November 24, 2022

"For the whole time I’ve worked on this, it’s been like nuclear fusion—always a few decades away no matter when you ask."

"But there are going to be events in the next decade or so that will sharpen people’s minds. When temperatures approach and then cross 1.5 centigrade, that will be a non-arbitrary moment. That’s the first globally agreed climate target we’re on course to break. Unless we find a way to remove carbon in quantities not imaginable presently, this would be the only way to stop or reverse rapidly rising temperature.... The idea is outlandish." 

Said climate researcher Andy Parker, quoted in "Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet Is a Desperate Idea, Yet We’re Inching Toward It/The scientists who study solar geoengineering don’t want anyone to try it. But climate inaction is making it more likely," by Bill McKibben (The New Yorker).

The enormous step of dimming the sun could turn out to be very easy, at least from a technological point of view. Filling the air with carbon dioxide took close to three hundred years of burning coal and oil and gas, millions of miles of pipelines, thousands of refineries, hundreds of millions of cars.... It would take only a tiny fraction of that effort to inject aerosol particles into the stratosphere. (Sulfur dioxide is the most commonly discussed candidate, but aluminum, calcium carbonate, and, most poetically, diamond dust, have also been proposed.)...

This is a long article. I'll just jump ahead and give you the last sentence:

Solar panels and wind turbines are our best vaccine against high temperatures, but also against the hubris of one more giant gamble.

129 comments:

Jefferson's Revenge said...

Why not just move the earth a little farther from the sun then?. Seems easier. Sarcasm intended.

Really, this is their idea? Am I the only person who has ever read a sci fi book? Someone devoted their whole life to 5his?

Crimso said...

Perhaps it's time to implement a "dangerous lunatics" tag.

Lyle Smith said...

Lol… they don’t even say nuclear reactors to go with win and solar. Not even the article writer is serious.

Dave Begley said...

“ When temperatures approach and then cross 1.5 centigrade, that will be a non-arbitrary moment.”

This is a future event that will never happen.

I predicted that the Huskers would be undefeated in football this year. Wrong!

Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs has reported that over the last decade the industrial world has spent $3.8T on green energy but fossil fuel consumption has been reduced by one percent.

This is the greatest waste of money in history.

Dan from Madison said...

As my wise grandfather used to say, "what could possibly go wrong?"

Humperdink said...

This would be whole lot easier if the earth was flat. Maybe we should go back to that "settled" science.

Humperdink said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MadTownGuy said...

Crimso said...

"Perhaps it's time to implement a "dangerous lunatics" tag."

I suggest "mad scientists." That's the first phrase that came to my mind.

Misinforminimalism said...

"People are always saying it's a few decades away, but this time it's just a few decades away!"

R C Belaire said...

We won't live to see it, but another glaciation looms on the horizon no matter what is done today to mitigate temperatures. How's that for stating a real problem for the human race? And have Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

Misinforminimalism said...

Not sure this fellow is 100% on what "arbitrary" means.

Kate said...

"Vaccine" isn't a term with as much clout anymore. Please keep using it.

Leland said...

Fortunate for us, global warming is also always a few decades away no matter when they tell you it is coming.

Jersey Fled said...

I vote for climate inaction

John henry said...

Filling the air with carbon dioxide took close to three hundred years

We have gone from about 0.028% co2 in 1800 to 0.041% today. +/- some imprecisions and inaccuracies that nobody ever wants to talk about.

Reminds me of the Miller commercial "tastes great, less filling"

By contrast, the air has almost 100 Times 0more argon gas at nearly 1%.

Nitrogen? Fuggedaboudit. More than 78% (780,000ppm). That's what "filling" is all about.

Not 0.041‰ (410ppm)

John Henry

Quayle said...

“ When temperatures approach and then cross 1.5 centigrade, that will be a non-arbitrary moment.”

I believe and maintain that in the context of the universe, the energy (of all forms) in the universe, our solar system, the sun and our planet, and heat being the inevitable lowest form of energy: these guys have a massive significant digit problem in their models and calculations. Fatally massive significant digit problem. And they always skip right over it.

What is 1.5°C in contextual magnitude of the energy of the universe and the big bang?

But for reasons, they cannot explain, except “that’s the way it’s always been, we observed” they can’t explain why they are allowed to partition off the entire rest of the universe, and look at the earth as a isolated local context, in which they claim the danger threshold is really 1.5 degrees C? Or is it really 1.534689463856837256 degrees C? It’s not arbitrary they are saying, so it must be calculated. Did the calculation come out to exactly 1.5 - 1.50000000000000000?

We and everything you see are supposedly riding the wave of the cosmic big bang, and these guys are telling you 1.5°C is significant.

Their world view doesn’t hold together.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Hey, is your Thanksgiving dinner destroying yhe earth?

Quayle said...

By the way, I don’t think we should put more carbon in the atmosphere. I also don’t think we should scar the face of the earth by putting up more wind farms and solar farms. I’ve seen the massive solar farms in the Nevada desert, and they an absolute disgrace visually and cannot but harm the desert. I think we should move to nuclear energy. That seems a lot easier and more environmentally friendly than spewing chemicals into the atmosphere to dampen the sun.

John henry said...

Neal Stephenson's latest novel "terminal shock" is pretty good. Not quit Cryptonomicon level good but up there.

Major plot point is a Texas billionaire shooting rockets full of Sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere as a bootleg project.

John Henry

Freeman Hunt said...

"Do what I want or I'll dim the sun!" What devilish imps these!

Owen said...

