Pirate's Cove

Funny thing about society nowadays: those who are shrill and unhinged, throwing rhetorical bombs, are listed to more than people who are rational and calm, at least in politics and in the media, hence, those who are shrill and unhinged feel emboldened to be more shrill and emboldened. Hence, we end up with things like this

(Winnipeg Free Press) The 800-odd authors of the report are selected by their fellow scientists in the various disciplines relevant to climate change as the acknowledged leaders in their field of study. Their job was to review all 14,000 scientific papers on climate change published in the past five years. And they are doing this work at the behest of the world’s governments, not as some random pressure group; it is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

All these authors, selected by the IPCC for their Belief that the miniscule warming since 1850 (1.4F) is caused by Mankind and their willingness to push for hard-left solutions, are “working for the world’s governments”. Interesting. They aren’t working for science?

Scientists are very cautious people. They won’t go one millimetre beyond what the evidence makes indisputable, knowing that they will be attacked by rival scientists if they do. They are much more comfortable talking about probabilities rather than certainties. They are, in other words, a nightmare for journalists who have to transmit their findings to the world.

So, I guess we’re being told they aren’t actually scientists.

There is reason to believe that it’s already too late to avoid this one. The protective covering of floating ice that has shielded the Arctic Ocean from solar heating for so long is now going fast, and we will probably see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the August-September period as early as the 2020s. Mercifully, this is the smallest of the three major feedbacks in terms of its impact — but it triggers a bigger one.

So that “ice free 2013” has gone out the window? What happens in the next 7-13 years when the Arctic is not ice free? Here comes the bomb

Those are the killer feedbacks. Earth has lurched suddenly into a climate 5-6 degrees C higher than now a number of times in the past. The original warming usually came from massive, long-lasting volcanic eruptions that put a large amount of CO2 into the atmosphere — but in every case it was feedbacks like these that carried the planet up into a temperature regime where there was a massive dieback of animals and plants.

We are the volcanoes now. Our own emissions would take a long time to get us up to really high average temperatures worldwide, but all we have to do is pull the trigger on the feedbacks. The rest is automatic.

So, if volcanoes have been primary drivers of climate in the past, ie, natural forces, why can’t natural forces be the primary driver of this modest warm period? Steven Goddard notes the cooling from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, causing cooling. When the reduced temps from that eruption are removed, we end up with this

(From Wood For Trees)

We see that as CO2 levels have gone up, global temperatures have barely risen. But, we’re all volcanoes now.