In groupthink, organizations value consensus more than free thought. The emphasis on consensus leads to group polarization, in which a group’s positions become more extreme than any individual would come up with. Alarmist climate science is a textbook example of groupthink in action.
Guest post by Paul MacRae
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.”
And so, Carl Sagan has written:
“Even a succession of professional scientists—including famous astronomers who had made other discoveries that are confirmed and now justly celebrated—can make serious, even profound errors in pattern recognition.”[1]
There is no reason to believe that climate scientists (alarmist or skeptic) are exempt from this possibility.
That leaves the first question, which is how so many “respected, competitive, independent science folks [could] be so wrong” about the causes and dangers of global warming, assuming they are wrong. And here, I confess that after five years of research into climate fears, this question still baffles me.
Climate certainty is baffling
It is not baffling that so many scientists believe humanity might be to blame for global warming. If carbon dioxide causes warming, additional CO2 should produce additional warming. But it’s baffling that alarmist climate scientists are so certain that additional carbon dioxide will produce a climate disaster, even though there is little empirical evidence to support this view, and much evidence against it, including a decade of non-warming. This dogmatism makes it clear, at least to those outside the alarmist climate paradigm, that something is very wrong with the state of “consensus” climate science.
There are many possible reasons for this scientific blindness, including sheer financial and career self-interest: scientists who don’t accept the alarmist paradigm will lose research grants and career doors will be closed to them. But one psychological diagnosis fits alarmist climate science like a glove: groupthink. With groupthink, we get the best explanation of “how can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong.”
Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus.
For example, regarding Symptom 1, overestimation of the group’s power and morality: leading consensus climate spokespeople like Al Gore, James Hansen, and Stephen Schneider have stated outright that they feel it’s acceptable and even moral to exaggerate global-warming claims to gain public support, even if they have to violate the broader scientific principle of adherence to truth at all costs (http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=51 has examples.) Consensus climate science also overestimates the power of humanity to override climate change, whether human-caused or natural, just as government planners overestimated the U.S.’s ability to win the Vietnam War.
Regarding Symptom 2, closed-mindedness, there are many cases of the alarmist climate paradigm ignoring or suppressing evidence that challenges the AGW hypothesis. The Climategate emails, for example, discuss refusing publication to known skeptics and even firing an editor favorable to skeptics.
Regarding Symptom 3, pressure toward uniformity: within alarmist climate science there is a “shared illusion of unanimity” (i.e., a belief in total consensus) about the majority view when this total or near-total consensus has no basis in reality. For example, the Oregon Petition against the anthropogenic warming theory has 31,000 signatories, over 9,000 of them with PhDs.
Climate scientists who dare to deviate from the consensus are censured as “deniers”—a choice of terminology that can only be described as odious. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change explicitly aims for “consensus” in its reports—it does not publish minority reports, and yet it is impossible that its alleged more than “2,000 scientists” could completely agree on a subject as complicated as climate.
Group polarization
Janis notes one other form of dysfunctional group dynamic that arises out of groupthink and that, in turn, helps create even more groupthink:
The tendency for the collective judgments arising out of group discussions to become polarized, sometimes shifting toward extreme conservatism and sometimes toward riskier forms of action than the individual members would otherwise be prepared to take.[7]
This dynamic is commonly referred to as “group polarization.”
As a process, “when like-minded people find themselves speaking only with one another, they get into a cycle of ideological reinforcement where they end up endorsing positions far more extreme than the ones they started with.”[8] [emphasis added]
And because these positions are so extreme, they are held with extreme ferocity against all criticisms.
Examples of alarmist climate groupthink
Groupthink is common in academic disciplines. For example, philosopher Walter Kaufmann, a world-renowned editor of Nietzsche’s works, identifies groupthink in his discipline as follows:
There is a deep reluctance to stick out one’s neck: there is safety in numbers, in belonging to a group, in employing a common method, and in not developing a position of one’s own that would bring one into open conflict with more people than would be likely to be pleased.[9]
Similarly, in the 2009 Climategate emails, CRU director Phil Jones shows this “deep reluctance to stick out one’s neck” in writing (July 5, 2005):
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998.”
Keith Briffa laments (Sept. 22, 1999):
“I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the temperature proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. … I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.”
