29th article in today’s paper: civilization will end in a year or two. “World is coming close to irreversible change, say climate experts.”
Forgivable: stories about celebrities, sport, or holiday destinations keep readers. What is not forgivable is the inaction of governments.
Passing the tipping point, into irreversible heating and energization of the atmosphere and oceans, means not only that all coastal cities will be under water but that we and our descendants will all be refugees.
Oil companies are expected to make four trillion dollars in 2022. That’s $4,000,000,000,000. They should have at least eighty percent taken from them in windfall tax. That could be used to fund the renewable energy needed to stop the damage they cause, as well as protected areas of sea and land, programs to save endangered species, reparations to countries that have already suffered devastation..
Shell says it won’t pay any windfall tax because it needs the money to invest in finding new oil fields
The new British prime minister won’t bother to attend Cop27, the UN climate conference (November 6 to 18 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt). Few countries are keeping the promises they made at Cop26 about reducing emissions.
I don’t like Just Stop Oil’s tactic of throwing food at paintings in galleries. That can seen anti-civilization, whereas climate activism is civilization-saving. But if what is needed to gain politicians’ serious attention is throwing their cars into the river, I might forgive it.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Not sure ifthis went through–originaly in reply to someone on thiis thread–I reposted in case it did not go through.Everything is a trade-off. One-offs like Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl etc.—or even the odd Russian artillery shell hitting Chernobyl (God Forbid) are in the long run most likely less damaging to the environment than the steady increase of CO2—yet modern civilization is based on fossil fuels. They will be a factor until they are replaced with something cleaner and more efficient. Since fossil fuels will be used for the forseeable future, Greta notwithstanding, we should at the very least research ways to use them more cleanly and efficiently as well. Use of nuclear energy would reduce fossil fuel use at least in the power generation industry so we should not cut ourselves off from this technology out of fear. Perhaps the Geneva and Hagye Conventions should be amended to make targeting of nuclear power plants in war as a war crime. Greta hates capitalism—so she needs to experience some non-capitalist economies—and their environmental disasters to give her a more balanced view
Everything is a trade-off. One-offs like Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl etc.—or even the odd Russian artillery shell hitting Chernobyl (God Forbid) are in the long run most likely less damaging to the environment than the steady increase of CO2—yet modern civilization is based on fossil fuels. They will be a factor until they are replaced with something cleaner and more efficient. Since fossil fuels will be used for the forseeable future, Greta notwithstanding, we should at the very least research ways to use them more cleanly and efficiently as well. Use of nuclear energy would reduce fossil fuel use at least in the power generation industry so we should not cut ourselves off from this technology out of fear. Perhaps the Geneva and Hagye Conventions should be amended to make targeting of nuclear power plants in war as a war crime. Greta hates capitalism—so she needs to experience some non-capitalist economies—and their environmental disasters to give her a more balanced view.
Far from solved as we have to mine Uranium and well run out of that but don’t worry we won’t be dependent on Fission as controlled Fusion is just around the corner, the same corner it was around 70 year ago I expect?If Brown Dwarf stars can’t fuse I don’t rate our chances!
Apparently we are all clear to resume building nuclear power plants, now that Greta Thunberg has endorsed them LOL! Climate problem solved! Of course, there is the small matter of catastrophic radiation leaks as a result of accidents such as Fukushima. Admittedly without the benefit of any specific evidence, my instinct tells me that the Pacific Ocean is probably now a radiation disaster that the authorities are covering up.
I nevertheless am eagerly anticipating the total lunar eclipse next week!
Guy, these will be my last thoughts on this exchange:
The perceived “damning” criticisms are often ad hominem attacks and are unwarranted. A good example is the Oreskes et al. criticism in Scientific American. Koonin responded fully and justifiably to their comments in the WSJ and other newspapers. Similar personal criticisms of Lomborg’s work often come from so-called “fact checkers” in various media and blogs. The cleverly crafted epithet of “Fact Checker” is deliberately designed to imply some sort of official and definitive say on any polemical subject under debate. However, the fact checkers themselves have been shown to be in error (deliberate or otherwise) on many issues, not just anthropogenic climate change. Again, the BBC is a major culprit here.
I sincerely urge you to examine the actual observational data for as unbiased a view as possible: observational, experimental data and measurements, not empirical computer models that have to make many assumptions. This unfortunately requires access to peer-reviewed journal articles and some degree of technical expertise. I myself I struggle sometimes because, although scientifically literate, I was not formerly trained in climate science. But quarterly reviews that summarise the current state of the subject matter do appear online and are very useful.
