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Comment by PKop | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain:

- since CO2 has a logarithmic effect on warming

- the catastrophic climate prediction models have not proven effective at predicting climate

- we should expect moderate increases in warming, which can be beneficial (livable climate, crops etc)

- the unquestionable benefits of hydro carbon energy to bring people out of poverty and into modern prosperity (food, healthcare, modern technology)

..what's all the sensationalism about? Shouldn't we be happy that the alarmists were wrong and the threat has been overblown?

An alternative viewpoint:

https://youtu.be/500MmY5rB1w

https://youtu.be/EaNPBZ6BZZ8

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/10/the-diminishing-influ...

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> - since CO2 has a logarithmic effect on warming

Sources?

> - the catastrophic climate prediction models have not proven effective at predicting climate

What catastrophic models?

> - we should expect moderate increases in warming, which can be beneficial (livable climate, crops etc)

2C is not moderate

> - the unquestionable benefits of hydro carbon energy to bring people out of poverty and into modern prosperity (food, healthcare, modern technology)

Because renewable has not benefits? Isn't?

> Shouldn't we be happy that the alarmists were wrong and the threat has been overblown?

I don't know about alarmists, but IPCC has been spot on, if not optimistic with their models

> An alternative viewpoint:

Alex Epstein and WUWT? Really?

PKop, I'm afraid that deprogramming global warming people is a futile effort.

Logarithmic scale of CO2 forcing: http://www.princeton.edu/~lam/documents/LamAug07bs.pdf

Failure of glorified climate models: http://www.thegwpf.com/epic-climate-model-failure/

You have no idea how much I want what you write to be true. Trust me, I LIKE driving fast and burning gas and building stuff. It's fun!

However, peddling this without very, very good sources is harmful. Yours are dubious at best, and come from a political organization (the Reason Foundation), not a scientific one.

    - since CO2 has a logarithmic effect on warming

Where does this affirmation come from ?

Eh, this is actually well known.

"The existing concentrations of a particular gas dictate the effect that additional molecules of that gas can have. For gases such as the halocarbons, where the naturally occurring concentrations are zero or very small, their forcing is close to linear in concentration for present-day concentrations. Gases such as methane and nitrous oxide are present in such quantities that significant absorption is already occurring and it is found that their forcing is approximately proportional to the square root of their concentration. (snip) For carbon dioxide, as has already been mentioned, parts of the spectrum are already so opaque that additional molecules of carbon dioxide are even less effective, the forcing is found to be logarithmic in concentration."

From page 49 of http://ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_02...

The question should be why the OP made this observation regarding the other claims he made

Citations needed

The problem is non-linearity. Moderate increases in temperatures can have catastrophic effects. While warming can be moderate at the planetary level, changes can be dramatic locally. Droughts and failing crops lead to massive migration (which we're already witnessing). Changing climate has brought tropical diseases to temperate climates.

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