I don’t share Roger’s optimism about reality prevailing anytime soon. As he knows from personal experience and has also discussed in other contexts, scientists who don’t toe the party line on this risk their funding and careers. The reason for this is that politicians want a pretext to centralize power and control, and only a crisis will do. And the government controls a great deal of the funding for research into climate.
Note that government policies which make people poorer also have the potential to increase dependency, which has been a reliable way to build voter constituencies.
We won’t even know 80 years from now because policies which are being implemented now based on bogus assumptions will be credited for whatever happens in the future. It’s kind of like giving antibiotics to someone with a cold; the person gets better and credits the antibiotics, when in reality they would have had exactly the same outcome whether they took the antibiotics or not.
I have written a little booklet for this exact reason. I would attach it, but that doesn't work here. It is available for 99cents on Kindle. "Carbon Dioxide-Not Guilty" by Hisey 2022. Or anyone who sends me a normal email address will get a free pdf copy, which is in the public domain.
The need to "keep the scream alive" by treating each 10th of a degree like it's another child sacrificed to a volcano god rings pretty similar to another precautionary principle canard: the Linear No Threshold phobia that treats any radiation level as inherently evil & thus assists in the blockade against a rational zero carbon nuclear energy policy.
I don't think this is exactly "change is difficult" but "I am desperate to retain my status, grant and money-making scheme leveraging climate crisis"
And here is the kicker.
1. Even though we might agree that average global temperatures are increasing (ignoring that for the last 8 years they have been on a slight downward trend)...
2. We still do not have anything but theories based on circumstantial evidence that human activity is responsible for that warming.
3. We absolutely do not know the human or environmental impact/costs that might result from any actual long-term global warming including what measures of adaption are invented and implemented.
And so we risk making mistakes in policy that cause greater negative reciprocal impacts and costs than would avoiding those policies.
What in the world would politicians do if they can’t distract us from their utter incompetence with the invisible hobgoblins of climate change and pandemics? I ask with seriousness. Because if the public becomes desensitized to the former, you know they’ll come up with something.
"the world should still try to limit future global warming as much as possible." Take literally, this would mean bankrupting our economy with insanely expensive energy, or deliberately impoverishing everyone by greatly reducing energy production. Surely, that's not what you mean. Given that even the IPCC sees few detectable effects of warmer climate by 2100, why should we try to limit it as much as possible? (I would go further and ask why limit it at all, since I think the overall effects are are likely to be positive, or neutral at worst.)
So, what does a world with 2.4 degrees higher temperatures look like? How bad is that? Seems to me that’s the question to answer if we want to know whether to push policy harder.
I do think we are at a crucial tipping point in terms of a return to a reality-based mean. I strongly hope you could find the resources to setup a clearinghouse-type website similar to catastrophist sites like skepticalscience.com et al. I'd like to engage at the public level but I need a point-by-point reference that is scientifically sound but completely without one bit of the snark that so strongly features in the anti-skeptics' public image. Can you help?
Excellent article! Thank you! As usual this is the sort of thing I could show my "climate concerned" friends that they would find very difficult to dismiss.
"...the world should still try to limit future global warming as much as possible. I agree." Would you consider replacing "I agree." With something like "I agree provided sufficient care is taken to ensure the costs of doing so don't exceed the benefits." It would be too easy for those who advocate that "our targets" must be met regardless of cost to say that "Even Pielke agrees that we should still try limit future warming as much as possible so we must continue to accept what many will consider an unacceptable level of pain...."
This is a fairly brief and very understandable post. Thanks! I do not mind so much that the scientific community is reluctant to acknowledge that the climate change scenario is less dire than was previously thought. What I mind is that politicians and their enablers in the electorate are spending trillions of dollars that must be repaid by future generations in a useless attempt to achieve net zero without the cooperation of China, India, and most of the world. How will we afford to invest in mitigating the effects of climate change, and in deploying future technologies such as fusion generation once they are developed? I think humans should pledge not to colonize the moon and Mars. Let's contain the stupidity and cupidity here on earth.
Ah, John Kerry, MR. Science. He along with another VP and failed Presidential Candidate have spent a lifetime of hypocrisy and phony issue chasing. Got wealthy from Oil, Tobacco and in John's case 57 Varieties. Way to go boys, more power to you. They have never really worked for a living, just lived the high life and in the meantime learned to pontificate, fear monger and engage in outrageous acts of hyperbole. Skeptical, yes, I'm skeptical of anything either of these two are attached to.
But of course 4C, 2.4, 1.5C are all opinions based on a theory and encapsulated in models that have no more basis is reality than Obi-wan fixing it with the force.
You may be right, but you may also be wrong.
Reading the news, the climate/insane are certainly not giving anything up.
Just last night the cbc implied that the Mackenzie River is likely to run dry due to climate change, a nonsensical idea but let’s just say it anyway.
Good luck waiting and watching - They really do think we are fools and couldn't care less what we think. Kerry, like all politicians, is nothing but a bad actor in a bad movie, and reads whatever is presented to him on the teleprompter
Thanks Roger - that post was worth a year’s subscription in itself. Possibly the most important post you’ve written.
