Climate Forecast Headline Predictions
- 1967 Salt Lake Tribune: Dire Famine Forecast by 1975, Already Too Late
- 1969 NYT: “Unless we are extremely lucky, everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years. The situation will get worse unless we change our behavior.“
- 1970 Boston Globe: Scientist Predicts New Ice Age by 21st Century said James P. Lodge, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
- 1971 Washington Post: Disastrous New Ice Age Coming says S.I. Rasool at NASA.
- 1972 Brown University Letter to President Nixon: Warning on Global Cooling
- 1974 The Guardian: Space Satellites Show Ice Age Coming Fast
- 1974 Time Magazine: Another Ice Age “Telling signs everywhere. Since the 1940s mean global temperatures have dropped 2.7 degrees F.”
- 1974 “Ozone Depletion a Great Peril to Life” University of Michigan Scientist
- 1976 NYT The Cooling: University of Wisconsin climatologist Stephen Schneider laments about the “deaf ear his warnings received.”
- 1988 Agence France Press: Maldives will be Completely Under Water in 30 Years.
- 1989 Associated Press: UN Official Says Rising Seas to ‘Obliterate Nations’ by 2000.
- 1989 Salon: New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019 said Jim Hansen the scientist who lectured Congress in 1988 about the greenhouse effect.
- 2000 The Independent: “Snowfalls are a thing of the past. Our children will not know what snow is,” says senior climate researcher.
- 2004 The Guardian: The Pentagon Tells Bush Climate Change Will Destroy Us. “Britain will be Siberian in less than 20 years,” the Pentagon told Bush.
- 2008 Associate Press: NASA Scientist says “We’re Toast. In 5-10 years the Arctic will be Ice Free”
- 2008 Al Gore: Al Gore warns of ice-free Arctic by 2013.
- 2009 The Independent: Prince Charles says Just 96 Months to Save the World. “The price of capitalism is too high.”
- 2009 The Independent: Gordon Brown says “We have fewer than 50 days to save our planet from catastrophe.”
- 2013 The Guardian: The Arctic will be Ice Free in Two Years. “The release of a 50 gigaton of methane pulse” will destabilize the planet.
- 2013 The Guardian: US Navy Predicts Ice Free Arctic by 2016. “The US Navy’s department of Oceanography uses complex modeling to makes its forecast more accurate than others.
- 2014 John Kerry: “We have 500 days to Avoid Climate Chaos” discussed Sec of State John Kerry and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabious at a joint meeting.
The above items are thanks to 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.
The article has actual news clips and links to everyone of the above stories.
What Happened to the Glaciers?
On January 17, 2020 Montana Public Radio reported Scientists Predicted Glacier Park’s Glaciers Would Be Gone By Now. What Happened?
Last week, Glacier National Park announced that it will be changing signs warning that its signature glaciers would disappear by 2020. The park says the signs, put in more than a decade ago, were based on the best available predictions at the time.
In terms of the predictions, the latest that I’ve seen actually comes from a group of Swiss researchers. So I would have to look at their results in more detail than is possible from looking at the paper they published to be able to say definitively when all the glaciers are are hosed and no longer present, but certainly by 2100.
New Predictions and Stories
- February 2021: “It’s long past time for the Senate to take a leading role in combating the existential threat of our time: climate,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
- January 2019: Ocasio-Cortez Says World Will End in 12 Years: Here’s What to Do About It.
Ocasio-Cortez called the fight to mitigate the effects of climate change her generation’s “World War II.”
“Millennials and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up, and we’re like, ‘The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change, and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?’ ” she said.
OAC then blasted the GOP for taking her doomsday prediction literally.
We have had 50 years of this kind of BS and yes, many people do take it literally.
On February 7 2020, she unleashed her Stunningly Absurd “New Green Deal” that suggests she was serious.
- Upgrade all existing buildings in the US
- 100% clean power
- Support family farms
- Universal access to healthy food
- Zero-emission vehicle infrastructure
- Remove greenhouse gasses form the atmosphere
- Eliminate unfair competition
- Affordable access to electricity
- Create high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages
- Guaranteeing a job with a family sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States
More $90 Trillion Solutions
In 2015, Business Insider noted A Plan Is Floating Around Davos To Spend $90 Trillion Redesigning All The Cities So They Don’t Need Cars
The $90 trillion proposal came from former US vice president Al Gore, former president of Mexico Felipe Calderon, and their colleagues on The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.
Where is the CO2 Coming From?
CO2 Stats
- Please note that the US reduced its carbon footprint from 6.13 billion tons in 2007 to 5.28 billion tons in 2019.
- Meanwhile, China increased its footprint from 6.86 billion tons in 2019 to 10.17 billion tons in 2019.
- In the same timeframe, global output rose from 31.29 billion tons to 36.44 billion tons.
- In 2007, the US accounted for 19.6% of the total global carbon footprint.
- In 2019, the US accounted for only 14.5% of the total global footprint.
