Climate change

How to live with climate change


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Nige_1 Nov 25th 2010 9:35 GMT wrote: "To the climate change skeptics. Please put a link below to a credible scientific publication that supports your views."

I can do better than that. Do it yourself! Go to the UK Met Office site and get the official annual world average temperature data series for the past 160 years. Use Excel to plot it and then get Excel to draw the regression line. The slope is an unalarming 0.41degC per century.

In my opinion, this chart kills the whole issue of man-induced global warming stone dead – as it has done every year for the last 10 years since I first drew it.

Actually I have done it for you, together with suitable supporting commentary. See:

I find that most people, when presented with this exceedingly simple graph of what has actually happened to the Earth’s temperature to date, simply shrug it off and can’t really engage with it because it is so far removed from the official warming rhetoric. A modern example of the emperor’s new clothes perhaps?

My simple view is that we skeptics could all blog on for ever about the physics of radiative absorption by CO2 molecules, and we could battle on well into the next century about polar bear extinctions, glacier melts, sea rise, etc., and get nowhere – because each issue is complex and uncertain and it always ends up as one expert’s opinion against another.

But facts are facts and data are data. And, since the data I have plotted come straight from the Hadley Centre of Climategate fame, I can hardly be accused of using specially selected ‘unalarming’ data that suits my case. It’s the official stuff!


Wow, since when The Economist comments board has become a forum for climate deniers?
Surely 95% of scientists in the world must be wrong and Fox News must be right.


Still flaking for the same deluded junk science, I see. Just goes to show I guess that the scribbling class, having once seized on an apocaliptic vision they can embrace without embarrassment at its overtly religious overtones, will not surrender it under any circumstances. Makes 'em feel so . . . so . . . journalistically self-righteous.

Well, amusing as I find their devotion, I'm just going to skip this claptrap. Must say, however, that no governments appear ready to stop flinging themselves on the green pyre long enough to save money that could be put to better uses.

Carbon Trading Uber Alles!


I was just minding my own Business, enjoying this ThanksGiving Holiday- along with this Well Written Leader, till I Stumbled upon this BAD piece of Advice:

"...Since genetic modification would help with this, it would be handy if people abandoned their prejudice against it...."

Au contraire, on this side of the Pond, the Vast Majority of People are Totally Un-Aware & Ignorant of the Real Dangers of SOME of these GM Foods!
We also are Blessed/Cursed with a Dept of Agriculture (USDA), that has effectively Abrogated it's Responsibility & Role to Regulate, over to Certain Cancerous Con-Science-Less Corporations!!

On this Uniquely American Holiday, this Land is Still Bountiful. But if WE continue to Allow them to Sow their Poisonous Seeds, then.....

Happy ThanksGiving.

Peace, Love & Respect.


Since Alarmists define "credible" as that which agrees with them, your request is impossible. As intended.

Global Cooling for the next 30 years will see the end of Warmist nonsense.



Please post below.


Ah, what happened to the good old days 100 years ago, when the greenhouse effect did not have any political economy implications? It wasn't nearly so controversial then.


Funny, the Editor at The Economist must have been deep asleep letting this article go through unchecked.

Just a reminder, when the global elite powers met for their annual Bilderberg Conference (held in Spain earlier this year), they had "GLOBAL COOLING" on their agenda ... not Global Warming! Even worse, The Economist looks rather stupid when one considers that two of their Correspondents (Wooldridge, Adrian D. and Bredow, Vendeline von) where in fact attending this high profile meeting!

The official website from the Bilderberg Conference:

John Dodds

To add to Edmh's very capable analysis (#12), there is the fact that there is EXCESS CO2 and Water Vapor in the air over what little is used for the Greenhouse Effect. Therefore when you add more GHGs to the air you add to the excess, not to more warming. When you remove CO2 from the air you remove the excess, not the warming. The fact that there is excess is amply demonstrated by the fact that the ocean exists. It it had absorbed a photon in the Greenhouse effect it would have vaporized to about 900C.

