Seemingly all of the major news media are breathlessly reporting today on a study claiming up to 3 billion people will live in “nearly unlivable” hot conditions by the year 2070.
A look at the sham study, however, shows that if the study’s claims were correct, none of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, or Roman empires could have existed.
Instead, publicity-seeking pseudo-scientists realize that the easiest path to fame, glory, and media adulation is to make outrageous climate claims that bear no semblance to real-world climate or history.
USA Today summarizes the “study”, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS):
If global warming continues unchecked, the heat that’s coming later this century in some parts of the world will bring “nearly unlivable” conditions for up to 3 billion people, a study released Monday said.
The authors predict that by 2070, much of the world’s population is likely to live in climate conditions that are “warmer than conditions deemed suitable for human life to flourish.”
The study warned that unless greenhouse gas emissions are curtailed, average annual temperatures will rise beyond the climate “niche” in which humans have thrived for 6,000 years.
That “niche” is equivalent to average yearly temperatures of roughly 52 to 59 Fahrenheit. The researchers found that people, despite all forms of innovations and migrations, have mostly lived in these climate conditions for several thousand years.
Serious glaring errors are immediately apparent. Scientists estimate the present average temperature of the Earth is 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
Scientists, including scientists who published the very first UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, have long known that most of the past 6,000 years were warmer than today (see the IPCC chart below, found at pg. 202, here).
So, according to the new study, any city that currently experiences temperatures above 59 degrees would similarly be “nearly unlivable” during earlier times. In fact, such cities would be even less livable in earlier times.
Rome, Italy, currently has an average temperature of 59.4 degrees. According to the new study, it, therefore, must be “nearly unlivable” and “warmer than conditions suitable for human life to flourish.”
Tell that to the people in Rome, and the people from all over the world who vacation there, in part due to its ideal climate.
If Rome has always been nearly unlivable and almost impossible for human life to flourish, how did the city of Rome form, grow, prosper, and support an entire empire?
Athens, Greece, currently has an average temperature of 63.7 degrees. This is well above the upper limit of temperatures the new study says is livable and suitable for human life to flourish.
If Athens has always been nearly unlivable and almost impossible for human life to flourish, how did the city of Athens form, grow, prosper, and flourish as the heart of an entire empire?
Cairo, Egypt, currently has an average temperature of 71.2 degrees. This is more than 12 degrees above the upper limit of temperatures the new study says is livable and suitable for human life to flourish.
If Cairo has always been nearly unlivable and almost impossible for human life to flourish, how did Egypt form, grow, prosper, and support an entire empire?
Baghdad, Iraq, near the ancient city of Babylon, currently has an average temperature of 73.2 degrees. This is more than 14 degrees above the upper limit of temperatures the new study says is livable and suitable for human life to flourish.
If Baghdad/Babylon has always been nearly unlivable and almost impossible for human life to flourish, how did the city of Babylon form, grow, prosper, and flourish as the heart of an entire empire?
Here are some American cities, and their present average temperatures, for comparison:
- San Francisco, California: 57.3 degrees
- Los Angeles, California: 65.4 degrees
- San Diego, California: 65.5 degrees
- Hilton Head Island, South Carolina: 66 degrees
All of the above cities are considered to have a highly desirable climate. All but San Francisco have average temperatures well above 59 degrees.
Even notoriously cool San Francisco is very close to being an “unlivable” hot city, according to the study. Obviously, most people would not consider San Francisco to be borderline too hot to live in.
Let’s take this a step further. Do the millions of people who choose to live in Phoenix, Arizona – many precisely because of its desirable climate – feel that its 75.1-degree average temperature is 16 degrees hotter than what is considered “livable”?
How about Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where millions of Americans dream of retiring? Is Ft. Lauderdale’s 76.5-degree average temperature unlivable?
The temperatures of cities that forged ancient empires and the temperatures of cities that today are considered to have an ideal climate show that the new PNAS study is complete garbage.
Media outlets that breathlessly and uncritically report on such a garbage study – including USA Today, the Washington Post, BBC News, and Yahoo News – are equally useless.
Ancient empires did exist, and their people flourished in temperatures much warmer than today.
CCD Editor: The study also used worst-case climate scenarios that most climatologists say are looking more and more unlikely to happen.
Read more at Climate Realism
More than a century ago commodity speculators in England noticed a correlation between some crop output levels and sun spot activity. That correlation was apparently sufficiently consistent to attract hedging and speculating.
It turns out that our climate in the past may have been influenced by cycles of sun activity. Sun activity cycles result in changes in cloud coverage. Cloud coverage, in turn, dictates how much sun radiation reaches the earth’s surface and that leads to cycles of both global coolings and warmings. Cloud cover influence has long been a concern of climatologists but direct measurements were not possible.
More than two decades ago Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist, and his associates (an astrophysicist and an oceanographer) proposed a new climate theory which, incidentally, did not involve CO2. Svensmark claimed that warmings and coolings were brought on by variation in sun activity. Svensmark claimed that sun activity has an impact on a relatively constant stream of cosmic rays which otherwise penetrate the lower atmosphere. During periods when more cosmic rays penetrate the lower atmosphere that additional penetration leads to more cloud coverage. (CERN has confirmed that cosmic rays can influence cloud cover.)