Key Questions
- How much money are we willing to spend to reduce our 14.5% and falling percentage of carbon emissions?
- What would it cost to cut that by half in 10 years?
- Assuming we could cut that in half in 10 years, what would it do to total carbon output?
- By what force do we get China, India, and all the developing economies in the Mideast and Africa to reduce their carbon output?
- Assuming we achieve number 4 peacefully by some sort of economic buyout like cap-and-trade what is the cost to the US?
- What about inflation?
- Sure, China is producing goods for the US and EU but do we want that to stop? When? Why? How? Cost?
- Does not China, India, Africa, etc., have the right to improve their standards of living?
- What do the above points imply about the US standard of living?
- How the hell do we pay for this?
Looking ahead over the next 100 years, the US is a minor part of the carbon problem.
Bonus Geopolitical Q&A
Q: What happened when Merkel went along with the Greens and did away with nuclear?
A: Germany imports more coal-based energy from neighboring states and is more dependent on Russia for natural gas.
Q: Is wind and solar ever going to make a serious dent in China’s growing energy demands.
A: No
Q: What happened in France when Macron pushed through a gas tax to support the Green movement?
A: How quick we forget the Yellow-Vest Revolt that went on for months.
I have yet see AOC, John Kerry, any Mish reader, or anyone else address any of the above questions in detail.
Final Questions to All Those Demanding Government Do Something
What the hell are you doing?
The #1 thing someone can proactively do eliminate their carbon footprint is to stop breathing.
Since that seems a bit impractical, the #2 thing someone can do is not have kids.
Instead, most demand the government do something. What?
Until someone can put a realistic price on this while addressing my questions, forgive me for not agreeing that a total rise in the ocean of 3 inches in the last 20 years is the existential threat of our time.
Politicians Will Not Solve the Problem
Climate change is ongoing for hundreds of millions of years.
I never said otherwise.
I do question the extreme emphasis on CO2, noting lies, coverups, and insane hype.
What I am sure of:
Politicians like AOC, Al Gore, John Kerry are hucksters incapable of solving anything. https://t.co/7rUsUcoLW7
— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) February 17, 2021
Clean Energy
I am a big fan of natural gas and believe it is clean energy. The byproduct of burning natural gas is carbon dioxide and water.
Neither is a pollutant in any way shape or form. Plants even need carbon dioxide to survive.
Coal is another matter.
Burning coal releases SO2 and NOx pollutants that cause Acid Rain, huge respiratory problems and will devastate forests.
If the atmosphere is polluted with sulfur dioxide (SO2) or nitrogen oxides (NOx), rain becomes oxidized by ozone (O3) or hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to form H2SO4 or HNO3 before falling to the ground. They are known respectively as sulfuric and nitric acid.
Acid rain will dissolve panty hose on the spot.
There is a huge difference between burning coal and burning natural gas.
Anti-Coal, Pro-Natural Gas
For environmental reasons, I am anti-coal but very much in favor of Natural Gas. And that has been my position forever.
I am totally fine with eliminating coal for environmental reasons but to expect China to be 100% wind and solar is nonsense.
There is no reason for Germany to abandon nuclear power and the results have been anything but green.
Libertarian Philosophy
Many of my readers blame me and Libertarians in general. They understand neither.
As noted above I am anti-coal. Why? It pollutes with SO2 and NOx causing acid, respiratory illnesses, and it kills fish.
I have seen too many environmental cleanups. I have never commented on this before but my degree at the University of Illinois was in Environmental Engineering.
I have bashed China’s air and water pollution consistently for decades. I have bashed Germany’s diesel industry consistently too.
Doing nothing about actual poison and doing nothing about CO2 are two very different things.
There is nothing Libertarian about letting companies pollute then walk away in bankruptcy.
One clever reader researched my coal and water pollution stance and noted I said the same things in 2006. Indeed I did.
My position has been consistent.
Don’t Accept 100% of the Climate Change Story and You Get Labeled a Racist
There we numerous global cooling warnings in the 60s and 70s and that is what we were taught in school. I did not believe the hype then, and I do not believe the hype now.
The scientific consensus when I was in grade school was the threat of global cooling.
Teachers discussed plans to dump charcoal on the ice to warm the earth as a solution. https://t.co/vwqVwphF4e
— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) February 17, 2021
Point any of this out and guess what happens: You Get Labeled a Racist, as I did.
I am grateful that 50 years of sensational headline now look laughable, but they keep coming and coming.
Why should anyone take these models seriously?
No Wonder People Don’t Believe the Hype
How many times did we hear the arctic ice would all be gone by now? That Miami if not all of Florida would be underwater?
Flashback 2010: The glaciers will all disappear by 2020. Now the best estimate is another 80 years.
Flashback 1989: UN Official Says Rising Seas to ‘Obliterate Nations’ by 2000. What a hoot.
