Climate – What Just Happened

What do you know about the climate?

What do you believe about the climate?

I didn’t take much notice, I just picked up the idea that we are heading for a climate emergency. The core of the problem is the CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans burning fossil fuels. We have to reduce emissions. We have to get to net zero.

The story as it seems to me:

CO2 (and methane) from human sources is causing global warming and this is a threat to the existence of the human race.
Unless we limit the world’s average temperature increase to 1.5C we will have a climate emergency.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are the scientific authority on this.
There is a great scientific consensus, and anyone who disagrees must be arrogant, stupid or a conspiracy theorist.

But then I started to take notice. I can’t remember what started it, but suddenly I was listening. At first I thought it was just people who wanted to promote the fossil fuel industry. Reckless, selfish, arrogant. Then I discovered scientists who have been studying physics, the atmosphere and the oceans for decades. Yes the climate is changing, but these changes pre-date the use of fossil fuels. There is natural variability in the processes that drive the climate. And good science will consider the unknowns and uncertainties of our theories about the climate.

So here are some of my findings…

CO2 levels are definitely rising. And average global temperatures have risen about 1.5C in the last 200 years. Human activities are probably contributing to the changes. But the climate has always been changing and it is really hard to be sure what our contribution is.
Climate catastrophe is not “settled science”. There are many individuals and groups of scientists who do not believe that we are in an emergency.
Net Zero climate policy basically means dismantling our existing ways of producing electricity and getting electricity from wind and solar. There are practical realities that mean the grid would become unreliable. The materials needed (such as copper) to do this just in the UK are more than are currently produced globally in a year. In the UK the policies enacted to this end have already resulted in expensive energy relative to the rest of the world, which is a contributory factor of the cost of living crisis for low income families.
- in the UK, as a result of our green energy policies, we now pay 4x more for our energy than in USA and 7x more than in China. This makes it impossible for our industry to compete on a global scale and has caused the dilemma “heat or eat’ for low income households.
- if we pressure developing countries to only use renewable energy we are denying poor people access to education, health, food.
Increasing CO2 has benefits for agriculture.
Censorship and putting people down. YouTube and Wikipedia are fully signed up to the UN line on climate and are trying to de-emphasis (YouTube) or defame (Wikipedia) any questioning of the official climate narrative.