Bishop Hill Bob misrepresents the science again
Nov 27, 2014 Climate: WG2 Climate: Ward Bob Ward's interview with Conor Gearty is fun, with the film-noir style making Bob look even stranger than normal. His views are amusing too, having only the loosest connections with the science. Take this bit on the 2-degree target.
This is straight from the science...we've seen from the evidence that if we go above global warming of more than 2 degrees we will be facing very severe risks that the world has not seen for millions of years...
As an actual climatologist explained at BH once:
Most climate scientists* do not subscribe to the 2 degrees "Dangerous Climate Change" meme.
And then there's this on the impact of climate change here in the UK:
We can already start to see the impacts of climate change in the UK...more flooding, more droughts, more heatwaves. They are things that are going to get worse. We are already starting to increase.
The trends in drought in the UK is downwards. Any increase in flooding is due to increased exposure rather than flood. I'm not aware of any studies on UK heatwaves.
Bit of an embarrassment really.
Reader Comments (157)
Nov 29, 2014 at 8:24 PM | Entropic man
In contrast, have you ever considered how many solar panels and windmills that you would require, the surface area they would occupy?
the singularity is planned for by 2040, allthough expert opinions tend to underestimate ingenuity (the human genome would take decennia after Celegans was taken..)
i am not sure we will need EMs dire predictions after 2040
anyway you have my blessing to mitigate for co2 by reaping low hanging fruit: stop all third world immigration, tax babies,
cull the nannystate 99% ( we cannot afford all these carbon emitting salries at bbc)
@ Harry Passfield Nov 29, 2014 at 11:02 PM
Hi Harry
not sure what OPEC are up to now, but take your word we should be watchfull.
'science is settled' meme will/is now rattling the foundations as more people are getting the message from the Bish & CA etc that there are problems.
some people made a big bet/gamble on this scare changing the world/west into making changes to lifestyles, for the planet (groan).
that affects me & mine now & down the line (and all the taxes etc my parents/grandparents have contributed to get me/uk where we are today).
it may all be deflection from the Ward side, but hammer them with the crappy Science & then the policy wonks agenda will be laid bare.
Yes, if the world gets warmer and the CO2 dramatically increases then we could see enough plants growing that will replenish the coal deposits. Yet another reason to be "anti-coal".
So, EM, you're suggesting I read the whole of the WEB report, which we both know claims low confidence in any impacts on extreme weather, in order to justify both your and Bob Ward's religious fervour?
Would it not have made more sense to either admit being wrong or at least link to the SREX, which is more on topic to Bob's claims, whilst still contradicting them.
Poor show.
Nov 29, 2014 at 11:02 PM | Harry Passfield
Harry is absolutely correct. They keep everyone occupied, discussing, as Joe Bastardi says, how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin. This is very relevant to what Tim Ball has been saying recently about Maurice Strong and the UN, a theme I investigated in "United Socialist Nations" - UN Progress on Global Governance via Climate Change "http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/un_progress_governance_via_climate_change.html
"As the advocates throw in yet more spurious claims of the “hottest year on record”, or record cold "caused by CO2 emissions", they occupy the debate, and determine the daily agenda in the media, whilst those who know that the claims are spurious, are driven to waste time, effort and resources on refuting them.
...the first Earth Summit was in Stockholm, in 1972, The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, (UNCHE), with Maurice Strong as Secretary-General.
Global Agreements
In 1987, the Brundtland Report, headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway and former vice-president of the Socialist International, led to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, which led to Agenda 21 and the Millennium Development Goals. The principal draftsman was Mr. Nitin Desai, UNCED's deputy secretary-general and currently a “Distinguished Fellow” at Rajendra Pachauri’s TERI organisation. William D. Ruckelshaus, the first EPA Administrator, was a member of the Brundtland Commission with Maurice Strong.
As the architect of the United Nations Environment Program and the United Nations Development Program, (UNEP-UNDP), Strong had for many years co-ordinated and strengthened the integration of Non-Governmental Organisations, (NGO’s) into the UN environmental bodies. In Geneva in 1973, he launched the "World Assembly of NGO's concerned with the Global Environment". He realised that for his ambitions of a UN world government to become reality he needed the vast networking opportunities offered by the NGO’s, now referred to as “Civil Society”.
