{"id":326514,"date":"2024-05-06T08:06:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T06:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=326514"},"modified":"2024-05-06T08:06:32","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T06:06:32","slug":"climatism-substitutes-for-solving-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=326514","title":{"rendered":"Climatism Substitutes for Solving\u00a0Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Science Matters <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cambridge professor Mike Hulme explains in an interview with Daily Mail Why climate change ISN\u2019T going to end the world and why we need to stop obsessing about net-zero<\/strong><\/a>.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  H\\T John Ray<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young people are terrified that climate change will destroy Earth by the time they grow up, but\u00a0the world is not actually ending<\/strong>, argues Cambridge professor Mike Hulme.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Humanity is not teetering on a cliff\u2019s edge, he says,
at risk of imminent catastrophe if we don\u2019t reach
net-zero carbon emissions by a certain date.<\/mark><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he has made it his mission to call out the people who claim we are. In his most recent book, Climate Change Isn\u2019t Everything, Hulme argued that belief in the urgent fight against climate change has shot far past the territory of science and become an ideology.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, dubs this ideology \u2018climatism,\u2019<\/strong> and he argues that it can distort the way society approaches the world\u2019s ills,<\/strong> placing too much focus on slowing Earth from warming.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem, he said, is this narrow focus takes attention away from
other important moral, ethical, and political objectives \u2013
like helping people in the developing world rise out of poverty.<\/mark><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DailyMail.com spoke with Hulme about why he thinks climatism is a problem, how it should be balanced out, and what keeps him hopeful about the future of humanity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with other \u2018isms\u2019 \u2013 like cubism or romanticism \u2013 ideologies provide a way of thinking about things,<\/strong> explained Hulme.  \u2018They\u2019re like spectacles that help us to make sense of the world, according to a predefined framework or structure,\u2019 he said<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, Hulme does not claim that all ideologies are wrong.\u00a0\u00a0\u2018We all need ideologies, and we all have them<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 whether you\u2019re a Marxist or a nationalist, you\u2019re likely to hold an ideology of some form or other,\u2019 he added.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As Hulme sees it, many journalists, advocates, and casual observers of climate change<\/strong> have become devotees of climatism, inaccurately attributing many events that happen in the world as being caused by climate change.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He gives the examples of a fire, flood, or damaging hurricane.  <\/strong>\u2018No matter how complex a particular causal chain might be, it\u2019s a very convenient shorthand<\/strong> to say, \u2018Oh, well, this was caused by climate change,<\/strong>\u201d Hulme said.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It\u2019s a very shallow and simplistic way, I would argue,
to try to describe events that are happening in the world.\u2019<\/mark><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers have shown that warming oceans do lead to more frequent and more severe storms:<\/strong> Twice as many cyclones now become category 4 or 5 as they did in the 1970s, scientists have found, and Atlantic storms are three times as likely to become hurricanes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hulme doesn\u2019t argue that the effects of climate change are not happening, though, just that stopping climate change won\u2019t stop disasters from happening altogether.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Fundamentally, we\u2019re going to have to deal with hurricanes, and
we\u2019re not going to deal with them just by cutting our carbon emissions.\u2019\u00a0<\/mark><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0solutions,<\/strong>\u00a0he argues, will include\u00a0better forecasting, better early warning systems, better emergency plans, and better infrastructure.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>\u2018There are all sorts of things that we can do to minimize the risks and dangers of hurricanes, that are\u00a0way more effective<\/strong>\u00a0in the short term\u00a0than trying to cut our carbon emissions,\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0said Hulme.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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The danger of climatism<\/strong>, he pointed out, is that it leads people down a false chain of events<\/strong>: If all of these things happening in the world are caused by climate change, then all we have to do is stop climate change, and all the other things will stop themselves.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018And that clearly is a very inadequate way of thinking<\/strong> about the complexities of most of the problems we we face in the world today.\u2019  This distorted thinking can make people forget about other important concerns,<\/strong> he argues.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an example, Hulme points to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):<\/strong> 17 areas that the world\u2019s governments have identified as top priorities for humanity.  The SDGs include building peace and justice, eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, and ensuring clean sanitation and water for billions of people on the planet.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If society were to put climate change priorities into their proper proportions then, Hulme said it would still be on the list.  It just wouldn\u2019t be the only item on the list, and it wouldn\u2019t be at the top.  \u2018There\u2019s 17 SDGs, and two of them are related to climate<\/strong>. So that begins to rebalance, or re-proportion, the amount of effort and attention<\/strong> we might wish to pay,\u2019 said Hulme.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond these mixed up priorities,<\/strong> Hulme also takes issue with what he sees as an obsession with deadlines<\/strong>: \u2018There\u2019s this idea of the ticking clock counting down to Ground Zero \u2013 we\u2019ve only got five years, 10 years, two years \u2013 however long different commentators put the deadline.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Doomsday was predicted but failed to happen at midnight.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hulme disputed the idea that he is over-egging the pudding on climatism \u2013 after all, the whole basis of his argument is that climatists are the ones making a bigger deal out of it than they should be<\/strong>.  \u2018I\u2019ve been observing concerns about how climate change is talked about, framed, and reacted to in public for many, many years.\u2019  And this public framing has led to a phenomenon called \u2018eco-anxiety,\u2019<\/strong> which Hulme said he sees among his students at Cambridge University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018They have absorbed these\u00a0claims of tipping points<\/strong>, and they take these things literally, and feel that there is no future for them because the climate is going to go out of control,\u2019 he said. \u2018They feel that it will be too late, and everything will collapse.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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See Also Climate Delusional Disorder<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Climate Delusional Disorder (CDD) 2021 Update<\/a><\/blockquote>