Cato Institute, canât be trueâŠ
Link is paywalled. But no matter, because the lead author, apparently, is not very good at his job. (I wonder if heâll ever write an article entitled Pat Michaels, How Well Do his Climate Predictions Stand Up?):
And 30 years later, the scientific consensus on global warming is more unified than ever. That tells you all you need to know.
Thatâs all well and good. But what solutions do we have that work without subsidies?
Weâve had fission power since the 1950âs. Zero carbon ftw. But people are all sensitive about it for some reason.
James E. Hansen wiped sweat from his brow. Outside it was a record-high 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, as the NASA scientist testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during a prolonged heat wave, which he decided to cast as a climate event of cosmic significance. He expressed to the senators his âhigh degree of confidenceâ in âa cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.â
With that testimony and an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Mr. Hansen lit the bonfire of the greenhouse vanities, igniting a world-wide debate that continues today about the energy structure of the entire planet. President Obamaâs environmental policies were predicated on similar models of rapid, high-cost warming. But the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansenâs predictions affords an opportunity to see how well his forecasts have doneâand to reconsider environmental policy accordingly.
Mr. Hansenâs testimony described three possible scenarios for the future of carbon dioxide emissions. He called Scenario A âbusiness as usual,â as it maintained the accelerating emissions growth typical of the 1970s and â80s. This scenario predicted the earth would warm 1 degree Celsius by 2018. Scenario B set emissions lower, rising at the same rate today as in 1988. Mr. Hansen called this outcome the âmost plausible,â and predicted it would lead to about 0.7 degree of warming by this year. He added a final projection, Scenario C, which he deemed highly unlikely: constant emissions beginning in 2000. In that forecast, temperatures would rise a few tenths of a degree before flatlining after 2000.
Thirty years of data have been collected since Mr. Hansen outlined his scenariosâenough to determine which was closest to reality. And the winner is Scenario C. Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16. Assessed by Mr. Hansenâs model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect. But we didnât. And it isnât just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago.
What about Mr. Hansenâs other claims? Outside the warming models, his only explicit claim in the testimony was that the late â80s and â90s would see âgreater than average warming in the southeast U.S. and the Midwest.â No such spike has been measured in these regions.
As observed temperatures diverged over the years from his predictions, Mr. Hansen doubled down. In a 2007 case on auto emissions, he stated in his deposition that most of Greenlandâs ice would soon melt, raising sea levels 23 feet over the course of 100 years. Subsequent research published in Nature magazine on the history of Greenlandâs ice cap demonstrated this to be impossible. Much of Greenlandâs surface melts every summer, meaning rapid melting might reasonably be expected to occur in a dramatically warming world. But not in the one we live in. The Nature study found only modest ice loss after 6,000 years of much warmer temperatures than human activity could ever sustain.
Several more of Mr. Hansenâs predictions can now be judged by history. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No. Satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature. Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage in the U.S.? Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such increase in damage, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. How about stronger tornadoes? The opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline. The list of what didnât happen is long and tedious.
The problem with Mr. Hansenâs modelsâand the U.N.âsâis that they donât consider more-precise measures of how aerosol emissions counter warming caused by greenhouse gases. Several newer climate models account for this trend and routinely project about half the warming predicted by U.N. models, placing their numbers much closer to observed temperatures. The most recent of these was published in April by Nic Lewis and Judith Curry in the Journal of Climate, a reliably mainstream journal.
These corrected climate predictions raise a crucial question: Why should people world-wide pay drastic costs to cut emissions when the global temperature is acting as if those cuts have already been made?
On the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansenâs galvanizing testimony, itâs time to acknowledge that the rapid warming he predicted isnât happening. Climate researchers and policy makers should adopt the more modest forecasts that are consistent with observed temperatures.
That would be a lukewarm policy, consistent with a lukewarming planet.
Mr. Michaels is director and Mr. Maue an adjunct scholar at the Cato Instituteâs Center for the Study of Science.
Does it?
All it tells me is that if you donât tow the line youâll be discredited and kicked out of the clubhouse.
And miss out on all that sweet grant money.
Letâs all stand on top of a mountain and discuss the easiest way down. One side is a craggy boulder strewn slope. The other is a steep cliff.
If you donât agree that a flying leap is the easiest way down, youâre anti science.
My opinion, in brief. You find what you shine a light on. Thereâs no doubt that CO2 is one of the main feedbacks, but there are at least another dozen or two big other control knobs. All the grant money and all the attention has gone to CO2, but it is by far not the only important knob. A lot of study of the other knobs and their magnitudes has been ignored so far.
Given that many of the mature fields in science are currently undergoing a replication crisis as well as an emerging crisis of data manipulation and potential misconduct, I do not have any confidence in the dire and extreme predictions of global disaster in such a politicized field fraught with landmines. If the current crises are affecting established fields with little political Danger or reward, I do not believe a heavily politicized field is poised to be the beacon of objectivity and rigor that many seem to believe it to be.
We should work on controlling pollution, and building cities and coastlines resilient to extreme weather as well as interior regions resilient to extremes, and we should work on understanding the other major control feedbacks better than we currently do. Everybody can agree we donât want pollution and everybody can agree that we want cities resilient to catastrophe so I see no need to argue about those things would it should be obvious we need them. However we also need to shine a light on other areas of the climate feedback systems.
Not that Iâm dead-set on using them, butâŠGiven global warming is a potentially existential crisis, why would you a priori take subsidies off the table?
Some reason = Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima. Which is not to say we shouldnât consider expanding nuclear powerâjust that concern over it isnât unfounded.
Not how science works. Or if youâre convinced it is, I assume you reject ALL scientific consensus, and thus do not concern yourself with most health and safety recommendations.
ALL science is funded this way. So if money taints the process, you have to throw it (science) all out.
