Climate Panic Puzzle Partly Pinned Down

The astonishing, and depressing, success of the climate alarmism 'movement' has long been a puzzle to me.  The explanation of it may well take decades to settle down on a widely agreed version, not least since so many academic disciplines are involved, and many not so academic drives to gain power and wealth are there too.

But a puzzle well-described is a puzzle more likely to be solved.  On the science sides of the puzzle, the role of the so-called climate scientists has been evocatively captured by a chap called Smolin looking at another field that shares with climate studies a severe shortage of good or adequate data*.  Here are his observations as presented by the oceanographer Carl Munsch (hat-tip Judith Curry):

From one point of view, scientific communities without adequate data have a distinct advantage: one can construct interesting and exciting stories and rationalizations with little or no risk of observational refutation. Colorful, sometimes charismatic, characters come to dominate the field, constructing their interpretations of a few intriguing, but indefinite observations that appeal to their followers, and which eventually emerge as “textbook truths.”

Consider the following characteristics ascribed to one particular, notoriously data-poor, field (Smolin, 2006), as having:

1. Tremendous self confidence, leading to a sense of entitlement and of belonging to an elite community of experts.

2. An unusually monolithic community, with a strong sense of consensus, whether driven by the evidence or not, and an unusual uniformity of views on open questions. These views seem related to the existence of a hierarchical structure in which the ideas of a few leaders dictate the viewpoint, strategy, and direction of the field.

3. In some cases a sense of identification with the group, akin to identification with a religious faith or political platform.

4. A strong sense of the boundary between the group and other experts.

5. A disregard for and disinterest in the ideas, opinions, and work of experts who are not part of the group, and a preference for talking only with other members of the community.

6. A tendency to interpret evidence optimistically, to believe exaggerated or incorrect statements of results and to disregard the possibility that the theory might be wrong. This is coupled with a tendency to believe results are true because they are ’widely believed,’ even if one has not checked (or even seen) the proof oneself.

7. A lack of appreciation for the extent to which a research program ought to involve risk.

Smolin (2006) was writing about string theory in physics. Nonetheless, observers of the paleoclimate scene might recognize some common characteristics. 

Note that string-theory is part of theoretical physics, a field noted for having a high proportion of very bright scientists.  Contrast that with the field of climate science, noted for being a somewhat ramshackle collection of often self-identified 'experts' from fields not known for high intellectual challenges such as geography, computer coding, weather forecasting, and planetary science.

The task of helping those who have been through the school system over the last 30 years, and those entering it soon, will be made easier the more insight we have into the causes of the Climate Panic.  Helping with what?  With the dismal, destructive, degrading, distorting world view that mankind is doomed thanks to industrial progress and the associated production of carbon dioxide.  There is not a shred of convincing evidence or argument for that view, but it seems widely adopted in political, media, and academic circles.

* Noted added 07 Oct 2018.  The Climategate Revelations (esp. the HarryReadMe file - details here) pointed to shoddy data and shoddier data management.  Now John McLean has dug into the manure to expose more data quality problems, and in more detail:  http://joannenova.com.au/2018/10/first-audit-of-global-temperature-data-finds-freezing-tropical-islands-boiling-towns-boats-on-land/
'“I was aghast to find that nothing was done to remove absurd values… the whole approach to the dataset’s create is careless and amateur, about the standard of a first-year university student.”
– John McLean

His report is available here for $8: https://robert-boyle-publishing.com/product/audit-of-the-hadcrut4-global-temperature-dataset-mclean-2018/

Warmism 2 is upon us - a new wave of scaremongering around CO2 to sustain the 'golden shower of research grant money'

JR writes:

'The evolution of global warming theory

I have not seen any explicit comment on this but it seems that there has been a large change over the years in what Warmists try to scare us with. There has been a Warmism 1 and a Warmism 2.

Warmism 1 is the Warmism of Al Gore, with sea level rises of 20 feet drowning most coastal cities. That was certainly scary and warranting of urgent action. But it was most implausible. 96% of the earth's glacial ice is in Antarctica and even at the continental margins the temperature there is many degrees below zero. So a few degrees of temperature rise might melt some sea ice but nothing more would happen. Melting sea ice cannot raise the sea level.  So where was the required great volume of water going to come from? Mars?

