CLIMATE CHANGE DOESN’T CAUSE EXTREME WEATHER

Sir,
 
I am commenting on the article ‘Business and climate change’, October 10, which appeared on your Website. The FSE&CC is both right and wrong when it comes to climate change and extreme weather.

They are right that “it is crucial to consider the impact of climate change on business operations”.

They are also right that “The core message is to know that adaptation adds costs, but lack of adaptation will cost far more.”
Indeed, it is crucially important that we harden our societies to extreme weather by doing such things as burying electrical cables underground and reinforcing buildings and other infrastructure.

We also need to support reliable energy sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear and hydro-power, to ensure that we have plenty of energy to heat and cool our dwellings as needed.

Renewable

Weak and intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar are simply not up to the task at hand.
However, the FSE&CC is wrong to associate climate change with the incidence and severity of extreme weather.
This is one of the few areas of agreement between the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC—see www.nipccreport.com).

In 2012 the IPCC asserted that a relationship between global warming and wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events has not been demonstrated.
The just-released NIPCC report states that “In no case has a convincing relationship been established between warming over the past 100 years and increases in any of these extreme events.”

The real tragedy in all this is that of the approximately US$97 billion that are spent each year on climate finance across the world, only five per cent of it goes to helping people in today’s world prepare for and adapt to climate change.
The rest all goes to trying to stop climate change that may happen decades in the future.

This is essentially giving more value to the lives of people yet to be born than those suffering today due to the impacts of climate change, however, caused. People from across the political spectrum are starting to speak out about this immoral approach.

Tom Harris, International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), Canada

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