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Climate scientists reveal data that earth’s heating is accelerating, heat extremes are increasing and 1.5C has been breached faster than forecast. We are failing to treat climate change as the single greatest threat to humanity.

At the same time our government has announced a gas strategy which increases emissions and the earth’s heating. Either we have misjudged the ability of government to understand climate change or they have been conned or captured by gas industries.

The danger is now so great that a majority of national initiatives must be directed to climate change. Yet ominously the Treasurer has been dancing under the falling leaves of deciduous trees muttering about economic and population growth which are already the shibboleths of failed climate and environmental policy.

The global average heating over February 2023 to January 2024 — exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) because governments have succumbed to a delusional policy-making narrative that warming to 1.5–2°C was still possible while continuing emissions to 2050.

One study consulted almost 400 senior authors from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Almost 80% expected a temperature rise of at least 2.5C above pre-industrial levels, unliveable temperatures for most of the world while only 6% thought it would stay within the 1.5C limit.

Data for extreme heat in Northern Australia presented by former Australian Defence Force chief Admiral Chris Barrie suggests that human life will be unviable in many areas of NT where defence bases are sited.

Such climate data are not included in the ADF’s security statement. Admiral Barrie and his team of security experts state that the federal government either doesn’t understand or is hiding from the public the risk of climate change to national security. They say mass migration, food insecurity and other climate risks must be addressed by government and the ADF.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Culling for Climate

May 17, 2024

Culling for Climate

Climate research and its misanthropic sect

Over the weekend, Bill McGuire, an Emeritus Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London, set X/Twitter afire with the following Tweet, which foresees the “culling of the human population” as the “only realistic” way to address climate change — a Tweet which he later deleted:

The issue of “overpopulation” is one that has long been present in the climate science community, but is rarely discussed in public in the stark terms employed by McGuire. Yes, I put the word “overpopulation” into scare quotes because it is not a meaningful analytical concept but it is one with a lot of symbolic baggage.1

I don’t want to be too harsh on McGuire as he simply articulated what some in the climate science community actually believe and had the unfortunate experience of committing a Kinsley gaffe. A view that climate change is really about overpopulation is not that uncommon among climate researchers.

Let’s go back in time.

Writing in 1990, only two years after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created and two years before the Rio Earth Summit, atmospheric scientist and president of the National Academy of Engineering, Robert M. White2 warned that,

The climate warming issue has also become a surrogate for other agendas. . . [Proponents argue that] because population growth is at the root of the environmental pressures being experienced by the world, prospects for stabilizing the climate and arresting the deterioration of the habitability of the planet are hopeless, argue the proponents, without population control.

Indeed, writing just one year later, the late Stephen Schneider suggested several strategies for addressing climate change including “curtailing population growth” and

“in developing countries they involve forsaking fossil fuels as a basis for development, as well as dramatic slashing of population growth rates as a strategy for addressing climate change.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory

May 14, 2024

Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory

Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed.

When I took over as the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, I inherited a project that tracks temperature changes since 1880. Using this trove of data, I’ve made climate predictions at the start of every year since 2016. It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has.

For the past nine months, mean land and sea surface temperatures have overshot previous records each month by up to 0.2 °C — a huge margin at the planetary scale. A general warming trend is expected because of rising greenhouse-gas emissions, but this sudden heat spike greatly exceeds predictions made by statistical climate models that rely on past observations. Many reasons for this discrepancy have been proposed but, as yet, no combination of them has been able to reconcile our theories with what has happened.

Earth just had its hottest year on record — climate change is to blame

For a start, prevalent global climate conditions one year ago would have suggested that a spell of record-setting warmth was unlikely. Early last year, the tropical Pacific Ocean was coming out of a three-year period of La Niña, a climate phenomenon associated with the relative cooling of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. Drawing on precedents when similar conditions prevailed at the beginning of a year, several climate scientists, including me, put the odds of 2023 turning out to be a record warm year at just one in five.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tracking toward mass extinction

May 14, 2024

Tracking toward mass extinction

Where “Two plus two equals five if the party says so” (George Orwell)
and when drilling methane wells reduces global warming

Having turned a blind eye to climate science, ignoring the evidence that extreme atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) rise and ocean acidification have led to mass extinctions of species through time, humanity allows an exponential growth of carbon emissions to track toward a global suicide marked by false pretexts and betrayal by the powers that be. The evidence suggests unabated global warming will lead to 3.4 million Deaths Per Year by Century End, fatal consequences calling for a preemptive Nuremberg-like trial exposing the crimes leading to the looming climate suicide.

Note the future estimates of CO₂ levels.

