NEW IPCC CHAIRMAN A REALIST

The world won't end, he says.

By Peter Williams

Here’s a piece of news that has been given scant coverage in the mainstream New Zealand media.

The IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the holy grail of Climate Change science, has a new chairman, and there’s very indication he is a realist, not an alarmist.

His name is Jim Skea and he reckons it isn’t helpful to imply that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees celsius is an existential threat to humanity.

He’s calling for a balanced approach to the Climate Change debate.

Professor Skea is British. He was born in Scotland, has graduated in physics, did his doctoral research in energy research and has been at Imperial College in London for the last 14 years before starting this job. He’s 69, a baby boomer and has been involved with the IPCC since the early 1990s.

But here’s what he told a couple of German magazines recently.

“We should not despair and fall into a state of shock if global temperatures were to increase by this amount, 1.5 Celsius. If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that polarises people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change.

“The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees. It will however be a more dangerous world.”

So there you are. It’s official.

The boss of the IPCC says there is no imminent catastrophe and we should stop being climate alarmists.

He also said that no scientist could tell people how to live or what to eat.

“It’s about real people and their lives, not scientific abstractions. We need to come down a level.”

There you are Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil and Greta and James Shaw and the Climate Change Commission.

Stop trying to get us to change our behaviours. The world is not about to end anytime soon.

But then we all knew that. Thank you Doctor Jim Skea for being a scientist, not an alarmist.

For more of Peter's musings, tune in to his ‘Afternoons' show here on RCR.