By offering them involvement and a perception of power he brought them on board and certainly the UN could not have developed as far as it has without them. NGO’s are now involved in all UN bodies and are major contributors to the IPCC reports. They have helped to build this all-encompassing bureaucracy into the behemoth that it now is.
Commission on Global Governance, (CGG)
The CGG was established in 1992, after Rio, at the suggestion of Willy Brandt, former West German chancellor and President of the Socialist International, (at that time, http://www.socialistinternational.org/viewArticle.cfm?ArticlePageID=1228).
It recommended that "user fees" should be imposed on companies operating in the "global commons." Such fees could be collected on international airline tickets, ocean shipping, deep-sea fishing, activities in Antarctica, geostationary satellite orbits, and electromagnetic spectrum. The main revenue stream would be carbon taxes, to be levied on all fossil fuels. "A carbon tax," the report said, would yield very large revenues indeed."
Does that sound a little familiar? And that was 1992.
Fast forward to December 2009 and COP 15 in Copenhagen. Whilst there was no apparent agreement, the main aim of continuing carbon trading was achieved, even though many of the participants thought it was a failure.
After Copenhagen, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, commissioned a “High Level” advisory group to look into the issue of Climate Change Financing. Their report was released three weeks before the Cancun Climate Conference, COP 16, in 2010.
It included amongst its members, George Soros, Lord Stern, Chris Huhne, Ciao Koch-Weser of Deutsche Bank, (whose wife is a trustee of Pachauri's Teri Europe, with Sir John Houghton and Sir Crispin Tickell as advisers) and Christine Lagarde, then French Finance Minister, now head of IMF.
Check out "High Level Climate Finance" http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/high_level_climate_finance.html, for more detail.
George Soros has long been interested in Climate Finance, as here in this Jan. 15 2010 Bloomberg report:
“A U.S. law to curb carbon emissions would spur billions of dollars of spending on green-energy projects in developing countries, billionaire George Soros said.
“If you had the legislation in the United States you would have a market for carbon emissions and for offsetting credits provided to clean-energy projects in the developing world”, Soros said at a conference yesterday in New York. “Right now you don’t even have that. The United States is the laggard.”
“Without a cap on carbon dioxide emissions that puts a penalty on pollution, low-carbon investments won’t be profitable”, Soros, founder of $25 billion hedge-fund firm Soros Fund Management LLC, said at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk at the United Nations.
“Rich nations should use special International Monetary Fund reserves to finance efforts in developing nations to combat climate change”, Soros said last month. He announced the plan in Copenhagen, where 193 nations were meeting to negotiate a treaty to curb emissions that most scientists blame for global warming.”
He also happens to be a member of the Columbia University Earth Institute external advisory board, (http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1006), along with IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri (and the pop singer, Bono). Earth Institute President Jeffrey Sachs is a long-time associate of Pachauri and Soros and is an advisor to Ban Ki Moon. Another interesting member is Dr. Tim Palmer, (http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/research/predictability-of-weather-and-climate/collaborations), Head of Probability and Seasonal Forecasting Division European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, UK.
The "High Level" panel came to these conclusions:
“The UN Advisory Group emphasized the importance of a carbon price in the range of US$20-US$25 per ton of CO2 equivalent in 2020 as a key element of reaching the US$100 billion per year.
The higher the carbon price, the steeper the rise in available revenues and the stronger the mutual reinforcement of abatement potentials and different measures.”
Among the proposals put forward by the group were taxes on aviation jet fuel, airline passenger tickets, and "bunker fuel," the heavy diesel fuel used by maritime shippers.
Revenues from carbon taxes were also proposed based on a tax on carbon emissions in developed countries raised on a per-ton-emitted basis.
Up to US$10 billion could be mobilized from other instruments, such as the redeployment of fossil fuel subsidies in developed countries or some form of financial transaction tax, though diverging views will make it difficult to implement this universally."
Just like they were saying in 1992.... and it's top of the Agenda again as comitments are currently sought for the Green Climate Fund. It is what they will be arguing for again in Lima and will be seeking to cement in 2015 in Paris, They are nothing if not patient and work on the old Fabian principle of evolutionary, not revolutionary Socialism.
Follow the money? Of course.
http://sppiblog.org/news/a-nest-of-carbon-vipers
Ah, we already had an inkling of "Entropic Man"'s agenda from his screenname, but now he has revealed his innermost thoughts.