The existence of excess water vapor and CO2 in the air, means that when the an added energy photon arrives (eg every morning) then these added photons get absorbed by a few of the excess GHGs. Even the water vapor directly absorbs photons. The so called anthropogenic feedback effect where man produces CO2 which causes warming which causes more water vapor which causes feedback warming DOES NOT EXIST. First the added CO2 does not cause more warming because there is already excess CO2 in the air that is in use for the GHE. Then when the photons arrive they have the choice of using the existing excess Water Vapor in the air or waiting for man to produce CO2 to then produce more Water Vapor. Obviously the photon will not wait for man so there is no Anthropogenic warming feedback.

Finally there is the validity of the original Arrhenius conclusion in his 1896 paper that "more GHGs means more warming". This is contradicted every night when man produces more GHGs, but the temperature goes down- because the number of incoming photons for the GHE goes down. The real conclusion should have been that with the excess of GHGs, "more energy photons means more warming" as happens every morning.

This conclusion that more photons means more warming" means that the emphasis should be on the amount of energy coming into the Earth. The computer models and IPCC fail to address incoming gravity energy from the sun and planets and they fail to address stored gravitational potential energy on Earth. The analyses are incomplete, and reach the wrong conclusion. It is the energy that warms the Earth not the GHGs. Since all of the energy comes from sun and planetary eccentricity sources outside the Earth then man can NOT control the climate.
Just as Mark Twain said: Everyone talks about the weather (climate) but noone does anything about it. That is because man cannot control gravity and the planets eccentricity, the source of the energy photons that cause the weather and climate and the Greenhouse effect. This then leads to the conclusion that man needs to adapt to the climate.

Current analyses of the energy sources (see paper "Gravity causes Climate Changes" in says that we are currently in the 30 year cooling half of the 60 year cycle where climate temperatures go from peak to peak in 1880, 1940, 1998, 2058... This means we should see flat or cooling temperature from 1998 through 2028 or so, with minor 12 year fluctuations (1998, 2010...)due to Jupiters orbit causing potential energy to be stored, as Earth gets further away from its gravitation field.


>The best protection against global warming is global prosperity. Wealthier, healthier people are better able to deal with higher food prices...

This passage seems to imply that higher food prices can be neutralized by higher wages everywhere, which is a nonsense: if there are ten people and food for nine, one person is going to starve regardless. If these ten people manage to get wealthier (own/produce/consume large amounts of goods and services) that simply means the relative price of food to all other goods is going to go higher, to the point where the least wealthy of the ten will not be able to afford it.

That is, the wealthier people in the world will be fine as long as some other people are less wealthy and can thus be beaten in the competition for a scarce resource, there is no such solution as "getting all wealthier".

Besides, a large increase in prosperity at present and for the foreseeable future would require a large increase in fossil fuel consumption, which is both not desiderable as it would aggravate the problem of global warming and in any case will definitely not happen since conventional petroleum production is most likely close to its peak (last giant oil field discovery:1968) and going to decline or be progressively replaced by costly, problematic unconventional sources (tar sands, coal liquefaction etc).


Now for the real argument !!!
The FUTILITY of Man-made Climate Control by limiting CO2 emissions
Just running the numbers: watch

On average world temperature is ~+15 deg C. This is sustained by the atmospheric Greenhouse Effect ~33 deg C. Without the Greenhouse Effect the planet would be un-inhabitable at ~-18 deg C. The Biosphere and Mankind need the Greenhouse Effect.

