Fake Claim 1: Climate change is part of a natural cycle
We’ll start by giving you one. Yes, there are natural cycles. For
instance deniers love pointing to 17th century Dutch oil paintings as
proof of a mini ice age, of all things, because they often depicted
frozen lakes. Of course it only takes a few days for a lake to freeze,
and even fewer to thaw. The role of “palaeo” scientists, like Mike, is
to check whether recent changes look like past natural cycles. They
don’t! The changes in the last 40 years are too big, and too fast. In
fact, the most powerful cycles we know about are slowly pushing us
towards a colder climate.
Here's the problem. Some of us have memories.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1960's the Club Of Rome (and this was still required reading in biology courses in the 1980's) said that we would run out of almost all metals and natural materials needed to run society by 2000. Oops.
Before them came Malthus who predicted societal collapse because we'd run out of food. Oops.
Then in the 1970's Time had its famous cover of a snow covered New York with a wolf in the foreground and a warning that another ice age is coming.
Al Gore told us in 2000 that if we didn't make radical changes immediately then the world would end in 2010. In 2010 he said it would happen in 2020.
Michael Mann came up with his "hockey stick" prediction that global temperatures, after rising slowly for a while, would suddenly shoot up to unlivable levels... 15 years ago.
Again, if carbon output is bad, then it is bad no matter where it comes from. Why is it that the same people who demand that we shut down all fossil fuel industries in the West ignore China and India, the world's two biggest emitters? Why did Obama, who had to shut down pipelines and fracking in America give his approval to the expansion of coal use in China?
Then there's the hypocrisy. Every few years we have a massive international climate conference where world leaders gather and intone about how serious they are about saving the planet. How do they get to their destinations? Planes, trains and automobiles, very few of which are electric. not just that but they bring huge delegations, increasing the amount of carbon needed to get the conference going.
And how about the folks protesting and shutting down pipelines? Here's the problem - the oil is still travelling. If you shut down a pipeline then it travels by train. Which produces more carbon emissions? Oil travelling quietly through a pipeline or on a carbon-belching train? But hey, they shut down the pipeline! They saved the world.
Finally, you can't keep releasing report after report about how the world is going to imminently fall apart and paint a scenario where we're all doomed and then demand we do stuff that's impossible. Shut down the fossil fuel industry immediately? Absurd, can't happen, would result in huge economic damage and likely lots of deaths. How about we switch track and say "Okay, badness is coming, let's start adapting and preparing for it so we're ready when it does?" No! Not acceptable. Might as well as a Muslim to eat pork. We have to stop this.
This is not science. It's religion.