Earth is in the Holocene, an interglacial..glaciers retreat, ocean levels rise and the planet warms. Its been 12k years and at some point glaciation will begin again and glaciers will return. The sun mostly drive these cycles and yes CO2 levels at 440ppm are quite low based on past history. At 180ppm everything on the planet starts to die.
Great piece, and I appreciate you devoting time to this subject. People far less informed than you have stronger (and wrong-er) opinions about climate. Even if the climate is warming, it's not clear why that's bad for us other than the models say it is. One big volcanic eruption could have a greater effect than thousands of years of civilization.
Yet our governments and government cut-outs (all those "experts" that depend on funding from our tax dollars) continue to fund the least effective solutions to whatever they think is coming, and the markets just follow the money. There will be a reckoning and a sudden shift back to those old reliable sources. In fact, it is happening now, just not in the West.
I thoroughly agree with this article ... or as Frank Herbert wrote in Dune "Fear is the mind killer" and that is exactly what the "global warming" addicts are experiencing...fear. Instead of logically looking at the records of temperatures all over the world they cherry pick the ones that support their fears. Your examples of Death Valley and New York City vs Central Park are excellent. Anyone with any kind of science background, even soft science as in Geography,, knows of the city heat island effects and presumably thought that that effect was taken into account. To find out it was not taken into account, at least not accurately is astounding and extremely disappointing.
The film's English director-writer had previously done a climate movie , Brexit, and other controversial films--not to mention that he had previously been a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. It would not have made sense to replicate other climate crisis features and producing plain vanilla does not sell, so this is a denial film. That does not mean it is fiction. The words of the eminent scientists seem true enough. But, those words weave a narrative and I suspect the director was very selective in the words of the scientists. I also noted that fossil was, I don't believe, ever mentioned.
Crazies exist on both sides of the climate issue just as in our right/left politics. Leaving aside those extremes, many of the points below can objectively be considered to represent "truth" at least to me. (I am also a big fan of Doomberg.)
After viewing the film (2 times), I was left with the nagging question of how to reconcile the remarks of the film's accomplished scientists and the seeming unanimity of environmental scientists about the urgent need to decarbonize to save our planet.
Global temperatures and CO2 have wildly fluctuated over millions of years. Temperature changes of several degrees did not lead to catastrophe historically--why now? Well, we humans have only been around 1 to 2 million years. To help solve my dilemma over why now, I turned to A.I.--ChatGPT and Google's Gemini (ok they could be biased). One of the points in the film is that over millions of years temperatures did occasionally change prior to CO2, so why worry now. Apparently, natural temperature changes triggered the release of CO2 stored in oceans and other reservoirs. But, the natural CO2 and temperature changes occurred over thousands of years. From the peak temperature in our current glacial period temperature has fallen about 2-4 degrees Fahrenheit--over 6500 years. In the previous interglacial transition, temperatures apparently rose from 7 to 13 degrees--over thousands of years.
So, the film is not incorrect in its assertions about historical temperature changes. But, the temperature changes were over thousands of years. The changes happened very slowly. According to A.I., scientific evidence indicates that the present rate of CO2 increase is about 100 times faster than past natural increases. This is the key point relative to the climate debate and the film: over the past 60 years the atmospheric CO2 has increased about 100 times faster than natural increases. This unnatural change appears to be linked to humans and fossil fuels. For me, this reconciles the film's scientists and environmentalists.
Is a 1.5, 2 or 3 degrees increase in temperature "existential" or even a "crisis"? No, as the film says. Humans have lived in much warmer climates. But, global warming may be existential or certainly life altering for some--like the beachfront Miami beach homeowner or flooding from rising waters or crop land turned into desert or tundras into arable land. The combination of human ingenuity and adaptability will accommodate the impact of future warming. But, warmer for some clearly will be disruptive.
I wanted to be a sceptic on global warming--since we were being told of the validity of the issue by thousands of scientists and the Davos crowd (and there is no way Covid originated in a lab). Wartime footing requires a government to assert control. Inefficiency abounds as the role of markets is diminished. A big cookie jar as lots of hands scramble for all the goodies. My bottom line is that I do not believe that our grandchildren will discover that the climate effort has been a hoax, and that additional warming will cause issues--not "existential" but issues.
The world's climate policies/strategies will hopelessly fall short of present net zero carbon goals or otherwise the damage to human progress will be greater than the cure. Furthermore, climate elites know that voters eventually will rebel from the impact on their living standards.
