Climate Ideology

Climate Refugees Imagined Statistics

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Any talk about climate (change, crisis, emergency, whatever) will include large numbers, scary enough to raise concern and support for the carbon crusade,  Of course, the implements of mass delusion are math models running on computers.  This is true of the ever-increasing range of climate sensitivity (how much warming from doubling atmospheric CO2), as well as the arbitrary choice of 1.5C warming as the tipping point into damnation.  And as this post explains, there are plenty of bogus numbers regarding climate “refugees.”

Disha Shetty challenges one common claim in her Undark article: Do Women Really Make Up 80 Percent of All Climate Migrants? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The figure is frequently cited by activists, policymakers, and the media,
but it is a dubious statistic of murky origin.

Although climate change affects all people, women often bear the brunt in places where the impacts of climate change are already being felt. Christiana Figueres CNN

It is an alarming and evocative statistic: An estimated 80 percent of climate migrants are women. The figure has been used by the United Nations in its official communication. It has been repeated in the media and by human rights groups. But it stands on shaky scientific ground — and most likely is wildly off the mark. 

To begin with, the 80 percent figure fails the basic smell test. As someone who has reported on climate change and migration across India, it is clear to me that men are typically the first to move in the face of environmental pressures, often in search of seasonal income or jobs in cities. Women and children tend to be the last to go, if they leave at all.

Perhaps more importantly, there are currently no comprehensive datasets that can tell us how climate migrant populations break down along gender lines. In fact, experts say there isn’t even a consensus on the definition of who counts as a climate migrant.  When people migrate, it is often due to a combination of factors.  Environment, when it comes into play, is just one of them.

Where, then, does the 80 percent figure come from?

Lawrence Huang, an analyst at Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute, has fielded questions from the media on this number, and he says the earliest reference he can find to it is in a 2010 report by a nonprofit called Women’s Environmental Network. The report — which has been cited by the World Trade Organization, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and numerous other groups — states that “it has been estimated that women constitute up to 80% of global refugee and displaced populations.” It then infers, based in part on that figure, “that of the current 26 million climate refugees, up to 20 million are female.”

But the estimate seems to contain two big mistakes. First, it assumes that the gender breakdown of climate migrants mirrors that of populations displaced for other reasons, such as political unrest, economic collapse, and other disasters. In actuality, the demographics of a migrant group can depend on what’s driving their displacement. Studies suggest, for example, that refugees fleeing from armed conflict are especially likely to be women and children, with men often staying behind as combatants. By contrast, women made up the vast majority of people who remained in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, mainly because they didn’t have the means to flee.

That brings us to the report’s second big mistake. Its claim that women constitute up to 80 percent of refugee and displaced populations is attributed to a 2004 fact sheet on climate change and disaster mitigation, produced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. That fact sheet doesn’t clearly specify a source, but its phrasing of the statistic bears resemblance to an often-repeated assertion, published in a 1999 report by the U.N.’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee, that “up to eighty percent of the internally displaced persons and refugees around the world are women and children.”

When people migrate, it is often due to a combination of factors.
Environment, when it comes into play, is just one of them.

Crucially, the 2004 fact sheet omitted “and children” from its phrasing of the statistic — as did the Women’s Environmental Network report that first applied the number in the context of climate change. It’s unclear whether the omission was intentional. (I was unable to reach the fact sheet’s author, Lorena Aguilar, despite multiple email attempts.) But what is clear, according to Huang, at least, is that the 80 percent figure “does not have a scientific basis” — especially not in the context of climate change.

“People just ran with the number,” Huang told me, noting that the statistic is used by some but not all U.N. organizations. On its website, UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, says that “[w]omen and girls make up around 50 per cent of any refugee, internally displaced or stateless population,” a classification that includes people migrating for reasons other than climate. Likewise, data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that women represent around 51 percent of people displaced by natural disasters. And yet the 80 percent figure has gained traction in the media and among policymakers and activists.

The potential consequences of this misinformation are many. First, by steering attention and resources toward women climate migrants, it could distract from the needs of women who haven’t been displaced but are impacted by climate change nonetheless. These women are affected in small and big ways. They often must take over agricultural and head-of-household duties from men who have moved in search of work, which places increased demand on their time and labor. Understanding the needs of these women is critical to crafting an effective response to climate change, but their narratives are often missing from media coverage.

Global warming could create 150 million ‘climate refugees’ by 2050. The Guardian (2009)

 Comment: 

The author is not skeptical enough to dig into the underlying claim that as of 2010 there are 26 million “cimate refugees.”

From NewScientist

When diplomats and military strategists gathered for a meeting of the council in July 2011 they asked a simple question: how many refugees can we expect as regions and countries become uninhabitable due to climate change? A clear-cut answer could spur politicians to do something about this problem. If only one could be found.

The first stab at an answer came in 1995 when British academic Norman Myers calculated there were 25 million environmental refugees, mostly in drought-hit parts of Africa. He predicted that numbers would swell to 50 million by 2010 and 200 million by mid-century. However, he did warn that his figures were “a first-cut assessment… to ‘get a handle’, however preliminary and exploratory, on an emergent problem of exceptional significance”. That was either foolhardy or heroic, according to your point of view.

The scandal is that those old figures still turn up in IPCC reports, the UK’s Stern review of the economics of climate change, and statements from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). They do so because, as far as New Scientist can establish, nobody has attempted to improve on Myers’s “first cut” calculations. 

Important Finding, Nature Communications (2021) Climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration

Recent research suggests that climate variability and change significantly affect forced migration, within and across borders. Yet, migration is also informed by a range of non-climatic factors, and current assessments are impeded by a poor understanding of the relative importance of these determinants.

Here, we evaluate the eligibility of climatic conditions relative to economic, political, and contextual factors for predicting bilateral asylum migration to the European Union—a form of forced migration that has been causally linked to climate variability.

Results from a machine-learning prediction framework reveal that drought and temperature anomalies are weak predictors of asylum migration, challenging simplistic notions of climate-driven refugee flows. Instead, core contextual characteristics shape latent migration potential whereas political violence and repression are the most powerful predictors of time-varying migration flows.

Future asylum migration flows are likely to respond much more
to political changes in vulnerable societies than to climate change.

Note: This is consistent with previous studies claiming climate causing displacement in Africa.  See

Food, Conflict and Climate

Zero Carbon Alarmists Upset at Public Rejection

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Climatists are increasingly complaining about critics dismissing their doomsday claims as false alarms.  Recently I posted on meteorologists upset about negative pushback from their audiences.  [See Enforcing Climate Correctness (Fact Checking)]

Maybe if they stuck to weather reporting? See Climate Evangelists Are Taking Over Your Local Weather Forecast

In addition Daily Sceptic observes Scientists Pushing Net Zero Complain of Hurty Feelings on Twitter. Excerpt in italics wtih my bolds.

