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No Climate Emergency

This doesn't seem to appear in the Daily Mail or the BBC, I wonder why:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/sep/29/scientists-tell-un-global-climate-summit-no-emerge/

There is no climate emergency
A global network of 500 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate
science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should
openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while
politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation
to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.
Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming
The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with
natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no
surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.
Warming is far slower than predicted
The world has warmed at less than half the originally-predicted rate, and at less than half the rate to
be expected on the basis of net anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance. It tells us that we are
far from understanding climate change.
Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. Moreover,
they most likely exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the
fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.
CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is
beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global
plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
Global warming has not increased natural disasters
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and
suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as
damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations
destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.
Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly
oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches
emerge, we will have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to
provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.

https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ecd-letter-to-un.pdf

At last some people talking sense. After the relatively rapid rise of around 1°C between 1975 and 2000 in the Northern Hemisphere the temperatures have been relatively flat.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/figures/Figure11.png

We certainly need to reduce our consumption of finite resources and reduce our impact on the planet but focusing on CO2 is not the way to do it. Let's start with real pollutants that are directly harmful.

Best regards

Roger

Parents

0 Roger B over 5 years ago

There are plenty of thoughts on the engineering solutions that could be applied and some on the resource problems that would limit them. Some things can be solved by ‘simple’ engineering others will require significant structural changes (but hopefully not as significant as the one applied by Thanos)

I will take this back to the original question: Is there a ‘Climate Emergency’ that means we must rush these solutions into place which will result in a significant spike in all our emissions due to the resources required to implement them. Does it actually make environmental sense to decommission systems before they have reached the end of their lives? Would we just be wasting finite resources. Is it just a ‘Climate Problem’ in which case rather more sensible and practical timescales can be used.

Is the ‘Climate Emergency’ just political hype? Is it for control (see my post 1984)

communities.theiet.org/.../24015

I posted this piece before which was written in response to ‘The Engineer’ poll on language and the climate which was based on the Guardian Editor’s instruction to ‘Hype Up’ climate change. As expected it did not pass the moderators. I have tried to use the best sources I could find ( In this forum I can directly include the pictures)
www.theengineer.co.uk/.../
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The climate has changed, is changing, and will continue to change with or without us. What do we actually know?
The longest directly measured temperature series is the Central England series held by the UK Met office:
www.metoffice.gov.uk/.../

If you look at the chart, the temperature rose by more than 1.5°C between about 1700 and 1730. The temperature rose around 1°C between about 1975 and 2000. Were both of these man made? Were both of them natural? How do the climate models explain the rise in the 1700s.

The longest measured CO2 series is from Mauna Loa:

www.esrl.noaa.gov/.../full.html

This is always shown with an offset zero. It is a fairly trivial task to import the raw data and draw a ‘normal’ graph starting at zero. Much less scary.

What about global temperatures? There are several series available. As this is a UK magazine I will use the ones from the Met office:
www.metoffice.gov.uk/.../Figure11.png

What do we see on these graphs? Firstly the various temperature series are in reasonable agreement. Secondly they only go back to 1900. If you look at the Central England series quite a lot happened before then. There is also a significant difference between the north and south hemispheres. For the northern hemisphere there is somewhat dubious attempt to show an increasing rate of temperature rise by starting from a cool spell in the 1970s.

Does anything look scary enough to justify all this ‘Climate Emergency’ language?

The next graphs comes from the IPCC AR5 Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis:

www.climatechange2013.org/.../hartmann13agu_U22A_final.pdf

On page 18 it shows the model outputs in red with a confidence band. Measured temperatures are black. The measure temperatures are always below the model and are starting to leave the confidence band. It also records the reduction in the rate of warming after 1998.

Is reality scary or is it just the models?

The IPCC uses four scenarios, RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. RCP8.5 is the worst case and it has been suggested it could be difficult to dig coal fast enough to achieve it. Most of the scaremongering is based on this scenario. RCP6.0 is around business as usual, RCP4.5 is if an effort is made to reduce CO2 emissions and RCP2.6 is an unlikely best case.
This is shown graphically in this article:

judithcurry.com/.../

Figure 4 shows it quite well.

