• Tag Archives global warming

  • 4 Questions You Probably Won’t Hear at CNN’s Climate Crisis Town Hall

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment


    Ten Democratic presidential candidates will square off in New York on Wednesday, fielding questions as part of a seven-hour telecast (yes, seven hours) that CNN is billing as an “unprecedented prime-time event focused on the climate crisis.”

    Though questions will come from members of the audience, CNN’s description of the event offers some indication of what questions viewers can expect.

    In his preview of the town hall-style event, CNN senior analyst Mark Preston writes that global warming “would cause coastal cities to disappear underwater, leaving hundreds of millions of people displaced and forced to migrate to dry areas.

    Because of this, Preston says, the UN warns that governments must take “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

    Whether questions that do not accept these premises—that global warming is a crisis and only governments can fix it—will be entertained remains to be seen. But CNN’s description suggests the event may be closer to Greta Thunberg’s “I Want You to Panic” approach to climate change than level-headed analysis that explores the costs and benefits of inaction and action on climate change.

    Regardless of CNN’s approach to the issue, here are four climate change-related questions audience members should consider asking.

    Nuclear energy is safe, comparatively cheap, reliable, and generates zero greenhouse gasses. For this reason, the Union of Concerned Scientists has said nuclear energy is necessary to address climate change. It’s already a proven solution to CO2 emissions. France and Sweden, two nations that have far lower per capita carbon emission rates than the US, rely heavily on nuclear power, generating 72 percent and 42 percent of their energy from it, respectively. The US, on the other hand, generates just 20 percent of its power from nuclear energy.

    Despite its efficiency and low-cost, prominent Green New Deal plans from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders either reject expanding US nuclear capacity or propose phasing it out entirely.

    A new study in Science magazine says one solution to the fears surrounding CO2 emissions is surprisingly simple: plant more trees. The study says that increasing the planet’s forests by an area the size of the United States “has the potential to cut the atmospheric carbon pool by about 25%.”

    That is no small order since we’re talking about an area more than five percent of the Earth’s land surface area. Yet it’s likely far more achievable than becoming a CO2-free economy by 2050.

    Assuming it could be achieved, would an international policy dedicated to increasing forestation not be preferable to taxing CO2?

    The environmentalist Dr. Bjorn Lomborg points out that since the 1920s, atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased by about 30 percent to more than 400 ppm, and global average temps increased by roughly 1°C. Yet during that same timeframe, climate-related deaths plummeted by 99 percent.

    The reason for this is that people in wealthier nations are more resistant to climate-related deaths than people in poorer nations, and the 20th century saw an unprecedented increase in economic growth (see below). This suggests the best way to protect people from climate change is with economic growth, not austerity. As it happens, the “socio-economic pathways” (SSPs) literature makes it clear that the most abundant future is one that relies on fossil fuels and free markets.

    About 65 percent of all electricity in the US is generated by fossil fuels, according to the Energy Information Administration. This actually increases during the coldest months of the year. During cold snaps, according to the Department of Energy, independent system operators (ISOs) can depend on coal, nuclear, and natural gas for more than 80 percent of the electricity they generate.

    Most parts of the country, however, aren’t heated with electric power. Natural gas—a fossil fuel—is the primary fuel for warming homes in most parts of the country by a wide margin. Kerosene and fuel oil also account for a sizable portion in some parts of the country. On a continent of about 3.8 million square miles that sees temps reach as low as 13 degrees Fahrenheit in Atlanta and -4 degrees in New York City, fossil fuels are what fight the freeze, keeping hundreds of millions of Americans warm during the coldest months. 


    Jon Miltimore

    Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Washington Times. 

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • 5 Surprising Scientific Facts about Earth’s Climate

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment


    On the weekend of August 10–11, as if in chorus, major online news websites called on people to stop consuming meat. The calls echoed a recent United Nations report that recommended doing so to fight climate change.

    It surprised many, but there are other more surprising facts about climate change that are hardly published in our everyday news media.

    Below are some facts—scientifically recognized and published in peer-reviewed journals—that may raise your eyebrows.

    All proxy temperature data sets reveal that there have been cyclical changes in climate in the past 10,000 years. There is not a single climate scientist who denies this well-established fact. It doesn’t matter what your position on the causes and magnitude and danger (or not) of current climate change is—you have to be on board on this one. Climate has always changed. And it has changed in both directions, hot and cold. Until at least the 17th century, all these changes occurred when almost all humans were hunters, gatherers, and farmers.

    Industrialization did not happen until the 17th century. Therefore, no prior changes in climate were driven by human emissions of carbon dioxide. In the last 2,000 years alone, global temperatures rose at least twice (around the 1st and 10th centuries) to levels very similar to today’s, and neither of those warm periods were caused by humans.

