Essay by Eric Worrall
“… Overstating the dangers can overshadow the significant progress being made and can undermine public trust in scientific discourse. …”
Most people fear climate change will end the world during their lifetime
By Sanjana Gajbhiye
Earth.com staff writerA recent survey has unveiled a startling statistic: nearly half (48%) fear they will witness climate change wreak havoc on Earth within their lifetime.
The survey, conducted by Talker Research, found Hawaiians to be the most anxious, with 61% expressing this belief. Vermont and New Mexico residents followed closely behind, with 59% and 56% respectively.
However, this widespread fear might be misplaced. “Belief in the urgent fight against climate change has shot far past the territory of science and become an ideology,” notes Cambridge professor Mike Hulme.
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Data scientist Hannah Ritchie of the University of Oxford offers a contrasting perspective. Once convinced of an impending climate disaster, she now believes that such extreme predictions can overshadow significant achievements.
In her book, Ritchie highlights that emissions per person have plateaued since 2012, suggesting some stabilization. She also argues that the dreaded 2.7°F (1.5°C) warming threshold is not necessarily a catastrophic tipping point.
Ritchie’s views suggest that while climate change remains a serious issue, it’s essential to recognize progress and avoid undue pessimism. She calls for a balanced approach that acknowledges both the ongoing challenges and the advancements made.
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While acknowledging the potential impacts of climate change is crucial for raising awareness and driving policy changes, it’s equally important to avoid exaggeration. Overstating the dangers can overshadow the significant progress being made and can undermine public trust in scientific discourse.
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Read more: https://www.earth.com/news/most-people-fear-climate-change-will-end-the-world-during-their-lifetime/
This tightrope act, maintaining a pitch of anxiety which facilitates desired political outcomes, while trying but sometimes failing to steer followers away from total despair, this has real consequences.
In 2019, Dr. Alex Wodak, a renowned Aussie drug rehabilitation specialist, testified to a government commission that fear of climate change was a significant factor driving young people to become addicted to hard drugs.
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First, the threshold step is redefining drugs as primarily a health and social issue rather than primarily a law enforcement issue. Second, drug treatment has to be expanded and improved until it reaches the same level as other health services. Third, all penalties for personal drug use and possession have to be scrapped.
Fourth, as much of the drug market as possible has to be regulated while recognising that part of the drug market is already regulated, such a methadone treatment, needle and syringe programs, medically supervised injecting centres. It will, of course, never be possible to regulate the entire drug market. We have regulated parts of the drug market before. Edible opium was taxed and regulated in Australia until 1906 and in the United States Coca-Cola contained cocaine until 1903.
Fifth, efforts to reduce the demand for powerful psychoactive drugs in Australia have had limited benefit and require a new focus. Unless and until young Australians feel optimistic about their future, demand for drugs will remain strong. Young people, understandably, want more certainty about their future prospects, including climate, education, jobs and housing affordability. Change will be slow and incremental, like all social policy reform.
As Herb Stein, as adviser to President Nixon said:
Things that cannot go on forever don’t.Drug prohibition cannot go on forever and will be replaced by libertarian paternalism. Thank you.
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Source:https://www.iceinquiry.nsw.gov.au//assets/scii/transcripts/Decriminalisation-round-table/Decriminalisation-Roundtable-Transcript.pdf(EW 6/8/23 – available on Wayback Machine)
Next time you look at the horror show Fentanyl death statistics in Western nations, ask yourself how many of those people got their start in addiction because most of the authority figures in their lives told them that climate change would destroy the world – except for those authority figures who told them there was room for a little optimism, providing we all support green policies.
There is no climate change crisis – just a climate education crisis. In fact, global warming and increasing CO2 are good for life on earth.
“Overstating the dangers can overshadow the significant progress being made and can undermine public trust in scientific discourse.”
Note: 2023 set the record for human CO2 emissions.
There is no data that demonstrates that human emissions effect global temperature because , if there is a signal, it is too week to detect. Proper analysis shows that human emissions are hardly effecting atmospheric CO2 content. There is good evidence that CO2 does not control temperature. There is no mechanism for CO2 to effect climate except by effecting temperature. So why should I or anyone be concerned about a record in human emissions? No one should be concerned about a “Climate Crisis” let alone the end of the world due to it. Exaggeration and lies are the cause of the angst and worry described in this article.
Ditto!
“There is no mechanism for CO2 to effect climate except by effecting temperature.”
That temperature effect over a long period of time is the entire debate. Except the CO2 Does Nothing Nutters.
That doesn’t make any sense. Long term records don’t display any signals of correlation, let alone causation.
You mean evidence-free CO2 AGW nutters.