The guy is apparently a retired science teacher, and so has some learning behind him. The reference to entropy, he hopes, lends his comments some authority but it's a subtle way of getting across a socialist message. He tells us that entropy can be reversed on a local scale, but only at the cost of accelerating it on a wider scale as - sob - the universe heads towards heat death. By extension, capitalism, with its winners and losers must hasten the collapse of civilzation. Entropy, like enterprise, like industry, is a bad thing. (Of course, his rake-off of public-sector pay and his pension paid for by productive citizens is a special case. He may never have been a wealth-creator, but he sees his contribution to society in the form of ideas as worthwhile.)
Only by engaging with trolls like him can we understand their thinking and the threat that these fifth columnists represent to the nation.
For a climate kook who pushes wind and solar to complain about the logistical challenges of a fantasy energy source is a source of great comedy relief. Wind and solar- completely failed as industrial size sources of energy- destroy or clutter up amazingly large amounts of landscape, require huge amounts of high pollution industry and heavy mining to build, are unreliable and only exist when directly subsidized.
Cold fusion is merely a failed experiment that people quickly recognized as such and quickly stopped worrying about.
Wind and solar are failed enterprises that still suck up our money and resources.
In that sense, cold fusion is more useful: It is not costing us a lot of money while it does nothing. Wind and solar cost us a bundle while doing practically nothing.
As for Paul Ehrlich: That he is still even considered as anything other than a complete failure and example of the worst in science is a testament to the corruption of big science.
So Entropic is it okay to be racist and Xenophobic if your doing it because of Environmental concerns.
Maybe UKIP should move to Switzerland and their change their name to Ecopop and take drastic to limit the Carbon Footprint of thousands of poor immigrants.
"Comparison with earlier humanity is misleading. It is easy for a hunter-gatherer to migrate elsewhere in a relatively empty world or replace a flooded hut. It is a little harder to migrate when all the land is already occupied or replace a flooded nuclear power station or a flooded city."
So, some twit thinks that primitive hunter-gather society had far superior resources than modern industrial societies. Back then they could go a few miles (if they knew to do so) and presto have warmth and more food. Yeah, right. The modern industrial society could never ship in food from all over the world. I can not have tomatoes in central Florida year round because ... well ... Because!
I think I have seen it all now. Primitive society as richer in resources than modern industrial societies. The religious fever is strong in that one.
Although off-topic, I offer this piece of human imagination as a little antidote to the pessimistic outlook that some have for our future generations...
http://www.erikwernquist.com/wanderers/film.html
DennisA:
Thank you for your comment. It was very illuminating: From what you say, the global governance clique came up with an idea to tax the hell out the world's wealthy (all things are relative) - then, and only then, came up with a good enough
reasonexcuse to do so. How easy it is to get used to air passenger duty/tax and a hundred other taxes. Add the word 'carbon' and teach the children that it is a filthy thing that needs to be taxed and they win - or think they do. It'll take years, but I am sure my new grandson will grow up in a world free from the control of warmists.Streetcred
We currently use 15 terawatts for 7 billion people. Under BAU we would have to find 25 terawatts for 12 billion people by the end of the century. That is very unlikely.
By then the oil will be gone, the easy coal will be gone and we'll be well down the uranium.
Renewables would not cover the need.
I have been thinking about this, which is one reason why I would be surprised if we still have a civilisation in 100 years time.
SteveW
First you complain about lack of detail, then you complain about getting too much.
No pleasing some people. :-)
Harry Passfield,
"The world's wealthy" = the developed industrial world.
See Strong: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
Or Oppenheimer: "We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are."
Or Edenhofer: "Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated."
I am giving myself RSI repeating these, and other, self-convicting quotes from the far from Great and certainly not Good of climate alarmism. Whatever the science may say (and the longer we go on debating that the happier these guys will be) the end product has been spelled out in fine detail over the last 40+ years, as DennisA reminds us above.
Brent Hargreaves, jamspid, Mark Stovl
"Primitive society is richer in resources than modern industrial societies."
That came out of your fevered imaginations.
Hunter gatherers are primitive by our standards. They travel light, have few possessions and no great investment in local infrastructure. They also have a low population density.
