The CO2 Climate Derangement Syndrome

Written by Dr Norman Page on October 9, 2019. Posted in Current News

A very large majority of establishment academic climate scientists have succumbed to a virulent infectious disease – the CO2 Derangement Syndrome. Those afflicted  by this syndrome  present with a spectrum of symptoms .

The first is an almost total inability to recognize the most obvious Millennial and 60 year  emergent patterns which are trivially obvious in solar activity and global temperature data.

This causes the  natural  climate cycle variability to appear frightening and emotionally overwhelming. Critical thinking capacity is badly degraded. The delusionary world inhabited by the eco-left establishment activist elite is epitomized by Harvard’s Naomi Oreskes  science-based fiction, ”

The Collapse of Western-Civilization: A View from the Future” Oreskes and Conway imagine a world devastated by climate change.  Intellectual hubris, confirmation bias, group think and a need to feel at once powerful and at the same time morally self-righteous caused those worst affected to convince themselves, politicians, governments, the politically correct chattering classes and almost the entire UK and US media that anthropogenic CO2 was the main climate driver.

This led governments to introduce policies which have wasted trillions of dollars in a quixotic and futile  attempt to control earth’s temperature by reducing CO2 emissions.

The origins of this disease can be traced to Ehrlich’s 1968 book “The Population Bomb”. He said:

“ In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate” 

Apocalyptic forecasts  are used as the main drivers of demands for action and for enormous investments such as those in the new  IPCC SR1.5 report and in the work of Nordhaus who advocates a carbon tax .Nordhaus is quoted in the NYT as saying:

  “If we start moving very swiftly in the next 20 years, we might able to avoid 2 degrees, but if we don’t do that, we’re in for changes in the Earth’s system that we can’t begin to understand in depth. Warming of 4, 5, 6 degrees will bring changes we don’t understand because it’s outside the range of human experience in the last 100,000 to 200,000 years.”

Nordhaus’ science and economics basis is  discussed in “Projections and Uncertainties about Climate Change in an Era of Minimal Climate Policies”  https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20170046
which states:

“The climate module has been revised to reflect recent earth system models. The equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is based on the analysis of Olsen et al. (2012).The reasons for using this approach are provided in Gillingham et al. (2018). The final estimate is a mean warming of 3.1°C for an equilibrium CO2 doubling. The transient climate sensitivity or TCS (sometimes called the transient climate response) is adjusted to correspond to models with an ECS of 3.1°C, which produces a TCS of 1.7°C”

IPCCSR1.5 says:

“C2. Pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems (high confidence). These systems transitions are unprecedented in terms of scale, but not necessarily in terms of speed, and imply deep emissions reductions in all sectors, a wide portfolio of mitigation options and a significant upscaling of investments in those options (medium confidence)………..
C2.6 Total annual average energy-related mitigation investment for the period 2015 to 2050 in
pathways limiting warming to 1.5°C is estimated to be around 900 billion USD2015 (range of 180
billion to 1800 billion USD2015 across six models17). This corresponds to total annual average
energy supply investments of 1600 to 3800 billion USD2015 and total annual average energy demand investments of 700 to 1000 billion USD2015 for the period 2015 to 2050, and an increase
in total energy-related investments of about 12% (range of 3% to 23%) in 1.5°C pathways relative
to 2°C pathways. Average annual investment in low-carbon energy technologies and energy
efficiency are upscaled by roughly a factor of five (range of factor of 4 to 5) by 2050 compared to
2015 (medium confidence).”

Those proselytizing  the warming scenario are closely following the UNFCCC Agenda 21 political plan of action. Bernie Sanders says :

” Climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet. The debate is over, and the scientific jury is in: global climate change is real, it is caused mainly by emissions released from burning fossil fuels and it poses a catastrophic threat to the long-term longevity of our planet. If we do nothing, the planet will heat up five to ten degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. That would cause enough sea level rise from melting glaciers to put cities like New York and Miami underwater – along with more frequent asthma attacks, higher food prices, insufficient drinking water and more infectious diseases.”

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed taxing the wealthy as high as 70% to fund a climate change plan she’s pushing called the “Green New Deal.” She also says “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change”

Fortunately, Reality is finally beginning to intrude upon the dangerous global warming meme.

“GCMs are not fit for the purpose of attributing the causes of 20th century warming or for predicting global or regional climate change on time scales of decades to centuries, with any high level of confidence. By extension, GCMs are not fit for the purpose of justifying political policies to fundamentally alter world social, economic and energy
systems…..”

“The severe discrepancy between observations and modeled predictions……further confirms….that the current climate models have significantly exaggerated the anthropogenic greenhouse warming effect”

“However, the solar variability is not negligible in comparison with the energy imbalance that drives global temperature change. Therefore, because of the combination of the strong 2016 El Niño and the phase of the solar cycle, it is plausible, if not likely, that the next 10 years of global temperature change will leave an impression of a ‘global warming hiatus’.

” This paper argued that the methods used by the establishment climate science community are not fit for purpose and that a new forecasting paradigm should be adopted.”

PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. 

Please DONATE TODAY To Help Our Non-Profit Mission To Defend The Scientific Method.

Trackback from your site.