CO2’s Moneyball Moment
CSS-53 Moneyball was a movie about the Oakland Athletics (the A’s). In 2001, key members of their team had moved on to greener pastures (i.e.: teams like the New York Yankees had a lot more “green”). The A’s (a small market team) had to make do with less prominent (i.e.: cheaper) players and rely on more in-depth, less consensus statistical data than most teams relied on at the time. Their manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) is known for a lot of quotes that have been routinely adapted to many business and societal situations. One of his most famous, “If he’s a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good?” can be easily adapted and applied to CO2. If CO2 is such a good climate driver, why doesn’t it drive the climate good?
#climatechange #delaythegreen #globalwarming #showusthedata
CO2 increases will contribute to global temperature rises. The CAGW alarmist narrative decrees that those CO2 increases will lead to Catastrophic temperature increases. The real question is how much will the temperature increase? First and foremost, there is no empirical CO2/Temperature dataset that shows CO2 driving the climate (I repeat climate) on any statistically significant historical time scale (a very basic requirement of the Scientific Method). That (in itself) suggests that CO2 has at best a minor role in “climate change”. A deep dive into the empirical data and the alarmists’ narrative confirm that minor role. The quick summary below shows that CO2 is NOT “a good hitter” and is also not the problem.
- CO2 is definitely not driving the temperatures in Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland (close to 100% of our land-based ice) and much of Europe.
- CO2 is certainly not the only driver of global temperature, and we (humanity) could only have a significant (but not necessarily dominant) role post-1950 (where 86%+ of our emissions have occurred).
- Temperatures fluctuate up and down significantly and often with no change in CO2 concentrations (on long (Holocene, Cenozoic, Phanerozoic, etc.) time scales and short (decadal, yearly, monthly) time scales).
- CO2 is not required to model global temperatures (although there is a minor contribution). In fact, models that focus solely on anthropogenic (primarily CO2) forcings self admittedly run way too hot and more often than not, still use emission scenarios that are implausibly high.
- CO2 is not driving extreme weather events.
- CO2 does not correlate to and is not driving sea level changes.
- The proposed CO2 reduction solutions (horrendously expensive green initiatives (Net Zero, ESG, Green New Deals, renewables, EVs, etc., etc.) will not produce measurable temperature reductions in the near or far future. Climate Change policy (not “Global Warming”) is the existential threat to our planet and our children’s future.
The climate realist problem is somewhat analogous to the Oakland A’s 2001 situation. We are the small market, competing against the big, bad NY Yankees (our ideological government, business, media and academic class equivalent (and those that blindly follow their simplistic, unscientific decrees)). Like the A’s, the realist community is willing to look at all the statistical (in our case, empirical) data. The A’s had a successful year in 2002, winning the AL West with a 103-59 record (and cast of no name players). The realist community has been using the empirical data and common sense economic and technological analysis to bring the full story to the general public. Those efforts are being rewarded as the general public’s comprehension of the bigger picture (energy/food security, green initiative fallout, unintended consequences, etc.), has continually improved and has become much clearer. Where the realists need your help is on the financial and participatory side. Big Oil (along with Big Green and their ideological government minions) funds the alarmist community, not the realist community. Consider supporting the many groups that are willing to speak up against the Climate Tyranny and Censorship.
I volunteer my time and resources at the Friends of Science Society (over and above posts like this one). Have a look at their website (https://friendsofscience.org) and consider a membership and/or a donation. The Society is a small budget ($150,000/year), registered non-profit and primarily volunteer staffed. The entire Board of Directors (me included) are volunteer positions. If not Friends of Science, there are many other realist organizations that can use your help. Do not sit on the sidelines any longer. Your children and grandchildren need you in the game. Their future depends on your participation (whether you are a utility or a star player). The realist community already has star players on the team, but the teams that ultimately win rely on their utility players heavily and get their boost from the fan base. On the “climate” file, you the voter, taxpayer, parent, etc. are that fan base. OK, enough analogies.
This post has a different style than my usual posts (for better or for worse). The focus is CO2’s very minor presence in the historical empirical data. The data/charts speak for themselves. CO2 may cause some minor warming, but that warming is not dangerous and is likely indistinguishable from the natural variability inherent in the climate system. It is long past time for our political leaders to move past the whole CAGW narrative and start dealing with the real problems our society is facing. There is NO Climate Emergency (at least not from warming) and without fixing our financial issues, we could not afford to fix the warming problem even if the problem did exist.
