[FRIAM] Important New Climate Study

[Pieter Steenekamp]

I'd like to read the paper, but it's pay-walled so I realise my comments
are on very thin ice. But I do accept that since the mini ice age the
global temperatures have been rising and CO2 levels caused by human
activities have also been rising and also contribute to the increase in
temperatures. So I'm happy to accept the findings of a paper that claims to
detect the fingerprints of externally driven climate change. On the other
hand, looking at historical global temperatures (much longer than since the
end of the mini ice age), I don't think there are solid arguments that only
human actions cause climate change. Earth has gone through "hot house"
periods and "snowball" periods with no humans burning fossil fuels. A mere
thousand years ago the Vikings lived in Greenland and it's too cold there
now for the lifestyle they had.

The million dollar question is how much? To what extent does CO2
contributes to global warming. The IPCC published a figure of between 1.5
and 4.5 for the "climate sensitivity". This is the increase in global
temperature for each doubling of CO2 levels. If it is close to 1,5, we
don't have anything to worry about, if it's close to 4.5 then we should
stop burning fossil fuels now. The best empirical evidence I could find for
the value of climate sensititvity is from the paper by Lewis and Curry
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0667.1. and they find it
to be closer to 1.5.

My conclusion is, yes, burning fossil fuels does increase global
temperatures and I support the efforts of the likes of Bill Gates doing his
utmost to find an "energy miracle" to provide abundant clean energy
sources. But personally I'm not ready to start panicking about climate
change. I'd rather support the copenhagenconsensus.com
<https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/> approach. I quote "The Copenhagen
Consensus Center is a think tank that researches the smartest solutions for
the world's biggest problems, advising policy-makers and philanthropists
how to spend their money most effectively." By all means, include climate
change as a risk, it undoubtedly is , but IMO it's wise to keep a balance
about  other existential risks too, and do proper cost and benefits
analyses for different risks and actions.

Pieter Steenekamp
Mossel Bay, South Africa


On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 06:56, Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com> wrote:

> For the first time, scientists have detected the “fingerprint” of
> human-induced climate change on daily weather patterns at the global scale.
> If verified by subsequent work, the findings, published Thursday in
> Nature Climate Change <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0666-7>,
> would upend the long-established narrative that daily weather is distinct
> from long-term climate change.
>
> The study’s results also imply that research aimed at assessing the human
> role in contributing to extreme weather events such as heat waves and
> floods may be underestimating the contribution.
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
> merlelefkoff at gmail.com <merlelefoff at gmail.com>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
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