Climate change rhetoric continues to escalate, with alarmists now proclaiming that there is no need to wait because “the apocalypse is now.”
That is the title of an article Wednesday by journalist Erin Bunch, in which she explains how “rampant disease, wildfires, hazardous air quality, hurricane damage” are all connected to global warming and therefore are destined to increase.
The truth is, Ms. Bunch writes, “this unprecedented-in-our-lifetime global state of emergency is not an aberration, and it won’t end as the sun sets on 2020. This, too, shall not pass.”
“Because the common denominator for so much of this death and destruction is climate change, and at this point, there is no avoiding the catastrophic effects caused by the warming of our planet—we are already experiencing them,” she insists, and things are only going to get worse.
“We’re already committed to further pain and suffering, but the amount of suffering that we have at 1.5 degrees is bearable,” Ms. Bunch writes, citing “human geographer” Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “It’s going suck, and people are going to die, and it’s going to cause a lot of damage, but we can get through it.”
At this very moment, “we’re in a truly apocalyptic string of record-setting events,” Leiserowitz claims, in reference to West coast fires, a string of hurricanes, and a “giant weather event” in the Great Plains.
Bunch also cites climate psychologist Margaret Klein Salamon, who offers a similar doomsday prognostication.
“I wish I could tell you that the air quality is bad this year, but it’ll be better next year. But the truth is that this is accelerating,” Klein Salamon says. “We’re talking about the collapse of civilization, and I think it’s really important for people to hear that. I truly believe this is the apocalypse.”
The article does not elucidate whether so-called experts’ use of “apocalypse” language is meant as an expression of religious belief or has some reference to the positive sciences, but one suspects that the language is chosen more for its impact value than for its mathematical precision.
Since “climate change communication” and “climate psychology” apparently now exist as distinct academic disciplines, readers can expect to be treated to much more talk of the apocalypse as the months progress.
Having exhausted their linguistic arsenal of climate hyperbole, however, alarmists may now face the problem of finding sufficiently dramatic language to express their ever-intensifying emotions.
Or, to switch the metaphor, how can climate alarmists continue raising the stakes when they are already all in?