Friday, January 25, 2013

Any warming will not drown us

Article

Scientists analysing ancient ice samples say that the Greenland ice sheet withstood temperatures much higher than today's for many thousands of years during a period of global warming more than 120,000 years ago, losing just a quarter of its mass. It had been widely suggested - by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for instance - that any such warming would melt the entire sheet, leading to massive sea-level rises.

Another nail in the coffin of the global warming panic.  This Parrot is Dead!  On to the Global Cooling Panic.

I've come to believe that the world needs these panics, and the Panic-tists make a lot of money.  You can go through your history books on all of them.  The best ones have a common theme - you can't do anything about it, and "People are a Plague on the Earth".  These Romanticists believe that we'd all be better off without any people.  (modified to 'any people but them').  When this group is successful, they attempt to kill people by lower living standards.

All of this could have been handled rationally by putting a tax on fossil fuel burning that captures the obvious externalities such as pollution.  The micro-carbon from diesel will kill many more people than any warming.  We can see that in China.  Instead, most fossil fuels are heavily subsidized, since it is a political sop.  Tackling micro-carbon would also sufficiently handle any remote CO2 effects.  New technology would reduce the problem in a rational manner.  Instead, we forced the technology with a trillion dollar disaster.

That article shows that we have had lots of interglacial warming periods, followed by glaciations.  Nobody has a firm handle on the reasons.  We have mini cycles and major cycles.  I'm still of the opinion that 'The New Warm is Cold'.


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