Cancel climate change hysteria

Climate change is real. It's not catastrophic. Here is one more opinion of a collection of opinions from a collection of people of a broad range of competence and a narrow view of reality.

Roger Pielke Jr is a political scientist and professor of climate studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Here are four key paragraphs from his interview in Spiked. You decide.

Floods are not more frequent. Hurricanes and tropical cyclones are not more frequent. Meteorological and hydrological droughts are not more frequent. Tornadoes are not more frequent. Hail is not more frequent. Lightning is not more frequent. Strong winds are not more frequent. Heatwaves are more frequent, as is extreme precipitation (though the IPCC is very explicit that extreme precipitation is not to be conflated with flooding). And there are two other types of drought, agricultural and ecological drought, which have increased.

There are only four phenomena that the IPCC claims to have detected an increase for, then. Saying that floods or storms have become more common because of climate change is just out of step with what the IPCC says. The IPCC can be right or wrong. But if we want to accurately reflect the report, then showing pictures of flooding in Belgium or Germany or China, or a picture of a hurricane, is just flat-out misleading.

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There are two perspectives that people need to keep in mind. Firstly, some of the gravest risks are certainly lower than we thought they were. That’s good news. The bad news is that the IPCC is quite conclusive that we are changing the climate and we are going to continue to do so. And it’s going to have negative effects and create risks.

The IPCC report obviously did not tell us that climate change isn’t a problem. But just because it’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s the apocalypse. Climate change is real. It’s serious. I’m a strong advocate for mitigation and adaptation policies. But that doesn’t mean that it’s ‘code red for humanity’ and billions of people are at immediate risk, as the secretary-general of the UN claimed. That’s just irresponsible hyperbole.