What is happening of course is that the horrors of the collectivist Net Zero project are becoming increasingly apparent, as a widespread attack on almost all human activity is launched under the suggestion that the climate is breaking down. Until recently the ‘settled’ science promoting this view had a safe, largely uncontested space to prosper. But scepticism about the unproven hypothesis that humans operate the climate thermostat by burning fossil fuels is growing, with two recent polls showing that over 40% of people surveyed worldwide believe climate change is mainly due to natural causes. Far from coughing up the huge sums required to hit Net Zero, 4 in 10 Americans are not even prepared to pay more than two dimes a week to combat climate change.

 It is hardly surprising that the banning of meat eating, along with all the other notable Net Zero suggestions such as no flying, shipping, barely enough energy to heat homes and cook food and restrictions on all common building materials, is starting to foster wide debate – even sometimes robust debate. Maslin, along with many of his fellow climate extremists, seem oblivious to this gathering trend. This is perhaps not surprising. In 2018, he was one of a number of eco-activists who signed a letter to the Guardian saying they would no longer “lend their credibility” by debating climate change scepticism.

The loss of Twitter as a ‘safe’ space for climate alarmists has been a bitter blow. It is not seemingly enough to exert considerable control over most other public platforms including social and mainstream media. Global Witness is of the view that if climate scientists are unable to do their work because of “stress and fear caused by harassment”, the critical evidence that undergirds climate action and solutions is put at risk.

It is reasonable for social media users to tell delicate activists like Maslin that there is really nothing to worry about from our climate. It’s just free speech, and it applies – in fact it is vital – in science and geography, as elsewhere. But it’s not just about science anymore. It is becoming apparent that Net Zero is being used as an attack on almost all human activity. Everything humans do to survive, from keeping warm to growing food, is being cast as an attack on Mother Earth.

Expert Findings Awaken Censorship 

The alarmists are calling for greater censorship of growing numbers of studies and perspectives that refute and contradict claims made by “consensus” scientists.  For example Fraser Institute recently published Celebrate Earth Day by burning latest UN climate report.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Ahead of Earth Day, and not coincidentally, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  released a summary of its summaries of summaries of a massive unreadable multi-volume report that specifies how the climate is changing and what must be done. Again, not surprisingly, the new plans are more stringent than the already unachievable previous plans.

In presenting the report, which is still not available in its final form, Antonio Guterres, UN secretary-general, called on developed countries to move up their already impossible “net-zero” greenhouse gas emission timelines from 2050 to 2040. He also wants coal use to end entirely by 2030 in developed countries, and wants the developed world on carbon-free electricity generation by 2035, meaning no gas-fired power plants. Yes, only 12 years from now.

If we don’t follow that advice, we’re told, we’ll cruise past the politically-determined target of limiting increased global average temperature to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. And, we’re told, UN scientists believe we’ll see all kinds of negative trends—droughts, floods, storms, hot weather, cold weather, ocean acidification, glacier retreat (basically all the worst parts of the Bible). Some of this may be true, much is likely untrue, as almost all of it is based on speculative computer models infused with assumptions about how things might work in nature, rather than rigorously measured values that establish how they actually work in nature. Canadians who believe computerization can correct soothsaying will be concerned; those who believe the future is unpredictable will be less so.

But either way, the secretary-general’s net-zero acceleration is a terrible idea that Canada’s governments should ignore, mainly because the side effects of this prescription will be far worse than the ailment. In 2021, RBC estimated it would cost a cool $2 trillion to reach net-zero by 2050. Broken down by year, the estimated cost rivalled spending on our health-care system. And RBC’s estimate assumed continued use of natural gas, which the UN is taking off the table. And even though, through RBC’s rose-coloured glasses, a “nation of electric vehicles, solar-powered houses and hydrogen-fueled airplanes” will help enormously, RBC found even the best-case scenarios for these technologies might only get Canada three-quarters of the way to net-zero—the old net-zero of 2050, not the potential new net-zero of 2040.

Finally, as always, the climate benefits from all of this will be negligible.

Nothing Canada can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (already a small and diminishing fraction of global emissions) would be enough to exert a measurable influence on the climate. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Trudeau’s friends in China, the world’s largest emissions emitter, are allowed to emit with abandon. Hopefully, Canadian policymakers will file the new UN report in the voluminous burn bin with other silly UN reports, and with the Trudeau government’s current woes, there’s room for hope.

Ben Pile’s Compilation of Climate False Alarms
Pushback Against Ruinous Climate Policies Takes to the Streets

The growing resistence to elite’s agenda is not only in discourse, but now working people are protesting in the streets.  Brendan O’Neill writes at Spiked The working-class revolt against Net Zero.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Danish truckers are the latest workers to rise up against eco-authoritarianism.

Danish truckers are the latest workers to join the rebellion against green authoritarianism. Yesterday, they caused ‘road havoc’ in Denmark. They parked their huge hauliers side by side on key roads. Sections of the border with Germany were affected, as were the M11 and M16 around Copenhagen. Roads towards the ferry docks at Helsingor – ‘one of the most important ports in Denmark’ – were also briefly clogged by angry truckers.

Their beef? The government’s plan to introduce a ‘truck tax’ in 2025. As part of its devotion to the cult of Net Zero, the Danish ruling class wants to slash carbon emissions by 70 per cent before 2030. And one way it intends to do that is by imposing a punitive mileage-based eco-tax on the drivers of diesel trucks, in the hope that the financial pressure will become so unbearable that they’ll switch to electric trucks instead.

The ingratitude is staggering.

Truckers are the lifeblood of a modern society. They transport the fuel, food and other goods that are essential to everyday life. They drive alone, for hours, in all weathers, to keep society well stocked. And how do the elites in Copenhagen repay these people who, without fuss or fanfare, bring them everything they need? By slapping them with a new kind of sin tax – the sin in this case being to drive a vehicle that the eco-minded consider to be ‘dirty’ and ‘polluting’.

No wonder the truckers are angry. Others are, too. Dutch farmers have been in a state of revolt for a couple of years now. They’re raging against their government’s plans to cut nitrogen emissions by half before 2030, which would entail farmers getting rid of vast numbers of their livestock and possibly lead to the closure of 3,000 farms.

The nitrogen-slashing policy was drawn up under pressure from the eco-oligarchs in the EU, who are heaping pressure on all member states to hurry toward that secular heaven of Net Zero. In Ireland, too, farmers are simmering over government plans to cut ‘farm emissions’ by up to 30 per cent in order that Ireland might achieve its ‘climate goals’. They’re worried that 58,000 farm jobs could be lost to the elites’ slavish devotion to the Net Zero ideology.

