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16419
From: chatillion, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Chief of World Meteorological Organization CastigatesClimate Alarmists
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September 8, 2019 Updated: September 10, 2019 The head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued an unprecedented rebuke to climate alarmists in an interview published by a Finnish magazine on Sept. 6. Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the WMO, told Talouselämä magazine that he called for a calm and rational approach to the climate debate, and disagreed with those who are promoting end-of-the-world scenarios. “Now we should stay calm and ponder what is really the solution to this problem,” Taalas told Talouselämä magazine. “It is not going to be the end of the world. The world is just becoming more challenging. In parts of the globe, living conditions are becoming worse, but people have survived in harsh conditions.” The WMO and the United Nations Environment Programme created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. Since then, the IPCC has become the leading institution worldwide to promote the theory that human activity contributes to global warming. Taalas said that while skepticism of the human-activity theory has abated in recent years, climate scientists are under increasing assault from radical climate extremists. “While climate skepticism has become less of an issue, now we are being challenged from the other side. Climate experts have been attacked by these people and they claim that we should be much more radical. They are doomsters and extremists; they make threats,” Taalas said. The head of the WMO noted that the media in his country are creating additional anxiety. “The latest idea is that children are a negative thing. I am worried for young mothers, who are already under much pressure. This will only add to their burden,” Taalas said. While Taalas limited his examples to the climate debate to Finland, some of the extremism he references is akin to the rhetoric employed by climate alarmists in the United States. Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the face of that movement. The New York congresswoman regularly promoted the theory that the world will end in 12 years unless the United States takes radical action to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore called Talaas’s remarks the “biggest crack in the alarmist narrative for a long time.” “The meteorologists are real scientists and probably fed up with Greta, Mann, Gore, & AOC catastrophists. Good on him,” Moore wrote on Twitter on Sept. 7. AOC is the acronym commonly used to refer to Ocasio-Cortez. The three others named in the message are Michael Mann, a climatologist, Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish student, and Al Gore, the former vice president. Talaas pointed out that climate extremists are selectively picking out facts from the IPCC reports to fit their narrative. For example, Ocasio-Cortez and the movement she represents often refer to the 12-year deadline to end the use of fossil fuels. That 12-year timeline was selectively plucked from a range of 12 to 44 years in the IPCC’s special report, which states that “Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” “The IPCC reports have been read in a similar way to the Bible: you try to find certain pieces or sections from which you try to justify your extreme views. This resembles religious extremism,” Taalas said. The vast majority of the climate models the IPCC uses as the basis for its predictions have repeatedly incorrectly forecast higher temperatures. According to an analysis by the Cato Institute, 105 of the 108 models predicted a higher surface temperature for the period between 1998 and 2014 than the temperature actually recorded. |
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[16426] [16427] [16422] [16424] [16423] [16425] [16420]
16426
From: sheila, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Petteri Taalas, Sec. General, WMO gave this slide share
URL: https://phosphorusplatform.eu/images/Conference/ESPC3/Outcomes/ESPC3-Taalas-WMO.pdf
in 2017 the WMO met in Davos, Switzerland to give this slide presentation to show the dangers facing the world now. Note the rise in losses because of climate change from 1980-2017. There are more slides at the link. Professor Petteri certainly is NOT a climate denier and the slides at the link provide a useful gauge of what the future may be.    
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[16427]
16427
From: sheila, [DNS_Address]
Subject: State of the Climate in 2018 shows accelerating climate change impacts
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another article from Professor Petteri Taalas, Secretary of the WMO: March 28, 2019 The physical signs and socio-economic impacts of climate change are accelerating as record greenhouse gas concentrations drive global temperatures towards increasingly dangerous levels, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization. The WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018, its 25th anniversary edition, highlights record sea level rise, as well as exceptionally high land and ocean temperatures over the past four years. This warming trend has lasted since the start of this century and is expected to continue. “Since the Statement was first published, climate science has achieved an unprecedented degree of robustness, providing authoritative evidence of global temperature increase and associated features such as accelerating sea level rise, shrinking sea ice, glacier retreat and extreme events such as heat waves,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. These key climate change indicators are becoming more pronounced. Carbon dioxide levels, which were at 357.0 parts per million when the statement was first published in 1994, keep rising – to 405.5 parts per million in 2017. For 2018 and 2019, greenhouse gas concentrations are expected to increase further. The WMO climate statement includes input from national meteorological and hydrological services, an extensive community of scientific experts, and United Nations agencies. It details climate related risks and impacts on human health and welfare, migration and displacement, food security, the environment and ocean and land-based ecosystems. It also catalogues extreme weather around the world. “Extreme weather has continued in the early 2019, most recently with Tropical Cyclone Idai, which caused devastating floods and tragic loss of life in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. It may turn out to be one of the deadliest weather-related disasters to hit the southern hemisphere,” said Mr Taalas. Climate Action Summit The WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate report will be formally launched at a joint press conference with UN Secretary General António Guterres, UN General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés and WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas at United Nations headquarters in New York. It coincides with a high-level meeting on Climate and Sustainable Development for All. “The data released in this report give cause for great concern. The past four years were the warmest on record, with the global average surface temperature in 2018 approximately 1°C above the pre-industrial baseline,” Mr Guterres wrote in the report. Climate impacts (based on input from UN partner agencies) Hazards: In 2018, most of the natural hazards which affected nearly 62 million people were associated with extreme weather and climate events. Floods continued to affect the largest number of people, more than 35 million, according to an analysis of 281 events recorded