Guest “attaboy” by David Middleton
Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and Green Book Award Winner Michael Shellenberger slaps down the apocalyptic climate change propagandists…
Nov 25, 2019
Why Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong
Michael ShellenbergerEnvironmental journalists and advocates have in recent weeks made a number of apocalyptic predictions about the impact of climate change. Bill McKibben suggested climate-driven fires in Australia had made koalas “functionally extinct.” Extinction Rebellion said “Billions will die” and “Life on Earth is dying.” Vice claimed the “collapse of civilization may have already begun.”
Few have underscored the threat more than student climate activist Greta Thunberg and Green New Deal sponsor Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The latter said, “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Says Thunberg in her new book, “Around 2030 we will be in a position to set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.”
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Apocalyptic statements like these have real-world impacts. In September, a group of British psychologists said children are increasingly suffering from anxiety from the frightening discourse around climate change.
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Journalists and activists alike have an obligation to describe environmental problems honestly and accurately, even if they fear doing so will reduce their news value or salience with the public. There is good evidence that the catastrophist framing of climate change is self-defeating because it alienates and polarizes many people. And exaggerating climate change risks distracting us from other important issues including ones we might have more near-term control over.
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First, no credible scientific body has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species.
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It’s not like climate doesn’t matter. It’s that climate change is outweighed by other factors.
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Last January, after climate scientists criticized Rep. Ocasio-Cortez for saying the world would end in 12 years, her spokesperson said “We can quibble about the phraseology, whether it’s existential or cataclysmic.” He added, “We’re seeing lots of [climate change-related] problems that are already impacting lives.”
That last part may be true, but it’s also true that economic development has made us less vulnerable, which is why there was a 99.7% decline in the death toll from natural disasters since its peak in 1931.
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What about sea level rise? IPCC estimates sea level could rise two feet (0.6 meters) by 2100. Does that sound apocalyptic or even “unmanageable”?
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What about claims of crop failure, famine, and mass death? That’s science fiction, not science.
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Does this mean we shouldn’t worry about climate change? Not at all.
One of the reasons I work on climate change is because I worry about the impact it could have on endangered species.
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But it’s not the case that “we’re putting our own survival in danger” through extinctions, as Elizabeth Kolbert claimed in her book, Sixth Extinction. As tragic as animal extinctions are, they do not threaten human civilization. If we want to save endangered species, we need to do so because we care about wildlife for spiritual, ethical, or aesthetic reasons, not survival ones.
And exaggerating the risk, and suggesting climate change is more important than things like habitat destruction, are counterproductive.
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As for fire, one of Australia’s leading scientists on the issue says, “Bushfire losses can be explained by the increasing exposure of dwellings to fire-prone bushlands. No other influences need be invoked.
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The same is true for fires in the United States. In 2017, scientists modeled 37 different regions and found “humans may not only influence fire regimes but their presence can actually override, or swamp out, the effects of climate.
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Climate scientists are starting to push back against exaggerations by activists, journalists, and other scientists.
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I asked the Australian climate scientist Tom Wigley what he thought of the claim that climate change threatens civilization. “It really does bother me because it’s wrong,” he said. “All these young people have been misinformed. And partly it’s Greta Thunberg’s fault. Not deliberately. But she’s wrong.”
But don’t scientists and activists need to exaggerate in order to get the public’s attention?
“I’m reminded of what [late Stanford University climate scientist] Steve Schneider used to say,” Wigley replied. “He used to say that as a scientist, we shouldn’t really be concerned about the way we slant things in communicating with people out on the street who might need a little push in a certain direction to realize that this is a serious problem. Steve didn’t have any qualms about speaking in that biased way. I don’t quite agree with that.”
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(Kerry) Emanuel and Wigley say the extreme rhetoric is making political agreement on climate change harder.
“You’ve got to come up with some kind of middle ground where you do reasonable things to mitigate the risk and try at the same time to lift people out of poverty and make them more resilient,” said Emanuel. “We shouldn’t be forced to choose between lifting people out of poverty and doing something for the climate.”