If a locality becomes uninhabitable they can easily move and space is available for them to move into.
Contrast that with your situation. You have a house, a farm, a nuclear power station, a power distribution network, an airport. None of them are mobile. You also have a lot of neighbours who vote UKIP and dislike the idea of immigrants and refugees using their own scarce resources. Your city becomes uninhabitable. Where do you go?
Entropic Man
When I was an undergraduate in 1960-64 we were told every week by the MSM that in 1980 there would be global mass starvation because the world population would by then have risen from 3.5 bn to 5.5 bn and we could not grow enough food for such a large number of people - WRONG.
The worlds population 1400 CE was +/- 350m and rose by an order of magnitude to 3,5 bn by 1963. During the same period the energy consumption per capita rose from 8 exajules (at which level it had been for at least 1000 yrs) to 80 exajoules - also an order of magnitude.
Population growth rate peaked at 2.2% per annum in 1968 and has been declining ever since. It is at present 1.1% per annum and is projected to be 0.3% per annum in 2068 and to decline to 0% by 2100 when the global population will have levelled out at +/- 10.8 bn.
Meanwhile energy consumption per capita will also level out at around 90 exajoules per capita so energy consumption will rise by +/- 45% and the specific energy consumption by +/- 15% an aggregate growth of +/- 65% (and not 360% as you suggest). This is a growth rate of around 0.75% pa - well below the historical average and there is no reason to believe it can not be achieved.
Given that only about 15% of proven oil and gas reserves have actually been extracted so far and allowing for a mere continuation of historical new reserve discovery rates there is no likelyhood that oil and gas reserves will have been depleted by 2100. As for coal ; merely as an example - the coal resources under the North Sea are an order of magnitude larger than those located onshore around the basin. The extraction of coal bed methane and development of in situ coal gasification - a technology which is even now being used commercially will prolong the life of production from this basin well beyond the end of this century in this coal basin ( and there are scores of similar coal basins globally). In situ coal gasification will be far more energy efficient than mining, transporting and burning coal.
You don't have to worry about running out of fossil fuels.
Domestic cold fusion may very well not be a realistic expectation but small scale fission reactors of the size used in submarines but using molten salt rather than pressurised water technology are close to being a commercial
right now and could well be a better option than continued large scale use of coal.
The main problem being the opposition to nuclear power by "Green" constituencies whose political activity has stymied the commercial ( and safety!) benefits of nuclear power by causing the imposition of costly and unnecessary regulation on this form of power generation.
Why are you such a pessimist?
By the way we are still waiting for some evidence to support your assertion that a rise in GAT of 2ºC will have catastrophic consequences.
Entropic Mann: even the UN think that the world population will peak around 9 billion. As the population gets richer, and the causes of early death reduce, so the need for large families will also reduce; people will realise that 4 children are a better proposition than 14, as the 4 will most likely survive – as most of the 14 are already doing. This is the mentality that has evolved in the developed world in little more than a century; from the vast families of Victorian times, when the hope was that at least one will survive, to the more self-replacing 2 or 3, today. Rarely do you see large families in much of the “western” world; those you do see are often first-generation immigrants from poorer societies, with the second generation tending for smaller families.
For this reason, as wealth accumulates around the world, population growth will slow, and may even be reducing by the end of this century (though I doubt either of us will witness that).
The end of civilisation has been predicted for years, now. Keep up the predictions – you will eventually be right (or your grandchildren’s grandchildren will be).
"Primitive society is richer in resources than modern industrial societies." You question this? Is it not self-evident? That they do not use those resources is what you are harping on about, and you say that makes them poorer in resources; surely, you should know that material wealth is not necessarily a sign of richness – then you mention that they make full use of that most precious of resources: space.
EM:[my bold]
Modern man can travel - even without air travel - many hundreds of miles more that 'hunter-gatherers'. You're really starting to clutch at straws here. Then again, when modern man travels it is invariably into a warmer zone. Your metaphor was of h-gs travelling to a cooler zone - which is not at all realistic.
Global warming was the creation of one man, James Hansen, who convinced some very influential people (like Gore and Soros) that he was a serious scientist. He wasn't. He was a far out Malthusian eco nut of the most dangerous kind.
Hansen endorsed an extreme eco fascist book by Keith Farnish calling for the destruction of industrial civilisation.