    Yes, you read that right. The 10,000-year Holocene paleoclimatology records reveal that both the Arctic and Antarctic are in some of their healthiest states. The only better period for the poles was the 17th century, during the Little Ice Age, when the ice mass levels were higher than today’s. For the larger part of the past 10,000 years, the ice mass levels were lower than today’s. Despite huge losses in recent decades, ice mass levels are at or near their historic highs.

    If you paid attention to the previous fact, then the following one is not hard to understand. Polar bears—often used as a symbol of climate doomsday—are one of the key species in the Arctic. Contrary to the hype surrounding their extinction fear, the population numbers have actually increased in the past two decades.

    Last year, the Canadian government considered increasing polar bear killing quotas as their increasing numbers posed a threat to the Inuit communities living in the Nunavut area.

    The increase in population size flies in the face of those who continue to claim otherwise in the popular news media. And it is not just the polar bears in the Arctic. Other critical species elsewhere, like tigers, are also making a comeback.

    While most of the current climatologists who collaborate with the United Nations believe anthropogenic CO2 emissions have exacerbated natural warming in recent decades, there is no empirical proof to support their claim. The only way to test it would be to wait and see if their assumptions come true.

    The entire climate fraternity was in for a surprise when global temperature between 2000 and 2016 failed to rise as anticipated by the climate alarmists. The scientists assumed that rising CO2 emissions from human activity would result in a rapid rise in temperature, but they didn’t.

    This proved that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are not the primary factor controlling global temperature. Consideration of a much longer period (10,000 or more years) suggests that CO2 had no significant role to play in temperature increases. CO2 never was the temperature control knob.

    These are some of the many climate facts that the media refuses to acknowledge, like the impending solar minimum that NASA has predicted for the next two solar cycles between 2021 and 2041, ushering in a period of global cooling like it did during the solar minimum of 17th century.

    There are other facts that run contrary to popular belief, such that there has been no increase in the frequency or intensity of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, droughts, or other extreme weather events. Even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported low confidence that global warming—manmade or not—was driving increases in extreme weather events.

    The list is endless. It would be naïve not to acknowledge this blatant and lopsided reporting in our news media.


    Vijay Jayaraj

    Vijay Jayaraj (M.S., Environmental Science) is the Research Associate for Developing Countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. He currently lives in Udumalpet, India.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Climate Hysteria Is Dangerous (But Typical)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

     

    In a MLK-day interview with Ta-Nehsisi Coates, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“AOC”) opined that “We’re like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”

    On its face, this seems silly. She’s misreading an October report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel called “Global Warming of 1.5°C.” But is it surprising that a radical politician would exaggerate something? That’s what politicians often do. And so do many media outlets—see this story in The Guardian that AOC used to justify her statement on Twitter, which opens with the following dire paragraph:

    The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

    The recent report does not say the “world will end” unless we “address climate change” within 12 years. Instead, it says that in order to keep warming below 1.5°C, we should reduce emissions nearly 50 percent below 2010 levels by 2030, and then quickly reduce them to zero, perhaps by 2050.

    The UN report, unfortunately, is as misguided as AOC and The Guardian. It assumes that all the warming since the mid-19th century is caused by human emissions of dreaded carbon dioxide. It’s not.

    There are two major periods of warming since then. The first, from 1910-45, can have little, if any, human component. When it started, the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over the preindustrial background was far too small to have caused the 0.45°C warming that subsequently ensued (a calculation showing this is in here). If such slight changes caused that much warming, surface temperatures would be so sensitive to changes in carbon dioxide, and it would be so hot by now, that climate change actually would be dire.

    That’s about half of the total warming that has been observed. So we really have about another degree to get to the 1.5°C human-caused warming.

    AOC and The Guardian are referencing the 2030 benchmark used in multiple projections throughout the report. It is similarly used in the UN’s 2015 Agenda for Sustainable Development, also referenced in the report. This benchmark year is used alongside other benchmark years (e.g. 2050) to indicate projected emissions and temperature trajectories under different abatement assumptions.

    Nowhere in the lengthy report does it claim that 2030 is an immutable deadline of any sort, after which all abatement efforts will be futile. Moreover, the report itself acknowledges that the current, nonforcible commitments of the Paris Climate Accord, if met by all signatories, would still fall dramatically short of achieving the dodgy 1.5°C target.

    End of the world? No. Exaggeration for political effect? Yes. AOC’s really doing nothing more than politics-as-usual.

    This article was reprinted from the Cato Institute.

    Derek Bonett


    Derek Bonett

    Derek Bonett is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, where he writes on a range of regulatory issues, with a particular emphasis on financial markets and commercial banking.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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