The fundamental difference between the two great scares of today, Covid-19 and climate alarm, is that the former is real and based on hard science while the latter is false and not backed by any science at all.
The Covid-19 scare might be exaggerated (I think it is) and there are big unknowns (especially in estimating the total number of people who have been infected), but at its core is the hard fact of the coronavirus, whose structure is exactly known, thanks to marvellous advances in microbiology.
Neither the mutated virus itself nor the fact that it has transferred from an animal (probably a bat) to a human is at all unusual. It’s happened many times before, and will happen again. It is not a ‘Black Swan’. We don’t know what total damage the virus will finally do but improved testing and diagnosis is giving us a better idea.
Nothing but good
Climate alarm is based on the belief that rising CO2 will change the climate in a dangerous way – by warming the Earth perilously and by increasing weather extremes. There is not a shred of scientific evidence to support this. On the contrary, rising CO2 – caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels – is doing nothing but good. CO2 reached dangerously low levels about five million years ago, threatening plant life. Mankind has accidentally rescued us from this danger and, although CO2 is still far below optimum levels, it is much better than it was 150 years ago, and plants are responding gratefully, greening the planet.
CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas (one that traps heat). It is already saturated in the peak of its only significant absorption band. In a test tube, it should cause a warming of about 1 deg C if it doubled from present levels (about 415 ppm). In the real world no such warming has ever been seen. In the Mediaeval Warm Period, about 900 to 1200 AD, temperatures worldwide were rather higher than now, while CO2 was lower than now (about 280 ppm). The same is true of warm periods before that.
Solar activity
We have never seen CO2 causing warming. The slight warming of the last 150 years is almost certainly associated with changes in solar activity – like previous warm periods.
There has been no increase in extreme weather events over the last hundred years, including droughts, floods, storms and hurricanes. They happen down the ages. They seem more severe in cold periods.
The last few decades have seen benign weather and a dramatic improvement in human welfare. We should thank the Sun for the good weather; rising CO2, to some extent at least, for better crops and spreading greenery; and improving technology for our escape from poverty.
On Covid-19, the media have let us hear the voices of experts – and they really are experts, highly qualified virologists with a deep understanding of the structure, behaviour, evolution and history of viruses.
Many of the ‘climate scientists’, who regularly pontificate on the coming catastrophe of dangerous manmade global warming, have no qualifications in the physics of climate change
On climate alarm, the ‘experts’ are not experts at all. Many of the ‘climate scientists’, who regularly pontificate on the coming catastrophe of dangerous manmade global warming, have no qualifications in the physics of climate change (thermodynamics, heat transfer and fluid mechanics).
Medical science has expert professional bodies. Climate alarm has the wretched IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), a political advocacy group, dedicated to promoting climate fear and riddled with scandal. Debate about Covid-19 is welcomed, and the medical establishment makes no attempt to suppress data or silence criticism.
The climate alarmists, who do not want to win the debate but to stop it, make every effort to suppress data they don’t like and silence any scientist who questions them. The medical doctors never shout ‘Denialist!’ at medical scientists with a different point of view; they do not speak rubbish about ‘97% of scientists’; and they do not promote privileged, self-righteous charlatans such as Al Gore and Greta Thunberg.
Political posturing
Of course some political posturing has crept into the Covid-19 theatre. This is inevitable when journalists and politicians are concerned. Woke media, such as the BBC, the Guardian and the New York Times, have tried to use the virus to mock Trump and Boris. But it’s been mild and restrained compared with their hysterical witch-hunting over climate change.
What to do about each scare? Covid-19 is real, and I can guarantee that there will be new viral and bacterial epidemics in future. The way to prepare for them is by better information technology and better biological analysis. And these are the two fields in which mankind is making the greatest advances – spectacular advances. I predict a time in the not too distant future when we shall be able to do cheap, accurate tests for such diseases for most people on Earth soon after it is identified. Then computers will plan the best way of isolating and treating the victims.
As for climate alarm, we know exactly what to do: nothing. The climate is just fine, and rising CO2 is doing the planet a power of good.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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