Category: Climate Change

Posted on by Tim Worstall

Where Michael Mann Goes Wrong About Climate Change

Michael Mann hasn’t grasped the simplest and most basic point about climate change yet:

Mann told the Observer that although flat rejection of global warming was becoming increasingly hard to maintain in the face of mounting evidence, this did not mean climate change deniers were giving up the fight.

“First of all, there is an attempt being made by them to deflect attention away from finding policy solutions to global warming towards promoting individual behaviour changes that affect people’s diets, travel choices and other personal behaviour,” said Mann.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Why Marty Weitzman Was Wrong About Climate Change’s Fat Tail

This comes into that – all too large – class of things I’d not want to have to explain myself but am willing to accept is being properly explained by another.

You know, on the basis that I don’t understand the method by which the point is being made, only the conclusion.

But, Marty Weitzman told us that there’s a fat tail to the probability of calamitous climate change. The implication of this being that we should and must do much more than we were thinking we had to.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Today’s Climate Change Argle Bargle

Over in Bioscience we’ve the latest insistence that we’ve all got to return to our wattle and daub huts and live, happily ever after, as medieval peasants.

More than 11,000 scientists around the world have declared a climate emergency, warning of “untold suffering” without urgent action.

The declaration is based on analysis of more than 40 years of publicly available data covering a range of measures from energy use to deforestation and carbon emissions.

Scientists from the University of Sydney, Australia, Oregon State University and Tufts University in the US and the University of Cape Town in South Africa are joined in the warning by 11,000 signatories from 153 countries including the UK.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Today’s Climate Change Nonsense

We have subcontracted out this to Bjorn Lomborg:

Go read the whole thread. Or here.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Labour’s Insulate Every House Idea Won’t Work – Most Already Are

From our Swindon Correspondent:

Labour has drawn up plans for what it claims would be the biggest overhaul of housing since the second world war, with a plan to install loft insulation, double glazing and renewable technologies in almost all of the UK’s 27m homes.

The party says that the Warm Homes for All scheme will create 450,000 jobs over the next decade. Under the plans, low-income households would be able to apply for a grant, paying no upfront costs.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Extinction Rebellion Should Shut Up And Go Home.

It’s time someone explained to St Greta and Extinction Rebellion that they are simply wrong about the world we inhabit. No, this is not an attempt to deny climate change. Nor to say that the science underlying it is all wet. I have my doubts about a lot of it, can point to gross errors in what is being said and how that scientific work is being done. Hell, I was once challenged by Michael Mann to do better science than was contained in a Jim Hansen paper, which I did and Mann went very quiet*.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Climate Change Scientists Say Spend More On Climate Scientists

This is one of those shocking events that we really never do see. A group of people arguing, in public, that we really should all be spending more on this group of people.

Sure, of course they dress it up in a little more reasoning than that. But that surface gloss doesn’t change the underlying demand – give us your money!

The Telegraph tries to have fun with it:

Academics have demanded career breaks so they can save the planet from climate change as they warn that “humanity is on a precipice”.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Munich’s Oktoberfest Does Not Have Excessive Methane Emissions

Another example of failing to grasp the “compared to what?” point here. Apparently Munich’s Oktoberfest has some horrible amount of methane emissions. Clearly, drinking beer and singing along to Ooompah Bands will have to be stopped in the name of saving Gaia. Or, alternatively, this is nonsense on lederhosen clad stilts:

For the millions of people who descend on Munich for the annual bash, Oktoberfest is a celebration of beer, bands and bratwurst.

But as the dust settles for another year on the world’s largest folk festival, and die Bierleichen (“beer corpses”) return to the land of the living, environmental scientists have released the first analysis of methane emissions from the 16-day party.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

The Club Of Rome Really Are Idiots, Aren’t They?

But then if all you’ve got is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. In their emergency report on the emergency that is emergency climate change they tell us that:

Ensure greater materials efficiency and circularity by 2025
• Substantially reduce the impact of basic materials,
e.g. steel, cement, aluminum and plastics, from a rate
of almost 20% of carbon emissions globally today, to
close to net zero.
• Promote innovation, material substitution, energy
efficiency, renewable energy supply and circular material
flows to more than halve GHG emissions.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Electricity Blackouts, Price Caps, No Coal and Renewables

Just a little thought really, sparked by this placing of stories on the Telegraph’s website:

Electricity problems

What could the connection be?

Possibly that price caps discourage investment in a sector. That planning the insistence upon no coal and the use of renewables leads to instability in supply – and thus frequency – both of which lead to the risk of blackouts.

Aren’t we all so lucky that the authorities have taken no notice whatsoever of the settled science on climate change and decided to solve the problem by having a carbon tax.…

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