On our current path, civilisation as we know it will disappear. If we meet current commitments only – net zero by 2050 – perhaps some form of humanity will survive, managing the challenges of continued extreme weather events, ice loss, and sea-level and temperature rises.
Sigh.
According to the byline the man is chair of something called the global Climate Crisis Advisory Group. It’s his mission to spout nonsense.
I’ve found this a constant source of amusement, that if they were granted their wish of eliminating CO2 from the planet everything, even Graun hacks, would die. Just the opposite of what they claim…
Anti-Western scaremongering.
Meanwhile in India:
India Power Giant to Add More Coal Plants to Meet Soaring Demand
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-14/india-power-giant-to-add-more-coal-plants-to-meet-soaring-demand
I see they are still wheeling out the picture of the polar bear for articles about net zero. It’s like one of those weird memes that youngsters use – I can’t work out what it is supposed to mean.
Sir David King, ex government scientific advisor.
Just launched his own charity, no. 1205544.
The only question is whether this is deranged hysterical nonsense or profoundly dishonest nonsense. Having said that, the border between derangement and dishonesty is so blurred among bien-pensants that it’s almost an irrelevant question.
There is zero chance of the world being net zero by 2050. It ain’t happening. However, even the chair of the IPCC concedes: “The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees.”
We know so much more about climate change than we did 40 or 30 years ago. We know not to set our doom laden predictions for “10 years from now”. Instead, 30 or more years is the timeframe to use so that we’ll be retired or dead by the time they don’t come true.
I was once going to do some research with King but the project fell through because he failed to meet a deadline. He blamed it on a postdoc. Twat!
One thing he deserves credit for – he does describe his agenda as “radical”. Most of the climate alarmists try to sell us on the idea that all this crap will be cheap! Even better, it’ll be cheaper than the current system and lots of high paying jobs! Whee!
I’m not worried, we all died in 2000 anyway, exactly as predicted. And again in 2010. And 2020.
@Sam Vara
Pictures of polar bears standing on a melting lump of ice suggest the narrative that if the ice melts the bear will fall in the water and freeze or drown. Whist this is what would happen to us, it rather ignores the fact that polar bears have evolved to deal with seasonally melting ice. Swimming 100 miles in icy water is trivial for a polar bear. Some have been recorded swimming 500 miles.
“The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees.”
Here’s the thing: who can tell the difference between now and 20 years ago. Go on a holiday to the Dordogne, it feels about the same to me.
And this isn’t to say it isn’t happening, but it ain’t happening so fast that we can’t move millions of people in the timeframe if it does. It starts getting harder to grow crops in Spain, maybe the farmers have to move north. You have decades to change that.
And if it’s real, it’s going to take centuries, maybe a millenium, and who knows what the world will be like. It’s hard to predict where we will be in 30 years, let alone 100 or 400.
It’s almost as if we’re still slowly emerging from an ice age into an interglacial period and the temperatures that our records start from ~1860 ish was a relatively cold period during that early interglacial.
The reality is that temperatures are still fluctuating as our climate finds a new normal, most of which amounts to “reversion to the mean”.
If we really wanted to compare like-for-like we’d have to compare today’s temperatures with the equivalent temperatures after the prior-to-last interglacial.
But that would upset the narrative, since at one point it was warm enough for Hippos to live in the river Thames.
The whole argument about Warble Gloaming is nonsense on stilts by people who want to restore sumptuary laws to lord it over the plebs will the plebs live in mud huts and eat grass and bugs (again).
I thought that the polar bear population was in fact increasing overall whilst some areas the population is decreasing. The estimates are up to 31000 with a lower linit of 22000. In fact a recently discovered group of polar bears was found in Greenland https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/secret-polar-bear-population-is-found-living-in-a-seemingly-impossible-habitat/
Andrew C
Even 30 years can be too short.
I’m reminded of Hansen’s (spectacularly half-witted) prediction back in 1988 that the West Side Highway (next to the Hudson River) would be under water in 40 years if CO2 doubled over that period!
4 years to go…
AndyF: «Pictures of polar bears standing on a melting lump of ice suggest the narrative that if the ice melts the bear will fall in the water and freeze or drown. »
Pictures of polar bears standing on a melting lump of ice always make me think of Fox’s Glacier Mints but I may be alone in this.
“With every 100 metres, the temperature drops by an average of 0.65°C.”
So to avoid 1 degree rise in temperature, could be 100 years worth, we have to move about 150metres up a hill. Or about 150km north in latitude iirc if you’re already north of the equator.
Manageable problem, not an emergency.
It isn’t really about warming anymore. Since the predicted warming failed to materialise, and no one is being fooled by claims that it is the hottest ever when it’s obviously bloody freezing, it’s now about extreme weather and wild fires. It’s pretty amazing how a tiny rise in the still miniscule levels of CO2 in the atmosphere can make it hotter, colder, wetter, drier or whatever other conditions might arise.
None of it makes any sense. We are told the polar regions are warming faster than lower latitudes. We are also told that this is causing extreme weather events such as hurricanes.. Winds are caused by temperature differences. A tendency towards temperature equalisation means less energy differential in the system & thus less wind.
it was warm enough for Hippos to live in the river Thames.
That’s just Diane Abbott going swimming, silly.
I was looking at a weather app the other day and one piece of information it had was that the temperature was 4 degrees cooled than was typical for that day, makes you wonder how you would spot a 1.5 degree difference within that level of variability
It depends bis
“From 1978 until 2010, research showed a worldwide stilling of winds, with speeds dropping 2.3 percent per decade.”
That’s from a Yale paper, which supports what you said, but also supports the models saying that polar temperatures will rise faster and winds will decrease. The effect should reduce as the differential narrows, and/or much ice is gone. There may be research soon showing that holding patterns of long still weather patterns are increasing due to lower wind disruption. If so, this would also support the main line of climate change theory.
Pictures of polar bears standing on a melting lump of ice always make me think of Fox’s Glacier Mints but I may be alone in this.
You are not alone.
If so, this would also support the main line of climate change theory.
But it wouldn’t support the proposition that recent increases in severe weather are evidence of climate change.
Not saying they’ve been any. But that just confirms the default position of the climate change lobby is lying through its teeth. So what else are they lying about? My guess would be most if not all of it.
Stony @ 1.52, the reason Carbon Dioxide is known as “The miracle molecule”. There is nothing it cannot do.
And thereby making the ‘theory of Man made global warming’ unscientific, as it cannot be falsified.
Agree BiS that that particular lobby has bigger frauds than any lobby group in history, and there have been some big ones. Councils declaring climate emergencies, £180/tonne to capture CO2 then let it escape over the next decade, carbon negative cements, net zero festivals, drying and burning woodchips, and then calling for the fracking ban to remain, the list of bollockios is awful and long.
One wonders whether the “average” temperature has really increased by 1.5C or whether the historical temps have been adjusted downwards by that amount? It would appear to be exactly the same as they report relatives, not absolutes.
@AndyF
Maybe the Proclaimers could rewite their song as “I would swim 500 miles, And I would swim 500 more …”