By Guus Berkhout and Kees de Lange
In the first part of this article, we argued that there is no climate crisis and politicians, climate researchers and journalists were urgently requested to stop scaring the hell out of the population and citing the results of dubious climate models. In this part, emeritus professors Guus Berkhout and Kees de Lange argue in favour of ending the fighting between alarmists and realists. They make a plea to start working together on the large opportunities offered by climate change. This means a completely different approach to climate policy and the energy transition.
It is time that we stopped accepting that more and more unelected international organisations – such as all those UN-organizations (WMO, UNEP, etc.) and the thousands of NGO’s – who are forcing us to organise life in our own country according to their preferences. Above all, it is high time that we eradicated the stories of fear and the coercive measures forced upon us by these organisations. This is only feasible with a strong national democracy! National governments must set a new course with plenty of courage and expertise. The result will create hope for a prosperous future. Such a new course starts with a sensible climate policy.
Get rid of climate anxiety.
Enough about all these fear-mongering narratives and all the nonsensical net-zero CO2 billions. We are now going to talk about the positive climate prospects for the future. The graph on the right in illustration 4 was published in 2020 by the well-known Danish environmental economist Bjørn Lomborg. It shows at a glance – without complicated models – why the climate scary narratives are misplaced. It turns out that investing in adaptation measures is extremely rewarding!
Mind you, the Western world has become considerably more prosperous in the past century due to reliable and affordable energy. This prosperity could be used to finance technological progress. And that technology could be used to prevent climate casualties. Mitigation technology has never saved a life or made a difference, but adaptation technology has saved millions according to Lomborg!
We now forecast the arrival of most extreme weather days, sometimes weeks, in advance so that proper measures can be taken. In prosperous countries, dikes are being strengthened and houses are much more resistant to hurricanes and increasingly to earthquakes. Wide firebreaks are created in forests to ensure that forest fires remain local, new water management techniques are developed to collect excess rainwater in overflow areas to be used later in dry times, etc.
Net-zero policies deliver nothing.
The graph on the left in illustration 4 shows that all those thousands of billions for net-zero policies have yielded nothing for decades! So why continue with it? Apparently, neither the climate nor CO2 care about human mitigation policies at all. Whereas the graph on the right in illustration 4 indicates that investments in adaptation are showing spectacular results, saving millions from death due to weather and climate events. Therefore, making a population poorer through pointless climate policies and unaffordable energy prices is stupid, wasteful, and immoral.
Why do we never see the side-by-side comparison in illustration 4 in the media? The IPCC is also completely silent about this! But the population is desperate for just that comparison, show them the costs and benefits of both possible solutions. For further information on this important topic, see also this thorough analysis by Clintel that shows serious errors in the latest IPCC report.
Foolish Western Illusions
In the Western world endless meetings are held to discuss methods of controlling Earth’s climate. In those meetings, policy measures are invented about Earth’s climate by green politicians who have little factual engineering or scientific knowledge. Partly because of this, Western countries want to be in front of the moral procession (‘look at us saving the world’) when it comes to taking moralistic climate measures. However, the population suffers as a result. Countries such as China and India are watching with utter amazement as the EU drives its high-quality industrial production and jobs out of Europe with foolish climate regulations.
The non-Western world, which is the vast majority of the world’s population, has many other things on its mind than an alleged climate crisis. They do not have any understanding or patience with a public welfare-destroying net-zero policy. They realise that their growing populations can only be given a future with the large-scale use of fossil fuels, followed by a gradual transition to the large-scale use of modern nuclear energy. Countries like China and India consider the net-zero policy to be a foolish Western illusion that serves them well. As a result, we see that the West weakening economically. Geopolitical relations are changing in favour of emerging economic superpowers, such as India and China. Europe is working hard to make itself irrelevant.
CO₂-emissions in the Netherlands
A specific example. How much CO₂ does the Netherlands actually emit? The facts: The Netherlands is responsible for 0.47% of global CO₂-emissions. If we follow the IPCC and believe their assumption that there is a simple linear relationship between CO₂-emissions and global warming, then the Netherlands’ contribution to global warming is 0.47%. If we also follow the alarmist climate models – human CO₂ is assumed to be the main cause of global warming – then the Dutch CO₂ contribution is responsible for an annual warming of about 0.0001°C! Even with the darkest IPCC scenario, our contribution is so small it cannot be measured!
So, the Dutch citizen is forced to spend hundreds of billions of euros to ensure that the global temperature is reduced by an immeasurably small amount every year. Looking at the major shortages in healthcare and education, among other things, isn’t this climate policy an outrage against the citizens of our country?
