Speaking of Monckton and Misinformation ...

The activist group 'GetUp' has posted a video of Chris Monckton suggesting that wealthy Australians pool resources to start an Australian version of Fox News. As an improvement over other versions of the video, this version has overlays of the transcript, making m'Lud's sometimes inaudible mumblings clearer. Faux News Australia: that's all we need to spoil a perfect country!

Chris Monckton, Self Publicist And Humourist

That paragon of all things aristocratically English, Christopher Monckton, has styled himself an expert on everything to do with Climate Change. Admittedly, he has no scientific background and has never published a scientific paper in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal, on anything to do with the subject, but that has not prevented him from admitting to be what must surely rank as a genius on the subject. His appointment as an advisor to the Science And Public Policy Institute was accompanied by an interesting biographical note:

Chief Policy Adviser: Lord Monckton, UK: -- Christopher, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, was Special Advisor to Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister from 1982 to 1986, and gave policy advice on technical issues such as warship hydrodynamics (his work led to his appointment as the youngest Trustee of the Hales Trophy for the Blue Riband of the Atlantic), psephological modeling (predicting the result of the 1983 General Election to within one seat), embryological research, hydrogeology (leading to the award of major financial assistance to a Commonwealth country for the construction of a very successful hydroelectric scheme), public-service investment analysis (leading to savings of tens of billions of pounds), public welfare modeling (his model of the UK tax and benefit system was, at the time, more detailed than the Treasury's economic model, and led to a major simplification of the housing benefit system), and epidemiological analysis. On leaving 10 Downing Street, he established a successful specialist consultancy company, giving technical advice to corporations and governments. His two articles in the Sunday Telegraph late in 2006 debunking the climate-change "consensus" received more hits to the newspaper's website than any other in the paper's history: the volume of hits caused the link to crash. His contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA. He has lectured at university physics departments on the quantification of climate sensitivity, on which he is widely recognized as an expert, and his limpid analysis of the climate-feedback factor was published on the famous climate blog of Roger Pielke, Sr. His lecture to undergraduates at the Cambridge Union Society on climate change has been released by SPPI as Apocalypse? NO!, a full-length feature movie on high-definition DVD (available from www.greatswindle.com). Apocalypse? NO! been described by Professor Larry Gould of the University of Hartford, Connecticut, as the best film ever made on climate change.

Interestingly, this bio does not list his qualifications, but that can be solved by looking at Wikipedia:

Monckton was educated at Harrow School and Churchill College, Cambridge, where he received an BA/MA(Cambs.) in classics in 1974, and at University College, Cardiff, where he obtained a diploma in journalism studies. He is also a qualified Day Skipper with the Royal Yachting Association

 A Day Skipper, no less! Well, at least we have that in common.

Let's examine his bio item by item.

Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley: Indeed, he is. To quote Wikipedia:

Although Monckton inherited a peerage, he did so after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999, which provided that hereditary peers would no longer have an automatic right to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Monckton asserts that the Act is flawed and unconstitutional, and has referred to himself as "a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature" in a letter to US Senators and also as "a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote."


The House of Lords authorities have said Monckton is not and never has been a member and that there is no such thing as a non-voting or honorary member of the House. In July 2011 the House took the "unprecedented step" of publishing online a cease and desist letter to Monckton from the Clerk of the Parliaments, which concluded, "I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not."

Nevertheless, he has been using a portcullis device, on his letterheads and on slides during his lectures, that looks remarkably like the House of Lords device. I found the following image at Barry Bickmore's blog:

The House of Lords device is described on Wikipedia as:

The principal emblem of the House is the Crowned Portcullis. It is a royal badge and its use by the House has been formally authorised by licence granted by Her Majesty the Queen. The designs and symbols of the House should not be used for purposes to which such authentication is inappropriate, or where there is a risk that their use might wrongly be regarded, or represented, as having the authority of the House.

Monckton reckons that he is not attempting to mislead anyone, according to The Guardian:

Monckton argues his use of the portcullis emblem, which has appeared on his letterheads and lecture presentations, does not breach any rules: "My logo is not a registered badge of parliament, and is plainly distinct from parliament's badge in numerous material respects. The Lords do not use the portcullis at all on their notepaper: they use the Royal Arms within an elliptical cartouche."


