As reality digresses from the man made global warming script presented by the IPCC John presents his top ten action items to address climate change while waiting for the apocalypse.
This Guardian story reinforces the Apocalyptic Anxiety that seems to pervade the man made climate change narrative and that the Guardian promotes.
It is fun to speculate on what the future world will be like and scientists and religious figures have been so entertaining themselves and their followers for centuries. And they have an unblemished record of being incorrect. But, of course, today’s experts are much more knowledgeable with computers and, at their cyber fingertips, all the knowledge previously uncovered. So they will be more accurate. Only trouble is they have missed the recall of their crystal ball issued by Mother Nature who is behaving more like a man made global warming denier than a seer with an alarmist message.
No wonder I prefer reading the CAGW skeptic blogs - the news is so much better. Hurricanes and tornadoes are less frequent, floods no worse than in the past and droughts are shorter and less severe. Even the IPCC acknowledges this in their AR5 SPM. Temperatures have stopped rising. Deaths due to extreme weather are way down due to our early warning systems. The polar regions show no signs of catastrophic melting. People continue to invest millions in new hotels, resorts and airports in the Maldives. What could be better?
So the world is not much different than in the past. And people are living like nothing catastrophic is in the offing. Extreme weather will come and it will go, sometime fast and sometimes slow. We will survive it and continue on. Sounds like a plan.
John makes an interesting and perhaps telling comment after detailing all the bad stuff we can expect to see by 2100. He says: “That could mean big shifts in rainfall patterns and a more unpredictable climate” This seems somewhat odd. We understand the climate so well now that our knowledge allows us to predict what it will be like in 2100. And what will it be like? More unpredictable. So by 2100 we will lose our ability to know what the climate will do. So, we are advancing to the past? We are going to have a knowledge regress?
Back in 2001 the IPCC seemed to understand the nature of our atmosphere:
” … In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing
with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the
long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
From the 3rd IPCC report, Section 14.2 “The Climate System”, page 774.
As time has passed they have indeed regressed. In spite of the mythical consensus among climate scientists Mother Nature has chosen her own path and the IPCC climate models have failed to follow and fallen off the catwalk.
Humans have an attraction to apocalyptic stories. They continue to pop up in science and religion. If we aren’t going to disappear by 2000 then it will be on Oct., 21 2011. Despite the claimed knowledge behind these predictions they continue to fail. We are still here. Somehow we manage to survive. Whenever they pop up in the news now my skeptical radar is automatically activated searching for blips in the logic or data.
Nope, pal Hal. No can do.
Unless there is an asteroid or comet on a direct path to intersect our orbit at the same time we arrive on our little blue planet or the sun is transforming itself into a red giant or we are in the middle of a thermonuclear conflagration don’t wake me up. Hakuna matata.
Hal is not alone.
James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and arguably the world’s foremost climatologist, has called coal "the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on the planet."
The fear and the hyperbole abound.
Symptoms: Sufferers seem to think that every instance of bad weather is a sign of impending environmental disaster. Bad weather sends them into a frenzy of doomsday warnings and attacks on oil companies whom they see as the devil incarnate. They demonize CO2 and berate those who will not heed their advice. They have delusions of grandeur and assume that they are at fault for bad weather. They recoil in horror at the sight of SUVs and incandescent light bulbs. Plastic bags can induce fits of rage.
Recommended treatment:
1) Hypocritical Redux - confronting the patient with the inconsistencies between their words and their actions. It is important to point out that people will be more likely to believe them if they follow their own advice and reduce their wanton consumption of goods, drive an electric car, turn down the thermostat, fly only with airlines that use biofuels and follow other patterns of behaviour to reduce their carbon footprint that they would expect others to use. As blogger Instapundit has observed: when people who tell me it is a crisis begin to act like it is a crisis I might believe it is a crisis. Step 1 should raise their awareness and make them more receptive to the data of Step 2 at the end of which they will realize that they don’t have to continue to observe Step 1.
2) Detox - people who have adopted AA must be cleansed of the drug BS - Bad Science. This drug has gotten into their minds and to the detriment of their followers and themselves it is leading them into the realm of fear and guilt. This can’t be good. Many sessions with contrary evidence is recommended to undo the self inflicted brainwashing they have encouraged. They should be armed with the year(1987) that 350 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere was attained so they can view stories about extreme weather that have occurred before that date. They often think that current extreme weather is somehow more extreme than in the past. History should cure that misconception. They should also be introduced to the cyclical weather patterns that have been identified and that can be shown to explain how our climate changes. An acquaintance with the HADCRUT dataset will reassure them that the planet is not overheating as CO2 increases.
This deprogramming should be continued until the fear and guilt subsides. Plastic bags can be used again guilt free.
3) AA meetings. - Can we borrow the useful methods of the very successful original AA to combat this affliction? Perhaps we need a 12 step program for people who have overdosed on the CAGW delusions in their own mind.
Support groups are an important component in the fight against AA.
Hello, my name is Al and I am an Alarmaholic. I am afraid of CO2, a trace gas essential to life on earth. Just knowing that I exist leaves me trembling in fear and riddled with guilt. My exhaled CO2 helps to feed my vegetables but at what cost? Gaia, have mercy on my soul.
Reading list: The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Emperor’s New Clothes
Perhaps they can be paired with a buddy who has conquered their AA so they will have someone to call whenever the next bad weather event appears. They will need reassurance to assuage their fear and relieve the guilt that they are at fault.
This is no joking matter. It is a pernicious and severe mental aberration that has caused politicians to implement many costly programs to address a problem that does not exist - a phantom of the atmosphere. Delusions can be expensive and wasteful of taxpayer money.. Non-problems addressed mean real problems remain naked.
It has been a pleasure to share.
So, as CO2 continues its unabated increase in the atmosphere without the expected but unaccompanying concomitant rise in temperature alarmists are left to the apocalypse in their own minds. They seem happy there. I have met Pogo and he is not us.
Dr. Lorenz notes that although other fields that deal with complex, non-linear systems have accepted the implications of chaos theory, some meteorologists and climatologists remain reluctant to accept the implications of chaos theory, namely that long-term climate forecasting is impossible.
Google for quote: Father of chaos theory explains why it is impossible to predict weather & climate beyond 3 weeks - Hockey Schtick Oct 9, 2013
Why are wise people so often ignored?