Happily, there is a plenty of middle ground between climate apocalypse and climate denial.
Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and Green Book Award Winner. He is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and other publications. His TED talks have been viewed over four million times.
Read full article at Forbes
There is a very expansive “middle ground between climate apocalypse and climate denial” . . . It’s called all of reality. Both climate apocalypse and climate denial are 100% fictional. I don’t know of anyone who denies the climate… I don’t even think that’s grammatically possible.
While I have a hunch that Mr. Shellenberger’s idea of a “middle ground” has very little overlap with my view of a “middle ground”, at least he recognizes the futility of the McKibben-AOC-Greta Axis of Mental Greentardation. My first thought was that this was a good thing. However, the fact that the Ken Caldeira was one of the scientists decrying the Apocalyptos struck me as odd. Caldeira invented the phrase “ocean acidification” out of whole cloth in 2003 for the express purpose of scaring the bejesus out of people.
This raises an important question. Which is a greater threat to liberty and prosperity: the McKibben-AOC-Greta Axis of Mental Greentardation or the Michael Shellenberger middle-ground? On paper, the McKibben-AOC-Greta Axis of Mental Greentardation is clearly an existential threat to liberty and prosperity… But, it has an ice cube’s chance in Hell of becoming reality. On the other hand, a formidable political consensus could be formed around a reasonable middle-ground. Could Mr. Shellenberger’s simply be a “wolf in sheep’s clothing“?
Dial back the alarmism? How dare you!
Greta
The first generation of climate alarmists are finding themselves in the position of the sorcerer’s apprentice, they started something that they didn’t understand and now can’t control. They have left it too late to start saying ‘no need to panic’.
Great analogy Susan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_heq0a3bwY
Happy Turkey Day everyone. It’s OK to not eat insects.
Thank you, Susan, I was about to say the same thing. To Michael Shellenberger, I say: Diddums.
How does one deny the climate?
Fail to go along with the hubris and hysteria of the climate changers and you’ll have the answer in spades.
When will Climate Alarmists be treated like Climate Deniers? Will Anthony Watts drive across the US in his Prius to deliver his message to the UN?
Man made Climate change is a danger, but it is a danger because Alarmists are making people freak out, not because it is .1 degree warmer now than in 2010.
“…Thunberg in her new book, “Around 2030 we will be in a position to set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.” ”
First off, I question that she actually wrote any book. I’d be more likely to believe that someone did it for her and she put her name on it. No, I will NOT support that idiocy by buying a copy of it. It was TWADDLE!!!
Second, trying to mollify people by appearing to take the so-called middle of the road only means that the Greenbeaners and Warmunistas are losing ground, and Shellenberger knows it. Hysteria only goes so far in stirring the pot. The 1930s did not have the mass communications tech that we have now. There are plenty of people on the sidelines, the quiet ones, who can and do think for themselves and have enough common sense to know what is really going on.
And third, since Mother Nautre/Gaia/Whatever you want to call it is the one in charge of how this planet takes care of itself, the likelihood of it catching fire is slim. Not a high enough O2 content in the atmosphere, and this is not either the Silurian or the Carboniferous periods. The people who want to stir up trouble with such hysterics do it for the purpose of grabbing “power” and/or money, and not much else. And neither power nor authority (perceived or otherwise) will put food on your table or keep you warm in the cold or keep your water clean and potable.
This is interesting, too. This attempt at stirring the pot using false claims and hysterical language like some auto auction sales ad on TV is failing. The people who started this load of wet manure are clearly showing themselves for what they are: money-grubbing con artists who are only looking to line their own pockets at your expense and mine.
I agree that nuclear power in the form of smaller and better-built facilities with properly trained crews is more likely to be the best way to reduce pollution, but there is no reason that anyone should be denied the right to have a warm home, clean water, and food on the table.