Flashback 2009: Gordon Brown UK Chancellor of the Exchequer says “We have fewer than 50 days to save our planet from catastrophe.” Hmm. Have 50 days passed?
Flashback 1969: “Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years. The situation will get worse unless we change our behavior.“
That’s my favorite.
A Word About Predictions and Urgency
Believe in man-made climate change all you want. There is some truth to it although the models have not been remotely accurate to say the least.
After 50 years of nonsense hype, it’s no wonder anyone with a modicum of common sense is more than a bit skeptical of these dire predictions and the alleged urgency to do something immediately about them.
If after all these now laughable headlines, you still have faith in the predictions, why?
And if you don’t believe the predictions, then do you still want to spend $90 trillion to solve the alleged problem?
Mish
everything u said is true I agree
For the hubris filled elite and desperate politicians, the loss of credibility is emboldening, especially when Executive Orders can be bought. The loss in credibility is why they had to transition to Coronadoom, which did reduce CO2, but not near enough to satisfy Gates. It has NEVER been about pollution for Gates and the other nut jobs who believe in eugenics. It’s about population control, which cycles also address, but linear thinkers think temps can only rise (they also likely believe that stocks only go up).
BTW, glaciers are in the process of migrating from the north pole (which is not a landmass) to somewhere in the northern hemisphere. Antarctica, which is a landmass, will see a growth in ice. The melting snow at the north pole results in more evaporation, which will settle in other places, forming new glaciers.
How many here don’t understand that claiming ‘the consensus believes’ is not an argument for or against anything.
The field of climate science has lost credibility. Any reasonable person can see that it is biased. It is an amazing and frankly horrifying thing for an entire field of hard science to be corrupted like that, but there it is.
I take climate science as the (now dead) canary in the coal mine revealing that the 20th century’s philosophical disintegration is well on its way of spilling over from the philosophy departments (absolutely no one cares what today’s professional philosophers say), to the rest of the humanities, and now to the hard sciences.
FWIW my model tells me that in 100 years if the oceans are 4 feet higher than now no one will care. Humans have always dealt with a changing planet and will continue to do so. Let’s try not to infantilize future generations — who I suspect will laugh at our apocalyptic BS.
Actually CO2 is absolutely a pollutant. It gets drawn into the ocean and creates carbonic acid causing acidification. This is killing the coral and other marine life in the lower part of the food chain that we rely on as well as phytoplankton that create oxygen. Additionally, sea water can only hold so much CO2. Increasing temperatures also reduce the amount it can hold. Once the maximum concentration in the water is reached, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will accelerate.
In the 70’s scientists talked of an ice age based on the data and knowledge they had (though there was I remember a B/W film for school children from the 50’s which did mention the potential for greenhouse heating due to CO2). Anyway, all that ice age talk went away when we began investigating Venus. We quickly learned that Venus was insanely hot for a planet not unlike ours save for large amounts of CO2 and other GHGs.
As for the glaciers in GNP there are now 25. In 1850 there were about 150. That’s about 3 glaciers lost every 4 years. That’s a really raw estimate but that would put their demise at about 35 years or say 2055. Only I would lower that a bit due to still increasing CO2 production. Also, more than 90% of the world’s glaciers are in retreat and picking up speed. The polar ice is also shrinking getting closer to a year over year, annual basis. It’s not just the surface area, it’s the thickness as well. This means it’s march to become ice free in the summer will become rapid at some point.
You have to realize the Earth’s climate is not balanced wrt CO2. The atmosphere is trying to catch up to this geologically rapid increase in CO2. That means if we stopped producing CO2 today the excess would still be there and the climate still equilibrating for some time. There are many different estimates on the time this would take and the time for the CO2 to return to normal levels. But as of this moment there is still guaranteed temperature increase until the atmosphere fully equilibrates with the new level. The longer CO2 increases the longer it will take to equilibrate unless we can use carbon capture to bring it backdown.
Unfortunately the press likes to hype so much of this and it’s better to read the more legitimate scientific articles. There is still much to learn but the direction is not good and there could be very bad unintended consequences such as we are seeing with the polar vortex, hurricanes, floods, and tornados. Sea level rise will take awhile but one fact is Miami has a $500M program to literally raise their streets by paving them higher, by as much as 30 inches. This is because many of their streets are flooding every month due to the tides. This won’t help property owners though because the ground just can’t be raised and no one will ever want to buy them out. Just another casualty…
Since temps will be declining for several decades, and may even exceed those in the last mini ice age around the Maunder Minimum, you won’t have to worry about CO2 absorption in the oceans.
The good thing about this debate is nature will provide the answer, and since the biggest contributor to our planets temperature – the sun, is going into another cooling cycle, I would be happy to buy any real estate you have down south, especially along the coast. Of course, it would need to be at a global warming discount.
I wonder if vegetation agrees that CO2 is a ‘pollutant?’
