Study: CO2 Climate Impact is ‘Effectively Unmeasurable’

A new study (Stallinga, 2020) assesses the climate sensitivity to rising CO2 concentrations is just 0.0014°C per ppm. Dr. Peter Stallinga has published a comprehensive analysis of the Earth’s ‘greenhouse effect.’ He finds an inconsequential role for CO2.

Doubling CO2 from 350 to 700 ppm yields warming of less than 0.5°C (500 mK). Feedbacks to warming are likely negative, as adding CO2 may only serve to speed up natural return-to-equilibrium processes.

As for absorption-reemission perturbation from CO2, “there is nothing CO2 would add to the current heat balance in the atmosphere.”



Larger image here

A portion of Dr. Stallinga’s paper worth highlighting – which he mentions only in passing – refers to the early history of the Earth’s greenhouse effect paradigm.

K. Ångström receives little attention as a pioneer of the conceptualization that warming and cooling result from radiative imbalances within a planetary ‘greenhouse effect.’

About 120 years ago, Ångström (1900) contradicted the oft-cited Arrhenius (1896) – the atmospheric physicist referred to by proponents of anthropogenic global warming.

Ångström suggested Earth’s greenhouse effect is already saturated in its current (1900) state, and therefore increasing CO2 will have “no effect whatsoever” on climate (Stallinga, 2020).

Ångström’s conclusions were largely ignored.

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Who needs Paris when we have capitalism? US had largest CO2 decline on a country basis in 2019

Two years after President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, the U.S. saw the greatest decline in carbon dioxide emissions on a country basis, according to the International Energy Agency's report on global greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. Thanks to an exceptional decrease in emissions in advanced economies, global emissions finally flatlined after three years of increasing.

Spearheading that charge was the U.S., which decreased carbon dioxide emissions by a staggering 140 million tons, or 2.9%, thanks to vast increases of natural gas generation. Since our peak in 2000, the IEA reports that emissions are down 1 gigaton, "the largest absolute decline by any country over that period."

Thanks to its nonlegally binding emissions standards, the Paris agreement was a prime piece of virtue signaling, but it never was going to affect emissions standards. Yet, technological innovation and markets did so instead.

"Economic growth in advanced economies averaged 1.7% in 2019, but total energy-related CO2 emissions fell by 3.2%," the IEA writes. "Generation from coal-fired plants in advanced economies declined by nearly 15% as a result of continued growth of renewables, coal-to-gas fuel switching, a rise in nuclear power and weaker electricity demand."

Of course, this makes sense. Nuclear is the single-most efficient, long-term source of carbon-neutral energy, and natural gas and renewables excel in the short term, especially as research and development make the latter cheaper. On some level, regulations and market-oriented approaches such as carbon taxes in Europe must have helped, but fundamentally, market forces are spearheading our fight against climate change.

Proponents of the Green New Deal may claim that nuclear and market-oriented solutions don't work, but the evidence is conclusive. Capitalism may very well save the world.

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Delingpole: Why Is Boris Johnson Allowing Eco-Fascists to Run Riot in Britain?

Extinction Rebellion vandals are digging up the lawns outside Cambridge’s grandest college Trinity and have blocked one of the roundabouts near the city centre.

Why aren’t the police arresting them? Why should taxpayers have to pay for the damage done? And what does this say about the future of Britain under a green tyranny where hardcore environmental activists and the Boris Johnson administration appear to have formed an alliance in opposition to the British people?

Here are the scenes in Cambridge today, dodgy anarchists wearing the fashionable Extinction Rebellion hat, digging up Cambridge’s manicured lawns under the rainbow flag.

Shockingly, almost unbelievably, instead of clearing away Extinction Rebellion’s makeshift roadblock, the local police have actually chosen to formalise the protest by using their own ’emergency police powers’ to close roads officially. Buses have been diverted. ‘Pedestrians and cyclists will not be affected’, the Cambridge Police Twitter account tells us primly and with, perhaps, a hint of relish at being able to participate in this orgy of environmental virtue-signalling.

We are using emergency police powers to close two city centre roads. Extinction Rebellion activists begin week-long occupation of Cambridge city centre junction

The climate campaigners, led by their youth wing, brought traffic to a halt on Sunday morning.

None of this should have been allowed to happen. You may say – not unreasonably – that this is God’s punishment against Cambridge for being such a stronghold of entrenched Social Justice Warrior stupidity; you may argue — again quite correctly — that because lots of people in Cambridge share Extinction Rebellion’s environmental concerns and support a lot of its aims this is simply a case of poetic justice, the biter bit; you may say that having appointed a talentless, thick, failed Civil Service apparatchik such as Dame Sally Davies as its next Master, Trinity lost all claim to being a serious academic institution so frankly who cares what happens to its poxy swards?