No evidence of any CO2 warming of the atmosphere in 45 years of satellite data.
But you know that… you just needed to rant.
Note: “Deaths in climate-related disasters declined 99% from a century ago”.
There is a climate chamge crisis
It is called Nut Zero
Politicians redesigning electric grids has a high probability of causing an electricity shortage crisis.
There is a “climate crisis” crisis. Entirely man made by the warmunists.
Can you say, ‘Mann made’?
Auto
Not one serious forecast of changed climate has EVER come to pass; There is no climate crisis. Worse nations are throwing good money away as a result of the silly Paris Agreement which is also sending money to the Maldives who are using it to build five new airports at near beach level.
The temperature gradient in the central part of the U.S. is about 1F per 40 miles.
That means 2 degrees of warming is like moving to a city that lies 80 miles south of your current home.
For example, all of the school kids that live in Minneapolis, MN that brought the lawsuit against climate change, believe their whole family will die if they move south to Rochester, MN!
Their education is wholly based on propaganda, rather than any rigorous scientific analysis.
It just shows how dangerous it is to believe Mainstream Media and Activists who have no interest in the truth. There is no cllmate crisis. Climate has always changed and always will. We adapt. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is almost at the lowest level it has ever been. Any lower and it will threaten plant and animal life. Man has not caused climate change and cannot change it, Hence Net Zero will achieve nothing but poverty. This is what most people should be understanding because most reputable scientists know this to be true.
“Man has not caused climate change and cannot change it”
Only stupid people, who enjoy making conservatives sound like fools, say that.
Better to say that human emissions of CO2 have had no unambiguous, detectable effect on climate and no climate changes beyond natural variations have occurred. However, increased CO2 is a net benefit to the biosphere. There is no climate crisis.
“Only stupid people, who enjoy making conservatives sound like fool”
You pretend to be “conservative”.
And you certainly sound like a fool !
How widespread was this poll anyway, or did it just emphasize the samples that showed the highest concern about the issue. A recent CBC survey in Alberta, one of the world’s leading fossil fuel jurisdictions, showed that its citizens rank the environment in general as only 10th in their list of major concerns. This number mirrors the results of a much larger ongoing UN survey which consistently has shown climate change at or near the bottom of the major priorities list. As for the young people who are driven to excessive drug use by their concerns about their futures in a changing climate, maybe they should make a concerted effort to seek treatment rather than running to safe-injection sites three times weekly. That alone would help the environment since they’d be less likely to clutter up the landscape recovering from their stupors.
I hear it was an online poll and those tend to attract clusters of fanatics. Likely worthless.
Your generic “character attack” on online polls sounds like the ranting of a fanatic.
You have made no attempt to investigate the sponsor of the poll, the market research company that conducted the poll, the publishers of articles about the results of the poll, or the poll results themselves.
You just reflexively reject online polls based on no evidence, to refute this specific poll
For your information most polling these days are online polls.
Do you reject all of them or just those with results you do not like?
Are online polls showing Trump leading Biden no good simply because they are online polls?
Live phone was once the dominant method of polling but has been in decline since 2016. As of 2022, about a third of national pollsters used live phone alone or in combination (32%), while a much smaller share relied on it as their only method (10%).
You are also an El Nino Nutter.
Did you make an attempt to investigate the sponsor of the poll, the market research company that conducted the poll, the publishers of articles about the results of the poll, or the poll results themselves?
Most reputable polls use several methods in collecting their data. An online only poll will gravitate to those that have a strong interest in the subject and will likely skew the results.
Self selected respondents will not give you good results. How can an online poll guarantee randomness of respondents?
Speaking about the rantings of a fanatic.. here’s RG !!
Poor RG… still a fanatical denialist of the effect of El Ninos.
Still a fanatic about CO2 causing warming, despite never having any evidence..
According to polls, President Hillary Clinton won 2016 elections.
According to Pew Research Centre the ill-defined category of “climate change” is eleventh on a list of the top problems facing the US (May 23 2024) but that is not a result of people being asked to volunteer concerns, the supposed concerns are suggested by the polling company, there are lots of fringe concerns not listed like vaccinations G5 towers unidentified flying objects etc. etc.
Polls are inherently unreliable.
“As for the young people who are driven . . . .”
You get knuckleheads like Greta Thunderstorm.
Here are the peer reviewers of all “97%” climate science papers –
Yes, but perhaps George Floyd is dead because of global warming induced drug use. It’s possible. /s
I don’t think there would ever be enough global warming experienced to interfere in any way with ol’ George’s hourly hits.
The only ingested or injected substance not detected in George’s system was Kryptonite.
Only because Fentanyl neutralizes Kryptonite though.