Consequences of net-zero climate policy
Because the main cause of global warming is attributed to CO₂ and increases in CO₂ in the atmosphere are attributed to the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), the net zero measures are aimed at eliminating fossil fuels. Did you know that these measures have their origins in the Paris Agreement? There were politicians and civil servants who had no clue about Earth’s climate system (there was no serious scientist in sight). The huge amount of nonsense that has been expressed during the prelude to this agreement is a clear demonstration that when science and politics are at loggerheads, science is bound to lose.
However, that did not stop them from jointly determining that the average global warming should not exceed the “disastrous” limit of 1.5°C! Since then, the Paris Agreement has been sacrosanct. When we talk about climate policy, we talk about ‘meeting the Paris Accord’. So, scientific content has completely disappeared from the climate debate and is replaced with an arbitrary political goal! Illustration 6 shows that the average annual temperature difference between Singapore and Oslo is about 22°C. Despite Singapore being 22°C warmer than Oslo, both cities are very prosperous. So, what does the 1.5°C Paris disaster limit represent?
Energy crisis
There is no climate crisis, and it is also a fiction that this crisis is caused by the Western world. But there is indeed an energy crisis of our own making (‘anthropogenic’). Historically, virtually all of humanity’s progress in the last few hundred years is due to advances in science and technology and the availability of sufficient reliable, affordable, and safe fossil energy sources. These sources can provide energy any time it is demanded. Modern fossil fuel power plants provide demand-driven energy and are a monumental technological-scientific achievement. They are also getting cleaner!
It is of utmost importance for everyone’s future that the energy needs of the world’s population are adequately met. This is no mean feat, with the world’s population continuing to grow and with per capita energy needs constantly increasing. In this context, look at the fast-growing data centers, which require a huge amount of energy. Serious projections of the world’s energy demand in 2050 show that an increase of about 25% can be expected. How are we going to provide that? Certainly not by phasing out fossil fuels as quickly as possible! Did you know that for years, 80% of energy has been supplied by fossil fuels and that the contribution of alternative energy sources remains around 20%?
Biomass, wind and solar
The alternative options that have been put forward for fossil fuels for years are biomass, wind, and solar. Even climate alarmists are beginning to realize that cutting down our forests en masse, and then burning them in biomass power plants, is great folly. We know that wind and sun only produce electricity when the wind is not blowing too hard or too soft and only when the sun is shining. Because we cannot practically store large amounts of electricity, solar and wind are, at best, niche solutions. Despite all the warning signs, politicians continue to cut down forests on a large scale and direct us en masse onto an inadequate power grid. Without a change of course, we are on our way to an anthropogenic energy crisis, in which blackouts will occur regularly.
Nuclear energy
Is there no solution at all? The cynical thing about the situation is that an excellent solution does exist. The key word is nuclear energy. Nuclear power is available, reliable, safe, and affordable, and has the advantage of emitting virtually no greenhouse gases, for anyone with a carbon phobia. Affordable waste recycling is also on the horizon. Nuclear power thus seems to be a possible solution that alarmists and realists could quickly agree on.
New course in climate policy
We conclude with a few guidelines on what a climate policy should look like under a new government (in The Netherlands a new government is now being formed):
- Policy should not be based upon immature computer models, but reliable facts.
- Facts show there is no climate crisis at all and CO₂ is not a thermostat that allows people to set the climate to a desired setting. Facts show that extremely expensive mitigation policies do not help at all, whereas adaptation policies are successful.
- CO₂ is not a harmful gas and CO₂ emissions are not environmental pollution. On the contrary, CO₂ is the molecule of life on planet Earth. More CO₂ in the atmosphere can cause modest warming, but also makes Earth greener, and greatly increases agricultural productivity. We should therefore be very happy with more CO₂.
- Climate change and environmental pollution should not be lumped together. Apart from the fact that it is factually incorrect, it makes climate policy unnecessarily complex. Climate change requires adaptation technology, and environmental pollution requires clean production technology. Therefore, impoverishing the population through pointless climate policies and unaffordable energy prices is naive and immoral. Only a prosperous nation can invest in climate adaptation and produce fossil fuels and other fuels more cleanly!
New course in energy transition
The above new course in climate policy will automatically lead to a completely different energy transition. Protesters, who want to abruptly stop using fossil fuels, show they have no idea what they are doing. If the use of fossil fuels stops at very short notice, modern society collapses. A transition, as the word suggests, is a gradual process. The energy of the future is clearly nuclear energy, consisting of a collection of well-positioned mix of large and small nuclear power plants. Practice shows unmistakably that supply-driven wind and solar energy can only play a niche role in our future energy system. After the election, the new Netherlands government must get to work on it quickly.
