"The UN has now spent more than three decades issuing countdowns to catastrophe" [updated]

"A recent story on PBS NewsHour, 'UN says world must jointly tackle issues of climate change, pollution, biodiversity and land loss,' by Tammy Webber of the Associated Press (AP), reports on a new UN 'Global Environment Outlook' that repeats the false assertion that the Earth is nearing a global tipping point that can only be avoided through “unprecedented change” and trillions of dollars in new spending to phase out fossil fuels. These assertions are bogus, lacking any basis in data or observable evidence. In fact, the UN has a long track record of failed disaster predictions tied to climate change, going all the way back to 1989 ...

"A history lesson is in order. This is not the first time the UN has announced that 'we’re running out of time.' In 1989, 36 years of global warming ago, the UN Environment Programme’s Noel Brown told the Associated Press that 'entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels' if global warming was not reversed by the year 2000, predicting up to three feet of sea-level rise by then, massive coastal inundation of Bangladesh and Egypt, and a wave of 'eco-refugees.'

"More than three decades later, each of these predictions have proven, not just false, but wildly inaccurate. The 'Climate at a Glance' website’s 'Sea Level Rise' page documents long-term tide-gauge records and NASA satellite data showing global sea level rising at about 1.2 inches per decade, with, at best, a modest acceleration since the nineteenth century. Nor have we seen the millions of 'climate refugees' that the UN forecast. The Maldives are still above water, Bangladesh has more people than ever, and the “10-year window” to avert disaster has been rolled over so many times it could qualify as a wrecked vehicle.

"PBS/AP never mentions this failed track record. Nor does it acknowledge that the UN has now presided over 30 Conferences of the Parties (COPs) without changing the basic trajectory of global emissions or global temperature ...

"The entries at 'Climate at a Glance'’s on 'Deaths from Extreme Weather' and 'Temperature-Related Deaths' highlight a crucial fact PBS never mentions: over the past century, climate-related deaths have plummeted by more than 95 percent, even as global population has quadrupled and temperatures have risen. Independent analyses, such as HumanProgress’ review of disaster mortality, show climate-related deaths falling from about 485,000 per year in the 1920s to fewer than 20,000 per year in the 2010s, a drop of more than 99 percent on a per-capita basis, as seen in their graph below.

"Th[is] is not what 'running out of time' looks like.

"What the article and the UN report completely ignore is the role that affordable, reliable energy, overwhelmingly fossil fuels, has played in making human societies more resilient to environmental hazards. Mechanised agriculture, synthetic fertilisers, modern flood defences, air conditioning, and rapid disaster response all depend on dense, on-demand energy. That is why climate-related deaths as documented by 'Climate at a Glance' have collapsed over the past century. Yet the UN prescription, uncritically endorsed by PBS/AP, is to rapidly phase out the very energy sources that lifted billions from abject poverty, based on a track record of predictions that have repeatedly failed to materialize.

"'Climate Realism' has chronicled this pattern for years. 'UNFCCC Climate Report Lies About Its Own Science' points out how UN political bodies routinely make sweeping claims about 'intensifying destruction' that are not supported by the UN’s own scientific assessments, which identify little or no change in most types of extreme weather events and trends in natural disasters. In 'The IPCC’s 1990 Predictions Were Even Worse Than We Thought,' 'Climate Realism' reviews the early IPCC forecasts of rapid warming and sea-level rise and shows how they overshot reality. Despite this, every new report is marketed as the 'most comprehensive ever' and used to justify more urgent demands for unprecedented, wrenching, transformational remaking of the world’s economy and governing institutions.

"PBS/AP could have told its audience that the UN has now spent more than three decades issuing countdowns to catastrophe ...

"By omitting the long trail of failed UN climate pronouncements, ignoring the dramatic decline in climate-related deaths, and treating speculative model outputs as inevitable futures, PBS and the Associated Press badly mislead their audience concerning the true state of the Earth. A truly public-minded broadcaster would carefully scrutinise the UN’s record and available data rather than uncritically regurgitate its latest false alarm report."

