Spin, Misinformation, Disinformation, & Conspiracy:
Challenges from the pavement.
The World Economic Forum 2 year Global Risks Report 2024 identifies “Misinformation and Disinformation” as the greatest risk to the global economy!
And the second most important risk factor they identify is climate change.
“What about China?”
China has roared from being a developing country where most people were very poor to being a global economic power in just a few decades. It’s huge, with a population some twenty times that of the UK. Its economic success, which was urgently necessary, was built on coal-powered energy, of which it has plenty.
But China has made considerable progress towards decarbonisation and their target of ‘peak carbon’ in 2030. China is developing alternative energy sources energetically. It’s difficult to turn a ship this size around, but China is moving on climate. It is building new coal-fired power stations, short term, but is also building renewable or carbon-neutral alternatives for the longer term.
It's a mixed bag, in other words. ‘Marks for effort but could do better’, perhaps - just like us and most other economies. Many people say China does better than most, in fact. We, in Britain, are doing very much less well than we once were and have no right to point fingers.
It also doesn’t make sense to allow ourselves to behave dangerously badly because of something less than perfect happening somewhere else – we are responsible for our own behaviours, and we abandon principle at our peril.
The possible existence of countries which pollute doesn’t give us the right to do it ourselves.
If something is existentially essential, we have to do it - by definition.
If we did, we’d be a global example and wider progress might happen.
China is acting at least as well, and as fast, as most countries, including us.
“We’ll be back in the stone age!”
Mitigating climate change does not demand drastically changing our lifestyle. Of course, it implies changes, but these are of a kind it would be relatively easy to accommodate. (Much easier than adapting to onrushing, catastrophic climate change – which is likely to be impossible.)
The baby boomer generation enjoyed the sunlit uplands of economic security and steady growth based on cheap fossil fuel energy. Today’s generations could enjoy the same sunlit uplands based on cheap low carbon energy. We have plenty and know how to do this.
Changes would be necessary as we switch from one to the other, but only in a few sectors of the economy – mainly the energy sector. Most jobs, and most of society, would simply run on as before and those sectors which had to change could be supported relatively cheaply and easily. (We did this successfully during Covid.) Many aspects of life would evolve into more user-friendly, cheaper forms.
Our lifestyle choices would have to change somewhat, but only in relatively trivial ways. We might eat less red meat (or switch to lab-grown), fly less perhaps, but we would have cheaper energy and live in better houses in a sustainable environment. Society would have to become more equitable, but it has been shown that greater equality improves everyone’s wellbeing and it’s high time the trend towards grotesque inequality was reversed anyway.
And if climate change was allowed to run on, devastating difficulties would arise (food insecurity, power disruption, disastrous weather crises, widespread business failure, market & banking collapse, public services collapse, income collapse, pension failure, massive, probably violent, breakdowns of society.) Civilisation itself would collapse. Health services, police, transport, food production, water and electricity supplies would stumble and fail. We would indeed revert to something like the stone age. Life would become “nasty, brutish and short” again.
Addressing climate change would mean changes, but not impossible or undesirable ones.
Unabated climate change is what will really put us back into something like the stone age.
“There’s no workable alternative!”
Of course there will be some change (but much less than often implied). Of course there are difficulties inherent in change, and of course mistakes will be made, but allowing climate change to continue unabated is an absolutely unworkable option. No other option is as bad as unmitigated climate change! The disasters which would unfold if we let fossil fuel business as usual run on are already becoming apparent, from drastic and perilous weather upheaval through important sea level rise to widespread crop failure, floods, fires, poverty and dangerous social chaos.
Unabated climate change is not a workable alternative!
Mitigation is. The experts say so, as do the economists and, increasingly, business.
“We’re insignificant! [We emit only 1% of global emissions].”
It is often claimed that we emit just 1% of the world’s greenhouse gases. This is spin. It’s disinformation. It is true that what we emit on our own shores is about 1% of world emissions but roughly the same amount of greenhouse gases are emitted overseas on our behalf. (All that Chinese stuff we buy, for instance!) These are ‘our’ emissions, in reality, and they bring us up to around 2% of the world total.
We actually emit about 2% of world total. This is significant. Reducing it would help.
“We can’t afford it! It’ll cost too much”
Mitigating climate change has been costed out by several authorities. They reach similar conclusions - namely that we can afford it. The independent Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change estimates it at about 1% of GDP. They describe this as “doable”, and it is – it’s roughly what we spent combatting the Covid pandemic. Nothing to be particularly afraid of, and less than the amount we spend subsidising fossil fuels. We could do it tomorrow.
Mitigation is a perfectly workable and affordable option. In a green future, new industries would offer solid, well-paid, higher-level work to compensate for jobs lost in fossil fuel-based industries. Most sectors of the economy would be completely undisturbed.
