The Current Wisdom
NOTE: This is the first in a series of monthly posts in which Senior Fellow Patrick J. Michaels reviews interesting items on global warming in the scientific literature that may not have received the media attention that they deserved, or have been misinterpreted in the popular press.
The Current Wisdom only comments on science appearing in the refereed, peer-reviewed literature, or that has been peer-screened prior to presentation at a scientific congress.
The Iceman Goeth: Good News from Greenland and Antarctica
How many of us have heard that global sea level will be about a meter—more than three feet—higher in 2100 than it was in the year 2000? There are even scarier stories, circulated by NASA’s James E. Hansen, that the rise may approach 6 meters, altering shorelines and inundating major cities and millions of coastal inhabitants worldwide.
Figure 1. Model from a travelling climate change exhibit (currently installed at the Field Museum of natural history in Chicago) of Lower Manhattan showing what 5 meters (16 feet) of sea level rise will look like.
Researchers and the media need to stop suggesting that Manhattan or even Miami will be lost to a rising sea. That’s not realistic; it promotes denial and panic, not a reasoned consideration of the future.
Titus was commenting upon his 2009 publication on sea-level rise in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
The number one rule of grabbing attention for global warming is to never let the facts stand in the way of a good horror story, so advice like Titus’s is usually ignored.
Kerry and Lieberman Unveil Their Climate Bill: Such a Deal!
I see that my colleague Sallie James has already blogged on the inherent protectionism in the Senate’s long-awaited cap-and-tax bill. A summary was leaked last night by The Hill.
Well, we now have the real “discussion draft” of “The American Power Act” [APA], sponsored by John Kerry (D-NH) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Lindsay Graham (R-SC) used to be on the earlier drafts, but excused himself to have a temper tantrum.
So, while Sallie talked about the trade aspects of the bill, I’d like to blather about the mechanics, costs, and climate effects. If you don’t want to read the excruciating details, stop here and note that it mandates the impossible, will not produce any meaningful reduction of planetary warming, and it will subsidize just about every form of power that is too inefficient to compete today.
UN Climate Official Steps In It, Then Aside
There are numerous possible reasons for UN climate chief Yvo de Boer’s decision to resign—from his inability to cobble together a new climate treaty last December in Copenhagen (where he wept on the podium), to recent revelations of his agency’s mishandling of climate change data.
What the climate science community and the public should focus on now are the ramifications of de Boer’s resignation. For one thing, it signals that hope is dead for a UN-brokered global treaty that would have any meaningful effect on global temperatures. It also means that the UN intends to keep its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pretty much intact under the leadership of the scientifically compromised Rajenda Pauchari, who should have resigned along with de Boer.
This development guarantees that the Obama administration will have an unmitigated mess on its hands when signatories to the Framework Convention sit down in Mexico City this November in yet another meeting intended to produce a climate treaty. The Mexico City meeting convenes six days after U.S. midterm elections, in which American voters are fully expected to rebuke Obama for policies including economy-crippling proposals to combat climate change.
In short, Mexico City is about as likely to produce substantive policy decisions as the TV show ‘The View.’ Backers of radical climate change measures are now paying the price for over two decades of telling the public—in this case literally—that the sky is falling.
Weekend Links
- How to manufacture a climate consensus: “The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg.”
- Forecast for Copenhagen: “Cloudy with a chance of nothing.”
- A tale of how far modern “constitutional law” has taken us toward the executive state.
- How the president’s policies are holding back the economy: “Right now, the best thing Washington can do for our economy is to simply stop what it has been doing.”
- Podcast: “Liberty, Tradition and Values“
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