Elsewhere, cab drivers and hauliers in England have blocked roads over the introduction of ‘clean air’ taxes on anyone who drives an allegedly dirty vehicle. Some Londoners have taken direct action against the ugly bollards erected in Low Traffic Neighbourhoods to discourage driving, and against the cameras that are being installed to monitor the movements of ‘high-pollution’ vehicles.

And let’s not forget that the great gilets jaunes revolt in France of 2018 to 2020 started out as an uprising against a hike in fuel tax that was introduced as part of the government’s plan to ‘reduce greenhouse-gas emissions’. Yet another Net Zero assault on working people’s pockets. The French knew very well that this eco-punishment was an act of Jupiterian overreach by Emmanuel Macron.

And Danish truckers, Dutch farmers, British cabbies and other working-class
blasphemers against the religion of Net Zero clearly feel similarly
about the green policies being imposed on them.

These uprisings throw into sharp relief the elitism of the climate-change ideology. They expose the class element in the green tyranny. It is increasingly clear that where the pursuit of Net Zero might benefit the elites, providing them with a sense of moral mission as they tackle the fantasy apocalypse of their own fever dreams, it is incredibly destructive for working-class communities. Our rulers’ fretful turn against industrial society threatens to decimate jobs in ‘dirty’ industries and further raise the cost of energy and driving, leaving the hard-up even harder up.

Look On The Bright Side

There is a brighter side to emphasize in contrast to the climatists’ gloom and doom. Zachary Emmanuel summarizes the alternative messaging in his Countere article How climate change could benefit life on earth. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

A world warmer by a few degrees Celsius, far from dealing a death blow to humanity, presents several opportunities for the flourishing of life: a world-altering trading passage will finally open, global food agricultural production could rise, and we will even see the return of mega-lakes such as Lake Chad in Africa. This certainly depends on the degree of warming: for example, a 2.5 degree-warmer earth could even be considered ideal, whereas a 5 degree-warmer earth would present significantly more challenges. Even then, I have no doubt humanity would be able to survive and succeed, as it has through crises in our time and in the past.

This is an unpopular opinion. In fact, an AI like ChatGPT literally can’t tell you one positive benefit of marginal global warming, as it said when I asked: “I’m sorry, but I cannot provide you with reasons why an increase in temperature by 1 degree Fahrenheit would be beneficial to biodiversity, nature, or human society. Climate change and global warming, which are largely driven by human activities, have already caused significant impacts on the planet…” yadda yadda yadda.

There will be negative effects of global warming. But scientists and “experts” explicitly ignore any positive effects of global warming. Dissident climatologists like Dr. Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have stated this is because entire academic careers, professional recognition, and media spotlights are linked to one’s degree of alarmism over climate change. (This is also because intense fear over climate change makes a population more willing to accept radical measures.)

Well, that’s why we have Countere. Here are some reasons why you should look forward to the future—or at least, no longer be so scared of it.

Climate change is not a new phenomenon. The Earth has been much hotter and colder before. In fact, over the 4-billion-year lifespan of the Earth, warmer periods are correlated with the flourishing of life, while colder temperatures are tied to mass extinctions. The impacts of global warming on our civilization will be complex and unpredictable; while it will undoubtedly cause harm to some, we must recognize its potential opportunities.

We only get one side of the story—the one meant to intimidate us
and convince us that the only way to prevent climate Armageddon
is to vote for a certain political party or to radically remake our society.

Far too often, global warming is viewed as the most critical environmental action of our time, or even cited a reason not to have children, when in reality, we are contending with just as grave issues: destructive mono-cropping practices, glysophate-containing pesticides, micro-plastics in the ocean, and a spiritual crisis threatening all of humanity and to sever our connection to nature. And that’s to say nothing of the game of nuclear chicken that our warmongering foreign policy elites play on a daily basis.

You are being lied to about climate change.

Global warming does not mean the end of the world. It means a new world with new challenges. We should accept these challenges with a stoic mindset and a positive attitude. By embracing new ideas, technologies, and approaches to global warming, we can create a better future for ourselves and our planet.

Enforcing Climate Correctness (Fact Checking)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Serfs attacking Climate Establishment

Phys.org sounds the alarm: Meteorologists targeted in climate misinfo surge.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Once trusted faces on the news, meteorologists now brave threats, insults and slander online from conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers who accuse them of faking or even fixing the weather.

Users on Twitter and other social media falsely accused Spain’s weather agency of engineering a drought, Australia’s of doctoring its thermometers and France’s of exaggerating global warming through misplaced weather stations.

“The coronavirus is no longer a trend. Conspiracy theorists and deniers who used to talk about that are now spreading disinformation about climate change,” Alexandre Lopez-Borrull, lecturer in Information and Communication Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia, told AFP.

“These scientific bodies are seen as part of the establishment, so anything they say may get disputed on social networks.

“They are providing evidence against what the climate deniers claim, so the latter try to discredit them.”

Maybe if they stuck to weather reporting? See Climate Evangelists Are Taking Over Your Local Weather Forecast

Australian thermometers

In a case investigated by AFP Fact Check, conservative media and Facebook users shared unfounded claims that Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) doctored its temperature readings.

In an analysis of data obtained via a freedom of information request, prominent climate skeptic Jennifer Marohasy said BOM’s electronic probes returned readings up to 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer than those of its older mercury thermometers.

Experts who analyzed the data said the claims were inaccurate.

Monash University emeritus environment professor Neville Nicholls said the difference between most readings on the electronic probes and the mercury thermometers was negligible—between zero and 0.1C (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit).

The World Meteorological Organization told AFP that the BOM’s measurements were in line with its standards, contrary to Marohasy’s allegation.

Marohasy makes her case in video below.

Several examples in the article shows they are relying on fact checking by AFP (Agence France Presse).  So the AFP Fact Check follows the usual procedure:  get quotes from establishment supporters in order to isolate and cancel a finding contrary to “consensus” climate science.

More from AFP to See How the Enforcement Works

Climate ‘declaration’ recirculates debunked claims.Excerpt in italics with my bolds

First Attack:   Big Oil Funds Them, So They Lie

However seven of the signatories to the declaration were identified on the list as having worked for Shell and eight others as having worked in the oil industry. Crok confirmed to AFP that Berkhout himself worked for the firm “about 40 years ago.” Besides these, there were 13 petroleum engineers and petroleum geologists, plus several mining specialists.

Several signatories had links, either mentioned on the list or documented elsewhere, to US climate-skeptic free-market groups with ties to the oil industry: the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute.

