It is not that there is no science in the global warming narrative but that every trick in the book is used to support a paradigm and that in the end what should be a cautionary tale becomes an exhortation because most people are said not to be able to process complex stories which must all therefore be reduce to black and white choices.
The first axiom of climate science is that there cannot be any certainty in extremely complex phenomena with a number of variables beyond our grasp. The temperature of the atmosphere has been rising very mildly over the last 200 years and so has the level of the oceans, but both without the exponential trends predicted by earlier models. Remember Al Gore and his "Inconvenient Truth" of the late 1990s? Well, he is still private jetting around the globe, predicting doom and gloom, although of course the deadlines have been pushed further down the line as the earlier predictions failed to materialize.
You would expect these people to show some humility after 30 years of failed expectations but you'd be wrong. The North Pole ice predicted to be gone by 2012 is still there, some years at record levels, but if you pick carefully your numbers, trends can be made, and without fail, sooner or later the ice will be gone. "Will you wait for this to happen or will you do something about it?" Forget the fact that the climate does indeed change and quite naturally. Or the usefulness of ice at the North Pole which the planet can and has done without multiple times in the past without much negative impact. Often the opposite seems true.
So yes, the long term climate consequences "could" be nasty, maybe? (or maybe not in fact!) but long before that, the short term economic consequences "will" most certainly be catastrophic on a scale far beyond any potential climate "costs". And as we should always keep in mind: Rich people care about their environment and usually tend to do something about it. Poor people, not so much as they just can't afford to.
Need an example? Remember the terrible air pollution over China 10 years ago? Heard anything about it recently? No, because the Chinese are slowly phasing out their polluting coal power plants and replacing them by far greener gas and nuclear plants. That's a real economic and ecological miracle but you won't hear much about it on the BBC as it doesn't fit the current imperative of lowering your carbon footprint!
Now about the loony ideological "Net Zero" target and the BBC...
Authored by Chris Morrison via The Daily Sceptic,
A gleeful, self-satisfied Mr Punch was often heard to remark: “That’s the way to do it.” Today we examine how Mark Poynting, one of the BBC’s top doom-mongering Net Zero activists, uses the trusted ‘scientists say’ message to turn a centennial sea level rise of around 30 cm into prose stating: “The world could see hugely damaging sea-level rises of several metres or more over the coming centuries”. Added fear is inserted into the mix with the warning that the disappearing act will occur, “even if the ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C is met, scientists have warned”.
Poynting and the BBC are essentially telling a worldwide audience that coastal land and beyond across the world could be overwhelmed with several metres of sea rise if the global temperature is three-tenths of a degree centigrade higher. This message properly belongs on a doomsday sandwich board walker, not least because the rise in temperature is almost within the margin of error of constantly-adjusted and unnaturally-heated global temperature datasets.
Extrapolating computer modelled data rigged with improbable ‘pathways’ that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change more or less dismiss as ‘low confidence’ – that’s the way to do it.
The BBC story is based on the recent compilation and interpretation of material from a group led by Geography Professor Chris Stokes. This provides just the sort of findings that are catnip to the BBC. At one point the authors seem to think that humans can control the amount of ice on both Greenland and Antarctica, arguing that the global mean temperature should be reduced with further work “urgently required to more precisely determine a ‘safe limit’ for ice sheets“. Given the catastrophic consequences of a rapid collapse of one or more ice sheets, the authors state, “we conclude that adopting the precautionary principle is imperative and that a global mean temperature cooler than present is required to keep ice sheets broadly in equilibrium”.
That’s the way to do it. Poynting could have informed his gaslit readers that overall ice loss in Antarctica is minimal with suggestions of an annual 100 gigatonnes reduction equivalent to 0.00041% of the total mass – well within the margin of error. At current rates of melting on a continent that has seen no overall warming for at least 70 years, it would take around 300,000 years for all the ice to disappear. And this assumes no intervening glaciations, a new ice age, or just more accurate measurements. Instead he reports the comments of the Stokes crew that the “major concern is that melting could accelerate further beyond ‘tipping points’ due to warming caused by humans”. That’s the way to do it – talk about ‘tipping points’ that never occur and then cover yourself by adding “though it’s not clear exactly how these mechanisms work and where the thresholds sit”.
Instead of “not exactly clear”, try, “haven’t got a clue”. But it is “precautionary” to remove hydrocarbons from modern use and drive humanity back to the dark ages – just in case the model inventions do occur.
It is of course easy to see how the metres-high scare is concocted. Under a low emission ‘pathway’ used by computer models, the rise by 2100 in sea levels due to ice melting ranges from 4 cm to 37 cm. Such is the range, another imputation of cluelessness might be justified. But a mere 37 cm doesn’t look very enticing on the sandwich board even though it is higher than the current trajected growth, so the highest pathway was consulted to give 12-52 cm. Alas, this is still pretty dismal when mass climate psychosis is the order of the day, so the suggestion from the IPCC was noted that it could not rule out that the pathway with ‘low confidence’ could point to a total sea level rise of over 15 metres by 2300. That’s the way to do it. Treble metres, and more, all round.
It might be noted at this point that the improbable pathway known as SSP5-8.5 is in common use in climate science circles and is behind most if not all the computer modelled alarms that gaslight the readers of almost all mainstream media. The science writer Roger Pielke Jr has long been a critic of the 8.5 pathway that provides the important propaganda messaging backing the collectivist Net Zero fantasy. He states that the continuing misuse of these scenarios has become pervasive and consequential, “so that we can view it as one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the 21st century so far”. His short explanation as to why it has been so popular for so long: “Groupthink fuelled by a misinformation campaign by activist scientists.”
Activist journalists as well. Poynting is rapidly emerging as the BBC climate activist to watch in a strong field including Justin Rowlatt and Matt McGrath. Who can forget his recent sterling ‘scientists say’ effort that the Gulf Stream “appears to be getting weaker” under the headline, ‘Could the UK actually get colder with global warming?’ This effort drew much critical appreciation, not least because it headed off the awkward findings published the month before in a Nature paper that observed the Gulf Stream had not declined in strength since the 1960s.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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