Tipping Points

By Graham Pinn

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) describes a tipping point as a “critical threshold beyond which a system reorganises, often abruptly, and/or irreversibly”. Their examples include melting polar ice with sea-level rise, increasing extreme weather events, and release of methane from thawing permafrost; currently nine potential such events have been identified, none currently occurring.

When initially discussing such events, the IPCC believed a temperature rise of 4C would be necessary for these events to occur, this figure was progressively revised down, to a 1.5C rise making them more probable, the latest figure is 1.5 – 2.5C. When looking back, to what we know has occurred historically, even the concept of temperature increase depends on the starting point.

Beginning at the low point of the Little Ice Age, when temperatures where significantly lower than average, the current increase is magnified by 0.6C; meaning the temperature reading now is the same as 1000 years ago. In fact, The Medieval Warming Period, a period where there was no climate crisis, was associated with great intellectual, artistic and scientific progress, brought about by increased food availability. As the graph shows, it was also when Greenland was settled, so named because it was a green land, and not under ice, without the world flooding.

Going back even further in time, there is an historical connection between CO2 and temperature, with CO2 FOLLOWING temperature increases, not preceding.

Current doomsayers expect the Greenland ice sheet to melt, increasing sea levels by as much as 7 metres; conversely, current satellite observation shows that most Pacific Islands are increasing in size, not drowning. The Antarctic ice shelves have been similarly implicated, the loss of the West ice sheet alone, could cause a 5 metre rise – more importantly there are subsea volcanoes in this area, unaffected by human activity, which could produce this result.

Other tipping points depicted are loss of the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the planet; coral reefs stubbornly refuse to decline according to plan, and mass animal extinctions are yet to occur. The greening of deserts is looked upon as bad news, rather than an indication of potential increased food production, to feed the world’s exploding population.

Where to start with the catastrophists? Originally theorised as far back as 1896, Swedish Scientist Svante Arrhenius first suggested that increased CO2 levels could affect temperature. His original prediction was that a CO2 rise of 2.5-3 times would raise temperature by 8-9C; subsequent work by physicists suggest that there is not a linear relationship, and that further CO2 increases have progressively less effect.

James Hansen worked at NASA 30 years; formerly head of the Goddard Institute of Space Research (GISS), he is considered the father global warming. His predictions were that a doubling of CO2 levels from pre-industrial levels (has risen from 280 to 420) would lead to a 4.8C temperature rise. He continues to advocate for climate change as a professor at Columbia University and has burnished his activist credentials by being arrested in 2023, along with Hollywood stars and high profile politicians.

He predicted a temperature rise of 1.5C (from the little ice age)by 2020, the UN now projects that mark by mid-2030’s, with warming accelerating to 2C by 2050. Even other activists, such as Michael Mann, dispute his increasingly dire predictions; Mann’s distortion and concealment of facts, in what became known as “Climategate”, exemplified how facts are cherry-picked by experts to produce a pre-ordained conclusion.

In 2006, politician and former US vice-President, Al Gore released the book and film “An Inconvenient Truth”, this has grossed $50 million. It prophesised such headlines as no snow on Kilimanjaro in 10 years, increasing extreme weather events, sea level rises drowning the Pacific Island, and massive Arctic ice loss resulting in polar bear deaths.

A year later, in 2007, when the film was due to be shown to British schoolchildren, a High Court Judge ruled that it had been made “in the context of exaggeration and alarmism”; its showing was allowed, but only with a disclaimer confirming its political/ideological nature. Its accuracy was then “confirmed” by CSIRO scientists, with some disagreeing and commenting on an atmosphere of intimidation if dissenting; those who continued to disagree were threatened with dismissal.

Gore was subsequently awarded the Nobel peace prize 2007. It is clear that this production was seriously flawed, but no retractions have been forthcoming despite his predictions failing to materialise.