[ Figure 1. Historic CO₂, by Owen Mulhern, image from Forster et al. (2017) ]

Note the sharp current and near-future temperature rise.

[ Figure 2. by Glen Fergus, from: Wikipedia – Temperature of Planet Earth ]

The rise in CO₂ in the atmosphere and oceans and the rise in ocean acidity (decline in pH).

[ Figure 3. As human activities have increased CO2 levels in our atmosphere (red line),
about a third of that CO2 has been absorbed by the ocean (green line), and
ocean pH has decreased (blue line). Adapted from NOAA by UC Museum of Paleontology. ]

According to the IPCC, as stated by the late Prof Will Steffen, Australia’s foremost climate scientist, if the exponential rise in greenhouse gas emissions continues we will already have crossed the upper limit that gives us a two-thirds chance of limiting warming to <2.0°C. Other scientists estimate that we have already missed the boat.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

December 31, 2022

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

Photo Credit: Getty

Thanks go to Tony Heller, who first collected many of these news clips and posted them on RealClimateScience.

SUMMARY

Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. They continue to do so today.

None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true.

What follows is a collection of notably wild predictions from notable people in government and science.

More than merely spotlighting the failed predictions, this collection shows that the makers of failed apocalyptic predictions often are individuals holding respected positions in government and science.

While such predictions have been and continue to be enthusiastically reported by a media eager for sensational headlines, the failures are typically not revisited.

1967: ‘Dire famine by 1975.’

Source: Salt Lake Tribune, November 17, 1967

1969: ‘Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989.’

Source: New York Times, August 10 1969

1970: Ice age by 2000

Source: Boston Globe, April 16, 1970

1970: ‘America subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.’

Source: Redlands Daily Facts, October 6, 1970

1971: ‘New Ice Age Coming’

Source: Washington Post, July 9, 1971

1972: New ice age by 2070

Source: NOAA, October 2015

1974: ‘New Ice Age Coming Fast’

Source: The Guardian, January 29, 1974

1974: ‘Another Ice Age?’

Source: TIME, June 24, 1974

1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life’

But no such ‘great peril to life’ has been observed as the so-called ‘ozone hole’ remains:

Sources: Headline

NASA Data | Graph

1976: ‘The Cooling’

Source: New York Times Book Review, July 18, 1976

1980: ‘Acid Rain Kills Life in Lakes’

Noblesville Ledger (Noblesville, IN) April 9, 1980

But 10 years later, the US government program formed to study acid rain concluded:

Associated Press, September 6, 1990

1978: ‘No End in Sight’ to 30-Year Cooling Trend

Source: New York Times, January 5, 1978

But according to NASA satellite data there is a slight warming trend since 1979.

Source: DrRoySpencer.com

1988: James Hansen forecasts increase regional drought in 1990s

October 2022: Earth’s 4th-warmest October on record

November 30, 2022

October 2022: Earth’s 4th-warmest October on record

Europe had its warmest October on record, as did Northern Hemisphere land areas.

Warm afternoon in London on 11/28/22 — Sunshine bathes government buildings at Whitehall Street in London on the unusually mild afternoon of Friday, October 28, 2022. The high of 66 degrees Fahrenheit at Kew Gardens followed 70 degrees on October 27. Some of the warmest late-October weather ever recorded reached many locations in Europe, including 92 degrees Fahrenheit at Lomnè, France, on October 29. (Image credit: Bob Henson)

October 2022 was Earth’s fourth-warmest October since record-keeping began in 1880, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) reported November 15. NASA rated October as the fifth-warmest on record, behind 2016, 1.23 degrees Celsius (2.21°F) above the 1880-1920 period – its best estimate for when preindustrial temperatures last occurred. The European Copernicus Climate Change Service and the Japan Meteorological Agency rated October 2022 as the third-warmest October on record. Such minor differences in the agencies’ rankings can result from the different ways they treat data-sparse regions such as the Arctic.

Land areas had their second-warmest October on record in 2022, land areas in the Northern Hemisphere had their warmest October on record, and global ocean temperatures were the fifth-warmest on record, according to NOAA. Europe had its warmest October on record; Africa, its third-warmest; and Asia and North America, their sixth-warmest. Oceania and South America each had a warmer-than-average October, but the month did not rank among their top 10 warmest on record.

The year-to-date global surface temperature is the sixth-highest on record, and 2022 is 99% likely to end up as the sixth-warmest year on record, according to NOAA.

