Panic First, Facts Last

I named this publication Irrational Fear for a reason. The most powerful institutions in our culture: legacy media, activist scientists, and a monoculture in academia, sell fear first and facts last. The damage is visible in young people. Climate catastrophizing is now a feature, not a bug, of the message machine, and the evidence is plain: catastrophism elevates anxiety and depression, while knowledge brings that anxiety down.

The Guardian just offered a pristine specimen of the panic industry. Bill McGuire’s column claims we are “hurtling into climate disaster,” declares a 1.5 °C threshold already crossed, and insists that at 2 °C the world will lose a quarter of its economy while billions die.

A recent report by the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and Exeter University forecasts that a 2C global temperature hike by 2050 would see a 25% collapse in the global economy and 2 billion people dead.

None of that is supported by the record that actually surrounds us. During the modern warming era, the human condition has improved across almost every measurable dimension: longevity, literacy, poverty, and access to energy have trended in the right direction. That is not a controversial statement; it is a summary of data from the last two centuries.

Even the thresholds themselves keep slipping. Successive IPCC reports have re-tinted their “tipping point” gauges so that what once counted as high-risk at 4–5 °C is now painted as high-risk near 1–2 °C. The effect is simple: the crisis is always “now,” even when observations refuse to cooperate. I documented this drift in Shifting Lines in the Sand.