Warmism 1 had another fault as well. It assumed a most implausible effect of clouds. It said that warming would be gradual until the cloud cover became much more extensive than it now is. And there is no doubt that a warmer world WOULD have more clouds as more water evaporated off the oceans.

But Warmism 1 at that point made two great theoretical leaps. They said that the increased cloud cover would warm the earth when clouds in fact normally cool the earth by blocking out the sun. But let's glide over that point and accept their assumption that clouds would warm us. The Warmist at that point makes another great leap. He says that at some point a "tipping point" would be reached so that warming would suddenly accelerate and we would really roast.

Normally, when scientists try to predict the future they make a straight line extrapolation from existing trends. But Warmism 1 aborts that.  Because of the tipping point, the past is no longer a guide to the future. Things will get a lot hotter very suddenly. They will get much hotter than they would under a normal extrapolation from the past. So while scientific prediction of the future is possible in some instances  -- by looking carefully at the past -- Warmism 1 abandons that and makes a prophecy based purely on speculation.

I have tried to tell the story of Warmism 1 as straight as I can but I think its implausibilities are nonetheless obviously gross. And, although it has never been formally abandoned by anyone, it has quietly faded away from most Warmist discourse. It is, for example, years since I have heard anything of the tipping point. 

So Warmism 1 has been replaced by Warmism 2.

Warmism 2 is much less fantastical. It has reverted to the normal scientific method of predicting the future by extrapolations from the past. There is no Deus ex machina that causes warming to suddenly leap. It hypothesizes a steady process of warming at some specified rate. But finding that rate is the issue. Vast guesses about what CO2 does are used to get a rate.

Different authors assume different rates and the actuality always seems to be less than any predicted rate. So the accepted rate of warming has trended steadily down in the face of all the predictive failures.  So under Warmism 2 we will have a temperature rise of only about 2 degrees Celsius and a consequent rise in sea levels of inches, not the yards predicted by Al Gore.

But that is rather boring. It is hard to frighten people with just a few inches of sea level rise so a whole new industry has arisen which says that the few degrees of predicted warming will lead to catastrophic weather events -- hurricanes etc. But even that is a dead end as dramatic weather events considered overall do not seem to be increasing and may even be decreasing.

So Warmism has in a way disappeared up its own back passage. It no longer has any pretence of science behind its warnings of doom. It is merely an example of telling a big enough lie often enough so that less informed people will believe it. And while it continues to give scientists a golden shower of research grant money, the myth will be maintained -- JR.'

'JR' is John Ray, an astute Australian commentator on the climate alarm scandal.  His 'Greenie Watch' blog postings are invaluable.  The above text was posted there on 2nd April, 2018.  See: http://antigreen.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/the-evolution-of-global-warming-theory.html#links

Note added 3 April 2018.  For useful background on the gestation of part of Warmism 2, see: http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/04/climate-change-trial/

Three Cheers for 'Human Achievement Hour'

The disgraceful panic over rising CO2 levels has led to many harms, not least to the mental well-being of children, and the physical well-being of just about everyone.  The jejune 'Earth Hour' is but one manifestation of the rot that has spread into many groups, organisations, and even governments.

Celebrate 'Human Achievement Hour' instead:   https://cei.org/humanachievementhour

Or, how about 'Energy Hour':  https://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/earth-hour-is-phoney-energy-hour-is.html

And the 'must-read':   https://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/i-abhor-earth-hour-abundant-cheap.html

Note added 24 March.  Jo Nova calls for  'Power Hour':   http://joannenova.com.au/2018/03/fight-the-forces-of-darkness-celebrate-powerhour-tonight/
'It’s your chance to show your commitment to fighting the forces of darkness.'
Note added 25 March.  Mark Morano's site provides more links to sensible responses to the 'Earth Hour' lunacy:  http://www.climatedepot.com/2018/03/24/star-treks-william-shatner-promotes-earth-hour-darkness-but-he-is-rebuked-by-forces-of-light/

Inch by Inch, Row by Row, Make the Climate Rascals Go

Here's a slightly modified first verse of an even more heavily modified 'Garden Song' which I put together about 5 years ago:

Inch by inch, row by row

Make the climate rascals go
All it takes is to check, don'tcha know
For their claims are so unsound.

