The author of the article below is hedging his bets about Climate Change since his target is the repression of free speech in the UK. Fair enough. His targeting is accurate as the problem is real.
And still Climate Change IS a hoax. But it is a subtle one, well crafted and engineered to weather rough arguments and uncertain seas. To dismantle it requires scientific craft. So let's try.
First "Climate Change" is an oxymoron. At least the earlier "Global Warming" was taking a clear stand. After a while, we could check if indeed the climate was or wasn't warming. (It was but not as much as expected.) Not so with Climate Change. Anything odd qualifies so that you can never be wrong with such a statement.
Second, the concept is a simplification of a very complex system we poorly understand. The atmosphere works with cycles. Some we know, others we ignore. Our models are full of "holes". In fact they are mostly holes since the mesh we calculate are cubes of 100 meters on each side. Not quite as precise as people would like you to believe.
Third, the models are mostly looking back to corroborate data, then forward to predict... more or less, usually less, accurately future weather patterns. This is important because in a model, you have tens or more variables that you can adjust as much as you want until the data fits. This is surprisingly easy to do but also amazingly inaccurate for future predictions. Bayesian statistics often over or under-fit, as long as you do not quite understand all the variables involved in detail.
Forth, climate cycles are a jumble of short, medium and long term cycles which interfere in very complex ways generating patterns we can't all grasp accurately.
practically, this means that we are currently in an upward warming trend which has been ongoing for the last 200 years, so a little longer than our "modern" data covers, since the 17th Century minimum called the Little Ice Age when the Seine and the Thames regularly froze. The time of the Bruegel paintings.
But these cold decades were preceded by the Middle Age optimum which was pleasantly warm (About one degree more than today on average) and consequently prosperous. The time of the Cathedrals.
And before that, we find another cold period, the Dark age of the early Middle Age and then the very warm Roman optimum which was warmer and lasted even longer that the Middle Age optimum. Ever wondered why the Romans were building Roman Villas in England? You wouldn't enjoy your patio that much today in the Midlands!
And these long term cycles go on and on for as long as we can see, all the way to the last glaciation. The one before the Romans was the Bronze Age optimum. Another time of prosperity and high temperatures which ended abruptly in the early 12 Century BCE.
We do not quite know why these optimums start and stop. It could be related to the sun although large scale volcanic eruptions seems to play a role, somehow.
So yes the climate do change and yes again we are currently in a warming period. Most scientists can agree on these facts. But this is of course not the issue. If it was, it would be a scientific discussion and politicians wouldn't be interested. The issue is that YOU/WE are responsible for these variations thanks to excess emissions of CO2 which must therefore be controlled. Never mind that the cycles were on-going long before the recent surge of fossil CO2 and the not insignificant detail that our prosperity depends, mostly, on oil and gas.
Think about it this way: If CO2 was really the concern, then mitigation would be to focus, relatively cheaply, by paying Indonesia, Congo and Brazil a few tens of billion dollars a year to protect the Equatorial Forests, the true lungs of the planet. But none of this happens. The forests keep being plundered while people in developed countries as being asked to invest trillions of dollars in new, often even more polluting energies, like electric cars which require heavy batteries, or wind energy, mostly made in China with non recyclable materials.
We live in complex times which require nuances and subtleties, as well as flexibility and continuity. A difficult political mix that most people cannot understand. Instead we get slogans and ideologies which are mostly wrong-headed but easy to follow.
This is why every single heat wave sounds like Armageddon on TV with red and purple warnings but the cold snap a week later is completely ignored when it doesn't fit the narrative. A pleasant day with temperatures hovering around 25C as was the case yesterday is plastered with red maps on the weather forecast to reinforce the perception of warming. And especially why the dissident voices and heretic scientists are persecuted.
Use your brain wisely. To paraphrase Groucho Marx: "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"
I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom for years, including in my book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.
One of the most critical components of the British censorship system is Ofcom, the Office of Communications, which regulates the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications, and postal industries.
The most recent controversy is detailed in the Telegraph, with Ofcom investigating GB News over the simple replaying of a Trump interview in which he called climate change a “hoax.”
Ofcom is investigating GB News for failing to challenge Trump’s characterization, even though many people share his views on climate change.
It is a breathtaking demonstration of the censorship culture in the United Kingdom. World leaders make controversial statements in every interview.
A free press allows the public to hear such viewpoints and reach their own conclusions on the merits of such arguments or policies.
The debate over the climate change data continues to rage.
The dates for dire predictions for massive environmental disasters, including those of Al Gore, have passed. Professor Guy McPherson received widespread press attention for his 2016 prediction that the entire human race would be wiped out by 2026. It appears that he is wrong.
Al Gore received the 2007 Peace Prize for his film The Inconvenient Truth as media, academic, and government censors attacked anyone questioning his data. His apocalyptic predictions have not borne out, and recent scientific papers have rejected the predictions found in the underlying studies.
Gore predicted more frequent and stronger hurricanes, but some insist that global data reveal a slight decline in both frequency and intensity. Others argue that the number may be decreasing but the intensity is increasing. We have not seen the type of global hurricane disaster that Gore described in the movie.
Critics point to NASA data to argue that the areas burned by wildfires have fallen by more than 25 percent over the past quarter of a century.
While the global population quadrupled in the last century, deaths from climate-related disasters have plummeted from the 1920s, when an average of nearly half a million people died annually from such events.
Even the film’s famous use of polar bears has not panned out. Polar bear populations have more than doubled from around 12,000 in the 1960s to over 26,000 today. While some have contested those figures, it has certainly not resulted in the wipeout predicted by Gore.
I believe that climate change is real, and there are other signs of more severe climate events, including flooding, that present real dangers for various countries. The point is not to say that it is all a hoax, but that reasonable people can disagree on this question.
That brings us back to the British censors.
In the last two decades, free speech protections in the U.K. have been eviscerated and the government is doubling down on the criminalization of speech. The criminalization of speech has expanded exponentially as individuals and groups call the police to silence those who criticize them or advocate opposing views.
Even silent prayer or “toxic ideologies” can lead to arrest. Expressing concerns over Western cultural values is now treated as an admission of “right-wing ideology,” warranting investigation. A few years ago, a neo-Nazi living with his mother was found to have a room filled with hateful symbols and material.
Judge Peter Lodder dismissed free speech concerns over the defendant’s possessions with a truly Orwellian flourish:
“I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.”
Calling the defendant “a right-wing extremist,” Mr. Lodder said the contents of his room were evidence of “enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology.”
The British people have become conditioned to censorship as different groups seek to silence those who express opposing viewpoints. The result is one of the most speech-phobic nations on Earth as offices like Ofcom fuel the fear of free speech.
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