These groups each received money from oil giant ExxonMobil, according to donor and tax documents published by Greenpeace (here, here and here). The company has been accused of undermining science to protect its fossil fuel business — a charge it denies.

Second Attack:  Only Some Signatories are Climatologists

According to an AFP count of the declaration’s signatories, about 10 explicitly described themselves as climatologists or climate scientists, fewer than one percent of the total. A few others described themselves as specialists in paleoclimatology and atmospheric sciences.

There were approximately 40 geophysicists, 130 geologists and 200 engineers of various kinds, plus several mathematicians, medical doctors and agricultural scientists.

Thirdly:  IPCC is the Final Authority

Documents accrediting the mainstream scientific view on climate change are more comprehensive than the World Climate Declaration. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change invited 721 experts from 90 countries to be authors and editors of its three-part Sixth Assessment Report, released between August 2021 and April 2022.

The report constitutes the most comprehensive assessment of scientific knowledge on climate change. Each part was some 3,000 pages long. The authors reviewed hundreds of studies that were listed in the reference sections. It says there is “unequivocal” evidence that humans are warming the climate by burning fossil fuels.

Finally, Refer to Insider Supporters to Refute Claims

Examples in the AFP fact check include Carbon Brief and World Weather Attribution.

Why Should We Believe A Bunch of Journalists like AFP?

Well, because they pass the media bias test;

Who is behind Media Bias Fact Checks and what is their POV?

From Climate Change Dispatch ‘Media Bias/Fact Check’ Site Served With Cease And Desist, Gets Fact-Checked.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Today, PSI has issued Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) site owner, Dave Van Zandt with a pre-action legal notice to take down the defamatory and false smear.

Ironically, the self-styled ‘MEDIA BIAS/FACT CHECK‘ (MB/FC) which negatively fact-checked PSI admits it relies on the subjective bias to decide how biased others are. In other words, MB/FC is a pseudoscientific fact checker!

Apart from unlawfully smearing PSI, Mr. Van Zandt has smeared other websites that publish scientific articles critical of man-made global warming claims. Among the unfairly smeared are:

  • Climate Change Dispatch
  • CFACT
  • WUWT

Below we help readers to fact-check the pseudo-fact-checker. We put Dave Van Zandt the faceless fact-checker under the microscope and discovered the following:

♦  Van Zandt Cites No Scientific Qualifications At All
♦  Van Zandt Was Exposed By WND As A Fraud And A Liar
♦  Van Zandt’s Website (MBFC) Does Not Apply Any Objective Scientific Method
♦  MBFC Relies On Unverifiable Subjectivity (Own Bias) To Make Judgments

Climate Enforcers Appeal to Membership in IFCN

Both AFP and MBFC stake their credibility on belonging to the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).  Who’s behind that authority?  WND discussed them in their article The 9 fakest fake-news checkers.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

In the past Facebook announced it would use the International Fact-Checking Network, or IFCN, to check on the legitimacy of news articles posted to the social media site.

IFCN is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and funded, in part, by Google and foundations of leftist billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates. Soros donated $25 million to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The Daily Mail reported that Clinton super-donor and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar is also backing the project.

The website reveals: “Poynter’s IFCN has received funding from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, the Duke Reporters’ Lab, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Foundations and the Park Foundation.”

Summary:  

There’s a well-funded industry dedicated to curating the news for the sake of “right-thinking” public opinion. It’s a closed loop of self-appointed authorities who validate each other, and excommunicate unbelievers.  Woe to those who outsource their critical intelligence to such.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Objection! Warming Alarm is Hearsay, Lacking Evidence.

Posted on by Ron Clutz

C3 Headlines reports: The Real Climate Science Crisis: The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) Hypothesis Is Without Scientific Evidence.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

For a hypothesis to reach the status of being a legit theory, it requires withstanding the onslaught of observed empirical evidence. The CAGW hypothesis is no such animal.

Known by its more contemporary aliases, such as ”climate crisis,” “climate emergency,” “climate collapse,” or “existential threat,” the CAGW has zero empirical evidence to support it.

Unlike the related hypothesis regarding greenhouse gases (GHG) and global warming, at least the GHG hypothesis has warming global temperature data that somewhat coincides with increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, putting aside the growing possibility that the purported cause-and-effect direction is probably the reverse. [Note:  See Temps Cause CO2 Changes, Not the Reverse. 2023 Update]

In order to reach a CAGW climate disaster, global warming temperatures must change rapidly in an accelerating manner that will initiate a ‘tipping point’ for the climate.

The rapid acceleration would present its occurrence in a continuous increasing of the slope, i.e., trend, of temperatures, such as monthly temperatures. Each subsequent month would represent a greater temperature magnitude increase than the month before, hypothetically.

To enlarge open image in new tab.

But those tipping point precursors are not occurring in the real-world climate.

For example, it is agreed by all climate scientists that oceans play a very major role in the world’s climate and its global temperatures due to their being both the world’s largest carbon sink and its largest heat content storage.

However, despite these characteristics, in totality, the global oceans HAVE NOT warmed since the year 2014. And certainly, there is no empirical evidence that oceans exhibit constant temperature increases of magnitude.

Quite the contrary, combined oceans exhibit a regular pattern of temperature decreases and increases, as the adjacent plot of NOAA’s monthly ocean data indicates.

Specifically, this is a plot (dark blue) of moving 5-year temperature changes ending each month of the 60-year period from March 1963 through March 2023.

[Explanation: the first data point is the temperature change for the 60 months ending on March 30, 1963; and the chart’s last temperature change data point is for the five 5 years (i.e. 60 months) ending on March 2023.]

The chart also includes a plot (green) of the moving 60-month CO2 level changes over the same sixty year period, plus a linear trend for both CO2 changes and ocean temperature changes.

The trend of the 60-month CO2 changes significantly exceeds the
slight positive trend of ocean temperature changes by a factor of 117x.

This huge differential undercuts the belief that global warming is primarily the result of GHGs. Which is confirmed by the paltry R^2 of +0.06 – an almost non-existent relationship between 5-year atmospheric CO2 changes and 5-year changes in ocean temperature.

Not only are the large increases in CO2 levels not causing a concerning uptick of temperature change magnitude, it also has not lead to any type of acceleration, per the linear trend since 1963.

Specifically, with a trend of a tiny +0.0001°C, that would project out 20 years to be an increase of 5-year temperature changes to an insignificant amount of +0.024 – definitely not an existential threat of ‘runaway warming’ or a CAGW ‘climate crisis’ as portrayed by bureaucrats, politicians and Hollywood celebrities.