~ Anthony Watts from his post 'Wrong Again PBS, UN Is Pushing Another False Climate Crisis Report'

UPDATE: Bjorn Lomborg writes in the New York Post:

"The main UN model shows that even if all rich countries were to cut their carbon emissions to zero, it would avert less than 0.2°F of projected warming by the end of the century, while imposing massive hits of up to 18% on rich-world GDP by 2050.

"The ever-increasing cost of climate policy is one reason the rich world is cutting back in many other areas, including aid to the world's poorest.

"That, in part, is why philanthropist Bill Gates has called for a strategic pivot on climate.

"He has laid out three tough truths: Climate change is serious but 'will not lead to humanity's demise'; temperature is not the best progress metric; and we should instead focus on boosting human welfare. [bold added; hat tip Gus Van Horn]

The DEFINITIVE Climate Change Rap Battle

From the folks who brought us the Keynes v Hayek rap battle ...

Live from Davos, it’s your morning update on the future of the planet. Representing the alarm bells and carbon cuts, it’s environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore, but he’s not alone. Enter the unapologetic fossil fuel defender, Alex Epstein, armed with charts, charisma, and a whole lot of hydrocarbons. Just when things start boiling over, in steps Mr. Moderate—Bjorn Lomborg—trying to cool the room with cost-benefit calculations. Is the planet on fire? Are fossil fuels the secret to success? Or is there a third path no one wants to rap about? Tune in, turn up, and try to keep your cool—this is the DEFINITIVE Climate Change Rap Battle.

Minisinformation, green gloating, and apocalypse porn

"Remember when a flood was just a flood? A watery calamity that might make roads impassable, homes unliveable and sometimes, in the worst cases, claim lives? Not anymore. Now it’s always a deluge, an apocalypse, a portent of the horrors to come if mankind keeps on sinfully heating the planet. Now a flood is always a lesson from on high – from a ticked-off Poseidon, presumably – warning hubristic humans to ‘reduce carbon emissions.’ Floods are our fault now, like everything else.
    "This neo-Biblical view of floods, this pre-modern belief that gushing waters are divine wrath for human misbehaviour, was much in evidence following the flooding of New York City on Friday....
    "The flooding was bad, there’s no question about that. ... [But t]here’s been a nauseating streak of apocalypse porn in the chatter about New York’s floods.... Hacks have been trying to outdo each other in the hyperbole stakes. ... With dire predictability, Friday’s flooding has been blamed on climate change – which is to say on that pesky, polluting modernity created by mankind. ... we must [they howl] ‘reduce carbon emissions and stop the ongoing heating of the planet’ or else these violent visitations from Mother Nature will ‘become more extreme’ ... In short, appease the weather gods, offer up industrial society as a sacrifice, and maybe they’ll leave us alone. ...
    "There is something distinctly medieval in this view of extreme weather as nature’s rage with mankind. You see it all the time. In response to wildfires in Australia, heatwaves in Europe, big storms in the US, the same cry goes up: we’re being punished for our eco-crimes. ...
    "It is a testament to the creeping irrationalism in chattering-class circles that every weather event is now interpreted as a ‘sign,’ a species of heavenly punishment. Like pre-modern peasants, who at least had the excuse of having never heard of science, they’re incapable of shrugging off rain or heat or wind as perfectly normal events. No, they’re rebukes, lessons, all providing ‘a glimpse of the possible winter world we’ll inhabit if we don’t sort ourselves out.’
    "The idea that weather is turning more violent, and that it’s all down to climate change, is essentially misinformation. As Bjorn Lomborg points out, ever-fewer people are dying in natural disasters. Even as the human population has quadrupled over the past hundred years, deaths from climate calamity have dropped 20-fold. The risk of a human dying in one of nature’s catastrophes has fallen by 99 per cent since the 1920s. Modernity isn’t taking lives – it’s saving them.
    "Which is why we need more of it, not less."

