Seven better-than-expected climate data points, and one cat lovers will hate

Oxford researcher says clean energy will do far more to improve our climate woes then we think.

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(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — Get your hard questions ready, all you gloom-and-doomers who think that fighting climate warming is a lost cause.

Hannah Ritchie is out with a new book to answer you, in the process showing that “the truth [about climate change] is far more hopeful than you might think.” Ritchie, for those of you who don’t know her, is not some pie-the-the-sky Pollyanna. She is senior researcher at Oxford University’s Program for Global Development, and deputy editor of Our World In Data. And for her statistical work, she was awarded an honorary fellowship by the Royal Statistical Society. In 2022 she was named Scotland’s Youth Climate Champion.

Ritchie’s new book, published last month by MIT Press, is titled “Clearing The Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change in 50 Questions and Answers”. One skeptical reviewer of the book wrote that, until he read it, he believed that “a transition away from society’s dependence on hydrocarbons is not feasible in any meaningful time frame.” Her book changed his mind.

Below are some of the revelations that emerge from Ritchie’s book:

• No, the earth is not on an inexorable path to being 6°C warmer by the end of the century. This used to be widely believed in scientific circles, but no longer. “Fortunately, the scientific consensus has moved away from the most extreme scenarios…,” Ritchie writes, but “unfortunately a lot of the public messaging has not… If no countries stepped up their efforts and we continued with current enacted policies, we’d end up at 2.5°C to 3°C higher than preindustrial temperature by the end of the century.”