By Pandra Selivanov
Fairbourne is a tiny Welsh village of only 700 people, tucked between mountains and the Irish sea. Founded around 1865, the pace is so slow that “Dragon’s Teeth” tank traps from World War II still dot the beach to fend off a German invasion that never came. There’s nothing particularly outstanding about Fairbourne to attract visitors. It’s just a lovely little place to live.
Or it was. In 2014, the authorities decided that Fairbourne was at high risk of flooding from climate change. Let’s just ponder that for a moment. Seven years have gone by since the arbitrary decision that Fairbourne was at risk. During that time, the little community has continued to thrive. It hasn’t been flooded out of existence. In fact, the sea level has only risen 4 inches in the past century.
The people of Fairbourne are not asking to be evacuated. They’re hanging tough, angry that they are being asked to leave their homes because of some nebulous threat. It’s true that Fairbourne is built on a salt marsh that is below sea level at spring high tide, and the community is also at the mouth of an estuary. Nevertheless, it’s been there since 1865 and no one who lives in Fairbourne is complaining about anything other than being forced out of house and home.
The government has looked at computer models and decreed that the people must leave Fairbourne because in 40 years they believe the sea will rise between 2 to 3 feet. The government says computer models show it will be too expensive to defend Fairbourne from the ocean because of this projected rise.
However, computer models are hardly models of accuracy. There are 29 major climate models that come up with different predictions. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change averages the results of all 29 models to forecast global warming.
That’s like taking a store with no fruit and averaging it with a fruit stand to say that both stores have an equal amount of fruit. There are times when averages are useful. Aggregating climate models that were built to measure different parameters results in critical errors that undermine understanding the climate.
Climate models have also been shown to be inherently flawed because we simply do not have the capability to run controlled experiments on the climate, nor have models been able to replicate their own results. There is also a possibility that climate models are over-sensitive to carbon dioxide increases, and that future projections of temperatures may be too high.
Climate alarmists have been using these shaky computer models for years to scold people for driving their cars, subsidize untenable green technology with taxpayer money, and give each other awards for being the most fervent in lip-service to the idea that humans are destroying the planet by breathing and eating beef. Now they want to drive people out of their homes because their oracles, the climate models, have spoken of a future in which the ocean might rise between 2 and 3 feet—maybe—in the next 40 years.
The people of Fairbourne are having none of it. They don’t find the computer models persuasive, and they don’t understand why their village has been singled out for destruction from all the other coastal communities in Wales. They don’t even know if they will be compensated if they are thrown out of their homes.
Many of the residents are just going on with their lives. There is Becky Offland, who recently took over the lease of the Glan Y Mor Hotel, hoping to bring in visitors and financial support for Fairbourne’s future. Alan Jones owns the Fairbourne Chippy, a fish and chips restaurant. He says he’s not going anywhere until the water comes in. That sounds remarkably like sense to me. If the climate models predicting the demise of Fairbourne are as accurate now as they have been in the past, the village has a very long future.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/climate_alarmists_plan_to_destroy_a_whole_village.html