(or so an as-yet unpublished research paper claims)
All good per Darwin. The climate afflicted will increasingly die of dispair induced drug overdose, or in fear not bother to reproduce. Both Darwinian solutions improve climate fitness over time.
All good, except that Darwin is slow, while climate realists need Darwin fast.
And every participant would automatically qualify for a Darwin Award 🙂
I was thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, the Darwin Award is usually fatal.
The “remedies” for this non-existent problem will be far worse for the next generations than any mythical CO2 warming could ever have been. !!
“… Overstating the dangers can overshadow the significant progress being made and can undermine public trust in scientific discourse. …”
What scientific discourse? “Enquiring minds want to know.”
What significant progress on what .matter? The propaganda? Certainly not climate science. The stuff has degenerated into scare story speculations: may be more migraines, more mosquitoes, no more beer … there is no more basic science of climate, except for that done by sceptics like Willis, Dr. Spencer, Will Happer, Javier Vinós….
“all penalties for personal drug use and possession have to be scrapped… as much of the drug market as possible has to be regulated while recognising that part of the drug market is already regulated, such a methadone treatment, needle and syringe programs, medically supervised injecting centres. It will, of course, never be possible to regulate the entire drug market. We have regulated parts of the drug market before.” This entire proposal is BS and will never work, for absolute proof of this look at the Oregon experience and the disaster underway in British Columbia.
Yes, I don’t agree with everything Wodak said, Singapore has proven that penalties can work. But I trust Wodsk’s explanation for why people turn to drugs, he has talked to and helped a lot of addicts.
Don’t they hang anyone in Singapore found with any drugs.
Actually I disagree. medically supervised and regulated drug use is infinitely safer than street drugs. Back in the 1960s Junkies were sad creatures queuing up for their ‘scripts’ at the early morning chemists.
No one was motivated to increase their number. Then it all became harder, and street drug users were compelled to sell to others to finance their habits, and the incentive to create more customers led to a far far worse situation, with bad chemistry, crime and violence taking over from sad sickos.
Of and by itself fentanyl is not dangerous in a medical context. I’ve been pumped full of it and very grateful for it too. The problem is when its out of a medical context when the narrow margin between intense pleasure and death is problematic.
One has to question whether the association between drugs and crime is inherent, or actually created by the legislation.
My gut feeling is that de criminalizing would take the crime out of drug use, and reduce users from neighborhood gang heroes to sad sickos.
Those intent on finding the most pleasant way to commit suicide would simply remove themselves from the gene pool with little angst placed on anyone else.
Those that choose to retreat into private worlds of superstone, and not engage with the rest of us, well why not?
I’ve met some of those people and their lives were crap to start with. If that’s their way of dealing with it, leave ’em to it.
I’ve purchased 2 copies of the comic “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers”. Both times I went to Haight-Ashbury in the ’70s. Still have them. Probably worth a lot. They’re very funny especially if you’re buzzed. 🙂 They even have a series on Netflix, but I didn’t care for it that much.
Good for big pharma prescribing any number of horrors to “treat” the anxiety.
Missing from the article is the findings that HALF the POPULATION DON’T BELIEVE THE CATASTROPHIC GLOBAL WARMING HOAX
I’m skeptical that 48 percent think the Earth is going to be destroyed within their own lifetimes by CO2.
Nobody I know has ever voiced such concerns, although admittedly, the topic is not much discussed around here among the people I meet.
I’m going to start asking random people if they think the climate is about to destroy them. Do my own survey.
In the meantime: There is no climate crisis. There is no evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.
Dr. William Happer, one of the most prominent atmospheric scientists alive or dead, says that it is a hoax to claim that CO2 will cause extreme weather to get more extreme, or will cause a climate crisis in any other manner.
The twisted psychology of the Left leaves its mark.
They are twisted. Very twisted. And that makes them dangerous.
Number one young people today have it easier than any previous generation. The young men being shot at in the Middle East, Vietnam,Korea, Europe, the Pacific, Africa and any number of other places didn’t have a lot of time to consider the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere or whether the average global temperature is up 1.5C since the little ice age. Even those who weren’t in uniform are thinking am I next to be called up? That was something to worry about. If these people need something to worry about I suggest we withhold the luxuries they currently enjoy. Their concern about CAGW would drop considerably if they couldn’t flip a switch for light or turn a knob to cook your meal or turn a knob to heat or cool your house. What about going to the market for anything you need food, clothing, tools, entertainment or anything else you want. Not to mention just turning a key and you have your own personal transportation to the store, work, school, the tavern, your holiday or any where you want to go. Nope, get back to me when you have real things to worry about not made up things.