A House of Lords spokeswoman said: "The emblem is property of the Queen, and Parliament has a Royal Licence granted for its use. Any misuse of the emblem by either members or non-members breaches this licence, and if a person refuses to stop using it the matter is drawn to the attention of the Lord Chamberlain, who is an Officer of the Royal Household. The Lord Chamberlain has been contacted regarding Lord Monckton's use of the emblem, and it will fall to him to follow up on any misuse of the emblem."

Our redoubtable Barry Bickmore seems to have caught m'Lud telling porkies, in that case:

Well, I was going through some video footage of Monckton and noted that when Monckton testified before a committee of the U.S. Congress in 2009, one congressman asked Monckton whether his logo was some kind of coat of arms.  Monckton replied,

No sir, that is the portcullis, the symbol of the House of Lords….

I leave it to you to judge whether Lord Monckton is being as transparently honest as one might wish, when he uses his "plainly distinct" logo. On his notepaper, no less?


Special Advisor to Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister from 1982 to 1986, and gave policy advice on technical issues such as warship hydrodynamics: Curiously, his Wikipedia page is much less fulsome:

He wrote a paper on the privatisation of council housing by means of a rent-to-mortgages scheme that brought him to the attention of Downing Street. Ferdinand Mount, the head of the Number 10 Policy Unit and a former CPS director, brought Monckton into the Policy Unit in 1982. He was recruited as a domestic specialist with responsibilities for housing and parliamentary affairs, working alongside Mount and Peter Shipley on projects such as the phasing out of council housing. He left the unit in 1986 to become assistant editor of the newly established, and now defunct, tabloid newspaper Today.

No mention there of being a "Special Advisor to Margaret Thatcher", or giving "policy advice on technical issues such as warship hydrodynamics". Oh, well, perhaps Wikipedia is just following m'Lud's example of excessive modesty.


Trustee of the Hales Trophy for the Blue Riband of the Atlantic: His Wikipedia page tells us that he:

has been a trustee of the Hales Trophy for the Blue Riband of the Atlantic since 1986.

His SPPI bio entry, above, says that his "policy advice on technical issues such as warship hydrodynamics ... led to his appointment as the youngest Trustee of the Hales Trophy", but Wikipedia fails to explain this linkage of cause and effect. Oh, well, more modesty probably. One does wonder what possible policy advice he could give in a field where he is patently lacking in qualification, but that does not seem to be an impediment to his achievements in this sphere,or in the sphere of the science of Climate Change.


... psephological modeling (predicting the result of the 1983 General Election to within one seat), embryological research, hydrogeology (leading to the award of major financial assistance to a Commonwealth country for the construction of a very successful hydroelectric scheme), public-service investment analysis (leading to savings of tens of billions of pounds), public welfare modeling (his model of the UK tax and benefit system was, at the time, more detailed than the Treasury's economic model, and led to a major simplification of the housing benefit system), and epidemiological analysis: This is a veritable gallop through the roses of his career, but I have found no supporting evidence for most of it. He was, indeed, a member of the Number 10 Policy Unit, as described above, with special focus on housing, but his litany of achievements there seems not to have made it to Wikipedia, or anywhere else that I have discovered.

The nearest I can find to leadership in the fields of embryological research and epidemiological analysis is his world-leading medical breakthrough, which has not (yet) earned him a Nobel Prize. I am sure the award is in the mail as I write. What breakthrough is that? Why, his cure for some dreadful human afflictions, of course:

Resurrexi Pharmaceutical is stated on the UK Independence Party (UKIP) web site to be a company of which Monckton is a director. In the BBC documentary, "Meet the Sceptics" (2011), Monckton, said he had cured himself of Graves' disease an auto-immune disease thought to have been triggered either by a one-time virus or bacterial infection, and said he was researching a "broad-spectrum cure" for infectious diseases. UKIP's CV for Monckton states that "patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves' Disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, and herpes simplex 6. Our first HIV patient had his viral titre reduced by 38% in five days, with no side-effects. Tests continue."

Test continue. What an understatement. Perhaps  Resurrexi Pharmaceutical is doing the embryological research and epidemiological analysis on his behalf, or perhaps his directorship entitles him to wear a lab coat, which, no doubt, has a pink portcullis embroidered on the breast pocket. Imagine that: a man with a classics degree, diploma in journalism and a Day Skipper qualification doing actual, hands-on, down-and-dirty embryological research. One can only stand in awe of such gifts.

