The Weather Truther Playbook

PANIC ➡️ ALARM ➡️ CURE

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I’ve been sitting on this post for a long time. When I first drafted it, I thought it was partially tongue-in-cheek and poking a bit of fun. As time has gone on and I’ve observed the incredible efforts being made to undermine the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mainstream science, I’ve decided that this post reflects reality more than I would have liked.

The main purpose of this post is to provide me with a concise language to describe this movement and its participants, that I can use going forward. This post characterizes the Weather Truthers and their playbook.

Longtime THB readers will be aware that a parallel universe has developed related to climate change and extreme weather. This parallel universe — science-like but not science — is characterized by:

• Claims that “climate” is a cause of extreme weather or its intensification;

• The invention of “extreme event attribution” to counter the IPCC detection and attribution framework;

• The invention of the concept of novel “climate risk,” which marks a clean break from risks of the past;

• A cottage industry of research focused on extreme and implausible climate scenarios that projects scary changes in extremes in the distant future, which are then time-traveled back to today to support the most extreme claims of causal attribution;

• A journalistic climate beat which hypes every extreme event as being made worse by, linked to, fueled by “climate;”

• A very small group of usual suspects willing to offer quotable quotes on the supposed “climate” causality connections to the event-that-just-happened;

• The repeated claim that addressing the crisis of escalating extreme weather requires rapidly reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Each of these claims is counter to the terminology, frameworks, and assessments of the IPCC and the broad base of research on which the work of the IPCC is based upon. Those making such claims are every bit as incorrect as those who claim that humans cannot affect the climate, or that climate change is a hoax, or that climate science and policy is a scam.

Weather Truthers express a worldview in which every extreme weather event is at once caused by “climate change” and proof of such changes. No attribution is necessary because the occurrence of the event is self-evidently the result of “climate change.” The remedy to extreme weather is thus to drastically reduce emissions.

The Weather Truther playbook has three parts:

1. P.A.N.I.C. — Political Advocacy Narratives In Climate. All framings of climate change and climate science are based on a felt need to justify emissons reductions. Individual extreme weather events are an asset in PANIC. So too is scientific (or, in some cases, science-like) research, which should be framed in terms of negative impacts that can only be reduced via climate policy. PANIC sets the stage.

2. A.L.A.R.M. — Attribution Leads All Reporting in the Media. Whatever happens, climate did it — shark attacks, food price inflation, legal and illegal immigration, civil war in Syria, turbulence on your last flight, a building collapse in Miami, poor tasting beer, more divorces, and more divorces among albatrosses . . . I could go on, and on and on. ALARM requires a constant drumbeat of “climate change“ as a cause of whatever bad thing just happened. ALARM justifies PANIC.

3. C.U.R.E. — CO2 emissions Understood as Remedy for Extremes. If carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the cause of ALARM then the obvious response is to focus on CURE.

The playbook: PANIC sets the stage, ALARM justifies PANIC, and points to the CURE.

Weather Truthers present a huge obstacle to effective climate policy, which will require that the broad public trust climate experts for many decades into the future. That means calling things straight, as IPCC Working Group 1 has done (mostly) over the decades. However, Weather Truthers are working hard to delegitimize mainstream climate science.

Weather Truthers give the public good reasons not to trust climate experts, even though the overwhelming number of climate experts are not Weather Truthers. However, Weather Truthers are disproportionately represented in the media, quoted in media reporting, found in leadership positions within the mainstream scientific community, and widespread among the most passionate climate advocates online and within the scientific community.

Climate scientists have long pushed back on false claims of “climate deniers.” It is long past time when the community should enforce scientific integrity when it comes to false claims of the Weather Truthers.

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