So, if 5 years of increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere barely influence 5-year changes in temperature over a 60-year span, either in magnitude or acceleration rate, then it is highly unlikely that this trace gas would cause a catastrophic climate disaster or an extinction event.

Thus, it is fair to state that for all those scientists pushing a narrative of an imminent climate change catastrophe from CO2 without the requisite empirical evidence, this has become the real climate science crisis facing society.

Notes: Temperature and CO2 data sources.Excel used to calculate 60-mth (5-yr) temperature and CO2 changes; used to calculate the respective trends; used to calculate correlation and r-squared; used to plot the chart.

Away With Self-Fullfilling Climate Prophecy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Edward Ring explains the importance of dispelling CO2 hysteria in his American Greatness article Challenging the Premise of Our Destruction.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Claiming that anthropogenic CO2 will not cause catastrophic climate change is a
credible, necessary point of view backed up by scientific evidence.

The most powerful and destructive perception in the world today is that using fossil fuels will cause catastrophic climate change. This belief, marketed by every major government and corporate institution in the Western world, is the foundational premise underlying a policy agenda of stunning indifference to the aspirations of ordinary people.

The war on fossil fuel is a war on freedom, prosperity, pluralism, independence, national sovereignty, world peace, domestic tranquility, and, most ironically, the environment itself. It is a war of rich against poor, the privileged against the disadvantaged, corporate monopolies against competitive upstarts, Malthusians against optimists, regulators against innovators, and authoritarians against freedom-loving people everywhere.

But this war cannot be won unless the perception is maintained. If fossil fuel is allowed to compete against other energy alternatives for customers as a vital and growing part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy, this authoritarian political agenda falls apart.

It is reasonable to question the assertion that eliminating fossil fuels will inevitably result in an impoverished society subject to punitive restrictions on individual behavior. But the numbers are compelling and can be distilled to two indisputable facts: First, fossil fuel continues to provide over 80 percent of all energy consumed worldwide. Second, if every person living on planet Earth were to consume half as much energy per year as the average American currently consumes, global energy production would need to double.

Several inescapable conclusions derive from these two facts, if one assumes that energy is the driver of prosperity. Just in case that is not obvious, imagine Americans living with half as much energy as they use today. Where would the cuts occur? Would they drive their cars half as much? Heat their homes half as much? Operate manufacturing, farming, and mining equipment half as much? They would need to do all those things and more. The economy would collapse.

These consequences don’t escape the intelligentsia who promote “net zero” policies. These consequences explain the policies they advocate. The recent promotion of “15-minute cities” that will inform rezoning and redevelopment to put all essential services within a 15-minute walk of every residence. The rise of “congestion pricing” to charge automobiles special tolls if they drive into an expanding footprint of urban neighborhoods. “Smart growth.” “Infill.” “Urban Service Boundaries.” Bike lanes. “Smart buildings,” “smart meters,” and “smart cities.”

These innovations, all in progress, only begin to describe what is coming.

By restricting new development and systematically reducing the use of fossil fuels, the global middle class will shrink instead of grow. The wealthiest elites will buy their way out of the smart slums. Everyone else will be locked down. This is how energy poverty will play out in the modern era. It cannot be emphasized enough: If energy production is restricted, this will happen. It’s algebra. It is objective fact.

Hardly less speculative is the reaction outside the Western world. What are our elites thinking? Do they intend to start World War III? Perhaps they do. Because nothing short of war is going to stop the Chinese, Indians, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Brazilians, Nigerians, or Bangladeshis from developing every source of energy they possibly can. Just those seven nations account for half the world’s population. That’s 4 billion people. Will they stop developing energy until they at least achieve half the per capita energy consumption that Americans currently enjoy? Not a chance.

Will they get there by relying exclusively on wind and solar? Dream on.

Fossil Fuel Will Not Cause a Climate Catastrophe

If you only believe half of the preceding arguments, you must realize that Americans have been backed into a corner. If anyone calls for abundant energy—or abundant anything, since energy, and fossil fuel in particular, is the prerequisite for virtually all goods and services—they are shouted down as “climate deniers.” And the way to upset the entire edifice is not to merely argue that fossil fuel is essential to the survival of civilization. Because the counterargument is that eliminating fossil fuel is essential to the survival of the planet.

That is an unwinnable argument. It is not possible to reason with an opponent of fossil fuel if you concede their fundamental premise: that burning fossil fuel will cause catastrophic climate change. You either become a “denier,” or you submit to energy poverty.

This is the tough decision facing Americans.

And it’s accurate to also say it is a decision facing Republicans since literally every prominent, mainstream, housebroken, accommodating establishment Republican will not challenge the assertion that we’re experiencing a “climate crisis,” even though most of them know better. But this should be a bipartisan issue. For Republicans, this is an opportunity to show some backbone by rejecting the most destructive and fraudulent premise of our time. In so doing, they would unify their party, attract independent voters, and realign the nation.

The irony is stupefying. Without fossil fuel, America will enter a dark age, and the only way to control a restive population that’s seen its standard of living plummet will be through the establishment of a technology-driven police state. They are the fascists. The so-called climate deniers are fighting for prosperity and freedom.

If you want to save civilization, be a denier.

Say it loud and without reservations, and say it every chance you get. Demand that politicians publicly refute climate alarmism. It isn’t necessary to claim that the powers behind the climate cult want to enslave the world. We don’t know what motivates them. Some just want to get rich on renewables. Some want to use climate change to advance American global hegemony. But all of them rely on a fundamental moral justification: By eliminating fossil fuel, we are saving the planet from certain destruction. Focusing on the possible ulterior motives of climate alarmist leaders without first challenging their core moral argument is a fool’s errand.

There are plenty of environmental challenges. Being an environmentalist is a good thing. But there has to be balance, and there has to be debate. Claiming that anthropogenic CO2 will not cause catastrophic climate change is a credible, necessary point of view backed up by scientific evidence. If more people make that claim, the climate cult can be broken, and civilization can be rescued from oblivion.

See Also A Rational Climate Policy

 

1875 was coldest in 10,000 years, Warming A Good Thing

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jørgen Peder Steffensen, of Denmark’s Niels Bohr Institute, is one of the most experienced experts in ice core analysis, in both Greenland and Antarctica. In this video he explains a coincidence that has misled those alarmed about the warming recovery since the Little Ice Age.  And if you skip to 2:25, you will see the huge error we have made and the assumptions and extrapolations based on that error.  Transcript below is from closed captions with my bolds and added images. H/T Raymond

What do ice cores tell us about the history of climate change and the present trend? 

