The Hill goes Full Climate Hysteria

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to The Hill contributor Stuart Mackintosh, “The climate change problem is so large and so all-consuming we can fail to get our collective hands and minds around it.”.

Climate change is no longer a probability — it’s time to face reality

BY STUART MACKINTOSH, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —  02/12/22 09:01 AM EST 2,389
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

The climate change problem is so large and so all-consuming we can fail to get our collective hands and minds around it. The timescale is so long we fail to plan properly. Too often we look backward for lessons when the probability of severe weather events such as fires in CaliforniaSiberiaAustralia, or hurricanes and typhoons are increasing in severity and number rather than remaining the same year-to-year. We look at past averages for solace even though this gives us the wrong probability for severe climate-related events. Perhaps most worryingly of all, we fail almost completely to account for epoch-shifting tipping points.  

The late economist Martin Weitzman calculated the was a non-zero probability that failure to address climate change would end our civilization. This dangerous outcome would be brought closer through interlinked tipping points such as the end of summer Arctic Icemelting of the world’s Alpine glaciers, the slowing and halting of the Gulf Stream, the loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the dieback of the Amazon rainforest, or the collapse of the West Antarctic ‘Doomsday’ glacier. The tipping points are many and terrifying, and all are being pulled closer by our failures to understand the risks. I argue in “Climate Crisis Economics” we must factor in these horrific tipping points so we properly account for the risks before 

Weitzman in “Climate Shock” also estimated the chance of the global temperature rising by a staggering 6 degrees Celsius at a whopping 10 percent. Yet because of our inability to understand probabilities and what economist Mark Carney calls the tragedy of our horizons too many of us underestimate the climate change dangers, to our peril. Yet if I put it this way — if you knew that there was a 10 percent chance of you or your children being killed walking down a street in your neighborhood you would act. You would demand action, more policing, better streetlights, more expenditures to ensure such an event did not occur; or you would move, refusing to countenance such risks to your family. What we all need to do is adjust our estimates of risks probability and keep doing so.  

Read more: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/593870-climate-change-is-no-longer-a-probability-its-time-to-face-reality

The world is not going to heat up 6C in the next century, but even if it did, civilisation would endure.

The idea humans couldn’t adapt to warmer conditions is absurd. Cities would need better drainage systems if rainfall increased, you can almost walk down the street drains in my hometown. People would want better air conditioning in Summer. The asphalt on roads would need to be upgraded. But none of these problems are insurmountable.

Food supply would not even blip. Farmers would need to do is copy agricultural practices from warmer regions. Most food crops are tolerant of a very broad range of growing conditions. Potato varieties developed in Maine, USA are a major crop in subtropical Bundaberg, Queensland.

When the British colonised Australia, farmers were, within a few months, transported directly from a place with a 56F average high temperature to a place with a 73F average high temperature – like experiencing an instant 17F (9C) global warming. After a few false starts, like planting grain in fall (the people in charge didn’t know the seasons are flipped in the Southern Hemisphere), they did just fine, using crops and food animals they had mostly brought from Britain.

6C over 100 years would not be a problem.

What about superstorms wiping out crops? My response to that – the age of the dinosaurs, a far warmer world than today, supported an ecosystem with giant animals at the top of the chain. Does that sound like an ecosystem clinging to viability, or was it a vibrant tropical riot bursting with plant growth and productivity?

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Tom Halla
February 13, 2022 2:09 pm

Yeah, we are approaching a tipping point where all these bad things that have not happened yet will occur?
Typhoons and tornadoes are essentially flat, and one degree since the end of the Little Ice Age is hardly ominous.
But we are all gonna die, right soon now, so send money!!!

Reply to  Tom Halla
February 13, 2022 3:20 pm

They don’t have facts on their side, so all they have is fear mongering. If the public understood that there are many climate skeptics for reasons that have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with science, the fear would be replaced with disdain.