Elsewhere, Briffa notes (April 29, 2007):
“I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC, which were not always the same. I worried that you might think I gave the impression of not supporting you well enough while trying to report on the issues and uncertainties.”
All of the above (there are many more examples in the Climategate emails) reveal scientific groupthink, which puts the needs and desires of a peer group—the desire for “consensus”—ahead of the scientific facts. We would, undoubtedly, find other examples of alarmist groupthink if we could examine the emails of other promoters of climate alarmism, like James Hansen’s Goddard Institute.
This groupthink isn’t at all surprising. After all, alarmist climate scientists attend several conferences a year with like-minded people (the views of outright “deniers” are not welcome, as the CRU emails clearly reveal). In the absence of real debate or dissent they easily persuade themselves that human beings are the main reason the planet is warming and it’s going to be a catastrophe. Why? Because everyone else seems to think so and, in groupthink, consensus is highly valued. The same principles operates strongly, of course, in religion.
The ‘hockey stick’ and groupthink
Climate alarmists will, of course, angrily dispute that climate science groupthink is as strong as claimed here. However, groupthink is clearly identified in the 2006 Wegman report into the Michael Mann hockey stick controversy.
As most WUWT readers will know, the Wegman report was commissioned by the U.S. House Science Committee after Mann refused to release all the data leading to the hockey stick conclusions, conclusions that eliminated the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in order to show today’s warming as unprecedented. In fact, as mathematician Steve McIntyre discovered after years of FOI requests, the calculations in Mann’s paper had not been checked by the paper’s peer reviewers and were, in fact, wrong.
The National Academy of Sciences committee, led by Dr. Edward Wegman, an expert on statistics, identified one of the reasons why Mann’s paper was so sloppily peer-reviewed as follows:
There is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.[10] [emphasis added]
Wegman noted that the Mann paper became prominent because it “fit some policy agendas.”[11]
The Wegman Report also observed:
As statisticians, we were struck by the isolation of communities such as the paleoclimate community that rely heavily on statistical methods, yet do not seem to be interacting with the mainstream statistical community. The public policy implications of this debate are financially staggering and yet apparently no independent statistical expertise was sought or used.[12] [emphasis added]
In other words, alarmist climate scientists are part of an exclusive group that talks mainly with itself and avoids groups that don’t share the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis and alarmist political agenda. Overall, Wegman is describing with great precision a science community whose conclusions have been distorted and polarized by groupthink.
Recognizing groupthink
After the Climategate emails, some consensus climate scientists began to recognize the dangers of groupthink within their discipline. So, Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry wrote in 2009:
In my opinion, there are two broader issues raised by these emails that are impeding the public credibility of climate research: lack of transparency in climate data, and “tribalism” in some segments of the climate research community that is impeding peer review and the assessment process.[13]
Similarly, IPCC contributor Mike Hulme wrote:
It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.[14] [emphasis added]
In short, it is clear that groupthink—a later, more scientific word for “tribalism”—is strongly at work within alarmist climate science, however much the affected scientists refuse to recognize it. As a result of tribalism (groupthink), alarmist climate science makes assertions that are often extreme (polarized), including the explicit or implicit endorsement of claims that global warming will lead to “oblivion,” “thermageddon,” mass extinctions, and the like. Indeed, one of the ironies of climate science is that extremist AGW believers like Gore, Hansen and Schneider have succeeded in persuading the media and public that those who don’t make grandiose claims, the skeptics, are the extremists.
Group polarization offers a rational explanation for extreme alarmist claims, given that the empirical scientific evidence is simply not strong enough to merit such confidence. It is likely that even intelligent, highly educated scientists have been caught in what has been called the “madness of crowds.” Indeed, writing in the Times Higher Education magazine, British philosopher Martin Cohen makes this connection explicit:
Is belief in global-warming science another example of the “madness of crowds”? That strange but powerful social phenomenon, first described by Charles Mackay in 1841, turns a widely shared prejudice into an irresistible “authority”. Could it [belief in human-caused, catastrophic global warming] indeed represent the final triumph of irrationality?[16]
There is strong psychological evidence that alarmist fears of climate change are far more the result of groupthink and the group polarization process than scientific evidence and, yes, this alarmist groupthink has indeed led to the triumph of irrationality over reason.
Paul MacRae is the author of False Alarm: Global Warming—Facts Versus Fears. His blog is at paulmacrae.com. More on this subject: http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=51
Notes
1. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996, p. 49.
