Wednesday
May162012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill International Disinformation Agency
May 16, 2012 Climate: HSI Climate: other Greens This from ESI-Africa, a website focused on energy issues for Africa.
Ambassador Richard H. Jones, deputy director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), opened the IEA's April conference by-lined Clean Energy Progress, by saying global temperatures are "probably" going to rise by "six degrees Celsius" by about 2050.
According to the IEA website, Jones has a degree in mathematics. I guess this was a long time ago.
(The Hockey Stick Illusion gets a mention in the article too)
Update on May 16, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
In the comments, Jonathan Jones notes that Bloomberg are reporting a slightly different version of events, namely that emissions by 2050 will lead to 6 degrees of warming.
Reader Comments (29)
The IEA is another agency taken over by people on the climate change gravy train.
I think he may have been slightly misreported: the article at Bloomberg suggests that he actually said that emissions by 2050 under business as usual would lead to a committed long term warming of six degrees.
Oh my God!!!! Thats a degree every six years four months!!!
We are doomed, park the SUV, stop eating meat, strip off, prepare to die!!!
(Obviously another Guru in the Hansen mould)
I think you are being too kind Jonathan. If the Bloomberg report is accurate, it reads as though his comments were as you describe but the confusion may have been intentional. If you had the begging bowl out for a trillion dollars at a time when half the world's economies are in the tank, you would feel the need to hype up the fear. Another FoE (Friend of Ehrlich), methinks.
I wondered about the sparse use of quotes from that article but I found his testimony to the U.S. Senate which looks like the source of the quote and it reads even more alarmist, or deliberately vague, IMHO because judging from the context I think you could take away the message we are risking possibly more than six degrees by 2035!
Testimony of Richard H Jones Deputy Executive Director of the International Energy Agency U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources February 3, 2011
I just noticed the Jonathan Jones link above, I guess he just likes to spray around the "6 degrees" bogey man figure to sound authoritative with people who enjoy no context or apparent understanding. Looking at the last IPCC I did find that is an absolute top most extreme of one model run pushing the top error bar for 2100 (is this the source of the Mark Lynas title?) , yet he talks of it in discussions of the context of 2050 and 2035. Just another self aggrandising alarmist who can't be trusted on the details that are supposed to matter.
I think there's a bidding up process going on at the moment. Who can come up with biggest temperature rise?
First Ms Figueres thinks an increase of 5 deg C = 41 deg F, now another transnational kleptocrat ups the bidding.
I think I've figured it out - like all sales people, they're paid on commission!
$100k per degree?
David S, you may well be right, but it's still helpful to be clear about what he actually said.
As usual I find the Leopard's take quite plausible.
Look at the silver lining...if these people feel it necessary to parade the 5C and 6C figures, it means they themselves don't think 4C is enough a worry to warrant sweeping and far-reaching action.
All we need now is for the IPCC to put its best confidence in the usual range, and another anti-CAGW argument will be built out of CAGW pronouncements.
Foxgoose,
5°C might be 41°F, but a 5°F increase is not a 41°F increase, but a 9°F increase. You are forgetting that 0°C = 32°F. I think.
Apologies Foxgoose - I'm not paying attention!!! Hadn't read the earlier post. I plead pressure of work!
Here comes Ambassador Richard H. Jones, deputy director of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Cue men in whites coats, carrying straightjacket.
But following the head quote is this-
'The main problem, apart from this being totally impossible − barring massive meteorite attack or massive volcanic eruptions − is that fewer and fewer persons believe this story.'
And the article proceeds to debate the Vahrenholt Damascene conversion and the IPCC's inherent bias.
Jonathan Jones gets this one right. Another story where a quote has been misinterpreted by a surprisingly un-sceptical sceptical crowd. Come on Andrew, more scepticism please!
ps, loved the wind powered car story.
Doug
Doug
I was sceptical enough to find his slides on the IEA website, but these don't cover the 2050 stuff.
Some, may be able to recall that champion of robust reportage and truth telling journalism, 'The Sport', which printed imfamous BS headlines such as: "World War Two Bomber Found on Moon" and that other classic:
"Hitler was a transvestite".
Contrast, the IEA, with 'The Sport' - one was tongue in cheek slapstick in print, the other enables governments to formulate energy policy and is:
Here.
Spot the difference?!
Makes me want to weep.
We're discovering the IEA pushes the CAGW meme just as it is committed by statute to promote alternative energy sources. So on the one hand they're doing their job, on the other hand their words are dubious to say the least.
Like the IPCC, rather than consolidating knowledge, expertise and authoritative opinion, the IEA ends up making itself both a running joke and a broken record.