But the wider and more important issue here surely is that Britain’s energy, environmental – and now, policing – policies have been devolved to the eco-fascist extreme.

Extinction Rebellion is a ‘destabilising and extremist’ organisation; its objective is ‘system change’, which means bringing down Britain’s existing democratic system. If achieved, this would cause ‘rapid economic disaster’.

These are the words of a report, co-written last year by Richard Walton, formerly head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command.

How can it be possible that a government committed to restoring law and order to broken Britain can let be allowing such destabilising extremists to be causing such mayhem with such impunity?

Earlier this year, the government had a brief chance to outlaw Extinction Rebellion, initially by publicly acknowledging it for the menace it is.

It had the perfect chance when Extinction Rebellion (XR) was included by counter-terrorism police on a list of extremist ideologies that should be reported to the government’s anti-terrorism Prevent programme.

But when leftist activists including the Guardian kicked up a massive stink about this supposed injustice, Boris Johnson’s virtue-signalling ministers seized the chance to express outrage that a ‘peaceful’ protest group could be bracketed with terrorists.

Never mind that Extinction Rebellion causes more economic damage to Britain than all its more violent terrorist equivalents put together — policing it in London alone cost more than £37 million last year, more than twice the budget for its Violent Crime Taskforce: we are effectively being asked to accept that because Extinction Rebellion hasn’t tried to kill anyone and because a few upper-middle-class airheads and brainwashed government ministers think their aims are kind of fluffy and cute, they can, therefore, close down the public highway and dig up ancient lawns and generally make a nuisance of themselves at their leisure.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself — always and ever keener to be liked more than he is to take a moral stand on any issue – has helped sow the seeds of future ruin by failing to confront Extinction Rebellion. Instead, he has given them carte blanche with idiot declarations like the one he made last year when he said:

“I deplore their tactics but I basically think that they are right to rebel against the extinctions that are taking place.”

First, what extinctions is he talking about? There have been none recently — certainly none ever caused by ‘climate change’.

Second, what kind of message does it send out to these extremists to tell them that essentially the moral justice of their cause has the endorsement of the Prime Minister?

Boris Johnson’s administration is heading towards green ruination – and it has only itself to blame. These protests in Cambridge are merely a taste of the disruption to come. No one, especially not in the working-class communities of the North and the Midlands, voted Conservative at the last election in order to have their streets blocked, their council tax increased, and their cities defiled by patchouli smelling trustafarians called Cressida and Rupert.

On this issue, as on so many others — from the Huawei deal currently souring Anglo-American relations to the HS2 behemoth about to cut a very, very expensive swathe through some of England’s most beautiful countryside — the urgent question needs to be asked: what do Boris Johnson’s ‘Conservatives’ think they are playing at?

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Bezos Bows To Worker Demands, Creates $10 Billion Climate Plan

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced Monday a $10-billion plan to tackle what he says is the most important threat facing human beings: man-made global warming.

Bezos is pressing forward with what he dubbed the Bezos Earth Fund, an initiative he hopes will spur investments to find climate solutions.

His statement came as Amazon workers continue to threaten a mass walkout over the company’s supposed lack of climate action.

“Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,” the billionaire wrote in a statement. “We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation-states, global organizations, and individuals.”

Bezos noted that he is providing a $10-billion infusion of cash to kick off the initiative.

“Earth is the one thing we all have in common — let’s protect it together,” he added.

Amazon employees created a group called Employees for Climate Justice, which published a statement in January updating its plans to allow company employees to speak to the press in September.

More than 1,000 employees walked off their jobs in September 2019 in support of a national march calling on Bezos to do more on global warming.

“Now is a time when we need to have communications policies that let us speak honestly about our company’s role in the climate crisis,” Karen Costa, a user experience principal designer at Amazon, said in a statement in January.

Bezos’s worth fell to $111.4 billion in 2019 after he divorced his wife in April of that year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He lost more money than any other human on the planet that year. He was worth roughly $150 billion before the split.

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UN, WHO, Lancet report says every Australian child under threat from climate, poor diet

This is just more Green/Left propaganda from the usual suspects.  It's an enchiridion of Green/Left moans.  "The Lancet" is highly political. It criticized the Iraq war and is very "Green". And the less said about the UN the better.

If Australia is such an unhealthy environment, how come it has  one of the world's longest life-expectancies?  That's the bottom line

Australia has been singled out for scathing criticism by the World Health Organisation for threatening the future of its children through disproportionately high carbon emissions, undermining positive scores in child health, socio-economic equity and education.