Reply to  Tom Halla
February 13, 2022 3:41 pm

g’day Tom,
I would suggest we’re rapidly approaching a tipping point where all these bad things that have not happened will be noticed and people will no longer take the prophets of gullible warming seriously.
Then no one will send money and the useless grifters and rent-seekers will have to get a real job.
Oh no! It’s worse than we thought…

Duane
Reply to  Erny72
February 14, 2022 4:13 am

We’re beyond that “tipping point” already. Nobody cares but the elites in the media and government. The people don’t give a g-damn.

Paul Johnson
Reply to  Tom Halla
February 13, 2022 8:40 pm

We are about 8-1/2 months away from a major tipping point when a lot of bad things will happen to a number of elected officials.

Reply to  Tom Halla
February 13, 2022 9:20 pm

Will that be before or after the flying saucers take away the truly righteous/best virtue signalers?

MarkW
Reply to  Tom Halla
February 14, 2022 10:17 am

But you don’t understand, while there has been no changes caused by the 1 degree increase over the last 150 years, the next 1/100th of a degree is going to cause a tipping point that’s gonna kill us all!

wadesworld
Reply to  Tom Halla
February 14, 2022 6:41 pm

Typhoons are down globally. They have increased in the Atlantic, but they’re down most other areas of the world.

February 13, 2022 2:11 pm

The Scaremongering goes on and on and on which is why I now ignore them since they are not running it on science, they are running on politics for the open attempt to increase their control over our lives with idiotic “solutions” and pat themselves on their backs for being a good socialist Planetary Savior.

The following says,

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

LINK

Chris Hanley
Reply to  Sunsettommy
February 13, 2022 4:30 pm

Reading the interview in which those comments were made it is unclear whether Edenhofer meant the economic redistribution is the aim of UN climate policy or rather a de facto result.

Reply to  Chris Hanley
February 13, 2022 4:38 pm

even if he meant the latter- he doesn’t seem concerned that that’s a bad result

Chris Hanley
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
February 13, 2022 6:37 pm

I’m sure he thought a redistribution would be a desirable byproduct of UN climate policies but I doubt that if that were the underlying intention of those policies he would have been so candid about it in a published interview.

Duane
Reply to  Chris Hanley
February 14, 2022 4:16 am

Actually, no the current tactic of the radical warmunists today is to declare that democracy the Enemy of the People, it must be wiped out so that our betters have the authority to dictate how we all live down to the last detail, including wealth redistribution

… note, however, that every time in the past when “wealth redistribution” became the policy of a dictatorial government, the wealth got redistributed from their wealthy opponents to themselves, not to the rank and file proletariat, who ended up poorer than ever.

Reply to  Chris Hanley
February 13, 2022 8:46 pm

From YOUR link:

Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.

Reply to  Chris Hanley
February 13, 2022 9:23 pm

He did explicitly state that it was not about environmental policy. Is that a clue?

Chris Hanley
Reply to  AndyHce
February 13, 2022 9:34 pm

The full quote suggest he was referring to prior environmental concerns: “… This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole …”.

Reply to  Chris Hanley
February 14, 2022 10:58 am

Sure, but you keep overlooking the rest of the quote:

The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Sunsettommy
February 13, 2022 5:52 pm

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer

Yeah, but not to the poor. The cash is extracted from the poor in astronomic electricity charges carbon taxes, etc. which are paid to rich landowners with subsidized windmills and subsidized electric cars that the growing poor will never afford. The 3rd World is still waiting in vain for ‘distribution’. The plan is much worse than you think!

Reply to  Gary Pearse
February 13, 2022 9:25 pm

They need those funds to keep the peons in check

Hari Seldon
Reply to  Sunsettommy
February 13, 2022 8:32 pm

Two comments:

  1. To “redistribution the world´s wealth”: The Bolsheviki wanted to do the same. The final result is rather well known.
  2. To the “10% probability”: As a certified risk manager I can only advise Mr. Mackintosh, that risks with 10% probability eventually are in the “green” part of a risk matrix for qualitative risk analysis, and usually will not even be reported in the regular (weekly, monthly) management reports (no management attention/mitigation on management level is required).
Duane
Reply to  Hari Seldon
February 14, 2022 4:19 am

Not to mention that a 6 deg C rise in average earth temperatures by the end of this century is a zero percent probability.