Of course, there is always his television appearance on the subject. Peter Sinclair, at Climate Denial Crock Of The Week posted an amusing little piece about 4 minutes long. Check it out at around the 3 minute mark:

On leaving 10 Downing Street, he established a successful specialist consultancy company, giving technical advice to corporations and governments: Surprisingly, under the heading of 'Entrepreneurship', Wikipedia notes only that

In 1995, Monckton and his wife opened Monckton's, a shirt shop in King's Road, Chelsea.

Perhaps he offered  technical advice to corporations and governments from a small room out the back, next to the fitting room.


His contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate: Wikipedia makes no mention of this, which one would really think would be of the utmost moment to such a biographical entry.

When Monckton was in Australia, he was interviewed by Adam Spencer and the following exchange took place:

Spencer: Are you a Nobel Laureate as is claimed on many websites?
Monckton: I don’t know what websites… there is no website that I control that says any such thing.

Interestingly, Australian journalist Hugh Riminton did some real research into this claim:

For some time - Google “Monckton” and “Nobel Prize” and see for yourself - the great sceptic-in-chief has been passing himself off as a Nobel Laureate.


Cornered last month by the Sydney Morning Herald, he reportedly said it was “a joke, a joke.”


Yet the website of his organisation, the Science and Public Policy Institute - as of yesterday - continues to press the claim (see page 2).


The site is extremely specific. Lord Monckton “earned the status of Nobel Peace Laureate (through) his contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.”


That contribution itself is detailed. Furthermore, the website continues, “his Nobel Prize pin…was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York.”


What credible person would not correct the error immediately - if it is indeed an error.


To be sure, I rang the Nobel Committee that administers the Peace Prize.


Committee secretary Geir Lundestat had never heard of Lord Monckton. I emailed him the Monckton website.


“The claim is ridiculous,” said Lundestat. “He is not a laureate - no way, no way.”


Thousands of people, he said, participated in the program of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 prize with Al Gore.


“But the organisation won the prize. Not even Dr Rajendra Pachauri (the chair of the IPCC) is an individual laureate.”


No individual, no matter what their involvement with the IPCC, can pass themselves off an a Nobel Laureate.


As for Lord Monckton’s Nobel Prize pin?


“It certainly wasn’t issued by us,” said Lundestat. “We have no pin.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

The Science And Public Policy Institute was certainly making this claim, as can be seen from the archived copy of his biographical note. The current version of that note does not include the claim, but the letter to McCain is still available there.

The current version of his bio at SPPI makes other claims:

Lord Monckton’s knowledge of the science and politics behind “global warming” is noted for its breadth and depth. He has given speeches, lectures, and university seminars in the US and all over the world, is widely consulted by governments, corporations, and professors, and has authored numerous papers on the climate issue for the layman, as well as for the scientific journals.

Yes, that's right: His Lordship's knowledge of the science and politics behind global warming is noted for its breadth and depth. They obviously meant to include the highth as well, but couldn't figure out how to spell it. To quote an appropriate source, The Goon Show, he must be known "through the length and longth of the land" for his remarkable scientific mind. I have no doubt he has special skills in the politics side of things, but the science? With no education in the field?

What about the claim that he "has authored numerous papers on the climate issue for the layman, as well as for the scientific journals"? Sadly, I could not find a relevant scientific paper authored by CW Monckton when I used Google Scholar. I did find a reference to “Shoe-fit”-a computerised shoe print database at IEEE (could there be another CW Monckton doing shoe research?), a commentary entitled "Free speech about climate change" (in the abstract to which he is described as follows: "3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, is a member of the British House of Lords." - I thought we had dealt with that, but it keeps popping up), a Guest Column called Uncertainty in Climate Modeling ostensibly by S. Fred Singer (a noted Climate Change "skeptic") but for which CW Monckton is given co-author status by Google Scholar; but of scientific papers published in reputable scientific journals there seem to be none.

The clue must be in their next sentence:

Many of his papers are published at www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org.

Ah - now I see! He is Chief Policy Adviser at SPPI. SPPI publish his papers. Ergo, SPPI is a scientific journal. The reference to scientific journals plural must be an accidental typo.

I must admit to being a teensy bit concerned that the SPPI has been indulging in a tad of astroturfing. Perhaps I am being unkind.