Meh…. link to iloveco2.com
Technical note: burning natural gas generates NOx too. Virtually all combustion processes generate NOx because the air is predominately N and O. It is the combustion process itself that creates NOx by creating the high temperatures that facilitate its formation.
So many articles lately purporting to dispel the “myth” of climate change and not a single article about how the deregulated libertarian paradise of Texas failed to provide water and power to its citizens in a crisis. Hmmm.
This debate will all be moot by 2050 because the hydrogen economy will be in full swing…..hydrogen powered cars,hydrogen powered electricity generating plants,etc.
Power companies are already outfitting dual purpose systems , burning natural gas now,and hydrogen gas later when supplies catch up. There are already Hydrogen powered Fuel Cell Cars that get 500 to 1000 miles per fill up. The Infrastructure will be built out over the next 30 years. The push for EV cars to replace ICE will never happen because Hydrogen is the future….the only pollutant is water!! There won’t be a need for the expensive and TOXIC rare earth heavy metals for EV batteries ,which is an extreme environmentally damaging hazard and labor intensive process to obtain. Hydrogen = Clean Energy( for Real!!)
Earth’s magnetic field broke down 42,000 years ago and caused massive sudden climate change link to theconversation.com
An excellent example of science coming with new knowledge.
Oh goody lets now review all the gold predictions last 50 years….
1974 Time Magazine: Another Ice Age “Telling signs everywhere. Since the 1940s mean global temperatures have dropped 2.7 degrees F.”
Temperature declined while CO2 rose.
If you go far back enough you can read how the sun revolves around the earth.
Get over it, science evolves.
There is so much BS from the left about global warming. And the people in charge do not understand it at all. They simply spout, rising CO2 levels cause the planet to get warmer and some scientists think it’s bad. The biggest problem are those who have a little knowledge, like some of the posters above, and think they understand it. Like the old saying ‘A little knowledge can be dangerous’.
So we have people who have little to no actual understanding of what’s happening demanding particular solutions. Since they don’t understand the science, they have no way of knowing if their solution will do much, if anything.
Take for example, electric cars. They think because the car doesn’t directly produce CO2, it’s green. The car gets electricity from somewhere. About 65% of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. Which produce CO2. So one might logically conclude, it’s still green since about 1/3 comes from renewables. It’s not that simple. An ICE car gets mechanical work directly from burning fuel. An electric car get electricity that comes from converting mechanical work to electricity and then the car converts the electricity to mechanical work. Every step of the way is inefficient. And on top of that, electric cars weigh a lot more than ICE cars. They require more BTUs to travel a given distance. So a typical electric car used in a typical location in the US actually produces more greenhouse gasses than an ICE car.
On Sunday, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez took issue with Republicans for taking her statement seriously.
“This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and ‘fact check’ it,” she tweeted. “Like the ‘world ending in 12 years’ thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal. But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows.”
The takeaway…”ERCOT’s biggest miss came in preparing for outages at what it thought were “firm” resources — gas, coal, and nuclear. Those outages topped 30 GW, more than double ERCOT’s worst-case scenario….
….ERCOT knows that those average conditions don’t happen all the time. So before each season, it issues a resource adequacy assessment to be sure the lights stay on when demand peaks. This winter’s plan expected “operational resources” (mostly gas, plus coal, nuclear and hydro) to provide 67 GW of power. Since it’s not always windy or sunny, ERCOT guesstimated just over 6 GW would come from wind and solar combined.
In a “normal” winter, operational resources could have satisfied peak demand, even without any help from wind or solar. Aside from the peak, wind and solar avert emissions while saving costlier fossil fuels for when we’ll need them most.
ERCOT realized not every winter is typical, so it planned for several what-if scenarios and associated risks. (All of their estimates are publicly available.)
Those scenarios display the typical temptation to refight the last battle. In this case, that meant planning for a repeat of the 2011 freeze that last caused rolling blackouts. Those lasted just hours, not days, and weren’t nearly as widespread.
Even so, ERCOT didn’t do too badly predicting peak demand — 67 GW in its extreme scenario. We don’t know how high the actual peak would have been without these rolling blackouts, but perhaps around 5 GW higher, with some conservation by industrial consumers.
Scheduled maintenance played a role too, as plants tune up for summer peaks. Why so much of that maintenance continued amid week-ahead forecasts of an Arctic blast deserves a closer look.
But ERCOT’s biggest miss came in preparing for outages at what it thought were “firm” resources — gas, coal, and nuclear. Those outages topped 30 GW, more than double ERCOT’s worst-case scenario. Just one of those gigawatts came from a temporary outage at a nuclear unit. Most of the rest came from gas.
That doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of individual gas power plants broke down. Most outages came because delivery systems failed to supply gas to those plants at the consistent pressures that they need.
These failures highlight the unique vulnerabilities of relying so heavily on natural gas for power. Only gas electricity relies on a continuous supply of a fossil fuel delivered from hundreds of miles away. And that fuel is also needed for heat. So when an Arctic blast drives up demand and drives down supply of heat and electricity at the same time, power plants languish in line while homes and hospitals get the heating fuel they need.