Why on earth anyone would even remotely aim at destroying an advancing civilization is beyond me, but think about this for a brief moment, because I did when my monitor failed and I had to get a new one: if all the high-tech junk that large numbers of people – including the so-called “elites” – depend on for just about everything went offline and could not be restarted, period, what would that do to THEM? That means no telephones, not even landlines; no electronic junk of any kind working; nothing. Just think about it.
I’ve said this before. They are more dependent on it than any of us are. They don’t even do their own laundry, for Pete’s sake!!
This bit of histrionic hysteria didn’t last as long as I thought it would. It is coming to an end. If we are moving slowly into a Dalton Minimum, which may have started with the solar minimum in 2006, then we should be preparing for that, not for some elusive and unlikely “world on fire” claptrap. And anyway, someone please tell me how you’re going to set an entire planet on fire when the fuel load is not nearly sufficient to sustain something like that, never mind the lack of enough O2 to sustain it? It is all hogwash, and we all know it. If it weren’t – well, Anthony Watts might never have put up this blog to rebut such nonsensical hogwash, and David Middleton wouldn’t be here giving us another look at what’s going on.
If this article posted tells us that there is a crack in the shell of the Greenbeaners smug certainty, FINE BY ME!!!! May it continue to grow and grow until the contents fry on the sidewalk!!
All of you: have a nice Thanksgiving, and let’s be grateful for what we do have: a human-friendly planet that sustains us. So far, another one like this hasn’t been found yet, but some day one will be found, and when it does, the exodus to get there will begin.
There is also the issue that the “extreme rhetoric” is so easy to disprove that it removes all credibility from the entire argument. If climate scientists were all like Michael Shellenberger, I would be more willing to consider their views. As it is, the CAGW Alarmist side is just fantastical science fiction, not worth even listening to other than to ridicule them.
Jeff: As it is, the CAGW Alarmist side is just fantastical science fiction, not worth even listening to other than to ridicule them.
Agreed. I have a story in the works set 325 years in the future, in which the ice sheets are advancing again and people – especially the farmers- have left Earth for warmer planets. If/when we do find another Earth-type planet ( and I believe that will happen soon), then the idea of a new home in the Sun will start to materialize.
Meantime, let’s just take care of this planet, keep it clean, and tell the Doomsdayers to go pound it. And get people to stop giving them money.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!!!
The climate, here, there, everywhere, in whole, in part, and on average, is out of social compliance. #Aborted… Cancelled
In recent decades sci-fi and disaster movies have benefited from CGI giving them a sense of plausibility even when the plots are implausible because they look realistic. For many, if not all, the time spent watching films/ fiction has increased exponentially so that many spend more time watching films than being outside in nature. The plots in many disaster movies are pretty similar in that there will be someone up against big business or the government trying to warn about some impending disaster. The ‘science’ in such plots is just a caricature of science as real science may not be that entertaining or even allow the plot to work.
Recent assertions of global disaster using labels such as ‘Climate Emergency’ ‘Climate Breakdown’, ‘Climate meltdown’, ‘6th mass extinction’, could have come out of an X-Men or Batman film. I think this is why there are so many movie stars and children getting worked up because both are highly impressionable and are capable of believing anything, after all that’s what movie stars are paid to do.
–On the other hand, a formidable political consensus could be formed around a reasonable middle-ground. Could Mr. Shellenberger’s simply be a “wolf in sheep’s clothing“?–
Well, I think of greatest threat is the massive child abuse from the climate doom brainwashing. And Mr. Shellenberger mightbe doing something to lessen future child abuse. So, that is good.
In terms of global climate, the most important aspect, is that we are living in an Icebox climate.
It is broadly known that we living in a Ice Age and it’s thought the cooling and the resulting increase in grasslands in Africa. had significant impact on evolution of the modern Human. Or the modern human evolved within our Ice Age, which has lasted millions of years and we currently within this Ice Age.
It is common to refer to glacial periods as ice ages, but it most accurate to say our Ice Age has glacial and interglacial periods.
An ice age or icebox or icehouse climate is characterized as having a cold ocean and polar ice caps. We currently have a cold ocean and polar icecaps. And there is nothing that humans have been doing which will change the global condition of having cold oceans and polar ice caps.
