From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

h/t Hedley; “People are already dying of climate change right now” – but “accelerating solar and wind” will save us from “the most severe climate change scenarios”.

A new climate reality: Less warming, but worse impacts on the planet 

The most severe climate change scenarios now appear less likely, but extremes are nonetheless poised to overwhelm societies, scientists say

By Scott Dance
January 6, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EST

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Accelerating solar and wind energy adoption means global warming probably will not reach the extremes once feared, climate scientists say. At the same time, recent heat, storms and ecological disasters prove, they say, that climate change impacts could be more severe than predicted even with less warming.

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Scientists pointed to recent signs of societies’ fragility: drought contributing to the Arab Spring uprisings; California narrowly avoiding widespread blackouts amid record-high temperatures; heat waves killing tens of thousands of people each year, including in Europe, the planet’s most developed continent.

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“People are already dying of climate change right now,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a professor at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland. “We have started to see events at near-zero probability of happening without human-induced climate change.”

…Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/06/climate-change-scenarios-extremes/

Back in the real world, total consumption of coal hit 8 billion tons for the first time ever in 2022. Oil use is skyrocketing. The rise in CO2, measured at Mauna Loa observatory whenever the volcano isn’t erupting, has showed a remarkably steady progress upwards.

So what has brought on this desperate attempt to talk up lesser climate scenarios, and claim, despite the lack of evidence, that wind and solar is about to have an impact the global rise of CO2?

My guess, and this is only speculation, is climate scientists are worried about the impact on their credibility of the growing pause in global warming.

I’m not suggesting any of them have considered the possibility they might be wrong. Alarmist climate scientists truly believe in their models. But pauses and warming trends which deviate from their predictions upset them, even when they tell each other the deviation is due to natural variation.

Many of them are expecting a breakout of extreme global warming any moment now, once the unexplained natural variation which is hiding pent up global warming releases its grip. In my opinion this is why they keep making ridiculous “end of snow” predictions.

… Where did the heat go? … How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter? We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless, as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty! …Climategate Email 1255523796.txt (10/14/2009 speaker Professor Kevin Trenberth)

Some of them have even expressed hope the world will suffer a global climate catastrophe, just so they can be unequivocally proved right.

… This is from an Australian at BMRC (not Neville Nicholls). It began from the attached article. What an idiot. The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK, it has, but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant. … As you know, I’m not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish. …Climategate Email 1120593115.txt (7/5/2005 speaker Professor Phil Jones)

How much evidence would it take to convince alarmist climate scientists they are wrong about global warming?

In 2015, then British climate change secretary Amber Rudd tried to get skeptics and alarmists together in the same room, to see if they could resolve their differences.

According to Breitbart;

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“We pinned them down on this hiatus… they were arguing that yes, there might have been a hiatus, but warming might be going into the ocean, or it could be due to volcanic activity. So we asked at what point would you begin to accept there had been no warming. If there is no warming for five years, or ten years? “

Finally they conceded they would wait fifty years.

“We asked would that be fifty years from now, or fifty years from 1997, when the hiatus started? They said they wouldn’t change their mind for fifty years from now.

…Read more: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/06/16/exclusive-well-all-be-dead-before-climate-change-orgs-admit-theyre-wrong-says-mp/

In other words, we shall never convince most of the core cadre of climate believers. Most of the core cadre will go to their graves still waiting for the great global warming breakout, regardless of observational evidence which contradicts their model predictions.

“People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful. Our approach is not entirely empirical.” – John Mitchell, UK MET.

If we can’t convince the most committed alarmist climate scientists, we can try to reach people who are less committed to their theories. We regularly demonstrate predictions of imminent climate catastrophe are not credible, by highlighting all the absurdities and failed predictions.