That makes these blackouts an energy systems crisis, not just a power crisis. Every one of our power sources underperformed. Every one of them has unique vulnerabilities that are exacerbated by extreme events. None of them prepared adequately for extreme cold.
Daniel Cohan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University
Science evolves. Knowledge increases.
Science is an iterative process.
The scale of modeling the climate is enormous and modern super-computers are pressed beyond their limits.
Old predictions may be laughably wrong, but science is always trying to get closer to the truth.
At one point leeches and bleeding were all the rage in medical treatment. We can laugh at that, but it was serious attempt to treat conditions. And, as it tuns out, leeches are still valuable in certain situations in medicine.
The trial AND error method of proceeding into an area of new knowledge is how humans evolved into what we are. To condemn an entire field of research based on early, apparently laughable results would have led to the early demise of humans as a species.
Bleeding may well have been useful, too. One of the problems of the era was lead pipes, and lead poisoning. How can you remove lead, and/or other heavy metals after it is consumed? You can’t remove them completely, but blood loss will remove some of it. Even today, people that donate blood live longer on average than people who don’t.
SO2 and NOx emissions from coal plants burning the right coal and using the right controls are minimal. If you’re not worried about CO2, there is little reason to oppose coal.
If you are worried about CO2, you might check out the Net Power plant technology. It burns gas using a different power cycle where the CO2 is captured with little energy or cost penalty: link to netpower.com
If you are worried about fossil fuels for other reasons, the only realistic option left is nuclear. Building an economy on renewables MIGHT work in a few parts of the world with few people, mild weather, and little industry. Even the 1950s version of the technology is safer than any other energy resource. Modern versions will be even safer, if regulators ever let them get to market.
Anything from M.I.T. is amazing.
Fear sells. Fear controls.
I bought a fear control for my furnace–it works.
This has been going on much longer than 50 years.
Witches used to be responsible for floods, draughts, blizzarrds,……
Can’t fool the people all the time? Guess you can.
Right on Mish!
The lawyers for the wind turbine companies should call up the lawyers for Dominion Voting Machines to discuss how to handle this organized lying on the part of Fox and other conservative outlets that wind turbines don’t operate in the cold.
Show me evidence of Fox stating windmills don’t operate in the cold.
Feel free to copy/past and google any of the following –
“It seems pretty clear that a reckless reliance on windmills is the cause of this disaster,”
As Hannity agreed with him, Abbott said that “this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.”
“… Now we know exactly why that margin for error was so tight: green energy,”
“Because politicians benefitted from it, wind turbines wound up generating about a quarter of Texas’ power. It got cold last night, and the windmills froze, and as a result millions of Texans are freezing. Several have died.”
“… it seems kind of reckless to set aside 25% of your power grid for windmills.”
State leaders thought having its own grid and not winterizing wouldn’t be worth the cost of federal regulations. They forgot to calculate the cost of problems even after power comes back. All those companies that moved to Texas probably didn’t even know this and just looked at the lack of regulations as a good thing.
Millions of Texans were left in the dark for days after winter storms triggered power outages. But people in El Paso, the upper Panhandle and parts of East Texas kept their lights on — thanks to power drawn from other parts of the country.
“The Earth is nothing but phlegm spat out by the Sun, and our immediate solar system a whirlwind of boulders. There is no “delicate balance”.”
― A.E. Samaan, From a “Race of Masters” to a “Master Race”: 1948 to 1848
Is it worth commenting when no one who matters will listen? Here goes. Global climate is more affected by sunspot activity than increased carbon. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is scientifically associated with increased food production and favorable climate conditions for humans and animals. But, I’ll provide you with the way to successfully reduce man-made carbon. Build the new, safe, small, modular, nuclear power reactors everywhere you need power. The NuScale Power reactor is safe and produces massive amounts of hydrogen ( clean fuel for transportation ) or using sea water, produces massive amounts of pure water, in addition to electric power, sized for the demand of your city.
Depends on what one gets out of bothering to post a comment. The act itself is cathartic for some, but if you’re trying to displace another’s deep-set convictions you’re tilting at windmills. (worse yet, you could be engaging a paid poster or an algorithm/bot, so even if you ‘win’ you don’t really win!)
As for power, it’d be nice to see a movement to decentralize. Large generation stations are expensive and take a long time to construct, not to mention the expansive, rickety distribution system. Eat local, shop local, power local. Some flavor of small-scale nuclear should be an easy sell to the public if a pile of nearly weapons-grade Pu is a byproduct.