A major joint report by the WHO, UNICEF and the scientific journal The Lancet concludes the future of children around the world, including Australia, is being threatened by ecological degradation, climate change and predatory marketing practices that drive obesity.

Australia’s children were ranked 20th in the world on a ‘flourishing’ index, which takes into account poverty, health, education and protection from violence, but Australia’s performance on an index of sustainability was dire, with a rank of 174 out of 180 countries.

The poor sustainability rank was driven by high CO2 emissions per head of population, with the WHO estimating that Australia’s emissions would be 524 per cent above a global target by 2030.

It’s the first time the WHO has included a country’s sustainability score as a measure of the future wellbeing of children. The report says if global warming exceeds 4 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 in line with current projections, “it would lead to devastating health consequences for children, due to rising ocean levels, heatwaves, proliferation of diseases like malaria and dengue, and malnutrition.”

The nations ranked top in the world on the score of child flourishing were Norway, South Korea and the Netherlands. The flourishing index measures the mortality of children younger than five years old, access to child and maternal health services, basic hygiene and sanitation, growth and nutrition, prevalence of extreme poverty and educational achievement.

However, the report – compiled by a Commission of 40 child and adolescent health experts from around the world – found that no single country is adequately protecting children’s health, their environment and their futures.

Co-chair of the Commission, former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, said children were facing future “existential threats”.

“Despite improvements in child and adolescent health over the past 20 years, progress has stalled, and is set to reverse,” Ms Clark said. “Every child worldwide now faces existential threats from climate change and commercial pressures.

“Countries need to overhaul their approach to child and adolescent health, to ensure that we not only look after our children today but protect the world they will inherit in the future.”

Australian academic Peter Sly, Director of the Children’s Health and Environment Program from the University of Queensland, was a local author of the report. He singled out excessive exposure of Australian children to fast food and gambling advertisements for particular criticism.

The report found children’s exposure to predatory commercial marketing of junk food and sugary beverages is associated with purchase of unhealthy foods and overweight and obesity. The number of obese children and adolescents increased from 11 million in 1975 to 124 million in 2016 – an 11-fold increase, with dire individual and societal costs. An estimated 28 per cent of Australian children are overweight or obese.

“The various governments and regulators responsible need to impose restrictions that truly protect children,” Professor Sly said. “Self-regulation is not working and did not work with the tobacco industry. A complete ban on advertising for all forms of alcohol and all forms of gaming during any program, including all sporting events likely to be watched by children, broadcast before 8:30 pm will be required to protect children. We did it for tobacco, so why not alcohol and gambling?”

The Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the landmark report was a “wake-up call”.

“This report shows that the world’s decision makers are failing today’s children and youth: failing to protect their health, failing to protect their rights, and failing to protect their planet,” Dr Tedros said. “This must be a wakeup call for countries to invest in child health and development, ensure their voices are heard, protect their rights, and build a future that is fit for children.”

Local academics responded to the report by saying Australia had been “disgraced” on the world stage.

Anthony Okely, a researcher in child health and education at the University of Wollongong, said the report should concern Australian politicians.

“While we like to believe we are putting our children first and meeting their needs, our ranking on the Sustainability Index shows that our actions are not meeting our words,” Professor Okely said.” Australia’s very low score on this index is eroding many of the advances we have made in ensuring our children are flourishing.

“Our children are growing up in environments that are not supporting their right to an active, healthy life. The high levels of child obesity testify to this. Children are living more sedentary lifestyles, spending large amounts of time using electronic media for entertainment. This exposes them to marketing of unhealthy foods, displaces time they could spend being physically active, and compromises healthy sleep patterns.”

Liz Hanna, an academic at the Australian National University who also chairs the Environmental Health Working Group at the World Federation of Public Health Associations, said it was no wonder young people around the world were organising mass protests.

“This rigorous study married the voices of children with global metrics,” Dr Hanna said. “It further explains why the world’s children are uprising, demanding governments protect their future.

“Australia’s poor ranking provides powerful evidence that Australia has lost its way. Ranking 174th out of 180 countries on the Sustainability Index is as shameful as it is stupid.

“Decades of wilful neglect of the environment and the erosion of compassion have transformed the lucky country to an international laggard that is failing its children. By taking our natural advantages for granted, Australia is squandering its opportunities to secure a safe and healthy future for our children.

“Pandering to the sugar industry, and refusing a sugar tax, needlessly renders children at high risk of obesity, diabetes and a life plagued by chronic disease and disability.

“Similarly, steadfastly clinging to fossil fuel industries, against solid scientific evidence, unfolding climatic crises and environmental degradation knowingly accelerates climate change and robs children of their future.”

SOURCE 

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