This ice is from the Viking age around the year one thousand, also called the medieval warm period. We believe that in Greenland the Medieval Warm Period was about one and a half degrees warmer on average than today

NorthGRIP the Greenland ice core project is being reopened to drill the last few meters through the ice sheet to the rock beneath the research station. The ice core over three kilometers in length has been hauled up to the surface piece by piece, and contains important data on the history of the climate of the earth. It bears the fingerprints of climatic conditions over more than 120 thousand years.

When we remove a drilled ice core we leave a hole, and we insert a thermometer in the hole. We are able to map out the temperature through the three kilometer ice sheet. Now that temperature, if we do it precisely enough with a thousandth of a degree accuracy, then the ice has not forgotten how cold or warm it was on the surface at the time the snow fell.

So using those temperatures we have been able to reconstruct the temperatures of the last ten thousand years. Here we have our picture of the temperature reconstructions that we have from Greenland in the graphical form. And if we go back along this axis it’s going back in time. This is the last 8 000 years we have plotted here. On this axis we have the temperatures at the site in Greenland, and we can see that if we go back from now about 4000 years ago, we would have temperatures up here for about 4 000 years in the past that on average were two and a half degrees warmer than today.

Reconstructed temperatures for Greenland ice cores Dye3 and GRIP. (A) The temperature from 8000 BP to present; (B) the temperature from AD 0-2000 (after Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998). The observed difference in amplitude between the two cores is a result of their different geographic location in relation to the variability in atmospheric circulation. Source: Reconstructed-temperatures-for-Greenland-ice-cores-Dye3-and-GRIP-A

Now as we go forward to approach our time, we can see that in the period after four thousand years ago and up to the two thousand years ago (which is actually the Roman Age) the temperatures have been decreasing in Greenland by two and a half degrees. Then temperatures increased gradually up to a maximum point around a thousand years ago, we call it the Medieval Warm Period. And then temperatures declined and go down to minimum around 1650 a.d., before coming back up a little in the 18th century.

And then around 1875 we have right here the lowest point in the last 10,000 years.
And that matches exactly the time when meteorological observations started.

Other core samples from elsewhere in Greenland confirmed that the little ice age ended about 140 years ago at the coldest point in the last 10,000 years. The natural pronounced alteration of warm and cold periods back in time has also been confirmed elsewhere in the northern hemisphere. Carbon 14 dating of organic matter from peat bogs and tree rings confirms the pattern. Also the data from stalactite caves in China and measurements from North Africa.

The problem is that we can all agree completely that we have had a global temperature increase in the 20th century. Yes, but an increase from what? It was probably an increase from the lowest point we’ve had for the last 10,000 years. And this means it will be very hard indeed to prove whether the increase of temperature in the 20th century was man-made or it’s a natural variation. That would be very hard because we made ourselves an extremely poor experiment when we started to observe meteorology at the coldest time in the last ten thousand years.

Dr. Syun Akasofu 2009 diagram from his paper Two Natural Components of Recent Warming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greta Thunberg, PhD Theology

Posted on by Ron Clutz

It’s not a report from Babylon Bee, or an April first joke.  It’s an upcoming ceremony at University of Helsinki. At least they get the field of knowledge right, no one outdoes her as a true believer, despite being a school dropout. From Daily Caller Greta Thunberg To Receive Honorary Doctorate Degree In Theology From University Of Helsinki.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg will receive an honorary doctorate degree in theology from the University of Helsinki in Finland on June 9, the school announced in a press release.

Thirty “distinguished individuals” from around the world will be awarded the university’s “highest recognition,” according to a March 20 press release. The Faculty of Philosophy, the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, the Faculty of Theology and the Faculty of Law will all give out honorary doctorates. Thunberg is the only individual listed as an “activist” who is receiving a degree, the announcement shows.

Thunberg, 20, gained popularity in 2018 when she refused to attend class until the Swedish general elections took place due to her concerns about climate change. She made international headlines again when she spoke at the United Nations in 2019, accusing politicians of stealing her childhood. Most recently, Thunberg came under scrutiny for deleting a years-old Tweet citing a claim that humans would go extinct if fossil fuels were still being used by 2023. [ So much for her prophetic credentials.]

Thunberg previously received an honorary doctorate law degree in 2021 from the University of British Columbia. [Yikes! A Preacher and a Lawyer.]

The University of Helsinki did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.

Footnote:  Climate Religion

It should be clear that when climate alarmists appeal to saving the planet for future generations, they are applying contextual ethics. Less obvious is the ancient religious notion that by making sacrifices, we humans can assure more favorable weather. These days, fossil fuels have become the sacrificial lamb required by Mother Nature to play nice with human beings. In the past, people made images and worshiped them, thinking that they could control nature in that way. These days, we make computer models whose projections are sure to scare the bejesus out of us.

How to Break the Climate Spell

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Getty Images

Mark Imisides advises climate skeptics to reconsider how to dispute claims from climate believers in his Spectator Australia article Changing climate change: debunking the global colossus.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

How is it that despite the scientific case for a climate apocalypse comprehensively collapsing some 20 years ago, we have seen a 16-year-old girl (at the time) being invited to address the United Nations, weeping children marching in our streets, and a federal election outcome in which this issue dominated the political landscape?

Where did we go wrong? And by ‘we’ I’m referring to those of us termed sceptics – people who understand the science, and the house of cards that comprises the notion of Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Put simply, we must learn the art of the polemic. The art of rhetoric. We must recognise that there’s no point in having evidence on our side if we don’t know how to use it.

We begin with this proposition. There is no case for reducing our carbon footprint unless all four of these statements are true:

  1. The world is warming.
  2. We are causing it.
  3. It’s a bad thing.
  4. We can do something about it.

No rational person can have any problem with this, and if they do, we need to find out why.

Here’s where we have to decide which of these points we want to contest. Remember, you only have to falsify one of them for the whole thing to collapse like a house of cards.

Most sceptics, in my view, pick the wrong fight. They do this by attempting to prosecute the case based on one of the first two points. This is a mistake.

Here’s why.

Arguments about whether the world is warming revolve around competing graphs: ‘My graph shows it’s warming. If your graph shows it isn’t, then it’s wrong – no it isn’t – yes it is – no it isn’t…’  This argument also looks at Urban Heat Island Effects, and examines manipulation of data by government agencies.  This is a poor approach to take because:

  • You’re never going to prove your graph is right.
  • You can be very easily and quickly discredited as a conspiracy theorist (Brian Cox did this to Malcolm Roberts on Q&A a few years ago). People just do not believe that government agencies would manipulate data.
  • We should not fear a warming world. Records began at the end of the last ice age, so it’s only natural that the world is warming. And the current temperatures are well within historical averages.

