Since the “rabid” part is treatable (they have shots for that), it is possible to make them “global warming alarmists”. Does that still count?
I’m not sure the rest of it is treatable.
Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by PA
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by PA
FOMD ….
“In other news Next-generation gravimetry satellites are showing thoughtful citizens — all around the world and ever-more-clearly — the melting of the world’s polar ice.”
This is all fine and good, but the MWP sea level was the equivalent of 17″-20″ higher than today.
1. How did all that water warm/ice melt without modern CO2?
2. How can it be claimed modern temperatures are unusual?
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by DocMartyn
One suspects that professional politicians are used to being lied to and that they are not generally happy that the people lying to them are motivated that the thought that politicians are too dumb to understand the truth.
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Comment on An unsettled climate by Peter Lang
P.A,
Thank you. Much appreciated.
PAL :)
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by ordvic
Got me there Fan :-)
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by Barnes
Agree with pokerguy. The hubris needs to be exposed and quashed by those with the credentials to challeng the consensuse.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by Barnes
Tell you hat fan – build your Tesla without fossil fuels and get back to me when you have a working auto.
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Comment on An unsettled climate by PA
You’re welcome.
I got distracted by real life. Please forgive the delay.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by ordvic
See JCs latest linked tweet for Nic Lewis’s dinner for more ‘meeting of the minds’. :-)
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Comment on Steyn versus Mann: norms of behavior by johanna
“how polluted and contaminated the environment has become and how important it is for people to clean and purify the environment.”
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Clean and purify the environment? With what? Disinfectant? Have these people ever been out in the places where bears relieve themselves?
“The environment” is a seething mass of excretement, shed skin and hair, rotting carrion, decaying vegetation, and uncountable micro-organisms feeding on it all, including each other.
It’s not clean or pure. If it was, it would be non-existent. It’s dirty, messy and unhygenic.
It just goes to show what the mindset of these people is all about. They conflate the desired state of their kitchen benchtop or an operating theatre with the real world, and proceed from there.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by JJ
Well, you’re in luck. There is already an organization for you: 350.org.
Unlike those misguided fools who think that holding the global temp to a 2C rise is scientifically meaningful and politically achievable, 350.org knows that if pCO2 is allowed to go over 350ppm, we are all TRULY doomed. Unlike 2C, which we might pass and apparently even flourish under, 350 ppm CO2 has been identified by no less a scientist than the inestimable James Hansen as the scientifically established line in the sand that we must not cross.
So, send them as much of your money as you can, and they will keep pCO2 below the 350ppm tipping point level. If they don’t succeed, we will all surely die!
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Comment on An unsettled climate by Peter Lang
PA,
I forgive you because 66.7% of your initials are correct.
PAL
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by Barnes
In simple terms, In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’ (copied from a post by Rob Ellison)
In other works, the climate system is a massively complex, chaotic, non-linear, coupled system made up of 5 separate subsystems, each with it’s own set of complexities and each affected by the interactions of all the subsystems combined, and affected by external forcings such as the sun, polarity, gravity, cosmic rays and who knows how many unknown unknowns.
The position that any single component of such a complex, chaotic system is THE control knob that will enable humans to control the climate is simply hubris on a scale that is utterly breathtaking – especially when that control knob is a a whopping .04% of the atmosphere – just one of the 5 subsystems of the entire climate system – and, human contribution of that .04% is between 3-4%.
