Patrick Brown was indeed “brave” to write his article, but here’s how he can be even braver: (1) get his other 7 authors to join him in insisting that the article in Nature be retracted or revised; (2) resolve that in future scientific papers that he and his colleagues strive to publish The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth; (3) convince other scientists to do the same.
I wish I could make sense of the UN and other institutions around the world. I understand the media and, of course, politicians want to use the most extreme example to reinforce their position, but why isn’t there a coordinated, agreed upon narrative coming from the UN? On the one hand I see ( Roger P jr. and others) identifying that the IPCC shows climatic changes but not, as some state, an existential threat to humanity, but then there are statements by the head of the UN effectively denouncing that position.
These two short articles, for me show the divide which exists; how are lay people, of which I am one - supposed to interpret the “ News”. I am trying to learn more, but when the general media, the political class and now, through years of indoctrination at school, younger people constantly tell me I’m wrong or I just don’t understand everything, it’s difficult to stay objective, but I at least try to do so - unlike many.
“For the strong adaptation scenario, temperature-related mortality decreases at all temperatures.”
This is the problem, there is no “strong adaptation” scenario, there is just adaptation as we have been doing for 10,000 years and will continue to do so.
Any study or “science” that posits we’ll sit there stupidly as the sea drowns us is garbage produced by idiots.
So that takes care of 97% of all the published science and we can just look at the other 3% to see if there is any value
UPDATE: The chief editor of Nature has issued a clearly threatening response to Brown's essay:
“We are now carefully considering the implications of his stated actions; certainly, they reflect poor research practices and are not in line with the standards we set for our journal”
It seems that, at least when it comes to climate issues, "Nature" is to science as the newspaper "Pravda" is to journalism. All the news must fit the governing ideology. A sad state of affairs...
It is bizarre to me that "science" demonstrates such hubris about what it actually knows to be true across time regarding multiple complex systems working in known and unknown ways to form a much larger complex system. The climate is full of unknown unknowns that blow up models on a continual basis.. The certitude of PhDs in their climate models and inability of big S science to act with even a tiny bit of humility is unpleasant and speaks poorly of the profession. I too am captive at times to my own ego speaking as though it were expertise in my work. But other people let me know when it's time to give up on something I've convinced myself is sacred but is really ego driven. I know we are at odds on my view that fearful scientists need to be bold and cease knuckling under the weight of dogmatic climate hysterics. I believe firmly that as long as journals like Nature demand the publication of spurious and absurdly uncertain papers from scientists as fact, we are doomed to a future much worse than would exist if a parallel body of honest researchers spoke truth as they understand it, even while being labelled by their captive peers. Until that time there will only be whispers and mutterings rather than effective argument between honest scientists.
Thanks for giving me the space to comment and for your always informative posts.
* The “climate crisis cult” is driven by an academia steeped in admiring the problem, and a cynical politica using academia’s narrative for their own purposes. Hence the purported solution - less fossil energy - will do nothing significant for the climate while increasing the number of those dependent on the powerful.
* I am continually amazed by those who hold the Panglossian belief that this is the best of all possible climates. That should have been the first question asked. More challenging, with the potential to elucidate both Today and Tomorrow.
The linkage between 3 degrees of warming and increased population must imply a time period over which which the temperature increase occurs. Is it 2100? How do they link 3 degrees of warming to a particular date? RCP8.5?
Roger, The paper says: "We find that in 3°C of global warming level, temperature-related deaths will increase by a factor of five, MOSTLY due to aging and increasing population. BELOW 3°C warming, impact of climate change slightly decreases temperature-related deaths." The capitalized words are incorrect. Are you point out, it is not merely the majority of the (pre-adaptation) increased deaths that are due to climate but the entirety of that increase because even at 3 degrees, the impact of climate change is to "slightly decrease" deaths. The detailed results in Table S2 of the paper's supplemental information shows that the heat+cold "climate effect" results in a net decrease of 225 temperature-related deaths. That means ALL of the increase is due solely to population and demographic changes, which off-set the slight decrease in death from climate change.
