Summary of #43 - Indur Goklany: “No empirical evidence that anything bad is happening b/c of climate change”

00:00:00 - 00:50:00

In this video, Indur Goklany argues against the idea that anything bad is happening due to climate change, stating that adaptations and technological changes are often not taken into account in climate change scenarios, leading to potentially overblown impacts. He suggests focusing on existing, urgent problems that are worsened by climate change through a strategy he calls "focused adaptation." Goklany also emphasizes the importance of context and highlights that improving human well-being requires taking into account economic growth and technological advancements. He argues that fossil fuels can help reduce the physical footprint on the world, and that climate change is not the greatest threat to humanity, but rather the stupid things people do to resolve problems caused by climate change.

• 00:00:00 In this section, Indur Goklany talks about his background in electrical engineering and how he ended up working in air quality and later on climate change. He mentions how he was involved in the establishment of the IPCC and the importance of focusing on adaptation in addressing climate change. Goklany emphasizes that climate has always changed and humans have historically adapted to it, making adaptation a no-brainer solution.
• 00:05:00 In this section, climate change author Indur Goklany discusses the scientific community's attitude towards climate change in the 1980s and 1990s. He notes that there were more open minds at the time, and that the idea of CO2 being a climate control knob wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now. However, he also comments on how funding from the Global Change Research Program (GCRP) incentivized researchers to advocate for climate change, which caused many people to become alarmists and converted to the idea of climate change being a problem. Additionally, Goklany notes that researchers who didn't adhere to the climate change paradigm risked losing funding for their research, creating a kind of "fealty" to the established beliefs around climate change. Finally, Goklany comments on how this paradigm has persisted over the years despite being unsupported by empirical evidence, with researchers able to manipulate data to show anything they want, and how paleo studies show that changes in the climate may not be as significant as some people think.
• 00:10:00 In this section, Indur Goklany discusses his work on adaptation and climate change since 1992. Goklany shares that he wrote adaptive climate change reports that were well-received in 1992. But after the Clinton administration came in, he was thrown off the climate change team, as he claims that he was not the type of bureaucrat they were interested in. Goklany was involved in writing on climate change until 2001 when the Bush Administration came in. He believes True Believers in climate change eventually took over science, but he thinks focusing on adaptation for existing and urgent problems is essential. The first step in doing so, according to Goklany, is to identify the urgent problem that could worsen due to climate change.
• 00:15:00 In this section, Indur Goklany argues against whole-scale mitigation as there is no empirical evidence that anything bad is happening because of climate change. He suggests focusing on urgent, existing problems that are made worse by climate change and improving them through a strategy he calls "focused adaptation." This strategy captures the benefits of global warming and rejects its costs while looking at the entire problem rather than just the portion created by climate change, which is generally a better approach than solving a portion of it. Goklany points out that this strategy was used in response to COVID-19 and has been proposed by other experts as well.
• 00:20:00 In this section, the speaker discusses a paper by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that looked at the impact of climate change on various aspects, such as water resources, food supplies, malaria, and sea level rise, and found that billions of people were at risk. However, the speaker points out that the paper failed to mention that there were already billions of people at risk in the absence of climate change and that the paper was meant to push the world community into taking action. The speaker highlights the importance of context and how losing context can lead to a skewed perspective.
• 00:25:00 In this section, Indur Goklany argues against the idea that anything bad is happening because of climate change, stating that everything is based on anomalies and exaggerations of context. He explains that the environmental business is based on burying context and not letting it out, which gets people riled up on virtually everything. When it comes to impacts methodologies, Goklany says that the major problem is that adaptation was never taken into account. However, as time goes by, we are able to adapt better and better with the advancement of technology and economic growth. Goklany claims that his research shows that as societies get wealthier over time, virtually every indicator of human well-being improves.
• 00:30:00 In this section, economist Indur Goklany explains how adaptation and technological changes are often not taken into account in climate change scenarios, leading to potentially overblown impacts. He discusses how economic growth and technological advancements can improve life expectancy and infant mortality rates, and as time goes on, adaptive capacity also increases. He argues that this should be taken into account in future projections of climate impacts to get a more accurate picture of what may happen. Goklany also mentions a paper he wrote called "Mitigation and Adaptation" which explores how to incorporate adaptation into economic models.
• 00:35:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the use of purchasing power parity in examining indicators such as food availability and nutrition, and how these indicators have improved over time with economic development. They also touch on the topic of heat waves and how fewer people are dying from them over time, and in fact, more people are dying from coal. The speaker believes that industrialized countries do not owe low-income countries anything in regards to climate change, as they have developed their technology and life expectancy much faster than the US did.
• 00:40:00 In this section, Goklany discusses how increasing agriculture productivity can help conserve land for nature. He argues that the more productive agriculture is, the less land is needed and that 62.5% of our food comes from fossil fuel-based technologies such as fertilizers and pesticides. Without these technologies, we would require an additional 20.4% of land for agriculture. He concludes that fossil fuels are, therefore, the greenest energy sources that help reduce our physical footprint on the world.
• 00:45:00 In this section, Goklany discusses the amount of land set aside for conservation compared to urbanization. He points out that the land set aside for conservation is 14.6% compared to urbanization being 20.4%. He also explains his research on climate change being the biggest threat to humanity. He looked at different IPCC scenarios and found that in virtually all cases, regardless of climate change, people would be better off. He concludes that humans doing stupid things to resolve the problems caused by climate change is the greatest threat to humanity, not climate change itself. There is no empirical evidence that anything bad is happening because of climate change.
• 00:50:00 In this section, the speaker argues that there is no empirical evidence that climate change poses a significant threat to humanity. He suggests that improvements in access to safe water and increased food supplies indicate that human well-being has improved and continued to do so over time. The speaker acknowledges that he has some skepticism about whether the trend will continue due to recent reckless human behavior. However, he rejects the idea of bullying people and calling them deniers, as it is not a valid response to the issue.