~ Brendan O'Neill, from his column 'Stop this green gloating over New York’s floods: Friday’s flooding was bad, but it was not an eco-apocalypse'

"Believe it or not, the world is getting better. We just don't hear about it"

"With a torrent of doom and gloom about climate change and the environment, it’s understandable why many people – especially the young – genuinely believe the world is about to end. The fact is that while problems remain, the world is in fact getting better. We just rarely hear it.
    "We are incessantly told about disasters, whether it is the latest heatwave, flood, wildfire or storm. Yet, the data overwhelmingly shows that over the past century, people have become much, much safer from all these weather events. Indeed, in the 1920s, around half a million people were killed by weather disasters, whereas in the last decade the death-toll averaged around 18,000. This year, just like 2020 and 2021, is tracking below that. Why? Because when people get richer, they get more resilient....
    "But it’s not only weather disasters that are getting less damaging despite dire predictions. A decade ago, environmentalists loudly declared that Australia’s magnificent Great Barrier Reef was nearly dead, killed by bleaching caused by climate change. 'The Guardian' even published an obituary. This year, scientists revealed that two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef shows the highest coral cover seen since records began in 1985. The good-news report got a fraction of the attention....
    "There are so many bad-news stories that we seldom stop to consider that on the most important indicators, life is getting much better. Human life expectancy has doubled over the past century, from 36 years in 1920 to more than 72 years today. A hundred years ago, three-quarters of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Today, it’s less than one-tenth....
    "Despite Covid-related setbacks, humanity has become better and better off. Yet doom-mongers will keep telling you the end is nigh. This is great for their fundraising, but the costs to society are sky-high: we make poor, expensive policy choices and our kids are scared witless....
    "Humanity is getting more prosperous every day. The United Nations estimates that without global warming, the average person in 2100 would be 450% better-off than today. Global warming means people will only be 434 percent richer, instead. That is not a disaster.
    "Climate change fear is causing life-changing anxiety. You might be hearing nothing but bad news, but that doesn’t mean that you’re hearing the full story."

~ Bjorn Lomborg, from his op-ed 'Believe it or not, the world is getting better. We just don't hear about it'

The New Green Imperialism: Fossil Fuels for me, but not for thee

"The rich world’s fossil fuel hypocrisy is on full display in its response to the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the wealthy G7 countries admonish the world’s poor to use only renewables because of climate concerns, Europe and the United States are going begging to Arab nations to expand oil production, Germany is reopening coal power plants, and Spain and Italy are ramping up African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal it will have to triple its exports.
    "A single person in the rich world uses more fossil fuel energy than all the energy available to 23 poor Africans. The rich world became wealthy by massively exploiting fossil fuels, which today provide more than three-quarters of its energy. Solar and wind deliver less than three per cent.
    "Yet the rich are choking off funding for any new fossil fuels in the developing world. Most of the world’s poorest four billion people have no meaningful energy access so the rich blithely tell them to 'leapfrog' from no energy to a green nirvana of solar panels and wind turbines. This promised nirvana is a sham consisting of wishful thinking and green marketing. The world’s rich [are showing they] would never accept off-grid, renewable energy themselves — and neither should the world’s poor."

~ Bjorn Lomborg, from his op-ed 'The rich world’s message to the poor: Fossil fuels for me but not for thee'

"They beg for more oil and coal for themselves while telling developing lands to rely on unreliable solar and wind."

"The developed world’s response to the global energy crisis has put its hypocritical attitude toward fossil fuels on display. Wealthy countries admonish developing ones to use renewable energy. Last month the Group of Seven went so far as to announce they would no longer fund fossil-fuel development abroad. Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are begging Arab nations to expand oil production. Germany is reopening coal power plants, and Spain and Italy are spending big on African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal that the nation will more than double its exports....
    "They beg for more oil and coal for themselves while telling developing lands to rely on [unreliable] solar and wind."

~ Bjorn Lomborg, from his op-ed 'The Rich World’s Climate Hypocrisy' [hat tip Samizdata]

"Just a few years left until catastrophe..." #Catastrophizing

 

"UN routinely warns us that we have just a few years left until catastrophe:
In 1989, a senior UN official warns Associated Press that we have to fix climate change by 1999 or climate change goes beyond human control."

~ Bjorn Lomborg [hat tip Homepaddock]

 

 [Tweets from Pierre Gosselin, Seamutt, Liam Dillon, Willis Eschenbach, Wittgenstein, Daryl Vogel, Alex Epstein from the #catastrophizing thread]

Q: Has more human production-and-use of energy made us more or less safe?