2. Irvin L. Janis, Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982, p. 3.
3. Janis, p. vii.
4. Janis, p. 9.
5. Janis, p. 247.
6. Janis, pp. 174-175.
7. Janis, p. 5.
8. Andrew Potter, “The newspaper is dying—hooray for democracy.” Maclean’s, April 7, 2008, p. 17.
9. Walter Kaufmann, Critique of Religion and Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990 (1958), p. 51.
10. Edward Wegman, et al., “Ad Hoc Committee Report on the ‘Hockey Stick’ Global Climate Reconstruction.” U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 2006, p. 65.
11. Wegman, et al., p. 29.
12. Wegman, et al., p. 51.
13. Judith Curry, “On the credibility of climate research.” Climate Audit blog, Nov. 22, 2009.
14. Andrew Revkin, “A climate scientist who engages skeptics.” Dot.Earth, Nov. 27, 2009.
15. Steve Fuller, Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2006 (2003), p. 105.
16. Martin Cohen, “Beyond debate?” Times Higher Education, Dec. 10, 2009.
Dinctionary definition for Luther Wu:
gen·tle·man
[ jént’lmən ]
polite and cultured man: a cultured man who behaves with courtesy and thoughtfulness
Example of correct usage:
When somebody asked Jack Vance, the well-known American writer, why didn’t he pursue a possible career as a Hollywood script writer, he answered: “They are not gentlemen.”
Michael Whittemore says:
May 1, 2012 at 12:57 am
The people explaining the chance of a huge 6 degrees celsius warming may be alarming but there is a chance of it happening. The people explaining that there might only be a 1 degree warming, may be alarming but there is a chance of it happening. The point is skeptics want to put everyone’s livelihoods at risk, while climate alarmists want to spend a little money to make sure it doesn’t happen. This is the real truth of the matter, we care about the possibility of great harm to humans and skeptics want to take a chance.
Hmmmmmmn.
The Precautionary Principle, as used by the CAGW Hansenkoism deists, is the following:
Activity, Result of Activity, Chance of Occurrence
Activity = Lower Cost Energy
Result = Longer lives, better living conditions, better health, better water supplies and cleaner
water, sewage systems, More concrete, steel, electricity, proper pesticides and fertilizer use, more transportation, better housing, less childhood disease, more food, more fuel, more fodder, …
Chance = 100% (if government/socialist interference and 3rd world government corruption interference is removed)
Activity = More CO2 in atmosphere
Result: 17 to 27% more plant growth, better resistance to drought, more fodder, more food, more fuel, more renewal supplies of wood and sugar, more natural growth of everything that eats plants or eats things that eats plants.
Chance of Occurrence = 100% (Since humans cannot stop the increase in CO2, but only of the 33% some-odd percent of the CO2 increase that is occurring naturally. .)
Activity = Control of Energy and CO2 by Decree, Fear of CAGW Crisis
Result = Death of millions from malnutrition, hunger, disease, bad water, poor shelter. Direct and deliberate harm to billions as the elite get trillions of tax dollars stolen from the world to go to government institutions and their employees of elite proxies and shills. Reduction (the forced death) of billions to a worldwide population at 20% of current levels to enforce a “sustainable” enclave of government-sanctioned “elites” .
Desirability of Occurrence = 100% (in Michael Whittemore’s case, where he assumes he will be become one of those sanctioned elites, and not one of the dead)
Activity = Increases in the world’s temperature by 1 degree, of 2 degree, of 3 degree.
Result = More warmth; more food; longer growing seasons and more cropland; less deaths overall from cold, sickness, starvation, hunger, illnesses.
Chance: 1% to 3% over a 30 year period.
Over a 100 to 1000 year period, chance is 0% of temp’s staying still.
(Chance of temp’s staying still for a 15 year period? 100% – Since it is happening now, despite CO2 increasing!)
Activity = Increase of Temp’s of 4 degrees, of 5 degrees, of 6 degrees.
Result = More warmth; more food; longer growing seasons and more cropland; less deaths overall from cold, sickness, starvation, hunger, illnesses. Loss of land by 1/2 meter increase in sea level over 150 years.
Chance = 0.0001% (Hasn’t happened in the last 1,000,000 years, despite much higher ranges of CO2 in the past than today’s levels. But it could. Natural sea level changes over that same period = 150 to 200 feet.)
