Under the scary heading “17 European World Heritage Sites named as the most at risk from climate change”, EuroNews.green reminds us that a very mild warming will destroy everything nice. It seems that “From prehistoric paintings to Swiss glaciers, these European World Heritage Sites are at risk from flooding and drought”, which we never had before 2000, or 1980, or 1950, or whenever “climate change” hit. Among the things we could lose, “the Swiss Alps”. Nooooooo! Not the Matterhorn. And you might think that all the combined efforts of every government on Earth could not get rid of one single mountain let alone an entire range. But there’s nothing climate change cannot do, including erase the world-obscure “Engelsberg Ironworks” in… um… “Ängelsberg, a village in Fagersta Municipality in Västmanland County, Sweden”. Also the Sydney Opera House, which we didn’t even realize was European. But in fact the story pretty much lays the entire world waste, at least any of the nice bits.
The study was irresistible clickbait. PlanetAttractions.com went with “Fifty World Heritage sites will be lost by 2050 thanks to climate change, say experts”. The Independent plumped for “The Unesco World Heritage sites most at risk from climate change – and four are in the UK” including Studley Royal Park and the Forth Bridge. Ethos said “50 UNESCO World Heritage Sites Face ‘Profound’ Impacts From Climate Change, New Research Finds”. And so on and so on. Without a single one of the stories linking to the actual study/simulation so we could determine whether, oh, let’s say, it relied on RCP8.5 or something. (The Independent does mention “eight global warming scenarios” but what they might be is anyone’s guess thanks to fearlessly uninvestigative journalism and thus far our own inquiries have only unearthed a press release and a spreadsheet not a paper.)
You can’t believe the scale of the disaster:
“Flooding, coastal erosion, landslides, strong winds, extreme heat, storms and cyclones are just some of the climate-related hazards hitting iconic sites around the globe.”
No, really. You can’t believe it. Or at least you shouldn’t. Does any sane person believe that any of those things are “climate-related hazards” in the implied sense of man-made and recent, rather than being examples of the bad weather that has existed since the first cave person grunted to another “Me not like look of sky or sound of river” and the other grunted back “Oh, that original” before adding that it was probably the fault of the neighbouring tribe?
Meanwhile we grunt that we don’t like the look of this simulation. You see:
“Climate risk data analytics company Climate X modelled how these will affect 500 such landmarks, identifying the top 50 most at-risk by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically cut.”
Modeled how? We have observed before that, for instance, Sydney Opera House is located in a spot where there has been literally no net sea level rise in a century. But if you tell a computer that soon there will be “coastal flood, storm surge risks” there, it will reply that soon there will be coastal flood, storm surge risks there.
As seems to be the case with plants and animals, the idea is that the weather will infallibly get worse if it warms slightly, just as it did not in the past. But only nice stuff will get the chop. No underground parking lot, unimaginative glass-and-steel bureaucratic office hive, or crumbling ugly public housing. Instead you lose Red Bay Basque Whaling Sation, the Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty, the Danube Delta, Everglades National Park blah blah blah.
P.S. We also note that of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, six have vanished. The Colossus of Rhodes, Lighthouse of Alexandria, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Temple of Artemis, Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and Hanging Gardens of Babylon are all history. Only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains (and unaccountably wasn’t slated for demolition by Climate X) although there seems to be some doubt whether the Hanging Gardens, for all their wondrousness, ever actually existed. The rest got burned, plundered, or earthquaked although it is worth noting that the former base of the Lighthouse is now, well, underwater due to some non-climate-related coastal flooding and storm surges of the old, natural kind. Whereas the Matterhorn probably weighs something on the order of a quarter of a trillion tons so it probably won’t succumb to climate change unless you count continental drift and eons of weathering which it’s hard even for a computer to blame on humans.
They're writing this bovine scatology just so they can get paid. Then there's Dr . Jordan Peterson - 'liars know they're lying but eventually they start believing their own lies.'