Solving Climate Change - Tim Worstall - It's All Trivial Or Obvious Except - Forbes
Here's why I used the word "warmist" when referring to Worstall:
As a handy guide, “RCPnumber” should be interpreted thusly: the higher the number after the RCP the closer we are to boiling Flipper as the last humans fight on the desert shores of Antarctica. The lower the number the more we can say, “Phew, we dodged the problem”. More specifically, RCP2.6 means CO2 peaks out at 490 ppm and then declines. RCP8.5 means it gets to 1370 ppm and perhaps keeps going leading to that dolphin BBQ.Update: A few people have contacted me to say that Worstall isn't a "warmist", so I've taken that word off this post's title.
Here's why I used the word "warmist" when referring to Worstall:
[Worstall] Or, to boil it right down, the IPCC is telling us that the solution to climate change is economic growth and low-carbon energy generation.
That’s absolutely all we have to do.
Or as I pointed out at book length recently, a globalised market economy with a carbon tax will do just fine.
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Tom, I'm not sure I would classify Tim Worstall as a 'warmist', or indeed anthing at all in the climate debate. As he frequently points out, he's an armchair-economics commentator, and when he says he accepts the IPCC or Stern economic numbers as 'true', it is purely for the sake of his subsequent analysis.
In no sense does this imply that he thinks they are true, or that he has any feelings on their veracity at all.
Here's why I used the word "warmist" when referring to Worstall:
[Worstall] Or, to boil it right down, the IPCC is telling us that the solution to climate change is economic growth and low-carbon energy generation.
That’s absolutely all we have to do.
Or as I pointed out at book length recently, a globalised market economy with a carbon tax will do just fine.
A warmist isn't someone who merely thinks the world has warmed in the past or will warm in the future. It is someone who says that the warming will be dramatic AND that the only response is to stop economic growth and de-industrialise western society. Worstall is arguing that if anything the opposite is the case - growth is the best defence against changing climate.
He is using the arguments of the consensus against the deep greens. At best Worstall might be described as a lukewarmer.
If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck...
Timmy is not a warmist loony, he's just fond of irony and sarcasm. The "boiling flipper" thing is a dig at the real swivel-eyed,foaming-at-the-mouth true believers.
As Chuckles points out, Timmy is an economist who - rightly or wrongly, as far as I can tell - broadly accepts the IPCC worldview.
Timmy's a good guy - he should be running the UK economy instead of the shower of retards we have right now.
Worstall is in fact sending the IPCC up
"The lower the number the more we can say, “Phew, we dodged the problem”. More specifically, RCP2.6 means CO2 peaks out at 490 ppm and then declines. RCP8.5 means it gets to 1370 ppm and perhaps keeps going leading to that dolphin BBQ."
I often wonder at just how significant these numbers are when put into perspective regarding CO2 & parts per million, even if CO2 had anything to do with AGW, which it doesn't.
This, I hope, will put this into some kind of a perspective that makes one understand just how insignificant this increase is.
A part per million is like 1 drop of ink in a large
kitchen sink.
A large kitchen sink is about 13-14 gallons. There
are 100 drops in one teaspoon, and 768 teaspoons
per gallon.
Some other things that are one part per million are…
One drop in the fuel tank of a mid-sized car
One inch in 16 miles
About one minute in two years
One car in a line of bumper-to-bumper traffic from
Cleveland to San Francisco.
One penny in $10,000.
I know that you understand that these 112 additional ppm are spread out over this 16 miles in different one inch segments and wouldn't it be a task to be told to sort out the 392 pennies from the number that it would take to make up $10,000.
At 368 parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth's atmosphere-- less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. Compared to former geologic times, earth's current atmosphere is CO2-
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