To continue examining his bio at SPPI:
He has lectured at university physics departments on the quantification of climate sensitivity, on which he is widely recognized as an expert: This claim in his bio is unsupported by any references. The claim of "widely recognised" is obscure: exactly who recognises him as an expert? We are left wondering.


and his limpid analysis of the climate-feedback factor was published on the famous climate blog of Roger Pielke, Sr.: Roger Pielke, Sr. is widely recognised as one of the few scientists going against the concensus scientific position on Climate Change. For Monckton to be published on Pielke's blog may be more an indication of Pielke's scientific rigour these days than an accolade for Monckton. Pielke has been criticised for inaccurate teaching of climate science in the past, so Monckton may do well to dissociate himself from the possible whiff of junk science there.


His lecture to undergraduates at the Cambridge Union Society on climate change has been released by SPPI as Apocalypse? NO!, a full-length feature movie on high-definition DVD (available from www.greatswindle.com): Monckton is Chief Policy Adviser at SPPI. SPPI publish his lecture as a feature-length movie. Another circular reference. Perhaps it is appropriate that it is available from www.greatswindle.com.


Apocalypse? NO! been described by Professor Larry Gould of the University of Hartford, Connecticut, as the best film ever made on climate change: Wow! A film critic and a Professor, no less! But who is Larry Gould? Once again, we are indebted to the SPPI. On a page labelled Proved: There is No Climate Crisis is this quote:

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chair (2004) of the New England Section of the American Physical Society (APS), has been studying climate-change science for four years.

As much as four years! Fancy that! Well, perhaps he is an unbiased witness, so let's see what he said:

“I was impressed by an hour-long academic lecture which criticized claims about ‘global warming’ and explained the implications of the physics of radiative transfer for climate change. I was pleased that the audience responded to the informative presentation with a prolonged, standing ovation. That is what happened when, at the invitation of the President of our University, Christopher Monckton lectured here in Hartford this spring. I am delighted that Physics and Society, an APS journal, has published his detailed paper refining and reporting his important and revealing results.‘

“To me the value of this paper lies in its dispassionate but ruthlessly clear exposition – or, rather, exposé – of the IPCC’s method of evaluating climate sensitivity. The detailed arguments in this paper, and, indeed, in a large number of other scientific papers, point up extensive errors, including numerous projection errors of climate models, as well as misleading statements by the IPCC. Consequently, there are no rational grounds for believing either the IPCC or any other claims of dangerous anthropogenic ‘global warming’.”

Ah! Did you spot that? He refers to Monckton having been published in "Physics and Society, an APS journal". Sadly, I could find no record of 'Physics and Society' being a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps it is and I have been looking in all the wrong places. From the tenor of the second paragraph, I infer that Professor Gould is a Climate Change "skeptic", just like Pielke Sr. and Monckton. Perhaps it is no surprise that what must seem such a gushingly fulsome piece of sycophancy should be published on the SPPI web site, where the "dispassionate but ruthless" Monckton holds court.


So, what have we learned here? About all that I have learned in doing this research is

• Lord Monckton is good at promoting himself
• He must have a sense of humour, as evidenced in his response to the question about his Nobel Prize: "a joke, a joke.”

A joke. That sums it up for me.

The Five Stages of Climate Change Denial

1. Climate change isn’t happening.
2. Climate change is happening, but it’s part of the Earth’s natural cycles.
3. Climate change is happening, it may well be due to human activity, but it’s generally beneficial.
4. Climate change is happening, it’s probably due to human activity, but it’s not going to be as bad as the computer models suggest.
5. Climate change is happening, it is caused by human activity, it’s a really bad thing, but there’s very little we can do about it and there are lots of other bad things we should attack first.

http://www.sustainability.com/blog/the-five-stages-of-climate-change-denial

Funny how they bypass "Climate change is happening, it is caused by human activity, it’s a really bad thing and we have a moral duty to do whatever we can to mitigate it, even though there are lots of other bad things we should attack at the same time".

In 1982, The Science On AGW Was Settled!

To confound those who say the science on AGW is new and untested, Peter Sinclair at Climate Denial Crock Of The Week has created this 10-minute video. If you can watch this and still claim the science is not "in", you are welcome to tell me why.

Hat tip to Skeptical Science, which put me onto this.

A Catastrophe In Three Dimensions

I encountered an interesting movie (1hr 17min) on YouTube, that ClimateProgress describes thusly:

"The Crisis Of Civilization is a documentary feature film investigating how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system. Proving that 'another world' is not merely possible, but on its way."