Madness.

Sean said...

"Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun.I will do the next best thing. Block it out."

Montgomery Burns

Ray Visotski said...


Climate changes. It always has and always will. Climate fear mongers are not taken seriously, except by their brethren who have financial interest or who just want to feel good about themselves because they care. Regardless, normal climate change marches on.

jaydub said...

The madness in something like this is that one country or a lunatic in one country with access to rockets can destroy life on Earth without any input from any of the other 8 billion people who would be affected. Jim Jones would have been impressed.

Heartless Aztec said...

Hahaha. Good one that. No?

boatbuilder said...

If (big "If") global temperatures do rise over 1.5 degrees centigrade over the next 80 years (which is now what the IPCC is projecting as their worst case scenario), in what respect (other than it being an arbitrary number) would that be "a non-arbitrary event?"

And they want to do an artificial Pinatubo, because they are so good at predicting things.

What could possibly go wrong?

Lincolntf said...

"Climate inaction". What a fucking fraud. We have been pouring billions and billions of dollars into every half-baked scheme the Watermelons (Green on the outside, commie Red on the inside) have come up with for decade upon decade. He knows this, but keeping the grift going is all that matters.

Big Mike said...

When temperatures approach and then cross 1.5 centigrade, that will be a non-arbitrary moment.

When? How about “if”? And what will the climate alarmists do if we cross that boundary and nothing particularly happens? No tipping point, no runaway? No doubt they will just move the goal posts to 2.0 centigrade, and then later to 2.5.

guitar joe said...

If humans caused the problem, wouldn't human intervention only make it worse? We can't destroy the earth. We might destroy humanity, but earth will move on.

MikeR said...

Neal Stephenson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) - sulfur dioxide. The authors don't seem to gotten the memo that global warming has gotten significantly better recently, by about half. That's why they've moved the target to 1.5 degrees instead of 2, because it's slower than they anticipated. https://judithcurry.com/2022/11/02/the-climate-crisis-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/

Owen said...

I spoke too quickly. This Parker dude is almost correct: the earth’s albedo seems to be a teeny bit lower than it was a decade or two ago and that means it absorbs a teeny bit more sunshine, so it gets a teeny bit warmer. (And by “teeny” we mean 0.1 W/m^2 or so, with big uncertainties.). What is causing this? Fewer clouds. What causes fewer clouds? Lower relative humidity(RH). What causes lower RH? Changes in land use, for one thing. The more forest you convert to cropland or pasture, the more surface you pave, the less rain enters the ground and the drier things get, including the air, and the fewer clouds form.

Notice something about this explanation? It has nothing to do with too much CO2 and everything to do with not enough H2O.

What could be done to change this? We could follow Joni Mitchell’s advice and stop paving Paradise. Or we could accept these teeny fluctuations in cloud cover (which are not going to produce runaway warming, and may not lead to any sustained change). Or we could build a giant sun-shade and put it into orbit. See Larry Niven’s “Ringworld.”

Ambrose said...

So 1.5 C is a "globally agreed climate target" - that makes it very different from, say, 1.49 or 1.51. No, not arbitrary at all. Top men!

iowan2 said...

We need to start with the trigger temperature. Arrived at without evidence.

narciso said...

Her house was damaged by an earth quake her family was under assault at will her son bears the injuries of this forever

All of these things she warned against including thr ukraine invasion came to pass

Tommy Duncan said...

"When temperatures approach and then cross 1.5 centigrade, that will be a non-arbitrary moment. That’s the first globally agreed climate target we’re on course to break."

The target of 1.5 degrees Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit) seems a bit low. Perhaps he meant an incremental increase in temperature rather than an actual measured temperature?

What does it mean for a moment to be "non-arbitrary"?

Isn't a globally agreed climate target somewhat arbitrary? Since when do we conduct global votes to establish scientific thresholds? Who voted? Why wasn't I invited to vote?

Randomizer said...

Carbon dioxide is not pollution unless life is pollution.

These "experts" seem to think that if we stop emitting carbon dioxide, the global mean temperature will stabilize. These science deniers fail to recognize the climate history of the Earth. My area, near the Great Lakes, was once under a 1000 feet of ice. To eliminate all industrial carbon dioxide emissions, civilization rolls back to prehistoric levels, billions of people die and the global mean temperature will continue to fluctuate as it always has.

Reducing our carbon dioxide emissions is a prudent idea, and nuclear power is the only way to achieve a large scale reduction without a tremendous human toll.

It would also be prudent to seriously pursue geoengineering. The global mean temperature will continue to rise or it will fall. Either one is bad. Any approach we consider will be an experiment and should only be considered if it's easy to discontinue without lasting damage. I vote for a sun shade at the Lagrange point between the Earth and Sun. A minuscule reduction of solar energy hitting the Earth could reduce any temperature increase.

tim in vermont said...

" that will be a non-arbitrary moment. That’s the first globally agreed climate target we’re on course to break. "

How does agreeing to a number make it "non-arbitrary"? If we agreed that the value of Pi was 3, would that be "non arbitrary"?

But setting that aside, the normal temperature of the planet before these periods of ice ages started, was far warmer than today, there were no ice caps, for one, and life did just fine. 115 thousand years ago, the planet was warmer than today, for a couple of thousand years; the Maldives were under water. The planet did not die; polar bears survived the warm period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg

Polar bears also survive what used to be called the "Holocene Optimum" when the sun at noon in the summer shone directly down on the ice in Greenland, and it was far warmer than today in the Arctic, and this was only 20,000 years ago. Not only did the polar bears survive these huge warming trends in the Arctic, but the all of that frozen methane that they claim will be released when the Arctic melts was never released. So far the biggest release of methane has been the NATO sabotage of that pipeline.