Table S2 shows another surprising and unheralded result: after accounting for adaptation, the "climate effect" results in a net reduction of 17,300 temperature-related deaths. Since the paper found current temperature-related deaths of 45,800 per year, that means that effect of future climate change after adaptation will REDUCED temperature-related deaths by 38%. That message, of course, is not found anywhere in the paper. The paper itself doesn't dare mention the reduction of 17,3000 deaths from climate change. It only says that factoring in adaptation, "temperature-related mortality decreases at all temperatures." No sense is given of the relative degree of the decrease, since it is surely statistically significant but even more so rhetorically significant.
Note that the 17,300 fewer deaths from climate change differs significantly from the 2000 fewer deaths mentioned in your second top line for a hypothetical press release. The paper (on page 7) does mention a reduction of 2192 deaths that is related to a constraint in the methodology for calculating adaptation, and that impacts only 8 of the cities in the study. To reflect the climate effect across all 106 cities using the study's adaptation model (including the artificial constraint), your second headline should actually read: "Overall, warming temperatures will reduce US temperature-related deaths by 38% resulting in 17,300 fewer deaths per year." Seen in this context, the paper hardly seems to constitute a "dire prediction," as the Texas A&M press release characterized it.
One final comment. The text of the paper claimed that temperature-related deaths (before adaptation) due to extreme temperatures would rise to 63,000 annually. Supplemental Table S3 shows a different number - specifically, 43,152 annual deaths from extreme temperatures. It's unclear to me what accounts for the difference of 20,000 deaths between the data file and the total shown in the paper. Regardless, after accounting for population and demographic changes and adaptation, the climate effect of extreme temperatures is reduced significantly to 15,200. This compares rather favorably to the current level of such deaths claimed in the paper, namely 12,500 deaths per year. That means the paper projects only a 20% increase in deaths (and less than 3000 additional deaths) that are directly attributable to extreme temperatures in 3 degrees warmer climate. That's a rather small effect for one of the few climate extreme impacts that the IPCC argues has already emerged.
"The world has just experienced the hottest summer on record – by a significant margin" (CNN)
But is it? How can you trust a research entity that titles itself the "Copernicus Climate Change Service," which itself suggests a bias towards enhancing The Narrative, and which uses its own temperature data (how collected and parsed?) rather than more broadly known sources? The group also holds to The Narrative's central premise: “The scientific evidence is overwhelming – we will continue to see more climate records and more intense and frequent extreme weather events impacting society and ecosystems, until we stop emitting greenhouse gases.”
Of course, CNN picked this up and added the "highest carbon [do they mean C02?] pollution in 800,000 years" meme just for eye-catching measure.
'Besides, many mainstream climate scientists tend to view the whole prospect of, say, using technology to adapt to climate change as wrongheaded; addressing emissions is the right approach. So the savvy researcher knows to stay away from practical solutions.'
At the risk of sounding like a technocrat wouldn't you do both?????
There are so many reasons to de carbonize. From human rights, geopolitical global governance, & inequality. Energy is tied to prosperity. I have a hard time thinking this way.
'And thus, worse because the climate-change-as-apocalypse orthodoxy thereby radically narrows the range of viewpoints we are willing to tolerate and the range of options we are willing to consider for dealing with complex challenges to our well-being like natural disasters and infectious disease and poverty and civil strife.'
The paper arrives at some interesting and counter-narrative conclusions. It is GRL so much less narrative control or editorial attention. Even so, the press release fixes that up to some degree. One of the authors (AD) has been online explaining away their findings (more lives saved by changing temperatures? "So what?"
The press release misrepresents the paper, and at my university the author of the study approves the language in press releases, so I'd guess they were OK with the mis representation.
When I attempt to dialogue with my adult children and nearly adult grandchildren about how the greatest existential threat to humanity is stopping the use of fossil fuels not "climate change" I get pushback "look at all the terrible climate disasters that are going on around the world all the time" (thank you mainstream media!). I wonder is the mainstream media really understands and believes everything they publish, just follows the path of least resistance or whether they are the "useful idiots" to the clerisy that are determined to shut down the world's economies in order the "save the planet"?
'Dialogue' is still a noun rather than a verb but I like the post.
I hear this at my kids' high school and at Georgetown. The level of using one's brain as a hatrack rather than for rational thought is acute at elite schools. If ever there are ever reeducation camps in the US they will most assuredly be at Ivies and other high end schools.
