Usually warmists screech that humans are 95% responsible for the recent warming, and that huge positive water vapor feedbacks will get involved in the future. So it’s not very often you hear a warmist admit that humans perhaps could be just half responsible for the warming of the last 100 years.This is what German climate expert Professor Mojib Latif said in an interview this morning with NDR public radio.
Forget all the obligatory “we’ve got to cut our emissions soon” stuff. When you look past that, Latif had a few surprises in his interview, mainly he’s keeping the door open that human GHG emissions may not be such a big problem after all. Call it the Great Disappearing Crisis.
1.15 mark: Latif says he sees no positive aspects coming out of Durban, thus confirming it was a failure (warmist point of view).
1.45 mark, Latif:
Durban failed. Durban was the 17th conference of this type, and one now has to ask if such conference make any sense.”
Interesting is at the 3:15 mark. The moderator even now admits that the seriousness of the greenhouse gas problem is actually disputed. This shows that even the media is repositioning. The moderator asks Latif what his view on climate is. Latif replies:
The fact is that there is climate change. The fact is that man is also at least 50% responsible for the warming over the last 100 years.”
50% responsible? If warming has been 0.7°C over the last 100 years, then according to Latif man’s share would only be about one third of a degree Celsius°. That would make a doubling of CO2 look awfully benign.
Latif is now a lukewarmer. Politically, he’s hot on renewable energy. But that’s a different topic.
Some readers will accuse me of twisting Latif’s words. Sorry, but 50% of 0.7°C is about a third of a degree. That’s major back-pedaling.
I think that claiming mankind’s impact on global temperatures at 50%, Latif has a long way still to go to get at the real truth about the impact that mankind is making which I think is closer to just 3%. Prof. Salby of Australia is much closer to the truth in my opinion. WUWT recently carried an article on him and they said.
“Over the last two years he has been looking at C12 and C13 ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels.”
to the truth
50% is still quite a step back for someone like Latif. Once the feedbacks get calculated in correctly, then it’s a long way from anything catastrophic.
This is the article on Prof Salby
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/05/the-emily-litella-moment-for-climate-science-and-co2/
Pierre
I think if they admitted the complete truth, their money revenue would dry up and many would loose their jobs . In Canada 700 scientists were recently laid off. Most were probably working on global warming science . So some will admit a little of their previous misinformation a little at a time to save their jobs . Durban conference is over and the threat is suddenly 50% less . Give me a break. When there is a lot of free money being given out by the govenments , people will do almost anything to get their share, especially when they are not held accontable for what they spend the money on . I am not at all surprised at the financial collapse that is happening in many countries today, as too much money is being given too freely with no accountablilty or monitoring to see if the results were really achieved.Until the free money stops, the truth will continue to be elusive .
I did some checking in the HadCRUT3v temperature anomaly and it turns out that 100 years ago is the most negative temperature anomaly in the 20th Century. So Latif has chosen his starting point for warming at the year that maximizes the warming trend which is disonest IMO. This the exact same dishonest tactic employed recently by Katharine Hayhoe when she used 1965 as the starting date for her claim that Texas winters were warming, as 1965 was the lowest point in the trend, and the only date that would show warming.
If you trend the entire 161 year record for HadCRUT3V and then measure the rate of warming from 1911 to present there is less than .5 degC of warming. However even if one accepts Latif’s .7 degC with .35 degC being caused by humans you still have to break that down even further to see what % that fossil fuel use contributes. The IPCC summary presented in Durban estimated CO2 equivalent emissions of land use was 45 billion tons and fossil fuel emissions were 33 billion tons which means fossil fuel use contributed to only 42.3% of warming total and when multiplied by Latif’s .35 degC, fossil fuel cumulative use has contributed about .148 degC or less of warming over the last 100 years. These are very rough numbers but the point is still valid that much more work has to be done to determine contribution factors for warming.
Hayhoe needs to eat, too.
http://atmosresearch.com/who_katharine.html
[…] Renowed Warmist Scientist Mojib Latif Says Humans Could Be Responsible For Only 0.35°C In 100 Years By P Gosselin […]
If it were one-half, then one could also pretty safely say that by 2100, the overall global warming since the beginning of the industrialization would be below those magic 2 deg C.
“Half” is as far as a warmest dares to venture – not because of scientific reasons, but because of political reasons. Like many of us suspect, it’s even less than a half.
Actually it has no sense to calculate warming from the wave pattern by linear trends, because it all depends on selecting starting and ending point.
The last 100 years are like this:
http://dwb4.unl.edu/chem/chem869m/chem869mmats/C07MatsFigs/Fig15.jpg
So even the sine wave above does not climb or sink in long-term at all, the linear trend starting in the low (1910), going through the rise (1940), descend (1975) and rise (200X) will be always positive.
IPCC claims that the only recent warming (post-1975) is from 90% man-made. CO2-driven models show very little warming in the first half of 20th century and it kicks in only around 1960.