Posts Tagged ‘Michael Mann’

Something Something Something Climate Change

Tuesday, December 1st, 2015

This week in Paris there’s evidently a summit to address what “world leaders” feel is a pressing crisis, namely that the governments they lead somehow aren’t able to exercise more control over our lives and take more of our money.

As Mark Steyn noted, the focus on “the problem on climate change” is a matter of mental displacement for Western elites who are unable to deal with the real problem of radical Islam.

So here’s a Global Warming news roundup:

  • Judith Curry, climate heretic:

    This debate will be conducted on the basis that there is a known, mechanistic relationship between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how world average temperatures will rise.

    Unfortunately, as Curry has shown, there isn’t. Any such projection is meaningless, unless it accounts for natural variability and gives a value for ‘climate sensitivity’ —i.e., how much hotter the world will get if the level of CO2 doubles. Until 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave a ‘best estimate’ of 3°C. But in its latest, 2013 report, the IPCC abandoned this, because the uncertainties are so great. Its ‘likely’ range is now vast — 1.5°C to 4.5°C.

    This isn’t all. According to Curry, the claims being made by policymakers suggest they are still making new policy from the old, now discarded assumptions. Recent research suggests the climate sensitivity is significantly less than 3˚C. ‘There’s growing evidence that climate sensitivity is at the lower end of the spectrum, yet this has been totally ignored in the policy debate,’ Curry told me. ‘Even if the sensitivity is 2.5˚C, not 3˚C, that makes a substantial difference as to how fast we might get to a world that’s 2˚C warmer. A sensitivity of 2.5˚C makes it much less likely we will see 2˚C warming during the 21st century. There are so many uncertainties, but the policy people say the target is fixed. And if you question this, you will be slagged off as a denier.’

  • Decarbonization will not change the temperature or climate picture for our planet. Decarbonization benefits one group: those whose livelihoods depend on your belief in their story.”
  • Speaking of Steyn, Michael Mann’s suit against him (and Steyn’s countersuit) continues to drag on with no end in sight.
  • One of the world’s largest sources of CO2: Barack Obama. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • The beepocalypse has been cancelled: U.S. honeybee hits 20-year high. (Hat tip: Powerline.)