This is THE paradox of international organisations, and should be central to the Rio+20 talks in a rational world. Not in ours of course.
Doug
So now, we are supposed to be sceptical enough to go looking for evidence that would exonerate alarmists of their alarmism?
Why won't the alarmists do this in the first place?!
On sea level, it has to be the Australian alarmist Robyn Williams, who goes for 100 meters by the end of this century.
Oh, come off it, Dr McNeall!
Even as sceptics, even as
the forbiddend****** (plural) word, we and our Gracious host are permitted to laugh at the idiocies perpetrated by the glorious combination of the media and the politician. Especially given that that combination's normal default stance isChicken Littlealarmism. Professor Jones does, at least, permit himself a wry smile, whether it's directed at Figueres or his near namesake.Lighten up, man!
Doug
Other people hav e said it before me but when the alarmists are feeding the news media with a series of scare stories - ever heard of James Hansen? - then why should we be sceptical of yet another stupid story that comes along? The media is full of them and the alramists do nothing to stop the flow.
The pattern of apocalyptic clap-trap like this is to always link the demand for action today to an outcome far enough out into the future that the prophet making the claim is not easily held accountable for the failure of the prophecy. It is a display of arrogance on the part of the Ambassoador that he would make such a blatantly false claim. It is a display of ignorance (or perhaps good manners?) on the part of the audience that they did not interrupt the ambassador by laughing him off the stage.
I have just been reading a Wiltshire and Swindon 'State of the Environment' report which is plugging the (up to) 5 degree temperature rise by 2080s and the usual warmer wetter winter, hotter, drier summers meme. See, it filters on down the line and is taken as gospel by the believing minions - that's the danger.
Stott had an article in Nature last year talking up the possibility that the “tail” of possible climate sensitivities might be thicker than we thought, making a 6°C rise by 2050 more probable. Carrington had an article in the Guardian last year quoting the Met Office and Richard Betts on the possibility of a 6°C rise by 2050. (Betts actually apologised here for supporting that bit of alarmism). And of course Mark Lynas’s 2007 book of the same title established 6 as the magic number, which he associated with the circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. It’s like the value of pi or the 300,000 deaths per year from Climate Change - a fact that everybody knows. You can’t do numerology without numbers.
I don't remember ever supporting the idea of 6°C warming by 2050!
I have published this paper suggesting 4°C possibly as early as 2060, which is consistent with 6°C by the end of the century, and if all of the following happen:
1. high emissions scenario (A1FI)
2. high climate sensitivity
3. strong climate-carbon cycle feedbacks
For the high emissions scenario, our best estimate for hitting 4 degrees would be the mid-2070s, see this table from the paper.
We point out in the paper that it it still too early to say which emissions scenario we are currently following.
Cheers
Richard
Doug McNeall
Are you going to admit that you are totally unaware of the media currents? that everything is geared toward the meme of global warming and catastrophe? maybe a hint of honesty from the "scientists"?
I thought not.
Doug McNeall
I agree that there has to be precision from sceptics but your comment helps remind me of the fact that when the guy gets upbraided by the “sceptical crowd” it actually adds to his standing no matter what or how they say it. The fact that there is silence from the scientists who know better also adds a little sugar on the top.
By occupying this critical no-man’s land space in the middle, in which Richard H. Jones can not only mouth the required platitudes but spin the alarm, huckster like, as high as he can stretch (Doug is fine with it, apparently it is just within his limits of silence), then he automatically becomes a climate science maven. Sceptics voices only add to the perceived assessment of his credibility no matter what they say.
No doubt, like Yvo De Boer, a career is safely open to Richard H. Jones to forever more pontificate at will in front of eager fellow rent seeking business and political crowds to the end of his retirement.
My apologies to Richard Betts. The article I was thinking of
was about a Royal Society publication to which Professor Betts contributed, which warning of a 4°C rise by 2060. According to the article, “Another Met Office study [concludes] that regional temperatures in southern Europe and north Africa would rise 6-8°C.”
The same Royal Society had just a few years before given a prize to Mark Lynas for his book “Six Degrees” - a skillfully woven tissue of quotes from Dante and peer-reviewed science.
Professor Betts says (May 16, 2012 11:18 PM):
that his forecast is consistent with 6°C by the end of the century, in the case of
1. high emissions scenario
2. high climate sensitivity
3. strong climate-carbon cycle feedbacks
and points out that it is still too early to say which emissions scenario we are currently following.
As the IPCC makes clear, it is also too early to say anything definite about climate sensitivity and climate-carbon cycle feedbacks.
So we’re really in the game of guessing the gender of my aunt, in the absence of crucial determining evidence.