The climate catastrophists’ “if ……, then ……” trick

Tuesday/Wednesday blog

First apologies for going AWOL for a few days. But I had a bit of a medical emergency. However, after blood tests, x-rays, scans and much else it turned out to be a false alarm.

The climate catastrophists’ “if ….., then …..” trick

The climate catastrophists have many ways of manipulating and faking facts and figures to beat us all into submission to their plans for us all to live much colder, more restricted, poorer lives. I expose some of these in my book THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS. But I’ve just come across one that I missed. I’ll call it the “if ….., then …..” trick.

It goes like this: the catastrophists make a claim such as “if such and such happens, then something awful will happen”. The clever part of the “if ….., then …..” trick is that the second part is always true. This then gives credibility to the first part. But, in fact, the first part is usually total nonsense.

Here’s an example. A new report has shown that if�seas were to rise by 6.6 feet (2 metres), then that would put most of Bangkok and its 10 million residents below sea level, contrary to previous projections that showed the Thailand capital would still be mostly above sea level. The report then goes on to detail many other horrors that would come from a one metre and a two metre rise in sea levels.

Twice as Much Land in Developing Nations Will be Swamped by Rising Seas than Previously Projected, New Research Shows

Bangkok is a coastal city, like many of the world’s cities. So it is more than obvious that a large rise in sea levels would flood the city. Thus the second part of the “if ….., then …..” trick is true.

But what about the first part – if sea levels were to rise by 6.6 feet (2 metres)?

Sea levels have risen by much more than this over the last 20,000 years:

But now sea levels are only rising by around 7 cms per 100 years

So at the present rate of sea-level rise, it would take more than 2,800 years for sea levels to reach the 6.6 feet (2 metres) rise the climate catastrophists use in their�”if ….., then …..” trick. Even if sea levels were rising by 10 or even 20 cms per 100 years, that would hardly be something to worry about. So, it’s nothing you or I need to worry about. In fact our children and grandchildren and many subsequent generations don’t need to worry about this either.

Moreover, in their great new report, the climate catastrophists claim: ‘Sea level rise keeps speeding up, and �many coastal areas are lower than scientists thought they were,� said Ronald Vernimmer, lead author of the new�study�published last week in Earth�s Future, a journal of the�American Geophysical Union.’

Yet, the bible of climate catastrophists – the IPCC reports – state that there is no sign of sea-level rise accelerating:

Moreover, the new report fails to mention that the real danger to many coastal cities is that they are built on marshy ground and are sinking under their own weight. Bangkok, for example is built�on swampy land and layers of soft clay and is sinking by 2 to 3 cms a year. Yet sea levels are only rising by 7 cms every 100 years. So the Thai capital will sink more in 2 to 3 years than the sea which it borders will rise in 100 years. Many other coastal cities are sinking due to water extraction.

You’ll often see climate catastrophists using the�”if ….., then …..” trick.

There was a documentary titled Earth Under Water made in 2010. The description of the film explains: “Step by step, it paints a chilling picture of the world as the�sea�levels rise from between one and 70 meters, unravelling the science behind this cataclysm.” Yet, if sea levels are rising by just 7 cms every 100 years, it would take 1,400 years for sea levels to rise by just one metre and 98,000 years for sea levels to rise the 70 metres the film frets about. The whole film just just an extended�”if ….., then …..” trick where the initial proposition of sea levels rising between one metre and 70 metres is utter and total tripe. Oh, and anyway, long before the next 98,000 years, the Earth will be heading into the next glaciation:

So sea levels will actually have fallen as more precipitation is turned to ice.

If the Earth’s temperature were to rise by 2 degrees, then Google tells us “the climate would be disrupted with fiercer storms, higher seas, animal and plant extinctions, disappearing coral, melting ice and more people dying from heat, smog and infectious disease.” But the Earth’s temperature isn’t going to rise by 2 degrees. In fact, all the climate models currently in use hugely overestimate the rate of global warming:

So, when the climate catastrophists enthusiastically supported by the mainstream media make their next grim prediction to terrify us all into cowering submission, look out for the�”if ….., then …..” trick. It’s one of the climate catastrophists’ and media’s favourite ways to bamboozle an ignorant public.