Reply to  Sunsettommy
February 13, 2022 8:52 pm

Thanks for the link, but where did they make the comments – need a full attribution.

Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
February 14, 2022 11:01 am

Try this one:

LINK

Peter W
February 13, 2022 2:16 pm

This past winter there were several times when temperatures in North Dakota, among other locations, were at or below minus 30 degrees F. My observation is that some warming would be very welcome.

Reply to  Peter W
February 13, 2022 7:26 pm

The record high temperature for Aberdeen South Dakota is 115F, the record low is -45F. This isn’t some tiny bunker that’s barely surviving the climate. It’s a city of over 28,000 residents with schools restaurants, a hospital and all manner of private businesses including a Walmart. The residents go about their lives and probably don’t think too much about the approximately 140F degree temperature swing they experience annually.

Terry
February 13, 2022 2:20 pm

Water based life on earth has survived, not frozen or boiled away, and actually flourished for 3.5 billion years. That’s got to mean that there is an natural,overwhelmingly powerful, regulation of temps on earth. Speaking about overwhelming how stupid to you have to be to believe that’s going to be wiped out in 30 years.

February 13, 2022 2:21 pm
John Garrett
February 13, 2022 2:27 pm

Stuart Mackintosh is clearly hallucinating.

If he was indulging in controlled substances, he probably ought to stop doing that to himself.

If that wasn’t the cause, he needs to get professional help— the serious anxiety disorder that he’s manifesting can be treated.

Tony Sullivan
Reply to  John Garrett
February 13, 2022 3:06 pm

You could lock this thread down and block all further comments as this nails it 100%. Great comment, John.

Mac
February 13, 2022 2:43 pm

I’ve been in Tula Russia in Feb one year and it was -35C and on the other hand I’ve lived in the Coachella Valley of California (think Palm Springs desert) where I regularly saw 110+F during the summer. It did reach 125F one time as I remember. The eastern part of the valley is a big farming area; all kinds of crops and of course dates.

Bruce Ranta
Reply to  Mac
February 14, 2022 8:08 am

I live in Kenora, Ontario, a couple of hundred km north of International Falls, MN. This morning, it was -35 C at our house. Yesterday morning, it was -39 C. A few days ago, it was -42C. In our field, there is about 70 cm of snow. A bit of warming (quite a bit) – and less snow – would be nice.

February 13, 2022 2:53 pm

Humans survive in climates as wildly varaible as north of the Artic Circle to Dubai. Climate varies all over between these two extremes.

The entire globe is not going to go up 6C. That is an AVERAGE. Some places will go up less and some will go up more. Humans will still survive. There may be some migrations as people look for climate conditions that suit them but we’ll have plenty of time to adapt to that. Cropland that we lose will be replaced by cropland that we gain.

The climate alarmists are like a small child that wants everything to stay the same forever. That’s one reason why so many of them are still living with their parents in their childhood home!

Duane
Reply to  Tim Gorman
February 14, 2022 4:21 am

The average is NOT going up 6 deg C by the end of this century. That is pure fantasy concocted by warmunist True Believers with unfalsifiable models.

Alan Robertson
February 13, 2022 2:55 pm

To: Stewart Mackintosh
Sir,
It isn’t difficult to get your mind around the entire climate change problem.
All you have to do is, accept only the whole truth of things.

Alan Robertson
Reply to  Alan Robertson
February 13, 2022 4:12 pm

Ps I apologize for misspelling your name.

roaddog
Reply to  Alan Robertson
February 13, 2022 9:41 pm

I’m certain he is too frightened to notice.

Pillage Idiot
February 13, 2022 2:59 pm

I see some dangerous tipping points in the Vostok ice core data.

Surprisingly, those tipping points are in the opposite direction of the tipping points that the politicians are warning us about!