So, on the certain chance that human lives might improve by reducing energy costs, his precautionary principle, as used by the Church of the CAGW of Hansenkoism, is that we absolutely MUST kill 4 billion people on the possibility they might live better lives by improving their energy use.
As a scientist, I find it worrisome that all of the warmest scientists have no trouble ignoring major laws of science. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is not a law to ignore. The atmosphere simply HAS to be warmer than the surface, if it is to warm the surface. As the atmosphere is rarely warmer than the surface, particularly in daylight, which is the climate model norm, it is impossible for any gas in the atmosphere to warm the surface.
How can they claim to be scientists and practice such selective science? You cannot pick and chose.
Smokey says: April 30, 2012 at 11:15 pm
“…As a Viet Nam vet I’ve done a lot of reading about it. “Lessons Learned” and all…”
Smokey, I appreciate your reasoned and politely worded reply. And I salute any man who has answered the call to duty by his country, (whether that call is just or unjust).
But, I question whether there was ever any intention in the upper levels of government and even the military to win that war. Everything indicates that in spite of the efforts of the men ‘on the ground’; everything was done to simply keep the thing ticking over.
Besides the bombing campaign issues, and the amazing complexity of the rules of engagement, often varying from region to region, and the inconvenient fact that much of the war was fought a stone’s throw from Saigon and in the delta, about as far south as you can get in Vietnam, the most telling thing to me was the widespread practise of rotating replacements through ‘front line’ units.
The military (worldwide, but certainly the US military) have ingrained knowledge that you can only keep a unit in action for a certain amount of time, and put a certain amount of replacements in there before you should pull that unit out an rebuild it. Any other action is just ‘treading water’, and provides an almost certain result that is perpetual war.
Who would want that? Vacillating politicians, sure. But possibly it also suits the purposes and careers of a bloated military command structure and bureaucracy. And also the industries which supply that massive machine that is the US military forces. And also the politicians and congressmen who want jobs and a working economy for their states (and the votes that come with that). And congressmen (who are not bound by the laws of insider trading in any way shape or form) who may wish to make a ‘legitimate’ buck on investing in companies they are aware are likely to get a big supply contract. And congressmen who make deals for votes in congress to further their own agendas.
I’ve also read all I can find on that war, and one only needs a scant knowledge of the history to know that the major Vietnamese concern was to run their own country once the French were gone. OSA agents who worked closely with Ho Chi Minh and his men during and after World War Two knew very well what his aims were, and in fact in his 1945 “Declaration of Independence the very first line invokes a quote from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~vern/van_kien/declar.html
Now there were men in the south who had their own ambitions, but there was no democracy at work there. These became very corrupt puppet governments propped up by their US backers. Some OSA officers resigned because of the political stance of the USA in backing the French return after WWII.
It would appear to be the most unlikely scenario in the world that a third world nation just emerging from years of colonization, a brutal Japanese occupation and then a brutal war to evict the returning French would bother themselves for a moment with ‘spreading communism’ to their neighbours.
Alexander Feht says:
May 1, 2012 at 9:31 am
Luther Wu,
You stopped long ago.
____________________
LOL
LazyTeenager says:
May 1, 2012 at 6:17 am
Dont believe a word of it. It’s a contrived and manipulative argument. Little more than propaganda based on pop psychology.
____________________
You’re joking, right?
While it is true that you are known to make facile and vapid arguments, you can’t possibly believe what you wrote about this thread’s intent.
“We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.
-Thomas Jefferson
– – – – – –
Alexander Feht,
Seems Mark Twain was right given your rather surprising ungentlemanly statement.
John
No, that’s post-modern “Progressive” baggage, also from the 19th Century (Fabianism). Deconstructionism is arrogant self-delusion, and a despicable intellectual superiority ploy.
“Groupthink” is a perfect explanation of why pure democracy will always fail.
The “group” wants “bread & circuses”? (Op cit, but you’ll all be aware of the metaphor)
The numerous “intelligent” commenters on the broader subject would do well to subscribe to WUWT and get a grip on why “consensus” isn’t always a good thing. Even the “intelligent” need an “even moreso” to think it through for them.
I came here as a slightly scared (warmer/not-warmer) thinker, and am content to remain so, but a better informed one.