Cold kills more people than warm, and crop failures would kill more people than either. If I were more cynical, I would say that these same people would view massive crop failures as a feature, not a bug, since they don't expect to be among the starving.

We can't even say with confidence, due to the nature of the paleoclimate data, that the Medieval Warm Period was not warmer than today, and it is likely that it often was.

DanTheMan said...

Imaginary problems often require imaginary solutions.

BobJustBob said...

Nice Sun you have there...be a shame if anything happened to it.

Duke Dan said...

I’m sure nothing could go wrong. Like triggering an ice age.

BobJustBob said...

Nice Sun you got there...be a shame if anything happened to it.

Temujin said...

Enough of this shit. How many times over the last 40 years have I read about the imminent markers about to be hit? The unwavering crisis coming at us? The death spiral we've entered?

"...there are going to be events in the next decade or so that will sharpen people’s minds." Next decade or so? Really? What happened to 'the clock is ticking and we only have 12 more, no...9 more years to live?' which is offered up every couple of years? Well...I'll just bid you all good luck as I probably won't be here for the 'or so' part of it. But I'd like just be able to say, and what's your next deadline?

The entire climate change/global warming/global cooling industry is the largest non-crisis scam ever perpetrated on humanity. It even surpasses the entire Covid industry which is currently watching death by vaccine approach and pass death by covid in some countries.

Like covid and like many other 'known' crises, the opposing views, even the opposing science is not give the air to breathe, so that The Narrative becomes like the Word of God. But science has never worked by consensus, not by mob rule, and not by repeating the false information so often it becomes a sort of truth.

We'll be here and we'll be fine in many more decades, with or without solar panels and wind turbines (we'll be warmer without them).

I'm suspecting the blotting out of the sun project is a move to make Florida less appealing to those in the Northeast.

Paul Kramer said...

McKibben is a Lunatic...and belongs there

dbp said...

"When temperatures approach and then cross 1.5 centigrade, that will be a non-arbitrary moment."

A Human invented temperature scale, a nice round number. This is literally the definition of an arbitrary moment.

Charlie said...



How about.........noooo.

Bob Boyd said...

The Earth looks so small and manageable when you put it right next to Andy Parker's head like that.

tim maguire said...

that will be a non-arbitrary moment. That’s the first globally agreed climate target we’re on course to break.

His argument that it's non-arbitrary s that it's agreed upon? Sounds about right for this crowd.

I'm against the death penalty for just about everything, but Im not joking when I say that any scientist that takes any concrete step towards deliberately changing the atmosphere to make the planet colder should be executed. Put up against a wall and shot. Publicly.

Genocide and crimes against humanity are not a strong enough charges for what they are doing.

Carol said...

Just a glance at all the flights in the air at any given time makes me despair. Or cam they get those jets to all poop out diamond dust?

https://www.flightradar24.com/SKW3359/2e52a054
.

chickelit said...

A while back, I modestly proposed that Americans out-sequester carbon viz. the rest of the world by far: link
As American grow steadily larger, the effect is amplified.

Martin said...

“ When temperatures approach and then cross 1.5 centigrade, that will be a non-arbitrary moment.”

In what way is that non-arbitrary? 1.5 seems very arbitrary.

chuck said...

Solar panels and wind turbines are our best vaccine against high temperatures,

That's ludicrous, but then it is Bill McKibben, a man loony enough to be published in The New Yorker. Does the article mention nuclear?

Gahrie said...

Changes in land use, for one thing. The more forest you convert to cropland or pasture, the more surface you pave, the less rain enters the ground and the drier things get, including the air, and the fewer clouds form.

The Earth is getting greener, not browner. There are more trees and forests than ever, and the forests are expanding. Carbon is plant food. The Sahara forest is coming back.

Rusty said...

Leland said...
"Fortunate for us, global warming is also always a few decades away no matter when they tell you it is coming."
You'd think with all the models they'd be a little more precise. You know. A decade more or less. That's how you know it's bullshit. They don't know.

Big Mike said...
"When temperatures approach and then cross 1.5 centigrade, that will be a non-arbitrary moment.

When? How about “if”? And what will the climate alarmists do if we cross that boundary and nothing particularly happens? No tipping point, no runaway? No doubt they will just move the goal posts to 2.0 centigrade, and then later to 2.5."
1.5 gives it a sense of urgency that they need to scare you. "Only 1.5 deg.C! OMG we have to DO something! Now!!!"

"By contrast, the air has almost 100 Times 0more argon gas at nearly 1%."
Sorry. That was me. I accidentally left the gas on when I was welding. Won't happen again. Promise.

See. If this was a truly dire problem we'd be building nuke plant's like there was, literally, no tomorrow.
We're not. So. Bullshit.

Wilbur said...

"I'm suspecting the blotting out of the sun project is a move to make Florida less appealing to those in the Northeast."

Then put me down in favor of it.

Creola Soul said...

