Indeed few of today’s leaders will still be alive in 2050 and none of them will be in power.

So what will the world be like in 2050 and will this target have been achieved?

I am going to be my usual optimistic self and suggest that the target will be achieved and that earth won’t have experienced a climate crisis in the meantime. But I hesitate to predict whether the average global temperature will be slightly warmer or cooler in 2050 than it is now in 2009.

Global warming will still be an issue, but not the key issue that it is now. Indeed I suspect it might still be on the agenda at meetings of world leaders, but their declarations on this issue won’t make the evening news.

Sometime in between now and 2050 there will be praise for President Barrack Obama for supporting a nuclear future for the world. Following the US President’s leadership, Julia Gillard, one of the longest reigning Australia Prime Ministers, will support a nuclear future for Australia.

The history books will claim that carbon trading was a useful first step towards avoiding the climate crisis, but that it was new nuclear technologies that eventually solved the problem and averted the crisis.

Al Gore will have had a huge statue built to his memory in London. But Beijing will, by 2050, be the financial capital of the world.

In Australia most people will be vegan and taking iron supplements. There will be no whaling, no zoos and the right to ride a horse will be under threat because of concerns about cruelty. Indeed there will be a need for permits for horse riding and rules about horse to rider weight ratios. There will be tough regulations for cat owners and following a severe bird flu pandemic backyard chickens banned.

The big environmental issue will be population. China, now the super power, will have imposed a one child policy on the rest of the world. But the most contentious issue won’t be the one child policy, but whether we have a right to live beyond say 100 years old and the extent to which ‘life extensions’, possible because of medical break throughs, should be subsidized by government.

We will still use oil, especially to make plastics, but the world will be primarily powered by uranium.

I will be 87 years old - fit, happy and still blogging.

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Notes and Links

World leaders, including US President Barrack Obama, are meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, and climate change is a priority agenda item:

“The struggle against climate changes is one of the Italian Presidency’s priorities on the G8 Agenda. It is necessary to define a global response in which the leadership and commitment of the industrially advanced countries is paralleled by an active contribution from the emerging and developing countries on the basis of a balanced sharing of responsibilities. In that sense, the L’Aquila G8 Summit, which will also be hosting the first ever meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) at leadership level, is going to be a vital step in paving the way for the success of the United Nations Conference in Copenhagen next December.”

And today the leaders declared:

“We reaffirm the importance of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and notably of its Fourth Assessment Report, which constitutes the most comprehensive assessment of the science. We recognise the broad scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2°C. Because this global challenge can only be met by a global response, we reiterate our willingness to share with all countries the goal of achieving at least a 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050…

http://www.g8italia2009.it/static/G8_Allegato/G8_Declaration_08_07_09_final,2.pdf  

Around the world carbon trading is emerging as an integral part of capitalism:

http://www.carbonexpo.com.au/

http://carbonexpo.com.au/uploads/file/09/Carbon%20Market%20Expo%20-%20Draft%20Program.pdf   

The photograph was taken by Neil Hewett, from Cooper Creek Wilderness, earlier this year at Matilda Way, Queensland, Australia.

More on NoAl from Blunt at Knutz here.

“REALCLIMATE is a commentary site (blog) on climatology by a group of climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. It aims to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion is intended to be restricted to scientific topics and to avoid political or economic implications of the science. The web hosting for RealClimate is provided by Environmental Media Services, a non-profit public relations firm, though they exercise no control over the content.”   Wikpedia

“At Real Climate, quite a few of the comments that they post continue to incorrectly interpret the observed behavior of the global average upper ocean heat content changes and sea level rise over the last 5 years.”  Roger Pielke Senior

Robyn Malcolm from Outrageous Fortune and Keisha Castle- Hughes from Whale Rider are giving face to save the earth campaigns in New Zealand.

“YET the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.”  

This extract from a column in the New York Times by Paul Krugman refers specifically to politicians who voted against the cap and trade legislation last Friday in the US House of Representatives.  

Clearly the professor has little understanding of what motivates many so-called sceptics. 

In the same column he writes:

“To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.

“The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.”

Apparently the professor also has little understanding of the observational data as it relates to climate change.

According to Kenneth P. Green blogging for the American Enterprise Institute, the column is as an incitement to violence. 

