The Australian launch of the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report was at the Sydney Aquarium last Monday.
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The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher observed that the lobby has a monstrous 7.5m fibreglass shark.
While the average shark is only four to five metres, he suggested that the “ridiculously outsized” model at the entrance is there “to give ‘em a good scare”.
In trying to help the cause of addressing climate change, the IPCC scientists are “using outlandish fears to attract attention”, he said. More likely they will undermine it by scaremongering,” adding later, “... hysteria and exaggeration from concerned scientists won’t help.”
I agree with him. The outright exaggeration in past IPCC reports has not been supported by subsequent events. The fact that world temperatures have not continued to rise, despite rising carbon dioxide, is just one obvious piece of evidence that the computer models on which they depend are not including some vital variables.
“... there are 170 million fewer malnourished people than in 1990.”
Trying to link every weather event to climate change is also wearing thin. Floods, cyclones, droughts, continue to occur much as they always have. Sea level rises have not followed IPCC predictions. Tuvalu has not been swamped. In fact, a Lowy Institute study showed that climate change was not Tuvalu’s problem, it was poor garbage disposal poisoning the island’s water supply.
The IPCC press release dated 31st March 2014 contains the usual threats to humanity, but at least the IPCC is now talking about adaptation. They need to acknowledge that better fertilisers, pesticides, and dare we say it - genetically modified crops, are saving the world from starvation.
Similar alarmism came from the World Hunger Project in 1990, which estimated that the ecosystem could only support six billion people.
We’re already up to 7.1 billion, yet global beef production has increased by five per cent per capita - that’s per person, pork by 17 per cent and chicken by 82 per cent. The World Food Program estimates that there are 170 million fewer malnourished people than in 1990.
Carbon dioxide nourishes crops. A University of East Anglia study predicted that with a “business as usual” scenario, wheat production would increase 34 per cent and soya beans 15 per cent for the next 70 years.
While The Guardian may warn that the Sydney Opera House will be lost to rising seas in the next 2000 years, an Australian Institute of Marine Studies report in 2012 indicated that the Great Barrier Reef’s coral cover remained relatively stable, and would be growing by 0.89 per cent each year if we could control the Crown of Thorns Starfish.
Despite the IPCC’s pessimism, we are not all going to die, or be drowned, anytime soon. The world’s problems will be solved by human ingenuity if those who say it can’t be done just get out of the way.