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, the IPCC, was formed in 1988 by the UN; its remit was to show a link between temperature and human activity; it does not consider alternative explanations for warming, such as volcanic activity, solar activity, variations in the earth’s orbit, etc. Since 1992, its predictions have been exaggerated and its climate modelling has needed correction. A review of its temperature predictions between 1998 and 2014, by Henderson and Hooper, found a 2% underestimate and 98% overestimate of outcomes; this suggests a fundamental inability to predict the future. Publicising these unreliable forecasts has resulted in one such “contrarian”, Judith Curry, Professor of climate science, being “cancelled”.

Our own climate guru, is Professor Tim Flannery, an expert in the paleontology of mammals (including wombats). He was appointed as head of Australia’s Climate Commission, until it was cancelled by the Coalition Government in 2013; his activism has continued through the Climate Council.

In 2007, he infamously announced that the the rivers would never run again, and dams never fill, resulting in Perth becoming a “ghost metropolis” – It has expanded by half a million people since then. The next floods were 4 years later, followed by regular events related to Cyclones and La Nina events. He also predicted that “hot rock technology” would run the Australian economy – itself now proven uneconomic. In an interview in 2021, with serial activist Peter FitzSimons, he felt his comments had been vindicated!

British naturalist, David Attenborough is another non-climate expert who has taken to the media. Not holding back at the COP 26 conference, in 2018, he announced that we were facing a man-made disaster, with climate change” our greatest threat in thousands of years”, predicting “collapse of civilizations and mass extinctions”. His dire predictions include breakdown of the Amazon rainforest climate by the 2030’s, thawing permafrost soils releasing methane gas by the 2040’s, ocean acidity killing sea-life by the 2050’s, by the 2100’s parts of the planet being uninhabitable because of heat; this would all lead to the earth’s sixth mass extinction.

The latest (non) climate expert to instill fear into modern youth is activist Greta Thunberg, now worth around US$20 million from her denunciation of world leaders. In 2018, climate scientist James Anderson announced that we had 5 years to stop using fossil fuels; this led to perhaps her most infamous quote, that the world would end in 5 years; when it didn’t end this tweet was deleted in 2023. She was 15 at the time, has now belatedly finished her school education, and has moved on to pro-Palestinian activism. Now 21, her earlier diagnosis of Aspergers syndrome is perhaps an explanation of her views.

The United Nations, directly and indirectly through its sponsorship of IPCC, has taken an aggressive role in promoting what is now claimed as settled science. At its head, President Guterres is leading the vision of a new world (unelected) government which will deal with discrimination, wealth redistribution, prevent wars and, of course resolve climate change. His latest contribution being we have moved on from global warming to global boiling – evaporation next?.

Fortunately there are scientists who do not depend on climate funding for their jobs; in fact large numbers, usually ignored by the left wing media. The Leipzig Declaration was signed by 31,000 dissenting scientists, the Global Warming Petition Project signed by 31,500, and the Manhattan Declaration, signed by 1500 scientists.

Despite its media association, whenever a weather event occurs, the IPCC is less confident of attributing events to climate change. Extreme weather events are not increasing in frequency, and sea levels continue to rise only slowly, due to thermal expansion; apart from more extremes of temperature, the IPCC reports low to medium (50/50) likelihood of CO2 effects on droughts, floods, extreme weather events or food production.

Tipping points have regularly been promoted to justify the massive expense Western countries invest in “decarbonising” their economies. The end result has been their de-industrialisation, and transfer of jobs and production to other countries, who continue to use fossil fuels for cheap power generation. Meanwhile, CO2 levels continue to increase and the world shows no sign of coming to an end. As other countries expand their use, fossil fuel restrictions are not sufficient to lower CO2 levels, we in the West, now have to reduce our meat consumption to save the planet. The latest threat to stress young people is that epidemics of infectious disease will become pandemics, with yet another tipping point. Ultimately, even activists worldwide are now realising that nuclear power is the solution to their perceived concerns, everywhere that is, except in Australia.

Rather than overusing and sensationalising the concept of social tipping points, now known as STP’s, a more scientific approach reveals that many social change processes are unrelated to CO2 and climate, and that those which are, might not be due to non-linear tipping point change. A tip for the previously mentioned tipping experts, stick to your day jobs!!

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Graham Pinn describes himself as, “a retired doctor. Another non-expert, of a certain age who knows b/s when he sees it.”