Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom

If you read one book on climate change, let it be this one

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

There are many books on climate change, from both sides of the debate. On our side, the books are better written, scientifically sounder and a lot closer to the truth than on the totalitarian side. Garth Paltridge, Ian Plimer, Gregory Wrightstone and the late Christopher Booker are among many sceptical authors who have written excellent, elegant and informative books.

Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, left when it ceased to be concerned about the environment and became just another profiteering, hard-Left front group – in his words “a racket peddling junk science”. He has now written the best book about climate change that I have read – and I have read many.

The title, Fake invisible catastrophes and threats of doom, is clunky. But the book itself is written in Patrick’s characteristic, gentle, easy-going style so that the non-scientific reader can understand it easily. The book is already available on Amazon in advance of publication, and Patrick is already getting rave reviews from readers. Here is one:

“I just bought a Kindle version. I cannot believe it. I’m into the 3rd chapter. It clarifies in such a fine detail even for non-scientists like me. I called my tennis partner and canceled the game. I’ll be sitting with the book until done and then I’ll read it again.”

The central thesis of the book is this –

A while back it dawned on me that the great majority of scare stories about the present and future state of the planet, and humanity as a whole, are based on subjects that are either invisible, extremely remote, or both. Thus, the vast majority of people have no way of observing and verifying for themselves the truth of these claims predicting these alleged catastrophes and devastating threats. Instead, they must rely on the activists, the media, the politicians, and the scientists – all of whom have a very large financial and/or political stake in the subject – to tell them the truth. This welcomes the opportunity to simply invent narratives such as the claim that “CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing a climate emergency.”

No one can actually see, or in any way sense, what CO₂ might actually be doing because it is invisible, odorless, tasteless, silent and cannot be felt by the sense of touch. Therefore, it is difficult to refute such claims because there is nothing to point to and tangibly expose the falsity of these claims. One can’t simply point to visible CO₂ and say, “Look what awful things CO₂ is doing over there.” Thus, CO₂ as a harmful, world-ending emission is an almost perfect subject to invent and propagate a doomsday story, and this fact has not gone unnoticed by those inclined to peddle unsubstantiated fabrications. CO₂ has become the scapegoat for an entire laundry list of negative effects that could require 118 books to record and tabulate. Indeed, the website www.goodreads.com lists 118 books on the subject of climate change; and that’s confined to books exclusively written in the English language.

When one studies these “narratives” of invisible and remote circumstances, it is hard to avoid noticing that the purveyors often stoop to ridiculing and shaming, and likewise exhibit an unwillingness to discuss the allegations in a civilized manner. It is virtually impossible to engage in debate. as they usually dismiss those who question their narrative as a skeptic, liar, denier, or in the pocket of “big oil.” And if the alleged skeptic has employment, these narrators will work underhandedly to have you removed from your livelihood or position. In summary, these purveyors of global environmental catastrophes are definitely a scurrilous and dishonest lot. Healthy skepticism is at the very heart of scientific inquiry, and it has played an integral role in determining factual, scientific truth. It is the duty of scientists to be skeptical of all new claims, especially when they are predictions of catastrophes that have not yet occurred.

Fake Invisible Catastrophes covers a lot of ground in a short compass: “Africa’s oldest baobab trees are dying at an unprecedented rate, and climate change may be to blame” [USA Today], “93% of the Great Barrier Reef is practically dead” [Huffpost], “The Great Barrier Reef is now terminal” [National Geographic], polar bears in the Arctic, a million species allegedly threatened with extinction, garbage in the Pacific, genetically modified food, fear of nuclear radiation, forest fires, mass walrus deaths and ocean “acidification”, which Patrick describes as “a complete fabrication”.

The hard science is confined to a single, massive chapter, Climate of fear and guilt, which Patrick placed third in the book so that readers would not be frightened off by it right at the outset. Yet it is a clear, compelling chapter dealing with the numerous science fictions peddled by the profiteers of doom. The chapter lists some of the thousands of alleged harms from our sins of emission: higher temperatures, lower temperatures, more snow, less snow, more drought, more floods, higher sea level, fewer glaciers, no ice at the North Pole, mass species extinction, more storms, stronger storms, burning forests, dying coral reefs, disappearing fish, fatal heatwaves, skinnier pigs, fatter horses, failing crops, food shortages, acid oceans, billions of climate-change refugees, more cancer, more heart disease, more lung disease, more mental illness, fewer French wines.

Patrick bluntly states: “The fact is there is no hard evidence that any of these things have been or will be triggered by human-caused emissions of CO₂. It is all conjecture based on the hypothesis that carbon dioxide controls temperature, which itself has never been determined as fact. More importantly, most of these claims are predictions about things that haven’t occurred to date and may never occur.”

The science chapter points out that science is not done by consensus (“not a valid scientific term but a social and politicalk term”), and that many of the world’s greatest scientists – Galileo, mendel, Darwin and Einstein – overthrew the pre-existing consensus.

One of Patrick’s favorite scientific points is given a good showing in the science chapter: The great decline of CO₂ – why did it happen? “Beginning about 150 million years ago, carbon dioxide has steadily declined to the lowest known level in the history of life on Earth. During the last glacial maximum, 20,000 years ago, CO₂ fell to about 180 ppm, only 30 ppm above the level where plants begin to die from CO₂ starvation.” Had it not been for us, within a few million years enough CO₂ would have left the atmosphere to starve most plants and trees.

And here is how temperatures in the deep ocean have declined since 50 million years ago:

Even Homer nods. The following graph of Central England temperatures compared with global CO₂ emissions in millions of tonnes uses a statistical dodge usually perpetrated by the climate fanatics.

The graph appears to show that the former have barely changed, though the latter have soared. The truth is that the y axis of the CO₂ graph has been stretched, while that of the temperature graph has been compressed. Let us uncompress it.

The trend is little more than 1 degree in 360 years, or less than a third of a degree per century. But almost three-fifths of that warming was in the 30 years since 1990, since when our damp island has warmed at a rate equivalent to 2 degrees per century:

Aside from a few nits like this, Patrick’s book is a first-class read. Even I, who have had the climate as one of my interests for 15 years, found much in it that I did not know. The book will be expecially valuable for those who have, until now, been content to drift along with the Party Line. To them, the book will be a revelation: the desanctifying of Attenborough is particularly satisfying.

These days, best-seller lists are heavily influenced by pre-publication sales. So, if you order now, you will be of real value to the marketing campaign. And Patrick, who has taken more knocks than most of us for daring to question the profiteers of doom, deserves our support.