13 Comments

Thank you for this welcome re-balancing of the climate policy debate. I agree that the apocalypse narrative could become a liability, even though it has served us well so far to get at least one, very large segment of the population, to rise up and demand action from our politicians. The Climate Change scientific and policy communities have been a very powerful driver of change and they have shown what can be done as an international community. It would be great if we could now move on from the realisation that climate change is potentially something really bad to creating a common vision of a desired common future for planet earth. From apocalyptic nightmares to dreams od greener pastures still ... There are still many vested interests out there, though, and we may still need to rely on diverse voices, including by our young and not so young climate activists. And the full range of critical scientific analyses.

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I am not sure that your memo has gotten to everyone yet. E.G.:

"The world is 'perilously close' to irreversible climate change. 5 tipping points keep scientists up at night" by Elizabeth Weise | April 7, 2022

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-world-perilously-irreversible-climate-scientists.html

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Dr Tim Ball - Historical Climatologist

<www.generalistjournal.com>

Book: ‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science’

Book: ‘Human Caused Global Warming, the Biggest Deception in History’

https://www.technocracy.news/dr-tim-ball-on-climate-lies-wrapped-in-deception-smothered-with-delusion/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzpPXuASY8

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A positive way to help people see the transition of uses of natural hydrocarbons is that they will become too precious to just burn.

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"Because the IPCC does not actually project apocalyptic futures at 1.5C (or even 2C), when people wake up one day and learn that the scheduled apocalypse did not come to pass, they may start asking some questions."

Well said. There's a long history of failed doomsday predictions. The last thing advocates of this cause need is to be considered another Heaven's Gate, Y2K or the like!

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I hope as we transition away from apocalyptic talk which implied a "whatever it takes" approach to emissions reduction we can return to using a "cost of carbon" metric to guide policy makers (and the public) towards a cost/benefit approach to policy. I believe this is more or less what you're saying in your article. I used to hear and see more "cost of carbon" figures being put out there as a guide to setting carbon taxes wherever they've been applied. The actual number ($/tonne) is subject to uncertainty and will be hotly debated as it should be but that has to be the starting point to getting people on the same page as to what initiatives make sense and which don't.

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I like the description. Climate apocalypse claimed have been shown to be totally off base with no understanding of economics. In the coming recession, mitigation will be even further undermined and adaptation will become the primary solution. As we saw with COVID … the feds hung onto masks long after they were useless and people rejected them and we will no doubt see how fast people swing to “never again.”

The world will warm. The world will cool

The climate will change. And humans will accept and adapt. Or not. And that’s ok too.

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Roger, do you really believe that climate variability is climate change? Do you think that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from just over 400 ppm to 800 ppm would be a bad thing? Do you really think that carbon capture in the West will offset carbon release by China and India? Do you really think that the massive capital investment in CO2 sequestration is going to yield a positive rate of return for shareholders? Just wondering. Martin.

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It looks like The Guardian hasn't gotten the word, Roger. Its headline several days ago: "IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster". Putting the words "now or never" in quotes implies that the IPCC actually uses those words in its report. Can somebody tell me whether those words are actually used in the report?

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Population could be headed for unexpected collapse in many parts of the world. Throw in war generated famine, from fertilizer and fuel shortages, add more pandemic, more femicide abortion and all advanced systems could utterly collapse by 2100. China is beyond recovery, as is Russia and all of Europe due to disastrous birth rates and female infanticide.

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