The World Bank estimates that fossil fuels and detrimental farming practices are subsidised to the tune of some 23 million dollars per minute. This is at least twice as much as is used to promote ‘green’ initiatives and many times what COP ‘pledges’ promised. We are, literally, funding climate change in preference to mitigating it. We have the money but spend it wrongly.
And a plethora of senior economists see climate mitigation as economic good sense – as the runaway best economic way forward. Mark Carney called it “… perhaps the greatest economic opportunity of our times.” There are major opportunities in mitigation – especially for the economies which get engaged in the project early and enthusiastically. We are falling behind in this race.
We can easily afford to ‘go green’ – it would cost less than Covid did (and less than fossil fuel subsidies do right now).
Can we afford NOT to address climate change? Of course not! That would cost everything we hold dear and then some. Fossil fuel ‘business as usual’ will be catastrophically costly.
‘Going green’ would deliver a solid, vigorous economy, good jobs based on cheap, reliable, green technologies and cheap, secure, ‘British’, renewable energy.
There’s a fortune to be made in mitigation - but we need to get going. Our competitors are!
“There’s no such thing as a fact!”
Well, philosophically perhaps not – and some (but only some!) ‘science’ does prove to have been somewhat amiss. Most of it doesn’t, though. (The Earth really does orbit the sun. Cars, planes, smart phones (and their geo-stationary satellites), vaccines, TVs (and their remote controls), moon walks, antibiotics, microwaves, the internet, gas boilers, WhatsApp, and hoovers - all these and more do amazing things, reliably and repeatedly, and all of them are pure science.)
Perhaps we should speak of probabilities rather than facts? Science is non-dogmatic, humble, and tentative as it slowly, openly, and honestly approaches greater and greater probability. It uses tentative language until it is certain – “might”, “could”, “possible”, etc. This gives the ill-informed, or wilfully ignorant, the sense that we are all qualified, and entitled, to challenge it. We are not.
A strong and important probability should surely be treated as if it were a fact? Climate change is a fact (it’s regularly and everywhere observed, and its causes are understood) but its future course is always a matter of probability. However, where probabilities are strong and existentially dangerous, let us treat them as facts and act on them! It is deliberately and dangerously ignorant to do otherwise. (Would you fly on a plane if an engineer told you there was a 82% probability of it crashing? Would you think the 18% chance of the engineer being wrong was good enough?)
The job of a politician is to serve the people and improve their circumstances. They must find, engage with, and understand the realities and probabilities of our world, most especially climate science. Not to do this, and not to act appropriately in response, is criminally negligent.
‘Science’ permeates our lives – and regularly works – because it’s a collection of facts.
To deny science with a smart phone in the pocket is ridiculous.
The precautionary principle applies, in spades. High probabilities are highly probable!
“Climate has always changed – it’s natural and not man-made.”
Not at this speed. It’s never changed this rapidly. This is very new. It’s very different. Ice core evidence shows this wonderfully precisely. It also shows that changes in climate now correlate exactly with the concentration of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere.
We know that carbon dioxide traps heat. Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated this in 1856.
Climate change correlates only with greenhouse gas accumulation. It’s man-made.
David Attenborough accepts that it’s real, here, man-made, and dangerous. So should we!
“Scientists are biased. It’s a conspiracy.”
What, all of them? There are thousands and thousands of scientists (& others) from every country on the planet working in every country on the planet for a plethora of different institutions in a plethora of different disciplines observing all sorts of natural things (from ice melt to little auk feeding patterns, forest die-back, weather patterns, insect populations, migration patterns, plant disease behaviours, ice core archaeology, the state of British railways, lengthening allergy seasons, and on and on and on) And all these myriad and independent people observe and report rapid and increasing changes in their specialist fields which correlate closely with measurable and reliably measured climate changes. The evidence is published, overwhelming and conclusive.
Where is the evidence for this global conspiracy? How could it be that almost every scientist in the world is systematically biased? We are asked to provide evidence for climate change and do so by the truckload. Where is theirs? Who are the scientists they claim show widespread fraud? Where is their work published and what evidence do they have? Why do they believe them?
The great scientists’ conspiracy theory (resulting from emails stolen a few years ago mainly from the University of East Anglia) is still believed. It purported to show fraudulent use of data to mislead on climate change. It was very thoroughly investigated, and it was shown conclusively that no fraud had occurred. This never made the front pages, so the conspiracy persists & permeates.
How could (and why would) a global conspiracy possibly happen, or be induced?
The emails conspiracy was investigated and proven to be false. There was no such fraud.
“We’re world-beating – top of the table.”
