Science Fiction: ‘Climate Vulnerability Monitor Report’ Released
On Wednesday, the 2012 “Climate Vulnerability Monitor – a Guide to the Cold Calculus of a Hot Planet“ was released to great fanfare in New York City. Conducted by the DARA group, a non-governmental organization based in Europe, and the Climate Vulnerable Forum, the 331-page report forecasts death and destruction on a scale normally reserved for science fiction.
Media covering the report printed extraordinary headlines. Per US News & World Report: “Report: 100 Million Could Die From Climate Change By 2030.”
The Manila Bulletin headlined an Agence France-Presse newswire article: “Climate Change Choking World Economy — Report.”
Businessweek announced: “Climate Change Reducing Global GDP by $1.2 Trillion.”
Only a few questioned whether the report made any sense. Calling it “a triumph for public relations,” statistician Bjorn Lomborg — director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Denmark — showed how the report’s handling of “climate change deaths, economic costs, and the costs of ‘action versus inaction’” is nonsense.
However, even Lomborg accepts the climate change science underlying the report. This is a serious mistake. Science misunderstandings continue to drive the climate scare, and lead to exaggerated reports such as the “Monitor.” While humans undoubtedly have some impact on climate, especially at regional levels due to the “urban heat island” effect, preventing climate from changing on a global basis is science fiction.
Like most documents of its kind, the “Climate Vulnerability Monitor” is based on the assumption that climate science is sufficiently mature that we conclusively know:
- It will get dangerously warmer over the century due to humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases;
- Extreme weather events will increase for the same reason;
- Glaciers and other ice cover will melt precipitously and sea level rise will accelerate quickly;
- Climate change during the 20th century was mostly caused by the carbon dioxide emissions of developed countries who are therefore “guilty” of causing the world’s climate problems;
- The vast majority of scientists who study the causes of global climate change agree with the “Climate Vulnerability Monitor” position.
None of these are valid assumptions. For example: while some scientists give the sort of confident, absolute statements included in the “Monitor” report, other scientists say the exact opposite — namely that we are headed for a period of the far more dangerous global cooling, no matter what humanity does. The majority of experts in the field likely – no one has yet conducted a meaningful survey — support the sensible position that we do not know the future of global climate, and that we cannot make meaningful forecasts until there are major advances in the basic science.
The report’s most dangerous section contained their recommendations to “communicators and the media.” From the subsection, titled “Promote awareness on risks as opportunities”:
Take a stand. … Time is running out and the stakes are tremendous, if not incalculable.
Interestingly, they did feel comfortable calculating “the stakes” elsewhere in the report, advising communicators and the media that “it is no longer credible that mitigation of climate change will lead to reduced economic growth.”
Also from the section:
If a low carbon transition is not engineered within the decade, the consequences will be dire regardless of the ultimate magnitude since they involve irreversible damage: the extinction of whole species, and thousands upon thousands of human lives lost.
Well, no. It is all about the “ultimate magnitude” of the changes forecast. A one degree warming over the next century (the amount of change cited by many experts as most likely) would be inconsequential. A ten-degree change would obviously be catastrophic. Of course, species extinction has been continuing since the origin of life. Of all the species that ever existed on the planet, 99.99% are now extinct.
The section took the claims a step further:
In worst case, not solving the climate change could render large areas of the planet unsuitable for human existence outdoors. The injustices, environmental irresponsibility and inhumanity are simply staggering.
The conclusion to the section is ominous, raising the specter of future Nuremberg-like trials for those who do not support the climate scare:
Despite the complexity of the topic, ignorance is no excuse for inaction, and indifference can be tied to complicity. With this report, there is now a comprehensive current-day economic justification for action in addition to the human, ethical, environmental and rights-based arguments already in wide circulation. Civil society groups, communicators and people of all kinds in positions of public influence or authority within their communities, whether in faith based groups, municipal or educational establishments, should find no further obstacles to taking a stand to tackling climate change.
The report ironically then advises communicators and the media to “question received wisdom.”
Natural climate change has affected societies throughout history, and the lack of preparedness for change ended some civilizations tragically. Consequently, the authors of the new report are right to promote preparation and adaptation to climate change. But climate change does not happen in only one direction, and we cannot halt it no matter what we do. The “Climate Vulnerability Monitor” should not be used as a basis for policy planning.
The solution is Thorazine.
