Reactions to the New IPCC Report

On episode 12 of Climate Change Roundtable, Andy Singer, H. Sterling Burnett, and James Taylor discuss the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The new report doubles down on the climate "catastrophe" while abandoning the facade of scientific analysis.

Tune in live Friday at 12pm CT to listen to a live discussion on the new report.

[i]

Modeling. I was a nuclear engineering student at NCSU and taking an elective economics class when my professor handed me a model for the limits to growth. In the 60's the "Club of Rome" was using Jay Forester's social engineering model (a takeoff of his watershed industrial engineering model) to predict that the world was rapidly heading for a population crash due to growth. The model included food, energy, population, garbage, etc. and used feedback loops iteratively to develop a projection into the future. So I ran the model and being dissatisfied with the results decided to use the model to see what could be done to avoid the coming catastrophe. Nothing worked. More food, recycle garbage, whatever, improving input assumptions resulted only a delay of the inevitable. So I dug deeper into the model. I discovered that the "sign" of the feedback loop was controlling on the results. The model had three "negative" feedback loops and two "positive" feedback loops so the result would always be negative. Well, not willing to let that stand, I added "technology" and "economic impact" - basically every person is not a reproducing food consumer, garbage producer or reproducer but also a GNP unit, and the result predicted was endless bliss with no catastrophe. With just one positive feedback loop instead of two, the result was endless steady state. if the sum of the "signs" was positive, bliss. If the same, it is steady state. If the sum is negative, catastrophe. Nothing done with inputs, so carefully considered in the modelling documentation, made no difference except change the time frame. My presentation to a number of students and academics in 1972 was that the model was rigged. They were angry. My professor was delighted. I have been skeptical of models predicting the future since. The population, since however, has blown through the peak predicted by the original model has long since been blown through, no catastrophe. If you look today on the internet on population predictions they still predict a catastrophe. People never learn.

[fugawiaus]

One of the first pages of the latest ipcc report shows the parameters. It compares the period of 1850-1900 to 2000-2020.
This starts at the end of the little ice age with 1875 being the coldest year in the last 6000 years. WTF.
It compares it to 2000-2020. The ipcc parameters for a period of climate are 30 years minimum. That doesn’t seem like 30 years to me. Again WTF

[stopthatluca]

I’d like to know how long a wind generator has to run to cover the energy cost of digging up and processing all the the steel, concrete, copper etc.

[gingef]

I'm in England. Household energy costs have just risen 60+% overnight, and we are warned it will increase again in Autumn. Families already living hand to mouth will now run into heavy debt. What does the future hold for younger generations.

[ScaryMary-]

Yeh, California with the most airports, 44 million plus and importing 62% of Saudi oil alone will need another uninhabited state landmass for green energy alone!

[BCFalls]

In 1888 my family stopped clearcut logging for farms after 200 years, and before that we were oilers and owned Staten Island to beach whales on the low gradual slope making it easy to beach whales because oil for our lamps came from whale blubber and they want to go back to that? Instead of using cheap oil oozing from the ground and our modern practice of tree farming which is actually thinning to prevent disease or infestations?

[srb]

Very informative discussion... you guys should consider inviting Vaclav Smil to your webcast.

[accessaryman]

we have a growing population world wide, we only have a finite area of arable land to sustain that growth, and we want to reduce the arable land with wind and solar farms, how does that compute,
when a normal power station is decommissioned the whole unit is recyclable, wind and solar which take up a hundred time the area is decommissioned, the percentage of that which is recyclable is considerably less, the remainder goes in to land fills wind turbine blades are simply burred for future generation to deal with, batteries are far more toxic than anything and will sit in landfills poisoning the earth and will leach into the surrounding land making it unusable for future generation,
if it is as great as they are touting, why are they using it them selves, that the biggest hypocrisy those who claim this so called demise.

[johnnyraven]

Here in Canada we have lots of trees to cut down when fossil fuels go out of style. We will use axes and hand saws.

[gingef]

I wish we could hear your views on BBC instead of the Greta Thunderbird alarmism.

[quantumac]

I would solve the crisis by throwing out the _extremely biased temperature record adjustments, _ adjustments which turned one of the warmest decades on record, the 1930s, into one of the coldest. They have used these biased adjustments to cool the past and warm the present. If you look at the raw temperature record, it's a much different picture. This is about kleptocracy, not science.

[RodMartinJr]

*_Rockefeller's UN:_* "Let's make the world unlivably tyrannical so we can make it more livable for us 'anointed' ones."

*_Me:_* No thanks! Five thousand years of tyranny is already too much. Let's restore the American Constitutional Republic (and notice I did NOT say "democracy").

[shaneervin]

Looking forward to Alex Epstein's new book "Fossil Future". His podcast, "Power Hour" is well worth subscribing to, for its many excellent interviews with knowledgeable guests from various sectors of the energy industry.

[jacquilayton]

I thought bill gates owned all the land

[FreeMktMonkey]

The only point where I would disagree is that of demand management. The problem is how it is used and its goal. Demand management, with new technologies, could be a great tool to keep less efficient baseload sources off the grid during periods of peak demand. Instead it is being used to allow more intermittent sources to safely be put on the grid, in effect stretching the capacity of the grid, but also reducing the reliability of the grid. It's probably a good thing that we are monkeying with intermittent sources supplemented with batteries now so we will be ready for that time far in the future when baseload sources become truly scarce, but there is certainly no urgency anytime soon. Then if we consider nuclear, the case for intermittent sources drops to only that of remote off grid users, who do benefit now by advancements in power harvesting and storage techniques.

[watershedchannel]

ALL BUILDINGS IN US WOULD FIT ON A STAMP of Ist Class Envelope....

[aaroningl]

The IPCC does not say we are out of time. To refer to sensartional media headlines within the first 30 seconds and such ridiculous rhetoric from the off just made a mockery of the video title.