Jump in the Wayback Machine and revisit 1970. In the name of reducing air pollution from power plants, utilities were required to install 1000’ smokestacks to reduce ground level accumulations and to get the aerosols and emissions into the upper atmosphere where they would be dispersed. After all, dilution is the solution to pollution. But, moving to the late 1980’s now the issue of the moment was acid rain and the culprit was…..wait for it…..the 1000’ stacks across the Midwest. So, plants were required to take down the tall stacks and use other technology to reduce emissions. Now, we are headed back to the future with a plan to disperse aerosols into the atmosphere. Will this work? Is it necessary? What are the unintended consequences?
What we don’t know about climate science is staggering. We’ve spent trillions on windmills, solar, evs, etc without doing the necessary basic science to understand what’s really going on. Sadly, we’re still at it. The only thing settled about the science is that it’s not settled….that’s why it’s science.

hpudding said...

“We have gone from about 0.028% co2…”

That 0.028% has been responsible for keeping the earth about 60 degrees warmer than space. How much warmer do you think doubling that will make it?

Barely even 8:30 CST and the merry band of ostriches is all gathered around to simultaneously play scientist (the kind without data), financial analyst, economic advisor and most importantly, cheerleader for Big Oil. And yet, they never seem to have met an insurance agent.

Never trust your future to people who not only live in the past, but have no capacity to learn from it. The number of civilizations that destroyed themselves in an ecologically unsustainable pursuit of riches far exceeds the number who weren’t mentally and morally lazy enough to think their way around avoiding such a stupid fate.

But why bother? I am after all posting amongst a crowd of double election deniers who believe most of the country vote for transsexual pedophile vampires that harvest babies to eat for replenishing adrenochrome.

Sebastian said...

"Unless we find a way to remove carbon in quantities not imaginable presently, this would be the only way to stop or reverse rapidly rising temperature.... The idea is outlandish."

So, there's no way to remove carbon, and the sun idea remains outlandish, hence there is no way to stop the rising temp, per the alarmists' models. Conclusion: stop spending trillions on failure, prepare to mitigate and adapt.

But the ultimate prog solution is to move from voluntary to involuntary extinction. To avoid climate catastrophe and save the planet you know.

tim maguire said...

"For the whole time I’ve worked on this, it’s been like nuclear fusion—always a few decades away no matter when you ask. But there are going to be events in the next decade or so that will sharpen people’s minds.

This time for sure!!

Jamie said...

If humans caused the problem, wouldn't human intervention only make it worse?

Look, I know this is an articulation of the precautionary principle. But as with the slippery slope fallacy, the fact that it's not necessarily for-sure going to happen - hence the "logical fallacy" thing - doesn't mean that it will not happen.

And in this case, we know that one volcanic eruption led to disastrous crop failures. And the same people who want to load up the atmosphere with particulates are the ones who says that "loading up" the atmosphere with more CO2 than in some prior periods is leading to catastrophic climate change (in an as-yet undetermined, or un-committed-to, direction).

We're highly adaptable - it's what has given us the edge over every other "higher mammal" and allowed us to inhabit every climatic zone, including the ones with to little oxygen for us to survive without technology, at least temporarily. Why does this side of the debate (insofar as they permit debate) insist that the solution is to change the Earth instead of ourselves?

CWJ said...

How did we ever survive the medieval warm period?

robother said...

Bill McKibben is a variation on the apocalyptic doomsayer, like Les Knight discussed by Althouse yesterday. Environmentalism lends a secular tone to the doomsaying, rendering it acceptable for our scientistic educated classes. But why does the specter of apocalyptic doom continue to hold such power over minds in Western Civilization?

Other cultures are happy to embrace Climate Change as long as it promises benefits to them (de-industrialization of the West in favor of China and India, climate "reparations" to Africa, etc.) but I can't imagine any internal support for real sacrifices of economic growth in such cultures.

Of course, it is certainly possible that the apocalyptic doomsaying is itself a manipulation, preparing the ground for human weather control via tech as described by McKibben.

CWJ said...

From the post title -"The whole time I've worked on this..."

From a bio last year - "Andy has worked on solar radiation management geoengineering (SRM) for over a decade..."

Dave Begley said...

Temujin:

I’ve told the Omaha Power District Board repeatedly that predictions of our doom have been wrong for decades and there is no reason to believe that the current predictions of doom by 2100 are correct. And we’ll all be dead by 2100 anyway. The Board ignores me.

But I will *not* be ignored. And I have a plan and, now, a powerful ally: The Governor-Elect.

Dave Begley said...

“ We'll be here and we'll be fine in many more decades, with or without solar panels and wind turbines (we'll be warmer without them).”

We’ll be here, but if net zero carbon is the standard then our electric rates will at least triple.

alfromchgo said...

Extortion by the "elites". "Give us money or you will all die when the earth explodes, warms, cools, whatever." Just give us money...

typingtalker said...

From the IPCC Summary for Policymakers FAQ Chapter 1.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions with a view to ‘holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’. While the overall intention of strengthening the global response to climate change is clear, the Paris Agreement does not specify precisely what is meant by ‘global average temperature’, or what period in history should be considered ‘pre-industrial’. To answer the question of how close are we to 1.5°C of warming, we need to first be clear about how both terms are defined in this Special Report.

IPCC Summary for Policymakers

The goalposts aren't just moving, they're wandering aimlessly.

Richard Aubrey said...

It's already been said. This is irrelevant. We've all starved to death in the early Seventies. See the population bomb. Then we were interred by galloping glaciers. See the Coming Ice Age.
Such as survived have been gallivanting around the ice free North Pole in their catamarans, going heavy on the sun block.

Narayanan said...

is this different from shifting earth orbit a little farther from sun?

and doing a Ring-Earth at the same time!

Howard said...

Bjorn Lomborg and Andy Revkin on Lex Fridman podcast is a common sense discussion of climate change global warming carbon dioxide and the technology future.