I don’t share Roger’s optimism about reality prevailing anytime soon. As he knows from personal experience and has also discussed in other contexts, scientists who don’t toe the party line on this risk their funding and careers. The reason for this is that politicians want a pretext to centralize power and control, and only a crisis will do. And the government controls a great deal of the funding for research into climate.
Note that government policies which make people poorer also have the potential to increase dependency, which has been a reliable way to build voter constituencies.
We won’t even know 80 years from now because policies which are being implemented now based on bogus assumptions will be credited for whatever happens in the future. It’s kind of like giving antibiotics to someone with a cold; the person gets better and credits the antibiotics, when in reality they would have had exactly the same outcome whether they took the antibiotics or not.
Hi
I have written a little booklet for this exact reason. I would attach it, but that doesn't work here. It is available for 99cents on Kindle. "Carbon Dioxide-Not Guilty" by Hisey 2022. Or anyone who sends me a normal email address will get a free pdf copy, which is in the public domain.
The need to "keep the scream alive" by treating each 10th of a degree like it's another child sacrificed to a volcano god rings pretty similar to another precautionary principle canard: the Linear No Threshold phobia that treats any radiation level as inherently evil & thus assists in the blockade against a rational zero carbon nuclear energy policy.
I don't think this is exactly "change is difficult" but "I am desperate to retain my status, grant and money-making scheme leveraging climate crisis"
And here is the kicker.
1. Even though we might agree that average global temperatures are increasing (ignoring that for the last 8 years they have been on a slight downward trend)...
2. We still do not have anything but theories based on circumstantial evidence that human activity is responsible for that warming.
3. We absolutely do not know the human or environmental impact/costs that might result from any actual long-term global warming including what measures of adaption are invented and implemented.
And so we risk making mistakes in policy that cause greater negative reciprocal impacts and costs than would avoiding those policies.
What in the world would politicians do if they can’t distract us from their utter incompetence with the invisible hobgoblins of climate change and pandemics? I ask with seriousness. Because if the public becomes desensitized to the former, you know they’ll come up with something.
"the world should still try to limit future global warming as much as possible." Take literally, this would mean bankrupting our economy with insanely expensive energy, or deliberately impoverishing everyone by greatly reducing energy production. Surely, that's not what you mean. Given that even the IPCC sees few detectable effects of warmer climate by 2100, why should we try to limit it as much as possible? (I would go further and ask why limit it at all, since I think the overall effects are are likely to be positive, or neutral at worst.)
So, what does a world with 2.4 degrees higher temperatures look like? How bad is that? Seems to me that’s the question to answer if we want to know whether to push policy harder.
I do think we are at a crucial tipping point in terms of a return to a reality-based mean. I strongly hope you could find the resources to setup a clearinghouse-type website similar to catastrophist sites like skepticalscience.com et al. I'd like to engage at the public level but I need a point-by-point reference that is scientifically sound but completely without one bit of the snark that so strongly features in the anti-skeptics' public image. Can you help?
"... reality is persistent."
I'll be "leveraging" that one!
Excellent article! Thank you! As usual this is the sort of thing I could show my "climate concerned" friends that they would find very difficult to dismiss.
"...the world should still try to limit future global warming as much as possible. I agree." Would you consider replacing "I agree." With something like "I agree provided sufficient care is taken to ensure the costs of doing so don't exceed the benefits." It would be too easy for those who advocate that "our targets" must be met regardless of cost to say that "Even Pielke agrees that we should still try limit future warming as much as possible so we must continue to accept what many will consider an unacceptable level of pain...."
The religion is crumbling, the Gods are nothing but false prophets, our sins don’t matter.
This is a fairly brief and very understandable post. Thanks! I do not mind so much that the scientific community is reluctant to acknowledge that the climate change scenario is less dire than was previously thought. What I mind is that politicians and their enablers in the electorate are spending trillions of dollars that must be repaid by future generations in a useless attempt to achieve net zero without the cooperation of China, India, and most of the world. How will we afford to invest in mitigating the effects of climate change, and in deploying future technologies such as fusion generation once they are developed? I think humans should pledge not to colonize the moon and Mars. Let's contain the stupidity and cupidity here on earth.
Ah, John Kerry, MR. Science. He along with another VP and failed Presidential Candidate have spent a lifetime of hypocrisy and phony issue chasing. Got wealthy from Oil, Tobacco and in John's case 57 Varieties. Way to go boys, more power to you. They have never really worked for a living, just lived the high life and in the meantime learned to pontificate, fear monger and engage in outrageous acts of hyperbole. Skeptical, yes, I'm skeptical of anything either of these two are attached to.
Great piece.
But of course 4C, 2.4, 1.5C are all opinions based on a theory and encapsulated in models that have no more basis is reality than Obi-wan fixing it with the force.
You may be right, but you may also be wrong.
Reading the news, the climate/insane are certainly not giving anything up.
Just last night the cbc implied that the Mackenzie River is likely to run dry due to climate change, a nonsensical idea but let’s just say it anyway.
Good luck waiting and watching - They really do think we are fools and couldn't care less what we think. Kerry, like all politicians, is nothing but a bad actor in a bad movie, and reads whatever is presented to him on the teleprompter