With this climate change thing it’s worth, just occasionally, going back to look at what the established and agreed climate science actually tells us. You know, the IPCC and all that, the evidence that leads to COP 21, Paris Agreements and such blather.
So, to reintroduce Representative Concentration Pathways. RCP lower number is better for climate change than RCP higher number. RCP 8.5 means we end up broiling Flipper in the fumes of the last ice floe. RCP 2.6 means we’re done and dusted, we’ve beaten the problem and no worries, she’ll be right.
Hmm:
So, the one we want is RCP 2.6. The she’ll be right option. As you can see this asks for something akin to the low UN estimate of population size. I happen to think that’s easy for the UN has been overestimating population growth for a long time now. They continually underestimate the impact upon fertility of rising incomes. Hmm, OK, but that’s arguable.
The rest of it isn’t. Energy consumption in total grows not that much. This is achieved by being more efficient in our energy consumption – less energy per unit of GDP that is. Something we’ve been doing this past couple of centuries rather well. It does require that we pretty much ditch the oil and coal, true. That’s not too, too, difficult.
But now to the biggie. Does this mean that we’ve got to ditch economic growth? No, not the new, real and improved definitions, those old ones of flat out GDP growth? Well, as you can see, no. In fact, RCP 2.6, the lowest emissions path, the she’ll be right emissions path, leads to greater economic growth by that old GDP measure.
The why should be obvious, economic growth is doing things more efficiently, using fewer resources to get ‘er done, through advancing production technology. What are we saying we need to do to get to RCP 2.6? Using fewer resources to get ‘er done, through advancing production technology.
We got the same outcome in the older, pre-AR5 scenarios, A1T the largest economy but using non-fossil fuels worked, A1FI, the largest economy with lots of fossil fuels didn’t.
Do note this is the settled climate science. These are the models from which everything else – absolutely everything else – is worked out. You can’t reject these models without rejecting everything that is worked out either.
So, the Senior Lecturer at Islington Technical College – and the author and inventor of the Green New Deal to hear him talk – tells us that:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Second, I am troubled by a focus on restoring economic growth which is wholly incompatible with the climate goals.[/perfectpullquote]Man’s a fathead, isn’t he? Entirely and completely ignorant of the very basics of the subject he wishes to discuss. Decent economic growth is a precondition of beating climate change. The less growth we have – of the right, non fossil fuel powered kind of course – the more we’ll end up broiling Flipper.
Economic growth – of that right, non-fossil fuel kind – is the solution to climate change. Meaning that the Fat Controller, and Extinction Rebellion, are simply wrong – factually incorrect – about having to reduce consumption or growth to beat climate change.
Why is it that people refuse to learn the accepted science of climate change?
Why is it that people refuse to learn the accepted science of climate change?
Because they’re not really interested in stopping ‘climate change’ (whatever that might mean), they want to stop capitalism.
Plus it’s about the feelz not the thinkz.
Every tim Tim feels obliged to accept this farrago of crap for the sake of argument, I feel obliged to comment that it is a farrago of crap. Just one thing regarding the particular content here, those graphs. Who tested the models? Who verified or validated them as one might do for any commercial software app? Why do the climate folks present results as an average of an ensemble of models when some of the contributors to that average are blatantly wrong and always have been? Yes, Canadian model, I mean you.
Climate models have the equivalent of Papal Infallibility, a dogma declared by the clergy of the faith.
Or.. you could just look at the Global Mean Temperature Anomaly record which flatlined after 1996 and shows the predicted increase versus CO2 emissions has failed to materialise. Or… you could look at the historic meteorological data which shows no trends away from normal variation that would indicate ‘climate change’, and indeed the IPCC’s own report which confirms this. Then there is the aggregate Polar ice mass which is constant, not melting, and more Arctic Summer sea ice than in 2007 when its disappearance by 2013 was asserted. Or… you could look at the much longer temperature record and note… Read more »
As a counter point, it’s not temperature per say they are worried about (if I can put it that way). It’s the runaway effect on temperature if we reach a tipping point of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
Of course, there is no proof this will happen (no, Venus isn’t the same) so in the end it doesn’t make any difference to the overall argument.
That policies supposedly designed to combat climate change are wrong headed is no surprise, but what if the starting point is as misdirected as the alleged solution?
The assumption that rising CO2 is a problem under pins policy approaches, however if these assumptions are fallacies then policies derived from them can only ever have negative impacts.
If Dr. Patrick Moore and Co. are correct that we and the planet in general will benefit greatly from higher CO2 levels, then the Green New Deal doesn’t look much better than a 1930s genocidal tract.
‘Oxford has warmed by 1.72°C (3.10°F) over the last 200 years’ — says so here: https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Book-Review-Oxford-Weather-and-Climate-1767