Vostok Ice Core Data.jpg
Adrian
Reply to  Pillage Idiot
February 13, 2022 6:33 pm

I’m a non-scientist who has gained genuine insight over a number of years now from following WUWT. The Vostok Ice Core data, which I have seen posted before, provides a very simple and, to me at least, compelling glimpse of the big picture. Any more informed people here care to add some further analysis and insight for we more ignorant readers?

Giordano Milton
February 13, 2022 3:14 pm

Like the ugly tourist, the alarmists seem to think that the thing to do when people are not listening is to pretend they don’t understand and yell louder.

LdB
February 13, 2022 3:16 pm

I really loved

“The late economist Martin Weitzman calculated the was a non-zero probability that failure to address climate change would end our civilization.”

There is also a non-zero probability that little pink aliens will invade and claim the Earth as there own … seriously what sort of education do you need to write that sort of junk?

Reply to  LdB
February 13, 2022 5:25 pm

Journalism school?

Duane
Reply to  LdB
February 14, 2022 4:22 am

Actually, there IS a zero probability of either event occuring.

Glen
Reply to  LdB
February 14, 2022 9:16 am

Harvard Buisines degree?

Charles Higley
February 13, 2022 3:18 pm

What these clowns fail to mention is that warming by a few degrees does NOT mean higher temperatures by that number of degrees and deadly heat waves. It simply means longer summers, warmer nights, and shorter winters. That’s all it takes for the average temperature to rise.

We are agonizing over longer growing seasons and better growing at night due to warmer nights. Yeah, that’s going to be hell, for sure. More food and life will be horrible as a result. What do we do without a starving section of the population—we depend on them for so much. Yeah, really, really bad.

Reply to  Charles Higley
February 13, 2022 4:54 pm

Living here on the canadian prairies I strongly support the idea of warmer nights and shorter warmer winters.

Anyone expounding the idea that we have to somehow try to take the world back to the horrendous little ice age time period should be given the full William Wallace treatment including sharped implements and 4 horses heading to all points of the compass.

Televise a few of these events and the Scientologists might be a little more circumspect.

Like everything associated with this subject the problem is lack of real penalties.

Kenji
February 13, 2022 3:24 pm

OMG! You’re recommending GMO crops!? Ohhhh mommmmmmaaaaaa … we’re all gonna DIIIEEEEEEE!!! /sarc.

AWG
Reply to  Kenji
February 13, 2022 4:24 pm

It seems a very sizeable percentage of the population demands GMO humans. With the mRNA genetic therapy drugs being mandated, it is rather hypocritical to say that genetic modification of food is somehow wrong.

Kenji
Reply to  AWG
February 13, 2022 5:54 pm

Isn’t that amazing!? And it’s always the same group of people … too ignorant to acknowledge their own contradictions.

Mark Pawelek
February 13, 2022 3:25 pm

Climate policy is essentially anti-energy policy. In the 1960s and early ’70 environmentalists identified energy as the key or master commodity. Reduce energy use and you reduce the impact of humanity on the environment – or so they thought!. They went after nuclear power and fossil fuels. We didn’t immediately notice the green impact on fossil fuels. It played out as a shift away from coal towards natural gas. Climate models and alarm are very important in the anti fossil fuel ‘fight’. Activist modellers, of the early 1970s, blamed particulate emissions from coal for global cooling which threatened a new, man-made, Ice Age. Coal emissions were supposedly increasing albedo – reflecting more sunlight back to space. Today we have the opposite threat – global warming – caused by the same thing: humans, via the same proxy: fossil fuels. This time CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, via a greenhouse gas effect, rather than albedo effect. The climate modellers are foolishly in league with greens promoting renewables – which are very bad for the environment; as all renewables significantly affect the environment due to their low power output per area (I’m not forgetting the many other renewable inadequacies – just focussing on the one which is supposed to make renewables ‘good’ for the environment!).

After greens stopped fracking in all of Europe we’re noticing big price rises. In the real world, anti-energy policies concocted by ’60s and ’70s greens are precisely wrong: More energy can actually help the environment. Less energy and energy poverty – relying on renewables – will certainly HARM the environment.