The level of cloud coverage determines the amount of warming. Recently (December 2019) sun activity dropped significantly. If this new inactive sun cycle persists for the usual decade or more, it will result in a cyclic increase in the average cloud coverage which, according to Svensmark, should bring on another cooling period. It is also possible that longer term variations in cosmic ray level penetration may occur as our Solar System makes its 250 million year revolution around the Milky Way.
Recently Don Easterbrook, a geologist, came out with a comprehensive study (an entire book) which makes use of available data covering the past 800,000 years. That extended duration includes the last few most recent ice ages. (Each ice age is now referred to as a “glaciation” because apparently the past 65 million years show a long term cooling underway!) Easterbrook’s book title says it all: “The Solar Magnetic Cause of Climate Changes and Origin of the Ice Ages”.
The conclusions in Easterbrook’s book are clearly not wishy-washy. He has put his reputation on the line, probably recognizing that the usual peer-review process by a like-minded scientist in the next cubby would end with the results being filed away in the same closet as Biden’s China and Ukraine payoffs, together with the rape accusations.
Easterbrook’s firm quoted conclusions (page 176) follow:
“EVERY cool period was characterized by low sunspot numbers, indicating low strength of the sun’s magnetic field, and high production rates of beryllium-10 and radiocarbon, indicating a high intensity of cosmic rays. EVERY warm period was coincident with high sunspot numbers and low production rates of beryllium-10 and radiocarbon. Thus, it is unequivocally clear that climate changes, large and small, are driven by fluctuations of the sun’s magnetic field.”
While Easterbrook claims that his data and conclusions stand, whether or not Svensmark’s theory survives, his results appear to further validate Svensmark’s theory.
Alarmists insist that neither the Medieval Warming Period nor the subsequent Little Ice Age were global. Easterbrook’s analysis implies that all prior warmings were caused by sun activity, so ALL prior warmings were, by definition, global.
Alarmist modelers have no explanation for any future cooling. Even with no further CO2 level increase their theory demands that the current warming level must persist. There are other conflicts with the alarmist position, including a mild three decade cooling from 1945-1975 as CO2 continued to increase, and also the IPCC acknowledged “hiatus” in temperature during the 2000s as CO2 continued its increase. The greenhouse gas theory, used liberally by alarmists to justify their arguments, is accompanied by a necessary condition: when the GHG application involves the open atmosphere there must also be an accompanying “signature”, a warmer region about 10km above the tropics. Despite decades of radiosondes that supposed “hot spot” has never been found and it’s not a matter of missing data. Actual temperatures have been recorded both above and below 10km. The two attempts by CAGW proponents (Sherwood and Santer) claiming to explain that missing “hot spot” both ignore the existing data and further exacerbate that gross error with speculation.
It is amazing that most of the major news media science writers ignore what appears to be the obvious implications of Easterbrook’s study. The MWP and earlier warmings were global (and, as Phil Jones, an early proponent of anthropogenic-caused warming has publicly stated, if the MWP was global it’s a different ballgame. Jones’ uncertainty also indicates that the alarmists do not have much in the way of supporting evidence.)
Any credible climatologist should by now feel obligated to investigate and verify or rebut Easterbrook’s data. If that data is valid the conclusions are a no-brainer, namely, ALL prior warmings (and coolings) were global and due to sun activity. Since there is no evidence that CO2, a trace gas, has any impact on our global temperature, why should the cause of our most recent warming, beginning in about 1975, be related to CO2 increase? Increasing CO2 level remains an important issue but is unrelated to warming. Apparently it is the cosmos, rather than humans, which remains in charge of our climate.
The peak of the temperature graph is labeled “Holocene Maximum”. It has several other names, one of which includes the word “optimum”, and it’s also called the “Altithermal”. Which title a person chooses depends on the sub-conscious impression the user is trying to convey. Words produce ‘feelings’ as well as having meanings.
More lies they speak the less and less we will want to hear their fake news
Astonishing how these supposed “studies” are taken seriously. Computer modelling and such supposed “forecasts” cannot even get weather a month ahead correctly. The motive is clearly the supposed disaster of “climate change” linked to what we must supposedly do about it. The media lap it up. There is no sense of history, no knowledge of it. About as accurate a forecast as the Book of Revelation, which forecast that Rome would be invaded by the Parthians led by “the Beast 666″ (Nero come back from the dead to lead them”. The author was no more looking 2000 years ahead than these guys can look ahead 80 years. It is all a projection of fears based on politics.
Here is my review of that study.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/05/too-hot-for-humans/
If anyone was to ever beleive a thing that is reported by that liberal rag USA TODAY back when they were forced to reveal the truth that they had members of a gang posed holding guns for a big Photo Shoot its all Fake News no different then what we read in liberal rags like TIME,NEWSWEEK,ROLLING STONE,The NYT’s and the rest of the liberal lie a day M.S. Media and that includes the talking heads as well