"1/ The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. It will require countries and institutions to re-allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet. This is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital. We will see carbon taxed like the vice that it is in most countries around the world this decade, including in the US. We will see real estate values collapse in some of the most affected regions and we will see real estate values increase in regions that benefit from the warming climate. We will see massive capital investments made in protecting critical regions and infrastructure. We will see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world, particularly smaller reactors that are easier to build and safer to operate. We will see installed solar power worldwide go from ~650GW currently to over 20,000GW by the end of this decade. All of these things and many more will cause the capital markets to focus on and fund the climate issue to the detriment of many other sectors."
there is an accurate one word summary -- nonsense. With two or more words, even worse than nonsense.
It's time to drive a stake through the heart of this climate change alarmism. We can do a good job just in this little post.
In simple terms, there is no serious evidence that CO2 from human activities at anything like probable concentrations will have any significant effect on the temperature or climate of the earth.
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it is a long logical path from there to any claims of a significant effect.
We need just two steps:
(1) History.
There is NOTHING in the climate history from the present back to about 1 million years ago that supports the idea that anything like realistic concentrations of CO2 from human activities will have any significant effect on temperatures.
(i) For the ice core records going back ~1 million years, yes, both temperatures and CO2 concentrations went both up and down. BUT, if we just look carefully at the big graph in Al Gore's movie, with high irony, that graph totally destroys his claims from that graph: He misread the graph. The main point is that there is an 800 year delay; CO2 concentrations changed 800 years AFTER the temperature changes, from whatever cause.
Specifically: (a) When temperatures started increasing, from whatever cause, CO2 concentrations were LOW, not high. (b) About 800 years later CO2 concentrations were HIGH, from increased biological activity from the higher temperatures. (c) When temperatures started to fall, from whatever cause, CO2 concentrations were still HIGH, not low. (d) The high CO2 concentrations did not keep the temperatures from falling. (e) Once the temperatures fell, about 800 years later so did CO2 concentrations. Net, CO2 did not cause the higher temperatures or keep the higher temperatures from falling.
(ii) In the last 2000 years we had the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and there is no suggestion that CO2 concentration changes caused either.
(iii) Starting in the 1940s and through about 1970, we actually had some significant cooling, but in those years CO2 from human activities -- WWII, pulling of the Great Depression, and the economic boom after WWII -- increased. So, we got COOLING, not warming, with the additional CO2 from human activities.
Net, there is NO data from the historical record that supports the claim that higher CO2 will cause higher temperatures.
(2) Yes, CO2 is a <i>greenhouse</i> gas. The absorption spectrum is at
https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Spec=C124389&Index=0&...
So, CO2 absorbs in three narrow bands, one for each of bending, stretching, and twisting of the molecule, out in the infrared.
No, Tom Friedman of the NYT: CO2 does not absorb sunlight, and anyone can confirm this by looking at a source of CO2, e.g., exhaling or the bubbles from soda pop, and simply observing that the CO2 is not visible and does not cast a shadow.
So, the theory has been that the CO2 warms the planet. Then there has been
ALARMIST CLAIM: Extra CO2 from current human activities will soon cause significant extra warming and, thus, "climate change", a "climate crisis", etc.
Since the historical record can't support the ALARMIST CLAIM, we have to rely on the theory based on the absorption spectrum of CO2 and computation.
Well the computations were done by dozens of teams, and the results are summarized in
http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg
Net, as in this graph, nearly all the computations predicted rapid, significant increases in temperatures soon. Well the time of predicted increases came and went with no sign of anything like the predicted increases.
In science, when predictions are made and found to be false, we junk the science.
No doubt, the failures in that graph are some of the worst in all the history of science. GOOD science, e.g., the hunt for and finding the Higgs boson at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), the observations that confirmed the predictions of black holes, many other confirmed predictions of special and general relativity, the A-bomb, the H-bomb, the design of the Hubble telescope, to the quantum mechanics in semi-conductors that are the core of current digital electronics, the science was just rock solid.
We are just awash in super solid science, and the global warming computations in that graph are just a humiliation of anything scientific and just sick.
So, for the ALARMIST CLAIM, there is no scientific support.
For more there is the video documentary <i>The Great Global Warming Swindle</i> at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg
there see (A) the remarks of MIT Professor R. Lindzen on (i) why any warming we might be getting now cannot be from CO2 and (ii) the huge pile of money that didn't just buy off the climate scientists but HIRED the climate alarmists pretending to be climate scientists, maybe 10 times more alarmists than real scientists.
Also that documentary argues that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were caused by variations in the rates of sun spots. More sun spots increase the solar wind which, from more links in a causal chain, in the end slows cloud formation and has a net warming effect.
So, since both (1) history from ~1 million years ago to the present and (2) the computations based on CO2 being a greenhouse gas fail to support the ALARMIST CLAIM, we have no scientific support or even meaningful evidence for the ALARMIST CLAIM or the proposed very expensive reductions in carbon, etc.
In this case and quite generally, if we are willing to go forward with big, expensive changes without good evidence, then we leave ourselves open to some of the worst mistakes in all of civilization.
One current example of such mistakes is killing off the rhinoceroses to get their horns for use in Chinese medicine.
For another such mistake, there is from page 76 of
Susan Milbrath, Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies), ISBN-13 978-0292752269, University of Texas Press, 2000.
with
"Indeed, blood sacrifice is required for the sun to move, according to Aztec cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin 1950 - 1982, 7:8)."
That is the Mayan charlatans killed people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky. No doubt the sun actually did keep moving across the sky.
If we go forward with the Green New Deal, the Paris Accords, carbon taxes, etc. we are making a mistake as irrational as in the Chinese medicine and the Mayans.
Warning: It appears that now the sun is entering the part of the 11 year or so sunspot cycle with fewer sun spots. So, we are in line for a few years of cooling.
So, don't believe a claim of the global warming alarmists that their efforts caused the cooling.
At this point, continuing with entertaining the ALARMIST CLAIM is just nonsense, expensive nonsense.