This evaluation of climate change and its impact on the UK is seriously, intellectually dishonest, and does not acknowledge or address many relevant issues. It is trying to mislead the public, crowing about the success of the UK's progress on emissions, achieved by fiddling the figures. 1/🧵
"UK ‘built for climate that no longer exists’ and needs urgent changes to survive global heating, report warns" This is correct, but the imagined solutions are based on demonstrable logical fallacies, I've been desperately trying to explain for decades. theguardian.com 1/🧵
www.theguardian.com
As experts have pointed out, lots of the apparent success in reducing UK emissions, has been achieved by not including a lot of emissions, and doesn't acknowledge a lot of this has been achieved by offshoring a lot of our emissions, as much of our goods, are now manufactured overseas. 2/ Whilst crowing about the UK's success, it doesn't acknowledge the UK's culpability in starting the fossil fuel powered industrial revolution, and that China's cumulative emissions, only overtook the UK's in the 1990s. It acts as if the UK exists in a 21st Century bubble. 3/ It fails to properly acknowledge the role the UK's massive financial sector plays in financing the fossil fuel industry globally, and that we are not the climate leaders, presented in this misleading sophistry. It fails to acknowledge our failure to keep to the 2015 Paris Agreement. 4/ It fails to acknowledge the UK government's role in suppressing protests by climate activists, to enable the government to gaslight the public into thinking that everything is fine - not that on the current course facilitated by the UK government, we are heading towards civilization collapse. 5/ It is sophistry, in that it pretends the UK's business as usual BaU course, if fine and dandy and everything is fine, and the public have nothing to worry about. It is basically saying carry on with BaU, to mislead the public, to stop them demanding more action. 6/ Most of all though, it fails to acknowledge that the UK does not exist in a bubble, trying to deny our responsibility and culpability, by implying the problem is other countries, and we've done our bit. The UK does not exist in a bubble, and what happens will be global, and impact the UK. 7/ I pointed out in my thread, if there is AMOC collapse, which is not a remote possibility, that everything this report recommends, will be utterly meaningless. Not acknowledging factors like this is what makes it grossly dishonest. theguardian.com 8/
www.theguardian.com
Yes, I'm well aware of the little caveat about AMOC collapse in Box 1.4, but this is more of a contrived disclaimer, rather than a realistic evaluation. Because the big take away, is that for the UK to be much safer, requires a drastic cut in global emissions, and huge system change. 9/ Overall, this evaluation is totally detached from the expert global assessments of the type of future threats we face. As I say, it is a type of legalistic contrivance, to justify the UK governments response, and to gaslight the public from realizing what a dire situation we face. 10/