In conclusion, we once again call on both climate worlds, alarmists and realists, not to fight each other, but to work together to build up more knowledge about the behaviour of the earth’s climate and about the choice of our future energy systems.
“In conclusion, we once again call on both climate worlds, alarmists and realists, not to fight each other, but to work together to build up more knowledge about the behavior of the earth’s climate and about the choice of our future energy systems.”
I admire your goal, but come on now, … that’ll never happen. Entire careers have been established to skim off filthy lucre from the vast sums politicians have allocated to aggregate and arrogate power, money and control to themselves and the academics who provide ammunition to the politicians arguing for more solar and wind power. Civil, rational discourse? Ha!!!
“Civil, rational discourse? Ha!!!”
____________________________________
Unfortunately you are probably very correct. You don’t have to do much of a diligent search to find out what it’s really all about:
Maurice Strong; September 1st 1997 National Review magazine:
“Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world
will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”
An unelected Obama/Clinton cabal is using “installed” Biden as a worn-out marionette, who can’t form a sentence, can’t deal with a teleprompter, is totally addled, does not know how to climb a stair, needs handholding, to advance a disastrously expensive, leftist wind/solar/battery/EV, heat pump agenda, to turn the US in some kind of zombie “state”, with uncontrolled borders, to permanently wrest political control and soul from the impoverished US people.
That cabal will stop at nothing, do whatever it takes, to keep hold of the levers of power
I agree 100%
Jumpin’ Joe Bribe’em is a puppet
He does do great pratfalls.
The study revealed that the annual mean temperature of OSLO has increased by 1.5 °C in the period 1838–2012.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269274665_The_Oslo_temperature_series_1837-2012_Homogeneity_testing_and_temperature_analysis
The most pronounced increase in annual temperature occurred during the last 50 years, and in the early 20th century that ended with a local maximum in the 1930s.
The temperature has increased significantly in all seasons; however, the temperature increase in summer was less than a half of that in winter and spring, which were the seasons with largest increase.
In addition the monthly mean temperature of the coldest month in each year has increased two times faster than the warmest one.
That corresponds to temps in Vermont, per NOAA
GLOBAL WARMING IN VERMONT
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/global-warming-in-vermont
Summer
Each year has peak temperatures during the summer months June, July, August. The below graph shows those peak temperatures in Vermont, for about 40 years.
Those temperatures were measured by the weather stations in Vermont of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA
Vermont has four weather stations; Burlington, St Johnsbury, Castleton and Windsor.
New Hampshire also has four stations
The peak temperatures increased by 1.5 F over 40 years, or 0.0375 F per year.
Almost all people cannot sense the difference of 77 F and 78.5 F
Winter
A similar graph shows the minimum temperatures during the months of December, January, February
The minimum temperatures increased by 4.2 F over 40 years, or 0.1 F per year.
Most older Vermonters agree, winters in Vermont have been getting warmer.
Heating demand is driven by temperature difference, which was about 65 F, indoor – 9.8 F, outdoor = 55.2 F in 1980, and became 65 F, indoor – 14 F outdoor = 51 F in 2020
At present, it takes 7.6% less Btu for space heating a house than 40 years ago.
The earth warming by manmade CO2 is a faux-science hoax spread far and wide by IPCC and associated entities, and cowed academia, and lapdog Mass Media, to implement the wind/solar/battery/EV/heat pump scam, to benefit multi-$billion conglomerates in Europe and well-heeled millionaires living in the poshest places, that are fee-paying clients of Wall Street financial conglomerates, such as Bloomberg and Lazard, which will tell any lie to get more money out of our pockets
Very nice report, well done. You have said all the important things that everybody needs to hear in simple, plain and easy to understand language.
Again I wish you all the luck in getting the CAGW crowd to listen to you, I hope they do. The problem is they know all of this stuff, they have known it all along. I would put your efforts into educating the average guy, once he understands had badly he has been taken to the cleaners by these lying cheating scoundrels all of this nonsense will end.
Best 2100 words I’ve read in a long time or ever.
Alarmists don’t live in the real world so there is no way to work with them. They believe invalidated model output is an unquestionable determination of our future.
Anti-human zealots dominate modern environmentalism. A defining trait for most is to project their own woke fragility onto the relentless forces of nature optimized to maximize biologic productivity for whatever conditions exist.
