The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called Monday for “urgent action” in its latest report, prodding countries to hasten emissions reductions even as events in Ukraine threaten to submerge the global-warming agenda.
The IPCC Working Group II report said that climate change is running ahead of global adaptation efforts, creating “dangerous and widespread disruption in nature” that could be irreversible unless action is taken quickly.
“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” said IPCC chair Hoesung Lee in a statement. “It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks.”
The climate movement, however, is facing a potentially existential threat of its own in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a crisis that has spurred calls for U.S. and European nations to reverse the fossil-fuel crackdowns that have strengthened the hand of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The European Union is moving to solar and wind to achieve its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, but the transition has failed to keep up with energy demand, the result being that Germany and others are heavily reliant on Russia for oil and natural gas.
President Biden has come under pressure from Republicans to unleash U.S. energy as a counterweight to Russia by reversing his cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and reopening drilling on federal lands.
Larry Behrens, western states director of Power the Future, described the U.N. report as tone-deaf, given last week’s invasion showing that climate policies have “major geopolitical implications.”
“Not only is the U.N. completely ineffective during the current crisis, but it also appears they want to push more alarmism that will only serve to further enrich Vladimir Putin,” he said. “As we witness the crisis in Ukraine, John Kerry and his fellow alarmists, including the IPCC, need to take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves why they push an agenda that fuels Kremlin aggression.”
Marc Morano, founder of the skeptical site Climate Depot, blasted what he called the “media and UN IPCC’s latest atlas of unsubstantiated hype.”
“One can only wonder how upset the UN IPCC and their legion of climate activists are that this new reheated report of climate doom was released when the world is not paying one ounce of attention to the UN climate scare due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” he said.
University of Colorado Boulder professor Roger Pielke Jr. scolded the IPCC for its use of “implausible” worst-case scenarios, slamming the report “an exceedingly poor assessment.”
“Climate change is real. It poses significant risks for the future of people and ecosystems. Vigorous adaptation & mitigation should be prioritized,” Mr. Pielke tweeted. “None of the above justifies science assessments built for headlines and political advocacy, which WG2 appears to be.”
Anthony Watts, a senior fellow at the free-market Heartland Institute, said that the report’s fundamental problem was that “it presents no hard, factual evidence to support the claim that the climate is worsening faster than expected, just future projections from computer models.”
Climate Realism: The New IPCC Climate Report – More of the Same Hot Air, with Extra Alarmism Added; Facts Missing https://t.co/v0pPDDIqPB
— Climate Realism (@RealismClimate) February 28, 2022
Championing the findings were climate groups and activists like Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, who tweeted, “Every sentence describing the new #IPCC report is completely life changing. Literally everything is at stake.”
Bill McKibben, the founder of the anti-fossil fuel group 350.org, argued that the Ukraine invasion underscores the need to retreat from fossil fuels, tweeting that “If we use this moment to get off oil and gas, we have a fighting chance as a planet.”
The 3,600-page report followed the Working Group I report released in August as part of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, which is expected to be completed this year.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.