Norsk

Now and then you might hear that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only gives cocksure statements and therefore is unscientific.

Polar bear on melting sea ice. Photo: Peter Prokosch, GRID-Arendal

The IPCC issues statements on a plethora of issues, so it is often difficult to know what these persons actually mean. The fact is that the IPCC sorts all statements in a system of probability levels. If people had taken the trouble to read the IPCC reports, they would have found the following system:

The terms ‘extremely likely’, ‘extremely unlikely’ and ‘more likely than not’ as defined above have been added to those given in the IPCC Uncertainty Guidance Note in order to provide a more specific assessment of aspects including attribution and radiative forcing.Unless noted otherwise, values given in this report are assessed best estimates and their uncertainty ranges are 90% confidence intervals.
Treatment of Uncertainties in the Working Group I Assessment

IPCC 2013: Climate change. The physical science basis
New Scientist (2013) IPCC digested: Just leave the fossil fuels undergroundIPCC (2007) How do Human Activities Contribute to Climate Change and How do They Compare with Natural Influences?

Every IPCC statement in WG 1 is reviewed by hundreds of the world’s most reputable climate scientists. Every statement passes through an elaborate system of peer review to evaluate, place at the level of probability and approval.
Next time you hear that the IPCC statements are condescending or cocksure, you should ask where in the IPCC reports this cocksure statement is to be found.

Interestingly, when you go to the climate “realists” or other deniers, you will find no such system of likelihood level.  Here are some such statements:

Climate “realist” statements:

• “There is no actual evidence that carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming” David Evans
• “Global Cooling Since 1997 – The IPCC Global Warming Prediction Due To CO2 Emissions Was Wrong, Spectacularly” Climate realists
• Those who believe in global warming “are barking mad” Lord Monckton

Maybe these statements are slightly more cocksure than those from the IPCC?

If you prefer reality rather than propaganda, one should take into consideration that the economic interests in keeping the fossil fuel society going for another few years are so high that the richest people in the world are willing to take unethical and extreme risk. They fund the largest propaganda machine the world has ever seen   to keep the carbon society going

• Scurvy Story: Why You Should Believe 97% Of Climate Scientists, Not Long-Wrong John Christy (Feb 2014)
• Who created the global warming “pause”?   |   The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
• Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks
• Fossil fuel industry caught taking a page out of the tobacco playbook (March 2015)

• The ATM for climate deniers
• ‘Reality Drop,’ Climate Change Social Media Website Unveiled By Al Gore, To Take Down Deniers
•  Misunderstanding Of Climate Change Concepts May Be Stalling Global Action
• The climate change deceit and conspiracy theories
• Desmogblog
• Climate change denials is just hot air
• Five shots against global warming denialism
• Myths on the urban island heat effect
• Koch Brothers Political Empire Holds Action on Climate Change Hostage
• How the Koch brothers screwed over the climate even more than you know
• Kochs Form New Dark Money Group To Hide Political Activities From Public
• Stripping the “climate realists”
• How to argue with “sceptics”
• Global warming contrarians (Union of Concerned Scientists)
• Why USA and Canada refuse to kick their fossil fuel addiction
• How the religious right fuels climate change denial
• Don’t let clean energy naysayers deny us hope
• How human stupidity destroys the world
• Greedy, lying bastards
• Skeptical science getting skeptical about global warming skepticism
• Some scientists have always been willing to prostitute themselves for good payment| Advertisements
• Climate change deniers
• How the Fossil Fuel Industry is Subverting Democracy and Undermining Sustainable Development in America
• Saudi Arabia blocks climate change from UN poverty goals
• Climate change in facts and figures
• 99 One-Liners Rebutting Denier Talking Points
• A Win for the Climate Scientist Whom Skeptics Compared to Jerry Sandusky

Climate “realists,” climate “skeptics” and others are fighting tooth and nail to keep the fossil community going as long as possible. Depletion of resources, pollution and rivers of money to various carbon barons worldwide, oil billionaires, petro tyrants and terrorists in the Middle East, Africa and Russia are inevitable results. When it comes to billions of dollars each day, some people are willing to just about anything to make the system continue. What they are afraid of, is a quick social, ecological and economic paradigm shift.

The new paradigm: renewable energy sources and sustainable development

a. Renewable energy does not pollute air and water

b. Renewable energy is eternal

c. Renewable energy increases local resilience and robustness, keeps capital at local leves, decentralises logistics, increases innovation and local competence, stops capital accumulation in the wrong places, facilitates and enhances democratic processes.

d. Renewable energy prevents global warming and ensures a safer and prosperous future for future generations

• The fight between dirty energy dinosaurs and clean-tech mammals
• Why Dirty Fossil Fuel Barons’ Power and Wealth May Be Reaching its Limits
• There’s Only One Real Option for Averting Economic and Ecological Ruin — So Why Aren’t We Talking About It?
• Bloomberg: renewables set to triple by 2030

The risk of choosing the sustainable development paradigm is having to pay some extra money for a much better and safer future for all. We are all more or less petro-holics. The sooner we start weaning ourselves off the habit, the better. The choice is yours – and many factors indicate you have to choose now.

• The Stern review: The economics of climate change
• Unburnable carbon: wasted capital and stranded assets
• The unburnable carbon
• The Grantham institute on the climate and the environment
• 15 Things You Should Know About the Major New Report on Climate Science   
•  National Academies: A Discussion on Climate Change: Evidence and Causes (March 2014)

• The economists in Wonderland
• Green eco economy
• The sustainable society of 2040
• How we can prevent catastrophic climate change with a clean energy revolution.

We should have started transforming our society forty years ago. The longer we wait, the more expensive it will be. We have known what to do for decades.  Margareth Thatcher on global warming 1990