Catastrophic Climate Change? (1977 memo to Carter in retrospect)

“Good thing that Jimmy Carter’s Administration did not act on this to join their other sins, from price control to conservationism to creating the Department of Energy to synthetic fuel.”

Do the math with the 1977 climate memo to Jimmy Carter (below). In the next 60 years (to 2037), the memo predicted that increasing CO2 emissions would increase global average temperatures between 0.5 and 5.0 C (midpoint is 2.75 C).

Warming nearing the 50-year market is about 0.8C. Assume the total warming in the next 12 years brings the total to 1C anthropogenic. That makes a mockery of the high end of the estimate, which is the basis of “the possibility of a Catastrophic Climate Change.” And it is around one-third of the midrange of 2.75C.

It gets worse. Some of the warming in the 60-year period is undoubtedly natural, not anthropogenic. And note that the enhanced greenhouse effect is more oriented toward minimum temperatures going up than maximum temperatures going up–a reduction of the diurnal cycle. Benign-to-positive warming, then.

Good thing that Jimmy Carter’s Administration did not act on this to join their other sins, from price control to conservationism to creating the Department of Energy to synthetic fuels.