Cheerful little flick. If you want to see how we are circling the plug-hole in the bathtub of dystopia, watch the movie:

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany have just released a report which supports the premise that one ecological disaster, anthropogenic global warming (AGW), is already having nasty impacts upon our little blue marble, our lifeboat, Earth.

"At least for extreme rainfall and heat waves the link with human-caused global warming is clear, the scientists show"

On a more cheerful note, I encountered a new word the other day: brane. I thought it was a misprint for 'brain', but it is much more interesting than that.

Definition: (from http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brane)

"(physics) A hypothetical object extending across a number of (often specified) spatial dimensions, with strings in string theory seen as one-dimensional examples."

Definition: (from http://physics.about.com/od/physicsatod/g/brane.htm)

"In theoretical physics, a brane (short for membrane) is an object which can have any number of allowed dimensions. Branes are most popular for their presence in string theory, where it is a fundamental object, along with the string.

String theory has 9 space dimensions, so a brane can have anywhere from 0 to 9 dimensions. Branes were hypothesized as part of string theory in the late 1980s. In 1995, Joe Polchinski realized that Edward Witten's proposed M-Theory required the existence of branes.

Some physicists have proposed that our own universe is in fact a 3-dimensional brane, on which we are "stuck" within a larger 9-dimensional space, to explain why we can't perceive the extra dimensions.
Also Known As: membrane, D-brane, p-brane, n-brane"

So there you have it. We are stuck in a piddling three dimensions, where we are in grave danger of stuffing up our existence in any number of creative ways and with little hope of reaching any of the other dimensions which we have not (presumably) managed to pollute yet. Inhabitants of the other six dimensions would do well to ensure that we never figure out how to reach them.

Makes one despair for our species, dunnit?

Lord Christopher Monckton Missing In Action

Our well-know climate change sceptic, Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, evidently does not like his public persona to be sullied with such trivia as supporting his claims in writing, on line, in a forum where what he says can be challenged.


Recently, he engaged in a conversation with Peter Hadfield (Potholer54)at WattsUpWithThat, where Peter challenged some of his information. After a short while, during which Monckton substantially failed to address Peter's questions, Monckton departed the debate, claiming more pressing business.

Peter Hadfield was subsequently interviewed by Peter Sinclair at Climate Crocks:

This interview upset Anthony Watts to the extent that Watts has closed the conversation between Hadfield and Monckton: follow the link and look for Anthony's response to the comment posted at 8.13 a.m., March 24, in which he says:

REPLY: While I can’t hear what Hadfield is saying (he sounds like a British mumble to me) they seem totally infatuated with their manhunt, so much for Hadfield’s repeated claims of being “dispassionate and logical”. Thanks for posting this. When he starts colluding with that hateful “greenman”, all semblance of rational debate is destroyed.
This video then cements my decision not to provide any further space to Hadfield here. – Anthony

So, the conversation, on a site of Monckton's choosing and where he gets support, has been closed because Hadfield spoke to Sinclair? The conversation has been closed by Watts, not by Monckton? Monckton just walks away and leaves his friends to clean up the mess? Shameful. Monckton does not come out of this with any respectable reputation left intact.

The conversation at WattsUpWithThat is the only case I am aware of in which Monckton has been convinced to start a debate in which all his claims can be scrutinised and debunked. Evidently, Monckton has a problem with exposing his claims to the light of investigation.

For more on this engrossing saga, visit Skeptical Science and Climate Crocks, where you will be both enlightened and entertained.

The Ecosystem Is Failing!

(See the full story at Skeptical Science, where this appeared.)


If only we could fix the problem by giving nature a soft reboot, without returning the planet to the manufacturer for a reformat and installation of a new operating system.

Slartibartfast, come back, all is forgiven!

The Cost Of Going Nuclear Free

In my blog post Germany wants nuclear exit by 2022 last year, I suggested that Germany would find it hard to achieve a nuclear-free economy, In a recent article, the Washington Post reports how Japan and Germany are trying to go nuclear free and the negative effect this is having on their greenhouse gas emissions.

This exposes the fallacy that an advanced society can function in a low pollution energy environment. If fossil carbon is not to be burnt, then fossil radiation becomes the only current source of energy which can meet the demand for base-load electricity.