Patrick Brown's comment about the Climate Change narrative and its effect on practical solutions has been on my mind as of late.
The climate is indeed changing, as it always has. This is a fact. Of course, the causes of the change are subject to debate...as they should be.
It is also a fact that the ongoing change has real consequences, some of which need to be addressed and very soon.
To Mr. Brown's point, it is tragic that the enforced orthodoxy is a serious impediment to the necessary solutions for the problems which led to the orthodoxy in the first place. It's enough to make one's head explode.
I immediately received this email just after reading this email from our Honest Broker
Source: CBS News
U.N. says summer 2023 hottest on record: "Climate breakdown has begun"
Weather
United Nations — "Earth just had its hottest three months on record," the United Nations weather agency said Wednesday."The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting," warned U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement coinciding with the release of the ... Read More
Wether it’s the catastrophe narrative of climate change or COVID, public institutions are rapidly losing public trust as their narratives do not comport with the reality that people experience in every day life.
They do this at their own peril as public institutions will continue to lose stature, be less relevant and eventually be defunded.
The narrative and reality cannot be decoupled forever, particularly when following the narrative is unnecessarily expensive and painful for the public, and rational voices in alternative media can expose the fraud.
We have a lot of debt to build up before anything rational occurs in the minds of the captivated. Americans are almost entirely decoupled from an understanding of economic reality.
Patrick Brown was indeed “brave” to write his article, but here’s how he can be even braver: (1) get his other 7 authors to join him in insisting that the article in Nature be retracted or revised; (2) resolve that in future scientific papers that he and his colleagues strive to publish The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth; (3) convince other scientists to do the same.
I wish I could make sense of the UN and other institutions around the world. I understand the media and, of course, politicians want to use the most extreme example to reinforce their position, but why isn’t there a coordinated, agreed upon narrative coming from the UN? On the one hand I see ( Roger P jr. and others) identifying that the IPCC shows climatic changes but not, as some state, an existential threat to humanity, but then there are statements by the head of the UN effectively denouncing that position.
These two short articles, for me show the divide which exists; how are lay people, of which I am one - supposed to interpret the “ News”. I am trying to learn more, but when the general media, the political class and now, through years of indoctrination at school, younger people constantly tell me I’m wrong or I just don’t understand everything, it’s difficult to stay objective, but I at least try to do so - unlike many.
https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-do-not-overstate-15-degrees-threat/a-66386523
https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-united-nations-summit-disasters-8b4de7469a1745f42d76a11bd7ac8641#
“For the strong adaptation scenario, temperature-related mortality decreases at all temperatures.”
This is the problem, there is no “strong adaptation” scenario, there is just adaptation as we have been doing for 10,000 years and will continue to do so.
Any study or “science” that posits we’ll sit there stupidly as the sea drowns us is garbage produced by idiots.
So that takes care of 97% of all the published science and we can just look at the other 3% to see if there is any value
UPDATE: The chief editor of Nature has issued a clearly threatening response to Brown's essay:
“We are now carefully considering the implications of his stated actions; certainly, they reflect poor research practices and are not in line with the standards we set for our journal”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12488605/editor-nature-journal-climate-change-scientist.html
No such statement was made about Proximal origins or the Alimonti retraction
It seems that, at least when it comes to climate issues, "Nature" is to science as the newspaper "Pravda" is to journalism. All the news must fit the governing ideology. A sad state of affairs...
Brown threatens the narrative.
The hounds are out
Self reflection is a rare quality…
It is bizarre to me that "science" demonstrates such hubris about what it actually knows to be true across time regarding multiple complex systems working in known and unknown ways to form a much larger complex system. The climate is full of unknown unknowns that blow up models on a continual basis.. The certitude of PhDs in their climate models and inability of big S science to act with even a tiny bit of humility is unpleasant and speaks poorly of the profession. I too am captive at times to my own ego speaking as though it were expertise in my work. But other people let me know when it's time to give up on something I've convinced myself is sacred but is really ego driven. I know we are at odds on my view that fearful scientists need to be bold and cease knuckling under the weight of dogmatic climate hysterics. I believe firmly that as long as journals like Nature demand the publication of spurious and absurdly uncertain papers from scientists as fact, we are doomed to a future much worse than would exist if a parallel body of honest researchers spoke truth as they understand it, even while being labelled by their captive peers. Until that time there will only be whispers and mutterings rather than effective argument between honest scientists.