I have kept the discussion to a minimum, with links to more detailed evaluations included below or on my website. The slides are summarized “quickly” below.
Slide CSS-53b – Climate Science is extremely complicated and is not limited to the simplistic, unscientific alarmist view that climate is controlled by anthropogenic drivers (primarily CO2 emissions). The plot shown here has just 3 parameters (Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) and CO2). CO2 is obviously not the sole climate driver, and the comprehensive answer will depend on more than just the three parameters highlighted here. The plot was first prepared in my Original Open Letter and has been updated occasionally over the years. Only two of these parameters are required to model the Modern Temperature Record and CO2 is not one of them.
Open Letter to the World on Climate Change – August 2018
Open Letter Addendum
CSS-35 – Climate Change – It’s Complicated – CC-IC
Slide CSS-53c – The temperatures in Greenland are obviously reacting to the AMO with, at the most, a small CO2 influence. Greenland Temperatures have been increasing at less than 1.0 °C/century. So, the temperatures in Greenland (which holds 10% of the land ice) does not seem to be warming twice as fast as everywhere else in the world (for those that remember that over used alarmist meme).
CSS-26 – Greenland/Iceland – AMO-PDO-CO2 Distribution
OPS-72 – Where are Greenland’s Temperatures Headed?
Slide CSS-53d – CO2 is having virtually no effect in Antarctica, where the long-term temperature trends have been statistically flat (with a slight cooling bias that culminated in the coldest 6-month period ever recorded back in their 2021 winter). Almost 90% of the land ice is in Antarctica and will not be melting away anytime soon. The same goes for Greenland.
CSS-32 – UAH – LT Temperature – November 2022
Slide CSS-53e – This slide adds in average Artic temperatures and extrapolates out those temperatures and CO2 concentrations to their logical conclusions. Assuming we could continually grow our fossil fuel use unrestricted, all our available reserves (of oil, natural gas and coal) would be used up within roughly 220 years when we have reached an atmospheric CO2 level of roughly 1600 ppm. Assuming current temperature trends continue, we run out of fossil fuels centuries before the Arctic/Greenland temperatures even approach the freezing point. For Antarctica, the freezing point cannot be approached for millennia. That and we will be back in a deep ice age long before any significant melting occurs in Antarctica.
OPS-65 – CO2–Temperature Extrapolations
OPS-69 – Polar Temperatures-CO2 Extrapolations
CSS-53f – The Central England Temperature (CET) expands the area where CO2 remains a minor contributor. The AMO has, like in Greenland/Iceland, a significant effect on Britain and Europe. Given the close correlation between the CET and the HadCRUT5 surface temperature data, an argument can be made that the AMO is critical to global temperatures as well.
CSS-16 – Central England Temperature Model
CSS-29 – Climate Model – TSI-AMO-CO2
CSS-53g – Conflating Sea Level Rise (SLR) with CO2 levels is a common alarmist misdirection play. The SLR and CO2 datasets simply do not correlate with each other over the modern era. There are certainly SLR accelerations and decelerations since 1856, but those happen with and/or without corresponding CO2 increases. And those declining sea levels, pre-1856 are hard (essentially impossible) to explain if CO2 (flat over that period) is the only significant climate driver.
CSS-33 – Sea Level – Is There Acceleration?
CSS-46 – Sea Level – Fact Check
CSS-47 – CO2 and Sea Level Do Not Correlate
OPS-74 – CO2 and Sea Level – 1807 to 2010
CSS-53h – That virtually flat pre-1856 CO2 trend extends back in time to the start of the Holocene Interglacial warm period. Yet somehow temperatures still seemed to fluctuate significantly without CO2 influence. Those natural forcings (primarily solar or solar related) were active throughout the pre-MTR Holocene. They have been active over the MTR and they will continue to be active in the future (just not in the computer models). You might also notice that the current warming trend began centuries before CO2 concentrations began increasing.
CSS-38 – Stripe Charts – Temperature
CSS-43 – Modeling Over the Holocene
CSS-53i – We now segway into the computer model discussion. The modelers themselves have acknowledged that the models run too hot, and the IPCC has stated that their higher end emission scenarios have a low likelihood of occurring. This slide shows a few of those projections plotted against the HadCRUT5 surface temperature data and the UAH and NOAA-STAR satellite temperature data. And yes, the modelers and the IPCC were correct. The models run way too hot (some more than others) and the emission scenarios used are too aggressive. Actual emissions are tracking below the ssp2-4.5 scenario, yet the higher emission scenarios are still being used.
