The words in Greg Ip's recent WSJ climate piece ('The Climate Crisis Clashed With Affordability and Affordability Won)', struck me at a level of cognitive dissonance:
"Why have climate alarmists suddenly gone quiet? The science and the economics haven't really changed. Carbon emissions are still rising and the climate is still getting warmer."
Ip isn't kidding on the matter of rising CO2 emissions and warming.. Over the past ten years, from 2015 to 2024, have been the hottest on record, with 2024 being the warmest year overall, according to scientific and weather organizations. This marks a significant shift, as all the warmest years in recorded history have occurred within this recent decade. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2024 surpassed previous records, ma\king it the first year to exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold above pre-industrial levels. And 2025's data - though not yet completely processed - is on a pace to rival or exceed 2024.
So what gives? What's changed? Ip provides what he believes is an answer:
"What's changed is the politics. Climate warriors persuaded the public to take climate change seriously, but not to pay for it, especially after the cost of living shot up in the wake of the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The share of respondents calling climate and the environment their most important issue has dropped from 14% in early 2020 to 6% now according to Yougov. By contrast 25% describe inflation as the top priority."
Enter Agnotology. As I have repeatedly pointed out , agnotology, derived from the Greek 'agnosis' -is the study of culturally constructed ignorance. It is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty). In this case, the claim of many climate scientists that we face an existential threat from carbon emissions and increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
Moreover, Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to
the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic
ends . In other words, the supporters of agnotology - whoever they may be- are
all committed to one end: minimizing the science to enable economic profit and political priority over survival. Hence, enabling shortsighted issues like inflation to trump truly perilous signs of a radical climate alteration. Proctor also notes these special interests are often paid
handsomely to sow immense confusion on the issue.
In this case the Yougov polling, intentionally or not, has sown confusion, namely that higher prices and inflation trump climate instability. They do not. Hence cannot be a more important issue objectively - i.e. in objective reality.
A recent (Oct. 18) Denver Post article proclaimed ‘The World is on a path to add 57 superhot days a year’. This scenario- based on a climate study cited - assumes countries fulfill their promises (from the 2015 Paris Agreement) to curb CO2 emissions so that by the year 2100 the planet warms by only 2.6 C (4.7 F) above pre-industrial times. In that case “57 superhot days would be added to what the Earth gets now”.
This according to the computer simulations released by the climate scientists belonging to The World Weather Attribution (WWA) and U.S. – based Climate Central. (The AP report noting the study is yet to be peer-reviewed "but uses established techniques for climate attribution".). As the Post account from the AP also noted (quoting the study authors):
“Superhot days are defined for each location as days that are warmer than comparable dates between 1991 and 2020”
This makes sense given the past ten years, from 2015 to 2024, have been the hottest on record, with 2024 being the warmest year overall, according to scientific and weather organizations. Indeed, "since 2015 the world has added 11 superhot days on average."
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has indeed confirmed that 2024 surpassed previous records, making it the first year to exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold above pre-industrial levels. And 2025, though all the data is not in (thanks to Trump's bunch muffling it), will likely exceed those levels.
Basically then, affordability did not 'beat' the climate crisis, rather it confirmed the human propensity for shortsightedness in terms of threats, and real crises. To put this another way: What good will any reduction in the costs of your housing or grocery items be if all the power grids have been knocked out by overuse - from trying to survive 120F heat waves lasting weeks or months? Answer that then come back and tell me that affordability trumps the climate crisis. Bottom line: the climate crisis is just that, is all too real (see the images provided) and isn't going away anytime soon, irrespective of what inflation does.
And:
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Articles | Nature Climate Change
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