“it is no longer credible that mitigation of climate change will lead to reduced economic growth.” –that statement is simply not true. I have read the Club of Rome materials going back to Limits to Growth in 1976 and the new economics foundation initiatives being pushed now. I read all the policy briefs for the March Planet under Pressure conference and the Global Transition 2012 reports in preparation for Rio. I have read the UN’s World Happiness Report 2012 and other UNEP and UNESCO reports put out this year. They all agree this is about deliberately reducing GDP and going to quality of life measures instead in a post fossil fuel/post-industrial economy. When you plug in the Bioregional part of the coalition they envision going back to agricultural communal societies. They do not tell that part to the Fortune 100 part of coalition.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/who-granted-permission-to-spearhead-societal-evolution-to-a-global-cooperative-consciousness/ was a piece I did earlier in the week explaining this tragic vision being pushed on Big Business and via education that social systems can be redesigned to change the future in accordance with desired vision. That it is just a matter of collective will. Most of us adults over a certain age with enough knowledge to still seek out info on a weekend via print recognize the tragic history being conjured up here. But these is what students are being taught to believe. At an emotional, non-factual level. The idea is to use computers to model various scenarios for the future. Just change the assumptions and see what happens.
That’s Systems Thinking and it is the new soft approach to masking collectivist political theories of control. I have written this before but Ban Ki Moon, the Un Secretary General, has said the UN does not need any more treaties to get what it wants. Although let’s face it that includes the largely unheralded Belmont Challenge and Future Earth Alliance that include the UN. Going forward the state control over education and alliance with the accreditation agencies to be the daily enforcers of the political vision is enough to gain the results desired.
Did you know a report came out this week to transition students away from print by 2017? The picture on the cover had empty book shelves to the right and a row of computer databases to the left. And that was supposed to be a good thing. Hard not to see those empty book shelves as a metaphor for cultivating empty minds. Minds without sufficient facts or any custom of logical analysis to dispute an officially lucrative statist myth like AGW appears to be. No abilty to fight back appears to be on the near horizon.
I went back and pulled a post explaining how the UN plans to get to its state redesigned and directed collectivist global economy via education http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-facts-wont-cooperate-there-is-always-pedagogy/.
Everything going on in education in the US now is consistent with this UN vision. As I explained yesterday even in states like Texas that believe they are setting their own ed policies and have refused to participate in either Race to the Top or CCSSI-the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
Climate change and education were essentially the 2 post Cold War tools the international nomenklatura picked out to retain power and continue living well at other’s expense. And they refuse to let piddly details like actual temps or an inactive solar flare season or troubling details in emails get in the way.
Submit darn it. Now. There is a time schedule to keep to here.
Hi Robin – love your blog!
“Climate change and education were essentially the 2 post Cold War tools the international nomenklatura picked out to retain power and continue living well at other’s expense.”
Might you consider adding “Comprehensive land use planning” to those “tools”?
You’re about 150 years too late. Thomas Mann was doing that, using the Prussian school model, back in the 1840s.
The report is bulls**t on the face, right from the start.
The very first two sentences quoted
Are directly contradictory.
“Extreme” weather is driven by the imbalances in air density between hot air masses (less dense) and cold ones (more so). This is known to meteorologists as the “heat engine” which drives storm activity.
The bleedover from cold air masses into less dense, warmer air masses is what causes storm fronts. Hot air masses mainly cause cyclonic action, when confined by surrounding higher-density cold air masses.
If the atmosphere warms overall, you reach a condition called a poikilothermal state. That’s a ten-dollar word with a two Greek roots, that simply means “a state in which all temperatures are about even”.
The stratosphere (means “area of even strata”) is largely poikilothermal; granted, it’s damn cold up there, but the temperature is roughly the same at most altitudes above about 20,000 feet. This is why airlines like to fly 747s up above 30,000; nice, stable air. Pilots like turbulence (due to- surprise- air masses of differing temperatures bumping into each other) even less than passengers do.
“Weather”, especially the extreme kind, develops in the lower atmosphere, called the troposphere. “Troposphere” means “area of change and/or movement”, which is just what air masses of varying temperature do. They move. When they do it fast enough, and bump into each other hard enough, we call it a storm.
If, as these ideologues (I refuse to call them “scientists”, because “D***it, I are one”) state, the atmosphere is warming steadily and overall, it doesn’t make a bit of difference how hot it gets. No storm activity. Without an imbalance in temperatures, and thus densities and pressures, it can’t happen. Period. Dot. Quod Erat F**king Demonstradum.