Another aspect of our current Ice Age, is the low CO2 levels. Though it has been reported that some past ice ages have had higher CO2 levels, our present Ice Age has had particularly low levels of CO2.
The CO2 levels have been so low, that one could imagine a myth, that Humans were created by God or Gaia or some other ruling power, in order to increase global CO2 levels in order to prevent a possible Mass Extinction.
If such wild fantasy is true, it seems Humans have so far failed to cause a significant effect in terms increasing Global CO2 levels. Though it seems the Chinese are currently doing the best they can.
But generally I don’t think humans doing enough to increase CO2 levels, if one assumes this is actually their divine task. But I am not religious, just saying it’s possible to have such religious views, and viewing a human task to generate more global CO2 could more reasonable than many other religious ideas.
I don’t think having higher CO2 levels would cause much warmer, and seems possible within thousands years we could enter a glacial period. And I don’t think having higher CO2 levels would prevent this from occurring.
And hope at that time, people don’t have the religious view, that emitting more CO2 will prevent it.
Though it seems that if we knew more about Climate, one could prevent us from entering a glacial period.
We in the absurd situation of having rather cold ocean and being worried about this Ice Age getting a bit warmer. We recovering from a recent cool period which called the Little Ice Age. There is no sane reason to desire to return to such cooler conditions of the Little Ice Age. Nor is there any reason to assume we will be returning to such colder conditions { I don’t think the Solar Grand Minimum {if it occurs} will returns us to Little Ice Age conditions before 2100 AD. Though the current Solar Min has been and probably will continue to affect “global weather”. It seems there could be good skiing conditions in our near future and other severe cold weather conditions. I am currently looking at 4″ of snowfall in high desert of southern California. Not something I would assign to global warming. but probably or possibly related being in Solar min. But it’s weather, and nothing to do global warming or cooling. Though if we had a significant amount of global warming, it would be very unlikely weather.
They’re starting to figure out that if the insanity doesn’t stop soon, it’s going to cost them 100 seats in Congress and two Supreme Court seats. It’s called a strategic retreat.
“He who fights and runs away
Lives to fight another day.”
I think Shellenberger is hoping to channel the various concerns about the environment into support for nukes. That’s more or less his job. Cleaner than fossil fuels, no CO2 emissions, etc.
For some reason we’re not supposed to say: burning fossil fuels has brought prosperity; no reasonable substitute has been found. Michael Kelly has written from an engineer’s perspective: when JFK promised man on the moon, experts knew that the necessary pieces of technology existed, it was a matter of spending a lot of money to put them together. Today the technology simply doesn’t exist to “do without fossil fuels.”https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/11/Kelly-1.pdf
It’s more and more mainstream to say: if we have to choose between prosperity and some kind of heretofore unkown moral purity, we’ll go for the purity.
IT’S A TRAP!
First of all, the climate change issue has nothing to do with actual, real-world climate, so we are not even speaking the same language. As David pointed out, there is no such thing as a climate change denier, so how do we find a middle ground between lunacy and something that doesn’t exist? There is no middle between two undefined points in two unrelated subjects!
The whole purpose of the climate change issue is to bring about dramatic economic and social change, away from capitalism and towards socialism, especially in the Western World. Michael Shellenberger wants to move towards socialism and the fear mongering has done all that it can towards that goal. It has reframed the discussion so that it is now safe to push towards what was really desired all along.
He may appear to be compromising on climate, but that was never the target anyway. He is not compromising on the real goal of a global socialist ruling class. Meeting him halfway would put him exactly where he wanted to be all along.
“Caldeira invented the phrase “ocean acidification” out of whole cloth in 2003 for the express purpose of scaring the bejesus out of people”
Well he didn’t scare me but I still fell for it until someone here at this website pointed me to some “other reading” that changed my views. One of the many reasons I read this site often. I learn lots here and I’m exposed to a lot of different points of view (always a good thing IMHO).
