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May 30, 2011

Increase in CO2 emissions means world on the brink, say warmists

Rick Moran
The only reason I am highlighting this piece in the Guardian is because it is a textbook example of everything that's wrong with climate change advocates.

Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency.

The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius - which scientists say is the threshold for potentially "dangerous climate change" - is likely to be just "a nice Utopia", according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA. It also shows the most serious global recession for 80 years has had only a minimal effect on emissions, contrary to some predictions.

Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel - a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data.

"I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions," Birol told the Guardian. "It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees. The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say."

Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire. "These figures indicate that [emissions] are now close to being back on a 'business as usual' path. According to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's] projections, such a path ... would mean around a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperature of more than 4C by 2100," he said.


1. Absolutely no quoting of skeptics.

2. Warnings of absolute catastrophe with not a shred of evidence to support it.

3. Hiding the fact that the increase in CO2 comes from "developing countries" (China, India) and not from the industrialized world. (one passing reference)

4. A 50-50 chance of a 4c rise in temps by 2100?  Talk about hedging your bets!

5. Ascribing reliable authority to people and organizations that have no track record of accuracy whatsoever.

6. The usual picture of smoking industrial smokestacks when CO2 is invisible and is not a pollutant.

I'm sure you could add more to the list. But since most of the increase comes from non-signatories to Kyoto and Copenhagen, it is unclear exactly why western industrialized countries should reduce their emissions even further, damaging their economies in the process, while China and India get a free ride.

Scare tactics don't work anymore. Quoting biased scientists and organizations who parrot echo chamber pronouncements of doom and gloom is just not good enough anymore. What models predict a 4c rise in temps before 2100? How accurate have they been to this point? Why the arbitrary number of 22GT's of emissions to prevent a rise in temps? Where does it come from? Who figured it out? Why not 23GT's of emissions? Or 24?

A good scientist - and a discerning reader of science articles in the mainstream press - demand answers to those and other questions before getting on the sky is falling bandwagon. Before we mangle the economies of the western world to satisfy the Luddites and control freaks in the UN, the NGO's and the radical green movement, we should require more proof than these ridiculous attempts at scaremongering by the media and their allies in the Global Warming movement.

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