This is a classic case of someone telling a great big thundering lie to scare people into obedience to their Grand Plan. Of course, the bit about their Grand Plan being good for our economy is a great big thundering lie, too. If it was good for it, they’d be against it, considering how much they hate any non-socialist economic and/or governmental system. Especially any system that they aren’t in charge of.
I used to think jail was the proper place for these would-be world rulers. I’m now holding out for tar and feathers, followed by an island in the most remote corner of the Indian Ocean.
They want to have a world run on socialist principles operating at Stone Age tech levels? Fine. Let’s do it reality-show style.
Drop them 1,000 miles from nowhere, buck-naked, with no tools, and tell them to build it.
They just can’t have any slaves to do the dirty work.
As to their chances of surviving more than about a month, I call the odds six-five and pick ‘em.
clear ether
eon
I’m now holding out for tar and feathers, followed by an island in the most remote corner of the Indian Ocean.
Only problem is ruining a perfectly good island.
Like Islamists, eliminate nutcase Warmists and a thousand are waiting in the wings to pick up the slack.
For the record, I think we 7 billion souls are trashing this place but someday, when we regain our sanity (not holding my breath) we’ll look at deforestation, destruction of habitat, desertification through trashing water sources etc. rather than these marxist/warmist agitators.
I’m still waiting for the alarmist mongering from the 70′s to kick in, global cooling.
Eon, I hate to say this, but your argument is so much BS.
SOME weather conditions are produced by cold/hot air interaction. But a lot isn’t – the rain cycle, for one, which is what affects most people on a daily basis.
The fundamental aspect of movement of air is caused by two major factors: coriolis effect, created by Earth’s rotation, and energy input from the sun, exciting atmosphere to higher temperatures. Higher temperature air expands and rises, lower temperature air, denser and lower, flows in to fill the gap. The more energy in the system, the FASTER that effect occurs. The greenhouse gas postulate would indicate more heat in the system, which would mean more energetic operation of these ordinary and daily weather effects.
Greater energy would also increase the likelihood and severity of many forms of extreme weather. Tropical Cyclones/Hurricanes form due to massive energy buidups contained in warm wet air over tropical oceans – this is also why they are more likely in relatively shallow waters such as the Caribbean, there are no deep ocean currents there to cycle heat away from the buid-up. Basic physics, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it must go somewhere – in this case, into massive kinetic rotational storms.
I haven’t read this document, from the comments I suspect there’s more than a little chicken little shy-is-falling panic involved. But the facts are:
Overall world temperature is rising.
The poles are melting.
Sea levels are rising.
Solar output is not measurably greater.
No significant change in deep-sea current activity (which acts as a long-term planetary ocean temperature regulator) has been observed.
The only factor that has changed is greenhouse gas emission from anthropogenic sources. Correlation, it is said, does not imply causation – but it is also said, when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
“Correlation, it is said, does not imply causation – but it is also said, when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Total BS on many levels. Meaningful correlation between CO2 concentration and Global Mean Temperature does not even exist: the last 15 years of data show yet another divergence of the two; for example, temps were already increasing from the time when the Little Ice Age began warming around 1620-1680, that is, before CO2 increased; and now there’s another divergence between the continued increasing CO2 levels and the lack of any increase of GMT over the last 15 yr..
“Overall” temps are not rising – which itself is yet another specific prediction failure of the idea that CO2 drives climate and which keeps the CO2 = CAGW prediction failure rate at 100%!/ Hansen’s and the IPCC’s pre-2000 predictions for temps to keep rising from 2000 if CO2 kept increasing. They didn’t.
The poles are not melting: just this very month, Antarctic sea ice achieved an all time high over the period of satellite measurement, and Antarctic ice mass has increased = another critical prediction failure of CO2 = CAGW “science”./all current satellite data.
Sea Level Rise has continued from its pre-CO2 increase, now at an anemic 2.1mm/yr, about 8″/100yr., except when it reversed to actually decrease by 5mm between 2010-2011./Univ. of Colorado at Boulder satellite Sea Level graph.
