Essay by Eric Worrall
In Australia we call a 110F top temperature a warm Summer day – so when alarmists tell us these temperatures are a climate crisis, it leaves us Aussies a bit perplexed.
Scorched by burning questions, our answer should not be inaction
July 24, 2023 — 5.00am
Consider, for a moment, how many words your eyes tend to skip over when you read – if you still do – articles about the catastrophe we are, right now, in the midst of. My list would look something like this: floods; fire; record temperatures; ice melting; mass extinction; bleached coral; 1.5 degrees; 2 degrees; IPCC report; drought; heatwave; tipping point.
There are more, but I’d like you to keep reading.
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I am writing this – and, full warning, this paragraph will bore you – at the end of a truly crazy period. The world has likely just seen its hottest two weeks on record. Nobody alive has lived through a hotter period. The people of Phoenix, Arizona endured almost three weeks with temperatures above 43 degrees. Climate change has combined with El Nino to produce almost literally unbelievable conditions. (At least all this gave me a new phrase: “heat dome”. This is apparently hot air trapped by the atmosphere. For now, my eyes slow down when I come across it; that will no doubt stop soon.)
As others have noted, such facts seem now barely to register in Australia. …
The question of how to approach climate change – with gloom or optimism – is a vexed one. The American commentator Ezra Klein recently wrote of the ways in which a world that has addressed climate change is actually more exciting: better cars, warmer homes, cleaner air. Politically, he wrote, we can’t rely on doom to convince people: “The green future has to be a welcoming one, even a thrilling one. If people cannot see themselves in it, they will fight to stop it.”
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The author goes on to complain that Australians also aren’t supporting “The Voice”, a left wing attempt to introduce racial identity based privileges into the Australian constitution. I’m not sure what “The Voice” has to do with climate change.
So why aren’t Aussies or the general public getting more excited about a few hot days? Probably for the same reason Arizona residents don’t usually get that excited by hot weather. Most people who live in hot places like Australia have experienced or worked in hot weather, at home or on holiday, weather conditions which rival this alleged “climate crisis” we are enduring.
That Phoenix Arizona heatwave record (22 consecutive days above 110F) was only a few days longer than a previous record (18 days above 110F) in 1974, back when CO2 levels were around 330ppm. Even if every minute of those 4 extra days of Phoenix heatwave was due to the 93ppm rise in CO2 since 1974 (2022 figure approx 423ppm), the appropriate response is to buy a bigger air conditioner, not to shut down Western civilisation.
If the climate crisis we’ve all been waiting for turns out to just be a few extra beach and poolside weather days, what a sad, uninspiring finale to all that dramatic climate propaganda buildup we’ve endured over the last few decades.
For more background on climate change alarmism click here.