You have a baby/bathwater problem. You canât argue that climate science is corrupted by money without doing the same for every other funded scientific endeavor (which is to say, all of it). So toss out climate science if you like, but youâre left with no science. You donât get to cherry-pick.
Agreed, but I find the complete stonewalling by activists unacceptable. Our nuclear technology has advanced eons beyond what it was, and there are a number of developed countries that use nuclear energy as one of their primary National sources of electric power.
Correct, but my position is that the science has taken a backseat to the fracas and the activism in many ways. This is not to say all ways, but the bitterness of the climate Wars indicates to me that we have long since moved from the pure faith so to speak.
Iâll say this also⊠You donât make catastrophic predictions over and over and then complain when the public has a hard time believing you after none of them have come true (not that I would want that). There has been a significant number of Doomsday predictions made by credentialed climate scientists publicly in the past 30 to 40 years. They never miss an opportunity to let everyone know how dire the situation is. They have a boy who cried wolf problem. No matter whether the science is pure or not, people have a hard time taking that seriously when theyâve made repeated predictions that havenât remotely come true. And I donât blame them for that disbelief, no matter how crazy I might think the conspiracy theories of the lay public might otherwise be.
Thank you, Aragorn. I think denial is maddeningly frustrating, but so was/is some of the doom saying. Is man made climate change a reality? I donât deny it. But, the more muted the change, and the effects of it, the more cost outweighs the benefit of various responses. No lie, my collegeâs required enviro/green/sustainable living course was pretty much a straight up call for wealth redistribution for developed nations to developing nations. Because, doom.
And a shoutout to eye. I do hate that so called conservatives seem completely unwilling to even entertain the idea that any degree of man made climate change is taking place. Seemingly out of loyalty to an idolized free market that needs cheap energy to produce more gadgets for us to stare at for even more hours on end. Oh, and my Christians? Stewardship.
Thatâs what matters, not how we pay for it.
I understand.
I believe we have been watching the de-evolution of scientific discourse and debate before our very eyes with the climate Wars, and the rise of Science Activism. This deeply troubles me, because it hints at the weaponization of science. It is not localized to The Climate debate but climate is the Exemplar in my humble opinion.
The AAAS (of which Iâm a member) has been sending out mailings and emails exhorting people to donate to become a âForce for Scienceâ. This very catch phrase is emotionally and viscerally charged. It says it aims to use this money for âscience advocacyâ, which is not the same as education. People have had Marches for Science, some protests, and other things happening as well.
It is clear that there are deeply serious and intertwined problems that involve both policy and science in the 21st century. There have always been such areas, but in the modern highly connected and rapidly innovating world we are seeing many more of these areas where policy and politics can enter play with the idea of scientific research. There is no way around this problem, because it is a natural result of continued innovation and the human experience. However, there are serious consequences should scientists not approach this problem in a circumspect and cautious manner.
People have a hard time taking it seriously because most people are idiots when it comes to science and then take advice from others who are idiots when it comes to science.
No argument from me, as indicated by my comment above.
There is little to no âbitternessâ among the people who actually know what theyâre talking about, ie, the climate scientists themselves. Rather, the folderol is being generated by people who (for various reasons) oppose implementation of carbon-ameliorative policies. They gin up controversy in the hope people will react as you have aboveâby throwing up their hands and saying âThis whole thing is just too political and controversial to know for sure whatâs true.â
Iâm reminded of the âcontroversyâ in the early aughts over whether creationismâexcuse me, âintelligent designââshould be taught in science class. President Bush tried to split the difference by saying educators should âteach the controversy.â But there was no controversy with respect to the science itselfâevolution was (and is) a fact, full stop. (BTW, Iâm not suggesting global warming rests on as solid a scientific firmament as evolution.)
Finally, note that the âcontroversyâ gambit demonstrates just how tilted this playing field is. That is, gaining your assent to do something about climate change requires convincing you of its reality. On the other hand, getting you to dissent from doing something can be achieved by either 1) convincing you it isnât real, or 2) convincing you the topic is simply too fraught to sort out. The anti-change forces know this of course, and thus are only too happy to âplay for a tie.â
This is debatable (if for no other reason than that the word âsignificantâ is very slippery). But even to the extent itâs true, you are likely conflating the doomsday prognostications of individuals with the consensus opinion of the field.
Further, with respect to wolf-crying: What happens is, one scientist publishes a dire prediction, and in the interest of grabbing eyeballs, the mainstream media latch onto it and splash it across the headlines with zero context; ie, it is presented as if it represents a consensus opinion, when in fact it doesnât. And some time later, when the prediction fails to hold, who is there to remind us of it? The anti-change forces.
So, letâs not blame climate-scientists for such situations.
This is perhaps true of certain media outlets, for the âeyeballsâ reason mentioned above. But again, letâs not blame the climate-science community for acts beyond their control.
LIke I said, the anti-global-warming forces constantly amplify and harp on statements that can be construed, in hindsight, as inaccurate and alarmist. They are seeking to manipulate youâand apparently, itâs working.
We as a species NEED China, India, South America and Africa to go low carbon as well as the west if AGW is going to be an extinction level event as predicted. The only way to do that is solutions that are actually better than fossil fuels without market manipulation. Right now thatâs fission.
Well if AGW will cause extinction itâs a greater threat than Chernobyl-like events.
With several summers in a row breaking records, and increasingly worse hurricane seasons hitting our coast, and people dying of heat exhaustion in the Third World⊠when are we going to get a clue?
Jared Diamond argued in âCollapseâ that societies never get around to fixing problems until those problems hurt the elites of that society, and sometimes by then it is too late. That is probably why Beijing spends more money looking for green energy solutions than the United States does; because their elites canât escape the pollution.