Update on Climate Change

There is no “climate emergency”, according to a recent study for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by independent scientist Dr. Indur Goklany. It will be hard for green activists to dismiss Goklany as a “denier”. His credentials as a climate expert are impeccable. He was a member of the U.S. delegation that established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and helped develop its First Assessment Report. He subsequently served as a U.S. delegate to the IPCC, and as an IPCC reviewer.

Goklany says: “Almost everywhere you look, climate change is having only small, and often benign, impacts. The impact of extreme weather events ― hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts ― are, if anything, declining. Economic damages have declined as a fraction of global GDP. Death rates from such events have declined by 99% since the 1920s. Climate-related disease has collapsed. And more people die from cold than warm temperatures.”

Even sea-level rise — predicted to be the most damaging impact of global warming — seems to be much less of a problem than thought, according to to the study’s findings. Goklany says: “A recent study showed that the Earth has actually gained more land in coastal areas in the last 30 years than it has lost through sea-level rise. We now know for sure that coral atolls aren’t disappearing and even Bangladesh is gaining more land through siltation than it is losing through rising seas.”

In his report, Goklany destroys many of the green movement’s shibboleths, including the notion that fossil fuels are bad for the planet. Not only, he suggests, has their CO2 contributed to “global greening” — “contrary to prevailing wisdom, tree cover globally has increased by over 2 million km2 between 1982 and 2016, an increase of 7 per cent” — but they provide the fertilizers and pesticides which simultaneously feed the planet and reduce the amount of land required for agriculture:

Thus, nitrogen fertilizers and carbon dioxide fertilization have together increased global food production by 111 per cent. In other words, fossil fuels are responsible for more than half of global food production. Without them, food would be scarcer, and prices higher (assuming all else, including food demand, stays constant). To maintain the food supply, croplands would have to more than double, to at least 26 per cent of the world’s land area (ex-Antarctica). Adding in pastureland, the human footprint on the planet would increase to 51.2 per cent of the world. In other words, fossil fuels have saved 13.8 per cent of the non-frozen parts of the world from being converted to agriculture.

Goklany concludes: “While climate may have changed for the warmer: Most extreme weather phenomena have not become more extreme, more deadly, or more destructive. Empirical evidence directly contradicts claims that increased carbon dioxide has reduced human well-being. In fact, human well-being has never been higher. Whatever detrimental effects warming and higher carbon dioxide may have had on terrestrial species and ecosystems, they have been swamped by the contribution of fossil fuels to increased biological productivity. This has halted, and turned around, reductions in habitat loss.”

None of the doom-mongering claims made about a decline in human welfare stands up, either, according to the study. Access to cleaner water has increased; mortality from ‘Extreme Weather Events’ has declined by 99 per cent since the 1920s; fewer people are dying from heat; death rates from climate-sensitive diseases like malaria and diarrhea have decreased (since 1900 malaria death rates have declined 96 per cent); hunger rates have declined; poverty has declined (GDP per capita has quadrupled since 1950 even as CO2 levels have sextupled); life expectancy has more than doubled since the start of industrialization; health adjusted life expectancy has increased; global inequality has decreased in terms of incomes, life expectancies and access to modern-day amenities; the earth is green and more productive; habitat lost to agriculture has peaked due to fossil fuel dependent technologies.

The report will make hugely depressing reading for all the prominent environmental activists - from the Pope and Doom Goblin Greta Thunberg to the Great Reset’s Klaus Schwab - who have been pushing the “climate emergency” narrative. It is an article of faith for the globalist elite and their useful idiots in the media, in politics, in business, and the entertainment that the world is on course for climate disaster which only radical and costly international action can prevent.

But Goklany’s report - Impacts of Climate Change: Perception & Reality - claims there is little if any evidence to support the scare narrative.

At the end, Goklany provides a table, setting out all the scaremongering claims made by environmental groups - and then comparing them with observed reality. Only one of the claims stands up, according to the study - weather has been getting slightly warmer:

• More hot days and fewer cold days — Yes

• Cyclones/hurricanes more intense or frequent — No

• Tornadoes increase and become more intense — No

• Floods more frequent and more intense — No

• Droughts more frequent and intense — No

• Area burned by wildfire increasing — No (area peaked in mid-19th century)

• Cereal yields decreasing — No (they have tripled since 1961)

• Food supplies per capita decreasing — No (increased 31 per cent since 1961)

• Land area and beaches shrinking, coral islands submerged — No. (Marginal expansion)

  Adapted from an article by James Delingpole on February 7, 2021