CSS-30 – CMIP6 Climate Models
OPS-73 – Can the IPCC Computers Model the Holocene
CSS-53j – An add-on that shows the projections from modelling groups around the planet. Only the Russians (and one Chinese model) came close to modeling the actual temperatures. Begs the question why do our Canadian Climate “scientists” still have jobs? Unfortunately, that is “the science” that Justin Trudeau (and others) have been following. Those consistently high, questionable projections are then averaged. But in what universe does averaging a bunch of wrong projections produce a reliable average?
OPS-70 – How Bad Are the Canadian Climate Models?
CSS-53k – The minimal impact we have on the climate shows up in the economic data as well. Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) came out with a report in November 2022 that stated “While the impact on Canadian GDP is from global GHG emissions, Canada’s own emissions are not large enough to materially impact climate change.” Among other revelations, the PBO has estimated that the 2015 Paris Accord commitments (globally hundreds of trillions of dollars), will only improve our GDP (80 years from now) by 0.8% (GDP reduction with no mitigation actions, 6.6%, with mitigation, 5.8%) . Based on a modest growth rate of 2.0%/year, that GDP improvement is just 17 billion dollars. How many trillions of dollars are Canadians going to spend for that minor gain? The PBO 6.6% reduction in GDP in 2100 is consistent with the IPCC’s 5.7% reduction using the implausible ssp5-8.5 emission scenario. Based on reasonable emission scenarios, the improvement is even smaller.
OPPS-22 – Parliamentary Budget Office – GDP & Climate Change
OPPS-23 – PBO – Trudeau’s Business Acumen
CSS-53l – The temperature improvements are just as hard to see (and justify). This plot comes from Bjorn Lomborg’s work. The Paris Accord commitments (±2 trillion dollars/year) will reduce the temperature rise by just 0.17 °C (using the IPCC “science” and assuming every country adheres to their commitments). That works out to ±10 trillion dollars for every 1/100th of a degree that temperatures are reduced. To make things worse, that temperature reduction disappears within a few years. How are those economics justified? They are not.
OPPS-9 – Common Sense
OPS-17 – Paris Accord 2015
CSS-53m – The model projections have been the primary source of future catastrophic temperature estimates. Those same models (that run too hot and use implausible emission scenarios) are now being used to forecast more and stronger extreme weather events or using “attribution studies” to say xx% is due to “climate change”. Just one problem, as CO2 concentrations have been rising, extreme weather events (on a global basis) have been declining or are statistically flat. Note, there are many posts that dive into the detail on extreme weather events. The links/posts are all available on my website and can be accessed quickly at the link below.
CSS-52 – Extreme Weather Events
CSS-53n – Solar activity is essentially ignored by the alarmist community. Yet somehow, global temperatures can be modeled more accurately with Total Solar Irradiance than with anthropogenic (primarily CO2) forcings. Ignoring the natural forcings is an ideological, unscientific and dangerous mistake.
CSS-42 – The Role of the Sun – Scafetta 2023
CSS-51 – Soon-Connolly – Solar Forcings
OPS-8 – Basic Climate Model (additional detail in the Open Letter Addendum)
CSS-53o – CO2 Climate Sensitivity is totally unsettled. The IPCC uses a range of 1.8 to 5.7 °C. All of which produce higher temperature estimates than observations. The Russians use the low end of the climate sensitivity range, 1.8 °C and come close. The actual value is closer to 1.0 °C when solar activity is factored in and drops down into the 0.8 °C range when Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) is recognized. The University of Chicago’s MODTRAN Model (used to model the levels of radiation escaping back to space, calibrated directly to satellite measurements) requires a CO2 climate sensitivity of roughly 0.8 °C to produce accurate radiation transfer results.
CSS-3 – CO2 Sensitivity
CSS-7 – CO2 – The FECKLESS Greenhouse Gas
CSS-21 – CO2 – Visualized Temperature Contribution
For more perspective and more detailed analysis, you can also check out some of the following posts.
Moneyball plays out every day, on the field and at work.
Moneyball plays out every day, on the field and at work. : HiringSmart
Paris climate promises will reduce temperatures by just 0.05°C in 2100 – Bjorn Lomborg
Paris climate promises will reduce temperatures by just 0.05°C in 2100 (Press release) | Lomborg
Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies – Bjorn Lomborg
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162520304157
One Page Summary (OPS)
OPS-45 – CO2 Emissions and the IPCC
OPS-55 – The State of Climate Science
Climate Short Story (CSS)
CSS-27 – Is CO2 Really the Primary Climate Driver?
