The recently-published IPCC synthesis report is a useful summary of the last five years of supra-national climate activism and hysteria undertaken under the control of the United Nations. The big takeaway from the 36-page summary for policymakers of the sixth assessment reports is that a large group of activists and state-funded scientists have signed up to the improbable notion that the climate should be stable, and any variation can somehow be controlled by humans. To support this suggestion, almost all the evidence provided is opinion, somehow given credence by being produced by computer models. Actual scientific facts are very thin on the ground.
In addition, a stonking level of economic naïvety is on display. At one point, the environmental footprint of battery production and “growing concerns” about critical minerals is noted, but with what is described as medium confidence, “this can be addressed by material and supply diversification strategies and material efficiency improvements, and circular material flows”.
It might be observed that this type of meaningless waffle is often produced by people who have never run a wealth-generating activity. Something will turn up, seems to be the hope, as collectivists promote their command-and-control Net Zero agenda. Meanwhile, the ‘unit’ cost of renewable energy is said to have fallen in recent years, but no account is taken of the enormous costs involved in countering the unreliable and intermittent nature of wind and solar power.
In the U.K. at least, the report, with its usual climate Armageddon warnings, was downplayed in a surprising number of media and relegated to short items on inside newspaper pages. The Daily Mail had a brief editorial headed ‘Climate hysteria‘ in which it wrote: “The prophecies of catastrophe by UN climate scientists yesterday were distinctly familiar… Yet we’ve heard such hair-raising predictions many times over the years and they often fall short of reality.” Matthew Lynn in the Daily Telegraph called the ‘scientific’ report, “nothing more than confected hysteria”. The science journalist Matt Ridley noted on Talk TV that the IPCC reports were mostly the work of activists these days, and any temperature rises were at the bottom of climate model forecasts. Overall, he noted, a recent period of warming had been beneficial.
IPCC reports are funded by national governments and every line is signed off by the funding parties. At times, the obvious compromises made to satisfy all the parties are almost comical. For instance, climate change is said to have reduced food security. But it is noted that “although overall agricultural productivity has increased, climate change has slowed this growth over the past 50 years”. The problem here, of course, is that useful scare stories about diminishing food supplies are easily debunked by graphs showing often near vertical production rises in many grains, fruits and vegetables over the last 70 years. The IPCC gets around this by accepting an obvious scientific fact, but opines without evidence that climate change has slowed the increase.
In all regions, increases in extreme heat events “have resulted in human mortality and morbidity”, it is observed. Of course a few people are taken away in a heat wave, but it is an established scientific fact that many more people die of the cold than the heat. Humans are sub-tropical creatures, so it is hardly surprising that cold is estimated to kill nine times more people than heat, something that is seemingly ignored by the IPCC. In some regions “mental health challenges” are associated with increasing temperatures. Others might note that mental health challenges – from women foregoing childbirth to children crying themselves to sleep – owe a great deal to 50 years of relentless green forecasts of ecological disasters that never seem to happen.
Looking, in particular, at you, IPCC, writing opinionated guff like this: “The likelihood and impacts and/or irreversible changes in the climate system, including changes triggered when tipping points are reached, increase with global warming.” None of this is based on scientific fact, or even relevant observations from the past. The IPCC continues that with warming levels increasing, there is “high confidence” of coral reef extinction, an opinion that flies in the face of tropical coral’s known ability to thrive within a near 10°C temperature range.
All of this scare-mongering is based on a small 200-year rise in global temperature of about 1°C. It is a scientific fact that such a rise has been seen many times in the past, possibly over much shorter time periods. The often-quoted 1.5°C warming ceiling has no grounding in science, and is a political invention. IPCC estimates of over 4°C warming by the end of the century are just the product of computer models.
The eminent Australian geology professor Dr. Ian Plimer has little time for opinionated activists. After all, geologists spend their life surrounded by the evidence thrown up by more than 600 million years of life on a habitable planet. In his view, the number of geologists who believe humans are responsible for most climate change can be counted on the fingers of a sawmill worker’s hand. In a recent article for Quadrant, he wrote:
During human times on Earth, the atmospheric temperature has varied by over 10°C, with increased disease and mortality during cold times. Humans thrived in far warmer times which saw longevity, populations, empires and wealth increase. There has been no recent increase in droughts, hurricanes, bushfires, temperature extremes, rainfall, flooding or death by climate disasters. A 30-second smart phone search shows this.
There has never been a public debate over climate change, he continued, yet we are told the science is settled.
Bearers of validated facts are denigrated, cancelled and deemed controversial by those who have no counter-argument, no ability to critically analyse, and who rely on self-interest and feelings. … We are reaping the rewards of 50 years of dumbing down education, politicised poor science, a green public service, tampering with the primary temperature data record, and the dismissal of common sense as extreme Right-wing politics.
But the United Nations knows best. In fact it “owns” climate science, at least according to its Under-Secretary for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming. We think the world should know it, she told delegates at a recent World Economic Forum disinformation seminar, so we partnered with Google to ensure only UN results appear at the top.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Well I think we may all be able to draw a little comfort if the MSM are starting to downgrade the green alarmists .
