The Penny Drops at last for One Climate Alarmist: here is his apology

One climate alarmist has changed his mind, but goodness knows how many to go before the climate scaremongering comes to an end, and children everywhere can begin to recover from all the fatuous shocks and terrors pushed at them from kindergarten onwards.

'On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. 

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30. 

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.'

Michael Shellenberger, 28th June, 2020.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/06/28/on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare/#5bb2dacf1fa8

(Note added later: Many thanks to the commenter below who alerted me to that link no longer working.  His cache link doesn't seem to work either, but I did find this on the WayBackMachine, and I hope it will continue to work .)

See the link to read his heartfelt testimony backing up this apology.  I'll reproduce one more extract here since it is most relevant to this blog:

'But then, last year, things spiraled out of control. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.” 

The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.” 

Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.

As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct. And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.

Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened. '

Shellenberger has written a book in support of his new position, and it certainly looks like one well worth buying.  Sadly, copies are unlikely to be pushed by government on to  schools in the UK in the way that Gore's misleading melodrama 'An Inconvenient Truth' was.

The book is due to be published in the UK on the 23rd of July. You can pre-order a copy on Amazon.

Here's hoping it is a good one.

Notes added 30 June 2020. 

1. James Delingpole has reported that Forbes Magazine caved in to green pressure when it pulled the article, and notes that Shellenberger himself says that Forbes censored it.  Shellenberger has reproduced his article here.

2. Not all commenters accept Shellenberger's apology on behalf of 'environmentalists everywhere' (a little immodest perhaps!).  One such is Allan MacRae:  'Michael, your apology is NOT accepted. Here, in part, is why:':  
 HYPOTHESIS: RADICAL GREENS ARE THE GREAT KILLERS OF OUR AGE
( https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/ )

Source: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/29/schellenberger-on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare/#comment-3024972