Bill McKibben’s Fight with Reality

The alleged, slight, recent warming of the world attributed to the small increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide is, apparently, “the worst thing that’s ever happened”.  Anthropogenic global warming, it seems, is far worse that the Black Death, the devastations of Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, concentration camps, any war, taxes, the designated-pitcher rule, paper-cuts, asteroid strikes, slavery, cancers, smallpox, syphilis, AIDS, malaria, institutionalised injustice, tyrannies of all sorts, the burning of the library at Alexandria, the rise of militant Islam, man’s first disobedience, reality television, candirus, the monster in Harry Potter’s chest, Jar-Jar Binks, or even boy-bands.  Bill McKibben, an awarmist and possibly criminally insane journalist, recently presented a speech packed with doom-laden but fallacious ravings at PowerShift 2011:

It’s tough, it’s grim, but the good news at least is that it’s clear, the science.  We have a number:  350 parts per million.  350, the most important number on earth.  As the NASA team put it in January 2008, “any value in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million is not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and which life on earth is adapted.”  Getting back to 350 parts per million will be very very tough, the toughest thing human beings have ever done, but there is no use complaining about it, it’s just physics and chemistry.  That’s what we have to do.  [...]

So far, we’ve raised the temperature of the planet one degree and that’s [...] melted the arctic [really? see this evidence], it’s changed the oceans. The climatologists tell us that unless we act with great speed and courage that one degree will be five degrees before this century is out. And if we do that, then the world that we leave behind will be a ruined world.

We fight not just for ourselves, we fight for the beauty of this place.  For cool trout streams and deep spruce woods.  For chilly fog rising off the Pacific and deep snow blanketing the mountains. We fight for all the creation that shares this planet with us.  We don’t know half the species on Earth we’re wiping out.  [...]

The only thing that a morally awake person to do when the worst thing that’s ever happened is happening is try to change those odds.

I have spent most of my last few years in rooms around the world with great people, many of whom will be refugees before this century is out, some of whom may be dead from climate change before this century is out.

So, many “great people” might not live to be much over a hundred years?  Many other centenarians will be refugees?  No!  Let’s halt all industry immediately!  The lunatic behind the nonsensical, NASA* team’s claim that “any value in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million is not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed”, by the way, is that bonkers boffin, James Hansen.

Notice that McKibben refers to a “morally awake person” who must take action to alleviate his spurious crisis.  As Maurizio Morabito says, it’s a short step from considering the rest of us as morally asleep to considering us subhumans—not that anyone need ever fear crazed monomaniacs with political power.

UPDATE: as demented as McKibben is, he has at least realised that forecasts of doom are best made for the far away, distant future.  Compare, for instance, the deluded predictions of awarmists, such as the irrational James Hansen et al., with those of Harold Camping; they made the mistake of forecasting immediate doom.

* see “NASA keeps mum on data that could disprove anthropogenic global warming theory”, at the Hockey Shtick:  “The theory of anthropogenic global warming is based upon the notion that increases in the minor greenhouse gas CO₂ result in increases of the major greenhouse gas water vapour, thereby supposedly increasing global warming to alarming levels of 2-5ºC per doubling of CO₂ levels.  Without this assumed and unproven positive feedback from water vapour, there is no basis for alarm. [...] a 2005 paper based on the NASA water vapor data set [called NVAP] showed that water vapour levels had instead declined (with 95% confidence) between 1988-99.” 

No Acceleration of Global Sea-Level, I

The renowned, crazed NASA employee, Dr James Hansen, a notorious, irrationally misanthracist fruitcake, has predicted that sea-levels may rise five metres a century or (on days when his navel lint sends messages by way of his breakfast cereal, perchance) over twenty-five metres.*  The famed, award-winning profiteer of doom, Al. Gore, a serial liar, has predicted that sea-levels will rise by more than seven metres by the end of this century.†  The late Robyn Williams predicted a rise of one hundred metres.  In the Fourth Assessment Report (4AR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), however, Bindoff et al. (2007) project a global sea-level rise relative to 1990 of up to 79 cm by 2100.  The data suggest that even the less outrageous predictions of Prof. Bindoff et alii are unlikely to occur.
From J.R. Houston and R.G. Dean, “Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses” in the Journal of Coastal Research:

The current sea-level trend of about 1.7 mm/y will produce a rise of about 19 mm [sic‡] over 110 years from 1990 to 2100, but a rise to 79 cm will require an acceleration of about 0.10 mm/y² [...].

Our analyses do not indicate acceleration in sea level in U.S. tide gauge records during the 20th century.  Instead, for each time period we consider, the records show small decelerations that are consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records.  The decelerations that we obtain are opposite in sign and one to two orders of magnitude less than the +0.07 to +0.28 mm/y² accelerations that are required to reach sea levels predicted for 2100 by Vermeer and Rahmsdorf (2009), Jevrejeva, Moore, and Grinsted (2010), and Grinsted, Moore, and Jevrejeva (2010).  Bindoff et al. (2007) note an increase in worldwide temperature from 1906 to 2005 of 0.74ºC.  It is essential that investigations continue to address why this worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years, and indeed why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.^§

UPDATE:  see “A Fairy Tale:  Jimmy and the Lump of Coal”.

*  Hansen, in “Climate Change:  On the Edge”, writes, “How far can it go?  The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today—which is what we expect later this century—sea levels were 25m higher.  So that is what we can look forward to if we don’t act soon.”

†  see, for example, earlier posts here and here.

‡  110 years of 1.7 mm a year would equal 187 mm or about 19 cm, not 19 mm.
UPDATE II:  James R. Houston kindly responded to an enquiring e-mail, writing that the “mm” is indeed an error for “cm”.
§  of course, one simple explanation could be that temperatures did not rise by 0.74ºC.