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I attended a seminar given by the late Professor Bob Carter some eight or nine years ago. The tide is turning, he pronounced, the warmist hysteria receding. In fact, the tide has not ebbed at all; it has flowed continuously and strongly in the same direction. He was mistaken.
I commented after visiting England in early 2019 that acceptance of human-induced climate change had become part of the fabric of media, political and ordinary life to a degree which went well beyond the Australian experience. The hotel where I stayed in Milton Keynes no longer had newspapers in its efforts to save the planet. We are catching up. If there were any doubt, the influence of the bushfires has removed it.
Minister for Science and Technology Karen Andrews must know what she is talking about, don’t you think? And she, in her scientific wisdom, has made it clear that climate change is real and that we now have to leave any debate about that behind us and get on with doing something about it.
The other day I read that James Murdoch is upset about various outlets of News Corporation still entertaining debate. I see that the head of the world’s largest fund manager BlackRock is “pulling the plug” on thermal coal. “Step up on climate,” says the Cbus super fund chief. “Green finance needed to tackle climate change,” says HSBC’s head of sustainable finance. Obviously, one can go on and on. There is no end to corporate wokeness on climate.
The sheer weight of the education sector, the corporate sector and most of those in politics and in the media is bound to bring to bear enough firepower (pun intended) to win the day. It is “settled.” Over! Sceptics, take note. It may be tommyrot, twaddle, tripe and tosh, but it’s a “fact” or, if you like accuracy, a factoid, which is just as authoritative in the grand scheme of things. Get used to it.
An analogy helps. Think of yourself, dear typical sceptic, being akin to the gallant, but eventually limbless, Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You haven’t been given a flesh wound you have been eviscerated. That some of you still don’t know it is, at best, touchingly delusional.
Where to turn is the question? The answer is obvious when you think about it. Become more rabid than the rabid. Any number of prominent alarmists, including Greta Thunberg, and the Extinction Rebellion crowd, and that “prominent climatologist” Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, said last year that we, the world, had only twelve years to remedy the problem before a tipping point was reached. After that, bye-bye civilisation, if not life itself. Incidentally, it must now be only eleven years and counting because the reckless world has done diddly-squat.
“We cannot be radical enough,” David Attenborough told a committee of the British Parliament. Take him at his word. Something realistic, pragmatic, practical and, most of all, effective must be done urgently before the fast-coming catastrophe hits. Remember this is not going to be a picnic. To wit: rampant heat-stroke, rapidly spreading tropical diseases, species extinctions, widespread childhood hysteria and post-climatic stress disorders, droughts, wildfires, inundations, willy-willies, hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones.
There is not a menu of choice. Given existing technology, there is only one solution. That solution is nuclear energy. No ifs, ands, buts or maybes. Even then, it will be a tight run thing. Can a large enough number of nuclear power plants be built, installed and connected to sufficiently mitigate the effects of climate change, as the 2020s close? Nothing and no-one must be allowed to stand in the way.
Those who oppose this solution, probably all of the aforementioned alarmists, must be badged as nuclear denialists, climate vandals, even as treasonous criminals. Shot at dawn, so to speak. The tables are turned. Unfortunately, it will mean sacrificing coal mining jobs. But, never mind, those miners thrown out of work can easily learn computer programming, according to Joe Biden.
Of course, China and India will be recalcitrant and go on spewing vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. There’s the rub, I suppose, buried in my otherwise brilliant ploy, my cunning plan. Oh, let’s give up. By next year we will only have ten years left. Make merry, for 2031 marks the year we start dying or suffering appallingly. And whatever you do, if fertile, avoid having children. At least restrict their number. Take a cue from the Sussexes.
> “By next year we will only have ten years left”
Me too, I expect. So on a personal level, not much worry.
You are right, Peter Smith, the factoid of CO2 gas causing climatological havoc is as established in the public mind now as gravity (not a factoid). Although I pointed out over five years ago that the combined weight of climate academia, virtue signalling corporates, politicos/bureaucrats lusting for power and an absolutely shameless MSM would win, that view was regarded as cynical. So, now what ?
Not a hope for nuclear technology in Oz. Just ask the female half of the population. Enforced reduction in domestic and industrial demand for power, EV’s totally unsuitable outside Glebe but enforced none the less, veggies as a constant diet …
Just 6 months ago:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.00165.pdf
Yet, not a sign of any reference to this by the despicable MSM journos. They lust to keep their illegitimate power. Clermont Q’landers will be overcome.
Sussexes? Don’t you mean the Markles?
Great link ianl. Who would have thought that such a study could have originated in Finland. And crikies, who would have thought that less clouds means slightly warmer temps, hey?
You mention a tipping point. Actually there were three tipping points and they all happened 3 billion years ago.
[1] life emerged in the hydrothermal vents deriving 1/10 volt from molecules such as H2 N2 CN H2S etc
[2] an entrepreneurial life form invented a antenna to harvest 2 volts from sunlight & escape the vents
[3] a daughter life form invented RUBISCO to store the electricity as oxygen and sugar
RUBISCO is the commonest protein on Earth, and keeps us alive.
RUBISCO, invented on Earth for Earth, got rid of 99.9995% of the CO2 that is still on hothouse Venus.
RUBISCO likes 0.5% CO2 [technically Michaelis constant] twelve times the present starvation level,
When we burn coal we get 2 volts per atom, and actually voluminous radioactive waste
When we split Uranium we get 200,000,000 volts and minimal waste.
