Pino’ictionary

I’m sure I saw it somewhere – I certainly can’t claim to have coined this phrase on my own.

But I’ll define it:

Climate Rapture – A belief held by AGW alarmists that the amount of climate change caused by mankind will bring about the end of the world.  Full and complete annihilation of Mother Earth is the only acceptable conclusion to the current trajectory of mankind.

6 responses to “Pino’ictionary

  1. “If you have enough bad things to say, you have a good chance of being a Prophet.” 🙂

  2. Climate change will simply create problems for humans. If the worst predictions are correct, there will be more warfare, immigration pressures on Europe and the US from Africa and South America, difficulty with crops (Canada will do better, the US worse, for instance), and probably economic depression. If it’s bad but not to the worst of predictions, all those issues will be a bit less severe. Its possible looking at models to make some predictions but “climate rapture” isn’t going to happen. The earth goes on and adapts, and humans will have to adapt to the earth. I just would prefer we do what we can to decrease the odds that my children will have to deal with problems and a lifestyle far less enjoyable than what we have now.

    • If it’s bad but not to the worst of predictions

      I think the skeptics believe the warming is occurring, but feel that the impacts will be little to any.

      However, I like the flow of the conversation–> That is, we can discus, with an open mind, regarding the impacts.

    • If the worst predictions are correct

      By the way, here are the predictions from 1988:

      And the description:

      The red curve follows a scenario (A) of continued emissions growth based on the previous 20 years before 1988 (which turned out to be an underestimate of actual emissions growth.) The orange represents a scenario (B) of fixed emissions at the rate achieved in the 1980s. The yellow curve portrays a scenario (C) in which “a drastic reduction” in GHG emissions is assumed for 1990-2000. The observations are global tropospheric temperatures adjusted to mimic the magnitude of surface temperature variability and trends according to published climate model simulations (i.e. a reduction in satellite anomalies by 0.83.)

      After tying all time series to a 1979-83 reference mean, one can see the significant divergence in the results. (Notes: 1. observed 2010 is Jan-Jul only; 2.) tropospheric temperatures are used as the comparison metric due to many uncertainties and biases in the surface temperature record, i.e. Klotzbach et al. 2009, 2010 ; 3.) both models and observations included the 1982 eruption of El Chichon while B and C scenarios included a volcano in the mid 1990s – not too different from Mt. Pinatubo.)

      The result suggests the old NASA GCM was considerably more sensitive to GHGs than is the real atmosphere since (a) the model was forced with lower GHG concentrations than actually occurred and (b) still gave a result that was significantly warmer than observations.

      I haven’t seen a prediction that’s hit the mark yet.

      Further, consider THIS prediction:

      …he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”

      The article quotes 20 years, however this is cleared up and is now a 40 year prediction.

      But we’re not even close:

      As of this update in March 2011, we’re 23 years into his prediction of the West Side Highway being underwater. From what I can measure in Google Earth, Dr. Hansen would need at least a ten foot rise in forty years to make his prediction work.

  3. I’m still worried about the future, but cautiously optimistic that things aren’t as bad as many people fear. One person I know, a very well intentioned and honest environmentalist, says he purposefully errs on the side of overstating the problem. His reason is one of “avoiding the worst possible outcome.” The consequences are so dire if things go bad, he wants to avoid that even if it means over-reacting. He’s straight forward about this, and clearly hopes those negative predictions are wrong. It ends up coming down to trying to figure out how to deal with uncertainty on many levels. I do think the EU probably did themselves an economic favor by forcing themselves to follow the Kyoto accords — that has given them a jump start on green technology at a time when China’s getting interested.

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