Just running the numbers by translating the agents causing the Greenhouse Effect into degrees centigrade:
• Greenhouse Effect = ~33.00 deg C
• Water Vapour accounts for about 95% of the Greenhouse Effect = ~ 31.35 deg C
• Other Greenhouse Gases GHGs account for 5% = ~1.65 deg C
• CO2 is 75% of the effect of all accounting for the enhanced effects of Methane, Nitrous Oxide and other GHGs = ~1.24 deg C
• the UK contribution to CO2 is 2% equals = 1.74 thousandths deg C
• the USA contribution to CO2 is ~20% equals = 17.6 thousandths deg C

So closing all the carbon economies of the Whole World could only ever achieve a virtually undetectable less than -0.087 deg C. How can the Green movement and their supporting politicians think that their remedial actions and draconian taxes are able to limit warming to only + 2.00 deg C?

• a warmer climate, within natural variation, would provide a future of greater opportunity and prosperity for human development and much more food for the growing world population. This has been well proven in the past and would now especially benefit the third world.

• environmental pollution.
• over fishing.
• forest clearance.
• industrial farming.
• farming for bio-fuels .
• and other habitat destruction.

• security of supply
• increasing scarcity
• rising costs


However in the light of the state of the current solar cycle, it seems that there is a real prospect of damaging cooling occurring in the near future for several decades. And as power stations face closure the lights may well go out in the winter 2016 if not before.
All because CO2 based Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming has become a state sponsored religion.

And now after “Splattergate” thanks to the 10:10 organisation everyone now knows exactly how they think.
Splattergate is classic NOBLE CAUSE CORRUPTION. It is probably the most egregious piece of publicity ever produced in the Man-made Global Warming cause. This short film shows doubting schoolchildren being blown up and having their entrails spread over their classmates because they may have been less than enthusiastic about the CAUSE.



What a change of opinion!!! At least this one is for the better. Now The Economist should aplogize, after having for so many years denied climate change and accused those who warned about it of being pseudo-scientific fraudsters.


I am disappointed by the superficiality of this editorial. It consists mainly of predictions without discussing their basis. It confuses correlation with causation (implying the Russian hot summer weather was caused by global warming) and uses the vague term "climate change" (what might be called a vague,indeterminant phrase)throughout. It is not up to The Economist's usual standards.


There does seem to be less smug in the air when talking to environmentalists these days. Their AGW political movement has collapsed. The onus is now squarely on them to prove to the public that AGW is real and it must be done with rigid scientific data, not the idiotic 'planet has a fever' rhetoric of Algore. After wasting many billions of dollars on junk science research, subsidizing ethanol, and creating carbon trading markets that have since gone the way of the Edsel with nothing to show for in terms of actual cuts in global or regional CO2 production, these folks owe us a profound apology. Just don't hold your breath waiting for it.

Michael Dunne

Had to hold off the recommend button here - it didn't really say much.

This was interesting - "will be at least 3°C warmer at the end of this century than it was at the start of the industrial revolution" - but would have liked to see the basis or source for this in the article (and not have to click through, which gave an equally unhelpful figure without context - "The world warmed by about 0.7°C in the 20th century").

Otherwise, what is the average band, when all is said and done? Is it 14°c? Or, 14.3°C? Seems like these kinds of articles run away from those kind of stats with absolute figures for reference (and rely on percentages without context).

On top of that, what are the average historical Earth temperature bands, taking into account paleoclimatology, tree rings, ice cores, etc? I bet higher, much higher aside from the various ice ages.

I just wish the economist would do a better job at covering this issue.

Now for open disclosure, I am all for energy regime changes because of concerns with security, as well as for improving ecological conditions and generally advancing progress (something both liberals and the far right seem to be against).

In my view though, that will require significant investments and developments in:
- thorium-uranium cycles
- fusion (which gut feels says 50/50 probability of succeeding), superconductors (for infrastructure)
- electric cars (which probably will take a long while to be competitive on a price performance with internal combustion engines, but maybe a moore's law of sorts could emerge)
- Industrial applications of process heat from nuclear facilities
- Solar (which seems will take a real long time to be competitive, but maybe a moore's law equivalent may emerge with multijunction devices)

All of this will be hard, and often appears downplayed or ignored by climate change activists (along with providing better statistics).


