Global warming speedometer

Effective graphics are difficult to develop, so I want to acknowledge and recommend this one, which I found here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/25/introducing-the-global-warming-speedometer/

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Introducing the global warming speedometer

Guest Blogger / 6 days ago May 25, 2016

A single devastating graph shows official climate predictions were wild

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

The new global warming speedometer shows in a single telling graph just how badly the model-based predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have over-predicted global warming.

The speedometer for the 15 years 4 months January 2001 to April 2016 shows the [1.1, 4.2] C°/century-equivalent interval of global warming rates (red/orange) that IPCC’s 1990, 1995 and 2001 reports predicted should be occurring by now, compared with real-world, observed warming (green) equivalent to less than 0.5 C°/century over the period.

Observed reality

RSS and UAH monthly near-global satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomaly values for each month from January 2001 to April 2016 were assumed to be broadly accurate and were averaged. The least-squares linear-regression trend on their mean was determined and found equivalent to 0.47 C°/century.

Predictions in IPCC’s Assessment Reports

IPCC (2007, 2013) are too recent to allow reliable comparison of their predictions against reality.

IPCC (2001), on page 8, predicted that in the 36 years 1990-2025 the world would warm by 0.75 [0.4, 1.1] C°, equivalent to 2.1 [1.1, 3.1] C°/century. This predicted interval is 4.5 [2.3, 6.6] times observed warming since January 2001.

IPCC (1995), at fig. 6.13, assuming the subsequently-observed 0.5%-per-year increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, predicted a medium-term warming rate a little below 0.4 C° over 21 years, equivalent to 1.8 C°/century, or 3.8 times observed warming since January 2001.

IPCC (1990), at page xxiv, predicted near-linear global warming of 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] C° over the 36 years to 2025, a rate equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] C°/century. This predicted interval is 6.0 [4.0, 8.9] times observed warming since January 2001.

Conclusion

Fifteen years is long enough to verify the predictions from IPCC’s first three Assessment Reports against real-world temperature change measured by the most sophisticated method available – satellites.

The visible discrepancy between wild predictions and harmless reality since January 2001 demonstrates that the major climate models on which governments have relied in setting their mitigation policies are unfit for their purpose. Removing the exaggerations inbuilt into the models eradicates the supposed climate problem.

The real-world evidence shows that global warming mitigation policies are based on predictions now exposed as having been flagrantly and baselessly exaggerated.

All global-warming mitigation policies should be forthwith abandoned and their heavy cost returned at once to taxpayers by way of cuts in energy taxes and charges.

Industries such as coal mining and generation should be fully compensated for the needless loss and damage that ill-considered government policies inflicted on them.

Subsidies for global warming research should be ended and IPCC dissolved.

climatefeedback.org a sham

I went to this web page with hopes of finally seeing a rational discussion: http://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/the-telegraph-bjorn-lomborg-in-many-ways-global-warming-will-be-good-thing/

Instead, I found a series of viewpoint-driven comments that contain the same logical fallacies they attribute to Lomborg's work. Worse, the web page does not allow readers' comments. I teach university classes on environmental science and ethics, but I have no way to point out the problems with the feedback from these scientists.

Consequently, this web page is merely more of the same: model-based propaganda.

Very disappointing!

Plus, although the page gives links to the various scientists quoted, it doesn't give a link to Lomborg's original article. You can find it here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/05/no-one-ever-says-it-but-in-many-ways-global-warming-will-be-a-go/

Lomborg makes a point that the experts unintentionally verify with their comments:

When we shift the climate conversation to describe positives along with negatives, and focus on costs and benefits of policies – essentially treating this challenge like any other policy agenda – it becomes obvious how many of today’s accepted climate policies are poor.  Little wonder climate campaigners do not want this sort of conversation.

Here are some excerpts:

Our climate conversation is lopsided. There is ample room to suggest that climate change has caused this problem or that negative outcome, but any mention of positives is frowned upon. We have known for decades that increasing CO₂ and precipitation from global warming will make the world much greener – by the end of the century, it is likely that global biomass will have increased by forty percent.

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Only mentioning the negatives distorts and degrades the political conversation. Any reasonable person can recognize both positives and negatives among the policy proposals of both Tories and Labour. It is an extreme partisan that insists either side offers only negatives.

Yet, this is the position enforced by the climate alarmists – last seen in aletter to The Times from Lord Krebs and company, essentially telling the newspaper to stop reporting less-than-negative climate stories. While it is true any individual news story rarely represents the whole truth, it is revealing that such campaigners don’t send out similar letters to correct the daily deluge of alarmist stories.

The idea that climate is bad for all good things and good for all bad things belongs in a morality play. In the real world, we should look at all the available information. When the BBC warns of more severe tropical storms, it has some validity. The UN’s climate panel expects to see fewer but stronger hurricanes. But it is an incomplete picture.

As the world develops, it has become much less vulnerable: a hurricane hitting Florida kills few people while a similar event in Guatemala kills tens of thousands. Indeed, climate-related deaths have dropped from half a million per year in the 1920s to less than 25,000 per year in the 2010s.

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If our climate conversation managed to include the good along with the bad, we would have a much better understanding of our options. Climate economics does just that, taking all the negatives (like rising sea levels and more heat deaths) and all the positives (a greener planet, fewer cold deaths). A climate economics approach finds that today – contrary to the alarmists’ massive insistence on negatives-only stories – global warming causes about as much damage as benefits. Over time, climate becomes a net problem: by the 2070s, the UN Climate Panel finds that global warming will likely cause damage equivalent to 0.2 per cent to 2 per cent of global GDP. This is certainly not a trivial cost, but nor is it the end of the world. It is perhaps half the social cost of alcohol today.

This suggests that a policy which could eradicate global warming for 1 per centof global GDP would probably be a good deal. Unfortunately, we do not have such a deal on the table. The Paris climate treaty will cost around 2 per cent of global GDP and fix much less than a tenth of the problem. Less effective but more ambitious climate policies cost at least 6 per cent of global GDP per year and likely much more. Wind and solar, which covers less than half of one percent of global energy, costs dozens of times more than their climate benefits. Electric cars provide perhaps a thousandth in climate benefit of their substantial public subsidies. Biofuels are just hugely costly while increasing emissions.

When we shift the climate conversation to describe positives along with negatives, and focus on costs and benefits of policies – essentially treating this challenge like any other policy agenda – it becomes obvious how many of today’s accepted climate policies are poor.  Little wonder climate campaigners do not want this sort of conversation.

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You can see more of Lomborg's stuff here: http://www.lomborg.com/