Nature, not Humans, rules the Climate

Coventry climate change funeral march, featuring Jim Hansen. Fortunately, only a few hundred participated. Perhaps even the British are growing tired of Hansen’s alarmism?

TIME Magazine’s Brian Walsh is searching for the climate’s tipping point, comparing it to a future asteroid impact. Only this time we know that the asteroid will hit, the question is not longer “if”, it is “when”.

The threat is real, the asteroid is out there, forecasting an ELE, writes Brian Walsh. Why on earth then doesn”t the society follow the rules of disaster flicks like Armageddon or Deep Impact? Not only do we not mobilize, as fear over the recession grows, climate change is sliding from our consciousness.

And so the tipping point draws closer. Although nobody seems to know how and when it will materialize. But obviously it’s as certain as death and taxes.

The value of the European Carbon Market is going to drop for the first time this year, said Point Carbon at their emissions trading conference this week.The value of emission permits is sagging. And judging by conference attendance, the number of people interested in trading is shrinking, too. Attendance this year was down about a fifth from recent boom years.

Nevertheless, Point Carbon is hoping for a change. Their survey of market participants shows half of the participants still believe that EUA prices will trade at 35 euros a tonne or higher in 2020 and around 80 percent of the total surveyed think the U.S. will have its own scheme by 2015. We’ll see, shall we?

On March 30-31 there will be another climate conference, this time in Washington, D.C. After this conference, four panels of experts are supposed to release consensus reports in late 2009. Then, the Committee on America’s Climate Choices will issue a final report in 2010 that will integrate the findings and recommendations from the four panel reports.

My question is: how much money is put into these conferences, congresses, summits, meetings and seminars? Kyoto, Bali, Washington, Copenhagen? And what is the result? Evidently, millions of dollars are spent on conference facilities, speakers’ fees, travel etc etc. For what good? What have we accomplished so far? And what do we hope to accomplish in the future?

European cap-and-trade is a miserable example of how climate politics don’t work. Now, it may be time for the US to discover the beauties of carbon trading.

I am surprised that, while climate alarmists always call for the precautionary principle when speaking of the dire consequences of CO2-emissions, no one even mentions it when talking about climate politics.

More news from the climate summit in Copenhagen. On the last day of the meeting, Hans Joachim Schnellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said that if the buildup of greenhouse gases and its consequences pushed global temperatures 9 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today — well below the upper temperature range that scientists project could occur from global warming — Earth’s population would be devastated.

But Dr Schellnhuber is happy about one thing - finally, we have been able to estimate the carrying capacity of our planet, namely below 1 billion people.

Dr. Schellnhuber also said that at certain “tipping points,” higher temperatures could cause areas of the ocean to become deoxygenated, resulting in what he calls “oxygen holes” between 600 and 2,400 feet deep. Unabated warming would also lead to “disruption of the monsoon, collapse of the Amazon rain forest and the Greenland ice sheet will meltdown”.

Now who is this guy? Is he a lunatic, one may wonder? No, on the contrary. He has been climate advisor to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a visiting professor at Oxford.

According to 350.org, Maldives plan to become the first country to be carbon neutral. By 2020, Maldives will be driven by 155 wind turbines, half a square kilometer of rooftop solar panels and a biomass plant burning coconut husks. Battery banks will be established to provide back-up for times of emergency.

Who’s paying the bill? UN? The tourists? Or the locals?

President Nasheed says: “Climate change is a global emergency. The world is in danger of going into cardiac arrest, yet we behave as if we’ve caught a common cold.” Excuse me, but in case of cardiac arrest, wouldn’t it be good to have secured access to electricity?

In Ontario, Canada, Frank de Jong, the Green Party Leader, wants the provincial government to scrap all nuclear plans and introduce a consumer-based carbon tax. If people learn how to conserve electricity then there will be no need for nuclear power.

This is the true nature of the greens. It’s not about cutting CO2, or saving the planet. Instead, it’s all about controlling our use of energy. Since energy is what’s needed for growth, then the green strategy is about curbing further growth.

Last year, Kate Soper wrote in New Scientist that there is plenty of evidence that our work-dominated material milieu is not making us happy. And that a more “sustainable” society in which we work and produce less would, in fact, make us happier. Sustainable thus means not evolving.

What Kate Soper doesn’t consider is that work not only leads to more financial wealth, but also to technological progress, which in turn enhances our quality of life and helps us preserve the environment.

“Global warming is accelerating, the arctic and antarctic ice shelves are rapidly melting, sea level and global temperatures are on the rise, ocean acidification is increasing, foot shortages and water shortages are occurring worldwide, a mass extinction event of millions of species is underway, and the human race faces peril. Thanks to coal, oil, and the industrial revolution.”

Note that the initial speaker is Paul Ehrlich. What does that tell us?

James Hansen is combining his scientific career with a political one. On Thursday, he will once again take part in a massive climate protest in Great Britain. This time, Hansen will actually lead the whole thing. The protest is being organized by Christian Aid and will involve a New Orleans-style funeral march by “mourners” for future lost generations.

Obviously, James Hansen is not worried that his climate activism may harm the reputation of science. He’s by the way not the only one who, desperate for new climate policies,  turns to activism. Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow, at the Earth and Biosphere Institute at Leeds University, believes his understanding of climate change means he is morally obliged to become a climate activist.

Others, like Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre, use academic journals to post their views on climate politics. Anderson recently wrote the following in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:

“Emissions are rising so fast that we are heading for a world that will be 4C-5C warmer than now by 2100. That would be catastrophic. (…) Unless economic growth can be reconciled with unprecedented rates of decarbonisation, it is difficult to foresee anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilising the climate.”

But if scientists start acting as politicians, what damage will that do to science itself? How can we trust scientific results? If science becomes distorted by politics, how will we be able to tell the truth about our world?

The climate meeting in Copenhagen was actually not all about alarmism. Jonathan Bamber, an ice sheet expert at the University of Bristol, told the conference that previous studies had misjudged the so-called Greenland tipping point, at which the ice sheet is certain to melt completely.

“We found that the threshold is about double what was previously published,” Bamber said. This means it would take an average global temperature rise of 6C to push Greenland into irreversible melting.

Barber also said that evidence from past climates confirms  that Greenland should be able to survive temperature rises higher than 3C. An ice sheet about half the size is known to have persisted there during the Eemian period, about 125,000 years ago, when temperatures were about 5C higher than today.

Time to rearrange your slides again, Al?