Instead, publish the insane rantings of cranks whom have no sense of scale and proportion to gain Amazon Porthole purchases of ChiCom Junk by inflaming the opposition into feeling justified to pollute as a human right.

tim in vermont said...

"That 0.028% has been responsible for keeping the earth about 60 degrees warmer than space. How much warmer do you think doubling that will make it?"

You do know, since you are so learned in the area, that the impact of CO2 is logarithmic, right?

tim in vermont said...

Even NASA says that sunshine doesn't cause global warming and in fact it seems to have decreased while the measures of warming that they have decided to use show an increase.. Amazing that he didn't look into this in his decade of research.

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/14/is-the-sun-causing-global-warming/

who-knew said...

I agree, the Mad Scientist tag is appropriate. Around the year 1000 Vikings were growing grain and raising sheep on Greenland. And quelle surprise, the world didn't end and the cities didn't drown. I see a lot of apocalyptic predictions from the climate alarmists but never a prediction of how a once again agricultural Greenland will usher in a golden age of food security. If you delve into the climate models that lead to all these predictions you'll find two things. 1) If you reset them to conditions of 30 years ago and run them forward, they do not come even close to predicting what actually happened, but go ahead and tell me over even larger time scales they'll be right. And 2) there are so many holes in them (most, for example, don't include changes in cloud cover), that they aren't much better than the old board game Risk as a model of the real world.

Owen said...

Gahrie @ 8:28: Earth is greening thanks to CO2: I heartily agree. My talk of albedo is not inconsistent with that, it is asking that we consider causes other than CO2 in atmospheric physics. These hysterics and grifters want to assume away every other factor —without any evidence. The burden is on them to show that factors other than CO2 are NOT driving whatever (minute; IMHO desirable) changes we may observe in “global average temperature” (which BTW is physical nonsense, a construct imported by the grifters to persuade the hysterics). They have not carried that burden of proof. At all. They just wave their hands and tell us to STFU.

My mention of albedo and water vapor is an effort to push back on these morons.

Milo Minderbinder said...

It’s so easy to predict the future, but it’s much harder to understand what’s going on now….

If I had a dollar for every erroneous scientific prediction, I’d be in Muskville. Where has humility gone?

Owen said...

typingtalker @ 9:06: “…goalposts…wandering aimlessly.” LOL. I am so stealing that!

Greg said...

I have a more intelligent idea, at least more intelligent than solar panels and wind turbines which is saying something. Nuke Russia and China, killing 2 of the worst CO2 emitters in one shot. Plus the ensuing nuclear winter will cool the planet, possibly to a new ice age which idiots like Bill MacGibbon seem to want.

MartyH said...

The IPCC climate forecast is based on an ensemble of models. According to Steven Koonin, whose expertise on computational physics is unquestioned, these models are diverging. They agree with each other less now than they did at an earlier time. That fact alone is enough proof to me that any action based on these models is lunacy.

Wince said...

How did he mention and then just walk past one obvious alternative technological fix operating over the same time-line: fusion power?

The way he states it, fusion would be a "carrot." By contrast, solar engineering is the "stick" he offers, not as a solution, but a risky punishment. A threat.

These people like "sticks" and coercion.

Michael K said...

Blogger hpudding said...

“We have gone from about 0.028% co2…”

That 0.028% has been responsible for keeping the earth about 60 degrees warmer than space. How much warmer do you think doubling that will make it?

Barely even 8:30 CST and the merry band of ostriches is all gathered around to simultaneously play scientist (the kind without data), financial analyst, economic advisor and most importantly, cheerleader for Big Oil. And yet, they never seem to have met an insurance agent.


More nonsense from pudding head. Scientism forever. How long did it take to get rid of phlogiston ?

mikee said...

Who dies to achieve carbon neutrality?
Who gets to choose who dies to achieve carbon neutrality?
What if those chosen to die fight back instead of just dying to achieve carbon neutrality?

What do we do if China decides a billion Indians need to die for the safety of the climate?

Gospace said...

CWJ said...
How did we ever survive the medieval warm period?


Yep, the earth has been colder, the earth has been warmer, including the time humans have been around but not undustrialized. And- it seems everyone and everythign living does better when it's warmer. The polar bears and penguins will adapt. Or not. Oh, well.

As some of the glaciers in Alaska reced there are forests of stumps being revealed. Gee, I wonder how they got there under all that ice....

Earnest Prole said...

Ordinary people will take climate change seriously when American elites show they take climate change seriously — that is, when they 1. Embrace nuclear power enthusiastically as our primary power source, 2. Dispose of their second, third, and fourth houses, and 3. Give up all travel. Until then it’s all talk.

Jersey Fled said...

1.5 C is roughly the average difference in temperature between Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Saint Croix said...

The left is ruled by control freaks. They are authoritarian mad. The idea that the climate is outside their control infuriates them. Changing, moving, snowstorms, earthquakes, hurricanes. They want to fix that messy environment.

So blot out the sun!

You can see them working their way to madness. How long until they start barking, or the spittle comes flying out of their mouths at scientific conferences?

And who are these idiots giving them a platform? You think because a guy works at a university he can't be a fucking madman?

That's another problem with people on the left. No independent thinkers, no questioning of authority. Your authoritarians announce insane fucking things ("maybe we should blot out the sun") and you nod your heads like this makes good sense to you.

The authority has spoken! Write it down in your notebooks. Memorize it and spit it back out on the test.

