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The world today can be described in just one word: hot. Last year, all continents were hit by severe heat waves. In at least 10 countries, daytime temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius were recorded in more than one place. Forest fires are scorching unusually large areas of the earth and coral reefs are suffering from the fourth coral bleaching event since records began.
Fortunately, there is no reason to act quickly to combat the climate change that is fueling these extremes—only alarmist climate ideologues think otherwise. This is the latest climate nonsense, the misleading, misguided, or just plain confusing statements that continue to bubble up in the face of an increasingly obvious problem.
More than 18 months have passed since this column last covered the climate chatter, and while it’s hard to say whether the problem is getting smaller or bigger, there are certainly still surprises.
Exhibit number one: Elon Musk, once a voice of reason on climate change, if not a particularly modest one. “I’ve done more for the environment than any other person on Earth,” the tech billionaire boasted last year. In 2017, he called global warming “the greatest threat facing humanity this century, apart from artificial intelligence.”
But last week, in a conversation with Donald Trump on his Platform X, Musk said the climate risk was actually not as high as many thought, before offering a puzzling explanation for why there was still so much time to tackle the problem.
If the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to rise from today’s average levels of around 420 ppm to over 1,000 ppm, “you’ll get headaches and nausea,” Trump told him. But since we’re only adding about 2 ppm of CO₂ per year, “we still have quite a bit of time” and “we don’t have to rush.”
This is nonsense of the first order. The heat, flooding and fire disasters we are experiencing in the face of the warming that accumulated CO₂ has already caused will be insignificant compared to what would happen if levels rose to around 1,000 ppm. And indeed, decades of failure to curb carbon dioxide emissions means that they must now be cut rapidly to avoid irreversible changes in a range of natural systems that humanity depends on. Headaches are the least of our problems.
Musk’s analysis is like saying you’d get brain freeze if you ate a bucket of ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner for years. That may technically be true, but it’s nothing compared to the larger carnage.
The idea that Musk could serve as an adviser on climate issues to a re-elected Trump is sobering. The same goes for Project 2025, a controversial 900-plus-page plan that conservative think tanks hope a second Trump administration could use to reshape the U.S. government.
The plan is full of climate talk, and although Trump has tried to distance himself from it, the plan also calls for contributions from allies and members of his administration.
This includes the section calling for the dissolution of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, the National Ocean Service, and other scientific agencies.
“Together, they constitute a colossal operation that has become one of the primary drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is damaging the future prosperity of the United States,” says Project 2025.
This is a confusing description of a group that provides important information like weather forecasts, hurricane tracking, and climate data. And if it poses such a threat to U.S. prosperity, one has to wonder why so many other countries have agencies that provide similar services.
Unfortunately, there is still confusing nonsense about climate change far beyond the United States.
There have been so many nonsensical claims in European newspapers that heat pumps (a more environmentally friendly alternative to gas boilers) are too weak, too noisy and too difficult to install that a small industry of technical and research experts has now formed to refute these claims.
And in Australia, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott delivered a gold medal-worthy performance last week when he wrote in a newspaper article: “Nothing Australia does will make any difference to the climate (assuming that humanity’s CO₂ emissions really are the main culprit for the climate).”
Unfortunately, this is indeed the case, as the world’s most reliable climate science reports confirm again and again.
One day, climate change will stop producing all this misleading nonsense. But it’s hard to say when that will be. In the meantime, it’s best to keep a close eye on the worst pollutants.
Climate Capital
Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Read the FT’s coverage here.
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