Robinson Meyer over at The Atlantic is back in doom mode. He cites the latest volume of the IPCC’s “synthesis report” which he calls “its omnibus summary of what humanity knows about the climate” although it is of course nothing of the sort; what humanity knows, or thinks it knows, about the climate fills endless shelves in libraries. The report, by contrast, is the wish list of alarmists before we all die, their bucket list, in Meyer’s case literally. “In the first bucket, every scenario forecasts that the world will soon be removing tens of gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. Carbon removal is still a bit of a dream…. But the IPCC report implies that within the lifetime of children alive today, the world might be spending more than a third of its total energy production removing carbon from the atmosphere,” which he says as if it’s a good thing. “What’s more, this mass removal will need to happen while the world does everything else that decarbonizing entails, such as building wind and solar farms, expanding public transit, and switching to electric vehicles.” No, that’s not a nightmare, that’s their dream. And wait till you hear what’s in the other buckets.

Over in the “second bucket of scenarios… the world rapidly curtails its energy usage over the next two decades, slashing carbon pollution not only from rich countries, such as the United States, but also from middle-income countries, such as Brazil, Pakistan, and India.” And joy of joys, “these scenarios imagine a world where total global energy demand collapses in the next few decades.” Which Meyer thinks would be jolly nice. For instance the world would go from “1.3 billion cars and light-duty trucks on the road worldwide” not up to around 2.21 billion by 2050, but down to “850 million… Don’t get me wrong: This sounds fantastic…. Yet it also does not strike me as particularly likely” especially since giving up your car is just part of it. Things like residential heating are also going to get massively cut. Too bad if you live in a place with winter. “Oh, and by the way, these low-energy-demand scenarios require a huge amount of carbon removal too – something like 3 billion tons of it.”

As for the “third bucket”, in those ones “humanity fails to limit global temperature growth to 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), blowing past the more ambitious of the Paris Agreement’s climate goals. Passing 1.5 degrees Celsius means that the world could encounter deadly droughts, mass migrations, and fatal outdoor temperatures by the middle of the century.” So it’s all over times two. And in another piece in the same vein, Meyer wrote that the Democrats were fiddling while the world burns: At the Aspen Ideas: Climate Festival (yes, festival) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed to lack “any sense that this legislation is a make-or-break moment for the broader Democratic caucus. Gone was any suggestion that if Democrats fail to pass a bill this term, then America’s climate commitment under the Paris Agreement will be out of reach, and worse heat waves, larger wildfires, and damaging famines across the country and around the world within the next decade and a half will be all but assured.” Which of course is rubbish: What could the Democrats possibly put through Congress in May 2022 that would have the slightest impact on global GHG emissions, temperature or wildfires in the next decade? Brace yourself: we’re all about to kick the bucket.