Farnish writes
The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization
and
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/
Hansen
Keith Farnish has it right: time has practically run out, and the 'system' is the problem. Governments are under the thumb of fossil fuel special interests - they will not look after our and the planet's well-being until we force them to do so, and that is going to require enormous effort. --Professor James Hansen, GISS, NASA
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Times-Up-Uncivilized-Solution-Global/dp/190032248X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265053838&sr=8-1
The ideology that man went wrong when he stopped being a hunter gatherer and took up farming is called anarcho primitivism. It is a self confessed belief of George Monbiot whose hatred of farming is well known
http://alturl.com/py3pf
If you want to go to the black heart of this ideology, visit. I call them eco fascists.
http://dark-mountain.net/
@Streetcred :12:20pm
The little troll is being misleading anyway; he clearly does not understand the difference between mineral reserves and resources and does not appear to know that a large amount of cold fusion research has been done using nickel or nickel/palladium electrodes - and current economic reserves of nickel are in excess of 80 million tons.
I call them eco fascists.
As do I, smiffy. I use other titles ('eco-luddite is useful on occasion) for variety but it has always struck me that that sums them up in a nutshell.
I followed your link. I found the title "Waking up to the Water – An ecocentric vision of human identity in the 21st Century" amusing; I think there's a surplus 'o' in there!
EM, if by complain you meant pointed out your lack of integrity, then yes, I suppose I did; although you obviously helped.
Entropic Man writes: "Contrast that with your situation. You have a house, a farm, a nuclear power station, a power distribution network, an airport. None of them are mobile. You also have a lot of neighbours who vote UKIP and dislike the idea of immigrants and refugees using their own scarce resources. Your city becomes uninhabitable. Where do you go?"
Drunk at 3:16 in the afternoon. I pity his poor wife.
Radical Rodent
Look again. The most recent estimate is closer to 12 billion.
Salopian
Excellent, someone current on cold fusion.
What will that domestic cold fusion unit look like?
How much nickel and/or palladium would each unit need?
What is the heavy water consumption?
How much will it cost?
Can you produce 3 billion of them or will it just be for rich westerners?
Proper peer reviewed data please, not just junk websites.
My own reading suggests that you are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Glebekinava
To change from 350million to 3.5 billion is an increase of three orders of magnitude not one. I presume the rest of your post is just as accurate.
There is no need to postulate a conspiracy to destroy industrial civilisation.. You sceptics with you insistence on following Business as Usual are doing it to yourselves.
I've got some bad news for you, EM. The sun will run out of hydrogen one day. It's not renewable.
EM at 3:16 PM -
"Contrast that with your situation. You have a house, a farm, a nuclear power station, a power distribution network, an airport. None of them are mobile. You also have a lot of neighbors who vote UKIP and dislike the idea of immigrants and refugees using their own scarce resources. Your city becomes uninhabitable. Where do you go?"
well if the "neighbours" are in the UK (or do you think the UK will be uninhabitable anytime soon ?) I would point out politely that me & my parents/grandparents etc... taxes & hard graft have helped to provide those "scarce resources" so they are not exclusively yours my friends & in times of need have to be shared equally among the people who created & paid for them.
I think this is sensible & probably what UKIP are also driving at by the way, which seems to be striking a cord with the common man/woman in the UK (as opposed to the 'Entropic man/woman' :-)
PS - many would relate to this -
Entropy - noun (Concise Encyclopedia) - Measure of a system's energy that is unavailable for Work, or of the degree of a system's disorder.
Tell you what, Entropic Mann, let us wait until then, and see who is right.
Michael hart
I am sure that a man who believes that 400ppm of CO2 is not a problem and that civilisation is a perpetual motion machine will find a way to restart a white dwarf, assuming you survive the red giant stage.
Entropic Man
350 million = 350 x 10 to the power 6
3. 5 billion = 350 X 10 TO THE POWER 7
3.5 billion is thus one order of magnitude larger than 350 million
I suggest it is you that has the problem with mathematics.
I suggest you go back to elementary school and learn some mathematics.
An excellent idea, except for one thing.
If you are right you have lost nothing. If I am right you have lost the opportunity to correct the problem. Do you usually wait until you are in obvious and immediate trouble before you start to dig yourself out?
Glebekinava
In science and mathematics 1 billion is one thousand million. That is 10^9.