And here is a recent example on WUWT of what people can find when they check climate-alarm-campaigners' scare-stories about climate.  There is surely great scope for including such examples in school textbooks as and when the climate alarm fad fades away and the whole sorry farce can be studied in ways to help children and adults recover from the propaganda onslaught they have endured.

'... Climate Alarmist have over time gone from focusing on Global Warming, to Climate Change to simply fear of Carbon. Thus, this research sought to determine the credibility of Ten (10) very frequently cited Climate Alarmists Claims.

Below are Rebuttals to each of these ten typical climate alarmists’ claims. The rebuttal authors are all recognized experts on their topic and each rebuttal demonstrates the claim fallacy by merely citing the most credible empirical data.

Claim #1: Heat Waves are increasing at an alarming rate and heat kills

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See: EF_RRT_AC – Heat Waves

Claim #2: Global warming is causing more hurricanes and stronger hurricanes

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See: EF_RRT_AC – Hurricanes

Claim #3: Global warming is causing more and stronger tornadoes

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See: EF_RRT_CA – Tornadoes

Claim #4: Global warming is increasing the magnitude and frequency of droughts and floods.

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See: EF_RRT_AC – Droughts and Floods

Claim #5: Global Warming has increased U.S. Wildfires

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See: EF_RRT_AC – Wildfires

Claim #6: Global warming is causing snow to disappear

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See:  EF_RRT_CA – Snow

Claim #7: Global warming is resulting in rising sea levels as seen in both tide gauge and satellite technology

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See: EF_RRT_CA – Sea Level

Claim #8:  Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice loss is accelerating due to global warming

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See: EF_RRT_AC – Arctic, Antarctic, Greenland

Claim #9: Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations are causing ocean acidification, which is catastrophically harming marine life

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See: EF_RRT_CA – Ocean pH

Claim #10: Carbon pollution is a health hazard

For Rebuttal and Author Credentials See: EF_RRT_AC – Health'

More from the WUWT article:

'On February 9, 2018, The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) submitted a fifth Supplement to their Petition to provide additional new highly relevant and credible information. (See:EF CPP Fifth Supplement to Petition for Recon FINAL020918 ) It relates to variables other than temperature describing the Earth’s Climate System. '

Clearing up the Mess produced by Climate Alarmism: watch out for Nolans and Baizuos.

The damage done to children and other vulnerable groups by the climate alarmists has yet to be quantified and assessed, but seems likely to be deep and extensive.  Here is one recent example: young women, whose entire education could have been contaminated with climate alarmism, are agonising over whether or not to have children:  http://wgntv.com/2018/01/31/climate-change-is-impacting-some-womens-decisions-to-have-children/

This blog will continue to report on people and materials that can help those who wish to repair such damage over the coming decades.

Here are a couple of types of people who will get in the way of such efforts: nolans and baizuos.

NOLAN /di’khe’d/ A bigoted blowhard, someone unwilling to listen to other points of view, someone who thinks they have licence to cast moral judgement upon others, someone who makes a show of being independently minded, intellectually rigorous and scrupulously impartial but is in fact someone who toes the party line and is in reality no more than a PC ‘bot’ churning out the Liberal Establishment orthodoxy whilst suppressing inconvenient facts. Alternate /J.O’Brien/

Hat-tip: Biased-BBC, https://biasedbbc.org/blog/2018/02/19/start-the-week-open-thread-161/

BAIZUO.  'The word 'baizuo' is, according to political scientist Zhang Chenchen, a Chinese word that ridicules Western “liberal elites”. He further defined the word “baizuo” with the definition “People who only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment” and “have no sense of real problems in the real world”; they are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”; they are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”; they believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”; they are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”. The term has also been used to refer to perceived double standards of the Western media, such as the alleged bias on reporting about Islamist attacks in Xinjiang.  The use of the word “Baizuo” could be an insult on the Chinese Internet.'

• Wikipedia

'Baizuo' is apparently pronounced 'buy-tshwaah'

Hat-tip: Samizdata,  https://www.samizdata.net/2018/02/samizdata-er-chinese-word-of-the-day-baizuo/