The entire world appears enthralled with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its periodic edicts. The pretension is that this is a “scientific” organization employing scientific methodology to forecast risks of global warming. It isn’t.
Reviewing the latest IPCC Report, one is struck by how far-ranging this global Panel now ventures—into “social sciences,” economics, politics, and (of course) social justice.
Notable is the wide range of supposed disciplines brought to bear on the single issue of greenhouse gasses, while other contributing causes of environmental harm—especially chemical pollution—are comprehensively sidestepped.
Most open minds are receptive to the possibility that human activity could warm the globe: the question is how much, and what harm (if any) that will cause. This is where science could be very useful. Scientific inquiry should then focus on two very complex issues:
1) causation (establishing that CO2 and other gasses cause climate change), and
2) prediction (how much such change, if established, will impact the environment over time). Those who cannot accurately predict the weather for next week, now feign prophetic clarity for 2100 A.D.
There does not appear to be an Intergovernmental Panel on Chemical Pollution. Why is that?
Species are disappearing due to chemical contaminants. Human sperm counts are plummeting, cancers rising, and endocrine disruptors may be impacting gender biologically.
Rachel Carson exposed these problems in 1962, in her ground-breaking book Silent Spring. Six decades later, the entire world is mesmerized by the IPCC like some newfound Papal order. As for the chemicals …crickets.
The IPCC has strayed so far from science that it is properly defined as a political and not a scientific entity.
The latest IPCC Report reveals this single-lens bias in favor of the climate-change cult through the prism of expanding disciplines while narrowing focus: more and more bunk studies are being used to label all things horrible as caused by greenhouse gasses.
Seas are being emptied of fish, species are dying, and the culprit is ever carbon.
Do scientists not consider the consequences of chemical pollution any more, or predict where the world will be if no brakes are applied to the generation of yet more man-made pollutants?
The question becomes downright eerie when the IPCC instead advocates for more chemical applications to the ecosystem as a solution to greenhouse gas warming: a climate-sensitive diet is now to be “balanced” by plants, to save the world from cows.
Globalists have found that they can weaponize poor people to help them get richer, cry globalist crocodile tears for crocodiles, weep for bees, and rescue humanity from cows—by culling them.
Greenhouse gasses are not the sole threat to food and fauna. Everything about the latest IPCC document reeks of fraud.
Where is the concern for BPA, phthalates, PFOAs, or neonicotinoids in the IPCC pronouncements?
How can “science” ignore these profound threats to the ecosystem and humans while using carbon dioxide to hone in on wealth disparity, social justice, and human fears of climate change?
More, the proposed solutions of a plant-based diet depend on the industrial chemical polluters who happily count themselves members of the World Economic Forum and peddle their chemical wares as salvific of all climate-change ills.
The IPCC scientific “standards”
Scientifically speaking, the IPCC Report does not obscure that it is speculative in its predictions:
“Building on multiple analytical frameworks, including those from the physical and social sciences, this report identifies opportunities for transformative action which are effective, feasible, just and equitable using concepts of systems transitions and resilient development pathways. ….Based on scientific understanding, key findings can be formulated as statements of fact or associated with an assessed level of confidence using the IPCC calibrated language.”
The “calibrated language” describes the “level of confidence” the various scientific possibilities are ascribed:
“The likely range of total human-caused global surface temperature increase from 1850–1900 to 2010–20199 is 0.8°C to 1.3°C, with a best estimate of 1.07°C. It is likely that well-mixed GHGs contributed a warming of 1.0°C–2.0°C…. It is very likely that GHG emissions were the main driver of tropospheric warming and extremely likely that human-caused stratospheric ozone depletion was the main driver of stratospheric cooling between 1979 and the mid-1990s. It is virtually certain that the global upper ocean (0-700m) has warmed since the 1970s and extremely likely that human influence is the main driver.” [emphasis of variabilities added].
The Report by its terms speaks in likelihoods and “best estimates,” but climate alarmists then harden these cautious scientific boundaries into calibrated end-of-the-world alarms of purported certitude.
This is hardly scientific. It is extremely likely that globalists and their large corporate allies are lying to garner power, wealth, and control.
What about chemical pollution?
Encompassing all aspects of the world under the sun (except chemical pollution), the Report posits “medium confidence” about agricultural impacts:
“Although overall agricultural productivity has increased, climate change has slowed this growth in agricultural productivity over the past 50 years globally (medium confidence), with related negative crop yield impacts mainly recorded in mid- and low latitude regions, and some positive impacts in some high latitude regions (high confidence). Ocean warming in the 20th century and beyond has contributed to an overall decrease in maximum catch potential (medium confidence).”
Is it possible that agricultural productivity has stalled due to soils saturated with chemicals required in GMO-cropping, or massive erosion from the techno-industrial methods of modern agriculture?
The Report apparently does not consider that. Do unscrupulous factory ships, chemical saturations, and plastic refuse in the oceans have something to do with decreases in fish catches?
We can say with medium confidence that they do, but only the vilified “greenhouse” offenders are highlighted in the Report.
How does the IPCC differentiate between mental health harms caused by climate change, and those caused by climate change alarmism? This passage smacks of bootstrapping:
“Climate change has adversely affected human physical health globally and mental health in assessed regions (very high confidence), and is contributing to humanitarian crises where climate hazards interact with high vulnerability (high confidence).”
This circular reasoning guarantees that when alarmists employ Orwellian exaggerations to terrify humanity about the future, the IPCC can point to human terror as “caused” by climate change—rather than by anthropogenic climate alarmism (high confidence: see Greta Thunberg et al).
It is difficult to discern whether sea levels are rising as quickly as the globalist seachange. And of course it is the poorest of the world’s populations who are suffering the most from renewable energy technologies, and climate change policies that escalate fuel prices.
Is that the plan, or just an unintended consequence, like killing all the cows to force-feed humanity with chemical-saturated plants?
The Report cautions that “Limiting human-caused global warming requires net zero anthropogenic CO2 emissions.” As UN, WEF, and WHO globalists leverage climate alarmism into a New Age AI art, what is required is net zero intergovernmental fear mongering.
Let us not hold our collective breaths for the study of that existential emergency (extremely low confidence).
Republished by The 21st Century
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 21cir.com.