[Noozhawk’s note: First in a series.]

Is climate change our generation’s existential threat? Existential certainly gives “threat” a greater depth.

So, in the context of (man-made) climate change, its causes/effects are at the top of any list. Maybe the only rivals are, well, nuclear war, unsustainable national debt or asteroids screaming toward earth.

Today we’ll go with climate change.

But unless you’re sequestered in a Boeing Starliner capsule, the rest of us mortals continue being challenged on what we should do about “managing climate.”

Is life as we know it doomed for existence through our own devices as we recklessly continue living in a fossil fuel material world?

Left of center ideology is the mantra that science has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, i.e. anthropogenic global warming is the existential threat to humanity.

Proponents argue that we need to eliminate all fossil fuel energy production and consumption by 2045-2050 to save the planet (faster).

On the flip side are those skeptical of this science summation and the prediction models that are driving this warp-speed world energy transition through political fiat and a willing news media.

Then there’s the wait a minute … yes, fossil fuel emissions probably have some influence, but we need more facts/data, until we hand over the keys.

So, with a divided consensus, our “current and future state” has not/cannot produce majority polices in which we are on the same page: problem statement(s), cause(s), coherent solutions, justifiable benefits, sustainable costs, economic bust or boom.

This couldn’t be clearer with recent election results not just in the United States, but around the globe.

Let’s start with what many would call the gold-standard subject matter experts, the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

We need to know there are three tiers of responsibilities:

• Working Group 1 — scientists and computer models
• Working Group 2 — natural and social scientists and economists working on impacts
• Working Group 3 — those who control conclusions and mitigations

The IPCC also writes the Synthesis Report, a reader’s digest that is basically the only document that governments, decision makers and the media read. Then John Q. Public gets the synthesis highlights through every analog or digital device on record.

However, there are many many cases in which input does align with output creating a continental divide within the IPCC.

Let’s start with an overview of public domain announcements reported by Working Group 3 policy makers through their Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) issued in 2021:

• “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming” (of the 195 countries in the world, 193 are member states of the United nations)
• Other key points in (the Synthesis Report) “Summaries for Policy Makers,” are “these activities already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region of our globe” and “there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”

But here are some of the latest assessments from scientists published by U.N. and U.S. sources, summarizing science in the detail reports from 2021-2022:

• Humans have no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century
• Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago 
• The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century

And these are just a few examples that the mainstream news media conveniently/sadly don’t widely report, leaving many of us to travel without a compass.

The nonprofit Copenhagen Consensus — under its president, Bjørn Lomborg — continues providing updates on what were considered climate catastrophes in the last 20 years, but are rarely updated for present day findings of fact:

• Former Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and the World Wildlife Fund projected polar bear populations would be unable to reproduce by 2012 and face extinction. We know today the polar population was around 12,000 in the 1960s and stands at 26,000 today.
• Many activists and environmental nonprofit organizations proclaimed that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef was being killed off by rising sea level temperatures in the early 2000s. Scientists in 2012 observed that the coral cover continually was being destroyed after a hurricane and The Guardian published an obituary in 2014. Since 2020, the Great Barrier Reef has more cover that at any point since records began in 1986.

Santa Barbara County and many of our local jurisdictions have targeted natural gas as the first greenhouse gas for elimination in the coming years.

“We’re talking about business as usual, and we’re not in that,” Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann said at a recent 2030 Climate Action Plan hearing.

“We’re in a serious crisis for human life as we know it.”

But just maybe there’s more at play with natural factors/drivers not being presented that also play a bigger role in the climate.

Which begs the question: Are we demanding the highest integrity through the multiple layers of bureaucracies in our institutions in representing the entire universe of causes and effects?

In my next commentary, we’ll address the history of earth’s climate.