The proponents of AGW ought to refocus on the dwindling resources issue, because, no really, they will run out, no matter how much you don’t like that (those) big shiny windmill(s) on the hill nearest you, or the 30,000 year nastiness of radioactive waste in the mines/water-table nearest your kids/grand-kids….
Yes, a thorough and powerful summary of the specifics of AGW-Groupthink! I remember reading the original when it came out. Another sterling example of the phenomenon is your own exclusion and expungement from the CFP* after you called out Weaver; an interesting example of the intersection of Group Think and Lawfare, which MM is currently employing against you.
(* to which I sent an email expressing my sympathy and contempt immediately.)
P.S. An amusing typo above; is it in the original? “an [a] uniformed observer”. The Thought Police have uniforms? 😉
Suggestions:
Check out the CA Assistant / Greasemonkey tool. Puts icons in WP Reply boxes for all that stuff.
Alternatively, type the opening and closing tags first, then put your content between them. Almost foolproof.
Thomas Jefferson
John Whitman says:
May 1, 2012 at 11:55 am
Alexander Feht says:
April 30, 2012 at 5:18 pm
Group-think and intolerance to criticism are notably present on both sides of the AGW conflict. It’s the human nature. Some of us are born and/or brought up as gentlemen, the others are “cattle farm intellectuals,” and the latter never learn.
– – – – – –
Alexander Feht,
Mark Twain said, “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.”
Seems Mark Twain was right given your rather surprising ungentlemanly statement.
John
===============================
One of my favorite secular quotes is,
“Everybody’s ignorant …. only on different subjects” – Will Rogers
When we remember we are each one of the “everybody”, it makes it easier to not think of others as “cattle”.
No, really, they won’t. Never have, never will.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
As for the radioactive waste, it will either be easily handled later, or used as a valuable resource. There’s something like Moore’s Law at work. For a multi-year project, use best current hardware, tight planning, and maybe finish on time. Or wait till a few months before deadline and do the whole job quickly, and better, and at 1/10 the cost, finishing at the same time. Extrapolated to centuries, much less millennia, it’s inane to assess future capacities on even steep linear extrapolations of current tech.
Groupthink is also a wolf pack?
+10 individuals but only one thought ?
Bernie is correct — I did discuss the virtuous corruption of climate science drawing on Janis’s concept of Groupthink back in 2007, but I think Paul does a better and more complete job of providing an exposition.
Readers (and Paul) might also like to look at his book with Leon Mann simply called ‘Decision-Making’ (1977, I think) for other kinds of defective decision-making at the individual level. Groupthink is a kind of ‘defensive avoidance’ and there is also ‘hypervigilance.’
But it is also worth mentioning (as I did) Festinger’s concept of cognitive dissonance, and his book (with others) ‘When Prophecy Fails’. This looks at what happens in millenarian movements when the predicted apocalypse doesn’t eventuate. As Bernie has written about so eloquently, there is a healthy does of apocalypticism in all this, and it has infected the Royal Society — witness their recent Malthusian report and election of chief apocalyptic Paul Ehrlich to a fellowship. Bernie was on to the RS even before this latest enthusiasm, and deserves credit for his work.
Gunga Din says:
When we remember we are each one of the “everybody”, it makes it easier to not think of others as “cattle”.
I didn’t think of anybody as “cattle,” and rather agree with Will Rogers’ observation. The expression I used was “cattle farm intellectual” — it refers to people who think that using foul language in public is some form of a cute self-expression. There are many cattle farmers who are gentlemen, and there are many self-appointed “intellectuals” with too much free time on their hands who are not.
Brian H says:
May 1, 2012 at 12:02 pm
phlogiston says:
May 1, 2012 at 1:49 am
…
There are no “primitive” and “advanced” human cultures – this is 19th century cultural baggage. There are just human cultures. We are all the same.
No, that’s post-modern “Progressive” baggage, also from the 19th Century (Fabianism). Deconstructionism is arrogant self-delusion, and a despicable intellectual superiority ploy.
Can you deconstruct this for me – I’m not quite with you. Am I being deconstructionist? – or is Mike Hulme of the IPCC? Thanks.
Tim Ball said:
“The relatively small group involved with the machinations of proving fossil fuels was producing CO2 that was causing warming or climate change appears to be a classic example of Groupthink. Professor Wegman in his report identified 43 people all linked in various ways, but especially publishing together and apparently peer-reviewing each other’s work that apparently constituted this group. They controlled the CRU, the critical roles of the IPCC and therefore world climate science and the resulting policies.”
