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January 27, 2024

Michael Shellenberger is a very talented environmentalist/journalist. For years his ideological outlook has been drifting right.

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The bedrock of current day environmentalism is climate change — the belief that increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels will lead to an environmental and economic collapse. Climate change is the latest in a long string of pending catastrophes that last until everyone is bored and a new pending catastrophe must be wheeled in.

Shellenberger has written three books. His 2007 book, Break Through: Why We Can’t Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists, was written with Ted Nordhaus. Ted Nordhaus is the nephew of the Yale economist William Nordhaus who also writes about climate change.

Break Through is critical of environmentalism ‘s negative outlook. Shellenberger and Nordhaus advocate a more positive and optimistic approach. But the basic ideas of environmentalism and progressivism are not challenged. For example, this overwrought passage:

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“The challenge of climate change is so massive, so global, and so complex that it can be overcome only if we look beyond the issue categories of the past and embrace a grand new vision for the future.”

Climate scientists rarely correct wild claims by environmentalists. Exaggeration by environmentalists helps promote the scientists’ importance without requiring them to commit scientific malpractice. Break Through repeats unscientific scare stories, for example increasing hurricanes, epidemics, and collapse of the Gulf Stream.

Shellenberger says that he wrote his 2020 book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, to combat exaggeration and alarmism. It is to his credit that he repents for the exaggerations and alarmism that characterizes the environmental movement and his first book.

Apocalypse Never points out some of the grossest contradictions in the climate change movement. For example, if you believe that CO2 emissions are leading to a climate problem it is rational to adopt nuclear power because it doesn’t emit CO2. But fanatical environmentalists oppose nuclear power and nuclear power stations are being closed in places like Germany. He also points out that the Left’s solution to reduce CO2 emissions, wind and solar, are not up to the job, although billions are being squandered on wind and solar.

Shellenberger clings to the idea that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a reliable source of scientific estimations of the effect of CO2 on climate. The IPCC doesn’t make predictions but projections. Projections are what the IPCC gets out of its computer models that typically use sketchy data as input to the models.  The various models used by the IPCC disagree seriously with each other and with the Earth’s climate.  Extremely important climate influencing agents are ignored or poorly handled by the models. It’s highly irresponsible to promote this science as foretelling an approaching cataclysm. It is also highly rewarding for the many stakeholders in climate alarmism.

The IPCC is a creature of the United Nations. The UN is known for its Human Rights Council filled with member states that are notorious violators of human rights. The UN is a political body and generally hostile toward the United States. Why should we think that the IPCC is a reliable scientific body that takes the interests of humanity to heart? There is an extensive literature exposing the corrupt nature of the IPCC.