Land and ocean temperature percentiles — Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average for October 2022, the fourth-warmest October for the globe since record-keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA. Parts of western and central Europe, western North America, and Africa experienced record-high October temperatures. No areas experienced record cold. (Image credit: NOAA/NCEI)

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Climate scientists: Ban solar geoengineering

January 22, 2022

Climate scientists: Ban solar geoengineering

‘The risks are poorly understood and can never be fully known’

The following open letter was issued by an international coalition of prominent scientists and governance scholars on January 17, 2022. It calls for an international treaty to outlaw attempts to reduce global heating by blocking sunlight from reaching earth.

Sixteen of the signatories are co-authors of Solar geoengineering: The case for an international non-use agreement, published simultaneously in the journal WIREs Climate Change. That paper concludes:

“Solar geoengineering is not necessary. Neither is it desirable, ethical, or politically governable in the current context. With the normalization of solar geoengineering research moving on with rapid speed, a strong political message to block these technologies is needed. And this message must come soon.”

OPEN LETTER

Solar geoengineering – a set of hypothetical technologies to reduce incoming sunlight on Earth – is gaining prominence in debates on climate policy. Several scientists have launched research projects on solar geoengineering, and some see it as a potential future policy option.

To us, these proliferating calls for solar geoengineering research and development are cause for alarm. We share three fundamental concerns:

First, the risks of solar geoengineering are poorly understood and can never be fully known. Impacts will vary across regions, and there are uncertainties about the effects on weather patterns, agriculture, and the provision of basic needs of food and water.

Second, speculative hopes about the future availability of solar geoengineering technologies threaten commitments to mitigation and can disincentives governments, businesses, and societies to do their utmost to achieve decarbonization or carbon neutrality as soon as possible. The speculative possibility of future solar geoengineering risks becoming a powerful argument for industry lobbyists, climate denialists, and some governments to delay decarbonization policies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If all 2030 climate targets are met, the planet will heat by 2.7 C this century

November 8, 2021

If all 2030 climate targets are met, the planet will heat by 2.7 C this century

If all 2030 climate targets are met, the planet will heat by 2.7℃ this century — Corals will not likely survive more than 2℃ global warming. Credit: Shutterstock

If nations make good on their latest promises to reduce emissions by 2030, the planet will warm by at least 2.7℃ this century, a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found. This overshoots the crucial internationally agreed temperature rise of 1.5℃.

Released today, just days before the international climate change summit in Glasgow begins, UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report works out the difference between where greenhouse emissions are projected to be in 2030 and where they should be to avoid the worst climate change impacts.

It comes as the Morrison government yesterday officially committed to a target of net-zero emissions by 2050. The government made no changes to its paltry 2030 target to reduce emissions by between 26% and 28% below 2005 levels, but announced that Australia is set to beat this, and reduce emissions by up to 35%.

The UNEP report was conducted before Australia’s new 2050 target was announced, but even with this new pledge, global pledges will undoubtedly still be short of what’s needed.

The report found global targets for net-zero emissions by mid-century could cut another 0.5℃ off global warming. While this is a big improvement, it will still see temperatures rise to 2.2℃ this century. If we don’t close the global emissions gap, what will Australia, and the rest of world, be forced to endure?

Pledges are falling short

As of August 30 (the date the UNEP report reviewed to), 120 countries had made new or updated pledges and announcements to cut emissions.

The US, for example, has set an ambitious new target of reducing emissions by 50–52% below 2005 levels in 2030. Similarly, the European Union will cut carbon emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Zero Carbon Sooner—Revised case for an early zero carbon target for the UK

November 7, 2021

Zero Carbon Sooner—Revised case for an early zero carbon target for the UK

Cover image: Anthony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ in Liverpool; photographed by Donald Judge / flickr.com (CC-BY 2.0); modified

Summary

This paper is an update of an earlier briefing note[1], revised to take account of new findings from the IPCC’s updated 6^th Assessment Report (AR6). The broad aim of the paper is to establish how soon the UK should aim for (net) zero carbon emissions. The paper first derives a ‘fair remaining carbon budget’ for the UK. It then analyses a variety of emission pathways and target dates for their adequacy in terms of remaining within this budget.

A first key finding is that a target date for zero carbon is not sufficient in itself to determine whether the UK remains within its carbon budget. Policy must specify both a target date and an associated emissions pathway. A second key finding is that the sufficiency of these targets and pathways depends crucially on whether emissions are accounted for on a ‘territorial’ basis or on a ‘consumption’ basis.

