University College London
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A climate scientist has shared his insight into the dystopian future which will occur unless we do as he says.
Don’t despair – climate change catastrophe can still be averted
The future looks fiery and dangerous, according to new reports. But political will and grassroots engagement can change this
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As a research scientist in this field, I can give some nuance to the headlines. One common way of thinking about climate change is the lower the future carbon dioxide emissions, the less warming and the less havoc we will face as this century progresses. This is certainly true, but as the summer heatwave and the potential hothouse news remind us, the shifts in climate we will experience will not be smooth, gradual and linear changes. They may be fast, abrupt, and dangerous surprises may happen. However, an unstoppable globally enveloping cascade of catastrophe, while possible, is certainly not a probable outcome.
Yet, even without a hothouse we are on track to transform Earth this century. The world, after 30 years of warnings, has barely got to grips with reducing carbon dioxide emissions. They need to rapidly decline to zero, but after decades of increases, are, at best, flatlining, with investments in extracting new fossil fuels continuing, including last month’s scandalous announcement that fracking will be allowed in the UK. Temperatures have increased just 1C above preindustrial levels, and we are on course for another 2C or 3C on top of that. Could civilisation weather this level of warming?
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It is then easy to see these intersecting crises dovetailing with calls from the new far-right populists for strong authoritarian leaders to solve these problems. Inward-looking nationalists could then move further away from the internationalism needed to ensure the continuation of stable global food supplies and to manage migration humanely. And without cooperative internationalism serious carbon dioxide mitigation will not happen, meaning the underling drivers of the problems will exacerbate, leading to a lock-in of a deteriorating, isolationist, fascist future.
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Who but a climate scientist could so eloquently establish the link between permitting fracking in the UK, and the global downfall of Democracy?
Carbon dioxide emissions need to decline to zero? Are we talking about the extinction of all animal and plant life here?
OMG….do you know what this means????
It’s even worse than we thought! 😉
https://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk//people/academic-staff/simon-lewis
Simon is a plant ecologist by training with a central focus on the tropics and global environmental change including climate change. His primary interest is in how humans are changing the Earth as a system. This is because one of the key issues facing humanity in the 21st century will be to address how a population of at least 8 billion can lead fulfilled lives without breaching environmental thresholds that may cause serious social, economic and environmental disruption, or even more severe outcomes.
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Simon is a plant biologist, sort of, I think, hard to tell for sure.
His very-scary statements are unsupported by credible evidence.
IN FACT, THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS ARE DEMONSTRABLY TRUE:
1. There is NO credible evidence of dangerous man-made global warming – it was significantly warmer in recorded human history
2. There is highly credible evidence that the sensitivity of climate to increasing atmospheric CO2 is low, less than ~1C/(2xCO2).
3. There is NO credible evidence of wilder weather over the past several decades.
4. There is nothing unusual happening in global climate over the past several decades.
5. The only measurable impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 is much higher plant and crop yields.
6. Atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high, it is alarmingly low for the continued survival of terrestrial life on Earth.
7. CO2 reduction and CO2 abatement schemes are destructive nonsense that increase energy costs and Excess Winter Deaths.
8. Most green energy schemes are not green, produce little useful (dispatchable) energy, and de-stabilize vital energy systems.
9. Twenty times more people die from cool and cold weather than from warm and hot weather.
10. Increasing atmospheric CO2 may cause some mild warming that should reduce Excess Winter Deaths, globally about 2 million/year.
11. Increasing atmospheric CO2 is strongly net beneficial for humanity and the environment.
12. Climate change is overwhelmingly natural and adaptation is the best approach to dealing with it, to date.
WHAT IF THE ENTIRE VERY-SCARY GLOBAL WARMING ALARMIST MANTRA IS FALSE?
BECAUSE IT IS!
……And one additional little tidbit to ponder: So-called renewables must have financial subsidies which can be provided ONLY by economic endeavors which are powered by economically efficient fossil fuels — nuclear included.
Trying to provide subsidies using the magic fake money that the Federal Reserve conjures out of their fake magic hole in the air is just not sustainable.
I agree with you Thomas.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/22/why-are-utility-investors-and-renewable-energy-investors-are-like-oil-and-water/comment-page-1/#comment-2435107
We’ve known for decades that so-called “green energy” was not green and produced little useful energy. I first published this conclusion in 2002. It is slowly becoming obvious to all.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/19/president-no-longer-worried-about-co2-focus-on-alternative-energy-is-economic-says-obama-no-mention-of-climate/
Funny thing – the Globe and Mail was one of the biggest supporters of the Global Warming Scam and so-called “Green Energy”.
Note the huge subsidies:
13.5¢/kWh for worthless wind power and 64.2¢/kWh for worthless solar power.
Natural gas-fired FULLY DISPATCHABLE electric power can probably be generated today for about 4 cents per kWh.
Attaboy Doltan! Way to screw the Ontario manufacturing business!
