Should we fight for Net Zero or adapt to climate change?
By Fabiano Micoli, Mercator. (Editor’s note: A little bit of sanity in the midst of all the ‘fear porn’)
How often do politicians, prominent leaders, and the mainstream media explicitly or implicitly conflate climate change with rising CO2 concentration? Very often. It occurs so regularly that they have effectively become the same thing. Here are two examples.
Here is the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in June this year: “In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger.”
And here is Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, in 2021, in a speech which made her famous:
I agree with them that global warming is real; I disagree that it’s time to panic. Let’s unpack this.
About global warming
The lower troposphere (our atmosphere up to 8 km altitude) has been warming at 0.16℃/decade since Dec 1, 1978. A new record was set in August 2024: “each of the last 12 consecutive months achieved their highest value [global temperature anomaly] in the 45+ year satellite record”, according to the UAH Global Temperature Report.
The Copernicus Global Climate Highlights 2023 and NOAA’s Annual 2023 Global Climate Report report a bleak situation. And there’s plenty more bad news below in this chart.