Glenbekinva
My mistake. I read that as 3.5 million to 3.5 billion.
This is the true barking insanity we are up against.
In October 2000 Mike Hulme founded the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
From page 326 of the book., Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, he writes
"The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us.".
Hulme then goes on to suggest that all climate change arguments should include at least one of the following four "myths" (being a motivational story).
1. Lamenting Eden - To give the idea that the world was stable until man turned up. And we broke it.
2. Presaging apocalypses - Where you should use phrases like "impending disaster" and "tipping point". This is despite having the knowledge of such predictions (as Hulme states) but should because it "capitalizes on the human inbuilt fear of the future."
3. Reconstructing babel - Appealing to our fear of advancement and technology. As though anything modern is inherently bad.
4. Celebrating Jubilee - Balancing the cosmic unfairness of the world where well off inherently make this worse for the poor and the balance should be readdressed every 25 years or so.
Dougieh
Not the whole UK at once. Hull would probably go first.
When Mike Hulme writes
"We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us." he means.
'What can the lies of climate change do to further our aim of destroying modern industrial civilisation'.
I love the idea of EM telling us the ideal PPM of a greenhouse gas, and the ideal temperature of a UK winters day.
I wonder what the ideal number for excess deaths per winter might be ?
in the UK
Well, we've passed 400ppm CO2 and it seems harmless. Better than before, in fact. Perhaps your other wildly pessimistic Malthusian assumptions will prove equally groundless?
At least Ed Davey is narrowing his options down to "only one year to save the world". That year cannot pass soon enough. I think I'll crack open a cold one while I'm waiting.
Nov 30, 2014 at 5:49 PM | Salopian
Indeed, a while back I recall reading an excellent article or comment (maybe here) on energy resources and reserves. 100 Years to the destruction of humanity is quite an extraordinary claim; it exposes the pessimistic ideological foundations of EM's thinking.
When Mike Hulme writes
"We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us."
he means:
"I wonder if this will this keep me in free lunches for perpetuity?"
Enough,
Time has come, you have your 2008 Climate Change Act, you have your funding, now get on and control our climate!
If we can control the climate why should we not expect floods and heatwaves to be things of the past?
Simples, either pee or get off the pot!
@Streetcred: I could go into a lot more detail on the reserves/resources issue, and the use of nickel and/or palladium in cold fusion, but it would be feeding the troll, and would only result in him spewing out more diversionary questions and ad homs.
EM - In the interests of accuracy, please could you check this?:
"To change from 350million to 3.5 billion is an increase of three orders of magnitude not one. I presume the rest of your post is just as accurate."
350 million = 3.5x10^8?
3.5 billion = 3.5x10^9?
3.5x10^9 = 10 x 3.5x10^8?
An orgder of magnitude is generally accepted as being a factor of 10?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude
Harry and Dennis
FWIW - I was struck by the fact that the Paris COP 2015 precursor "Scientific Conference" is named with such a direct reference to Brundtland:
http://www.commonfuture-paris2015.org/
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Common_Future
How many Malthusians does it take to change a light bulb.
None. That was the last one.
Just an observation ... it took ~1000 comments before Richard Betts made an appearance at his (Tamasin Edwards') WUWT guest blog post (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/27/a-big-goose-step-backwards/ ) sliming Dr David Ball, and then it was just a drive by 'seagulling' of commenters. No wonder he gets no respect. If you want to slime people who disagree with your opinion then be prepared to defend your diatribe fully.
E. Smiff,
Did he actually write those things?
hunter
It is from his book, quoted here http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/cr/rRD110FZLZRMS9
see also
http://www.workersliberty.org/blogs/paulhampton/2009/09/26/significance-and-meaning-climate-change
Hulme extends this treatment to what he calls the “four myths of climate change”, which he links to the “human instincts of nostalgia, fear, pride and justice”. The term ‘myth’ is used in “the very specific anthropological and non-pejorative sense of revealing meanings and assumed truths”, not as a falsehood. (2009 p.340) The four myths are: lamenting Eden, presaging apocalypse, constructing Babel and celebrating Jubilee.
The religious overtones are deliberate (Hulme confesses his Christian faith), but actually the arguments work perfectly well as secular myths too.
