More Histrionics. More Noise Please. We're Desperate.

The Way of the Fool

The IPCC has published its latest broadside in a flailing attempt to get its fictitious anthropogenic apocalypse back on track.  It's got to the stage when it is becoming amusing.  We are now in the denouement stage of the plot.  We are in clear and present danger! shrieks the siren.  All kinds of calamities are about to fall upon the human race if the global temperature rises by between 2 and 4 degrees in the next one hundred years.  Case and argument is weak.  Shout louder. 

Excuse us.  Pardon.  Two degrees.  That hardly sounds like a calamity.  No, well, the script used to read eight to ten degrees, but the scaremongering and Chicken Littling has been toned down just a bit, especially since global temperatures have shown no signs of going up over the past fifteen years--despite carbon dioxide disgorgement continuing on its merry way over that time.  But in order to get action, a calamity of some sort must be concocted.  A "clear and present danger" must be manufactured from somewhere to make governments and the poor suckers they govern get in line.

Whilst the apocalyptic orchestra has toned down the volume, it has increased the screeching.  No harmonies or melodies in sight.
  This latest piece of IPCC desperation tries to paint the consequences of two degrees of warming over one hundred years in the most lurid, frightening, sensational, armageddon-esque lights possible.  To re-terrify the Commentariat and its chattering classes.  To use fear to get them to fall in line.  But as the years pass, the horror story more and more becomes farcical.

We note that some dumb media are striving their best to do what is expected of them.  This from Isaac Davison, in the NZ Herald:

New Zealand is unprepared for sea level rises of half a metre by the end of the century that could turn 1-in-100 year flooding events into annual occurrences, a blockbuster report on climate change has revealed today.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's much-anticipated climate update found that New Zealand had a significant "adaptation deficit" in the face of human-influenced global warming of between 2C and 4C by 2100.

The UN organisation's analysis said the country was already witnessing climate change in the form of extreme weather events, and could expect more frequent and more intense storms and damage to coastal infrastructure and low-lying ecosystems as a result of rising oceans.  New Zealand scientists described the report as a wake-up call which should prompt New Zealand to "take its head out of the sand".

A "blockbuster report".   What a hoot.  More like a Roald Dahl bedtime story to terrify four year olds.  The UN gravely tells us that we are already witnessing climate change--as, of course, we have for the past five thousand years.  Folks, we may take you with a bit more seriousness if you dump the specious descriptor "climate change" to cover for what you really mean--"global warming".  But the hard data does not support your propaganda, so you have engaged in trickery and deceit, trying to fool people.  No-one can deny "climate change" because the climate is changing all the time, whereas global warming is fictional.  That alone reveals your mettle.  But the only ones you are scaring are young children.  Adults long ago worked it out.  That's why climate change barely registers in surveys of the public as something about which those with common-sense are concerned about. 

What is even more of a hoot is the cacophonous chorus of "the science is settled" by which is meant, "We don't want to talk about whether global temperatures are rising or not.  It's too embarrassing.  We know that they are not.  So we will just assert that they are and insult anyone who dares suggest otherwise.  We will beg the question.  We will assume what has to be proven.  Meanwhile, we will talk about all the horrendous consequences if it were true.  That way, we will more likely keep everyone in line."  It's what propagandists do.


But the chuckles get even louder when the NZ government responds to the latest diatribe of horror.  It has expertly palmed it off like a magician at the top of his craft.  So clever, so deserved.  Firstly, the NZ government welcomed the UN report.  "Good one, boys. We love this stuff."  Next, the assertion that New Zealand is taking all of this climate apocalypse stuff really, really seriously--delivered, of course, in sober, sotto voce tones.  Then, the claim that the government has taken plenty of steps and measures to ensure that no calamities will cross New Zealand shores on its watch as it battles heroically against global warming.  And what it actually does as little as possible--which is precisely the right thing to do--because, underneath it all, the present NZ government knows that global warming catastrophism is a faux calamity, and even if it weren't there are no votes in it anyway. 

Climate Change Minister Tim Groser said the report backed the view that adaptation was as important part of dealing with climate change that could not be ignored.  "While much of our focus is on getting international agreement on reducing emissions, some change can't be avoided so we must be prepared to adapt."  He noted that on top of the risks that this country faced, it could also benefit from reduced energy demand because of warmer winters and some regions could observe increases in spring pasture growth.

The IPCC report started out trying to moderate the extremism of previous efforts.  It not only watered down to more realistic levels the degrees of expected global warming, it also sought to call not for costly radical intervention but for gradual adaptation to it.  James Delingpole:

The economic costs of 'global warming' have been grossly overestimated, a pre-release leaked report - shortly to be published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - has admitted.  Previous reports - notably the hugely influential 2006 Stern Review - have put the costs to the global economy caused by 'climate change' at between 5 and 20 percent of world GDP.  But the latest estimates, to be published by Working Group II of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, say that a 2.5 degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures by the end of the century will cost the world economy between just 0.2 and 2 percent of its GDP.

If the lower estimate is correct, then all it would take is an annual growth rate of 2.4 percent (currently it's around 3 percent) for the economic costs of climate change to be wiped out within a month.  This admission by the IPCC will come as a huge blow to those alarmists - notably the Stern Review's author but also including everyone from the Prince of Wales to Al Gore - who argue that costly intervention now is our only hope if we are to stave off the potentially disastrous effects of climate change.

But the summary of the Report reverts again to the old, tired, extremist alarmism.  Got to get those troops in line and moving.  Got to strike the fear of Hades into them.

Unfortunately, those expecting the IPCC's Working Group II's report to effect a new note of realism in global economic policy on climate change may be disappointed.  That's because the Summary for Policymakers (the only part of the IPCC's reports that policymakers tend to read) will - as usual - strike a much more alarmist tone than the contents of the more detailed report actually justify.

"Basically, it has been Pachauri-ised," says Benny Peiser of the independent think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Peiser is referring to the IPCC's jet-setting chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian former railway engineer who has consistently put an alarmist complexion on all the IPCC's Summaries for Policymakers.

It turns out that the level of global warming now being speculated upon in the IPCC report is mild.  It turns out that if true, a bit of global warming will be good for us.   And that's the whole matter in a nutshell.  Climate changes.  It cycles through warm and cold phases.  Human being adapt.  End of story.  But they adapt as and when something happens, not one hundred years in advance on the basis of something that might happen but most likely will not.  That is the way of the wise.

But to act now to prevent something which will gradually emerge over a one hundred year period, but which may not, and which, if it did, will have a slew of positive side-effects, would be idiocy.  It is the way of the fool.