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Notes and Links

Betraying the Planet, By PAUL KRUGMAN, Published: June 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html

Is Paul Krugman Inciting Violence? By Kenneth P. Green June 29, 2009, http://blog.american.com/?p=2598

“Paul Robin Krugman (pronounced /ˈkruːɡmən/[1]), born February 28, 1953, is an American economist, columnist, intellectual, and author.[2] He is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, a centenary professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times.[3][4] In 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics “for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.”[5][6] Krugman is known in academia for his work in international economics, including trade theory, economic geography, and international finance… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman

The US Environment Protection Agency had one of its employees, Alan Carlin, critique the supporting technical documentation for the legislation.  Mr Carlin’s report advised that the scientific hypothesis on which the draft legislation is based is seriously flawed. He lists its failings as:

“1. Lack of observed upper tropospheric heating in the tropics

2. Lack of observed constant humidity levels, a very important assumption of all the IPCC models, as CO2levels have risen

3. The most reliable sets of global temperature data we have, using satellite microwave sounding units, show no appreciable temperature increases during the critical period 1978-1997, just when the surface station data show a pronounced rise. Satellite data after 1998 is also inconsistent with the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis.

4. The models used by the IPCC do not take into account or show the most important ocean oscillations which clearly do affect global temperatures, namely, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the ENSO. Leaving out any major potential causes for global warming from the analysis results in the likely misattribution of the effects of these oscillations to the GHGs/CO2 and hence is likely to overstate their importance as a cause for climate change.

5. The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility of indirect solar variability, which if important would again be likely to have the effect of overstating the importance of GHGs/CO2.

6. The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility that there may be other significant natural effects on global temperatures that we do not yet understand. This possibility invalidates their statements that one must assume anthropogenic sources in order to duplicate the temperature record. The 1998 spike in global temperatures is very difficult to explain in any other way.

7. Surface global temperature data may have been hopelessly corrupted by the urban heat island effect and other problems which may explain some portion of the warming that would otherwise be attributed to GHGs/CO2. In fact, the Draft TSD [technical supporting documentation] refers almost exclusively in Section 5 to surface rather than satellite data….

“These inconsistencies between the TSD analysis and scientific observations are so important and sufficiently abstruse that in my view EPA needs to make an independent analysis of the science of global warming rather than adopting the conclusions of the IPCC and CCSP without much more careful and independent EPA staff review than is evidenced by the Draft TSP. Adopting the scientific conclusions of an outside group such as the IPCC or CCSP without thorough review by EPA is not in the EPA tradition anyway, and there seems to be little reason to change the tradition in this case.

“If their conclusions should be incorrect and EPA acts on them, it is EPA that will be blamed for inadequate research and understanding and reaching a possibly inaccurate determination of endangerment. Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until about 2030 given the 60 year cycle described in Section 2) there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain much of the available data.

“Finally, there is an obvious logical problem posed by steadily increasing US health and welfare measures and the alleged endangerment of health and welfare discussed in this draft TSD during a period of rapid rise in at least CO2 ambient levels. This discontinuity either needs to be carefully explained in the draft TSD or the conclusions changed.”

Mr Carlin’s report was suppressed even within the EPA, but a copy leaked to meteorologist and blogger Anthony Watts who has posted it here: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf  [4 MB pdf]

But what if, since the movie was released in 2006, there has been a small drop in temperature?

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Notes and Links

According to Victor Hutchinson, University of Oklahoma, Department of Zoology, the story about the frog boiling is incorrect, the ‘critical thermal maxima’ for many species of frog have been determined.   Unless there is a lid on the pot, the frog will jump out.  http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp

Each month GORE LIED documents the temperature change since Al Gore released his science fiction movie An Inconvenient Truth at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2006, which we call the Al Gore / AIT Index.  http://algorelied.com/?p=1502

More Blunt cartoon by Knutz can be found here:  http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/tag/humour/ .  Scroll down, click on the titles for the cartoon.

If you consider carbon dioxide a “dangerous contaminate” and want to get rid of the carbon dioxide in say the soda, before you drink it, then shake the bottle first. Fizzing allows dissolved carbon dioxide gas to be released in the form of bubbles. 

But here’s a dilemma, since the fizz in the soda is actually dissolved carbon dioxide gas, shouldn’t you really be trying to keep as much of the gas in the bottle as possible as suggested by US scientists, Steve Spangler? 

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Notes and Links

 “Since the fizz in the soda is actually dissolved carbon dioxide gas, the goal is to keep as much of the gas in the bottle as possible.”  Steve Spangler, Scientist
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/content/experiment/00000103

“At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air we breathe.” Barrack Obama, June 23, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/23/obama-climate-change-congress

Via Tom Nelson, via Marc Morano

Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)
http://www.nipccreport.org 

Global Politics is being Influenced by Climate Contrarians
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25661632-5013457,00.html