London, 31 July – The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has welcomed the rebuke of exaggerated climate hype and alarm by the IPCC’s new chairman, Professor Jim Skea.
In interviews with German news media over the weekend the new head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it was wrong and misleading for climate activists to imply that temperature increases of 1.5 degrees Celsius posed an existential threat to humanity.
“The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees,” Skea told Der Spiegel.
“If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyses people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” he said.
Skea’s criticism of exaggerated climate alarm comes as he predicted the world would exceed the global warming target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, adding that governments around the world had failed to adopt sufficiently ambitious policies.
Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, welcomed the timely IPCC message:
“Jim Skea’s warnings about the detrimental impact of unjustified climate alarmism is a breath of fresh air and a welcome intervention. The new IPCC chairman seems to recognise that the political climate is changing fast.”
“As European governments have begun to pause, water down and roll back Net Zero pledges and plans, developing nations have no intention to abandon their relentless use of coal, oil and gas. The new IPCC chairman seems to have accepted that the 1.5C climate threshold and its Net Zero policy implications are no longer politically viable.”
“The Global Warming Policy Foundation has warned for more than a decade that climate mitigation policies are highly likely to fail and that governments would be well advised to prioritise effective and relative low cost adaptation measures.”
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In the eyes of many climate activists and journalists, limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius has become the decisive benchmark for ‘saving the planet.’ Climate activists and green politicians are reluctant to admit that the 1.5 degree limit has become non-viable as governments around the world are pushing back on Net Zero policies.
In 2018, the IPCC warned that humanity had only twelve years left to prevent a global climate catastrophe if global warming could not be limited to 1.5C degrees Celsius. Its special report concluded that global CO2 emissions would have to be reduced by about 45 percent by 2030 and to net zero by 2050 in order to prevent climate catastrophe.
No surprise, then, that green activists set up new, organisations (such as ‘Extinction Rebellion’ and ‘Last Generation’), which attempt to prevent the rise of global temperatures beyond the 1.5C threshold.
In a dramatic speech to MPs in the British House of Commons in 2019, a sixteen-year-old Swedish schoolgirl prophesised the collapse of global civilisation – to the hour:
“Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%.”
Greta Thunberg emphasised that her prediction was not based on her personal assumption, but was based on a global, scientific consensus: “These projections are backed up by scientific facts, concluded by all nations through the IPCC.”
“We’re the last generation who can stop the collapse of our society,” claim the “Last Generation” climate movement.
However, such doomsday predictions are not limited to apocalyptic climate activists.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has warned repeatedly that humanity is facing “collective suicide” due to climate change, while former prime minister Boris Johnson warned global leaders at the UN climate summit in Glasgow (COP26) that it was ‘one minute to midnight’ to prevent climate catastrophe.