I remember the first Earth Day and I think that that the environmental problems we had in the US at that time did have to be addressed. Rivers were polluted, we couldn’t see very far in our large cities and in industrial areas, and yes, the air was toxic. And a LOT of that has been cleaned up – and from a Conservative standpoint, that was a common good that Government played the right role.
There’s also a problem with the environmental problems we have today; they are still man-caused but of a far different nature. Instead of actually dealing with severe and and actual environmental problems, they are now from a political and ideological standpoints. When science ignore the science, that’s a problem that spans past the scientific realm and when it spills into the political realm (and where it rooted and grown like Jack’s infamous Beanstalk) it REALLY has acquired a financial component.
But in going forward, potentially spending Trillions a year to spread the wealth mitigate less than one or two degrees of warming, it might be useful to look to the past to see where we’re going in the future. As with NASA’s James Hansen’s predictions back in 1988 as to how things would look into the future.
As Watts Up With That? points out, the models that much of our current enviro-frenzy is built upon, that James Hansen pushed and pushed and pushed, have turned out to be flat wrong:
One of the most important publications on the “dangerous anthropogenic climate change” is that of James Hansen and colleagues from the year 1988, in the Journal of Geophysical Research published. The title of the work is (in German translation) “Global climate change, according to the prediction of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.”
In this publication, Hansen and colleagues present the GISS Model II, with which they simulate climate change as a result of concentration changes of atmospheric trace gases and particulate matter (aerosols). The scientists here are three scenarios:
A: increase in CO 2 emissions by 1.5% per year
B: constant increase in CO 2 emissions after 2000
C: No increase in CO 2 emissions after 2000
The CO 2 emissions since 2000 to about 2.5 percent per year has increased, so that we would expect according to the Hansen paper a temperature rise, which should be stronger than in model A. Figure 1 shows the three Hansen scenarios and the real measured global temperature curve are shown. The protruding beyond Scenario A arrow represents the temperature value that the Hansen team would have predicted on the basis of a CO 2 increase of 2.5%. Be increased according to the Hansen’s forecast, the temperature would have compared to the same level in the 1970s by 1.5 ° C. In truth, however, the temperature has increased by only 0.6 ° C.
It is apparent that the next to it by the Hansen group in 1988 modeled temperature prediction by about 150%. It is extremely regrettable that precisely this type of modeling of our politicians is still regarded as a reliable climate prediction.
We hear politicians, on both side of the aisle, say “let the science be the science – by which we will govern”. Given the modeling being WAY off based compared to, you know, the actual observations, don’t you think that it might be wise to at least take a pause on all the “Green Money” being spent by Government to actually see the results? Yes, there is warming, but if the warming was from what the Warmists say, that the models would have been closer to actual results than by being off by 150%? I have two degrees – in biology and in computer science. When the models don’t fit reality, the actual empirical data, the first thought is not “oh, my data is wrong”, instead, having done computer modeling, the question is “crap, how is my model off?”.
After all, it isn’t just about a couple of public shekels that are being muscled around for what now turns out – nothing.
