There’re scientists and then there’re King Canutes

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Dec 23

RE: We can’t abandon climate targets.  Op-ed by Steve Easterbrook, professor and director of the school of the environment at the University of Toronto.

You’d expect a professor and director of the U of T school of the environment to be a serious scientist and, as such, to be up on his science.  Not so. Professor Easterbrook makes a pathetic plea, in the manner of a King Canute, that “we”, meaning Canada, can’t give up on “the 1.5ºC target.”

The hard and most current science from serious atmospheric physicists is that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere from 400 to 800 ppm will result in a global temperature increase of only 0.72ºC. Either the professor knows of this fact and ignores it, or, worse, doesn’t know it.

Conspicuous by their omissions are serious explanations: like, 1.5 above what? “Pre-industrial” temperature is the commonly given answer, except what is that number, exactly? None dare say what, because the moment they do, they can be challenged as to how do they know it? Truly global temperature measurement did not come into being until 1979.  It’s 1.5 above a guess.  The current global average temperature is 14.45ºC, and the IPCC requires a GAT of 16.3ºC to make its radiation budget work; so we have plenty of leeway in any event.

Finally, Professor Easterbrook is talking to the wrong people.  Canada contributes 1.5 percent of global CO2 emissions, while Asia contributes over 50 percent. Heroic efforts by Canada won’t solve his issue with CO2, and Asia doesn’t buy into this Western mania about atmospheric plant food.

Some scientists are more serious than others.

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See my “How Will Happer computes temperature increase” 20 Oct 23 entry of this blog.