We’ve another climate change report out from the Federal Government. This is the one that Congress asks the executive to prepare every four years. And it’s this which is driving the headlines of another 3 degree warming by 2100 and so on. Yes, Aiee! We All Die!
Sadly, this report is wrong. Anyone believing this more worrying predictions made will also be wrong. For there’s an error in the report itself. And even more of an error in the reporting about the report. The error being they’re simply using the wrong prediction about the future as the basis for their work.
Do note what I am not saying. I am not saying that climate change is all a crock. Nor am I trying to insist that it’s not us humans causing it, that climate changes all the time, nor even that what the Hell who likes cold winters anyway? No, I’m making a simple statement of fact here. The report is using the wrong prediction about the future.
But that’s not going to stop everyone having conniption fits:
The United States already warmed on average 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century and will warm at least 3 more degrees by 2100 unless fossil fuel use is dramatically curtailed, scientists from more than a dozen federal agencies concluded in their latest in-depth assessment.
The 13-agency consensus, authored by more than 300 researchers, found in the second volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment makes it clear the world is barreling toward catastrophic ― perhaps irreversible ― climate change. The report concluded that warming “could increase by 9°F (5°C) or more by the end of this century” without significant emissions reductions.
Nope, it isn’t:
The government quietly dropped a sweeping report on Friday that found the fingerprints of climate change on everything from infrastructure to the economy and warned that the world is already experiencing the effects, with more damage to come.
The timing of the report’s publication—at 2 p.m. ET on the Friday after Thanksgiving—was viewed by critics as a possible maneuver by the Trump administration to sidestep national attention on the crisis.
It’s not a crisis, it’s a chronic problem. But still, we do need to understand what is being done in this report. The mistake is in their choice of scenarios to study:
USGCRP further decided that NCA4 would focus primarily on RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 for framing purposes,
That’s the mistake.
In simple terms we’ve a number of guesses – sure, informed, people have tried hard but they’re guesses – about what the rest of the century is going to be like. How rich will everyone be, what sort of technology will they be using and how many of those people will there be? We need these three so that we can work out what emissions are going to be. For, obviously enough, we’re saying that emissions cause the climate change therefore we need to know how many emissions to work out how much climate change.
Again, obviously enough, to get to this scenario we need to have a pathway – the way that global economy is going to develop over this time. We’ve got a number of these, older ones from the SRES, newer “RCPs”. And they’re using RCP 8.5 as their top end here. Their middle estimate includes RCP 8.5 as a possible pathway and then applies a probability to it actually happening.
Here’s the thing, RCP 8.5 isn’t going to happen. Just won’t. Because we’ve already taken the actions which mean that it won’t.
RCP 8.5 assumes that we never do make solar PV cheap. That we never build windmill farms. That we don’t curtail our use of coal. In fact, it assumes that we have more people than we’re going to using more coal for a greater portion of energy needs than humanity ever has done. Now look around the world. Coal companies going bust left and right, the plains packed with PV, the mountains sprouting birdchoppers – RCP 8.5 just isn’t going to happen. Never. The probability of it doing so is zero. We’ve already done the work to make sure that it doesn’t happen.
Yet here we have a report assuming that it will – to get those top end figures – or that it might to get the medium ones. That’s a mistake, an error.
In simpler terms the report from the Feds is assuming that we’ll never do anything about climate change. That’s what the RCP 8.5 pathway means. Yet we’ve already done quite a lot about climate change so RCP 8.5 will never happen. To assume it will is therefore an error.
Note again that this is nothing at all to do with the wider climate change debate. RCP 8.5 will not happen therefore any report assuming it will or might is wrong. Be useful if the people feeding us climate change reports woke up to this simple fact, no?
The language we use matters - it provides clarity to our own thoughts and enables…
It is now generally acknowledged that the structure of the NHS needs to be overhauled…
In the film Apollo 13, a loss of oxygen causes the crew to start inadvertently…
There's an idea out there which seems intuitive but then so many ideas do seem…
When we think about the darkly opaque goals of modern central bankers as they relate…
As the papers recently filled with the distressing images of desperate souls looking to escape…
View Comments
Here's a rule of thumb. Whenever you see a prediction of disaster, whether this, or 'crashing out', or plastic in the ocean, or acid rain, or the coming ice age, it's bollocks. Someone has an agenda which relies on you being scared. It's always bollocks. Always ask cui bono, always always always subject their claims to the highest possible standard of due diligence. Because it's bollocks.
The mistake is believing that future climate can be predicted with any certainty and not understanding (it is in the IPCC reports) that the further into the future the prediction is made, the greater the margin of error to the point of being meaningless.
Trying to ‘prevent’ or modify something which you cannot know is futile, crass and self-deception... and expensive.
With respect to global warming, nobody can produce any data to show how much, if any, is caused by Human activity, and how much natural. And that means it is impossible to attribute change in climate to one or the other either, therefore how can anyone assess what must be done, to what degree or monitor effect?
We do however know that all the global warming/cooling and change to climate - much of it quite severe - for the last 4,5 billion years was not caused by Humans and during times when atmospheric CO2 concentration was many multiples of current level. I wonder...
Yes - and it's even worse than that, because the geophysical climate predictions( which are already poorly understood) are based on anthropic CO2 generation that is scaled up for population and economic growth, which are little better than a wet finger in the air guess.
...or a pilot of a plane in flight trying to find out which way the wind is blowing by sucking his/her/xer/ver/zer finger and sticking it out the cockpit window.
A genuine environmental economist (Bjorn Lomborg) has already calculated (and he, like Tim, does not understand that a chaotic non-linear system cannot be modeled) that if all the Paris pledges were to be honoured to the last metric ton, it would make a difference of a couple of tenths of a degree Celcius in 2100. The trillions so far spent on the War on Carbon will have no measurable effect at all. Thus Worstall's Fallacy comes back to bite its creator.
And these are the people you're advocating manage a Carbon Tax, Tim?
Jeez...
...Do note what I am not saying. I am not saying that climate change is all a crock....
I stopped reading your argument there. Because climate change IS a crock - a provable crock. The errors you have found are repeated at all levels of the exercise, and the whole edifice has failed. That is why they are having to make up stories and assumptions to pretend that it is still a problem.
By the way, has anyone pointed out that 'warming' throughout the last century was the recovery from the Little Ice Age? Thought not. The implication of worrying about that warming is that the activists want to plunge us back into the LIA and have thousands die....
A technology advance that will reduce emissions by more than a hundred Paris compacts. The linear extrapolation beloved of climate alarmists ignores such possibilities. http://euanmearns.com/every-big-bit-helps/#more-22657
Shadeburst, I wondered what had happened to the Brayton cycle. Now this is a thing we should do anyway whether we believe in CAGW or not, because increased efficiency is always better.
Oh, and the headline is wrong, this is no mistake it is an attempt to fool people who just read the summary and don't understand the terminology.