Tuesday, September 24, 2019

The Worst Greenhouse Gas Might Surprise You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdhnhknaJOg

Since 1880, which is a frequently quoted benchmark, the average temperature increase has been less than .01 degrees celsius per year. Since 1970 is has been about 0.015 per year. Since 1880 the average CO2 level increase has been less than one part per million per year. The current rate of increase is about 3 parts per million per year. The current level of sea-level rise is about 33 millimeters per decade. Over the last 30 years, it has been 25 millimeters per decade.

Disaster is not happening any time soon. It has been stated that we will run out of most fossil fuels by the year 2100, which is about the time we are predicted to double the atmospheric CO2 from current levels. What bothers me is that they keep moving the goalpost. They used to say that we need to prevent a 5 to 6 degree temperature increase by the year 2100 because that would be disastrous, but a 2.5 degree temperature increase would be manageable. However, reality didn't meet up with their predictions of disaster ( https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-climate-reality/ ),  so now they are saying that we need to prevent a 2-degree increase by the year 2100, but 1.5 degrees would be manageable. They spout a catchy slogan, "Half a degree makes a difference." The IPCC recently proposed spending 122 trillion dollars to prevent that half-degree difference, which is just absurd.

The scientific community is by no means united on what the Climate Sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is. Past ranges were from 2 to 12 degrees celsius. The IPCC gives a generally accepted range of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees, and they give 3 degrees as an average. Some people are still saying that it is over 5 degrees. The climate alarmism skeptics give a range from about 0.5 to 2.3 degrees with 1 to 2 degrees being the most common. If you look at the actual CO2 and temperature data from 1880, then you get a climate sensitivity of about 2.2 to 2.3 degrees. This assumes that CO2 is the only forcing factor. Some people are claiming that solar radiance plays a much bigger role than what the IPCC predicts, which minimizes the effect of solar radiance.

Most of the disagreement is over the feedbacks which are both positive and negative. For at least 20 years the skeptics have claimed that increased cloud cover will provide negative feedback to temperature increase. The IPCC claims that clouds will be a positive feedback. Nobody really knows for sure, and the IPCC has pretty much admitted that they don't know how to factor clouds. However, we are doing the experiment despite the best efforts of presumably well-intentioned people, so we are going to find out.

Nuclear Fusion will be a reality within 20 years, which will make this whole argument seem like much ado about nothing.

History will remember this as a time of mass hysteria. This hysteria has been driven by people who are pushing both a green and a socialist agenda. People have admitted that this is as much about changing the economic system as it is about protecting the climate.

The IPCC is by no means an unbiased organization. About 1/3 of the people on the IPCC belong to an environmental lobbying organization. The head of IPCC said that disastrous climate change was his religion. The IPCC has tried to censor papers written by skeptics, and skeptical scientists can't get funding. The Climategate scandal showed that they were trying to hide the big dip in temperature that happened in 2007. Scientists with skeptical views are getting fired or pushed out from universities.

Both NASA and the NOAA have taken past temperature data that has been known for decades and altered it to make the current warming look worse. They defend this practice. Up to half of all current temperature "data" are just estimates based on models. This distortion of science should be criminal.

Almost everybody is ignoring the positive benefits of CO2. Patrick Moore does the best job of talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWahKIG4BE4&t=1500s

Best wishes,

John Coffey

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