Saturday, 1 April 2023

"If we can’t have cooperation in fighting climate change, let’s compete” | Yeah, but no

Nobody is choosing extinction, dummies!
My Comment at the site:
Peter F.
I wonder if Brian Klein has actually read the latest IPCC report? Nowhere does it talk of "existential" risks, of "closing doors", of "red alarms" or any other of the cataclysmic nonsense we see here and in the MSM. I *have* read it. It talks of RCPs, "Representative Concentration Pathways", which are likely/projected/possible outcomes at different levels of CO2 increases. At the current best guess, RCP4, global mean temperature will increase 2C which will affect global GDP so that we will be slightly less rich than otherwise, but still substantially better off Than today. 
None of the apocalyptic scenarios like complete collapse of Antarctica or Greenland, or the Gulf Stream are predicted by IPCC. Klein's "remedies" would make us substantialy poorer today for an inconsequential, likely zero,  temperature lower in fifty years time. And put us all at each other throats with tort cases that will enrich only the lawyers.  Klein needs to read more widely. He hasn't thought this through.
Article here

Here’s my position on Climate Change: I fully accept that it’s happening and that it human-caused (largely, but not fully). WE need to reduce Carbon Dioxide and other GHG emissions. On that we are agreed, all parties, right? Where we’ll differ is the extent of the threat and what to do about it. The science, such as it is, and it’s summed in the IPCC report above, does not tell us that we are threatened with extinction. Nor that we are due for calamity in twelve years. Nor that we will have an uninhabitable world by 2050 let alone 2030, nor that we have to completely reorder our economic and political to tackle the threat. 
This position, the one I share, is: we should reduce carbon emissions, but a combination of nuclear and natural gas and renewable such as solar and wind. We should put money to develop factory made meats and other foods. That still leaves construction, with steel and cement major contributors, but that need more research, and can’t simply be shut down. That’s about it. There’s not need for panic. We do not face an apocalypse. We face a challenge. It’s like you go to the doctor for a sore foot and his advice to fix it is cut off your head. We need to fix the foot, not cut off the head.....