by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction. Hurricane Florence and Michael were two of fourteen “billion dollar disasters” in 2018 in the United States of America (USA). They triggered around US$49 billion in damages and over 100 deaths. Super typhoon Mangkhut affected more than 2.4 million people and killed at least 134 people, mainly in the Philippines. More than 1600 death were associated with intense heat waves and wildfires in Europe, Japan and USA, where they were associated with record economic damages of nearly US$24 billion in USA. The Indian state of Kerala suffered the heaviest rainfall and worst flooding in nearly a century. Food security: Exposure of the agriculture sector to climate extremes is threatening to reverse gains made in ending malnutrition. New evidence shows a continuing rise in world hunger after a prolonged decline, according to data compiled by United Nations agencies including the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme. In 2017, the number of undernourished people was estimated to have increased to 821 million, partly due to severe droughts associated with the strong El Niño of 2015–2016. Displacement: Out of the 17.7 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) tracked by the International Organization for Migration, over 2 million people were displaced due to disasters linked to weather and climate events as of September 2018. Drought, floods and storms (including hurricanes and cyclones) are the events that have led to the most disaster-induced displacement in 2018. In all cases, the displaced populations have protection needs and vulnerabilities. According to UNHCR’s Protection and Return Monitoring Network, some 883 000 new internal displacements were recorded between January and December 2018, of which 32% were associated with flooding and 29% with drought. Heat, Air Quality and Health: There are many interconnections between climate and air quality, which are being exacerbated by climate change. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of people exposed to heatwaves was estimated to have increased by around 125 million persons, as the average length of individual heatwaves was 0.37 days longer, compared to the period between 1986 and 2008, according to the World Health Organization. These trends raise alarm bells for the public health community as extreme temperature events are expected to be further increasing in their intensity, frequency and duration. Environmental Impacts include coral bleaching and reduced levels of oxygen in the oceans. Others include loss of “Blue Carbon” associated with coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes; and ecosystems across a range of landscapes. Global warming is expected to contribute to the observed decrease of oxygen in the open and coastal oceans, including estuaries and semi-enclosed seas. Since the middle of the last century, there has been an estimated 1-2 % decrease in the global ocean oxygen inventory, according to UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (UNESCO-IOC). Climate change has emerged as a significant threat to peatland ecosystems, because it exacerbates the effects of drainage and increases fire risk, according to UN-Environment. Peatlands are important to human societies around the world. They contribute significantly to climate change mitigation and adaptation through carbon sequestration and storage, biodiversity conservation, water regime and quality regulation, and the provision of other ecosystem services that support livelihoods. Climate indicators Ocean heat: 2018 saw new records for ocean heat content in the upper 700 metres (data record started in from 1955) and upper 2000m (data record started in 2005), topping the previous record set in 2017. More than 90% of the energy trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans and ocean heat content provides a direct measure of this energy accumulation in the upper layers of the ocean. Sea level: Sea level continues to rise at an accelerated rate. Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) for 2018 was around 3.7 millimetres higher than in 2017 and the highest on record. Over the period January 1993 to December 2018, the average rate of rise is 3.15 ± 0.3 mm yr-1 while the estimated acceleration is 0.1 mm yr-2. Increasing ice mass loss from the ice sheets is the main cause of the GMSL acceleration as revealed by satellite altimetry, according to the World Climate Research Programme global sea level budget group, 2018. Ocean acidification: In the past decade, the oceans absorbed around 30% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Absorbed CO2 reacts with seawater and changes the pH of the ocean. This process is known as ocean acidification, which can affect the ability of marine organisms such as molluscs and reef-building corals, to build and maintain shells and skeletal material. Observations in the open-ocean over the last 30 years have shown a clear trend of decreasing pH. In line with previous reports and projections, ocean acidification is ongoing and the global pH levels continue to decrease, according to UNESCO-IOC. Sea ice: Arctic sea-ice extent was well below average throughout 2018 and was at record-low levels for the first two months of the year. The annual maximum occurred in mid-March and was the third lowest March extent in the 1979-2018 satellite record. The September monthly sea ice extent was the sixth smallest September extent on record. The 12 smallest September extents have all occurred since 2007. At the end of 2018, the daily ice extent was near record low levels. |
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16422
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Chief of World Meteorological Organization CastigatesClimate...
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🚩 Overall, we rate The Epoch Times Right Biased based on editorial positions that consistently favor the right. We also rate them factually Mixed due to the publication of pseudoscience as well as propaganda against China and strong support for the Trump administration. Detailed Report Factual Reporting: MIXED |
16424
From: chatillion, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Chief of World Meteorological Organization CastigatesClimate...
| Go fish. |
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16423
From: sequoia, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Chief of World Meteorological Organization CastigatesClimate...
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Hi Redhart, what you are implicitly saying is equivalent to the assertion that the result of 1+1 depends on who performs the computation, who writes down the result, who reports the result. sequoia |
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[16425]
16425
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Chief of World Meteorological Organization CastigatesClimate...
| go fish :) |
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16420
From: sequoia, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Chief of World Meteorological Organization CastigatesClimate...
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Hi chatillion, it looks like one person is waking up from climate extremism slumber. It will be interesting to watch how long it takes for the next similar comment to appear. Finally a higher-up in the science pipeline has noticed that "climate science" as defined by extremists, who rule by shear rudeness and mental aggression, is more like religion than science. Are some scientists becoming concerned that the cleansing tsunami which will inevitably follow the climate fearmonger era will drag them along and out of their comfortable positions? sequoia |
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