————————————————————————–
Tim, kudos for your work in putting all this together, but as I mentioned in my early post, it misses the point. The fact is, 43 scientists can not just take over the world’s policies on anything, ever. They were surfing a wave. Focusing on the surfboard while ignoring the wave is the Achilles’ heel of theories like the Groupthink one expounded above (which, as several commenters have pointed out, is hardly new).
43 people all agreeing with each other is a cult nobody has ever heard of, no matter who they are. It is by tracing the genesis and building up of the wave, beginning with the environment movement of the late 1960s, reinforced by the oil shocks of the 70s, and the middle class guilt of the anti-affluence movement, mixed with a dose of wealth redistribution and a few other ingredients, that created the surge on which climate alarmism has ridden so successfully.
The scientific groupthink was a function of the political groupthink, a situation which has numerous historical parallels. Mann et al would have been baying at the moon if there had not been many intersecting and converging external forces that enabled their ascendancy.
Groupthink
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/badloadaircraft.jpg
Scottish Sceptic says:
April 30, 2012 at 3:54 pm
OK, the null hypothesis is that it is we sceptics who are the groupthinkers and are deluded and not the climate scientists…..
_______________________________
No, there have to be at least a half dozen or so “Climate theories” floating around WUWT alone. Someone floats a hypothesis and the rest tear it to shreds or try to. THAT is the opposite of group think.
misterjohnqpublic says:
April 30, 2012 at 4:59 pm
Another word for groupthink is arrogance.
Groupthink is just too p.c. for me. I say call a spade a spade. AGW is simply a group of professionals who are too full of themselves to ever admit they were wrong….
___________________________
Actually I think the word “groupthink” is a nice politically correct way of saying MOB.
Definition of MOB.
a large or disorderly crowd; especially : one bent on riotous or destructive action.
a crowd bent on or engaged in lawless violence
Michael Whittemore says:
May 1, 2012 at 9:10 am
“This comes back to my point, if there is only 1 degree warming, then it wont be too bad, but if its 3 or 6, it will be bad.”
Earth has had thousands of ppm CO2 in the atmosphere before. Even in the warmest periods where warming caused outgas or release of CO2 from the oceans (sort of like Henry’s Law although more complicated than literally such alone), tropical regions had lush vegetation and were quite habitable.
We still dig up and burn fossil fuels believed to come from some of the abundant, lush vegetation of the age of the dinosaurs.
There is evidence that average sea surface temperatures near the equator have never been more than a degree or two Celsius warmer in the past billion years at least, IIRC (probably never). Not only does radiative heat loss go up with temperature to the fourth power (T^4) but also more water evaporation forms clouds which reflect more sunlight. Earth would never have stayed comfortable for life throughout the eons (aside from cold periods less favorable to life than warm periods) if it was a system dominated by excessive instability rather than actually much negative feedback stabilization.
Regarding sea level rise, it is impossible for the bulk of ice in Antarctica to melt faster than over centuries upon centuries minimum in any scenario, a result of its sheer thickness. Pretending merely for the sake of argument that it all melted vast ages from now, gradual loss of some current coastal lands over eons would be counterbalanced by new land becoming available for practical settlement in a warmer Antarctica itself, and coastal cities, like other cities and other technology, are renovated on far faster timescales anyway. Only in a small minuscule percentage of total residences do we use almost anything older than even a single century in construction. But that is merely for the sake of argument.
One illustration of the real picture in contrast is this:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
So much for the grandness (or not!) of late 20th century warming in even a little part of proper context.
(With Asian industrialization and all else, global human emissions increased throughout the whole period, from CO2 to aerosols, but the above is unsurprising compared to a graph I made in other context: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/newuploads/319xq.jpg discussed more at the end of http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature-history-a-look-at-multiple-timescales-in-the-context-of-the-shakun-et-al-paper/ ).