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Ontario’s Green Dream Was Just a Fantasy
Across the countryside outside Toronto, wind turbines are spreading like the plague. They are being built over the objections of rural residents whose rights are being ignored by the Province of Ontario. They’re chewing up birds and billions of taxpayer dollars in the name of a green dream that’s nothing but a fantasy. In an effort to placate the voters, Premier Dalton McGuinty promises to trim the subsidies for solar and wind and to give rural communities more say.
However, these changes won’t affect contracts already in place. That means projects already approved, but not built, will be eligible to get 13.5¢/kWh for wind and 64.2¢/kWh for solar, keeping the building boom going for the next three or four years.
Green energy was supposed to launch a vast new industry in Ontario with the export of products and expertise to the world. But the world is losing interest. Instead the next energy boom, and the resulting jobs, will be due to brown energy in the form of low-cost natural gas.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/ontarios-green-dream-was-just-a-fantasy/article2369422/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/adam-radwanski/mcguinty-powers-up-a-compromise-on-renewable-energy-plan/article2368524/
Correct Thomas.
I posted this circa 2010:
The problem with most “green energy” is it is really “brown energy” – it has a strong aroma of the barnyard.
Brown energy is so inefficient that more energy goes into the manufacturing process that comes out as product – examples are wind power, solar power and corn ethanol.
A telltale characteristic of brown energy is that it requires life-of-project subsidies. Subsidies are defined here as a net inflow of taxpayers’ or consumers’ money to support the technology – this is not at all the same as a reduction in the high royalties and taxes paid by many fossil fuel producers.
There are some promising examples of real green energy, but they all have one factor in common – they do NOT require life-of-project subsidies.
Allan
“WHAT IF THE ENTIRE VERY-SCARY GLOBAL WARMING ALARMIST MANTRA IS FALSE?”
A very important question.
Their own ‘precautionary principle’ should be applied, meaning we should do nothing. By spending vast amounts on renewables, shutting down coal mines and coal fired power stations, nuclear energy and restricting fracking (in the UK at least) they are reacting not being cautious.
They are wrong and are condemning my children and grandchildren to a dystopian future but they are too obsessed with their own self importance to see that.
Hi HotScot,
This was recently posted on wattsup – and it is SO TRUE!
“Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it.”
– Stephen Vizinczey
The entire Canadian federal Cabinet seems to have this terrible affliction – they are either incredibly evil or incredibly stupid – and I just don’t think they are all that evil.
Your British Cabinet seems to be even more obtuse, and they have had a much longer time to learn just how idiotic their green energy schemes truly are!
As I recall, Britain’s foolish green energy schemes started with Tony Blair about 20 years go, and have continued until now, when there appears to be a slight perturbation in The Farce, with the permission to frack-on.
There may be method in their madness – the UK’s per-capita Excess Winter Mortality Rate this past year was about 2.5 times the average for the USA – with about 48,000 Excess Winter Deaths in the UK.
Green energy is a very effective method of killing off the elderly and the poor.
A plant biologist who doesn’t know that CO2 and warmth are good for plants.
A plant biologist who’s never grown a real plant, I’ll wager.
‘The future looks fiery and dangerous, according to new reports.’
Same as the old reports.
‘calls from the new far-right populists for strong authoritarian leaders to solve these problems.’
The ‘new far-right populists’ (sic) don’t think there is a problem. Nothing to ‘solve’ here.
Fascism: strong, autocratic central control of a private economy.
The only difference between fascism and communism is who owns the means of production.
From Roman Fasces – a fistfull of staves for its corporatist interests.
all bound by the rope of central authority
Notice the characteristic failure to specify where exactly this political willand grassroots engagement will have to take place.
Like, are they calling for it to take place in the world’s largest emitter, China? Thought not.
The advocates of this stuff never take the trouble to explain that if they take place in the US, or the OECD countries, the countries who account for over two thirds of global emissions will not benefit from them.
In fact, in most of them to engage in political will and grassroots engagement is a quick and speedy route to a re-education camp, without passing GO and without influencing emissions.
Be alert for this. We have to reduce emissions, we have to change in various ways…. Always ask: and who exactly do you mean by ‘we’? And why?
It would seem that the climate “crisis” is already leading to global fascism.
Otherwise known as crisis management. Odd that it rhymes with ISIS.
Remembering that the Fascists were actually a variety of socialists, not far right at all; the NAZI party was the German Socialist Party. So, yet again, everything these people say is completely wrong.
When insider Rosa Luxemburg pointed that out, the weekly jacket swapping, they murdered her.
The effort to control global CO2 emissions IS fascism.
(Amazing how the forces of evil always get it backwards, and they do it on purpose, the jerks.)
“calls from the new far-right populists for strong authoritarian leaders to solve these problems… leading to a lock-in of a deteriorating, isolationist, fascist future.”
The warmist’s increasing reliance on disingenuous Alinsky tactics, such as accusing your enemy of being exactly who you are and doing exactly what you do, is quite telling.
