If climate disaster is nigh, at least we’ll be spared IPCC reports

JUDITH SLOAN
OCTOBER 8, 2018
AFR

Here we go again — a group of like-minded, henny-penny scientists telling us the world is about to be transformed in a bad way unless we act. Yes, we’ve heard it many times before.

The good thing this time is that this group of credulous scientists who are part of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is telling us that we are so close to a tipping point that there will be no point issuing any more warnings. That will be a ­relief.

Evidently, the difference ­between the world temperature rising by 2C and 1.5C is huge. More people being inundated, more floods/droughts, greater destruction of biodiversity, hardly any coral reefs left. You know, the normal catastrophic stuff.

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And “actions that can reduce emissions include: phasing out coal in the energy sector, increasing the amount of energy produced from renewable sources, electrifying transport and reducing the carbon footprint of the food we consume”. That is, all the favourites of the far-Left.

Mind you, the content of the IPCC report released yesterday ain’t science. It doesn’t set out ­refutable hypotheses and test them. In fact, we don’t even have reliable data on global temperatures. Using climate models to support predictions of future disasters is actually not that far from making astrological prophecies. 

And, of course, scientists make truly appalling economists. They don’t understand the first thing about cost-benefit analysis. Check out this piece of guff: “Limiting ­global warming to 1.5C compared to 2C could go hand-in-hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society.”

To suggest that all coal-fired power stations will need to be closed by 2050 is not just silly, it is also completely naive. According to German environmental group Urgewald, “1600 coal plants are planned or currently under construction in 62 countries … The new plants will expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 per cent”.

And bear in mind, most of these plants will last at least 50 years. Luckily, our own Prime Minister recognises the essentially fraudulent nature of these international reports. Scott Morrison said yesterday that “we’re not throwing money into some global climate fund and getting pulled around by the nose by all these international agencies when it comes to these other reports. I mean the same ­report that (came out yesterday) said a year ago that the policies were fine”.

He may be weak for refusing to consider Australia pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, but at least he’s not being fooled by some of its various appendages.

 For anyone who wants to spend time on yet another IPCC report predicting future climate cataclysms, I recommend you read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s latest book, Skin in the Game. He makes the distinction between science and scientism.

The IPCC report is a clear ­example of the latter, with all its fancy concocted charts and tables pretending to be based on real ­science undertaken by disinterested scientists when it is nothing of the sort.

 According to this insightful ­author, “one can see that these academic-bureaucrats wanting to run our lives aren’t even rigorous. They can’t tell science from scientism — in fact, in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science”.

In sum, “scientism is to science what a Ponzi scheme is to an ­investment”.

We should all bear this in mind next time we see a report from the IPCC.