I was pinged recently by the UK outfit Forum for the Future, a foresight team specializing in sustainable futures. They wanted to know what I thought would be the key issues the world would be confronting in 2030. “Climate” is the first thing that popped to mind, unsurprisingly, and we talked for a bit about what that might look like. (I also argued for molecular nanotechnology as a likely disruptive element to the world of 2030, and I’ll examine what that might mean down the road.)
...
Complete entry
Posted by
ateologu on 12/22 at 04:41 AM
"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003"
Ah, but OTOH more and more people are realising:
1. that there's a serious disconnect between what the actual scientific reports of the IPCC show or predict (try reading them sometime) and what the alarmist "summary for policymakers" (authored only by a handful) "predicts" (not to mention the horrible distortions added by the non-scientific press to said summary - it seems the Apocalypse always sells more newspapers)
2. that even the more conservative predictions of the _scientific_ reports of the IPCC are highly questionable (and indeed physicists everywhere are questioning them at every point).
"without extensive irrigation the plants will die"
Oh yeah, and let's obscure the fact that more CO2 in the atmosphere leads to more plant growth in drier environments. Not a convenient fact when you're trying to scare the living daylights out of people, is it? After all, who wants the poor people in dry regions to get more food? Not the tax-hungry AGW apologists, that's for sure. So let's cut back on the main plant fertilizer - CO2 - and see what happens. Let's suck it all out of the air and kill our vegetation. That'll be one biochemistry lesson learned the hard way.
(BTW, are your predictions of political doom and gloom also the result of "computer models"?
Posted by
Brad Arnold on 12/24 at 03:11 AM
The IPCC's models have been proven conservative, not alarmist (particularly in terms of the rate of emissions). Furthermore, elevated CO2 levels may lead to faster plant growth, but that certainly doesn't make up for ocean acidification or high temperatures that stop photosynthesis.
By the way, your hostility to "computer models" is more because they contradict your "intuition" than because they have proven inaccurate. As far as your anti-tax attitude as it relates to cutting emissions, I agree that the severe carbon dieting advocated by the Greens is impractical and wasteful:
"Japan, like the European Union, hasn't let its failure so far to meet Kyoto emissions-reductions targets stop it from setting even more ambitious goals, like a 50% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050. But how to do that? If getting within shouting distance of Kyoto's targets could cost Japan $500 billion, how much would it cost to cut emissions twelve-fold more?" --Keith Johnson, WSJ, 19 March 2008
"By the year 2050, the Census Bureau projects that our population will be around 420 million. This means per capita emissions will have to fall to about 2.5 tons in order to meet the goal of 80% reduction. It is likely that U.S. per capita emissions were never that low : even back in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood. " --"The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change," WSJ
"I know of no realistic person who thinks carbon dioxide emissions are going to do anything but grow. Most European countries are not meeting their emissions goals, and of the ones that have, it's because their economies are collapsing. In the United States, this notion that we're going to reduce our emissions by 80 percent is pure fantasy." --Pete Geddes, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, 2 April 2008
But there is a cheap and easy way to immediately cool the Earth (if it becomes necessary): just put a little sun dimming aerosol into the upper atmosphere.
By the way, you should study what happened in Europe during the record heatwave of 2003. Too bad you probably won't be alive in 2040 to see Dr Lovelock proven correct, and your anti-science intuitions proven wrong (although this isn't a "convenient fact" when you are trying to scare the living daylights out of people over higher taxes).
IEET Blog