Do We Really Have A Decade Left To Solve Climate Change?
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Wise alecks on social media noted with amusement how Beto O’Rourke recently claimed humans had only ten years to act on climate change, thus one-upping Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who had previously gone out on a limb by putting the deadline at twelve years.
Snark aside, it’s important to point out that the “consensus science” as codified, for example, in the periodic reports from the United Nations do not support such a cliff-hanger mentality at all.
Our Political Figures Ignore the IPCC
The quickest way to make this point is to reproduce something I highlighted several years ago in an IER post where I caught Paul Krugman just making up stuff about climate change. Specifically, the following table comes from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the AR5 (Table SPM.2):
Source: IPCC AR5, Working Group III, Summary for Policymakers
To make it easier to read, I’ll excerpt the relevant left and right portions of the table below:
SOURCE: Adapted from IPCC AR5, Working Group III, Summary for Policymakers, Table SPM.2
There’s a lot of information in the table, but let me summarize the important elements vis-à-vis the recent claims from O’Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez. The beige cells in the adapted table above show the percentage increases in the total (undiscounted) mitigation costs necessary to achieve the far-left (white cells) atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in the year 2100, for the years 2030-2050 and also for 2050-2100, for two different scenarios of total emissions (either below 55 gigatons of CO2-equivalent, or above).
In other words, the beige cells show us how much a delay of government action through the year 2030 will increase the cost necessary to achieve the specified atmospheric concentrations for the year 2100 (white cells). Specifically, the beige cells show that by “doing nothing” about climate change until the year 2030, even in a high-emission baseline scenario, the IPCC’s best guess of the cost of achieving the aggressive outcome rises by 44 percent in the years 2030-2050 and 37 percent in the years 2050-2100.
Now to be sure, the rhetorical point of the above table in the AR5 was to encourage support for climate mitigation policies. The people who put together this table for policymakers wanted to show, “Hey, since we’re obviously going to have to deal with climate change eventually, we might as well get going, because the longer we delay, the more expensive it will be.”
IPCC: An Inconvenient Truth
My modest point here, however, is to show that this table now poses an awkward stumbling block for those—like O’Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez—trying to scare people into supporting ludicrously expensive and aggressive proposals to “fight climate change.” If O’Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez were anywhere close to being correct when issuing their ever-shrinking windows for action, then in the IPCC table above, the beige cells should have all had infinity signs, and in a footnote it would explain: “If we wait until 2030 to begin mitigation efforts, we will all die.”
But that’s not what the UN report told us. Instead, it reported that yes, the costs of achieving various climate targets (as measured by atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in the year 2100) would be higher due to delay, but even in a pessimistic scenario, the best-guess of the cost increase was 44 percent.
Conclusion
In this post, I highlighted one particular table from the most recent UN report on the science of climate change in order to show just how baseless are the recent claims that humans have x years to act on climate change. Over at Reason, Ronald Bailey marshals more evidence—again, from the very “consensus science” documents we are supposed to rely on—to show that these claims are nonsense.
This whole episode is yet another example demonstrating the farce of the climate change policy debate. Whenever a critic disagrees with the most radical proposals that would—according to their own proponents—transform Western society, the critic is berated as a science denier. And yet, even a cursory examination of the actual technical reports shows that the prophets of doom are the ones who are spouting forth unsupported claims.
Read more at www.instituteforenergyresearch.org
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Squidly
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Sorry, but every time I hear phrases like “achieving various climate targets” I just have to bust out laughing my rear end off .. talk about stupid. You can’t even achieve general social stability, curtail poverty, keep our rivers and oceans clean, and you believe you can “achieving various climate targets” ?? .. who the hell are these stupid clowns? .. worse yet, who are the stupid morons that would believe a single word of this drivel?
OMG! .. we truly live in a time of idiocracy!
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tom0mason
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Hopefully we’ll reach 600ppm sooner than 2030 and then everyone will see it makes no darn difference except greening up the planet at a faster rate. As the world cools we’ll need more help in growing our crops.
Bring on the CO2 increases I say, for if anyone was truly worried about it then actions against the Chinese and the Indian governments would be front and center of the whole issue. No, no-one is serious about it, what the UN-IPCC is serious about is bringing about the collapse of capitalism so it can install the UN as a world government and their numpties at the World Bank as their financiers.
Rising atmospheric CO2 is good for the planet, CO2 at the current and projected levels is excellent news for making it easier to grow the food for ourselves, the livestock we need and for the rest of nature.
