Matt Ridley, a respected science writer including the bestseller The Rational Optimist, is now at the long end of his illustrious career. Years ago, he contributed to the theme by identifying narratives designed to fudge the truth, “almost every global environmental prediction of the past half century proved exaggerated, including the population bomb, pesticides, acid rain, the ozone, falling sperm counts, genetically engineered crops, and killer bees.”In every case, according to Ridley, the institutional science gained a lot of funding from the scare and then quietly converged on the view that the problem was much more moderate than extreme voices argued — “voila global warming,” he added.The United Nations (UN) and its acolytes are unfortunate examples of Ridley’s observation. “Five years to save the world” from the Ecologist magazine in 2007; “ten years to save the world” from the UN in 1989, and frequently repeated; in 2009, NASA scientist and ‘climate expert’ Jim Hansen gave us “four years.” The fortunes of the Earth continue to advance despite continuous dire predictions.Adding to Ridley’s list, further false assertions include fracking, dying coral reefs, declining polar bear populations, hurricanes, flooding, forest fires, and much more. A few revealing narratives follow.Fracking was an early attack on the energy sector, referring to the fracturing of rock to release imbedded oil. Fracking is almost as old as the industry; horizontal drilling is also long established. But horizontal multi-fracking (HMF) (many fracs along a single well bore) has unlocked immense quantities of oil and natural gas.With this productivity enhancement, the oil and gas industry shifted from hard to find and easy to produce, to easy to find and hard to produce. .But the climate crusaders claimed fracking taints groundwater. A couple of inconvenient truths — groundwater exists only at shallow depths below the surface; fracking is deep, sometimes miles down. The other fact is that a normal steel drill pipe is further supported by a cement casing down through the groundwater.The Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency, after a five-year study, concluded that fracking has NOT led to “widespread, systemic impact on drinking water.” Despite this, two years later, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, alluding to “uncertainties,” banned fracking. Anti-scientific decisions have consequences. Much of New York state cannot access natural gas, the lowest emission hydrocarbon, due to pipeline approval difficulties that mirror those in Canada. Energy shortages are so likely that the Governor has recently proposed further access to vital energy. Will she be supported?Another narrative is that there will soon be an ice-free Arctic, portending the demise of polar bears, allegedly already in decline. Arctic ice increases and declines subject to long climate cycles. Hard to count, polar bears live in 19 different sub-populations and are growing according to native residents. They thrive in open water.Next up — forest fires are caused by climate change — wrong again. Statistics show a continual decline in forest fires for almost a century, mostly due to better forestry management. But nature has its way, and aging forests decay, creating kindling, enhanced by insect infections. Cliff Mass is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. In a June 11, 2023, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) op-ed about smoke from forest fires, he explained, “The ecology of these forests relies on fire for the release of seeds and forest health. Many of the major boreal fires occur during a narrow temporal window from mid-April until early June before the grass and other small plants grow, reducing flammability” usually from “lightning or errant human behaviour.”.Bjorn Lomborg is President of the Copenhagen Consensus, an environmental think tank he formed. He is also an academic, author, and energetic climate commentator. His July 31, 2023, op-ed in the WSJ indicated that satellite data since 2001, when 3% of the world’s land caught fire, the area burned has declined such that in 2022, the last year of complete data, “the world hit a new record low of 2.2%” — an almost 25% reduction.Highlighting the insidious role of much of the media, “The New York Times employed more than 40 staff on a project called ‘postcards from a world on fire’ to convince readers of the climate crisis immediacy…” Build the narrative, truthful or not.Steve Koonin is a renowned physicist and academic hired by President Obama as the Under Secretary of Energy, the largest administrative position below the Secretary. He is considered one of the most respected climate scientists anywhere, and his book Unsettled is a must-read for those interested in understanding the climate.A feature speaker at a Fraser Institute Planning Session several years ago, I had the great pleasure of sitting next to him at the dinner. He is a soft-spoken scientist and emphasized his non-involvement in politics.In the chapter of his book questioning climate models, referring to the dramatic impact of droughts and floods, he lamented the inability of politicians and other officials to resist citing models to “prophesy future catastrophes.” In the only personal admonishment I recall from the book, he responded to Mark Carney’s comments as Governor of the Bank of England, on the run up to the Paris Climate COP in 2015, warning “despite winter 2014 being England's wettest since the time of King George III forecasts suggest we can expect at least a further 10% increase in rainfall during future winters.” He supported that assertion by “research into climate observations, projections, and impacts” from five-year models.The models were “dead wrong” according to Koonin, who also added, “it is surprising that someone with a PhD in economics and experience with the unpredictability of financial markets and economies as a whole doesn't show a greater respect for the perils of prediction — and more caution in depending upon models.”.Much of the false climate narrative is built on models which are predictions of the future based on assumptions and people's feelings or political objectives, not scientific evidence. Even Carney, who “understands these things better than others,” should not make predictions based on values.Attending his film, I well remember Al Gore defining global warming as a “moral issue.” So, what about the litany of continued and changing false assertions led by the UN and many others, wrongly building false narratives by attacking countries, industries, and individuals — are they moral? Has anyone ever heard an apology or even an acknowledgement as these crusaders move from target to target? Certainly not from morally superior ideologues like Al Gore and Mark Carney.Matt Ridley has given way to a younger Lomborg, who gets the last words: “Telling half-truths while piously purporting to be ‘following the science’ benefits activists with their fundraising, generates clicks for media outlets, and helps politicians rally voters. But it leaves all of us poorly informed and worse off.” “Overheated headlines about climate Armageddon are an attempt to scare us into supporting them anyway, at the cost of sensible discussion and debate.”Amen.
