Category: Climate realism

Climate change catastrophism based on culture, not science

Only culture can explain why so many people are willing to incur immense cost to avert a supposed existential threat without proof of either its existence or our ability to alter its impact.

By Joe Oliver, National Post, July 26, 2023

The climate-change movement is a powerful cultural entity. It does not affirm or negate the reality of its core narrative, which is for science to decide. Culture does, however, explain the power and prevalence of the narrative, the political and societal responses to it and the apparent willingness of many people to incur immense cost to avert a supposed existential threat, without proof of either its existence or our ability to alter its impact.… Read more

Global ‘progressives’ are enemies of progress

Reasonable people are tired of pessimistic and divisive hectoring from our betters, urging us (but not requiring themselves) to sacrifice more and settle for less.

By Joe Oliver, National Post, July 21, 2023

Back in 1961, American conservative intellectual William F. Buckley sardonically observed that “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard faculty.” He was saying that the average person has more common sense than esteemed academics. His remark has even greater resonance 62 years later, now that academia has lost its way in woke madness. But the observation applies equally to progressive politicians and international bureaucrats.… Read more

‘Climate change’ is the new COVID—an attempt to shut you up

The real target of the climate alarmists is freedom, just as it was for COVID

By Jeffrey A. Tucker, Epoch Times, July 20, 2023

Listening to National Public Radio (NPR) just now (why do I do this?), the lead item was about flooding in Kentucky. It seems that it rained a lot and some streets became impassable. Fascinating right? But why is this bit of local news a top-of-the-hour blast from government radio?

You know why: the whole of mainstream press has shifted completely from COVID panic to Climate Change panic. Everything qualifies as evidence of a new crisis: smoke in the air, rain on the ground, sun in the sky, sand in the wind, you name it.… Read more

There is no ‘climate crisis’: Nobel-winning physicist

‘The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.’

By Andreas Wailzer, LifeSite News, July 13, 2023

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist has criticized alarmist climate predictions and said that he does not believe that there is a “climate crisis.”

During his speech at the “Quantum Korea 2023” event, Dr. John Clauser said, “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis,” according to a report by Seoul Economic Daily that has been translated into English by the CO2 Coalition. 

Clauser added that “key [climate] processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times” and accused the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of spreading misinformation. … Read more

Deaths from cold vastly outnumber deaths from heat in Europe

Lancet study finds 203,620 deaths due to cold weather, 20,173 deaths due to warm weather in 2019

By Pierre Masselot, et al., Lancet, Volume 7, Issue 4, April 2023

Heat and cold are established environmental risk factors for human health. However, mapping the related health burden is a difficult task due to the complexity of the associations and the differences in vulnerability and demographic distributions. In this study, we did a comprehensive mortality impact assessment due to heat and cold in European urban areas, considering geographical differences and age-specific risks.

Methods

We included urban areas across Europe between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec.… Read more

Strong El Niño, not ‘global warming’, is creating ‘record’ temperatures

Temperatures have been mostly flat for a decade, except during 2015/16 El Niño spike, so fears of uncontrolled warming are hype, not science

By David Whitehouse, Net Zero Watch, July 11, 2023

The world is once again in the grip of a semi-regular climate alarm. I’m not referring to the latest onset of the El Niño cycle, declared in action on July 4th by the United Nations, but the amplified rhetoric about the pace and scale of warming temperatures that always accompanies such El Niño periods.

Do you remember what happened last time we had a record El Niño in 2015/16?… Read more

‘Record’ forest fires in Canada? Only if you ignore history

Pre-industrial fires were much worse than today’s, but media ignore them to get scarier headlines

By Tristan Hopper, National Post, July 10, 2023

More of Canada has burned this year than in any other year on record, and it’s not particularly close.

According to the most recent figures from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, nine million hectares of forest have already burned. That shatters the previous record of 7.8 million hectares set in 1989, and is more than four times the annual average of Canadian forest burned between 1959 and 2015. These stats are all the more remarkable given that the season is only about half over. … Read more

Climate adaptation, not mitigation, should be world’s goal

Despite 30 years of aggressive international climate mitigation efforts, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise whereas adaptation efforts have shown considerable success.

By Ross McKitrick, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, July 6, 2023

Discussion of climate policy is overwhelmingly focused on options for mitigation, or emission reduction, with relatively little attention paid to options for and benefits of adaptation.

Proponents of climate policy have long resisted discussing adaptation perhaps out of fear that it might be effective: if through adaptation we can substantially reduce or even eliminate the negative effects of climate change, this will weaken the case for deep decarbonization and elimination of fossil fuels, which some in the climate movement view as an end in itself.… Read more

Ottawa’s environmental ideals become economic suicide cult

Damage from Trudeau’s dogmatic climate policies are a self-inflicted wound

By Gwyn Morgan, C2C Journal, July 5, 2023

Wildfires in Canada and unseasonably high temperatures in parts of Europe are being blamed on climate change, further escalating the frenzied sense of urgency propounded by governments, activist groups and the mainstream media to “do something” about carbon emissions.

In Canada, it seems no volume of emissions is too small to worry about. B.C. taxpayers, for example, will be paying an estimated $25 million to connect cruise ships docking in Victoria to electric shore power so the ships’ diesel generators can be shut down.… Read more

The utopian social engineering of the Net Zero promoters will be disastrous

The promised climate utopia will cost us our prosperity and our freedom, if we allow it

By Paul MacRae, Climate Realists of British Columbia, July 4, 2023

Dr. Trevor Hancock, the first leader of the Canadian Green Party and now a retired professor of public health, has for several years had a regular weekly column in the Victoria Times Colonist promoting what can only be called a bleak vision of the future if we don’t abandon our industrial-technological civilization and return to a more “natural” way of being (smaller communities, less consumption, etc.)

He is, of course, firmly in the Net Zero by 2050 camp when it comes to “climate change” and the headline for his June 25, 2023, column is “Climate action needs a greater sense of urgency.”… Read more