For a linear reduction pathway not to exceed the remaining carbon budget the net zero target year would have to be between 2027 and 2032, depending on the accounting framework. For a target year of 2050, the average rate of emission reductions must lie in the range 17-27% if the UK’s fair budget is not to be exceeded. As measured on a consumption basis, these rates would require absolute reductions approaching 95% of current carbon emissions as early as 2030. Consequently, this paper argues in favour of setting a UK target for net zero carbon emissions no later than 2035, with a maximum of around 5% of the mitigation effort achieved through negative emission technologies.

Download

The full working paper is available for download in pdf (1.4MB). | Jackson T 2021. Zero Carbon Sooner…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why 4°C?

November 7, 2021

Why 4°C?

Climatologists say that civilization can’t survive global warming of 4^oC over the pre-industrial average. Some climatologists even say that civilization can’t survive 3^oC. A temperature increase of 4^oC over the pre-industrial average sounds fairly trivial so why would that cause civilization to collapse?

First, for Americans, a 4.0^oC temperature increase corresponds to a 7.2^oF temperature increase. Maybe that still doesn’t sound too bad but it’s a big problem because the 7.2^oF increase is an average over the globe and the temperature increase will not be homogeneous.

Some places will warm more than 7.2^oF and some places less than 7.2^oF. The regions that will warm substantially more than 7.2^oF include high latitude regions and large landmasses. We can see that happening already with the global temperature change over the last 50 years (See Figure 1):

chart1

Figure 1: Global Temperature Change from 1951-1980 to 2011-2020 (From NASA)

Figures II and III are projections of future warming across the globe:

chart2

Figure II: Average annual air temperature change (°C) at the Earth surface for two scenarios of future climate relative to the average of temperature between 1980 to 1999

chart3

Figure III-Warming during days and nights (Maps from NASA)

Not only will temperatures be higher in the future, but precipitation patterns will change over time, illustrated by predictions from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research shown in Figure IV:

chart4

Figure IV-Predictions of future precipitation changes from the National Center for Atmospheric Research

Hotter and drier conditions will make growing food more challenging. As it is now, a substantial amount of agricultural production in the U.S., as well as in other countries, takes place in regions that rely on irrigation, particularly in the southwestern U.S. and the Great Plains. The water for irrigation comes from both surface water and aquifer sources.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Scientists Are Terrified

November 2, 2021

The Scientists Are Terrified

A survey of the world’s top climate researchers shows a stark finding: Most expect catastrophic levels of heating and damage soon—very soon.

woman looks at wildfires tearing through a forest in the region of Chefchaouen in northern Morocco on August 15, 2021. Smoke and flames rise in the background as she clasps her hands behind her head. — Photo: Fadel Senna/AFP (Getty Images)

A new Nature survey shows a majority of the world’s leading climate scientists expect “catastrophic” impacts in their lifetimes driven by rising greenhouse gas emissions. Brilliant researchers, they’re just like you and me—but with more data, which actually makes the new survey even more unnerving.

The feature from Nature, published on Monday, involved querying Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change researchers. These are the same folks who put out a major report earlier this year warning that this is essentially the most consequential decade in human history, one that will play a major role in deciding just how severe global warming will be for generations to come. In other words, they’re deep in it.

Nature heard back from 92 of the 233 living IPCC authors. The results show that six in 10 of the respondents expect the planet to warm at least 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius), a level that’s well beyond the Paris Agreement target of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). And it’s double the 1.5-degree-Celsius (2.7-degree-Fahrenheit) target that policymakers and researchers (including the IPCC) have identified as a relatively safe level of heating that would allow small islands to remain above sea level and protect millions from food insecurity and violence. Just 20% of the researchers, meanwhile, expect the world to meet the Paris Agreement 2-degree-Celsius target, and a paltry 4% think 1.5 degrees Celsius is in play.

Even more upsetting, 88% of the researchers expect climate change to unleash catastrophic impacts in their lifetimes. Of course, you could argue that’s already happening. Research has shown climate change is playing a role in making heat waves, wildfires, and cyclones worse…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch With Reality

July 31, 2021

How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch With Reality

A failure of self-correction in science has compromised climate science’s ability to provide plausible views of our collective future.

The integrity of science depends on its capacity to provide an ever more reliable picture of how the world works. Over the past decade or so, serious threats to this integrity have come to light. The expectation that science is inherently self-correcting, and that it moves cumulatively and progressively away from false beliefs and toward truth, has been challenged in numerous fields—including cancer research, neuroscience, hydrology, cosmology, and economics—as observers discover that many published findings are of poor quality, subject to systemic biases, or irreproducible.