Here's a question: has more human production and use of energy made us safer? Or less safe?

If warmists are to be believed, recent natural disasters are all the result of our enormously increased production and use of energy. So they would (and do) answer 'No!' But what's the evidence here?

Over the last century-and-a-bit, global energy production-and-use went up by more than fourteen times, from 7.000 to 22.400 kWh/Capita with a trend to reach 40.000 kWh/Capita in the future -- most of that after 1950. And over that period, global temperatures went up by less than 1 degree C -- and most of that before 1950. It's this warming that the warmists say coyly suggest is causing so many of the recently-reported disasters.

But what's the truth? This vast outpouring of human-produced energy has certainly made us more productive; which has made us all more comfortable, and able to enjoy much longer lives. But has it made our climate safer? What's the evidence here?

To find out, let's look at Bjorn Lomborg's peer-reviewed* summary:

Graph by Bjorn Lomborg, updated from his 2020 article 'Welfare in the 21st Century'

The evidence is clear. Over the period of increasing energy production, fewer and fewer people have been dying from climate-related natural disasters:

This is even true of 2021, despite breathless climate reporting.

This shouldn't be any kind of surprise. Increasing use of energy allows us to leverage our puny human efforts to do things vastly greater than we could manage under our own steam.  As writer Alex Epstein has been saying for at least a decade, the availability of abundant energy has allowed humans to change the environment in our favour. “We don’t take a safe environment and make it dangerous; we take a dangerous environment and make it far safer.” The production of abundant energy hasn't caused environmental disasters, its abundance has instead allowed human beings to begin avoiding their worst effects. Lomborg summarises the result:

Over the past hundred years, annual climate-related deaths have declined by more than 96%. In the 1920s, the death count from climate-related disasters was 485,000 on average every year. In the last full decade, 2010-2019, the average was 18,362 dead per year, or 96.2% lower.
    In the first year of the new decade, 2020, the number of dead was even lower at 14,893 — 97% lower than the 1920s average.
    You hear a lot about all the deadly climate catastrophes in 2021 — the US/Canada heat dome, the floodings in Germany and Belgium, or the US February winter storm. All of these deaths are included in the graph.
    Also included are the 559 dead from India (incl a February glacial lake outburst in Uttarakhand killing 234 and a May hurricane killing 198) and more than a thousand others.  Many of these you probably haven't heard about, possibly because they're not first-world, photogenic catastrophes.
    2021 is not over so the actual graph shows the likely number of dead, based on the historical ratio of climate-related deaths in Jan-Jul to the full year. This gives a preliminary estimate of 2021 climate-related deaths at 5,569 or 98.9% lower than the 1920s.
    This is clearly the opposite of what you hear, but that is because we're often just being told of one disaster after another – telling us how many events are happening. The number of reported events are increasing, but that is mainly due to better reporting, lower thresholds, and better accessibility (the CNN effect). For instance, for Denmark, the database only shows events starting from 1976.
    Instead, look at the number of dead per year, which is much harder to fudge. Given that these numbers fluctuate enormously from year to year (especially in the past, with huge droughts and floods in China and elsewhere), they are here presented as averages of each decade (1920-29, 1930-39 etc.). The data is from the most respected global database, the International Disaster Database (https://public.emdat.be/). There is some uncertainty about complete reporting from the early decades, which is why this graph starts in 1920, and if anything this uncertainty means the graph underestimates the reduction in deaths.
    We are not well-informed when the media doesn't actually give us an overview of the data, but instead, just inundates us with one catastrophic story after another without context.
    Notice, this does not mean that there is no global warming or that possibly a climate signal could eventually lead to further deaths. Global warming is a real problem that we should fix smartly. But panic from bad media reporting does not help us being smart. This graph shows us that our increased wealth and increased adaptive capacity has vastly overshadowed any potential negative impact from climate when it comes to human climate vulnerability.

Despite the scare-mongers, increased energy use has made us less vulnerable to disaster, not more.

* The graph is an update of the one appearing in his 2020 peer-reviewed article in Science Direct.