You are obsessed with your good grades and report cards, and the idea that maybe your authority is not a fucking authority at all seems to fly right over your head.

MikeD said...

I believe the only people who would take McKibben seriously are those who'd pay to read the NYT.

Lurker21 said...

More trees in the US, probably, but fewer trees in Brazil, Indonesia, and other places where it really matters.

That bit about the albedo and relative humidity is interesting, and could explain a lot.

RNB said...

"Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a climate catastrophe out of my hat!"

"Bullwinkle, that trick never works!"

"This time for sure!"

(Sure it's in your hat and not your -- ?)

traditionalguy said...

NB: there is never a mention of the global cooling happening for the last 24 years. There is no loot and political power for the cult in mentioning that. The disproved fraud relies on lying young scientists and institutions as censors of the 60+ scientists who have their careers and retirement are secured. That has happened over and over since 2000. Those stories are immediately memory holed.

Since the early 1990s the world government guys having lost the USSR for a power base have gotten Green true believers to mega fund a fake Science complete with fake new Departments at major Univerities, all funded by mega donors, to be the authorities even publishing fake Treatises complete with claims of faked research facts.

There is zero truth within 1,000 miles of the whole charade. But true believers push on their crap 24/7 for money.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

The AGW theory is a failed theory. Increasing CO2 is supposed to drive temperatures always higher. That stopped in 1997. CO2 has continued to increase, but temperatures have remained steady for decades at a time, with a few step increases in temperature over a couple of years.

The IPCC models don't model water vapor (clouds!) accurately, water vapor is 90% of the greenhouse effect. The models run hot, predicting a 0.35C/decade warming rate vs. the observed rate of 0.14C/decade. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

The Winter Gate Keeper Hypothesis models heat transfer from the equator to the poles. When the Sun is active with lots of sunspots and UV radiation, the UV radiation creates lots of ozone, which throttles down the heat flow and strengthens the jet stream into a meridian (circular) formation. Throttling down the heat flow causes the temperature to rise.

The opposite occurs with low sunspots and an inactive Sun. The jet stream develops wiggles and more heat is transferred to the poles and the Earth cools.

The Sun is predicted to enter an inactive period through the 2050s with few sunspots. This will cause the Earth to cool. The last time this happened ca. 1300, we got the bubonic plague and the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire after the Turks left central Asia and conquered the eastern Mediterranean countries. Fun times ahead.

Joe Smith said...

So putting temperature recorders in parking lots and next to buildings is working?

Joe Smith said...

Women and minorities hardest hit...

hpudding said...

Anyone calling the relationship between atmosphere and climate “scientism” might as well demand the removal of oxygen masks and climate control in airplanes. Anyone declaring a 30-year cooling trend should join the flat earth society. The oil companies knew how problematic AGW would become even in the 1960s and just changed their propaganda strategy. I never knew marketing and PR required honesty but the MAGAtrons here assembled tell me money and their love of it has the power to change the physical laws of the universe.

Also, Trump won 2020, all his candidates really won in 2022, Hugo Chavez rigged the voting machines, trickle-down economics works, unprecedented fires/flooding/droughts aren’t allowed to have a known cause attributable to heat-trapping gases emitted by major polluters and more than half the country supports a party that has nothing to do but drink baby blood to obtain adrenochrome.

I guess denying AGW is only appropriate to a tribe whose supreme leader demands loyalty to all his own lies, including the idea that windmills cause cancer or that finding a way to get bleach into your body is a great antiviral strategy.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Uh Oh! The sky IS falling... Aunie Em... Auntie Em!

Gusty Winds said...

This Thanksgiving...I'm thankful for there are Godless megalomaniacs ready to block out the sun to save the earth and all of mankind.

TaeJohnDo said...

OH MY GOD! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE. Someday. Of something. Every. Single. One. Of. Us.

Amadeus 48 said...

The experts have proven their worth.

Only a fool would ignore the teachings of experience.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Andy and Bill are a couple of lying asshole grifters. First, Asshole, name ONE prediction made by the Global Warming crowd that came true or even came close to the catastrophic predictions from Gore, Mann etc. Just one. They can’t. Their record is failure and worldwide misery and disaster just PREPARING for their bullshit predictions. I hate their religion and it’s Fauci-like antipathy to facts. Fuck ‘em!

And a happy Thanksgiving to you all!

MikeR said...

Pretty depressing comment thread, if you like science. Liberals are evil, so climate science must be a hoax.

Joe Smith said...

'I guess denying AGW is only appropriate to a tribe whose supreme leader demands loyalty to all his own lies...'

When the cocksuckers who are in charge and screaming from the rooftops stop flying in their private jets, stop sailing on their private yachts, and stop living in their 20,000 square-foot homes and start acting like this is a crisis, then I will too.

I am as respectful of the environment as the next guy...maybe more so.

But until the fascist elite change their ways, they can kiss my ass...

John henry said...

In 1968 in the navy's nuclear power school taught me that fusion was 20 years away.

We are making progress. At this rate in 2078 it will only be 5 years in the future.

Global whatsit seems to follow a similar path. Especially melting of the polar ice cap.

Can anyone point to any global what's it predictions of the past 40 years that have turned out to be true?

The so-called "science" can't even predict the past!

John Henry

walter said...

BUMBLE BEE said...
Hey, is your Thanksgiving dinner destroying yhe earth?
--
Methane will be released.

walter said...

(The leader by far being hpudding)

John henry said...

How much science have you studied, pudding?

How many science degrees?