Heat transfer calculations do not support a “crisis” scenario. The IPCC says Rad Forcing for CO2 is 5.35 Ln (C/Co) which works out to 3.7 watts per doubling of CO2. If you multiply this by the current ratio of Surface/TOA which is 390/240 you get 3.7×390/240=6 W. This ratio would assume cloud cover, albedo, etc, remain unchanged but likely there would be increased evaporation causing those items to result in less warming. Raising the surface temperature by 1 degree raises the emitted IR by 5.4 watts according to SB equation.
So doubling CO2 will get us to about 6 Watts Extra, a bit over 1 degree….in about 150 to 200 years at present annual CO2 increase rate.
So no crisis. About like walking your dog at 9:35 AM instead of 9:30 AM
They just won’t be able to charge their phones so that will be like the end of the world for them-
Warnings Australia’s energy transition ‘out of control’ as NSW market quietly melts down (msn.com)
The fickles fan club want to get mighty nervous about that as all Hell will break loose and weather worrying will be the least of their concerns. Leftys have trained the woke petals to be triggered easily so be careful what you wish for with net-zero electrons numpties.
The Harrison Act against opium and opiates was passed in 1914. The deaths didn’t start until 1921 according to the CDC Mortality Statistics.
The law was probably passed to protect the alcohol and tobacco industries since smoking opium was catching on.
The law raised the price of opiates so high that people had to inject it resulting in deaths.
Some people don’t make enough endorphins, the morphine-like compound the body makes and opiates make them feel more normal.
Temperature trend in the equatorial Pacific has not changed since before 1981
Nor is it ever likely to. !
Dan, why wouldn’t the NOAA graphs show an increase of temperature at least equal to the increase of the UAH Global lower atmosphere series over the same time frame ? Presumably some other sea surface has increased MORE than the equatorial Pacific. Where ? UAH tropical departures (presumably includes the equatorial Pacific for about half it’s numbers) are usually higher than the global average.
Rick Will often gives a very good rundown on why central tropical ocean (a couple of degrees either side of the equator) temperatures cannot increase.
UAH Tropics is a very large area, covering some 34% (est) of the globe !! (20N -20S), so can’t really compare.
(I did ask Roy what the actual % is, but no answer yet)
Rick also has a nice little graph of “climate model” SSTs for the central tropics against reality… very informative about models! 😉 ….
I’m sure I have it saved, but I can’t find it.
“…fear of climate change was a significant factor driving young people to become addicted to hard drugs.”
Drugs, and “no children”.
“Opinion”, Sydney Morning Herald, morning edition, May 26, 2024. “Birth rates are declining.”
Couples apparently don’t want to bring children into a world that going to suffer some sort of disastrous end just a few years from now. The propaganda is working.
Really ? Did “Silent Spring” and “The Population Bomb” reduce family size back in the 70’s ? Or was it “the Pill”? And now it is something else like a decline in the number of people wanting to be parents due to internet narcissism.
G’Day D,
“…internet narcissism.”
That’s an expression I’m not familiar with.
Fear of the future is certainly one of the “no children” reasons. In Australia the cost of rentals/housing is very probably another.
Australian researchers in India some years ago were looking at rural decreasing birth rates. They drew a map outlining those areas. One chap, “I’ve seen something very much like that.” He came up with a map showing the expanding television coverage of the country. Very similar. Seems that the country ladies were now seeing how the city families prospered, with fewer children.
All sorts of possibilities, but “climate doom” is way up there.
If you want to control people in every aspect of their life, scare the living crap out of them and then tell them you have the answer to all their fears, as long as they do what you say.
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken
My advice to the bed wetters: Stop listening to AOC. Relax and enjoy the nice weather.
Yeah, “MyUsername” seems to love her (if she really is a she–it’s hard to tell nowadays). I think Communists like her are ugly to the bone.
This AOC?
Reminds me of a horse neighing !!
They don’t want to frighten the children so they chose to mention the 3 scaredest lefty states!
In another few decades, a lot of the people who think “Climate Change!” is going to kill them will have died of old age, or maybe terrible net zero policies.
“. . . terrible net zero policies.”
We actually want to prevent those policies: no meat, no dairy, no breathing.
Obviously it was a survey of Greta Thunberg’s acolytes, no one else is so braindead!
I suspect that the higher-order effects of “fear [of] climate change” when acted upon at a global political and socio-economic level “will end the world” [as we currently know it] “during [our] lifetime” if left un-checked is a reasonable concern.
And perhaps that’s exactly the intent. Perhaps the “fear of climate-change” is merely a tool to drastically change as much about the human condition on Earth as possible, and not intended to prolong human-kind’s ongoing amazing success here.
And if this is true, the next logical question is “What is the desired long-term outcome?”.