The previous century in fact recently concluded a long “Solar Maximum”, and ignoring the Sun’s well known positively correlated effect on Global Temps, although the exact mechanism is not known, is by now probably another case of statistics’ well known “excluded variable fraud”./Alec Rawls at wattsupwiththat.com
The CO2 = CAGW “hotspot” simply did not develop. But to cut this record of “mainstream” Climate Science’s prediction failures and intentional myopia short, excluding the “impossible” is usually very easy, by definition. Nor did you make any argument as to cause by appealing to your alleged “facts”. Regardless, to then appeal from the fact that you don’t know what causes GMT changes to therefore ~”it must be CO2″, commits the “argument from ignorance” fallacy, which anyone could similarly use to claim, say, that “It must be space aliens.”/Michael Crichton
Instead, according to “mainstream” Climate Science’s own failed predictions, which have thus failed to find a discernible effect of CO2, there is no evidence from “mainstream” Climate Science that increasing CO2 levels have impacted the natural “climate”.
I think that US News & World Report headline is wrong. What are the predictable outcomes of Climate Change Remediation?
- energy will become less available, relative prices will skyrocket
- the price of all goods that require energy in their manufacture or distribution will skyrocket
- countries will split urban/rural with no interaction except necessary commerce because travel is too expensive
- people will congregate in urban areas, overloading the capacity of water, power and sanitation systems. Brownouts, blackouts, and epidemics will become common.
- food will become less available, relative prices will skyrocket and mass starvation will result
- rioting and looting will become commonplace as the economic malaise enters the 3rd decade
- all money will be spent on food and energy, damage from any storm or other natural event will be both catastrophic and permanent, no money will be available for reconstruction, mass homelessness will result
- income inequality will increase 10000-fold, we’ll have the rich, the dying and the dead
In other words, the entire world will be Haiti so the headline should read “Report: 4 Trillion Will Die from Climate Change Remediation by 2030″. I’m an optimist, the death toll will probably be much higher.
The issue is total global control. The excuse is anthropogenic global warming, a non existent problem. Even though the global average temperature has been in a downward trend for 13 years. The sea level has been falling for 5 years, and Antarctic sea ice is at an historic high, the agenda(21)will continue.
The issue is total global control. The excuse is anthropogenic global warming, a non existent problem.
Yes, this is my conclusion, too—control as part of Globalist policies, including–as well–these damnable “free-trade” treaties, and lots of corporate shenanigans. There is much mischief going on “behind the scenes.”
OMG! Malthus was right! Oh, wait…..what about Rousseau?
Let us not forget climate scientist James Hansen, who predicted parts of New York City being underwater in 20 years. Total BS. How do I know? Because he made the prediction in 1986.
The great irony is that if the risk is that great, we should be working on geoengineering to control the climate. But the people making the most dire predictions are the first to object that we don’t understand the climate well enough to do that. Oops. It’s fun watching lefties tie themselves in logical knots.
Not only that. IF this really was an emergency those so convinced of it would rush to share every shred of information, every line of code, every “assumption” made in it’s prediction. . . rather than fight every freedom of information act request, “loose” the raw data, and cooperate to actively suppress opposing views.
That, my friends would be logical, and what is science if not logical?
Pray for global warming; It is a slow and innocuous process compared to
global cooling, which has in the past taken the climate from temperate
to glacial in a single century. Direct your prayers to ‘Fallen Angels’:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_%28science_fiction_novel%29
Spot on, and may I also recommend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Centurion
a tale combining a global cooling cycle, a flu pandemic, and a bumbling incompetent ultraliberal US president. It’s not a pretty picture.
As someone who remembers the 1960′s these same projections applied to the starvation awaiting the globe as the populus grew. Than in the 1970′s it was Global Cooling for the same reasons as Global Warming. You can read the same predictions from the turn of the century. The only consistency in all these warnings is to tax/cotrol/eliminate our soverenty.
My question is?
How accurate is the weather forcast ? Not very
Hurricane forcasts ? A joke
How honest is the IPCC ? Provda is more accurate
How can you take an organization seriously that is taxing gas farts from animals ?
While I totally agree with the premise of your last sentence, you do know that it’s not farts, but belches? (from “ruminants”; animals with more than one stomach chamber, such as cows and other cud-chewers)
The proponents of taking total control of the national economic life due to climate change must stop meeting in New York and must invade the ground zero of carbon combustion, Beijing China. It is clear, China, not the US, is where climate change activists should attempt to control national economic policy.
China brings a new coal fired power plant on line every few days, whereas the US has not begun a big one since the mid 1970s. China burns more than twice as much coal as the US burns. The AGW warriors fight in the wrong battle field.
In fairness, I must warn them that China executes some 10,000 people every year, more than all other nations combined. These wretches are either criminals, or those who disagree with state policy. (The number is inexact as she does not keep good records, as required by a treaty she signed.) China also kills some 13,000 coal miners annually. She will have coal combustion.
