Apocalypse Now, again

Vincent J. Curtis

21 July 22

RE: On climate, or time is running out.  Spectator editorial 21 July 22.

Once again, the climate crazies are forecasting the apocalypse.  In 1989, the first time it was forecasted, the global warming apocalypse was supposed to occur in the year 2000.  Oceans were going to rise, glaciers melt, and the world was going to burn up, and there wasn’t time to discuss it (so shut up!).    That didn’t happen.  In the early 2000’s, the expression “global warming” had to be dropped because of the so-called global warming pause that began in 1997 (and ended in 2015).  That pause didn’t stop famous climate wackos (some of whom won awards!) from claiming the Arctic sea ice would disappear in summer between 2014 and 2018.  That’ didn’t happen either.  Now, 2030 is the year of the apocalypse.

The less specific expression “climate change” was adopted to replace the directional “global warming” because anything anomalous could attributed to climate change.  Nobody doubts that climate changes, it’s always changing, going in cycles is change.  (The Farmer’s Almanac, famous for its weather forecasts, has existed for 203 years because seasonal weather is not predicable from one year to the next.  If it were, there’d be no need for the Almanac and deviations from the expected would be identifiable.)  The question is how much change is anthropogenic in origin?  But that can’t be researched, and famous climatologist Dr. Judith Curry was driven from the profession for claiming it needed to be.

The Spectator is writing this year about heat and fires in Europe because they’re not happening in B.C.  Last year, B.C. experienced a “heat dome”, and had lots of fires.  The burn acreage in B.C. last year turned out to be only the third highest of the last eleven, in a decade with no trend either up or down. Burn acreage in B.C. will be low this year, and since that explodes the trend to an apocalypse narrative, it goes unreported.  It’s a dog that isn’t barking, and best not report that fact.

The fashion this year is Europe.  It goes unreported that the worst year for forest fires in France was 1949 because that destroys the trend to apocalypse narrative.  London had two days of 40℃ temperatures this week, and then cooled a lot.  Unreported is that in 1976, London had 16 days in a row of temperatures above 33℃.  Reporting that would explode the trend to apocalypse narrative.  Basically, everything before 1979 gets erased, and that’s why there are so many new records and “unprecedented” occurrences.

The climate crazies aren’t serious, for if they were they’d confront the challenges to their theory.  But they don’t because they’re ideologues.  And so the question is, why persist in this phony and disprovable narrative of the trend to the apocalypse?  The answer lies in the ideologue’s proposed remedies that would be inflicted on the western world to halt the alleged trend.  Ultimately, driving people into a frenzy for action would seem to require the imposition of these alleged remedies to ward off the apocalypse since they are the only alternative.  Doing nothing is what leads directly to the apocalypse, according to the narrative. Those remedies would start a new trend towards a new apocalypse: the decline of western civilization, the goal of post-modernism.

The decline of western civilization is the goal.

-30-

A word on forest fires.  You can only burn a forest once.  Then, it takes forty or fifty years of growth to build the forest back up to the point that it can burn again.  Forests that burn are old and have lots of dry wood, and they burn when weather conditions are hot and dry.  It is therefore not surprising that the worst period of burn acreage in North America occurred during the 1930s, when weather year after year was especially hot and dry.  The hot and dry conditions of the 1930s created the “dust bowl,” drove the Okies off the land, and depopulated Saskatchewan.  The climate crazies don’t talk about the 1930s because every climate record they claim is new was surpassed a couple of times in the 1930s, when CO₂ levels were low.  Western North America used to be a smoky place.  Forests have adapted over a hundred million years to periodic fires, and now depend upon them for renewal and good health.  Fire suppression and poor forest management can lead to spectacular and uncontrollable forest fires, due to the buildup of dry tinder.

Obviously, forest fire cannot be used as an indication of climate change.  Forest fire requires a mature forest and a period of hot, dry weather.  Eventually, you’d run out of forest to burn, and then forest fire would cease to be an indicator of climate change.  And an indicator is not a some time thing.  But that won’t stop a stupid, unscrupulous, or simply ignorant news agency from touting forest fire as an undoubted sign of climate change.