Climate change activists consistently warning of a doomsday in the near future are harming efforts to tackle the current situation, warned Prof. Jim Skea, the newly elected head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Mr. Skea made the comments during interviews with major German news outlets over the weekend, just days after he was elected to the new role at the international panel, which monitors and assesses the science related to climate change.
Elsewhere, Mr. Skea, who has more than 40 years of experience in climate science, stressed that global temperatures increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with the pre-industrial era doesn’t pose an “existential threat to humanity.”
Under the Paris Climate Agreement—adopted in 2015 and formally ratified in 2016—hundreds of nations agreed to pursue efforts to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius in an effort to “significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change.”
‘We Will Not Die Out’
Mr. Skea also told Der Spiegel magazine that “we should not despair and fall into a state of shock” if global temperatures increase by this amount and that “the world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees.”“It will, however, be a more dangerous world,” Mr. Skea said, noting that social tensions may rise but “we will not die out.”
He did say that “man-made” climate change exists and that we can no longer deny it.
“Man has caused this global crisis and caused massive damage to the planet,” Mr. Skea said. “The task now is to prevent something even worse from happening.
“Every measure we take to weaken climate change helps.”
He added that climate change can be limited via the “expansion of renewable energies, which replace climate-damaging coal-fired power plants, gas heating, or oil in industry and transport.”
“Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” Mr. Guterres said, warning of “children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, and workers collapsing in scorching heat.”
Dissenting Climate Experts Silenced
However, many experts have repeatedly raised concerns about the impending climate doomsday regularly cited by environmental activists, including more than 1,100 scientists and professionals who signed a statement in 2022 declaring that ”there is no climate emergency.”Some of those experts, including Nobel prize-winning physicist John F. Clauser, have allegedly been censored because of their skepticism over climate change.
It is not clear why Mr. Clauser’s presentation was pulled.
Before the scheduled event, Mr. Clauser had also told the Korea Quantum Conference, “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis,” adding that some of the “key processes” used in models on climate change “are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times.”
The Epoch Times contacted the IMF for further comment but received none by press time.