Thanks for giving me the space to comment and for your always informative posts.
* The “climate crisis cult” is driven by an academia steeped in admiring the problem, and a cynical politica using academia’s narrative for their own purposes. Hence the purported solution - less fossil energy - will do nothing significant for the climate while increasing the number of those dependent on the powerful.
* I am continually amazed by those who hold the Panglossian belief that this is the best of all possible climates. That should have been the first question asked. More challenging, with the potential to elucidate both Today and Tomorrow.
The linkage between 3 degrees of warming and increased population must imply a time period over which which the temperature increase occurs. Is it 2100? How do they link 3 degrees of warming to a particular date? RCP8.5?
Roger, The paper says: "We find that in 3°C of global warming level, temperature-related deaths will increase by a factor of five, MOSTLY due to aging and increasing population. BELOW 3°C warming, impact of climate change slightly decreases temperature-related deaths." The capitalized words are incorrect. Are you point out, it is not merely the majority of the (pre-adaptation) increased deaths that are due to climate but the entirety of that increase because even at 3 degrees, the impact of climate change is to "slightly decrease" deaths. The detailed results in Table S2 of the paper's supplemental information shows that the heat+cold "climate effect" results in a net decrease of 225 temperature-related deaths. That means ALL of the increase is due solely to population and demographic changes, which off-set the slight decrease in death from climate change.
Table S2 shows another surprising and unheralded result: after accounting for adaptation, the "climate effect" results in a net reduction of 17,300 temperature-related deaths. Since the paper found current temperature-related deaths of 45,800 per year, that means that effect of future climate change after adaptation will REDUCED temperature-related deaths by 38%. That message, of course, is not found anywhere in the paper. The paper itself doesn't dare mention the reduction of 17,3000 deaths from climate change. It only says that factoring in adaptation, "temperature-related mortality decreases at all temperatures." No sense is given of the relative degree of the decrease, since it is surely statistically significant but even more so rhetorically significant.
Note that the 17,300 fewer deaths from climate change differs significantly from the 2000 fewer deaths mentioned in your second top line for a hypothetical press release. The paper (on page 7) does mention a reduction of 2192 deaths that is related to a constraint in the methodology for calculating adaptation, and that impacts only 8 of the cities in the study. To reflect the climate effect across all 106 cities using the study's adaptation model (including the artificial constraint), your second headline should actually read: "Overall, warming temperatures will reduce US temperature-related deaths by 38% resulting in 17,300 fewer deaths per year." Seen in this context, the paper hardly seems to constitute a "dire prediction," as the Texas A&M press release characterized it.
One final comment. The text of the paper claimed that temperature-related deaths (before adaptation) due to extreme temperatures would rise to 63,000 annually. Supplemental Table S3 shows a different number - specifically, 43,152 annual deaths from extreme temperatures. It's unclear to me what accounts for the difference of 20,000 deaths between the data file and the total shown in the paper. Regardless, after accounting for population and demographic changes and adaptation, the climate effect of extreme temperatures is reduced significantly to 15,200. This compares rather favorably to the current level of such deaths claimed in the paper, namely 12,500 deaths per year. That means the paper projects only a 20% increase in deaths (and less than 3000 additional deaths) that are directly attributable to extreme temperatures in 3 degrees warmer climate. That's a rather small effect for one of the few climate extreme impacts that the IPCC argues has already emerged.
I fully agree
Last week I tweeted that this paper “destroyed” the Biden admin social cost of carbon methodology.
They buried the lede, to be sure.
"The world has just experienced the hottest summer on record – by a significant margin" (CNN)
But is it? How can you trust a research entity that titles itself the "Copernicus Climate Change Service," which itself suggests a bias towards enhancing The Narrative, and which uses its own temperature data (how collected and parsed?) rather than more broadly known sources? The group also holds to The Narrative's central premise: “The scientific evidence is overwhelming – we will continue to see more climate records and more intense and frequent extreme weather events impacting society and ecosystems, until we stop emitting greenhouse gases.”