In lamenting Eden, “climate is viewed as a symbol of the natural or the wild, a manifestation of Nature that is pure and pristine and (should be) beyond the reach of humans. Climate becomes something that is fragile and needs to be protected or ‘saved’”. On this view, by changing the climate humans believe they are diminishing not just themselves, but also something beyond themselves. (2009 p.342-43, p.344)
**
from his own website
http://mikehulme.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/three-meanings-of-climate-change.doc
see also
http://www.faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/resources/Hulme.pdf
Presaging apocalypse draws upon categories such as ‘impending disaster’, ‘approaching tipping points’, ‘species wiped out’, billions of humans at risk of devastation, if not death’. This view has widespread purchase, first because of “the enduring human fear of the future which fuels these descriptions of a physical climate on the point of collapse”. Second it “draws strength from the new paradigm of Earth system science with its ideas of complexity, thresholds and tipping elements”. A third reason is “the frustration experienced by some campaigners and policy advocates due to the failure of international measures and agreements to start slowing down the growth in carbon emissions”. However, numerous studies show that fear may change attitudes but not necessarily increase active engagement or behaviour change. (2009 p.345, p.346, p.348)
On the other hand, constructing Babel, “this confident belief in the human ability to control Nature”, is “a dominant, if often subliminal, attribute of the international diplomacy that engages climate change”. This myth of climate mastery and control reaches its apogee with proposals for geo-engineering. Hulme dismisses this approach: “What is therefore proposed is a new, but now deliberate, great geophysical experiment with the planet. The only difference between this purposeful experiment and our ongoing inadvertent one is that we now have the ‘wisdom’ of Earth system models to guide us.” (2009 p.352-53)
Finally, celebrating Jubilee mean that “climate change is an idea around which their concerns for social and environmental justice can be mobilised. Indeed, a new category of justice – climate justice – is demanded, and one that attaches itself easily to other longstanding global justice concerns.” (2009 p.353)
This should have been together
http://www.workersliberty.org/blogs/paulhampton/2009/09/26/significance-and-meaning-climate-change
Hulme extends this treatment to what he calls the “four myths of climate change”, which he links to the “human instincts of nostalgia, fear, pride and justice”. The term ‘myth’ is used in “the very specific anthropological and non-pejorative sense of revealing meanings and assumed truths”, not as a falsehood. (2009 p.340) The four myths are: lamenting Eden, presaging apocalypse, constructing Babel and celebrating Jubilee.
The religious overtones are deliberate (Hulme confesses his Christian faith), but actually the arguments work perfectly well as secular myths too.
In lamenting Eden, “climate is viewed as a symbol of the natural or the wild, a manifestation of Nature that is pure and pristine and (should be) beyond the reach of humans. Climate becomes something that is fragile and needs to be protected or ‘saved’”. On this view, by changing the climate humans believe they are diminishing not just themselves, but also something beyond themselves. (2009 p.342-43, p.344)
Presaging apocalypse draws upon categories such as ‘impending disaster’, ‘approaching tipping points’, ‘species wiped out’, billions of humans at risk of devastation, if not death’. This view has widespread purchase, first because of “the enduring human fear of the future which fuels these descriptions of a physical climate on the point of collapse”. Second it “draws strength from the new paradigm of Earth system science with its ideas of complexity, thresholds and tipping elements”. A third reason is “the frustration experienced by some campaigners and policy advocates due to the failure of international measures and agreements to start slowing down the growth in carbon emissions”. However, numerous studies show that fear may change attitudes but not necessarily increase active engagement or behaviour change. (2009 p.345, p.346, p.348)
On the other hand, constructing Babel, “this confident belief in the human ability to control Nature”, is “a dominant, if often subliminal, attribute of the international diplomacy that engages climate change”. This myth of climate mastery and control reaches its apogee with proposals for geo-engineering. Hulme dismisses this approach: “What is therefore proposed is a new, but now deliberate, great geophysical experiment with the planet. The only difference between this purposeful experiment and our ongoing inadvertent one is that we now have the ‘wisdom’ of Earth system models to guide us.” (2009 p.352-53)
Finally, celebrating Jubilee mean that “climate change is an idea around which their concerns for social and environmental justice can be mobilised. Indeed, a new category of justice – climate justice – is demanded, and one that attaches itself easily to other longstanding global justice concerns.” (2009 p.353)