Commentary
Surely, you are familiar with the folk tale of Chicken Little, who was struck by an acorn falling from one of the trees, and was sure the sky was falling.
Over the years, Chicken Little has become almost synonymous with alarmism, as a description of someone or group needlessly stoking fear.
For the purpose of this blog post, Chicken Little is represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its current chairman, Hoesung Lee of South Korea.
Lee insists that the world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature threshold within the next 10 years, pushing the planet past the point of catastrophic warming, unless nations drastically transform their economies and immediately transition away from fossil fuels.
The threshold is the ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by the early 2030s.
Just as Chicken Little was able to persuade her friends – Henny Penny, Goosey Loosey, and others – to join her in her journey to warn the king, the UN’s Lee is using the media to create hysteria. Note these headlines:
“Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe. The Next Decade Is Critical, UN Panel Says” – The New York Times
“World is on brink of catastrophic warming, UN climate change report says” – The Washington Post
Why Should We Believe the IPCC?
We shouldn’t. Formed in 1998, the IPCC is made up pseudo climate scientists from 195 countries to provide policymakers assessments on climate change, its impacts and risks. Its credibility has been questioned as it is viewed to be politically motivated.
Dr. Judith Curry , professor emeritus and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, stirred colleagues when she cast doubt on the IPCC, referring to it as a “manufactured consensus of scientists at the request of policymakers.”
She has been critical of the number of scientists who have become politically involved, and are exaggerating the truth in the interests of a good story or political objectives.
In recent posts, I have written about the skepticism cast on the science by wild modelling variations, causing distrust.
IPCC Blames Us
Humanity’s responsibility for all of the warming of the global climate system is an unassailable fact, according to the IPCC.
The IPCC’s latest report states that “humanity has fundamentally and irreversibly transformed the Earth system, with emissions from fossil fuels and other planet-warming activities that have increased global average temperatures. These changes have caused irrevocable damage to communities and ecosystems.
“Earth has survived far bigger insults than what human beings are doing,” Curry reminds us.
“The real threat to humanity is the stupidity of these people,” writes Stephen Kruiser. “They’ve been wrong about virtually everything. The only thing they’ve succeeded in is bleeding the American taxpayer dry and frightening a generation of young people.”
Responding to those who say, ‘Oh, the weather is worse now,’ Curry agrees, but is quick to say it’s not worse than the 1930s or 40s, or even the 50’s. It’s cyclical.
Looking beyond the science, Curry talks about how our lives with reduced poverty and advances in human development were fueled by petroleum and coal. It’s easy to see why others in the scientific community object to her views:
“Having our entire energy infrastructure relying on wind turbines and solar energy is going to cause a lot of harm to people, not just to the over economy. You can’t run an industrial economy on wind and solar, at least not in the way it’s currently envisioned.”
“Even if we’re going to transition to all wind and solar, we’re going to need a lot of fossil fuels to accomplish that, to do all the mining and establish supply chains and all the transport and everything else.”
While the left-leaning media (of Chicken Little Society) continues to collude with the IPCC by publishing headlines to scare us and heap blame on our activities, we know we cannot control climate, and even if we went to net zero emissions, we would barely notice.
We can expect another warning shot across the bow in early 2024, with a report of the IPCC’s Dubai meeting in December. I can hardly wait.
In the meantime, we need to pressure our Republican leadership to do what it can to put the brakes on Biden’s new green deal activities.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
