{"id":8571,"date":"2024-04-16T06:49:50","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T06:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8571"},"modified":"2024-04-16T06:49:50","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T06:49:50","slug":"the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2024\/04\/16\/the-end-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did you see that Simon Stiell<\/a>, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told an audience in London: \u201cWe have two years to save the world.\u201d \u00a0I didn't and am grateful to Dominic Lawson in \u00a0The Times<\/a> for making me splutter into my museli when I read it.<\/p>\n

Seriously? \u00a0How can someone in such a responsible position come up with such gibberish? \u00a0Does he believe it, is he just trying to frighten the rest of us, or does he feel that such visions are expected of him? \u00a0Maybe all those or more. \u00a0But he's not a climate expert; he's an engineer with an MBA. \u00a0As Lawson rightly notes, such apocalyptic warnings never come from experts involved, and none of the IPCC reports have warned of human or planetary extinction through our emissions. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But why did I splutter when I'm so used to this sort of anti-Millennialism from climate cults leaders? \u00a0Al Gore used to do it. \u00a0Greta T was adept at it before she discovered intersectionality. The Prince of Wales (now King Charles) did it all the time. \u00a0None has any relevant credentials, but people still fell at their feet in awe and wonder at their very insightful insights. The Prince warned in March 2009 that only 100 months remained to avert \u201cirretrievable climate collapse\u201d and in October 2021 he told COP leaders that they were in the last-chance saloon; again, obviously. \u00a0Only they weren't and we're not.<\/p>\n

Lawson points to a 2021 paper for the International Journal of Global Warming<\/a> by Rode and Fischbeck of Carnegie Mellon University: \u201cApocalypse now? Communicating extreme forecasts<\/em>\u201d. \u00a0This contained a graph plotting such forecasts, their advocates and the due date. \u00a0I recommend it.<\/p>\n

He also cites Professor Mike Hulme<\/a>, founder of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. \u00a0In 2006 Hulme noted that the increasing use of catastrophe rhetoric had altered the public discourse such that it was now characterised by doom laden phraseology. \u00a0In his book Climate Change Isn\u2019t Everything: liberating climate politics from alarmism, <\/em>he wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate kills and climate change is real \u2026 [but] climate change is not like a comet approaching Earth. \u00a0There is no good historical evidence that it will lead to human extinction or the collapse of human civilisation \u2026 climate is not and never has been static. \u00a0It is a changing condition to which all life continually adapts as a natural response. \u00a0Human societies continually adapt.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he observed that such scaremongering has led to \u201cpanic, fear and disengagement among people as \u2018the end\u2019 is imagined to be approaching\u201d. \u00a0 Clearly all this despair mongering has gotten through to young people especially, many of whom seem to live in terror of what they think is coming. \u00a0Teachers and schools take note; it's not too late to find a better balance in your messaging. \u00a0Although we face one of humanity's greatest ever challenges, it's not necessarily existential, given that we are rightly seized of the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you see that Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told an audience in London: \u201cWe have two years to save the world.\u201d \u00a0I didn't and am grateful to Dominic Lawson in \u00a0The Times...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}