I’m afraid so, we’ve yet another of these “scientific” reports insisting that we’re all going to end up boiling Flipper in the remains of the last ice floe. Entire, complete and gargling nonsense of course but they will keep repeating these claims.
Earth’s climate could warm by as much as 4 degrees Celsius before the end of the 21st century, far surpassing temperatures hoped to be avoided under the Paris Agreement, according to a new study.
No, it won’t. This is garbage. It’s garbage because:
While the Paris Agreement aims to prevent an increase of 2 degrees, a new analysis suggests temperatures could be double that within the next 50 to 80 years if we do not curb emissions.
We are curbing emissions therefore it’s not going to happen, is it? In more detail, the paper is here:
Using a set of numerical experiments from 39 CMIP5 climate models, we project the emergence time for 4◦C global warming with respect to pre-industrial levels and associated climate changes under the RCP8.5 greenhouse gas concentration scenario.
Nothing in that, taken individually, is incorrect. Taken as a whole it’s a lie. Hmm, OK, a statement deliberately designed to mislead then.
The point being that there’s absolutely no way at all that RCP 8.5 is going to happen. For if it were to happen then we’d need the following things to have happened.
We would need to reverse globalisation. Return to a much more regional and localised economy where technological dispersion slows markedly. We would also need to curb, substantially, economic growth. It would be necessary for the fall in fertility rates to go into reverse. Women would need to start having more children as the society around them becomes richer. Not something we’ve ever seen in any portion of human history ever.
We’d also need to be using more coal. Not just a larger economy using more coal, but humanity gouging more of it out as a portion of total energy supply. We would need to have solar energy as expensive as it was 40 years ago – no, really, that is so. We’d need to entirely ignore all that we’ve gone these recent decades in making renewables cheaper.
Basically, we’d need to entirely ignore all technological development since 1980 or so.
It’s simply not going to happen. The basic truth about climate change – within the boundaries of what is that accepted science on the subject – is that RCP 8.5 just isn’t gonna happen. We’re anywhere between RCP 2.6 and 6.0 depending upon how you want to forecast future technological adoption. But we know, absolutely, that we’ve already done enough to avoid 8.5.
Thus warnings based upon RCP 8.5 are misleading enough for us to call them lies, aren’t they?
And we still don’t know if the result of all our remediation isn’t merely to accelerate the onset of the next Ice Age by a few years.
Given that the other side is lying, Tim, can we drop the idea of a Carbon Tax as a gentler and more mature way to reach halfway toward them?
We’ve already done enough to avoid catastrophic climate change, he says.
Even if every nation keeps its Paris pledges, the projected reduction in global temperatures will be 0.048°C by 2030 and a whole 0.17°C by 2100.
It’s always funny when tuberous people who know nothing about economics try to lecture us on economics. It’s a bit sad when otherwise knowledgeable people try to lecture us on climate change when they know next to nothing about climate change.
Again, as there is no unpopulated “control” Earth for comparisons, no one knows anything about climate change (or at least about what the causes are and in what amounts).
1. All we need to say something about the impact of greenhouse gases on global temperatures is thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, physics which is incredibly well understood and has been for over 100 years. It is so simple and clear from this physics that more greenhouse gases leads to warming. 2. The point of climate models is to use our (very good) understanding of the physics of small processes ( such as how water and air flows and heats up) to make more complex predictions about the climate than we can get from 1. Climate models as such CAN give… Read more »
1. I don’t think I would accept the output of 39 climate models, averaged. If they all say different things only one or fewer can be right. Averaging that one (whichever it is) with all the wrong ones can’t improve the accuracy of the result.
2. When people try to con me in one aspect of their activist aim, that tells me they are activists. Science has nothing to do with it, they are ready to cheat so they should not be trusted on anything.
1. I don’t think I would accept the output of 39 climate models, averaged. If they all say different things only one or fewer can be right. Averaging that one (whichever it is) with all the wrong ones can’t improve the accuracy of the result.
2. When people try to con me in one aspect of their activist aim, that tells me they are activists. Science has nothing to do with it, they are ready to cheat so they should not be trusted on anything.
1. The scientific article (and even the Mail’s article) show very clearly what the individual climate models say, and they are all extremely consistent.
And we still don’t know if the result of all our remediation isn’t merely to accelerate the onset of the next Ice Age by a few years.
Given that the other side is lying, Tim, can we drop the idea of a Carbon Tax as a gentler and more mature way to reach halfway toward them?
Tim – you’re quoting from a “Mail online” article and using their interpretation of a very credible scientific report to discredit the work of the scientific community. This is very bad practice. The scientific article is totally clear in what it says – if we do not continue to mitigate emissions and end up on with concentrations along the RCP8.5 pathway then our best estimates of climate change suggest that warming could be as much as 4C by the end of the century. This is totally logical and empirically backed up. What the “Mail online” happens to say about it… Read more »
And there I’m afraid you’re spouting bollocks. We’re not on RCP 8.5 and were never likely to be. Go back and look at the assumptions made in that pathway. That we run out of conventional oil and gas and have to turn to coal as we don’t develop renewables. That was never what was going to happen and isn’t what is happening. We invented fracking, recall, and so we are tapping the unconventional oils and gas and therefore are not turning to ever more coal. Another way to say the same thing is that we’ve already done all the work… Read more »