By: Jože Biščak
The left wing opposition is concerned and wants an urgent session of the Parliamentary Committee for Infrastructure, Environment and Spatial Planning. Slovenia is expected to warm up twice as fast as the world average. At least that is what follows from the latest report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This time it is supposed to be quite real, the cataclysmic predictions are now supposed to be accurate. So many eminent world scientists really cannot be wrong, right? Well, according to projections from the beginning of the millennium, Piran should be at least two meters under water due to the melting of Arctic ice, and bananas should have been harvested in Pokljuka a long time ago.
The Slovenian Left Quartet is neither the first nor the last to predict a climate apocalypse. It is not entirely up to date, because the world has long since abandoned the term global warming (they are also slowly abandoning the term climate change, now climate disasters are in vogue), but the vocabulary has remained the same for half a century – alarming. Paul R. Erlich, a biologist and professor at Stanford University, announced on the first International Earth Day in 1970 that “all important marine animals will become extinct in ten years”. The following year, he made a new prediction: “By 2000, the United Kingdom will become a small group of impoverished islands, home to about 70 million hungry people.” Erlich is today considered the originator of the alarming rhetoric about the end of the world. Although none of his predictions came true, he was awarded several times, he was also quoted by the ICPP.
Months ago, this prompted Professors Paul S. Fischbeck and David C. Rode to analyse the 79 most high-profile climate apocalyptic forecasts (1970 to 2019, including four IPCC forecasts). For the prediction to come under their scrutiny, it had to meet three criteria: (first), the date or time when something would happen; (second), description of the disaster; (and third), the forecast had to be documented. They published their findings in the International Journal of Global Warming: out of 79 cataclysmic forecasts, the “expiration dates” have already expired for 49, another 16 had so little time left to materialise that a catastrophe will almost certainly not occur, and the remaining forecasts are in a very distant future (Professor Granger Morgan’s prediction, for example, is set in 2205). But as it turns out now, Baba Vanga is more accurate in predicting the future than the IPCC.
Nevertheless, the latest IPCC policy report is more catastrophic than ever. The IPCC is not a scientific (professional) body, but a political one. Just over 2,000 scientists and “scientists” at their discretion condense numerous (and most apocalyptic) reports from around the world into a single or several shorter ones. But this is not final, it is not official. What and how goes public is clearly stated in point 11 of the IPCC Principles: “The findings of the IPCC working groups and all working groups are not the official positions of the IPCC until they are adopted by the committee in plenary assembly.”
Fear of the apocalypse aimed at accelerating the theft of taxpayers’ money
The plenary session is attended mainly by government representatives, civil servants and breadwinners from non-governmental organisations. The final decisions of the IPCC are therefore more political bribery than as a result of a serious scientific process. This is also why, after each such report, it happens that many scientists who still have a conscience withdraw from cooperation. Like Paul Reiter of the French Pasteur Institute. This kind of fear of the apocalypse, which is just around the corner, is intended to accelerate the theft of taxpayers’ money, and ecological activism (ecoterrorism) is therefore becoming the fastest growing industry. And gullible people fall for this over and over again. So grab your wallets when you hear about the “green agenda,” the “green deal,” and similar melodious phrases.
Daily news of the year 5561 of the Lord: Summer heat wave, in Ljubljana it is 37 degrees Celsius, the IPCC report is the most pessimistic so far – humanity has less than a decade of time, otherwise it will become extinct. Climatologist and great (140 times) grandson of Lučka Kajfež Bogataj says in a trembling voice on TVS: “My great (140 times) grandmother warned you…”
Jože Biščak is the editor-in-chief of the weekly Demokracija, a long-term investigative journalist, and since 2020 also the president of the Slovenian Association of Patriotic Journalists and the author of three books.