(I have 2)

And while we're at it how long is your dick? (whickerbills don't count)

John Henry

Yancey Ward said...

At some point, probably after I have shuffled off this mortal coil, the AGW crowd like hpuddinghead above will be forced to claim responsibility for halting global warming, even with carbon dioxide concentrations double what they are today.

My long term prediction holds- we reach 1000 ppm CO2 concentrations by 2100, and Greenland and Antarctica are still covered by about the same amounts of ice as today, and it still gets cold and snows in the Winter in the exact same places as it does today, and Florida's beach properties will be in exactly the same places with regards to the ocean as they are today.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Anyone declaring a 30-year cooling trend should join the flat earth society.

We were told that a continuing increase in CO2 would cause the temperature to always rise. It doesn't. The climate is more complex than the so-called climate scientist know. To believe that a simple increase in CO2 density could cause catastrophic climate disasters is naive, if not downright stupid. The climate modelers should have read Hamlet before they tried to tell us that "The sky is falling, the sky is falling."

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Rusty said...

"That 0.028% has been responsible for keeping the earth about 60 degrees warmer than space. How much warmer do you think doubling that will make it?"
How do we even know that 0.028 figure is correct. How was it obtained? What was the sample size? Was it world wide?
Keep in mind that Dr. Mann still has not released his data. Which is no data at all. We still don't know how he reached his conclusion.
We will not get "warmer". If anything we will get colder for awhile. At least that's what im getting from meteorologists. You know. Real climate scientists.

John henry said...

Hpudding,

Do you know how how to measure temperature? It's not as easy as looking out your window at the thermometer you have nailed to a tree. That's fine for telling you whether to wear a jacket or not. Nothing much more precise.

It probably only reads in 2degree increments. That gives you +/-4 degrees precision.

Is it accurate? If it reads 78 degrees, is it really 79. Or 86 degrees for that matter. When was the last time it was calibrated? And how? Even mercury in glass thermometer need to be calibrated annually to be reliable.

Then how do you calculate the average temperature under your tree? Day Hi+lo/2. Every 6hours? Continuously integrated measurement.

What happens if you move the thermometer? Are the old readings compatible with the new? Do you apply a "correction factor"?

What do you do if the neighbor plants a hedge that shades your thermometer? Or a driveway that blasts radiant heat at it?

These are just a few of the problems with measuring temperature and averages at a single spot.

Unlike you, apparently, I know quite a bit about measuring temperature and how difficult it is. Unlike you, apparently, I've delved into how world temperature data has been collected over the past 150-200 years. Haphazardly and inaccurate, covering a rather small percentage of the globe. Read how they extrapolate global average for 1000 years from tree rings in Arizona. Estimates is a kind word for it. Wild ass guess is a more accurate one.

John Henry

Jamie said...

How did we ever survive the medieval warm period?

Wine... delicious English wine.

walter said...

How long has McKibben been running his grift?

Michael K said...


Blogger MikeR said...

Pretty depressing comment thread, if you like science. Liberals are evil, so climate science must be a hoax.


Only if you know no science and believe in "Scientism."

Jamie said...

Liberals are evil, so climate science must be a hoax.

MikeR, you have the causation arrow going the wrong way, and I suspect you either already know it or could figure it out if you read the comment thread instead of imposing your beliefs on it.

The point every AGW "non-believer" (a problematic concept in itself, don't you think?) on this thread had been making is that the models used by AGW proponents (or "believers" - same problematicity, a word I think I've just coined) have failed to predict anything (the usual criterion for gauging the utility of a model), that both their assumptions and their predictions vary from one another, that they fail to account for huge amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere and for extraterrestrial phenomena like sunspots, that there is no reason to believe that today's temperature conditions are ideal as opposed to those of any other time in our history, much less the planet's...

And because AGW proponents use these unreliable and unproven and internally inconsistent models to push public policies that have never shown the slightest effect even on local climate conditions, much less global ones, and that the only certain effects of these policies would be (1) redistributing wealth from the industrialized world, especially the US, to the developing world and (2) condemning the developing world to stay underdeveloped indefinitely, AGW proponents' agenda is not what they say it is.

And therefore they're evil. At least potentially.

Original Mike said...

”Anyone declaring a 30-year cooling trend should join the flat earth society. ‘

The temperature has been flat for the last 8 years. Look it up.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

The temperature has been flat for the last 8 years. Look it up.

And it was flat for 18 1/2 years before that, from 1997 to 2016. It increased during a couple of El Nino years, then went flat again, as Original Mike said.

The Weather Underground and the Weather Channel are predicting a week and half of snow at our new home outside of Snoqualmie. That's a lot of snow for late November and early December We're at 560-ft MSL, not that high.

The Earth is entering a cooling trend. AGW believers most impacted. Their world view is going down in flames, err, I mean snow.

Robert Cook said...

"I think we should move to nuclear energy. That seems a lot easier and more environmentally friendly than spewing chemicals into the atmosphere to dampen the sun."

What about the problem of storing or disposing of accumulating nuclear waste?

Josephbleau said...

"That 0.028% has been responsible for keeping the earth about 60 degrees warmer than space."

A random idiot thinks that CO2 is the reason the earth is warmer than space. The earth is at 60 degf, space is at -460 degf. So you are very wrong, earth is not close to 60 deg warmer than space.

What makes earth warm? The sun, idiot.

Paul said...

Easy solution.. provoke a nuke war with Russia/China/Iran/North Korea... nuclear winter will solve it all...

See, Dr. Strangelove was a manual for nutjobs... like the 'scientist' author who wants to cool the sun.