Time to wake the f up and start dealing with real problems and stop wasting precious resources on this nonsense.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by stevefitzpatrick
Les Johnson,
Yes, I think that is right. there is need to develop alternatives to fossil fuels, because they will gradually become more scarce and expensive. Nuclear is an obvious near term alternative, but it remains vigorously opposed by most of the same people who demand draconian fossil fuel reductions. The biggest long term problems are unlikely to be caused by rapid warming; transitioning away from fossil fuels will be the far bigger problem. The climate concerned only get in the way of the most economically viable alternative.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by stevepostrel
I suspect the main limitation on investments in oil production is the geopolitical risk involved in the places that haven’t been as thoroughly explored and exploited yet. It’s sensible to go from cheaper to more expensive sources, and the more-stable political regimes represent a cost advantage sufficient to allow more-exotic geology to be exploited there. Even if you found a field where the oil was practically bubbling out of the ground, you’d hesitate to invest if it were located in the Congo.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by Alan Poirier
Personally, the Nature article is little more than yet another attempt to move goal posts and change the playing field. It’s pointless debating the science any more. It’s a lost cause. Frankly, I no longer care. The only hope we have to avoid a slide into an economic depression is to work to elect skeptics. Republicans have an excellent chance of gaining control of both Houses and ultimately winning the White House in 2016. The Tories will hold Canada. Australia has Abbott. India is offside. So is China. Come 2016 there will be no one left to keep this fantasy alive with the exception of a few diehards (Europe?) who are beyond reason. Bit by bit we will then be able to undo all the damage that has been done. Climate research budgets will be slashed. Whole departments gutted. The IPCC has two years of life left. This is now a game of politics and the scientists are children here.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by jim2
From the article:
Oil slides to multi-year lows; WTI at lowest in 1-1/2 years
Global oil prices extended a months-long rout into bear market territory on Friday, with Brent notching a new 27-month low as the dollar spiked following upbeat U.S. employment data and further signs of undiminished crude supply.
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Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, eastern Europe and Asia have failed to prevent a slide in the oil price over the summer. Although Islamic State insurgents have advanced across northern Iraq, this has had little impact on oil production in the south to date.
Some analysts say that only a cut in output by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will rescue oil prices. Although some OPEC countries are calling for supply cuts, other core members are betting that winter demand will revive the market, suggesting the group is no closer to any collective steps.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by PA
Jim: “Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, eastern Europe and Asia have failed to prevent a slide in the oil price over the summer.”
You aren’t suggesting we “rescue” oil prices are you?
That is about as useful as EMS “rescuing” healthy people walking down the sidewalk.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by stevepostrel
I read Victor’s long reply on dot.earth. Possible interpretations:
1. Motorized goalposts. Victor wants to change the targets because the pause is killing the cause and his less-sophisticated cohorts don’t get it and are barraging him with friendly fire.
2. Hardworking policy volunteer and expert on political science and policy-making wants to increase the behavioral relevance of the targets to motivate action. Pie-in-the-skiers don’t grok that you can’t “hold governments accountable” for things like global temperature that are not in each actor’s individual control. I can give a Wal-Mart cashier company stock options but that won’t motivate him much because nothing he does will have a perceptible impact on the stock price. I can hold the cashier accountable for smiling, not making mistakes, rapid processing, etc., much as one could hold national governments accountable for national CO2 emissions.
3. Victor’s attackers are afflicted with the equivalent of a certain Austrian corporal’s notorious unwillingness to allow retreat from indefensible positions. Victor urges immediate withdrawal from the Stalingrad of 2 degrees Celsius and is met with the equivalent of a “not one inch, fight to the last man, my secret carbon-capture wonder weapons will win the war if you just hold on” message. He tries to explain that the wonder weapons are vaporware and that he is about to be overrun by hordes of growth-demanding Chinese with their squadrons of conventional coal plants.
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Comment on Challenging the 2 degree target by Jim D
From the Victor item “The best indicator has been there all along: the concentrations of CO2 and the other greenhouse gases. A global goal for average concentrations in 2030 or 2050 must be agreed on and translated into specific emissions and policy efforts, updated periodically, so that individual governments can see clearly how their actions add up to global outcomes. ”
I couldn’t agree more, and this is exactly what is happening whether the remaining skeptics like it or not. The important target for policy is of course CO2. That is a direct and easily measured metric where it is also possible to translate fossil fuel reduction actions or not into consequences. Depending completely on policy, by 2100 we could have a stabilized 450 ppm level, or a rising 750 ppm level.
CO2 can also be put into a paleo context. The last time it was 500 ppm was 35 million years ago, the time before the Antarctic had a permanent glacier because it was too warm for polar ice, and sea levels were 70 meters higher. That won’t happen immediately but that would be the trajectory as we exceed 500 ppm. The higher latitudes and land warm much faster than the global average rate, so a 2 C global average is actually higher in most developed countries which are at those latitudes.
The article also makes a lot of sense in proposing tracking metrics like 3-sigma deviations. This will show the shifting temperature distribution in various localities in real time, and rainfall statistics will also change.
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