So does Climate Change deserve scary language? In my view no. What is important is reduction in the use of finite resources, reduction in change of land use and sustainable use of natural resources such as fish.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where is the reality? Is the world burning up? As I posted earlier the official website on Greenland ice offers on three different pages, no problem, some problem and catastrophe. What is the ‘Truth’.
Best regards
Roger
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0 Roger B over 5 years ago

There are plenty of thoughts on the engineering solutions that could be applied and some on the resource problems that would limit them. Some things can be solved by ‘simple’ engineering others will require significant structural changes (but hopefully not as significant as the one applied by Thanos)

I will take this back to the original question: Is there a ‘Climate Emergency’ that means we must rush these solutions into place which will result in a significant spike in all our emissions due to the resources required to implement them. Does it actually make environmental sense to decommission systems before they have reached the end of their lives? Would we just be wasting finite resources. Is it just a ‘Climate Problem’ in which case rather more sensible and practical timescales can be used.

Is the ‘Climate Emergency’ just political hype? Is it for control (see my post 1984)

communities.theiet.org/.../24015

I posted this piece before which was written in response to ‘The Engineer’ poll on language and the climate which was based on the Guardian Editor’s instruction to ‘Hype Up’ climate change. As expected it did not pass the moderators. I have tried to use the best sources I could find ( In this forum I can directly include the pictures)
www.theengineer.co.uk/.../
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The climate has changed, is changing, and will continue to change with or without us. What do we actually know?
The longest directly measured temperature series is the Central England series held by the UK Met office:
www.metoffice.gov.uk/.../

If you look at the chart, the temperature rose by more than 1.5°C between about 1700 and 1730. The temperature rose around 1°C between about 1975 and 2000. Were both of these man made? Were both of them natural? How do the climate models explain the rise in the 1700s.

The longest measured CO2 series is from Mauna Loa:

www.esrl.noaa.gov/.../full.html

This is always shown with an offset zero. It is a fairly trivial task to import the raw data and draw a ‘normal’ graph starting at zero. Much less scary.

What about global temperatures? There are several series available. As this is a UK magazine I will use the ones from the Met office:
www.metoffice.gov.uk/.../Figure11.png

What do we see on these graphs? Firstly the various temperature series are in reasonable agreement. Secondly they only go back to 1900. If you look at the Central England series quite a lot happened before then. There is also a significant difference between the north and south hemispheres. For the northern hemisphere there is somewhat dubious attempt to show an increasing rate of temperature rise by starting from a cool spell in the 1970s.

Does anything look scary enough to justify all this ‘Climate Emergency’ language?

The next graphs comes from the IPCC AR5 Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis:

www.climatechange2013.org/.../hartmann13agu_U22A_final.pdf

On page 18 it shows the model outputs in red with a confidence band. Measured temperatures are black. The measure temperatures are always below the model and are starting to leave the confidence band. It also records the reduction in the rate of warming after 1998.

Is reality scary or is it just the models?

The IPCC uses four scenarios, RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. RCP8.5 is the worst case and it has been suggested it could be difficult to dig coal fast enough to achieve it. Most of the scaremongering is based on this scenario. RCP6.0 is around business as usual, RCP4.5 is if an effort is made to reduce CO2 emissions and RCP2.6 is an unlikely best case.
This is shown graphically in this article:

judithcurry.com/.../

Figure 4 shows it quite well.

So does Climate Change deserve scary language? In my view no. What is important is reduction in the use of finite resources, reduction in change of land use and sustainable use of natural resources such as fish.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where is the reality? Is the world burning up? As I posted earlier the official website on Greenland ice offers on three different pages, no problem, some problem and catastrophe. What is the ‘Truth’.
Best regards
Roger
Cancel
Vote Up 0 Vote Down

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No Climate Emergency

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