The bizarre thing is these environmental vandals, and climate do-gooders, driving energy poverty and more renewables think they’re good people!

roaddog
Reply to  Mark Pawelek
February 13, 2022 9:48 pm

Environmentalism is a luxury available only to very financially fortunate.

Juan Slayton
February 13, 2022 3:31 pm

“…our inability to understand probabilities….”

Well, he almost got that right. But what he mean, ‘our’?

roaddog
Reply to  Juan Slayton
February 13, 2022 9:49 pm

I believe he’s apologizing for the ignorance of himself and the mouse in his pocket.

John Bell
February 13, 2022 3:33 pm

Funny how warmunists keep repeating the same lies to each other all the time in their echo chambers, then claim that it is a HUGE problem because they hear about it all the time, so it must be true.

Tom Gelsthorpe
February 13, 2022 3:44 pm

MacKintosh’s doomsday hyperbole is Chapter Umpteen from the kind of mass hysteria described in Charles Mackay’s prescient 1841 book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.”

The hysteria will subside eventually and people will come back to their senses. But it will happen “slowly, and one by one,” as Mackay observed.

In the meantime, don’t let the ninnies make you suffer collateral damage.

GeoNC
February 13, 2022 4:19 pm

Not for nothing, I guess, is economics known as the dismal science. The result of a practitioner of that “science” trying to do real science is about what you’d expect.

AWG
February 13, 2022 4:22 pm

What year had the perfect global climate that every nation on earth can agree?

roaddog
Reply to  AWG
February 13, 2022 9:50 pm

There’s no possibility of agreement, but on an individual basis it’s typically that summer one lost their virginity.

LarryD
Reply to  roaddog
February 14, 2022 4:03 am

He said “global climate”, not “global climax”. 😉

Boff Doff
February 13, 2022 4:40 pm

Seas boiling! Skies falling!! Cats and dogs living together!!!

Mass hysteria….

Reply to  Boff Doff
February 13, 2022 4:55 pm

Red alert…alarm bells are ringing…climate catastrophe ahead…there will be 10 billion people by 2050 and all of ’em will want to be electrified….OH THE HUMANITY!

February 13, 2022 5:04 pm

In The Hill’s article:

But humans are bad at understanding probabilities. We tend to underestimate the likelihood of events. When shocking things happen, we think of them as being incredibly unlikely. This probabilistic failure undermines our collective efforts to understand the real and increasing dangers we face as climate change risks mount.

Since people are so bad at understanding probabilities, according to him, I can only wonder how is it that he knows “the real and increasing dangers”.

Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
February 13, 2022 5:07 pm

Then he says: “I knew the leaves of the Blue Ridge near my cabin all fell to the earth by Oct. 31. This year, the leaves were still on the trees at the beginning of December.”

And that’s a terrible thing?

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
February 13, 2022 8:04 pm

I have noticed that most of the oaks in back lose their leaves in the Fall, as any self-respecting oak should. On the other hand, some, just change the color of their leaves to brown and hang on until they leaf out again in Spring. It seems that it is the oaks closest to the house that only give up their leaves on the top, maybe because the house provides a wind shadow to protect the lower leaves.

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
February 14, 2022 5:02 am

This depends somewhat on what variety of oak you have – bur oak, pin oak, white oak, etc.

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
February 14, 2022 9:33 am

I’ve noticed that that our trees often do not shed their leaves if the leaves are killed while green by an early hard freeze. That would include scrub oak, cottonwood, aspen, apple, pear and boxelder.

Thomas Gasloli
February 13, 2022 5:13 pm

Maybe someone should send Mr. MacKintosh a copy of that European Journal of Physics article that concluded there is no evidence yet of “climate change.”

Gary Pearse
February 13, 2022 5:23 pm

“…they did just fine, using crops and food animals they had mostly brought from Britain.”

Back in the mid 1960s, I worked for the Geological Survey of Nigeria and wound up in charge of the Survey branch office in Jos, in northern Nigeria (just me, a typist and messenger with a bicycle)
I joined the Horticultural Society and learned how to plant potatoes, beans, carrots, lettuce etc. (Lat 9.9N). The head of the society even grew apples in the shade of mango trees. It seems you can grow anything anywhere.