Source: Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Two Natural Components of the Recent Climate Change: (1) The Recovery from the Little Ice Age (A Possible Cause of Global Warming) and (2) The Multi-decadal Oscillation (The Recent Halting of the Warming):

As for arguments about whether we are causing the warming, this is even more problematic. The various contributions to global temperatures are extremely complex, involving a deep understanding of atmospheric physics and thermodynamics. With a PhD in Chemistry, this is much closer to my area of expertise than Joe Public, but I am very quickly out of my depth. I recognise most of the terms and concepts involved, but know just enough to know how little I know.

Sadly, many people on both sides of the debate don’t understand how little they know, nor how complex the subject of atmospheric physics is, and it is nothing short of comical seeing two people debating about a subject of which both of them are blissfully ignorant.

The bottom line is this – they simply don’t change anyone’s minds – ever.

Having seen these arguments used for years, and having used them myself, I cannot point to a single person that has said, ‘Oh yes! I see it now…’ The whole point of arguing, or debating, is to change someone’s mind (including, at times, your own). If that isn’t happening, then it’s futile to continue with the same approach.

I think the reason both these approaches fail that most people do not believe that all these experts, and the government, can be wrong. You say the world isn’t warming? Oh, I’m sure you have the wrong graph. You say that CO2 is not responsible? Oh, I’m sure the government scientists know more than you do.

This then brings us to the third point. Why is a warmer world a bad thing?

This is even more tempting than the first two points, as it’s so easy to prove that a warming world, so far from being a crisis, is actually a good thing. The reason for this is that, unlike with the first two points, they don’t have to look at a complex scientific argument. They just have to look at the weather. Are cyclones and hurricanes increasing? Are droughts increasing? Are flooding events increasing?

Regretfully, it is impossible to get people to even look at this. Even worse, they seem oblivious to the simple concept of cause and effect. We see this in that they simply can’t see that droughts and floods are opposites, and the same cause cannot produce exactly opposite effects. Astonishingly, they somehow think that charts that plot these extreme events are somehow manipulated, even when they come from a primary source such as the BOM, and that there really is a ‘climate crisis’.

Where does that leave us? Well, before we adopt Catweazle’s mantra of ‘nothing works’, there is one more point – point 4 (can we do anything about it?).

Most people will have seen the address of Konstantin Kisin at an Oxford Union debate, where he prosecuted this case to great effect. He pointed out, in simple terms, that as the UK only contributes 2 per cent to the global CO2 budget, anything they did will have negligible effect, and that global CO2 levels will be determined by people in Africa and Asia. He then pointed out that people in these countries ‘didn’t give a sh*t’ about climate change, as all they want to do is feed and clothe their children, and they don’t care how much CO2 that produces.

Finally, he pointed out that Xi Jinping knows that the way to ensure that he isn’t rolled in a revolution, as happened to so many other leaders in former communist regimes, is to ensure prosperity for the Chinese people. And indispensable to that goal is cheap, reliable, power, which is the reason that China is now building lots more coal-fired power plants – in 2021 alone they built 25 GW of capacity – equivalent to 25 x 1000MW plants.

By all accounts, his speech was well-received, with many people turning to his side. The beauty of prosecuting this case, as opposed to the other three, is that people don’t have to look at any evidence. They don’t even have to look at the weather.

The argument is at the same time simple, compelling, and irresistible. The question is this: will we see a major political party with the courage to take it on?

That part remains to be seen. But what is certain is this – the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes. If, for twenty years we’ve been telling people either that the world isn’t warming, or if it is we aren’t causing it, or if it is warmer but there’s no climate crisis, and not a single person has been persuaded by our arguments, then we have the brains of a tomato if we think anything is going to change.

Konstantin Kisin’s talk, and in particular the way it was received, fill me with hope that I haven’t had in years. It fills me with hope that if the case is prosecuted wisely, the climate change colossus can be brought to a grinding halt, politicians will unashamedly take on energy security as a political mantra, and the notion of climate change will at last be exposed as the unscientific, anti-human, regressive, apocalyptic cult that it is.

 

 

Save the Children and Us All from Climate Grooming

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Conclusion from Ben Pile’s Climate Resistance Video above:

Experts have used the authority of institutional science and medicine to convince people that a climate crisis is happening despite there being no scientific observational evidence for it. And this misuse of institutional authority has in turn been used to close down public democratic debate about far-reaching policy and to silence critics of the Green agenda. But computer simulations and hypothetical worlds are not reality and not evidence. They are science fiction and they are used to mislead people into believing that there is a climate crisis so that they may support radical climate policies.

(Question to then IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri) “What do you see as the next tools you could utilize to create change?
(Pachuri Response) “Children. I think we have to sensitize the young and tell them how their future is going to be affected if we don’t take action today. I think if we can get them to understand the seriousness of the problem they would probably shame adults into taking the right steps.”

Global warming and climate change are real, but climate policy is the far more real and more dangerous threat than climate change. The world has seen unprecedented progress in recent decades and much more needs to be done to eliminate problems such as poverty and disease. But by failing to confront green scare mongering, Global agencies, world leaders, politicians, scientists and the media have allowed a dark and dangerous ideology to fester. By causing a widespread ignorance of this progress which it now threatens to reverse, green scare mongering will turn the clock back for Humanity and civilization.

Ben Pile exposes how climate radicals are using media messaging to advance the climate crisis mass delusion in his substack article Behind the ‘climate crisis’ myth: green ideology.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The world is healthier, wealthier, and safer than it ever has been.
And most of this progress has been achieved in the era of global warming.
The green story does not add up.

In the eighties and nineties, Adherents of the precautionary principle argued that a hypothesis of a potentially civilisation-ending catastrophe merely needs to be plausible to be sufficient to compel action, and that the world cannot afford to wait for scientific knowledge to verify the threat with any certainty. This urgency was the basis of the Montreal Protocol on limiting ozone-depleting substances, and it was the hope of many greens that the same formulation could be used again to drive global agreements on climate change.

The problem for adherents of the precautionary principle is that, as is the case with all green ideologues’ prognostications, too much time passed without the events they were sure would befall us, undermining the original hypothesis. In the 1970s, before global warming had been invented, environmentalists proclaimed that civilisation stood on the brink of collapse. Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb were global best sellers, putting green politics at the top of the global political agenda, and cementing the end of post-war optimism with a terminally negative outlook that the West has not shaken off, despite the books’ manifest failures.

The precautionary principle (and many $billions of ersatz ‘philanthropic’ generosity) saved the greens and their ideological project the humiliation they deserved by adding an unending not-if-but-when caveat to their soothsaying. . . The precautionary principle is an article of faith, and work both ways when fully considered. Progress towards a global climate lockdown agreement has been slow in significant part because many countries have been unwilling to undermine the certain benefits of economic growth on the basis of uncertain speculation. The precautionary principle, has thus been of decreasing value towards advancing the climate agenda as time has passed.