Remember, climate science is a complex, multidisciplinary subject that attempts to describe a non-linear, chaotic, time-dependent system in dynamic equilibrium between the oceans and the major land masses. No computer model available today can accurately forecast the rate of increase in global average temperature over the next 100 years and many of them (such as RCP8.5 – now renamed SSP8.5) vastly overstate the temperature increase relative to actual measurements. So let’s stick to the actual observational data.
Start with Goklany – he was a member of the US delegation that originally set up the IPCC and helped develop the first Assessment Report. It’s a decent summary of what the measurements are telling us compared to what the perceptions in government, well financed environmental organisations and the media are claiming.
Steve
The UN secretary general is not a scientist but a global politician who has been found wanting in several other areas – Covid-19 and kow-towing to China is a recent example. The scientists, and especially the agencies, cited in the Guardian are cherry-picked and all have very powerful vested interests in maintaining the rhetoric. Consider this: let’s say you are a very bright, up-and-coming climate scientist with the ink still wet on your PhD thesis. You are lucky enough to be in the running for tenure at a university. There is no way you will go against the flow by publishing observational data that show that many of these climate projections are exaggerated or inaccurate, even if your own data show this to be the case. In fact you would have a very difficult time trying to get your work published in the first place and through the peer review process. The peer review process has become so distorted and skewed over the last forty years it has become a travesty of its noble goals of stewardship of the scientific method for testing hypotheses, repeating the experiment, and testing under different conditions, etc. There are real examples of this resistance: A good one is Dr. Judith Curry, formerly chair of the School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. She faced such resistance and vilification from her colleagues, because she challenged some of the more alarmist viewpoints in the climate community, that she was forced to take early retirement. She is now a blogger like yourself. That is one of many example of sincere hard working scientists who have questioned the current dogma and who have been forced out. Understandably, many of them only come forward to challenge the dogma when they are close to retirement.
For starters, I encourage you to read Steve Koonin’s book “Unsettled”. Much of the data from this book come from AR5 of the IPCC (the book was published before AR6 came out). The work contains many UN official charts but it is not mathematical. Of particular relevance is the section in part I at the very beginning (The Science) that depicts how the hard scientific data get watered down, twisted and politicized in the SPMs (upon which the politicians rely) before making their proclamations. Then the media take over and things get even more alarmist.
After Koonin, you can move on the the work of Bjorn Lomberg at the Copenhagen Consensus.
And another useful source is here, comparing the actual observational climate data to what is perceived in the media and other sources:
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2021/02/Goklany-EmpiricalTrends.pdf
P.S. Stop reading The Guardian ;) Get a more balanced view. And remember, the whole foundation of the Scientific Method, is based on the principles of scepticism, whereby a hypothesis is tested multiple times and under many different conditions and in different laboratories before it is finally accepted as scientific fact.
I hope you’ve also read the damning criticisms of Koonin and Lomborg.
Guy, please stick to what you do best: describing the beauty of the night sky and celestial events.
Has anyone in the environmental activist movement taken the trouble to read at least small sections of AR6 from the IPCC? I’m not referring to the SPM (Summary for Policy Makers), a 90 page document prepared mostly by non-scientists for the politicians. I’m referring to the full technical reports that total over 3,900 pages and distill directly the data from the scientific literature. I actually did a word search for “crisis” in AR6 and it is mentioned once, where it was critical of the alarmist nature from some of the media. It was not referring at all to any dangerous climate change. And yet when the media announcements are made on AR6, you have the secretary general of the UN making the ridiculous statement claiming we have “Code Red for Humanity”.
Retired now, my PhD was in atmospheric photochemistry, so I do know a little of the subject and I have been following the debate (or should I say religious dogma) since 2009 after the Climategate scandal. Is carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas? Absolutely. Are humans contributing to a warming climate? Absolutely. Is it a catastrophe? Absolutely NOT.
The global average temperature is rising at the rate or 0.13-0.15 C per decade. This rate of increase is based on actual physical measurements from satellite data and weather balloons. There is plenty of time to adapt during the next 80 years if we plan long term and stick to those plans. Over the centuries human beings have had an excellent track record of adaptation. There is no panic and our global leaders need to understand this. However, they are all too short-sighted with time horizons up to the next government election cycle.
Do you know what the most powerful greenhouse gas in our atmosphere is? No, it’s not CO2, not even methane….. it’s water vapour. We know this intuitively – clear nights in winter = frosty morning. Cloudy nights in winter = mild conditions in the morning. That’s the greenhouse effect in action. And yet you don’t see the likes of The Guardian or the BBC crying out to reduce or eliminate clouds, do you?
