IN THE YEAR 2020, AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE SCIENTISTS HAVE PREDICTED THE COLLAPSE OF OUR CIVILIZATION BY CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE YEAR 2050. THE PREDICTION IS ACCOMPANIED BY A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE MONSOON FLOOD IN DHAKA, BANGLADESH APPARENTLY AS AN INDICATOR OF THE PRECARIOUS STATE OF THE PLANET. LINK TO SOURCE: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2205741-is-it-true-climate-change-will-cause-the-end-of-civilisation-by-2050/

PART-1: WHAT THE SOURCE ARTICLE SAYS

Climate change could bring about the end of civilisation as we know it within three decades, according to a report released by the BREAKTHROUGH NATIONAL CENTRE FOR CLIMATE RESTORATION IN AUSTRALIA. The report by Breakthrough, endorsed by a retired Australian admiral, says a war-time response is needed to avoid the doomsday scenario.

The report speaks, in our opinion, a harsh but necessary truth,” says co-author David Spratt. The report presents a scenario where by 2050 more than half of the world’s population faces 20 days a year of lethal heat, crop yields globally drop by a fifth, the Amazon ecosystem collapses, the Arctic is ice-free in summer, and sea levels have risen by 0.5 metres but that is not the worst case scenario. Spratt explains that in the worst case scenario, the scale of destruction is beyond their capacity to model, with a high likelihood that human civilisation will come to an end. This is the collapse of civilization scenario of the climate change movement described by many climate change analysts including Sir David Attenborough and science historian James Burke.

The Spratt report says that more than a billion people could be displaced by climate change by 2050. Spratt cites a 2018 report by a Swedish non-profit, which cites a 2010 report by a German non-profit which said a billion people live in areas that could be inundated by sea level rise this century. The report also cites a UN website which says that in the next 30 years we may leave a billion or more vulnerable poor people with little choice but to migrate.

The Breakthrough report forecasts warming of 4C by 2100 without taking feedbacks into account and higher if we include carbon cycle feedbacks (eg warmer soil releasing more carbon). As a way of comparison, the IPCC forecasts much lower warming. The disagreement is explained by Breakthrough in terms of feedbacks that the IPCC has not taken into account and the irreversible changes they may create.

Climate scientist Mark Maslin is supportive of the Spratt report saying that the report adds to the deep concerns expressed by security experts such as the Pentagon over climate change. Maybe, just maybe, it is time for our politicians to be worried and start to act to avoid these scenarios. Climate scientist Michael Mann says the Spratt report is too extreme and counterproductive for the climate movement because that kind of talk weakens the call to climate action.

The Spratt report says that we can stop these doomsday predictions from coming to pass if we reverse emissions, which are still climbing. He cites Extinction Rebellion and says that there are plenty of signs from citizens around the world that they would like to see a war-like response to climate change. Mark Maslin is supportive because in his view a stark warning is what is needed to encourage AMBITION for climate action now being sought by the UN.

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

ISSUE#1: UNCERTAINTY: The report highlights the inconsistencies and uncertainties in climate science with respect to when and at what temperature climate change will become “irreversible” with catastrophic consequences and exactly how catastrophic those catastrophic consequences will be. In objective scientific inquiry these uncertainties would imply that the uncertainties are too large and that therefore the research findings have low information content – in other words that they don’t really know. However, as explained in a related post, uncertainty has a very different and a very flawed interpretation in climate science: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/22/climate-science-uncertainty/ where only the most extreme worst case end of the uncertainty band is taken as the information contained in that uncertainty band. In objective scientific inquiry untainted by advocacy or activism needs, uncertainty has a very different interpretation and that is that we don’t know. Climate scientists, including Maslin and Mann, subscribe to the odd and flawed climate science theory that the less they know the scarier climate change gets LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/22/global-warming-science-2007-the-dearth-of-scientific-knowledge-only-adds-to-the-alarm/

ISSUE#2: ACTIVISM/ADVOCACY: The comment by Michael Mann is that the extreme assessments in the Spratt report are a bad thing not because they are not the best objective and unbiased assessment but because they may cause people to give up hope and thereby make it harder for climate science to sell their climate action agenda of moving the world’s energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels to renewables. At the same time we find that in the language of the Spratt report and its support from Mark Maslin, the most extreme possible assessment of climate change survives in any discussion of uncertainty in a language of what COULD happen given the uncertainty of the estimate and the “unknowns” such as feedbacks. As in the case of Mann, it is climate action advocacy and its needed biases and not unbiased objective scientific inquiry that determines how these difficult uncertainties and information vacuums are resolved. This odd and unscientific methodology in climate science is discussed in two related posts on this site:

LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/02/03/hidden-hand/ : LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/03/confirmationbias/

CONCLUSION: We conclude from the analysis presented above that the collapse of civilization forecast in the Spratt report for 2050, 30 years from now, is not credible because it is not a product of unbiased and objective scientific inquiry but a product of bias in research methodology driven by the activism and advocacy needs and the corresponding biases of the researchers that carried out the investigation and came to these horrific conclusions.