Rainer Hoffmann of the German language Klimamanifest has produced a short clip on the 2°C target we keep hearing about.
According to activists the globe mustn’t be allowed to warm up more than 2°C over its 1900 level, otherwise it will tip into an irreversible and unstoppable spiral to climate catastrophe that will lead to “the end of civilization as we know it”.
Many of us have been misled to believe that the 2°C was established by leading climate scientists and even made to “international law” that now has to be strictly adhered to, and that CO2 emissions must start falling by 2020. Prof Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber (0:18 mark), Director of the ultra-alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, for example, claimed on German public television on July 3, 2011, that the 2°C target indeed was “international law” and that CO2 emissions needed to start falling by 2020 if humanity was to have any chance of reaching the 2°C target.
But these are two patented alarmist falsehoods. Don’t take it from me, but from the climate scientists themselves.
On December 3, 2014, Schellnhuber admitted that the 2°C target was not international law (0:53) and then postponed the year CO2 emissions would have to start dropping by an entire decade, to 2030. Suddenly we got goalposts that were not international law and had been moved out another 10 years.
2°C target is purely political
On the question of: Is the theoretical 2°C target a scientific one? The answer to that question is also a definite “no”.
On February 2, 2010, Prof. Dr. Christian Schönwiese (1:27) told FAZ journalist Christian Bartsch on German public television:
They formulated a 2°C target. It is not from a climate scientist, or a physicist, or a chemist, but from an outside person who simply plucked it out of thin air and said ‘2°C'”
Bartsch asks Schönwiese rhetorically:
“So it’s no scientific target?”
Schönwiese acknowledges: “Right.”
At the 2:03 mark of the video, Prof. Hans von Storch in a speech he made in January, 2011 confirmed Schönwiese:
We are in a time where scientists and politicians claim, or at least suggest, the science, in the form of the IPCC, or the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), has shown that the 2°C target is scientifically mandatory, and is thus no longer a political question that has to be negotiated by society, but rather a target that policymakers only must execute – quasi an order. However the IPCC has never in any way presented the 2°C target as mandatory. Rather this was done by a few scientists, or shall I say: politicians disguised as scientists.”
I think he messed up here. He said “scientists disguised as politicians.” but he must have meant “politicians disguised as scientists” or else how does this argument work?
Perhaps the scientists have traded their science for a political agenda, but I don’t think any scientist would willingly disguise himself as a politician because it is his science that gives him the knowledge he believes is worth something.
Agree with you overall, Mike,
…but then, there are those “scientists” such as Dr. Michael Mann who enjoys playing his quasi-political role from the safety of his ivory tower at the University of Pennsylvania…
Penn versus Penn State:
University of Pennsylvania; known as Penn; also known as Penn Quakers as in Philadelphia with links to Ben Franklin;
Pennsylvania State University; known as Penn State; links to football issues; located in the center of the State near Mount Nittany and uses this for the Nittany Lions name used by athletic teams.
The climate guy is a Nittany Lion, not a Penn Quaker
Oops…indeed I got it backwards…now fixed. Thanks!
Scientists would have set the magical limit at 2.718281828.
Schellnhuber himself admitted the political nature of the 2 C target back in 2010:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.fi/2010/08/schellnhuber-in-der-spiegel.html
That’s right, quite shamelessly. And yet we hear about this target as if it were a magical line, the crossing of which will tip us all into disaster.
“But this is scientific nonsense. “Two degrees is not a magical limit — it’s clearly a political goal,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). “The world will not come to an end right away in the event of stronger warming, nor are we definitely saved if warming is not as significant. The reality, of course, is much more complicated.”
Schellnhuber ought to know. He is the father of the two-degree target.
“Yes, I plead guilty,” he says, smiling. The idea didn’t hurt his career. In fact, it made him Germany’s most influential climatologist. Schellnhuber, a theoretical physicist, became Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief scientific adviser — a position any researcher would envy.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-catastrophe-a-superstorm-for-global-warming-research-a-686697-8.html
That’s right:
“But this is scientific nonsense. “Two degrees is not a magical limit — it’s clearly a political goal,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). “The world will not come to an end right away in the event of stronger warming, nor are we definitely saved if warming is not as significant. The reality, of course, is much more complicated.”
Schellnhuber ought to know. He is the father of the two-degree target.
“Yes, I plead guilty,” he says, smiling. The idea didn’t hurt his career. In fact, it made him Germany’s most influential climatologist. Schellnhuber, a theoretical physicist, became Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief scientific adviser — a position any researcher would envy.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-catastrophe-a-superstorm-for-global-warming-research-a-686697-8.html
The original paper with the 2 degrees Celsius taken from the air by an economist in 1977: Nordhaus from Yale: link: cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d04a/d0443.pdf
Oebele, could you point out where exactly? By skimming through the paper fast, I could only find statements concerning 2C warming being result of doubling of CO2, but not 2C being a tipping point.
[…] Straight to it: […]
Hi from Oz. Henning Nielsen says “Schnellnhuber became … Angela Merkel’s chief scientific adviser”. So who is the organ grinder and who is the monkey here? Did Merkel choose Schnellnhuber because of his CAGW beliefs, and if so why? Or did Schnellnhuber become her adviser by other means than by Merkel’s choice? I think these are important questions, even if many German citizens don’t seem to think so.
“Did Merkel choose Schnellnhuber because of his CAGW beliefs, and if so why?”
For a long time the Greens sailed under the environmentalist flag. To neutralize them major parties had to outgreen the Greens. That’s what Merkel did, and before her the SPD.
Today there are bigger problems, namely EU, NATO, Euro, Multiculturalism, Genderism, in that order. So currently SPD and CDU try to out-multiculturalize and outgender the Greens.
The bigger problems of EU, NATO, Euro are being solved but not on the visible/media/party level. Their solution will come as a surprise, as a fait accomplis.
[…] brings us to the post here by Pierre Gosselin at the NoTrickZone. It includes a number of quotes from members of the climate […]
Sadly, to the global warming alarmists, everything is now irrelevant except the need to get their desired Paris Accord in December 2015.
The people who have to be educated are the politicians who have blindly accepted the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism. The science on climate change has simply been corrupted by the IPCC, which does not even care that its statements often contradict its detailed 5th Assessment Report. It’s all about green politics.
My guess is that if the oil price descends to US$40 per barrel and remains at that price for at least three years, it will kill off the renewable energy industry, and bring some sanity to the global energy market and the myth of dangerous man-made global warming etc etc etc.
[…] https://notrickszone.com/2014/12/15/christian-schoenwiese-hans-von-storch-2c-target-purely-political-… […]