You dug foot deep trenches to plant in or planted in furrows shaded by rows of dirt.

February 13, 2022 5:25 pm

It’s always fun to ask these quivering doomsters what the temperature rise of the last 100 years is. What the sea level rise is. What the current rate of both is. And watch their vacuous faces as they stand mute because they don’t know. You’d think they would because it’s supposedly the basis for all their hyperbole. But they don’t. Only the hyperbole matters to them.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  stinkerp
February 13, 2022 8:13 pm

I remember back in 1989 when California was poised to pass the first “assault weapons” ban in the country. I got into a discussion with a liberal, newly-minted PhD from Stanford, who was working at the Menlo Park branch of the USGS. She was strongly in support of the proposed legislation. I asked her if she could define an “assault weapon.” She stumbled for words, eventually spewing some things that vaguely resembled the description of a sub-machine gun.

I’ve always found it strange that people would take strong positions on things that they knew nothing about. It seems to be a characteristic of liberals.

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
February 14, 2022 5:12 am

I have yet to meet a gun control advocate that can define the difference between a battle rifle and an assault rifle.

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
February 14, 2022 8:18 am

Emote first, ask questions later. Or more often, don’t ask questions later. Emoting is the essential thing.

February 13, 2022 6:16 pm

It really is worse than he says.
It is so big that no matter how hard i look i cannot find the crisis.
Even with WE help.

Its like i’m a 2 dimensional creature trying to see something in 11 dimensions.

John Hultquist
February 13, 2022 6:42 pm

Say you are living in 1922 and are tasked with planning for 2022.
What would do?
What Happened In 1922 – Historical Events 1922 (eventshistory.com)

roaddog
February 13, 2022 9:38 pm

I’ll give him this, he’s possibly managed to pen the most data-free article in the history of Climate Nutters.

Rod Evans
February 13, 2022 10:26 pm

If I could muster the enthusiasm, I would celebrate every day the fact the global average temperature has increased by almost 1 deg C since the “end” of the little ice age.
If it had not done that we would still be experiencing the “little ice age”.
What is wrong with climate change doom-mongers? They moan when things have improved almost beyond measure and demand a return to the past conditions of famine and cold from extended cold periods of winter.
They need to remember a simple truth.
Global warming is good, global cooling is bad. Ask any Canadian, well, almost any Canadian…..

Roald J. Larsen
February 13, 2022 11:04 pm

How much did the CCP have to pay for that nonsense??

dodgy geezer
February 13, 2022 11:31 pm

There is no point logically explaing that this prediction is absurd.

It is not made as a result of careful calculation. It is propaganda designed to frighten people into accepting activist plans.

Sky King
February 14, 2022 1:00 am

75F-85F today here on Subic Bay. People making babies like crazy, plants growing in leaps, the monkeys are fat. No climate problem here. Would that more of the world could share in this bounty!

February 14, 2022 1:17 am

Stuart P.M. Mackintosh is executive director of G30, a cabal of very senior bankers including the likes of Mark Carney, Mario Draghi, Mervyn King and Yi Gang from the People’s bank of China.

Since when have these top tier globalists become concerned eco-warriors?

If you smell a rat, it’s probably because there is a rat and it smells.

griff
February 14, 2022 1:32 am

 Cities would need better drainage systems if rainfall increased,

Rainfall has already increased in the UK and the street drainage isn’t coping.
Flash floods: Parts of London receive a month of rain in one day – BBC News

Who is going to pay for the new drains? and the disruption replacing all of them will cause?

Reply to  griff
February 14, 2022 2:20 am

Surely you meant to say, “disruption for the cause” comrade.