No doubt some idiot will bring up ocean acidification — well blockheads there is NO evidence that it could happen. For what gets dissolved into the oceans mainly depends on changes in atmospheric pressure and seawater temperature and NOT the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
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And just think, in those sealed up buildings and vehicles we all live, work, and travel within the CO2 levels are well above the outside atmospheric of 410ppm (a piffling low amount), and are probably closer to 1% or even higher.
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John Doran
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The Medieval , Roman & Minoan Warm Periods were all prosperous times of good crops: William The Conqueror’s Domesday book, 1086 AD, records grapes growing up by Hadrian’s wall, the England/Scotland border.
A few inebriated Jocks may well have caused some local problems for those nice Romans, but they did not constitute a global catastrophe & we did not all fry.
We are being propagandised to fear a little warming & this is ridiculous: most of the last 10,000 years has been warmer than now. We survived & have prospered.
The fraud factory UN IPCC has been set up to look only at man-made causes of climate change: its Charter demands this.
This is ridiculous: Earth has been in & out of Ice Ages for at least 600,000,000 years & man’s CO2 contributions can only theoretically have had any effect since 1950.
The fraud factory UN IPCC picks an arbitrary temperature out of thin air & recommends cutting CO2 to cut temperatures. This is ridiculous: there is zero sound science to demonstrate this cause & effect relationship.
Lunatic politicians take the UN IPCC fraud factory foolishness & invent thoroughly ridiculous time limits for climate catastrophe. This is totally ridiculous & one hopes these double dim Democrats are committing electoral suicide as the triple thick “Greens” are doing in Canada & Australia.
Dr. Tim Ball, climatologist, reveals the 1%s motivations behind this global fraud:
1) A Totalitarian World Govt.
2) A Vast depopulation. (95%?)
3) Deindustrialisation. ( The demonisation of CO2)
His 121 page 2016 handbook names names: the bent financiers, bent “scientists” & bent politicians. A must read.
Human Caused Global Warming The Biggest Deception In History
These motives are confirmed from the mouths of the main protagonists:
http://www.c3headlines.com
Click on Quotes.
Another great read is geology Prof. Ian Plimer’s considerable work of scholarship: Heaven and Earth Global Warming: The Missing Science
2012, with 500 + pages, 2000 + refs to peer-reviewed papers etc & including a most valuable chapter on history.
JD.
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Bevan Dockery
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As a retired geophysicist, I have spent the past few years applying my knowledge and experience to studying the CO2 induced global warming/climate change proposition. My analysis of atmospheric temperature and CO2 concentration data has shown that:
1. Temperature is independent of CO2 concentration.
2. CO2 concentration is dependent on the climate with the annual rate of change of CO2 having a statistically significant correlation with the temperature.
3. Spectral analysis of both temperature and CO2 rate of change produce practically identical spectra with periodicities which may relate to the ever changing configuration of the Solar System. There is nothing to indicate an anthropogenic effect.
4. The seasonal variation in CO2 concentration far exceeds the annual increment for the Northern Hemisphere due to the far greater land area, that is, far greater biomass to generate and absorb CO2. This indicates that most of the atmospheric CO2 may be derived from life forms.
For detailed results see https://www.climateauditor.com
To date I have not seen anything in the data to support the UN IPCC propositions and thus agree with the above comments that the UN is promoting the greatest fraud in history. I look at the photograph at the beginning of the article are wonder how is it that all of these people can knowingly indulge in this massive fraud?
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Toto's fan
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Hi Bevan,
In answer to your question, the final sentence of your worthy comments.
All of these people can knowingly indulge because of the flock of sheep phenomenon Known as group think.
Some of them will not be aware of their misrepresentations but the most common anomaly from people who are supposedly serving others is the game of power and control.
Of course if one of them raised the necessary questions that individual would become persona non grata and become a forgotten moment of history. Ego takes precedence over humility.
Even within a volunteer fire brigade there are games of power and control but much less common because the serving of others takes priority.
Best wishes
The fanatic.
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Toto's Fan
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System Error. Files Corrupted. Attempting Reboot.
The error in my above comment is ego over humility. People with a robust ego can still serve with integrity and scrupulousness.
Prestige is a contributor to games of power and control.
As many readers know, an antidote to group think is the participant who asks the “dumb Question” whilst knowing the answer themselves but asks the question on behalf of those on who do not know the answer and lack the courage to maintain fidelity to integrity.
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