The sun keeps getting bigger and it’s ray larger and hotter. Meteors, moons, and any debris that comes into it’s gravitational pull- 150,000,000 kilimeters gets sucked in and keeps adding to its size. Suns gravity is 28 times that of earth. The political Fear Green House Science paper is full of misinformation and omissions about the carbon effect on earths life. Threes and vegitation take in CO2 and give us wood, plants, food, and oxygen. Politicians cannot control the sun but can controll taxpayers who get fleeced by bogus science that omits the effect of Glass skyscrapers solar panels (glass magnifys light and heat) Concrete black tar roads, Electrical transformers, Car, trucks, planes, ships homes, to spin Carbon Tax, Wind turbines, solar panels and EVs. Earths life is sustained by carbon. No carbon no life. The sun will keep growing and the earth will keep adapting.
Signed To much BS. (My icon disappeared)
The sun is getting bigger because it’s slowly running out of hydrogen. Not because of outer space objects hitting it. And as it heats up it emits higher frequency rays. Not bigger or hotter. More energetic would be more accurate.
10% change in the emissions of the sun over each billion years at it heads to the earth’s doom in 4.5 billion years.
Changes during our mortal span on earth? Inconsequential.
About that alleged 97% consensus.
Seems like BS.
Funders of the Faser Institute…
Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation $1,669,721
Aurea Foundation $1,638,330
Searle Freedom Trust $850,000
John Templeton Foundation $694,862
Pierre F. and Enid Goodrich Foundation $300,000
Chase Foundation of Virginia $265,061
Sarah Scaife Foundation $225,000
Exxon Mobil $120,000
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation $95,080
The Carthage Foundation $50,000
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation $30,000
Blair Foundation $11,000
John M. Olin Foundation $10,000
Grand Total $5,959,054
I would say that, with the Koch family being the top funder, they seem to have their bread buttered by the fossil fuel industry. Exxon Mobil is hardly a neutral either. If I had time I would check the other out.
“Funders of the Faser Institute…”
Thank you, this is the biggest source of confusion – disinformation or bias funded by industries with a vested interest in outcomes.
Source
In fact, it is completely debunked, as anyone can easily find out… aside from that, scientific truth is not a matter of “consensus” anyway. It is a matter of being correct – and the “consensus” often isn’t (see as a particularly egregious example Alfred Wegener and his tectonic plates theory/model).
OK – for the sake of argument let’s say I accept 100% of what you say. I said similar things in my post.
So now what?
What the flying F do we do about it that makes much of any sense given that I am already to give up coal.
I am reminded of Stephen Crane:
A man said to the universe, “Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”
It is possible, likely and probably correct that the science is accurate AND humanity is incapable of acting in its collective best interests.
The universe, meanwhile, could not care less. And when it is done with us, something else will take our place.
Recognizing the problem is a start. Many of your posts have been dismissive in nature which just contributes to the problem (blame renewables for Texas mess post, and this climate forecast post as examples).
Nobody knows for certain how things will play out. However I don’t think it is in our best interest to belittle the risks. Right now, as a society, we don’t have the capability to coherently debate and make smart educated decisions about the risks. We don’t trust our scientists and don’t trust our government and elected officials. This is in large part due to our polarized politics that uses these issues to galvanize the base. Most are guilty, but some much more so. Change has to start somewhere.
I also think the deep seated libertarian element of the US psyche is largely to blame. This clearly shows up in the Texas mess with the go-it alone, don’t want the federal government involved, small government is better attitude. In the long run as a country, we are weaker for it. I agree with Realist that global issues require global cooperation and leadership. We don’t currently bring much to the table in this regard. But hey, we’ve got basements full of guns…
I’m capitalist at heart, but it needs checks and balances. Capitalism loves anti government anti regulation libertarianism, but is this in people’s long term best interests? My view is libertarians have been played big time.
I’m one of the lucky few that have escaped, but we all have to live on the same ever smaller planet.
The first (and last) thing to do is to add a tax on carbon emissions, and start small, and let the effect of the tax filter through to the entire economy. Then gradually increase it until you get the desired effect. You don’t need 10,000 word bills, and incentives to every company with good lobbyists.
The eminently reasonable climate expert Judith Curry did a recent interview, I recommend reading the transcript.
For the VAST MAJORITY it’s maybe 30 yr’s. “50” is a false choice.
‘course I’m sure you can call an earth evolutionary change more precisely.
I think NNTaleb has the correct perspective here:
The ozone thing… we figured it out and fixed it. Well, mostly.
CO2 also kills fish by dissolving into the ocean, becoming carbonic acid and bleaching corals. Lower level organisms need corals to survive, they die, then the next rung of the food chain dies… then the next… etc.
You’re making decent points, there is lots of hype but the actual data says things aren’t going great. I suggest looking into CO2’s effects on the ocean and the general ecosystem. Your article is mostly claiming pundits are liars and politicians are corrupt. I 100% agree.
I agree about ocean acidification. Although now, it seems to be primarily isolated to a few spots. That could change.
Suprisingly peaceful considering in 1935 population was around 2bn… makes you wonder what happens if people lose it at some point in the future though 🙁
It is impossible people havent impacted the environment negatively based on that chart alone. It would be interesting to see a time lapse satellite image of the earth from the year 0 until now.