No doubt the authors are sincere, and their ideas are certanly in line with Lomborg and Alex Epstein. But I’m afraid the debate – maybe conflict is a better word – is not about the “climate” to begin with. Buckle up. The decarbonization and “Net Zero” programs must be defeated. I don’t think there are enough verses of Kumbaya to ever bring the opposing sides together. Maybe I’m wrong.
“The decarbonization and “Net Zero” programs must be defeated.”
These are absolutely NOTHING to do with climate.
They are part of a concerted campaign to downgrade western society.
The leaders of this idealistic idiocy have stated so many times.
It is WAR on many fronts…. there can be absolutely no doubt about it.
You cannot bow before people that want to do that, or to people/trolls who are stupid/dumb enough to follow and support this idiotic agenda without a clue why they are doing so, or how badly they themselves will be affected.
We have to wake people up to the reality of what is being attempted.
It’s all gonna get ugly before it gets better.
A very good paper. Something everyone misses. The person on the other side of the table that you think us evil because of their policies. They feel the exact same thing about you.
I do not think they’re evil, I know they are evil. They are in it for personal gain. Many depend on perpetuating the scam to stay employed. Those who have stood up for science have lost their job.
At least one of the authors is retired. So no longer dependent on following the party line.
There are very few people who have put morals ahead of employment. It has been career ending for some.
There needs to be serious consequences for perpetuating this fraud. It iwill go down in history as one of the worst examples of fraud. Climate Change™ will be a synonym for fraud.
“Climate Change™ will be a synonym for fraud.”
__________________________________________________________
Right in there with “Dinking the Kool-Aid”
Leftists want to control me with fascism
That is evil
As a libertarian, I do not want to control them — preferring a small government whose powers are constitutionally limited.
That is not evil in any way
Your understanding of evil is puzzling?
For a leftist, evil means you don’t agree with us.
I fully agree with your ‘new course in climate policy’ section.
I disagree that we will ever see climate alarmists and realists ‘working together’. There are three reasons, all based on the character of alarmists, not realists.
I think it will take one or more major grid blackout disasters caused by renewables to halt the climate alarm nonsense. And that will NOT end peacefully with some reconciliation, because people will die. Alarmist heads will figuratively roll.
Or, put slightly differently, there can be no reconciliation with those who knowingly perpetrated a multidecadal obvious scientific fraud. NONE. They must be vanquished so that such a thing does not arise again (to paraphrase Dem operative David Plouff about Trump—back at you). Hansen, Mann, Wadhams, DeRocher and Stirling, Dessler, and many others merit NO forgiveness.
What happens when the economy hits the fan?
Is it possible that government spending will reach a maximum, not in nominal terms of course, but in real terms as it is no longer possible to service interest payments on the debt?
Wouldn’t spending on a “settled science” be subject to cuts?
FedGov defaulting on the debt is possible. I would not put anything beyond the Leftists currently in power.
My thoughts exactly. When you look how readily science has been cast aside to support the agenda it has criminal intent.
No scientist would ever suggest that “science is settled”.
One thing everyone must remember.. It makes no difference what we do to control climate, Mother Nature always wins.
George Carlin had something to say about that.
The criminals spawning the nonsense about CO2 doing anything to alter Earth’s energy balance need to be prosecuted. They are either criminally incompetent or scam artists. Both deserve severe punishment for the harm they have done.
Energy “transition” is a totally unnecessary and meaningless term.
There is no necessity whatsoever to “transition” to less reliable, erratic, intermittent forms of energy.
Not only is it a stupidly idiotic concept, based on totally erroneous anti-science, but it is also totally impossible if society is to survive.
What would be good is if third world countries could be helped to “transition” from dung to gas or electricity for heating and cooking…. Reliable electricity would also allow for things like refrigeration, lighting and so on.
Conservatives work together with leftists? Maybe that would happen if there was an invasion of aliens from the planet Uranus.
Conservatives and leftists sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya? The author must live in a dream world.
“Climate change requires adaptation technology,” quote from article
Only silly lukewarmers say that.
Did I have to adopt to warmer winters and just 10 minutes of snow shoveling of our 100 foot driveway, one time this winter, at our Detroit suburbs home?
Did Siberians have to adapt to warmer winter nights?
There is no need to adapt to a BETTER climate, which is what the first 48 years of global warming has created.
The author understands the climate crisis is fake
He may not understand Nut Zero is a fake engineering project
He does not seem to understand that CO2 and Nut Zero are just political strategies for the REAL Transition to Leftist Fascism. And they are working.