In a particularly troubling example from the biomedical sciences, a 2015 literature review found that almost 900 peer-reviewed publications reporting studies of a supposed breast cancer cell line were in fact based on a misidentified skin cancer line. Worse still, nearly 250 of these studies were published even after the mistaken cell line was conclusively identified in 2007. Our cursory search of Google Scholar indicates that researchers are still using the skin cancer cell line in breast cancer studies published in 2021. All of these erroneous studies remain in the literature and will continue to be a source of misinformation for scientists working on breast cancer.

In 2021, climate research finds itself in a situation similar to breast cancer research in 2007. Our research (and that of several colleagues) indicates that the scenarios of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through the end of the twenty-first century are grounded in outdated portrayals of the recent past. Because climate models depend on these scenarios to project the future behavior of the climate, the outdated scenarios provide a misleading basis both for developing a scientific evidence base and for informing climate policy discussions…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is the National Observer intentionally ignoring reports by/about leading climate scientists?

June 26, 2021

Is the National Observer intentionally ignoring reports by/about leading climate scientists?

Why has Observer reporter not responded to my email promoting work of Dr. Nate Hagens?

On May 31, I sent a polite email to National Observer reporter Chris Hatch in response to his open invitation to readers to share “comments or suggestions” related to his efforts as climate correspondent to sort through “the kaleidoscope of news, ideas, politics and culture to figure out what’s working in the race against climate change.”

A copy of my email to Mr. Hatch is reposted below. But first, I want to point out that my letter to Hatch was not the first time I had contacted the National Observer to express my concerns re its absence of any coverage of the work of leading climate scientists and experts in related fields. In fact, last year, because of this failure, I did not renew my subscription and shared my reason with the paper.

Here is a slightly abridged copy of my letter to Mr. Hatch. Coincidentally, not only has he failed to reply to my request for feedback, he did not have the common courtesy to acknowledge receipt of my email.

Dear Chris Hatch

Frank White, here, of Windsor Ontario. Thank you for your invitation to share “comments or suggestions” related to your efforts as climate correspondent to sort through “the kaleidoscope of news, ideas, politics and culture to figure out what’s working in the race against climate change.”

Before sharing my thoughts with you, here’s a bit of relevant, personal background information. For the past 11 years I have been editing a blog, Citizen Action Monitor, that focuses primarily on major contemporary global and Canadian-specific issues, including climate change. I offer my readership a news and information filtering service that involves monitoring, selecting, and reposting articles from authoritative online sources…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

By Neil Halloran: A Skeptical Look at Climate Science

June 9, 2021

By Neil Halloran: A Skeptical Look at Climate Science

I haven’t had time to write a new essay, and I wanted a new post so newcomers don’t assume un-Denial.com has shifted its focus to Covid, which is a confusing space populated by crazy people speculating about the intentions of our incompetent leaders.

Thank you to reader Frank White for providing a good reason for a quick post with a new video by Neil Halloran on climate change.

It’s my first exposure to Halloran and I’m really impressed. He targets people that are skeptical of climate change and does an amazing job of leading them to conclude we are in serious trouble and must act.

I left this comment on his YouTube channel:

Brilliant content and production! This is best video I’ve seen for persuading climate change skeptics that we are in serious trouble. Thank you.

Your next step should be to address the human genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities.

https://un-denial.com/denial-2/theory-video/

Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap

April 25, 2021

Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap

Sometimes realisation comes in a blinding flash. Blurred outlines snap into shape and suddenly it all makes sense. Underneath such revelations is typically a much slower-dawning process. Doubts at the back of the mind grow. The sense of confusion that things cannot be made to fit together increases until something clicks. Or perhaps snaps.

Collectively we three authors of this article must have spent more than 80 years thinking about climate change. Why has it taken us so long to speak out about the obvious dangers of the concept of net zero? In our defence, the premise of net zero is deceptively simple – and we admit that it deceived us.

The threats of climate change are the direct result of there being too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So it follows that we must stop emitting more and even remove some of it. This idea is central to the world’s current plan to avoid catastrophe. In fact, there are many suggestions as to how to actually do this, from mass tree planting, to high tech direct air capture devices that suck out carbon dioxide from the air.

The current consensus is that if we deploy these and other so-called “carbon dioxide removal” techniques at the same time as reducing our burning of fossil fuels, we can more rapidly halt global warming. Hopefully around the middle of this century we will achieve “net zero”. This is the point at which any residual emissions of greenhouse gases are balanced by technologies removing them from the atmosphere.

Climeworks factory with tractor in foreground. — A facility for capturing carbon dioxide from air on the roof of a waste incinerating plant in Hinwil, Switzerland July 18, 2017. This is one of the handful of demonstrator projects currently in operation. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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