We were, once, somewhat ahead of the field. Not any more. We have picked all the low-hanging fruit (mainly by closing coal power stations – for economic reasons, not climate!) but our emissions are no longer reducing. Especially not if we count our ‘exported emissions’ (making stuff for us overseas) and our offshore aviation and shipping emissions. On the contrary – we’re licensing new fossil fuels big time. Maxing out oil and gas from the North Sea and a new coal mine in Cumbria. This is not only increasing our emissions vastly but locking them in long term.
Our emissions are not reducing and we’re tumbling down the table!
“North Sea oil and gas will secure Britain’s supply and lower prices.”
This is greenwash. The oil companies own the oil and gas. It’s not ‘British’. They sell it on the world market. It’s no more secure than foreign fuel.
The oil and gas belong to the companies – often foreign companies – who find and extract it. They sell it at the best price they can get on the world market. We have to buy it there. It’s no cheaper than foreign fuel.
That’ll never happen!
Many people claim that the transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon, green alternatives is way too complicated. Much too difficult and far too high a hill to climb. We’ll never get all the infrastructure built, all the jobs switched, all the necessary expertise etc etc. That’ll never happen!
The only counter to this, I think, is to point to all the infrastructure, institutions and processes we built for the fossil fuel era. Thousands of miles of pipes, hundreds of square miles of storage, huge corporations, millions of jobs, thousands of petrol stations, power stations, and on and on.
150 years ago, standing right here, we’d also have said “That’ll never happen!” But it did and would again if we decided to transition. We’d do it and we’d make money on it - just like last time.
We did it before, in the fossil fuel era.
If we decided to do it again, we’d be fine (and make money on it).
Sunak says it’ll cost every household “5, 10, even 15 thousand pounds”.
What is Sunak talking about? The purported cost to a household of installing heat pumps? Or some cost range taken from bona fide climate reports divided by the number of households?
This is disinformation. Heat pumps are cheaper (with government support), potentially much cheaper. Or national cost/households aren’t how we normally express government spending.
We spend more on subsidising fossil fuels than we do on alternative strategies – we could easily reallocate the money we already have to subsidise low-carbon if we decided to.
Replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, and insulating homes, are the most immediate and cost-effective way to reduce GB’s carbon footprint.
And…it’s much, much more expensive not to act (as well as threatening life as we know it)!
Sources (and more):
IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change). UN body which collects and analyses world-wide research and produces reports based upon it. Absolutely authoritative.
CCC (Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change). UK body established under Climate Change Act 2008 to collect and analyse research on climate and then to report to government on it, to advise government how to deal with it and to produce carbon budgets for debate and approval in parliament and then implementation. Lord Deben was chair for many years. Absolutely authoritative.
IEA (International Energy Agency) “works with governments and industry to shape a secure and sustainable energy future for all”. Carries out its own research to this end. Reported in 2021 that if we were to stay below 1.5C we had to stop new fossil fuel drilling immediately. Absolutely authoritative.
Grantham Institute (London School of Economics). Lord Stern (of Stern Review (2006) fame) is chair, Bob Ward communications. Absolutely authoritative.
David Attenborough, King Charles III, Chris Packham, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Kevin McLoud, Carol Vorderman, Caroline Lucas, Stewart Lee, The Pope, Leonardo di Caprio, Mark Carney, Hugh Grant, Antony Gormley, Gary Lineker, Charlotte Church, & on & on (& on).
Chris Skidmore. Net Zero Review (2023). Chris Skidmore is a former Tory MP and was Energy Minister. He resigned over the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill. His review pulls a few punches but is absolutely authoritative. (He is co-author of ‘Britannia Unchained’ and still leans very free market but has fully grasped the truths and significance of climate change).
Alok Sharma. Still a Tory MP. Was chair of COP26. Spoke against the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill and abstained. Absolutely authoritative.
WEF (World Economic Forum). The WEF identifies climate change as the second most urgent risk over two years to global economies and business. (And they see misinformation and disinformation as risk number one. It matters!)
Guardian Newspaper. Authoritative articles liberally sprinkled with links to other authorities.
University departments around the world. A plethora (hundreds and hundreds) of professors, and other academics, are referenced in papers and articles about climate from departments all over the world. Together, they make up an absolutely authoritative source as they all agree that climate change is real, here, caused by greenhouse gases and an urgent danger demanding immediate political action.
So does NASA, of course!
Random observations confirm that climate change is happening. Researchers into little auks note that they must fly further and further to find the fish they require. The CEO of the British rail system notes that the greatest threat to its integrity is climate-related damages. Farming across the world is threatened by flood here and drought there, and so there is talk in the UK of food shortages. Our Met Office worries loudly. And on and on and on and on …