Climate Change for Young People

David Stark

Description

David Stark could not find a book which explained climate change and related energy policy in appropriate detail without being patronising and alarmist so after seven years of research he wrote one himself.He believes that the contagion circulating through young people of the 21st century, eco-anxiety has spread because the agenda was set by activism where rational and informed debate is precluded. With this comprehensive - but entirely accessible - guide to climate change, debate and the healing process can now start. We can all begin to understand why efforts to date to 'save the planet' have hurt the economies of Western democracies and placed our energy and manufacturing security in the hands of autocracies.This book discusses the different arguments that are often heard in documentaries and news reports but breaks them down with facts and empirical scientific evidence, cutting through the hyperbole to see whether they are actually the cause for panic that we've been told they are and whether the solutions being proposed will really help. The current energy crisis suggests that the cure is worse than the disease.

Sujets

• Climate change

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781803134192
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2023 David Stark

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


Matador
Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,
Harrison Road, Market Harborough,
Leicestershire. LE16 7UL
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks


ISBN 978 1803134 192

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd


Advice to my grandchildren:
You need to be a specialist and a generalist. Enough of a specialist not to be fooled by people who think they are clever “know-it-alls” but are not. A generalist to embrace everything that this wonderful world has to offer.

David Stark


Frontispiece
I reckon I have produced the first comprehensive guide to climate change that people in the street can understand, especially young people who have been told by climate activists that their parents’ generation has ruined their future. This will start an informed conversation which should have happened a long time ago. Why must we give up our petrol, diesel and hybrid cars? Why must we get rid of our gas-fired boilers and gas cooking? How much of our treasured modern Western lifestyle will we have to abandon to ‘save the planet’? Will poorer countries get the message and restrict the progress of their societies, or are there alternative and affordable technologies that can be substituted for the fossil fuels that made Western countries wealthy? Are we actually saving the planet or harming it further with ‘renewables’ like biofuels which involve cutting down huge areas of forest? How much will the transition cost, how fast will it happen, and how will we know if our sacrifices have been worth it? What government policies are merely costly greenwash and virtue-signalling? Why has Europe effectively been funding Putin’s murder of Ukrainians by buying energy from Russia? Politicians had better read this book and come up with the answers.
I believe that the reason no one has so far produced a popular book on climate change is that to do so exposes the uncertainties in climatology and its related sciences in what is a very complex subject. Those who believe that human emissions are having a disastrous effect on the planet, and they mostly believe this honestly and passionately, wish to present a simple message to avoid any doubt. During the period that human carbon dioxide emissions have risen, especially since the middle of the 20 th century, the world has warmed. The assumption is made that further emissions will accelerate this warming and the climate will change in ways that can only be bad for the environment and, ultimately, human beings. This book explores such contentions in some detail but also explores alternative approaches, which focus more on the mechanics of natural climate change, as observed throughout history, and which argue that human emissions may play only a limited part in climate change. Warming also has benefits as well as downsides.
If this is true, it might lead to a change in emphasis from political solutions that focus on mitigation measures (ones designed to move the climate back to where it was by radically changing society to reduce human CO 2 emissions) towards focusing more on adapting human society to climate change as it happens. Each annual COP climate conference shows that politicians are good at declaring ‘climate emergencies’, but poor at actually agreeing and implementing policies which will inevitably place a severe financial burden on their citizens. As I demonstrate, current mitigation measures based on ‘renewables’ are ineffective (they are poor at reducing net emissions) and do not come out well in cost benefit analyses, but are religiously pursued. It seems that a CO 2 VID irrationality virus has infected the Western world while countries like India and China carry on regardless, immune to the contagion, their priority being to free their citizens from poverty.
In contrast, investment in climate/weather adaptation measures has proved very successful and financially profitable: strengthening sea and river defences against floods, warning threatened populations about impending extreme weather events so they can prepare better, increasing search and rescue services for when disasters happen, building stronger buildings and infrastructure that can withstand fierce storms, developing irrigation schemes that protect us against droughts, etc. As the International Disaster Database shows, human deaths from natural disasters are a small fraction of what they were half a century ago. Adaptation has been proved to work and be highly cost effective.
This book is aimed at the general reader, but in particular teenagers and young people at college and university who are thirsting for information on what they have been told is the biggest issue that their generation will face. They need to know the facts. We must question everything if we are to understand this world and where we are going in it. Blind acceptance of the current apocalyptic message on climate change is not healthy. It is scaring our children, almost certainly unnecessarily, because humanity has shown many times before that it can rise to the challenge. I am sure it will do so again with climate change.

David Stark
October 2022



Note: This book was mostly written in 2020 and early 2021, so preceded the late 2021 escalation in energy prices and Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, both of which were predictable.


Contents
Introduction

Chapter 1
Scary stuff – or is it?
Psychology lesson

Chapter 2
My fears and tears: Nazis, Communists and the end of the world
History lesson

Chapter 3
What does the United Nations say about climate change?
Meteorology and futurology lessons

Chapter 4
Tipping points and cliff edges
Futurology lesson

Chapter 5
Another panic: ocean acidification
Ecology and chemistry lessons, highlighting the importance of good quality control in research

Chapter 6
What about species extinction?
Ecology lesson

Chapter 7
Why poverty reduction is a more urgent problem than climate change
Sociology and economics lessons

Chapter 8
The chemistry of ‘greenhouse’ gases (GHGs)
Chemistry lesson

Chapter 9
It’s the sun, stupid
Meteorology lesson

Chapter 10
What can we do to reduce human emissions?
Technology and economics lessons

Chapter 11
The Garden of Eden Complex and ‘we’re all doomed’
Psychology lesson

Chapter 12
Jolly hockey-sticks and cycles within cycles
Politics, mathematical graphs and history lessons

Chapter 13
My conclusions: the skeptics of sceptics challenge
Topics for debate

Chapter 14
Addressing climate change, the storm in a teacup
A lesson in pragmatism

Appendix
Review of UN IPCC Assessment Report 6

Postscript


Introduction
To a teenager, the prospects for climate change are very scary. The future itself is scary because we can’t predict it. You, the young reader, have hopefully been largely protected from the problems of the