth is CO2 is the most important food for all life on Earth, including marine life. It is the main food for photosynthetic plankton (algae), which in turn is the food for the entire food chain in the sea.”

Summary:

The claim that the surface-water of the oceans has declined in pH from 8.2 to 8.1, since the industrial revolution, is based on sparse, contradictory evidence, at least some of which is problematic computer modeling. Some areas of the oceans, not subject to algal blooms or upwelling, may be experiencing slightly lower pH values than were common before the industrial revolution. However, forecasts for ‘average’ future pH values are likely exaggerated and of debatable consequences. The effects of alkaline buffering and stabilizing biological feedback loops seem to be underappreciated by those who carelessly throw around the inaccurate term “ocean acidification.”

Footnote on Climate Hype

Alarming claims are usually detected because they involve myopia, an error in perception, combined with lop-sided judgment weighing proportional significance of factors.

  1. CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.

Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”

2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.

Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”

To avoid myopia, pay attention to the temporal and spatial contexts for effects discussed.  To avoid lop-sided judgment, pay attention to the impact of factors proportional to the baseline inertia of climate system components.

IPCC World’s Last Chance (Again)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Getty Images

James Macpherson reports on the latest deadline in his Australian Spectator article The IPCC say the world is ending! (Again?) .H/T John Ray.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

In the latest ‘now or never!’ since the ‘last now or never!’ the United Nations has warned the world that it is once again ‘now or never!’ to avoid disastrous Climate Change.

Forget Prince Charles’ warning back in July 2009 that we had just 96 months to save the planet.

Ignore former British PM Gordon Brown’s prediction, just three months later, that we had fewer than 50 days to avoid disaster.

And never mind French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who, standing beside then American Secretary of State John Kerry, told the world on May 13, 2014, that ‘we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos’.

The irony of that particular Chicken Little routine was that Fabius was scheduled to host the 21st Conference of the Parties on Climate Change on November 30 the following year – 65 days after the world, by his reckoning, would have ended.

I was going to quip that you couldn’t make this stuff up, but it seems like they do.

Anyway, enough joking around. This is it. Seriously. They’re not even kidding this time. Honestly. Like, for real guys. ‘It’s now or never!’

Yes, I know that’s what American defence chiefs were warning back in 2004 when they predicted European cities would sink beneath rising seas, and that Britain would be plunged into ‘a Siberian climate’ by 2020.

But it wasn’t like they got everything wrong.

Their predictions of widespread rioting across the world by 2020 did come to pass. And if you overlook the fact that the rioting was caused by the death of George Floyd and the imposition of compulsory injections – rather than the complete collapse of the ecosystem – you’ll see just how prescient the defence chiefs were.

You can’t expect climate catastrophists to get it right all the time. Or any of the time. It’s not like they’re astrologers.

Doomsday was predicted but failed to happen at midnight.

The important thing to worry about is that things are now a lot more worrying than the last time we were warned to worry, and so there is now good reason to be worried.

We have this week reached a tipping point that is even pointier than every other tipping point so far reached; which is to say we will soon be at a point of no return that is well past the point of no return that we were last warned there was no returning from.

The latest UN climate panic comes in the form of what media outlets called ‘a massive 3,000-page document’ published Monday.

It’s unlikely anyone will read all 3,000 pages, but no one should need to. The sheer size of the document – let me remind you, it’s ‘massive’ – tells you everything you need to know.  Things are bad.

And if the thickness of the report does not convince you that things are dire, environmentalists at the UN can make their next dossier of doom and gloom run twice that length. It’s only trees, after all.

Let me remind you just how massively bad things are.

Back in 1972, the then UN Under General Secretary Maurice Strong warned we had ‘only 10 years to stop the catastrophe’.

In 1982, which was the deadline for stopping the catastrophe, the head of the UN Environment Program Mostafa Tolba told us we had just 18 more years before we would face an environmental catastrophe ‘as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust’.

Just eight years later, he was insisting we needed to fix global warming by 1995 or we would ‘lose the struggle’.

The great climate doomsday of 1995 failed to materialise, as did the climate Armageddon of 2000. But the flurry of final warnings, last chances, and tipping points continued; every prediction more hysterical than the last.

UN Climate Panel chief Rajendra Pachauir, who was no doubt surprised to still be here in 2007, warned that ‘if there is no action before 2012, that’s too late’. He further insisted that ‘what we do in the next two to three years will determine our future’.

Our betters spent the next two or three years jetting around the globe, holding lots of conferences and summits, which must have saved our bacon since not only did we survive the predicted 2012 apocalypse, but we hung on grimly until 2019 at which point the UN informed us we had just 11 years to prevent irreversible damage from climate change.

To emphasise just how serious things were, they invited a Swedish school girl to berate them for robbing her of her dreams, or something. These days she’s performing Rick Astley covers for adoring fans.

Now, just three years into that 11-year do-or-die period,
we are being told that it’s ‘now or never’.

One could be forgiven for thinking that when the world doesn’t end as these activists predict, they simply change the date and call it science.

The UN report, the most comprehensive report since the last most comprehensive report, says emissions must be curbed by 2030 or things will be even worse than the last time we were told they couldn’t possibly be any worse.

The report says that people must change their diets and their lifestyles which, as we already know, means eating bugs and walking.

And if we fail to heed the latest hysterical shrieks from those who warn of rising sea levels while purchasing beachside mansions, we can be sure there will be even shriekier histrionics in the future.

This is it. Our final, cataclysmic warning. Until the next one. And probably the one after that.

When the UN insist that it is ‘now or never’ for climate action, what they really mean is that they want now and never-ending emergencies as a pretext for herding us around the room. First here and then there, but never to an exit.