Current trends show a leveling off of population. The only part of the world currently having much population growth is Africa.
Apparently you haven’t looked at Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador..
The current human condition is a predicament….meaning that getting out of this one is not gonna be easy.
It is of course all connected……a huge find of nearly free energy led to overpopulation (with help from technology)….
Burning through a ten thousand year supply of cheap power in a couple hundred years led to CO2 driven climate change.
Now we have 20 times the number of people the planet can easily support through “normal” agriculture that isn’t juiced with ammonium nitrate and Roundup.
We are fairly close to getting to a future where energy will be in decline no matter what we do. At the same time we might have already put enough carbon into the air that warming is irreversible even though the inputs will drop.
And we have weakening magnetic poles that will flip at some future time and probably accelerate climate change and wreck our power grid and send us back to the age of steam…..if we can avoid losing ALL our knowledge of tech…which is not a given.
Yep, we live in interesting times. Best not to dwell on all the negatives.
We actually are entering another ice age. The warm, interglacial periods last for 11,500 years and, of course, it’s now 11,500 years since the last ice age ended, give or take a few centuries. The Arctic is currently at the same temperature that it was at for the start of the last ice age. The current average water vapor content of the atmosphere isn’t yet high enough yet to start an ice sheet. The only thing we will notice for the next several centuries is an increase in rain. In several thousand years, Georgia will have the current climate of Ohio, and New York City could be under a mile of ice like it was during the last ice age.
The bands on the left are ice ages, which last millions of years and represent permanent polar ice caps. During those you have glacials and interglacials, which are cyclical periods of more or less ice, which is where we are now. The rest is ice free. Even if “they” wanted to control climate they would have to decide what climate was best. That is very subjective, for example are they talking cultivable area or species diversity. Obviously rapid change is stressful but for the rest I’m not sure renewable energy is really what is going to make that much difference , not that I object at all to renewables in themselves. Sometimes it all just looks like a virtue badge to boost consumption because of making wearers feel justified …not that I mind that people are eco-conscious either… plus I guess there are whole countries just milling around nowadays, twidling their thumbs and itching to rebuild their nation or something, which is something to do I suppose ? People are odd.
I don’t think we’re entering another ice age. I think we would be if not for global warming. I think we would be far worse off if we had no global warming instead of the little we have now.
Mish, great post, one of your best.
Good Stuff. At one time there were swamps in New Mexico… There have been no swamps way before man burnt his first bit of coal. The climate is always changing.
This is a big Tax package the politicians can smell it and it’s perfect the climate is always changing so will the Taxes.
Is climate science the only science you disagree with or are the scientific method? I’m simply not persuaded by the “no it isn’t” logic. But it was a great Monty Python skit.
The climate debate has been politicized beyond belief. There are many scientists who disagree openly and far more that keep their mouths shut fearing ostracism.
97% of the scientists surveyed agreed that global temperatures had increased during the past 100 years; 84% said they personally believed human-induced warming was occurring, and 74% agreed that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiated its occurrence.
Curiously, I agree with all three groups. The question is degree.
How much of the current warming man-made?
There is clearly a lot of debate with 26% having some doubts.
44% thought the effects would be moderate and about 13 percent saw relatively little danger.
I am clearly in the 57% who thinks the effects are low to moderate.
Economic geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in significant human involvement.
That was 2007 so I expect the percentages are not as high but we are miles away from consensus.
link to en.wikipedia.org,scientific%20evidence%22%20substantiated%20its%20occurrence.
I agree with you there.
“The climate debate has been politicized beyond belief. ”
This’s the problem.
Big Tobacco, big oil, big banks, big pharma….have all proven that a given sector will manipulate data, fund campaigns (bribery) and disinform the public when there are stakes, regardless of public welfare.
This is a consequence on “money is free speech”.
Al Gore was ignored by the political opposition, accused of trying to bolster his own investments in green energy…..had it been a Republican that had produced “An inconvenient truth” it might be the Dems now pushing against global warming.
We need to get money out of elections, we also need fact checking in media.
Global warming does not follow the scientific method at all. In order for something to be scientifically acceptable is has to be able to predict outcomes and explain how the theory predicted those outcomes. In global warming, the outcomes are not predicted correctly and the only explanations are after the results are known. The latest example is the Texas cold spell. None of this was part of the general consensus about global warming. After the fact, a few obscure journals, out of the thousands authored every year, are uncovered that predicted this may happen and that’s presented as evidence of global warming.
“…the US actually produces double the CO2 as China.”
Your figure indicates the US produces double the CO2 per capita as China. Mish’s figure shows that as a nation China produces double the CO2 as the US. Both figures are correct and neither are terrible, however the “actually” in your statement bothers me. We need to refer to both sets of data as part of a broader conversation. We also need to ask where most future emissions increases will come from, but of course nobody likes the answer.
