Please read the first in this series if you haven’t already.
I continue from where I left off. Which was pondering the question, Is “human activity is pushing Earth into a climate crisis”? I do not need to provide a reference for that quote since it is the basis for virtually all sources clamouring for action or warning of dire consequences – up to and including annihilation of the human race or even to all life on Earth. The short, and 100% correct answer to that, is ‘No’. But I suspect you may not accept that, coming from me, or even from respected climate scientists who have not fallen for the manufactured consensus of climate alarmists. And there are many such experts now gaining the courage to speak the truth, at great potential risk to their positions or jobs. Where that was earlier the realm of dissidents and climate skeptics it is now actual scientists who are pointing out the erroneous thinking which draws climate alarmists. Go look.
For this reason I do not intend to spend long on this subject. If you think about it. About the number of human beings now living and breathing, consuming and emitting, along with all their feed animals, manufacturing, mining, and transport operations, their continuous war efforts and their wasteful ways, yes, the position seems to present a huge problem for the natural planetary systems which for many, at least hundreds of millions of years, did not have to cater for such an onslaught from any its two-legged denizens (as far as we know). I added that last qualifier because we just don’t know – as any good scientist will tell you – even though we pretend to know, what occurred in those ancient times. Just as we also do not know what happened on Earth even a few millions of years ago. We can make guesses based on evidence found in the physical record, clouded or actually censored by certain adherents to the current scientific dogma but, in essence, that is all they are – guesses. Many of which have been preserved only by hiding more recent legitimate findings which contradict that dogma. Such is the world of science. And why would we think it to be any different there than in the multitude of falsehoods prevalent in other areas of human officialdom? This is a general observation, not meant to cast any suspicion on the work of Prof. McPherson (or any other named or unnamed individual), whom I assume to be an honourable man, caught up, no matter how deeply or marginally, and himself even long time working on the fringes of the current science zeitgheist – forced there due to his own divergent views. Just because I (or anyone else) think his views are wrong, does not invalidate his right to own them or promulgate them just as he sees fit. But it also does not preclude my right to point out where I think they are incorrect. If you do not agree with my point of view, go write your own blog, and express your views there.
I didn’t intend to write all that before I began this work, and I need now to get down to specifics.
Forget the figures presented as evidence of climate catastrophe. They may be based on actual data, but always presented and viewed in such a way that appear to support the alarmist narrative. The conclusions drawn are simply not true. You just need to use some common sense. I want to show a short illustrative video of what 8 billion people grouped together look like from space. Take a look.
It has been separately calculated that such a group would fit into a square of land with sides less than 51 miles or around 82 kilometres which, from that video is seen to roughly equate with the area of New York City.
Ok, that is just people, but how on Earth do you think such a group could possibly have any positive or negative effect on the actual planet or its atmosphere, or its oceans? They couldn’t.
Now imagine those people spread more broadly such that all of them could cook a beef-stake dinner, in a modern house with all its manufactured gadgets and also sit outside in a petrol driven car with its motor operating all day, all situated next to a business premise where they could conduct the kind of work or other activity they normally engage in all day long. How much space would that occupy and what energy would it take to make it all work? Assume it would be roughly the same amount of energy used around the world today, all contained in perhaps the few states which surround New York City. What effect would all of that have on the natural planetary systems? It would be negligible.
In fact it has been calculated that all of the real bad things we humans are supposed to be doing to our planet in terms of detrimental emissions from all human activity as adjusted by our vast animal feedstock (which is what takes up the most used physical space) is actually only 0.03% of the planet’s own natural contribution. I actually did a post on exactly that some time ago, in which I concluded…
So, we must assume that nature itself is entirely responsible for the whole of the rise from 300ppm to around 400ppm of atmospheric CO2. Let’s consider that for a moment. This has the appearance that nature herself, whether by sentience or simply the application of natural laws, has foreseen the problem facing at least some of her surface-resident life-forms and has applied or is in the process of applying an appropriate solution.
I said that.
Let’s state this clearly.
Human beings, the whole of humanity, together with their animal dependencies, make virtually no contribution to natural changes in the planet Earth’s climate condition.
I said that too. Maybe more eminent others have made similar statements.
From this point on, I do not want to see any assertion, documented or vocal, which blames humanity for having any effect on climate. I realise that is a forlorn hope, but it is a just one.
Please make it happen.
I could finish here, but I am only just moved on to paragraph 4 of Guy McPherson’s video transcript, begun in the previous post linked at top. I must continue for a while at least. But I can bypass this paragraph. It contains nothing of note other than a declaration of shock by the 12 member team as to the severity of climate events in 2023. Really? And because we are at an extreme point in the current climate cycle, are such events not to be expected? We may have seen nothing yet, but it is all within bounds and nothing to be shocked about. Just because it is new to humanity, none of whom living today, nor their antecedents, have experienced such wonders of nature, does it make something to get all excited about and attempt to make futile plans to alter the situation. Sit back and enjoy, or move if you feel threatened.
The fifth paragraph: Now we are getting somewhere. McPherson’s response.
Here McPherson diverges from the normal climate issue, keyed by the claim of the group of twelve that the lives of 6 billion humans are now at risk, into his favourite subject – that of near-term human extinction. He dismisses the alarm of the team’s claim by pointing to the fact that there have 8 prior species of the genus homo which all also went extinct over the preceding 2-3 million years. So, why not us, I think is the inference. A reasonable conjecture, from what we know of history, but it is his claim that each of those extinctions was as the result of abrupt climate change – offering no proof of the statement whatsoever – that I find to be unacceptable.