Conservatives debating the science of CO2 and engineering of Nut Zero are missing the big picture: The politics of the Transition to Leftist Fascism
Nut Zero is just a symptom of too much leftism. And the leftist need to micromanage our lives.
“Did Siberians have to adapt to warmer winter nights?”
One less bear skin ! 🙂
But I wouldn’t be talking to anyone from Mongolia about how much warmer it is !
Many have just lost all their livestock due to a period of intense cold. !
This bloke knows what’s caused all the warmening-
Expert say darked coloured roofs drive power bills up | Watch (msn.com)
They’re not listening to an expert and we have to wonder why not?
There should be little doubt that the UN and its fatuous but expensive tentacles of power (in particular but not exclusively the WHO) has demonstrated not only that it is unworthy of any citizen’s trust but that it does not act in the interests of any citizen anywhere. The UN’s only interest is it’s own power and ability to control all else. It truly is an unpleasant, ugly tentacled monster of a beast.
Anyone who analyses what happened with COVID-19 will understand the “conspiracies” which took place because they were deliberately designed to do so and look authentic as actions taken by bungling political leaders around the globe. The history of mRNA based vaccines alone should be enough to make you want to ask many questions of any and all politicians who were at the time simply unfit for purpose and unable to act in our best interests either in shorter or longer time frames because they were afraid to be otherwise and be labelled pariahs (an admission of how our democracies were crushed from within).
And so it is with climate change and everything it begets starting with the whole premise of CO2’s nonsensical but egregious role as the central villain of the piece. The UN and its tentacles have lied for so long they no longer know what the truth once was, seduced as they have been by their love affair with power, and their inability to want to be kept in order by anyone – that is how unpleasant they have become..
I just hope we soon see the election of politicians prepared to take the UN monsters down one by one and ensure they never again show their ugly faces or are allowed near any other potential bureaucratic breeding grounds for and of evil. CO2 mitigation is no more necessary than were lockdowns, school closures, masks, PPE, vaccinations or any other draconian measures – COVID-19 was bad ‘flu – and the WHO needs to confess its miserable and terrible performance under pressure of its own making and take its punishment which must clarify the UN’s complicity and ensure these things never happen again for any reason at all.
Great goal, however it ignores a very real problem outlined by “Bonhoeffer‘s Theory of Stupidity”:.
“Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that stupid people are more dangerous than evil ones. This is because while we can protest against or fight evil people, against stupid ones we are defenseless — reasons fall on dead ears.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc (Bonhoeffer‘s Theory of Stupidity)
I would argue there are several added nuances to this core idea. Even smart people can succumb to an immense internal force preventing their acknowledging that they have been duped into a line of thinking that is based on falsehood, and in essence become obedient cult members. You cannot argue reason with those held back by the idea they could be seriously embarrassed by their blind faith in a falsehood.
And as others point out, some know or suspect the Climate Crisis is a scam, they profit immensely from towing the party line. which can be an even stronger power against rational dialogue.
And finally there is an interesting psychological theory outlined by Dr Grande here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVztQdAf7YY (Physician Dies After Illegally Riding in Trailer to Watch Eclipse | Monika Woroniecka Case Analysis)
The notion is high intelligence is often associated with very low common sense. Literature refers to these as “clever sillies”. People who are intelligent and highly skilled or functioning in their narrow field, are often oblivious to common sensibility, and hence you cannot successfully have dialogue about an issue they have no common sense about. (even if their behavior may lead to tragedy, injury or death, or societal suicide as in eliminating fossil fuels)
The old saying comes to bear: Never engage in a battle of wits with the unarmed – they never know when they have lost.
The climate is changing as it always does – slowly.
In related news … ::Energy is Civilization::
It is killing civilization to replace an energy source-thru-delivery with a less reliable source.
The Mauna Lau CO2 graph needs a minor clarification. What is plotted is the mole fraction of CO2 in dry air. Per the Mauna Lau information, inject water vapor and the ppm of CO2 drops by as much as 15 ppm.
Second point alluded to with the temperatures of Oslo and Singapore is humans are quite able to adapt. We have people living in the Arctic circle, the deserts, and the equator and at sea level and at high altitudes. Denver is the “mile high” city and the ambient air pressure is much lower than at sea level. Indigenous peoples in the SA Andes mountains had lungs that evolve allowing life at high altitude.
A gradual change of 1.5 C does not need anything more than people acclimating, especially given the preponderance of data suggests it is low temperatures warming rather than the highs that results in the calculated earth average.