Not entirely sure why it’s so important to relitigate the topic, consensus has it global warming is real.
That aside, there is debate as to whether, or how much, CO has to do with it.
Who cares?
To me, the decider is price of energy and jobs (here vs Saudi Arabia), wind turbines are cheaper than NG, solar technology is advancing rapidly, home with solar roofs are reaping cost benefits.
For the countless billions oil companies spent over the decades to lobby and fund campaigns, the untold trillions we’ve spent on wars in the mid east to control oil – it baffles me why splitting hairs or parsing the issue is an imperative.
I’m sick of our oil dependence, screw the climate debate.
I don’t think anyone’s debating global warming is real, just the extent, so if the worrying Liberals are incentivized to promote technology that yields us cheaper energy, hell yeah, why not.
Wind turbines only work when there is wind. Solar when there is sun. And it’s not cheaper. That’s why we still use oil. Show me something other than a petroleum product that can spin a motor/ generator to produce regulated electricity and at a low cost. I am thinking Nuclear.
“Wind turbines only work when there is wind.”
Right, and Texas derives 25% of it’s electricity from wind., they use it because it’s cheaper than nat gas.
Uhhh, I’m Texan, and you have that completely wrong on the costs. The wind turbines only exist because of tax credits. Wind turbines will never compete with natural gas as they take too much maintenance and too much oil to fabricate and keep running. Not to mention, we are now finding out that the blades and structures are too big to recycle and have no value.
“Uhhh, I’m Texan, and you have that completely wrong on the costs. ”
Funny, I think the hubris in that statement is why TX is in it’s current pickle, that said – No, you’re wrong.
This is from 2019, NG was -20% it’s current price.
“link to arstechnica.com“
Uhhh, I’m Texan and the only reason those wind turbines exists are the tax credits that were given to put them up. Wind turbines will never compete with natural gas as they take too much oil to create, maintenance, and reliability/availability that makes them your weakest link in the grid, etc. Now we find that the blades and towers are too big and worthless to recycle. What a disaster.
This feels coordinated.
In November 1980, Congressman Al Ullman, head of the House Ways and Means Committee, lost his job merely for proposing a national value added tax. No, I don’t want to spend $90 trillion on AOC’s Green New Deal.
The 16th Amendment permits the Federal Government to create an income tax. A new Amendment would be needed in order to allow them to create a VAT. It’s possible that that could happen, but it might take many years, and even then, it very well might not pass.
link to climate.gov,two%20and%20a%20half%20decades.
My simple question…based on the data, sea level was already rising before the introduction of the Model T…so, what makes you think that it will stop rising if we end all use of ICE’s? How much are you willing to sacrifice to try the experiment?
Global sea level has been rising since the end of the last ice age. Initially the rise was relatively fast but it slowed about 6000 years ago to a lower rate, ie. there’s a natural background rise in sea level of about 1.2 mm/year. The modeled acceleration in sea level rise has occurred since the 1940’s with an increase above the background trend that amounts to about 100 mm (0.1 m) – obtained by extrapolating the pre-1940 trend line to 2010 on the NOAA chart you provided and then adding a conservative 10 mm to bring it up to 2020. This change in trend should be observable in the long-term global tide gauge record (tide gauges measure relative sea level, but trend changes are what we’re interested in not absolutes). Here is the NOAA website for these data link to tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov. You have to find locations with records dating back to the early 1900’s so you can establish the background trend to see if the modeled post-1940’s acceleration can be observed, e.g. Bergen, Norway; Sydney, Fort Denison; New York, The Battery, etc. I couldn’t find any site around the world that showed a change in trend – as it’s a global increase in sea level rise you’d expect that every tide gauge with a long-term record would exhibit a change in trend but none do. The data doesn’t support the model.
link to tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov.
The link doesn’t work
The link didn’t work
you are cherry picking as always. However, the trend is a friend for the climate scientists. Shell Oil Corporation scientists predicted the range of temperatures for the decade for 2010’s in the 1970’s. the hottest decade that has been measured was the last one. the warmest in recorded history.
the scientists have been largely correct.
So?
it means that oil companies realized that global warming is real. I forgot to add also. Exxon knew per documents leaked last decade about global warming. the increase in temperatures will cause the earth to be inhabitable by mid century.
that means mass death for Billions and our children who will inherit this earth.
So the hottest temperature in recorded history (the last 250 years?) huh. That is some timeline. How are you going to keep the sun from going super nova?
What about Medieval Warming Period?
The Vikings colonized and farmed Greenland. The is irrefutable evidence of higher temperatures globally in that period. There were no SUVs or Jets or oil fired electricity plants.
As for utter ignorance it is hard to beat AOC Green Deal Demand to remove all greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.
Instead of her grim overheating warning of extinction in 12 years we would have the end of all life on the planet from freezing, in 48 hours. Ask any scientist.
Boy am I glad she is not in charge!