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Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger

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Charles said: " Perhaps it’s fitting that a book aimed squarely at climate 'alarmism' is so fatally undermined by its own over-reach. It's not that Shellenberger doesn't spell out some legitimate questions and dilemmas, but over-confidence in his conclusions and the Perhaps it’s fitting that a book aimed squarely at climate 'alarmism' is so fatally undermined by its own over-reach. It's not that Shellenberger doesn't spell out some legitimate questions and dilemmas, but over-confidence in his conclusions and the flimsiness and incompleteness of the evidence on which many of them are based made this an insubstantial and unsatisfying read. There are far too many such instances to mention, but the sections on fire, food and energy provide examples.

In claiming that Australia's disastrous east coast fires in 2019/20 would have occurred even without any warming, partly because of a supposed lack of fuel reduction burns, Schellenberger, relying on an Andrew Bolt interview with David Packham, takes no account of the extreme heat, nor of those areas where the fires raged despite hazard reduction burns. He minimises their severity by referencing the more extensive 1974/75 fires despite the fact these were largely grass fires in the Northern Territory that resulted from heavy rains the previous year, and which caused much less ecological damage. And in referencing a (perfectly valid) study showing that the area burned by wildfire globally has fallen, he fails to point out that the same study showed that fires in closed canopy forests were increasing, and that where reductions in savannah and grasslands were driven largely by agricultural expansion.

In his sections on agriculture, Shellenberger notes the potential for higher CO2 levels to increase yields, but ignores evidence that the nutritional value of many crops is adversely affected. He tries to argue that the development of Brazil’s Cerrado helps take pressure off other areas, a claim he does not substantiate, and which does not address the fact that much of the Cerrado’s output of soy is for animal fodder, not human consumption. Of course, this is consistent with his defence of intensive agriculture to support meat consumption, which follows some slightly peculiar philosophical and nutritional musings about diet and health. He highlights a study showing that climate change mitigation could decrease land availability for farming and raise prices, but omits subsequent work by the same author showing how these mitigation costs can be avoided.

Reading his discussion of energy, it is hard to take seriously his advocacy of LNG when he never evaluates the extent and effect of current fugitive emissions from this huge industry, instead using a thirty year-old EPA report to assure us that improved gaskets and maintenance had reduced emissions from even earlier levels. His assertions about renewable energy include comprehensively wrong statements, such as the notion that solar and wind’s unreliability means that they require 100% backup, which is most certainly not true for networks in large and meteorologically diverse regions, and his dismissal of distributed solar generation notion that “real electricity” in Indian villages means “reliable grid electricity” wouldn’t jive with those in many areas for whom the grid is anything but reliable.

This is a strange, somewhat confessional book. It scores a few cheap points knocking obvious exaggerations, and raises some legitimate questions, but it is so selective in its presentation of evidence that it undermines the case it is trying to make. His discussion of the place of nuclear energy in decarbonizing the economy is about the only really substantial, if still selective, argument.

If you must read it, do your homework and check for information the author omits. And perhaps read it alongside The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, who very deliberately examines the worst case scenarios and in Shellenberger’s terms is the arch-exaggerator – this may be a valuable counterpoint. ...more "

Jul 04, 2020 08:03PM · see review