A new era, the Idiocene, is a time when common sense exited the planet. It is characterized by a fear of global warming. Individuals, organizations, and governments are under the thrall of this bogeyman.
President Obama has declared that global warming is much more dangerous than radical Islamic terrorism. States and countries are eschewing inexpensive, abundant energy sources in favor of unreliable, expensive, allegedly “green” energy sources. It is a time of silliness and hypocrisy – with many unintended consequences.
On December 5, 2015, at the Paris Climate Charade, about 178 countries signed an agreement to cut CO2 emissions with the goal of keeping future global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
This U.N. deal is based on voluntary participation and is virtually unenforceable. It features voluntary emission caps, voluntary progress reviews, no international oversight of any voluntary progress, and voluntary contributions to the U.N. managed slush Fund to mitigate climate change.
Secretary of State John Kerry has stated:
The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, car pooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what – that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.
If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions –- remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions -– it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65% of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world. (see video)
I wonder that if a cut of 35% in emissions will have no beneficial effects, what makes you think additional cuts will?
Some examples of the circus:
Britain cuts renewable energy subsidies. (Daily Mail)
India plans to double coal output by 2020 and rely on the resource for decades afterwards. (The Guardian)
Japan and South Korea have committed to cutting CO2 emissions, yet both are pressing ahead with plans to open scores of new coal-fired power plants. (Japan Times)
Very green California government intensifies its attack on renewable energy. (source)
Belgian professor calls the Paris agreement a “grand illusion”, a “resounding failure” and one of “wishful thinking” on the part of the rich countries. He calls the 2.0°C warming target “unrealistic” – never mind the 1.5°C warming target, which in the interview he called “laughable”. (NoTricksZone blog)
Dr. Craig Idso writes in the Washington Examiner:
One of the most bizarre claims to come out of the conference is the assertion that global temperatures must be kept from rising a mere seventy five-hundredths of a degree Celsius (0.75°C) above present day values (they are to be kept within a total increase of 1.5°C since pre-industrial times) or climate Armageddon will result. This narrative includes melting glaciers and ice sheets, rising sea levels, inundated coastlines, more frequent and severe hurricanes, droughts, floods and other types of extreme weather events, crop failures, plant and animal extinctions, and widespread human suffering, diseases and death.
Such a claim is preposterous. It exists only in the deranged output of computer model projections that are derived from the most extreme and frenzied future scenarios. Data and observations provide no hint whatsoever that such a catastrophe would occur if the world warmed another 0.75°C or more. Temperatures were likely at least that warm, if not warmer, a thousand years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, and another thousand years before that during the Roman Warm Period. Additionally, global temperatures were approximately 2°C warmer than present some 5,000 years ago during the peak warmth of the current interglacial period. Yet in none of these time periods did climate Armageddon occur.
Global warming godfather James Hansen has even called the conference and its result a fraud. Economic expert Prof. Bjorn Lomborg wrote at Twitter that the agreement will be “extraordinarily costly”, and that it “will do little – if anything to rein in global warming.” (NoTricksZone blog)
Obama touts the agreement as “the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got.”
Physicists Lubos Motl writes “Stunning scientific illiteracy behind the Paris 2 °C target.”
The “final” COP21 Paris agreement has 31 pages and this delusional text will go down in history as a certificate of madness and hysteria.
Fourteen months ago, Victor and Kennel published an article in Nature explaining some of the reasons why the “temperature targets” such as the 2 °C target should be ditched because this kind of targeting is ill-defined, meaningless, inconsequential, unreachable, … and just plain idiotic. Victor’s and Kennel’s main complaint was that the global mean temperature wasn’t in any useful sense correlated with the health of our planet.
But the climate hysteria has lost all contacts with science. The hundreds of stupid mammals from all corners of the world who gathered in Paris don’t read Nature. It’s much worse than that, of course. They don’t talk to anyone who has a clue about science, either. They’ve brainwashed themselves into believing that the global warming temperature must be a high-precision, well-defined number and, which is even worse, they may push it in any direction they want by meeting their fellow mammals and signing meaningless arrogant declarations.
Needless to say, sub-degree accurate comparative temperature targets can’t be used as the basis of any human or corporate or national behavior or planning. This form of planning is nonsensical for at least 5 totally fundamental reasons. Read more
See also: Global Average Temperature: Meaningless & Misleading
Such is the new Idiocene.
The term “Idiocene” was coined by the Carbon Sense Coalition, see their graphic here.
Related articles:
The Bankruptcy of Climate Science
Carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect
Climate science, perpetual motion and squirrels
Evidence that CO2 emissions do not intensify the greenhouse effect
Note to readers: I have constructed a linked index to more than 300 of my ADI articles. You can see it at: https://wryheat.wordpress.com/adi-index/
You can read my comprehensive, 28-page essay on climate change here: http://wp.me/P3SUNp-1bq