“The political left has never understood that, if you give the government enough power to create ‘social justice,’ you have given it enough power to create despotism. Millions of people around the world have paid with their lives for overlooking that simple fact.”
Thomas Sowell
As someone once said:
A government that is powerful enough to give you everything you want, is also powerful enough to take everything you have.
Anyone take the time to read some of the comments of that article at the Guardian? WOW what a bunch of depressed, frustrated, naive marxists complaining about trump and greedy capitalists, it is hilarious, and it even shows that some comments have been deleted due to not toeing the party line.
“The future looks fiery and dangerous, according to new reports.”
Every time I read statements of this kind, I am struck by the fact that global warming predicts the same end to the planet as Revelation does…….
“I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him.”
We could provide a lot of present day names for the rider of the pale horse but I won’t get into that as we all know them.
Clint Eastwoods Pale Rider was good. A different horse entirely.
Oh dear. Another day, another climate cuckaloo proseletyzing, knowing that whatever nonsense and idiocy he espouses will be happily snarfed up by the cackling, cooing, drooling True Believers, and heartily applauded by those in the Climate Industry.
Claim: Failure to Control CO2 Emissions will Lead to Global Fascism
The obvious solution is global communism, right? Have not but skimmed the responses but suppose most have that theme for our wackadoodle friends on the warmist bandwagon. A little knowledge of history will show that fascism has never been capable of achieving the level of evil produced by communism. Just compare the millions killed by each for a rough guide to level of evil. Even some of the various religious purges probably killed more people than fascism.
“Fascism” is only one step to the left to become ” Communism” and/or “Socialism”
I find it ironic that the author states “…calls from the new far-right populists for strong authoritarian leaders to solve these problems.”, when the leftist global warming proponents are, in fact, calling for essentially fascist-like actions to be taken to enact their policies.
Claim:
FailureAttempt to Control CO2 Emissions will Lead to Global FascismThere, fixed it for Simple Simon.
So our choices are the International Socialism of the “Climate Scientists” (f/k/a Stalinism), and nationalist fascism (f/k/a National Socialism a/k/a Nazism).
Waiter, I am sorry, I don’t think I am hungry. I’ll just have a cup of black coffee to go.
Run but no chance to hide. There is another choice, and the establishment knows very well they are on very thin ice.
Counter Claim: Attempts to “Control” CO2 Emissions will Result in Global Fascism
There, fixed it for you.
“new far-right populists for strong authoritarian leaders to solve these problems.” Sounds like the fascist writer is fishing for the job.
Actually, if you look at history, radical left-wing movements (Communism etc), tend to result in deprivation of freedoms and totalitarianism (at some scale, local, national or international). They pretend to be protecting the world from some kind of oppression (capitalism, colonialism, religion, etc), yet become the oppressors, once they have consolidated power.
What is “fascism”? Wikipedia says: “a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce…”
Isn’t that exactly what these greenie wackos are doing right now in virtually every “1st world” country? It seems to me that these “Green Fascists”, are indeed demanding control of industry, commerce, media and even personal speech and thought. Everywhere!
And they also promote the idea of “one world government”, through the United Nations. I don’t think it is possible to be more “ultra-national” than this: to establish a single government to rule the entire world!
So, “global fascism” is already here! CO2 had nothing to do with it, except provide a convenient pathway and roadmap for a complete social and economic revolution.
What the hell is ultranationalism? You must hate or despise all other nations? Then you cannot have allies, right? Then Mussolini’s Italy was totally not fascist?
Apparently more leaders like Trump are being elected lately…is Trump a Fascist?
Gleichschaltung, enabled by the Reichstag arson (9/11), means corporatist lockstep. The Roman Fasces of Il Duce Mussolini (praised by Time Mag) is the fistfull of corporatist interests.
Today the large social net corporate interests. have begun, in lockstep, to shut down dissent.
How long before they come for this blog? They even went after Ron Paul’s institute. All before the midterm elections.
It’s what globalism will bring. This censorship of the media by globalist capitalists is a warning sign.
If you want to use government to shut down your competition, you are a socialist, not a capitalist.
Just having lots of money, or running a big company is not sufficient to make one a capitalist.
“We suggest that a deep transformation based on a fundamental reorientation of human values, equity, behaviour, institutions, economies, and technologies is required,”
No fascism for us but if you’re in the market for porcine superiors to run the brave new Animal Farm then ahem!
https://cosmosmagazine.com/climate/earth-may-soon-become-inhospitable-to-current-human-societies
Again – they keep harping on this – once again alerting everyone to what they’re all about.
It’s like they’re programmed. And all this robot-like collectivist conformity apparently leaves them absent of sufficient creativity to even deviate from the playbook enough to keep from making it so damned obvious.
I’ve called this blind and absolute hypocrisy before but, honestly, how can anyone lack self-awareness to this degree? Some of it HAS to be deliberate.
In a way, I HOPE it is – the thought of such a large segment of the human race being not much more than a collective ant-farm, is somehow more disturbing than outright villainy.
You can at least reason with a crook – zealot zombies, not so much.