Earth is in the Holocene, an interglacial..glaciers retreat, ocean levels rise and the planet warms. Its been 12k years and at some point glaciation will begin again and glaciers will return. The sun mostly drive these cycles and yes CO2 levels at 440ppm are quite low based on past history. At 180ppm everything on the planet starts to die.
Great piece, and I appreciate you devoting time to this subject. People far less informed than you have stronger (and wrong-er) opinions about climate. Even if the climate is warming, it's not clear why that's bad for us other than the models say it is. One big volcanic eruption could have a greater effect than thousands of years of civilization.
Yet our governments and government cut-outs (all those "experts" that depend on funding from our tax dollars) continue to fund the least effective solutions to whatever they think is coming, and the markets just follow the money. There will be a reckoning and a sudden shift back to those old reliable sources. In fact, it is happening now, just not in the West.
I thoroughly agree with this article ... or as Frank Herbert wrote in Dune "Fear is the mind killer" and that is exactly what the "global warming" addicts are experiencing...fear. Instead of logically looking at the records of temperatures all over the world they cherry pick the ones that support their fears. Your examples of Death Valley and New York City vs Central Park are excellent. Anyone with any kind of science background, even soft science as in Geography,, knows of the city heat island effects and presumably thought that that effect was taken into account. To find out it was not taken into account, at least not accurately is astounding and extremely disappointing.
Climate change as reported in the movie is a scam !!!!
Your comment towards the end of the article about the price of oil- wouldn't a Trump victory in November entirely change the equation?
Vernon Winters
The film's English director-writer had previously done a climate movie , Brexit, and other controversial films--not to mention that he had previously been a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. It would not have made sense to replicate other climate crisis features and producing plain vanilla does not sell, so this is a denial film. That does not mean it is fiction. The words of the eminent scientists seem true enough. But, those words weave a narrative and I suspect the director was very selective in the words of the scientists. I also noted that fossil was, I don't believe, ever mentioned.
Crazies exist on both sides of the climate issue just as in our right/left politics. Leaving aside those extremes, many of the points below can objectively be considered to represent "truth" at least to me. (I am also a big fan of Doomberg.)
After viewing the film (2 times), I was left with the nagging question of how to reconcile the remarks of the film's accomplished scientists and the seeming unanimity of environmental scientists about the urgent need to decarbonize to save our planet.
Global temperatures and CO2 have wildly fluctuated over millions of years. Temperature changes of several degrees did not lead to catastrophe historically--why now? Well, we humans have only been around 1 to 2 million years. To help solve my dilemma over why now, I turned to A.I.--ChatGPT and Google's Gemini (ok they could be biased). One of the points in the film is that over millions of years temperatures did occasionally change prior to CO2, so why worry now. Apparently, natural temperature changes triggered the release of CO2 stored in oceans and other reservoirs. But, the natural CO2 and temperature changes occurred over thousands of years. From the peak temperature in our current glacial period temperature has fallen about 2-4 degrees Fahrenheit--over 6500 years. In the previous interglacial transition, temperatures apparently rose from 7 to 13 degrees--over thousands of years.
So, the film is not incorrect in its assertions about historical temperature changes. But, the temperature changes were over thousands of years. The changes happened very slowly. According to A.I., scientific evidence indicates that the present rate of CO2 increase is about 100 times faster than past natural increases. This is the key point relative to the climate debate and the film: over the past 60 years the atmospheric CO2 has increased about 100 times faster than natural increases. This unnatural change appears to be linked to humans and fossil fuels. For me, this reconciles the film's scientists and environmentalists.
Is a 1.5, 2 or 3 degrees increase in temperature "existential" or even a "crisis"? No, as the film says. Humans have lived in much warmer climates. But, global warming may be existential or certainly life altering for some--like the beachfront Miami beach homeowner or flooding from rising waters or crop land turned into desert or tundras into arable land. The combination of human ingenuity and adaptability will accommodate the impact of future warming. But, warmer for some clearly will be disruptive.
I wanted to be a sceptic on global warming--since we were being told of the validity of the issue by thousands of scientists and the Davos crowd (and there is no way Covid originated in a lab). Wartime footing requires a government to assert control. Inefficiency abounds as the role of markets is diminished. A big cookie jar as lots of hands scramble for all the goodies. My bottom line is that I do not believe that our grandchildren will discover that the climate effort has been a hoax, and that additional warming will cause issues--not "existential" but issues.
The world's climate policies/strategies will hopelessly fall short of present net zero carbon goals or otherwise the damage to human progress will be greater than the cure. Furthermore, climate elites know that voters eventually will rebel from the impact on their living standards.
With China mass producing coal fired plants, we need to be adapting to global warming. Pushing back is a huge waste of energy, pun intended