Thanks, Colorado Springs Gazette, For The Danger of “Climate Change Catastrophe” – Watts Up With That?
Are from ClimateREALism
Via Linnea Lueken
The editorial board of Colorado Springs Gazette published a paper describing the harm caused by “catastrophic climate change”, the continual repetition of regrettably exaggerated claims about the risk of climate change. The story quotes a letter recently published in a peer-reviewed newspaper Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in which an international group of scientists urged their fellow researchers to avoid exaggerating the likely effects of climate change, warning that it could contribute to mental health problems, especially in young people. This presents a much more realistic and balanced perspective, avoiding sensationalist claims and focusing on a realistic assessment of the state of climate knowledge.
The Colorado Springs Gazette article titled “Boulder scientists warn of ‘climate change catastrophe’,'” speak “[e]not enough with climate change scare tactics. They hurt people, probably more than they will because of climate change.” They cite a letter posted on PNAS with the title “Catastrophic climate risks should not be underestimated nor overstated,” written by climate scientists Matthew G. Burgess, Roger Pielke Jr. and Justin Ritchie.
The Colorado Springs Gazette write:
In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists warn about the scientific community focusing too much on worst-case scenarios — including the imminent extinction of species. people — rather than the more plausible outcomes that fall between Armageddon on the one hand and “no worries” on the other. They explain that alarmism leads to the impossible goals of ending all fossil fuel consumption by mid-century, social anarchy and mental health problems.
The letter itself addresses a specific article in the PNAS, “Ending the climate: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios,” which states that catastrophic, extinction-level climate scenarios need to be explored more in the scientific literature. Burgess and his co-authors argue that there has been a considerable overemphasis on “disaster” predictions and modeling.
From the letter:
“Kemp et al. note that recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasize scenarios below 2°C. At the same time, IPCC reports overemphasize dire scenarios, as well as broader discourses. For example, the Catastrophic Representative Concentration Roadmap 8.5 (RCP8.5) and Common Socio-Economic Roadmap scenarios 5-8.5 (SSP5-8.5)—currently considered by many to be unreasonable—account for about one half of the scenarios covered in the IPCC Recent Assessment Report (Working Group II) impacts are similar to the baseline science literature.
This is consistent with what many scientists, such as those cited at Climate realism, Already warned. RCP8.5 and similar high emission scenarios are not realistic, potentially impossible. Unfortunately, despite its plausibility, RCP8.5 is widely used in climate science and climate policy literature to promote unsupported extreme climate change disaster scenarios. supported by data. The goal is to push governments around the world to undertake an immediate and radical “great reset” of global political and economic systems.
The authors of the letter correctly pointed out that “[o]Emphasized apocalyptic futures can be used to support autocracy and haste.”
They continued:
For example, catastrophic and ultimately inaccurate overpopulation scenarios in the 1960s and 1970s contributed to the adoption of forced sterilization and abortion programs in several countries, including China’s one-child policy, which causes up to 100 million forced abortions, disproportionately affects girls.
The authors also cite the recent ban on synthetic fertilizers – a long-supported policy goal of environmentalists and climate alarmists – in Sri Lanka, which has led to a crisis Food Climate realism mention, here.
Climate alarmists exaggerate the recent pace of warming and the risks of extreme weather to spur radical political action. The editorial board of Colorado Springs Gazette and PNAS should be thanked for making this point. Earth’s climate changes and will continue to do so, and it is wise to respond to this change with realistic mitigation efforts. An over-regulation imposed by governments around the world, such as ban fossil fuelshas the potential to cause far greater harm and devastation than climate change itself.
https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/linnea-lueken
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. As a Heartland Institute intern in 2018, she co-authored the Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Unmasking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracture”.
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