Be gone, climate dementors! Alarmist gibberish fools no one, alienates all & detracts from valid pollution-reduction/environmental footprint goals

“Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them… Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you…” Remus Lupin, Harry Potter teammate and occasional werewolf

It may seem odd that fictional creatures from a movie about teenage wizards are the best approximation of climate change commentators, but it’s true. We’ve seen the media lose its collective mind now and then when it gets overexcited and wets its pants at some new trend; consider the bitcoin mania of a year or two ago, which has faded almost to nothing, or countless other bandwagons to jump on (one from the 1970s, ironically, was about how the earth was about to cool dangerously. We don’t talk about that anymore for fear of imprisonment.).

Seldom however has the media succumbed in such a broad-based way to a fear-driven narrative as with speculation about what a changing climate might bring. It is truly remarkable to see such a wide-ranging collection of news outlets go completely barking mad.

Before putting a tire around my neck and set it on fire, let’s look at an unemotional description of climate change – one that, in a scientific way, analyzes that things could happen.  From Wikipedia, emphasis added: “Physical, ecological and social systems may respond in an abrupt, non-linear or irregular way to climate change. This is as opposed to a smooth or regular response. A quantitative entity behaves “irregularly” when its dynamics are discontinuous (i.e., not smooth), nondifferentiable, unbounded, wildly varying, or otherwise ill-defined…Irregular behaviour in Earth systems may give rise to certain thresholds, which, when crossed, may lead to a large change in the system…Some singularities could potentially lead to severe impacts at regional or global scales. Examples of “large-scale” singularities are discussed in the articles on abrupt climate change, climate change feedback and runaway climate change. It is possible that human-induced climate change could trigger large-scale singularities, but the probabilities of triggering such events are, for the most part, poorly understood.”

See, it’s possible – a climate change discussion that is not frenzied with irrationality. The above paragraph is eminently sensible; with many qualifiers the authors conclude that some things could happen, some of them could be bad, but that on a large scale the probabilities of triggering such events are poorly understood. And note that the “may lead to” qualifiers are multiplicative when assigning probability; do you suppose the media picked up on that subtlety?

Not a chance. Compare that rational analysis with the headlines (image at top) spawned by a report from two Australian researchers that catalogued an unimaginable shop of horrors that might happen by 2050 (even though the authors cheerily postulate: “A doomsday future is not inevitable!” which is in stark contrast to the central message they purposely scream at the world.).

No one believes this stuff anymore., not even the dejected climate scientists referenced in the paper as “young women speak of their decisions to not have children, and climate scientists admitting to depression as they consider the ‘inevitable’ nature of a doomsday future and turn towards thinking more about family and relocation to ‘safer’ places, rather than working on more research.” If they believe it, and aren’t acting with every fiber of their being to prevent it (as in, no flying, no extraneous consumption whatsoever), then they are walking contradictions, simultaneously terrified of climate change and contributing to it, by their own volition. Yet another Harry Potter creature come to life.

If the world is indeed going to face challenges from a warming climate, we will have to deal with it as it comes, because within two years these fools, and the trumpeters in the media, will have been thoroughly tuned out by the entire population. Which is a shame; there may have been valuable lessons if the dementors had not been given the task of spreading the good word.

Ready for constructive energy thinking, as opposed to wasteful bun-fights? Pick up a copy of “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com!