There are only so many times even the most faithful are willing to climb the mountain
to wait for salvation from doom before doubt creeps in.

The new claim, intended to overcome the global climate policy agendas’ inertia, is that certainty has been achieved by science, and that scientists have shown that the world is in the grip of the very catastrophe that environmentalists had predicted: people are starving, diseases are rampant, storms, floods, wildfires and heatwaves kill thousands by the day, forcing millions from their homes and into poverty.

The problem, of course, is that it is not true. In every region of the world, and at every level of economic development, people are living healthier, wealthier, longer, and safer lives. In the few places where this trend of continued progress does not hold, other reasons better account for the failure than slightly different weather: failed states, corruption and conflict.

The problem for the green narrative then, as now, is that deaths from these diseases of poverty were falling, and have continued to fall, radically.

Between 2000 and 2019, the number of deaths from malaria in the world fell from 900 thousand to 560 thousand – given the world’s population increase, this is equivalent to a halving of the mortality rate. Over the same time, the number of deaths caused by diarrheal diseases fell from 2.4 million to 1.5 million. And deaths from malnutrition fell from 506 thousand to 212 thousand. What this means is not merely that there is no evidence of a climate crisis, there extremely good evidence of the opposite: humanity is thriving.

Many other metrics of human welfare bear out the same picture of reality. But try to explain this indubitable progress to the protestors who, on the words of UN chiefs, nonagenarian BBC voice-over artists and degenerate green ideologues of the Guardian and green blob, block roads and demand nothing less than the cancellation of industry and the economy and the immiseration of the entire world, to make certain that all of humanity’s development is undone. The good news provokes an angry and uncomprehending rage in green activists.

To compare the story of the climate crisis with the facts is
to betray one’s own children, country and world,
and to condemn future generations to an ‘unliveable planet’.

The facts and stats of the world are in contradiction to the ideological conception of nature held by the global green Great and Good and by the street-level environmentalists, but not the broader public. So what is this ideology, and how does it overwhelm its victims’ capacity for reason and facts?

As David Attenborough explains, it,

Our economies and political systems are unconsciously predicated on the belief that nature will continue to be a benign and regular provider of the conditions we need to thrive. […] Our stable and reliable planet no longer exists. The impacts of this destabilisation will profoundly impact every country on Earth.

We can know that this is a false belief, because it is a myth that nature has ever been anything but extremely hostile, rather than a benign ‘provider’. Hence, until the end of the 1880s, a quarter of all British children died before reaching their fifth birthday. In Germany, half of children did not survive that long. Globally, infant mortality was 22.4 per cent in 1950. In 2021, it was 3.7 per cent. The ‘planet’ is manifestly far less hostile to humanity than it was just a lifetime ago. And this is thanks to industries, to expanding access to markets, and to technological and scientific development – sheer artifice – not to Natural Providence. David Attenborough is as misled and misleading as he is a ‘national treasure’.

My Mind is Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts. H/T Bjorn Lomborg, WUWT

“There’s only one world”, a girl explains to the interviewer. “If we destroy it all, then we have no other place to live”. “Right now, we are not acting”, adds her little friend. “We should act now.”

If the words of global climate technocrats, so earnestly spoken by such innocent faces
is not an abomination, then nothing is.

Tiny children’s view of the world and their own futures have been poisoned by an ideology that has no care for facts, much less the children and their prosperity. Their heads have been deliberately filled by the false idea of a ‘climate crisis’ in order to make them instruments of a political agenda, against their own interests, far before they are equipped to understand the claims they reproduce.

Society needs to confront green ideology urgently.
It is the greatest threat to our safety and prosperity.

Please watch and share our film: Why There Is No Climate Crisis (and why people believe that there is)

Reuters Editor Comes Clean About CO2 Hysteria

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Neil Winton disavows his uncritically adopting global warming belief in his Daily Skeptic article:  Covering Climate Change for Reuters, I Thought CO2 to Blame for Rising Temperatures. I Was Wrong. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

If you wonder why much of the mainstream media seem united in accepting that the world will soon die unless humans don hair shirts, freeze in winter and walk instead of driving, you need to know about websites like Covering Climate Now (CCN).

Reuters and some of the biggest names in the news like Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, CBS News, and ABC News have signed up to support CCN, which brags that it is an unbiased seeker after the truth. But this claim won’t last long if you peer behind the façade. CCN may claim to be fair and balanced, but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.

CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense.

This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.

I have a particular interest in Reuters’ attitude because I spent 32 years there as a reporter and editor. The global news agency’s traditional insistence on high standards in reporting makes this liaison with CCN seem questionable.

When Reuters announced its tie-up with CCN in 2019 it said this, among other things.

The (CCN) coalition, which includes more than 350 organisations [there are many more now] has no agenda beyond embracing science and fair coverage and publishing more climate change content.

That is clearly not true. It has a partisan agenda and encourages reporters
to dismiss those with contrary opinions as ‘deniers’.   

The involvement of Reuters in CCN seems to me to be in direct contradiction to three of its 10 Hallmarks of Reuters Journalism – Hold Accuracy Sacrosanct, Seek Fair Comment, Strive For Balance and Freedom From Bias.

When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated.
I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong.

My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.

My reporting reflected the wide range of views, with Reuters typical “on the one hand this, on the other, that” style. But even then, the mainstream media seem to have run out of the energy required, and often lazily went along with the BBC’s faulty, opinionated thesis. It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.

Fast forward 20 years and firm proof CO2 was warming the climate still hasn’t been established, but politics has taken over. Sure, there are plenty of computer models with their hidden assumptions ‘proving’ man is guilty as charged, and the assumption that we had the power and knowledge to change the climate became embedded.

The Left had lost all of the economic arguments by the 1990s, and its activists eagerly grabbed the chance to say free markets and small government couldn’t save us from climate change; only government intervention could do that. Letting capitalism run free was a certain way to ensure the end of the planet; smart Lefties should take charge and save us from ourselves.

The debate about climate change is far from over. I’m not a scientist so I don’t know enough to say it’s all man-made or not. But politicians and lobbyists have decided that we are all guilty.

They are in the process of dismantling our way of life, ordering us to comply because it’s all for the future and our children. If we are going to give up our civilization, at the very least we ought to have an open debate. Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is that requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom.

Reuters should be leading this movement. All it has to do is stand by its 10 Hallmarks. And maybe tell CCN thanks but no thanks; it needs to apply Reuters principles to its climate reporting.

See Also Global Warming Theory and the Tests It Fails