And very little in the media is heard of the beneficial aspects from a mild degree of warming, which is what we are seeing. Rice crop yields in Asia are at an all-time high. The whole planet is 18-20% greener than it was 35-40 years ago (NASA’s own data) and this, despite the burning of the Amazon rainforest by unscrupulous politicians and corrupt landowners. I could continue about the benefits of increased CO2 but I will conclude with a quote from Richard Lindzen, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT, who said over 10 years ago now that:
“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”
That’s very informative and I hope you’re right. But, if so, not only the UN secretary general but many scientists and agencies cited in the Guardian article are wrong. Is it or is it not true that “Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising”?
Guy, I enjoy your blog but please stick to what you do best: describing the beauty of the night sky and celestial events. Has anyone in the environmental activist movement taken the trouble to read at least small sections of AR6 from the IPCC? I’m not referring to the SPM (Summary for Policy Makers), a 90 page document prepared by non-scientists for the politicians. I’m referring to the full technical reports that total over 3,900 pages and summarize directly the data from the scientific literature. I actually did a word search for “crisis” in AR6 and it is mentioned only once, where it was specifically critical of the alarmist nature from some of the media and was not referring at all to any dangerous climate change. And yet when the media announcements are made from the work on AR6, you have the secretary general of the UN making the ridiculous statement claiming we have “Code Red for Humanity”.
Retired now, my PhD was in atmospheric photochemistry, so I do know a little of the subject and I have been following the debate (or should I say religious dogma) since 2009 after the Climategate scandal. Is carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas? Absolutely. Are humans contributing to a warming climate? Absolutely. Is it a catastrophe? Absolutely NOT. The global average temperature is rising at the rate or 0.13-0.15 C per decade. This rate of increase is based on actual physical measurements from satellite data and weather balloons and is from a mix of human-caused climate change and from natural causes. There is plenty of time to adapt during the next 80 years if we plan for the long term and stick to those plans. Over the centuries human beings have had an excellent track record of adaptation. There is no panic and our global leaders need to understand this. However, they are all too short-sighted with time horizons up to the next election cycle.
Do you know what the most powerful greenhouse gas in our atmosphere is? No, it’s not CO2, not even methane….. it’s water vapour. We know this intuitively – clear nights in winter = frosty morning. Cloudy nights in winter = mild conditions in the morning. That’s the greenhouse effect in action. And yet you don’t see the likes of The Guardian or the BBC crying out to ban clouds, do you? And very little in the media is heard of the beneficial aspects of a mild degree of warming, which is what we are seeing. Rice crop yields in Asia are at an all time high. The whole planet is 18-20% greener than it was 35-40 years ago (NASA’s own data); and this, despite the burning of the Amazon rainforest by unscrupulous politicians and corrupt landowners. I could continue about the benefits of increased CO2 but I will conclude with a quote from Richard Lindzen, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT, who said over 10 years ago now that:
“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”
Spoken like a true socialist Guy. What right does any government have to take 80% of what a company makes in profit. Those companies took the risk to invest in materials and people to find that oil, bring it out of the ground, process it, and use it to make global economies thrive. Do you think any company would stand for that? Or their shareholders? I’d close my doors sooner than give that to any government. It’s a complex issue to be sure, but confiscatory taxation doesn’t help.
The reason why BP earned $8.52 billion and $8.32 billion PROFITS in the last two quarter-years is not that they took investment or exploration risks or worked hard: it was that energy prices soared because of Russia’s war and its chokehold on natural gas. The fossil fuel companies exploit the situation. That is the kind of reason by windfall tax is being called for.
Hi Guy, being a dark sky preservation supporter, one low hanging fruit is light pollution sources. It’s all wasted energy. Changing to LEDs does nothing if we let them lit all night long and put up 3x more because energy is cheap and LEDs save energy (right?). Govts can do stuff but it is up to all people to not use, to conserve, to not be wasteful. Will people do that without being hogtied and chained up by laws? Will companies do the right thing without regulation? Can society be responsible? Why should we, the people who are using all the resource, not be able to just turn the switch off? We each need to take responsibility for the mess.
Didn’t Al Gore say that the poles were going to be melted by 2013, or something like? See here: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-climate-change-idUSL1N2RV0K6 The article says of Gore that he did misrepresent the data, even if he did not make that specific “prediction”. oi vey!
Just for the record—I do not at present own a car—but if someone were to throw my car into the river–they would be, reported to the NYPD.
The defacement of museum exhibits IS anti civilizational, as is destruction of people’s personal property.
Anyone who knows basic planetology or meteorology is well aware of the dangers of carbon emission—(SEE VENUS for an extreme example) But, if we want to be serious about reducing such we should be less fearful of nuclear power, plant more trees, and find ways to lessen emissions by anything that uses fossil fuels—(no use switching to electric cars if the production of electricity is coal based). Research on carbon sequestration needs to be expanded.
And by a sleigh of hand we worry about a few thousand rich people flying around in a few thousand private jets when there must be well over a billion cars on the planet.