So Germany really does want to broil Flipper in the fumes of the last ice floe then

This is not, in fact, a complaint about climate change nor even policy concerning it. This is, instead, an example of what we wish to complain about. The inability of scientific planning to be done according to the science, for the obvious reason that it’s always politicians, thus politics, that determine the planning.

Buried deep in the entire climate change edifice is a series of socioeconomic models, first fully explained in the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. Some 40 variations are used to explore possible futures. The importance here being that before any computer model looks at the effect of emissions it’s necessary to work out how many emissions? How many people will there be, how rich will they be and how will they be powering that society that makes so many of them that rich?

As has been pointed out elsewhere there’s a hugely important point in here. If the world carries on along the A1FI path then Flipper does indeed get broiled in the fumes of the last ice floe. If instead A1T is followed then climate change is a minor enough, chronic, problem that fades away in time to miss such apocalyptic end times.

A1 denotes the continuation of globalised free market capitalism. Matters proceed much as they have done. Fertility, thus population, responds to rising wealth as we’ve seen it do in the rich nations already. Economic growth continues its steady pace. The poor become rich - convergence happens. Technological advance continues as it has done this past couple of centuries - much the same statement as economic growth continues.

The big difference is between that FI and that T. The actual description of the difference being that the T leads to continued efficiency in energy production and consumption, solar cells continue to decline in price and so on. FI indicates that - and this is expressly pointed out in the basics of the model - resources of conventional oil and gas run out, unconventional resources are not used and the world turns back to coal to power itself.

A1FI is now renamed in the current suite of models as RCP 8.5. A1T is not represented in that current suite as, perhaps, the idea that things will largely take care of themselves doesn’t suit the model makers. But we are not being excessively partial in our descriptions there. That really is the difference between the two and the outcomes. Turn back to coal and Flipper gets broiled in those fumes of the last ice floe. Use unconventional oil and gas as a bridge to that renewables and low emission future and he doesn’t.

Germany’s two houses of parliament have passed emergency legislation to reactivate mothballed coal-fired power plants in order to support electricity generation amid fears of gas shortages as Russia curbs capacity.

The move has been described as “painful but necessary” by the government’s environmentalist economics minister, Robert Habeck.

Germany, as with most of Europe, has banned the exploitation of unconventional oil and gas - the other name for which is fracking. So, when conventional oil and gas are unavailable, the return is to coal. This is exactly the policy that the SRES, therefore the entire structure and logic of climate change science, warns us against. But this is also the output of those trillions of euros spent upon the Energiewende - the scientific planning of the response to climate change.

Again, this is not a specific complaint about climate change. Rather, it’s using this as an example of the larger point - scientific planning isn’t scientific. That planning process in Germany, as elsewhere, ignored the science itself and hared off after political goals, directed by politicians. Which is why it has failed even in its own terms.

Scientific planning doesn’t work because it never is actually driven by the science for it is always a political process when politics does the planning.

We can add all sorts of other critiques, like the knowledge base necessary to plan doesn’t exist, the illiberality of everyone being told what they must do and so on. But even if those don’t appeal as reasonings it is still true that the idea doesn’t work. Because science never is the driver of the plans.

Our proof being that Germany’s politics has spent trillions supposedly to ensure that Flipper doesn’t get broiled in the fumes of the last ice floe and yet German politics has ended up with the one, single, policy that ensures Flipper will get broiled in the fumes of the last ice floe.

Politics just isn’t a good way of doing things now, is it?