ROSS CLARK: Hysterical language and scaremongering we hear about climate change is self-defeating
How many more times are we going to be told that it is our last chance to avert climate Armageddon, before we work out that actually, no, we are not going to be wiped out like the dinosaurs? On Monday, was greeted with the usual hysteria which we have become used to with these publications. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres told us the climate time bomb is ticking, and called for developed countries to commit to eliminating all net greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 a decade earlier than Britains already near-impossible net zero target. Greenpeace claimed it amounted to our final warning. If only. Ed Miliband, as ever, claimed that we need to slash carbon emission far faster than we are doing to ensure that our children have a liveable future. And, adding to the canon of catastrophising language, on Tuesday the and has flown 6,500 delegates to New York in gas-guzzling aeroplanes to discuss the crisis. I am not denying the need to address the problems posed by a warming planet, and to slow, where we can, the temperature change. But this climate hysteria has real consequences, especially among young people brought up on a diet of gloom, beginning, in many cases, by being shown the U.S. politician Al Gores film An Inconvenient Truth while at school. According to a global survey in 2021 of 10,000 people aged 16 to 25, two-thirds said they were anxious, sad or afraid at the prospect of climate change. A shocking 56 per cent said they believed humans were doomed. A whole generation has been mentally scarred. There is emerging evidence that climate worries are leading to anxiety disorders and depression among the young. Some studies found these rise when there is an extreme weather event. The apocalyptic language is traumatising people and worse without good reason. While there is quality evidence that average global temperatures have risen by just over 1c over the past 150 years, the claims that we are headed soon for an unliveable Earth racked by Biblical storms, unsurvivable temperatures and endless fires is nothing more than irresponsible scaremongering. IPCC reports sift the mountain of scientific research on climate change. It is a serious endeavour but there is an ever-growing gap between what the reports actually say and the hyperbole that surrounds their publication. Dig past the press releases, and they present a very mixed bag of climactic trends many of which are inconvenient to human societies, but some of which are advantageous and others of which make little difference. In its coverage, The Guardian who else? reports extreme weather has led to millions of lives and homes destroyed in droughts and floods, millions of people facing hunger. Actually, there has been a downward trend in the number of people in the world suffering from under-nourishment over the past two decades, as defined by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in spite of substantial growth in the worlds population. There was a sharp rise in hunger in 2020, but that wasnt due to climate change as a World Health Organisation report made clear, it was the Covid pandemic and lockdowns. The number of people dying of extreme heat has been rising in recent decades as heatwaves increase. Yet that is more than cancelled out by a fall in the number of people shivering to death as cold snaps decrease. A study by the University of Monash, Australia, two years ago concluded that five million people a year die from extreme temperatures hot or cold but the overall number is falling as the world warms. Floods? The IPCC notes that overall rainfall, and extreme rainfall, have increased in many places as the result of global warming which is expected given that warmer air can hold more moisture. Indeed, rainfall has increased in many monsoon areas of South Asia such as Pakistan, where last summer about 8 per cent of the country was submerged in floods (not a third as is often erroneously claimed). These are highly flood-prone areas, home to ever more people, so an increase in rainfall will doubtless cause more damage to lives and livelihoods. But that is not the full picture. A study of 3,500 rivers around the world between 1961 and 2005 found that the maximum annual flood flow rose significantly in only 7 per cent of rivers, and fell in 11 per cent of rivers. In the remainder of the rivers, flood risk was pretty much unchanged. People habitually blame every occurrence of extreme weather on man-made climate change. Geological evidence presented by the IPCC, however, shows that floods in recent years have been nothing special by historical standards. Droughts? The IPCC records no significant trends in the incidence of droughts with the exception of a few regions in Africa and South America. Hurricanes? No upwards trend in the number of tropical cyclones making landfall in America although they do more damage as coastal areas have become more developed. It is a similar story with storms in Britain. How many times have we been told climate change will bring us more violent storms? Yet the evidence presented by the IPCC points in the opposite direction with the heaviest storms in the North Atlantic falling in recent decades. It is a trend confirmed in the State Of The Climate report published annually by the Royal Meteorological Society: since 1969 mean wind speeds have fallen. Extreme winds, too, have become less common over the past couple of decades. Clearly, there are reasons to worry about climate change. Sea levels are rising partly in response to melting ice and partly as a result of expansion (because warmer water is less dense and so takes up more space). In the longer run, that could cause serious problems in low-lying areas of Britain. Yet the IPCCs central estimate for sea-level rise over the course of the 21st century is 50cm a level that we can easily cope with if we are prepared to do what the Dutch do and defend our coasts properly. A quarter of the Netherlands lies below sea level, the lowest point being 22ft beneath it. But so far they have resisted launching a national Noahs Ark into the North Sea. Instead, through a series of sophisticated dykes, pumps and sand dunes the country stays afloat. Of course, there are good reasons to reduce carbon emissions, and eventually eliminate them. But the idea that humanity is on the precipice of extinction is a gross exaggeration. It is Project Fear writ large. And just as the Governments attempt to weaponise fear over Covid 19 backfired leaving some people too scared to leave their homes long after they had been vaccinated climate hysteria is having dreadful consequences. Not only is it damaging our mental health, it will likely end up counter-productive. After all, if you believe that human societies are doomed anyway as 56 per cent of young people apparently do what is the incentive to cut emissions? We need young people to commit to careers developing the technology to clean up industry not cowering in a corner waiting for the end. The scaremongers should tone down their rhetoric and study what is really happening to the climate. n Not Zero: How An Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (And Wont Even Save The Planet), by Ross Clark, is published by Forum Press.