As far as I am aware, by 3 million years into our past (and covering a period of some 20 to 40, even perhaps up to 60 million years of massive adjustments), the majority of major geophysical movements – rearrangements of the various tectonic plates on which our continents ‘float’ (if that is the right word for it), had ceased. The Americas were finally joined, the various ocean currents firmly established, and the major polar ice-sheets formed. Putting an end to any further massive climate adjustments (until perhaps some future cosmic intervention). All of this taking place following the extinction of the dinosaurs and amid the noticeable continuous cooling of the planet as a result of diverse emissions of heat causing methane transforming naturally into large volumes of cooling CO2 gas and passing through the greenest period of our planet’s history to the dangerously low volumes of CO2 we see today. I have written extensively on this here over the past several months, so I am not going to dwell on nor further explain it.
Now, I am not one to disagree with the proposal that climate is likely to play a considerable part in species extinction, although there are many other ways to achieve that condition. All animals have niches of specific natural conditions in which they can thrive. Remove the animal from its niche and the chances are that it will die. But within that niche it can never be said that conditions change ‘abruptly’, except from rare external interventions. With that exception, in the natural world, nothing changes abruptly. Since humans walked the Earth there have been few such exceptional disruptions. One around 70,000 years ago almost reduced humanity to irretrievable levels and another – the Younger Dryas cosmic event – which provided the driving force which enabled our species to flourish. But none of these events can be said to be climate related or ‘abruptly’ climate driven. Changes to planetary level climate take place over thousands or even millions of years. And even if there is a sudden surge to effect matters, the only possible way for our own planetary conditions to be affected is to get colder. No sudden event can alter the magnitude of drivers bringing our conditions to ever cooler levels – at least not until the Sun begins to expand.
What we are witnessing right now is not a planetary heating event but the continuation of a longstanding cooling one. The fact that there are cycles of heating and cooling operating within that general cooling, we should be grateful for. The current heating/cooling cycle, which began some 14,000 years ago at the end of the previous ice-age, presaged by a massive cometary impact across much of the northern hemisphere (I have written about that too), which started a 5-6°C rise in GMST (Global Mean Surface Temperature) which is now almost complete, and which will soon inevitably turn into a long, slow, GMST reduction back to ice-age conditions over something like 100,000 years into the future. That is almost (one can never be sure) a given. Incidentally, ‘soon’ in this context, means possibly up to another thousand years, but likely much shorter than that (since it has taken the whole of human civilisation, so far, to climb by around 5°C), but still something most of those alive today may not see. I am content to wait, knowing I am unlikely to see my words vindicated while I yet breathe.
So, do not worry about abrupt climate change. That is not something which is predictable, and certainly not something which is happening now.
What else does Prof. McPherson have to say?
He resorts to quoting a 2018 IPCC Report on climate change, presumably unaware of how derisible such reports have become over the years. He says, and I quote…
This IPCC report cited two peer-reviewed articles in reaching this conclusion, which indicates ongoing rates of human-driven change far exceed those that occurred in the wake of an interstellar body striking the Yucatán Peninsula about 66 million years ago. This event drove the dinosaurs and many other species to extinction. It was responsible for a Mass Extinction Event.
Professor Guy McPherson
What?? ”…ongoing rates of human-driven change far exceed those…”?? The man is totally mad. In fact he is numbered among those whom I once (several times, actually) dubbed “The Mad Scientists of AMEG” – the group of academic lunatics who once forecast Arctic ice destruction by 2016, which was to precede the end of mankind. AMEG being the mostly now defunct Arctic Methane Emergency Group. There is a reason, a valid reason, why Russia continues to build a fleet of massive nuclear powered ice-breaking vessels. She needs to keep the Northern Sea Route open, as Arctic annual sea ice continues to build, well into the future.
I think we can instantly dismiss everything said in that paragraph. How does something shown elsewhere to be negligible and which is only a minor part of nature, ‘far exceed’ all the forces of nature released in a cometary or asteroidal impact? Chutter-chutter-chutter-chutter.
The next two paragraphs of his transcript are taken with quotes from the Bioscience journal entry I ridiculed yesterday. Oh dear, this is so disappointing. If I had read the whole thing through, I would probably have never begun this project. There is nothing worth commenting on, in it.
McPherson then commends the sentence from the report, which says…
“It is the moral duty of us scientists and our institutions to clearly alert humanity of any potential existential threat and to show leadership in taking action.”
Of course. That is eminently reasonable. But where is the ‘potential existential threat’? There is none.
He then invokes irrelevant issues, with a mere mention, no explanation, such as aerosol masking effect – which he claims elsewhere, hid ‘global warming until it was too late – the same global warming which I have shown as being entirely natural.
Next he calls on the Guardian (stifled guffaw) in a mirror article to the Forbes one from my first of these bulletins, to talk on the Earth’s vital signs. The main point of which – hottest planet in 100,000 years I dispensed with also in that first bulletin. There is still nothing to get my teeth stuck into, just repeats of already used quotes. Has he nothing of value to say?
Finally, on no real basis at all, he issues an impassioned plea for scientists and world leaders to tell us the truth. If he had left it at that, I would agree. But he continues to spout all the nonsense revealed above.
Just another loose cannon on the battlefield of human existence.
Not Something Else 
Leave a comment