Nevertheless I have every confidence that Al Gore will lead them all to victory. Of course, if he does not put it on the line, as every combat vet in Afghanistan has done, I will take the latest Big Apple buzz, as simply spin.
DEDICATED TO MICHAEL MANN, THE “GORICAL” AND ALL OTHER CLIMATE CHANGE FREAKERS” –whose true agenda is their usurpation of power over the people.
[Tune, “Hush Little Baby” Nursery Rhyme—odd ironies here, right?]
Hush Climate Freakers, don’t you dare,
Say we another need “Climate Scare”.
Your last Scare didn’t do the trick,
And we didn’t buy your hockey stick!
Since that hockey stick got broke,
All your goofy numbers went up in smoke.
Since those numbers went smokin’ away,
You don’t have a clue where they are today.
If today we know you’re a fool,
Attacking conservatives just isn’t cool!
And if the people can’t speak his mind,
Then the law that we know’s no longer blind.
If that law is no longer blind,
Then another Prezzy we should find.
Once a new Prezzy we have found,
We can start to turn this country around!
And once we turn this country around,
Then no silly scientists need be found.
When the silly scientists are all gone away,
No more Climate Freakers will come our way.
U.N.-Backed Agenda 21 Angers Many in Texas by Aman Batheja August 28, 2012
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-environmental-news/environmental-problems-and-policies/fears-un-backed-agenda-21-spark-anger-across-texas/
Clearly the climate will gradually get warmer or perhaps suddenly get much colder if a caldera decides to blanket the earth. So rather than spending trillions of dollars to do barely blip the temperature downwards, we’d be better off planning for either eventuality.
This is great, because the secretive totalitarians are being forced to come out and expose their real, full agenda. This will get them laughed out of the halls of power, because people are not stupid, and won’t fall for this lying BS.
Remember, we WERE already going to have 10 million global climate refugees by 2010. The polar bears were already going to be near extinct, but in reality their numbers are rising. The Himalayan glaciers were going to melt by 2030, but now they are growing. Even the one remaining physical measure of climate the alarmists can still point to, that being the Arctic minimum (summer) sea ice extent, while it did hit a record low (due to a large summer cyclonic storm), is still vastly more than alarmists had predicted, which was for a completely ice free ocean this year. Mention Antarctic sea ice record highs, and growing ice sheet mass, and they sort of go blank and keep clicking on the empty chamber of their tiny little pistols.
So kick back, drive your big V8 down to the liquor store and buy some brews, then fire up your charcoal grill and grill some burgers and sip some ice cold beer. Oh, and you climate weenie chicken littles, you should really go suck on one, too.
Great stuff, Tom. As one would expect. You well outlined the absurdity of the “scientific” statements in this report. It is typical Chicken Little stuff, but serves as a good example of just how desperate the eco-left is getting. Putting a specific number on the whole “We’re all DOOOOMED!” trope is a fine piece of PR that the gullible MSM can’t resist.
But the only thing that really matters in these kinds of reports are the policy conclusions. And this one is more explicit than most: Submit to my will or be responsible for a unimaginable human holocaust. And failure to submit (i.e. laughing at your absurd alarmism) is a crime against humanity, which should naturally be punished … somehow.
It’s the “somehow” that worries me, and should worry others if this kind of nonsense gets traction. A sensible climate worrier has a tinge of “what if I’m wrong?” in their psyche. Not so for these folks. The tyrannical impulse is just too strong, and we shouldn’t expect apologies for the skeptical victims of their hysteria if their vision comes to pass.
We SF fans resent the comparison.
We damned Skippy do.
(And I notice you properly wrote, “SF,” not the cheesy, Hollywood-derived “Sci-Fi”)
Actually, “Sci-Fi” predates Hollywood’s schlock. The term was first used by Forrest J. Ackerman and other early SciFans in fanzines during the 1930s, derived from the word “Scientifiction”, an early term for SF coined by Hugo Gernsback.
Hollywood may have corrupted the term, but we “Sciffys” own it. Since SyFy (formerly the Sci-Fi Channel) apparently doesn’t want it anymore (because it can’t be copyrighted), I say we take it back.
cheers
eon
Ah, so THAT’S why the stupid network name-change!!…to Syfy.
“it is no longer credible that mitigation of climate change will lead to reduced economic growth.”
Rrright. As has been so clearly evidenced in Europe, California and Ontario, Canada that has officially achieved its unprecedented “have-not” status accordingly?