Richard Page
Reply to  griff
February 14, 2022 4:26 am

If you check the records, London has experienced flooding on a regular basis – after some severe floods the flood management systems were improved, then improved again and again. Each time requiring money and causing disruption during the work – either live with the problem or allocate resources to deal with it. London floods include the years 1742, 1764, 1768, 1774 (very severe), 1819, 1821, 1841, 1852 (very severe), 1869, 1873, 1875 (very severe), 1877, 1891, 1894 (very severe), 1899, 1912, 1915, 1926, 1929, 1936 and 1947. From 1947 to 2003 there were no significant floods occurring, mostly due to effective flood management and increased drainage. I should point out that all of the floods I’ve mentioned here were associated with extreme rainfall – which goes to show that the idea of ‘extreme weather events’ is not new and has been going on since way before records began. Rainfall has not increased, nor have these events become more common – in fact, looking at the records, these events were far more common in the past than they are now.

John Hultquist
Reply to  griff
February 14, 2022 7:28 am

 Read more, write less.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1968/0554/report.pdf

Hydrology for Urban land Planning – A Guidebook on the Hydrologic
Effects of Urban land Use GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 554
By Luna B. leopold, 1968

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  griff
February 14, 2022 10:28 am

… the street drainage isn’t coping.

I imagine that as the population has increased, the area of impervious cover (streets & roofs) has also increased. Therefore, even with the same rainfall, one could expect problems with the runoff.

Reply to  griff
February 14, 2022 3:58 pm

I live in London. The drainage is rubbish because the storm drains aren’t cleared properly. That is the fault of the lefty Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

Bruce Cobb
February 14, 2022 1:43 am

Stuart Mackintosh went full retard. Climate Hysteria does that, but it’s self-induced. The ultimate goal is to gin up the fear factor, based on 100% lies in order to spread fear as much as possible. Sometimes it seems like the Climate Caterwaulers are trying to outdo one another as to who can climate caterwaul the most and the loudest. Chicken Little was a piker compared to these people.

Moderately Cross of East Anglia
February 14, 2022 1:50 am

The alarmists should try breathing into a paper bag for a few minutes and then rest in a darkened room until the tremors stop. Then they can rejoin the rest of us and go about normal life.

Reply to  Moderately Cross of East Anglia
February 14, 2022 9:38 am

If only CO2 levels were higher, they wouldn’t need the paper bag.

Tom.1
February 14, 2022 2:40 am

The timescale is so long we fail to plan properly.

At least they got that right.

Christina Widmann
February 14, 2022 2:44 am

“a non-zero probability that failure to address climate change would end our civilization”

There is a non-zero probability that I will fall through the seat of my chair because all the molecules of my body happen to slip between the molecules of the wood. An infitesimally small probability, but non-zero. I should definitely take action about it.

Bruce Cobb
February 14, 2022 4:56 am

This is all a runup to the “climate report” by the chief climate caterwaulers and cuckoo crackpots of the IPCC’s WGII later this month. In case anyone’s wondering, the source of Climate Hysteria is the IPCC. They not only produce Climate Hysteria, but they put an official, “scientific” stamp on it, which makes it all OK. Then, anyone who speaks out against it is simply an “anti-science Denier”. This is what makes the Climate Lies so incredibly difficult to refute. That, and the fact that none of it is rational.

Paul Hurley (aka PaulH)
February 14, 2022 5:24 am

I know weather isn’t climate, but it is a crisp -23C morning here in Ottawa. An increase of 6C today would be welcome, but barely noticeable. 🥶

Frank
February 14, 2022 6:18 am

In the Hill article:
 
“I can see the climate changing and so can you.”
 
This sums up the author’s capacity for critical thinking. As to climate change, if global temperature is any indication, then there is none. Without El Ninos, global warming doesn’t exist.
 
https://rclutz.com/2022/01/12/uah-confirms-global-warming-gone-end-of-2021/
 
It’s safe to say that El Nino isn’t caused by greenhouse gases. Even if it was, increased CO2 isn’t caused by humans.

https://scc.klimarealistene.com/2021/10/new-papers-on-control-of-atmospheric-co2/

https://scc.klimarealistene.com/produkt/the-impact-of-human-co2-on-atmospheric-co2/
 
Rx for Mr. MackIntosh: Take a valium and go to bed.

yirgach
February 14, 2022 6:33 am

Someone has been over indulging their need for more of Dr. Frankenstein.