The CO2 hoax has nothing to do with real science.
I’m not a scientist, but I’d nevertheless take that Finnish paper with a grain of the proverbial.
Tony you will need to qualify that conclusion. I’ve read it through and it looks perfectly sound to me.
Here is the nut-grabber:
‘During the last hundred years the temperature is increased about 0.1°C because of CO2. The human contribution was about 0.01°C.’
There’s not even a denial of AGW in that.
Nuclear power is a sensible option whether or not mankind is effecting climate change. The pity is that many Australians have been conned by selective data about nuclear energy; the deaths attributed to it and the problems perceived about radioactive waste.
Have a look at the paper, ‘Climate Change Misunderstood”, at https://www.scribd.com/document/383385011/. The evidence and arguments it presents give a perspective missing in much of the alarmist viewpoint. It discusses nuclear energy.
Let’s go full bore: close down all CO2 ’emitting’ things: power stations, motor vehicles, plastics production, animal farming, aircraft, ships, and mining. There, that should fix it.
“During the last hundred years the temperature is increased about 0.1°C because of CO2.” When temperature is a multifactor phenomenon, I need convincing that on factor can be drawn out in this way.
I am so sick of the whole thing that I say deploy all the world’s nukes at once and hope that the creatures that crawl out of the slime in a million years or so make a better job of it than we have done.
https://www.nature.com/articles/444426a
Even Captain Cook noted fires.
We had 10 years left in 1989! This UN “expert” assured us of this back then – 10 years unless drastic changes were made, and the Earth’s life support systems would collapse! Suzuki enthusiastically parroted that claim the whole year to the likes of Ray Martin and whichever ABC talking head had him on. They even slipped into their soap GP! As of now we’re surely 21 years past the point of “no return”. CO2 emissions are much higher than in 1989, so so “major changes in lifestyle” to let them off the hook, unless millions of Chinese and Indians driving cars instead of riding bikes was what they had in mind.
“Of course, China and India will be recalcitrant and go on spewing vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere.”
As I understand it, under the”contraction and convergence” theory embedded in the Paris 2015 Agreement, China and India are still considered developing countries and hence permitted to continue their CO2 emissions until they equal the developed world’s average per capita emissions; with the latter synchronously reducing its emissions per capita and with 2030 projected as the equalisation year. It is also the year when China’s population is projected to reach its maximum, at least in theory, before demographic transition kicks in and the national birthrate begins to decline. Hence China can go on growing for another decade, which is handy for ensuring its emissions PER CAPITA remain low.
Ianl. See also https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
Another ominous sign: Tamania’s new Premier is Hell bent on more “action on climate change”.
Tasmania’s climate, at least in the populated parts is Koppen-Geiger “cfc”, with Burnie and environs “cfd”, just as it was 120 years ago. What does “action on climate change” actually mean?
Damn the Madden-Julian oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole! This weather is caused by WITCHCRAFT! And Black Magic! Let’s see some action on witches!
“All men are born ignorant, but one must work very hard to remain stupid indefinitely”
Ben Franklin
Pgang, just a peer reviewed gut feeling.
The irony is that in order to build the tens of thousands of windmills and solar panels required to make even a small impact on CO2 emissions the world will still have to use either coal fired and/or nuclear power stations to provide the base load power necessary! If zero emissions is the objective then nuclear power is the only answer. Refusal to consider this option means that the ranting breast beating apocalyptic alarmists are totally disingenuous and their concerns are fake.
The Climate Change issue one of ideology and politics (with economic self interest) far more than ever about atmospheric physics. It’s been latched onto by greens, and “post industrial ‘progressives’” and by various “anti-capitalists” (the latter are either brazen or too young to remember the nightmare of pollution produced by the Communist Bloc, exposed when the system collapsed).
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But most greens clearly do not believe in their claims. If they did they would support nuclear power, albeit with certain caveats. They would certainly back hydroelectricity, again with some environmental protection such as fish ladders. But they do not. Bob Brown in the late 1990’s, even as he was born preaching about the world frying, was calling for the Lake Pedder project (where his green crusade began) to be demolished! His big victory was stopping a major renewable energy project in the Gordon below Franklin dam (something which Hawke seemed to not grasp in comparing this with the “fight against climate change”). If these people really believed their rhetoric, they’d rethink these things. But they do not. Which tells me their “belief” is more ideological utility and prejudice and has not changed their thinking at all. Something that supposedly does change thinking has not in the case of the loudest shouters!
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The excuses made against nuclear energy concentrate on “it is too expensive and isn’t cost effective” and it will take too long to roll out, we won’t be able to build the plants fast enough. Both of which could be equally said against wind and solar (certainly if storage costs were included), but are dismissed in those cases. That’s why I have a degree of respect for those climate warriors who have rethought this. But they are few and far between.
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The claim of militant atheists is that “religion poisons everything”. The truth is that it’s politics, and particularly ideological politics that poisons everything. Political ideologies were once mostly based on religion, but now apart from Islamism (where “progressives” avert their eyes), unquestioned mantras can come from obstensibly non-religious sources. From Marxism, or Neo-Marxism. From invoking “multiculturalism” – which always makes me think of Jacob and Esau, where Esau sold his birthright for a “mess of pottage”! I always think this describes the “multicult” given that “the food” always seems to be the be all and end all of the “benefits”! No wonder “progressives” want us to not know the old morality tales and foundational stories.