Can someone please tell Australuia’s ABC.
Quote from their online story this morning.
It’s time to listen to the kids, Professor Steffen said.
“The bottom line is, we’re saying the schoolchildren have got it right — this is a climate emergency.”
Link to full article. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-11-28/climate-emergency-kids-are-right/11735942
Lagarde wants ECB to run climate change…
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/analysts-stunned-after-lagarde-demands-key-role-ecb-climate-change
The statement that koalas are functionally extinct is simply a lie. It is fake news taking advantage of natural disaster. It is an appalling example of the depths to which climate activists stoop.
Here in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, which has been seriously affected by recent fires, the Koala Hospital has been treating injured animals and has recently been granted significant funds to treat them and their kind well into the future. That funding would not be forthcoming if they were “functionally extinct”. Activists need to appreciate that their lies and nonsense has real effects on the environment they tell us they care so much about.
Definition from Baylon on lone dictionary.
Functional extinction is the extinction of a species or other taxon such that:
it disappears from the fossil record, or historic reports of its existence cease;
the reduced population no longer plays a significant role in ecosystem function; or
the population is no longer viable. There are no individuals able to reproduce, or the small population of breeding individuals will not be able to sustain itself due to inbreeding depression and genetic drift, which leads to a loss of fitness.
Certainly does NOT apply to koalas in my humble non-expert opinion. I only have to go 10km west to find a small population in Werribee Gorge. Further west along the Great Ocean Road they are plentiful almost to the point of becoming a danger to humans as tourist stop in the middle of the road to photograph them.
I am fully on board with climate change.
The planet has always warmed after a cold period and always entered a cold phase after a warm period.
That is called climate change. Alarmists do not own the term.
I think history shows that we will likely enter a cooling period once this very gradual warming phase has ended.
That will also be climate change
I cannot, nor can any scientist or model accurately and safely predict when this next change will occur.
The consequences of warming do not seem to be very severe but past glaciations can attest to the extreme dangers of a significant cooling. Happily the time frames involved make that rather irrelevant to us as is warming.
Seems they are now are afraid they can’t control the attack dogs they unleashed.
I think there is room in the “middle ground” for legitimate “no regrets” efforts such as this one (even if it has zero impact on the climate): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
How does Tom Wigley know that Greta’s misstatements are not deliberate? She gains a lot through her alarmism.
David,
You might be interested, if you don’t already know of.
Tracey Henderson of Kosmos Energy
I’d say the later.
I’d said some time ago something along the lines that “The Nut from NY (AOC) is getting so press because she makes the rest of the nuts seem less cracked.”
Same thing here. Either path leads to where we don’t want to go. The later is just slower
(Think of the frog dropped in a pot of boiling water vs the frog in the pot where the heat is gradually raised until the water boils. Either way, the frog is dead.)
The bushfires in Aus are not from climate change, 85% are caused by people by accident and/or deliberate.
Alongside arsonists causing some of the Australian bushfires has reportedly been a decline in controlled burning to reduce risks, at the insistence of the woke.
Given what Shellenberger says, shouldn’t XR & co. be on trail for the psychological damage their insane ranting is doing to kids?
Schellenberger did a great service spotting the wolf in “philosophers” clothing, Martin Heidegger – see above.
But the question is what made Martin Heidegger so dangerous, that even the Nurenberg trial did not indict him?
See Karl Jasper’s letter to the Judge, that Heidegger never again be allowed to lecture in a university, because he was “mesmerising”, a danger to young students. Today that might sound naive, and Heidegger’s “philosophy” translated to english by his mistress Hannah Arendt, ostensibly “left”, is fully broadcast in all universities world wide. Slipped under the carpet is that this great mesmeriser was Hitler’s ghostwriter.
It is no wonder that campuses are in disarray.
As to mesmerism today, see Edgar Poe’s harrowing story :
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
https://poestories.com/read/facts
And wonder at the GND, the GFI, and the FED#s actions, not to mention Ursilas green EIB, nor Lagarde’s green ECB.