I’m glad I no longer read the news. I do look at a few youtube channels like Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson and others to take stock from time to time. Even then, it’s difficult to miss the constant churn of the agenda cranking media isn’t it? It’s all fear mongering and always attached to politics.

My daughter called me this morning all concerned about the Moon’s wobble impacting sea levels. I told her, yes, sea level is slowly rising in many locations but it’s too slow to be much of a bother to you in your lifetime. It’s been rising for thousands of years as we come out of an ice age and that is why it is getting a little warmer as well by the way. As for a Moon wobble impacting tides and making sea level rise more of a thing, ask yourself this. If the climate is changing so fast that we are all threatened by sea level rise, why do they need to introduce a minor change in tides via a Moon wobble to scare you? Could it be that actually, the sea level isn’t rising fast enough for them so by introducing this spurious piece of information, they can make you really afraid?

I told her I will show her photos of locations around the world shot 100-years a part and if she can see a visible, discernible difference in seal-level between the pictures, I will take her for a treat. She won’t be able to because the rise in seal level is so small that over 100 years, it is not noticeable. Besides, what do you want to do about something like that? It’s been going on for thousands of years already. There have been instances in the past where it was devastating to humanity but we survived. For example, the Dogger area of the North Sea was once land and inhabited. The sea incursion was rather sudden and probably fatal for people living there. But this was thousands of years ago.

She then asked me about Yellowstone. I told her as a geologist, I had been waiting for Yellowstone to explode for 50-years and also for the San Andreas to wipe out most of California but it hadn’t happened. Could it? Yes. Will it? Why worry about it? Chances are, it won’t occur in her lifetime either.

I realised though that my daughter lives in constant fear of everything. I don’t recall living like that at age 13. I blame the media and access to social media in particular. There is the banter around natural disasters – it makes people click on headlines and videos – but… there is a constant stream of fear mongering by the media. Every event is turned into evidence for climate disaster or COVID disaster or even better – both. And, as I pointed out to her, its all a bullshit narrative and agenda with little truth or facts behind it.

Things are complex. Systems are complex. A flood in Germany, a tornado in Czechia, hot weather in the NW if the Americas…. climate crisis scream the politically-motivated mainstream media who wheel out the same old tired pseudoscientists to back up their claims. Nonsense I say. Each of these events has a complex and logical explanation that doesn’t need to and shouldn’t involve climate at all. Just a little research can prove this. The German flooding tragedy has much more to do with poor dam management, tornados are common in Czechia at this time of year and that hot weather in the North West is a weather event not climate.

But the agenda and the narrative needs to be fed…. no wonder my daughter is scared. I will keep explaining patiently what lies behind the BS and what the real explanations are.