Piers Akerman: Climate change report remains as bogus and unscientific as ever
Empirical research doesn’t cut it with the Kumbaya crew protesting outside Parliament House as they are all barracking for an apocalyptic end to the world as we know it, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The well-co-ordinated hysterical reactions to Climate Change 2021, the IPCC’s latest over-hyped fearmongering report, show how few adherents to the global warming cult actually read the document.
If they had accepted the Covid-lockdown boredom challenge and ploughed through the wordy document, they’d understand that it’s not actually based on science but on modelling. Modelling of five scenarios, helpfully labelled SSP1-1.9, SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5.
These models forecast wildly varying temperature changes in the global climate over coming decades but they ignore easily verifiable history of the Earth’s climatic ranges and are solely based on an extremely limited time frame, the baseline being the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900 and data from then to the current era.
This obscenely ignores the accepted and well-recorded temperature changes which occurred when the Vikings were farming in Greenland, the Roman and medieval warming periods, and the Little Ice Age when major rivers including the Thames and the Hudson froze over.
As the eminent and exceedingly qualified former head of earth sciences at Melbourne University Dr Ian Plimer dryly noted, in an essay titled The Past is the Key to the Present: “The concept of human-induced climate change is based on models projected well into the future and not measurement.”
Empirical research doesn’t cut it with the hopey-wishy Kumbaya crew who were ululating outside Parliament House last week as they used fossil fuels to torch a pram in a protest which appeared to be orchestrated for the benefit of the ABC.
They are all barracking for an apocalyptic end to the world as we know it because, as they say, the current model is racist, paternalistic, neo-colonial, misogynist and generally so oppressive it must be destroyed before any utopia can be built on its ashes.
History tells us that such revolutionaries come to an unfortunate end but not before visiting horrors such as the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and Mao’s Cultural Revolution upon hundreds of millions of unfortunates.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, the report “is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable … this report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet”.
The luvvies may have been swinging from the bells in Green inner-urban areas, but if world leaders were foolish enough to follow the demands of Greta Thunberg and other truants who’ve been missing seriously important school periods, the knell would be sounding for millions in Africa, Asia and South America who would be robbed of the benefits of the energy which has powered the First World nations.
While the ABC, Crikey, Greenpeace and other organisations spread fear, the young and poorly informed aren’t being told how a warmer planet would actually be of benefit to more people than it would harm. Food production has never been higher. The planet is greening at a greater rate than ever. Deaths from natural disasters have never been lower.
The IPCC report is no more than a reprise of the utterly discredited “hockey stick” scenario produced by Michael Mann two decades ago in which the world’s temperature was shown as stable until a sharp rise was discovered this century. It was bogus then and it remains as unscientific and as bogus now.
The IPCC is not a scientific organisation, it is a political grouping which has developed a religious fervour and spawned a cult – mindless as cults are and unable to conduct civil discussion. That the weak woke West is outsourcing its industry to China, principally, and China is the single largest emitter and refuses to respond to any of the UN’s silliness is overlooked. Out of total annual global emissions from fossil fuels of 36.4 billion tonnes, China emits 10.2 billion tonnes.
The US is the next biggest emitter with 5.4 billion tonnes, then the EU with 2.9 billion, India 2.6 billion, Russia 2.4 billion and Japan 1.3 billion.
Fear and angst are being ramped up to pressure governments at November’s Glasgow climate conference to pledge to trash their economies.
It seems increasingly likely, however, that the mutating Wuhan virus is going to steal the limelight and leave the hand-wringing warmist cultists in the shade.
More Coverage
Black Friday ahead for retailers
Let’s call this rail dispute for what it is. It’s industrial warfare that is a dagger to the heart of our city and its still struggling economy, writes Paul Nicolaou.
Transport minister Jo Haylen’s service could be terminated by train stoppage
Sydney’s train strike has not come as any surprise. The transport minister had weeks to plan for this but instead basked in the glory of a Metro she did nothing to build, writes James O’Doherty.