Of course, CNN picked this up and added the "highest carbon [do they mean C02?] pollution in 800,000 years" meme just for eye-catching measure.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/world/hottest-summer-record-climate-intl/index.html
All nonsense
Climategate was not a distinct historical event. Rather, it is an ongoing process, as confirmed above.
"It ain't over 'till it's over" and it ain't over yet.
Amen
'Besides, many mainstream climate scientists tend to view the whole prospect of, say, using technology to adapt to climate change as wrongheaded; addressing emissions is the right approach. So the savvy researcher knows to stay away from practical solutions.'
At the risk of sounding like a technocrat wouldn't you do both?????
There are so many reasons to de carbonize. From human rights, geopolitical global governance, & inequality. Energy is tied to prosperity. I have a hard time thinking this way.
'And thus, worse because the climate-change-as-apocalypse orthodoxy thereby radically narrows the range of viewpoints we are willing to tolerate and the range of options we are willing to consider for dealing with complex challenges to our well-being like natural disasters and infectious disease and poverty and civil strife.'
I've learned a lot.
“It’s time to break the narrative rules”
It seems that the authors of the TAMU paper broke the narrative rules. Did they challenge the University press release or just meakly accept it?
At the end of the day if scientists go along to get along the problem will not be solved.
The paper arrives at some interesting and counter-narrative conclusions. It is GRL so much less narrative control or editorial attention. Even so, the press release fixes that up to some degree. One of the authors (AD) has been online explaining away their findings (more lives saved by changing temperatures? "So what?"
The press release misrepresents the paper, and at my university the author of the study approves the language in press releases, so I'd guess they were OK with the mis representation.
Narrative rules!
I wouldn't be surprised if AD vote the press release. From what I've seen of him he is a catastrophe narrative adherent.
That's wrote not vote.
When I attempt to dialogue with my adult children and nearly adult grandchildren about how the greatest existential threat to humanity is stopping the use of fossil fuels not "climate change" I get pushback "look at all the terrible climate disasters that are going on around the world all the time" (thank you mainstream media!). I wonder is the mainstream media really understands and believes everything they publish, just follows the path of least resistance or whether they are the "useful idiots" to the clerisy that are determined to shut down the world's economies in order the "save the planet"?
Kit, try to be specific with the kids.
My niece talked about watching a Netflix doc on coral reef, the Great Barrier Reef almost dead, blah blah.
So I sent her a link to Jen Marohasy’s blog.
Polar bears got them down.? Susan Crockfords Polarbearscience
Etc
Eventually they will grasp that most of what they read is a lie
'Dialogue' is still a noun rather than a verb but I like the post.
I hear this at my kids' high school and at Georgetown. The level of using one's brain as a hatrack rather than for rational thought is acute at elite schools. If ever there are ever reeducation camps in the US they will most assuredly be at Ivies and other high end schools.
Patrick Brown's comment about the Climate Change narrative and its effect on practical solutions has been on my mind as of late.
The climate is indeed changing, as it always has. This is a fact. Of course, the causes of the change are subject to debate...as they should be.
It is also a fact that the ongoing change has real consequences, some of which need to be addressed and very soon.
To Mr. Brown's point, it is tragic that the enforced orthodoxy is a serious impediment to the necessary solutions for the problems which led to the orthodoxy in the first place. It's enough to make one's head explode.
I immediately received this email just after reading this email from our Honest Broker
Source: CBS News
U.N. says summer 2023 hottest on record: "Climate breakdown has begun"
Weather
United Nations — "Earth just had its hottest three months on record," the United Nations weather agency said Wednesday."The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting," warned U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement coinciding with the release of the ... Read More
Wether it’s the catastrophe narrative of climate change or COVID, public institutions are rapidly losing public trust as their narratives do not comport with the reality that people experience in every day life.
They do this at their own peril as public institutions will continue to lose stature, be less relevant and eventually be defunded.
The narrative and reality cannot be decoupled forever, particularly when following the narrative is unnecessarily expensive and painful for the public, and rational voices in alternative media can expose the fraud.
We have a lot of debt to build up before anything rational occurs in the minds of the captivated. Americans are almost entirely decoupled from an understanding of economic reality.