Mason G said...

"These are just a few of the problems with measuring temperature and averages at a single spot."

Exactly. Now, measure the temperature of the entire planet. Show your work.

Robert Cook said...

"But setting that aside, the normal temperature of the planet before these periods of ice ages started, was far warmer than today, there were no ice caps, for one, and life did just fine. 115 thousand years ago, the planet was warmer than today, for a couple of thousand years; the Maldives were under water. The planet did not die; polar bears survived the warm period."

No one proposes global warming will cause the planet to die, but that it will wreak great changes to the planet and to the life forms presently extant on the planet, not least among them human life.

rwnutjob said...

There were approximately 10,000 polar bears in 1970. Only 26,000 survive today

Yancey Ward said...

Coal will be burned to generate power in China, India, Russia, and every other non-1st world country for at least the next century. The supply of coal is enormous- the "known" reserves in those countries is probably only 10% or less of what is actually mineable with today's technology. Additionally, those same countries will burn natural gas and petroleum products at increasing rates, too, no matter what we in the US and Europe do.

We might as well accept that carbon dioxide concentrations are not going to reverse and will continue to rise at the trend rate of the last century, and that rate of increase is more likely to accelerate rather than stay the same

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

No one proposes global warming will cause the planet to die, but that it will wreak great changes to the planet and to the life forms presently extant on the planet, not least among them human life.

No, Global Warming is a failed theory. It was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period than it is today. It was even warmer during the Roman Warm Period. The climate models are garbage, they have too many tunable parameters and they can't match the recent temperature record.

The correlation between CO2 density and temperature is weak. The models don't include effects of the Sun on the planet. The radiation from the Sun contributes more than just energy, it changes how much ozone is created and how the jet stream functions.

The climate doomsters are lying to us. They want all of us cold and miserable, without any means to get around. At the same time, they will be living in luxury with all the energy and transportation they want. We'll be little more than peasants.

Construction machinery runs on diesel. Imagine trying to pour a concrete driveway or patio by hand mixing concrete and water. No 10-yd deliveries of concrete via a diesel concrete truck, no concrete pump/boom trucks to place the concrete. (Those pump trucks are amazing! Our patio and driveway (1,700 sq-ft) were poured in about three hours. Now do that with a wheelbarrow, and a manual stirring stick.)

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

No one proposes global warming will cause the planet to die, but that it will wreak great changes to the planet and to the life forms presently extant on the planet, not least among them human life.

That's exactly what Greta and AOC say. We're all DOOMED! Just ask them. And idiots like you believe them.

Original Mike said...

"What about the problem of storing or disposing of accumulating nuclear waste?"

The problem is political, not science or engineering. If climate change is an existential threat, we know where to place the blame if an agreement can't be reached.

Achilles said...

Robert Cook said...

"I think we should move to nuclear energy. That seems a lot easier and more environmentally friendly than spewing chemicals into the atmosphere to dampen the sun."

What about the problem of storing or disposing of accumulating nuclear waste?

Thorium Salt reactors don't leave any radioactive waste.

Paul said...

Robert Cook said...

'No one proposes global warming will cause the planet to die, but that it will wreak great changes to the planet and to the life forms presently extant on the planet, not least among them human life.'

Climate has always changed... and have wreaked great changes to life forms... duh... look at the ice ages, the super volcanoes that have erupted (causing world wide famines), the great desert in Africa that every 50,000 years changes into a green paradise.... etc.

What is so stupid is they 'think' us humans cause massive 'climate change' yet the data they give is so bogus. We may have a slight effect but nothing compared to Mother Natures.

JAORE said...

I recall a cartoon I saw MANY years ago. It featured the iconic image of a bearded man in rags bearing a poster on a stick saying, "The World to end Monday". Monday is crossed out and Tuesday written below. Tuesday is crossed out and Wednesday is written below.

Kind of like climate predictions.

Achilles said...

hpudding said...

“We have gone from about 0.028% co2…”

That 0.028% has been responsible for keeping the earth about 60 degrees warmer than space. How much warmer do you think doubling that will make it?

Wow.

You are just really fucking stupid.

Amadeus 48 said...


"No one proposes global warming will cause the planet to die, but that it will wreak great changes to the planet and to the life forms presently extant on the planet, not least among them human life."

In the past when the Earth has been warm, humanity has thrived. The cool periods have been rough. I look out my window and see Lake Michigan. 25,000 years ago I would have been under ice a mile thick. Something changed for the better. The Earth got warm. The ice melted. No human actors were involved in the warming or the cooling.

The scientific method involves forming a hypothesis and then testing it through observation and experiment. The climate industry people appear to substitute computer climate models, which cannot account for very substantial variables (clouds, for example), for rigorous observation. That isn't science.

Rusty said...

Robert Cook said...
"I think we should move to nuclear energy. That seems a lot easier and more environmentally friendly than spewing chemicals into the atmosphere to dampen the sun."

"What about the problem of storing or disposing of accumulating nuclear waste?"
All the nuclear waste produced by modern nuclear reactors is stored.....................On Site! With room for much more. The spent fuel pools are nowhere near capacity.

"Anyone declaring a 30-year cooling trend should join the flat earth society."
And yet average yearly temps have stayed the same or gone down depending on where you live. The sun determines climate. We are entering a solar minimum. For those global climate scientists on this thread that means the sun is getting colder. And that means less solar radiation will reach earth. That means we'll be getting colder. No amount of man made(sic) global shenanigans is going to stop it.