February 14, 2022 6:53 am

The Hill labels Macintosh as an “opinion contributor.”

The following comes from his new book “Climate Crisis Economics.” Amazon books has his prologue – which reads like poor science fiction – and a few pages. Here are the first words from the first paragraph. It should have a red warning pasted across it for the reader: THIS IS AN OPINION.

The climate change crisis is the existential challenge of our time. The future of the planet and survival of all living things depends on our collective effort to arrest global temperature increases, for that will determine the sustainability of all life. The relentless increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is indisputable, disturbing, and increasingly damaging.” He then quotes the great teenage girl, the authority on all things climate.

Has Macintosh, if he is truly an intellectual, even examined the statement of CLINTEL and how they have clearly presented and explained a very different position?

Here is the “scary” science that I follow and why I love CO2:
carbon dioxide + water + sunlight
plant photosynthesis
to glucose + oxygen

Steve Oregon
February 14, 2022 7:56 am

The better display of societal ignorance is in the comment section.
And 3 days earlier The Hill had another whopper piece.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/593603-climate-will-define-bidens-legacy
The opinion pitch is simply asinine.
When future generations look back at Joe Biden’s presidency, they will likely judge him by one metric above any other: his legacy on climate action. The climate crisis is upon us, and its impacts are already devastating and deadly, but what happens in the next few years will determine whether our future is one of resilience and recovery or one of unmitigated climate catastrophe. 

Mickey Reno
February 14, 2022 8:29 am

What is with the logic of these rummies?

The Gulf Stream will NOT slow down in a warmer world, it will speed up It’s entire raison d’etre is to transport warmer water toward cooler water.

HOJO
February 14, 2022 9:05 am

Scared is the new normal. They just keep pushing to take my money and my soul to create this utopian people don’t count society. I went from NYC to Tucson and didn’t die from the change in temps. According to these nut jobs I should be dead and gone Climate change, Global Warming is going to take the place of Covid, and a lot harder sell so the smash mouth begins

February 14, 2022 9:20 am

Too often we look backward for lessons when the probability of severe weather events such as fires in CaliforniaSiberiaAustralia, or hurricanes and typhoons are increasing in severity and number rather than remaining the same year-to-year. We look at past averages for solace even though this gives us the wrong probability for severe climate-related events. Perhaps most worryingly of all, we fail almost completely to account for epoch-shifting tipping points.”

A delusional doom centered state of mind that imagined future disasters override the historical past.

That is, Mackintosh purposely refuses to learn from the past and demands that people charge forward based upon his most extreme assumptions.

Another fool doomed to endlessly repeat his failures alongside Ehrlich, Lord Nicholas Stern, Manniacal and other alarmists.

Ted Koehl
February 14, 2022 9:46 am

A reasoning person has only to observe the climate hysteria is a load of crapolla because all of the climate fearmongers, such as Barrack Obama, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, et al, ALL have purchased multimillion dollar estates right on the waterfront of the oceans.

Ignore what these grifters say and watch what they do with their “own” money.

February 14, 2022 9:48 am

Ya gotta hand it to the lefty watermelons–they managed to make warming sound like a bad thing. Just like they said that a president who was REDUCING regulation and taxes was being a bad guy. Then they voted for a guy who promptly shredded the constitution. These red diaper doper babies aren’t watermelons, they’re alchemists; everything they touch turns to shit.

Hutches Hunches
February 15, 2022 9:43 am

The big concern should be the fact that the Climate Alarmists have infiltrated most Western institutions including universities, scientific publications, boards of directors of many financial and other large corporations, and, most alarming Governments.
If these idiots get their way, the world will be a very inhospitable place in a few years, ironically maybe not so much in tropical 3rd world countries who have adapted to not having to rely on fossil fuels as much as the developed world.
There is little doubt that this entire “climate crisis” will collapse due to its disingenuous
reason d’etre and ailed predictions, but humanity hasn’t seemed to evolved to avoid being suckered by bogus causes since the flat earthers were in control.
So, hang on and stock up.