On September 21st, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) released its 2026 Planetary Health Check, an annual report now authored, we are told, by more than 60 scientists. The Guardian duly reported, as it always does, the verdict with the gravity the occasion apparently demanded: the planetary life-support systems on which humanity depends have deteriorated to their worst levels ever recorded, and seven of nine “planetary boundaries” are now breached at their “highest ever levels of transgression”.
The seven transgressed boundaries, PIK tells us, are climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, novel entities and ocean acidification. Only stratospheric ozone and atmospheric aerosol loading remain, for now, within bounds. Having delivered this verdict, PIK’s sixty co-authors extend the traditional mercy of the apocalyptic genre: salvation remains possible, if only humanity accelerates action to “return to the safe operating space” and thereby secures “shared future prosperity”. It is a formula as old as the genre itself — diagnose civilisational catastrophe, then offer just enough hope to keep the reader turning the page, or better still, funding the institute.
These cycles of doom repeat themselves regularly (remember the Club of Rome’s 1972 report Limits to Growth anyone?) The PIK report is simply the latest instalment. It deserves to be read carefully, not because its science is compelling, but because its rhetorical machinery — the appeal to consensus, the confusion of value judgement with measurement and the use of pseudo-scientific "tipping points" is now so deeply
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There used to be a (much parodied) man in a grubby raincoat parading Oxford Street in the 1960s wearing sandwich boards that proclaimed the end of the world is nigh. And no doubt before then. We thought he was sad and crazy. What’s the difference with today’s soi-distant scientists?
A boundary is something fixed. Nothing is fixed on our ever changing Earth.
Where I am sitting now was under an ice sheet 12 000 years or so ago. Britain wasn’t an island until about 7 000 years ago.
Many, perhaps most, people refuse to think clearly, even when presented with scientific facts. Emotion completely clouds this out. So we have climate hysteria, covid “vaccine” delusions, immigration (suicidal) empathy etc etc.
It takes time, and not a little energy, to think through complex issues. Most don’t want to do that. They want an easy binary choice. They also want to stick with their peer group, so they just go along with the loudest voice in the room.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if a Government stated clearly that the benefits of almospheric CO2 (there are many) far outweighed any observed downsides. In a stroke they would save their country £100s of billions, probably £trillions.
Except that for the globalists the ‘global warming’ and associated crap is nothing to do with saving the planet – ain’t that hubris off the scale – but all about reducing the world population and securing control of all this planet’s resources.
Iain Davis – The Theft of the Commons.https://iaindavis.com/global-commons-part-1/
I find it difficult to even discuss this subject with normies because, like the C1984, there is no movement from them; presenting a shed load of facts has no effect. I cannot be bothered.
No matter what you show them they simply can’t get their heads around the idea that their own government could be so malignant. Even while the results are right in front of them, it’s frustrating.
Exactly.
There are no scientific facts, only accepted temporary theories, no matter whether they have been accepted for decades or centuries.
The history of science is current temporary theories being replaced by new accepted temporary theories as our knowledge and understanding expands.
There are many things that are, and have been, recognised and repeated for centuries. That’s close enough to being a fact for me. E.g. pressure reduces in a moving airstream which allows all flight.
It can be measured precisely and aircraft wings are carefully designed around the Bernoulli effect.
I can’t say I worry too much about global warming, or ocean acidification, or AI, or viruses, or war. The thing that worries me most is our own government, be it red or blue. They are the biggest threat by far.
If you are going to make arguments about chaotic systems and tipping points then you could argue that someone dropping a crisp packet in Epping Forest could lead to a catastrophic outcome.
But nobody else, apart from a few Gaia cult members, would believe you.
I’m happy to see tipping point in quotes. I started reading the book but stopped in disgust after Gladwell had used two different Mathematical definitions.
As to Malthusians, they were debunked by Charles Darwin and his fifteen million elephants back in 1859.
Got to give it to them, those 60 have had to put a lot of time and effort into coming up with this pile of Bo!!@cks!
And what are all these strange calculations actually compared too? no one measured any of these made up categories before, so were are the previous results and how long ago were the recorded?
I concur. Mortgage paying bollocks….
Exactly. What’s the baseline for all the so-called calculations ?