https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2182663/climate-change-how-long-do-we-really-have-save--------------------------
I tend to post data and articles on climate change that align with my own view but post this link in the spirit of balance. This is published in the South China Morning Post magazine this morning trying, I think, to take an honest look at this allegedly existential question.
I have a few problems with the article that goes with nearly all journalism of this type.
They rely on discredited sources like UN IPCC who rely on 'adjusted' data and operate in a closed group with a heavy agenda.
He admits the topic is filled with uncertainty but then goes on to use specific numbers that are not and cannot be accurately measured.
From the article:
"... just the beginning of the confusion. No two numbers from climate-change studies ever seem to agree. Even climate scientists are often baffled by the figures other researchers come up with.
Climate-change deniers seize on the uncertainty as evidence that the underlying science is wrong. It is not. It is just complex, as real-world science is. The biggest uncertainty by far is us and what we will do over the next century. And the uncertainty cuts both ways: we could be underestimating how fast the world will warm and what the effects will be."The article fails to ask or answer the most basic questions that a disinterested reader or writer of catastrophic, human caused global warming articles should want to know:
How much has the earth warmed and what part of that warming is caused by human CO2 emissions?
WARMING ON THIS SCALE IS NOT UNPRECEDENTED
Go back a step from the 100 to 150 years discussed. When did the current warming trend begin? The implication that it started with the industrial age is wrong. There was a 'little ice age' that ended a couple hundred years before the industrial age. At least part of modern warming is likely part of a natural cycle. This is not mentioned in the article. What is the right temperature for today or for the earth? What is the natural or normal temperature today absent human causation. No one knows. The benchmark used in the article is that zero warming is natural. All warming is implied to be within our control. That is of course wrong.
Who picked the two degree warming benchmark? Who picked the one and a half degree benchmark? Who picked the 12 year deadline? UN IPCC. Who picked the previous seven year deadline to take action? Same. Besides unreliable, it's the same people who adjust the data for us.
ADJUSTED DATA
Where do they account for the controversy over adjusted data? Not mentioned. Questioning the adjustments made by a group admitted to have an agenda is the world of 'deniers'. Does anything in the measured data validate the adjustments they made? Do the adjustments go in both directions? Are they transparent, made out in the open, justified and explained? No, no, no, no, no and unfortunately no. Unadjusted raw temperatures are rarely made available to the public or to the media. If, as some have calculated, half or more of the published increases come from human adjustments to raw data, then we are talking about a half a degree of warming per century, and we don't even know what the right amount should be.
THERE IS A SOLUTION
Let's stipulate for a moment that the alarmists of this debate are right. We should do something even in the face of uncertain and imperfect information. Wind and solar power make little economic sense and have only grown with huge, corrupting subsidies. Both tend to go down in the evening when demand is often the greatest. They are expensive and unreliable non-solutions to the CO2 reduction challenge posed. Only one known source of zero CO2 emissions could largely power our economy without turning the clock back 150 years, nuclear. Is this mentioned in the article or generally promoted by the activists and analysts? No.
People promoting the idea that the world ends in 12 years might actually curtail their own travel and heat and air conditioning usage first - until we are carbon-free - to enhance the seriousness of their claims. They could propose a massive public program to build new nuclear power plants all over the world and push for natural gas to replace oil and coal, but real world solutions that maintain our prosperity never seem to be part of the mix. Instead activists jet around the world with their increased power carrying the carbon free message. They point to electric cars that make their emissions back at the power plant as a solution. They otherwise imply we should go back to a pre-industrial economy and propose taxation and coercion as the only remedies. We must take away liberties and transition to a centrally planned and controlled society in order to survive. I don't buy it.
Attacking the people you intend to persuade rarely if ever works.