It would be even better if the UK goverblob actually took a hard look at the awful Mabot Nett Zero act and started to do some sums and realise its all expensive , fabricated puff !!!
They had their chance to have a “hard look at it”, and decided not to. ——NET ZERO was simply waved through parliament with not a single question asked as to cost/benefit by one single MP of any major party. It was a climate coup.
You can only cry wolf so many times. Thunberg gets a honorary doctorate in theology, that would make climate alarmism a religious cult then.
She recently deleted her tweets made 4/5 years ago that the world would end in 2023 because of climate change….
Can’t imagine why.
Correct, you just create apathy!
Another good article from Chris, thank you. Increasingly you have to wonder if it matters what the western MSM think? maybe these days you would better looking at the Global Times;
https://www.globaltimes.cn/index.html
Chris – I sometimes wonder if you read all your sources. In your last post the headline was “Latest UN Climate Doom Report Falsely Claims Global Temperatures Are “Highest for 125,000 Years” presumably referring to this report. There is no such claim in the report. (There was a minor paragraph in the WG 1 report 2 years ago).
If your readers look at the Daily Mail story they might be surprised to learn the complaint is not about the IPCC report all:
IPCC reports sift the mountain of scientific research on climate change. It is a serious endeavour but there is an ever-growing gap between what the reports actually say and the hyperbole that surrounds their publication.
Dig past the press releases, and they present a very mixed bag of climactic trends — many of which are inconvenient to human societies, but some of which are advantageous and others of which make little difference.
Turn to the Telegraph and the complaint is not about the climate science in the report but the recommendations on how to respond (section C):
Few would disagree that climate change needs to be taken seriously, that carbon emissions should be dramatically reduced, and that pollution needs to be addressed.
With just the slightest of nudges, free markets and commercially-driven innovation are more than capable of delivering dramatic reductions in carbon emissions. And they could do it a lot more quickly and cheaply, and with far greater popular consent, than the top-down, state-led solutions pushed by the IPCC and its supporters.
……
We are making remarkable progress to cleaner, more efficient energy production, and to reducing carbon emissions and pollution levels. The costs of solar and wind power have dropped dramatically, making it as efficient as oil and gas, and the huge amount of innovation in batteries may soon make it possible to store that energy at minimal cost.
I
A minor correction. The 125,000 year claim was not in in the press release or the headline statements or the summary for policymakers which were the only documents available at the time you wrote the article. (In this article you link to the summary for policymakers ).The full report does contain a reference although it is hardly a highlight of the report.
More mendacious tosh from this paid Ruinable Energy shill.
So which parts of what I wrote are false?
You said “carbon emissions need to be dramatically reduced”. ——-Your making a statement of certainty there, where there is NONE. That is simply an opinion. ——–If you live on a dollar a day with no electricity like one billion people on this planet do, then your opinion might be slightly different. People burning dung for heat and cooking and dying young as a result might disagree with you and would be happy to generate electricity from coal and gas, but are coerced into not doing so and get fobbed off with some money for turbines.— There is no evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate. Output from speculative un-validated climate models which project such dangerous changes are NOT evidence of anything. Especially since all of those models, (many costing millions) have been totally wrong so far.—– We always hear about the risks of using fossil fuels, but never about the risks of not using them, and that risk is very high since about 90% of the world’s energy comes from those fuels. Many people think that all that is required to “save the planet” is to get rid of coal and gas and replace it with wind and sun and everything will tick along just fine. —-No it won’t. ——-Industrial Society cannot run on wind and sun. I am afraid the politics off Sustainable Development is a cautionary tale. There is a strong moral case for the continued use of fossil fuels especially among the world’s poorest people, whose life expectancy is half of that of people in the wealthy west.
You said “carbon emissions need to be dramatically reduced”.
No I didn’t. I pointed out that the Telegraph columnist said it – quite a different thing.
It sounds as though you agree though?
Your comment is noted
I have started a petition asking HM government to abandon net zero and aim for energy independence.
If you want to sign this petition, copy and paste this link into your browser:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/635337/sponsors/new?token=U4kSWi0RfUJoN6tDZm57
My petition:
Abandon the 2050 net zero target, and instead aim for energy independence.
The 2050 net zero target is not achievable and will not have a significant effect on our climate. Government should abandon the 2050 net zero target, and remove all subsidies from wind and solar. Instead we should aim for UK energy independence with increased natural gas until 2050.
Achieving net zero by 2050 will cost the UK at least five trillion pounds, to electrify all transport, industrial, and domestic heat. Wind turbines consume 720 times as much concrete as a gas turbine for the same power. Gas turbines produce 1000 times as much power as wind and solar per kg of steel. Batteries for net zero would require more than the global supply of lithium and copper. Wind and solar subsidies cause increased energy prices, poverty, starvation, and reduced life expectancy.
I meant to reply that I agree and have signed your petition and inadvertently downticked instead – sorry it was not intentional.