Climate change has hi-jacked and possibly ruined forever the true fight of Environmentalists (and many average people) - preservation of the Bio-sphere in all its amazing glory and diversity.

Instead of hugely complex and potentially erroneous models of the climate we should focus on putting less detergents into the water supply, preventing deforestation and the associated soil degradation, appropriate fresh water management (also closely linked to trees), creating more wildlife and marine parks and looking after the ones that are already there.

These are easy concepts with easily measurable results. And I am certain that focusing on the simple will help us to preserve the whole. I truly hope that my grandchildren will be able to see tigers prowling in the wild, blue-fin tuna scything through the sea and algae covered sloths dangling from vast trees in the rainforest. No amount of 'development' can compensate for scenes that leave one's heart soaring.


Dear Sir,

The reason the anthropogenic global warming movement has run out of steam is that people are beginning to realize that it lacks substance. The fact is, increasing temperature (i.e. warming) causes increases in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Increasing concentration of CO2, manmade or otherwise, in the atmosphere does NOT cause significant warming.

For example, today’s mean atmospheric CO2 content is about 320 ppm and the mean surface temperature is about 14C. Yet during the Carboniferous Period (359.2–299 million years ago) the mean atmospheric CO2 content over the period was about 800 ppm (3 times our pre-industrial level) yet the mean surface temperature over the period was about 14C. The same as today’s level.

Further, during the Devonian Period (416–359.2million years ago) the mean atmospheric CO2 content over the period was 2200 ppm (8 times our pre-industrial level). Yet the mean surface temperature over the period was about 20C (only 6C above the modern level). Both these examples clearly demonstrate that a high and even higher concentration from today’s levels does not cause significant warming.

However, the important difference today from past periods is that the total concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now so low that any warming effect due to CO2 is statistically insignificant. CO2 is now a trace gas in the atmosphere and the human-contributed portion is only a fraction of the total. Given the fact that any plant’s photosynthesis shuts down when CO2 levels reach 200 ppm, it could be fair to describe today’s atmosphere as ‘CO2 deprived’.

Yes, CO2 is a “greenhouse gas”, that is, CO2 absorbs infrared radiation reflected from the earth at one wavelength and almost instantly re-emits that IR radiation at a lower wavelength. CO2 does not act like a sponge to absorb and hold heat. And as Professor Lindzen at MIT has ably demonstrated in a peer reviewed paper, CO2 is re-emitting a major portion of its IR radiation to space thereby demonstrating that earth is not a closed energy system. Instead, the earth’s temperatures will continue to rise and fall, as it has always done, due to changes in a combination of natural phenomena such as water vapor, the suns energy output, vagaries in the earth’s orbit, ocean currents, cosmic rays, etc.

We need to learn to adapt and live with natural climate change as we have always done, because quite frankly, we cannot do anything about it. Despite our hubris we are not omnipotent.

Prakhar Singh

All these reports and research are good for reading and discussing but their ultimate result is rhetoric. Air we breathe, water we drink and food we eat everything is polluted.
Health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society have released a report that lists 12 pathogens that could spread into new regions as a result of climate change, with potential impacts to both human and wildlife health and global economies. Called The Deadly Dozen:
Avian influenza
lime disease
red tide
rift valley fever
yellow fever

Hubert J. Farnsworth

Dear Sir, I cannot help but notice that The Economist's articles on this subject lack the critical analysis that I would expect. This article reads more like an op Ed in a standard newspaper than it does the kind of product I expect. Since The Economist has clearly decided to embrace this train of thought, it is time to convince us with good data and analysis rather than by summarizing reports written by others who have obvious agendas in either direction. Where does that 3C estimate come from, at what confidence level, and I want to know what data was used as an input and how that data was selected. Show us rigorous statistical analysis, show us how it was done, show us the raw data, and then show us long term cost comparisons for preventative versus mitigating strategies. The data is out there, but the statistical analysis I have seen in climate science makes my inner econometrician cringe.

Convince us.


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