Our technology has brought us to where we are, but has not yet solved the vexed question of where we are going. The much-discussed hydrogen economy is years away from coming into existence, despite the best efforts of cutting edge research and development programs. Fast breeder reactors, which promise to operate on fuel which is discarded from existing nuclear power plants, have not been developed. Fusion reactors are at least a generation away from successful operation. The tin-foil hat brigade would have us believe in magical energy sources ranging from gravity waves to cosmic rays.

Nobody, anywhere, has demonstrated a source of energy which will be the silver bullet to end our emissions of CO₂. Nobody, anywhere, has demonstrated a cheap power source with the energy density of fossil carbon, to drive our complex transport systems.

Nobody, anywhere, has demonstrated a get-out-of-jail-free card that will solve the problem of an unsupportable human population.

As for me, I'm going to ramp up the growing of my own food, to support my family when the cost of participating in our high-tech society becomes unbearable.

The future is not looking like the past.

Expert James Hansen On AGW Solutions

In this video (18 minutes), Dr. James Hansen delivers a talk at TED, outlining the threat we face and proposing a solution which would at least start us in the right direction.

To quote Martin Lack, here is a summary of the problems we are now facing:

1. The Earth’s current energy imbalance is 0.6 Watts per sq.m.; a rate of energy input 20 times greater than the energy output of all human activity; and equivalent to the detonation of 400,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs every day.
2. Since measurements began in 2003, there has been a noticeable acceleration in the annual rate of mass loss from both the Greenland and Antarctica ice caps.
3. The last time atmospheric CO2 was 390 ppm, sea levels were 15 m higher than they are today, which implies even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow, this is where they would end up several centuries from now because the warming “is already in the pipeline” (i.e. because the Earth must warm-up in order to restore its energy balance).
4. Unless we stop burning fossil fuels soon, sea level rise will continue to accelerate, which is likely to cause between 1 and 5 metre rise by 2100AD depending on how quickly we stop.
5. Palaeoclimatology tells us that 350 ppm is the safe limit for avoiding significant disruption to the planet’s ecological carrying capacity (i.e. in terms of both populations of individual species and overall biodivesity); and it now seems likely that between 20%-50% of all species will be “ticketed for extinction” by the end of the century.
6. If we push the Earth beyond it’s “tipping point” (i.e. allow all the emerging positive feedback mechanisms to take hold); ACD will become unstoppable; and the ensuing socio-economic damage will be almost unimaginable. The total global cost of mitigation is already put at somewhere between 35 and 70 Trillion US Dollars depending on how soon we choose to act.
7. If we had started to get off fossil fuels in 2005, it would have required 3% reduction per year in order to restore energy imbalance by 2100AD. If we start next year, it will require 6% p.a. If we wait 10 years it will require 15% p.a.
8. Recent droughts in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico were 3 Standard Deviations outside the norm. Events such as these cannot therefore be ascribed to natural variability; anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) is happening just as Hansen said it would 24 years ago (if we did not change course – which we haven’t).
9. Pursuing emissions limits (i.e. Cap and Trade) will not work because there is no actual incentive to reduce emissions without any self-imposed restraint being to the advantage of others who do not do the same (i.e. the Tragedy of the Commons problem).
10. Hansen uses the analogy of an approaching asteroid – the longer we wait to prevent it hitting us the harder it becomes to do so.

Clearly, the fact that people are still denying that there is a threat is an indictment of our political leaders and the opinion leaders in the main stream media.

The Earth is warming, it is because of us and it will be bad.

Every day we delay in addressing the threat makes the bad outcomes worse.

So you think our carbon-dioxide emissions are not a problem?

Here is a depiction of CO₂ levels over the last 800,000 years, also showing current and projected levels over the coming century or so:

h/t Another Nail In The Coffin

Of course, one needs to look at this in the context of how long human civilisation has been around:

Image by John Garrett. h/t Skeptical Science

So, CO₂ levels are higher than at any time since organised human civilisation started to develop. Physics tells us that increased CO₂ = increased temperatures. Are you starting to see the problem?

The climate has changed before - so what?

Over at Skeptical Science, they have posted a simple, easily digested explanation of the climate we have evolved in response to. It seems our species has experienced a couple of colder periods - glaciations - but we have never been through a climate hotter than we experienced last century. As we are set fair to warm the planet with our CO₂, it is sobering to realise that we are heading into uncharted waters and there is no way back. We are committed and all we can do now is hang on for the ride. Such fun.