Aside from all else, how about waiting for the equivalent of that graph to look more than a little different, pretending it ever did in a way favoring CAGW, before embarking on measures of vast cost…
Also, average sea level rise rates in the second half 20th century were no more than about those in the first half of the 20th century or even in the late 19th century, since the end of the Little Ice Age, despite how human emissions rose more than a factor of 10 over that period:
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Holgate/sealevel_change_poster_holgate.pdf
Even the IPCC’s sea level rise rate graph (in the 2007 report IIRC) is rather similar to that in the above link if one looks closely, although they try hard to keep you from noticing; in fact, the low end of their estimate range for predictions of sea level rise over the 21st century by the year 2100 A.D. is merely comparable to the few inches in the 20th century, despite vast differences in human emissions.
There are pages upon pages more that could be written to better show matters, including more fully why future temperature rise even as a global average would be under 1 degree anyway in reality, but I am reminded of how rarely it is productive to argue with someone on the internet. Still, continuing a bit:
Michael Whittemore says:
May 1, 2012 at 9:10 am
“The “fix” might have to be geoengineering, but scientists don’t like messing with the earth, and would rather a carbon tax.”
Not “messing with the earth” is a belief of some environmentalists. Dr. Edward Teller, a real scientist, a brilliant physicist known colloquially as the father of the hydrogen bomb (someone I trust more than any CAGW-supporting environmentalist “scientist” who has never demonstrated true skill even aside from the honesty matter), estimated that the cost of geoengineering by stratospheric reflective particulates would be on the order of under 1% the cost of attempting to do so by means of CO2. The common claim (dishonesty) that any geoengineering would suddenly cause catastrophic net harm without warning, without prior observation of effects, is based on a fallacy which is readily debunked: Any done would be ramped up gradually over a number of years, not going from no effect to huge effect instantly. I don’t literally particularly support geoengineering for cooling (and AFAIK don’t think Dr. Teller necessarily did either), especially since warmer periods are better for agriculture and humanity anyway, but the point is that, if it was done, a global CO2 regime would be an inferior way of attempting it.
A carbon tax wouldn’t end the CO2 already in the atmosphere even if one pretended unrealistically that China cut their emissions lifting their people out of poverty (with China already by far the #1 emitter, with India and more to follow later), even if did much other than get more industry to flee the E.U. or U.S. to countries like China. However, pretending for the sake of argument that there was CO2 reduction, the main thing it would do is harm plant growth. Study after study has shown major rise in plant growth and water usage efficiency occurs under elevated CO2, aside from in some cases other limiting nutrients preventing that but still overall benefit.
There was a 5% rise in net primary productivity observed by satellites over the past 3 decades despite all other factors. Estimated global vegetation biomass in terms of carbon content increased from around 740 billion tons in 1910 A.D. to around 780 billion tons in 1990 A.D.:
http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/doers/doer34/t_fig2.gif
Some of that is from warming too, aside from and in addition to the CO2 increase, but that has also been beneficial.
Random example:
Response of Growth and Yield of Rice (Oryza sativa) to Elevated Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide in the Subhumid Zone of Sri Lanka:
“Increasing atmospheric CO2 is recognized as a major aspect of global climate change that would have a significant impact on the productivity of major agricultural crops. Two field experiments were done, with the objective of quantifying the response of a short-duration rice (Oryza sativa) variety (BG-300) to elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide, in the low elevation, subhumid zone of Sri Lanka. Grain yields of rice crops grown under elevated CO2 were 24 % and 39 % greater than the respective ambient treatments in the maha (January – March 2001) and yala (May – August, 2001) seasons. The results of this study demonstrate that elevated CO2 causes significant yield increases in rice, even when it is grown in warm, subhumid tropical climates.”
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118887984/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
A lot more discussion with many paper references is at:
http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/07TerrestrialPlants.pdf
Severe CO2 reduction would be geoengineering while worse than other methods: an ideological choice with huge negative side consequences for the biosphere (loss of plant growth), complex interactions with the biosphere (unlike the simpler case of some reflective dust in the stratosphere), and astronomical cost and ineffectiveness.
Michael Whittemore says:
May 1, 2012 at 9:10 am
“Put it this way, solar molten salt power stations which work during the night and day, is only a little bit more expensive than coal power. But with a carbon tax, coal power will go up in costs and solar molten salt power stations will become a cheaper option.
Over some years the mass production of this green technology will make it cheaper and at the same time will reduce the need to buy expensive coal. So at the end you get cheaper and cleaner electricity, like I said, pay a little to mitigate the risks, and reduce the chance of a 3 or even 6 degree warming and get sustainable renewable cheaper electricity. 🙂”
Actually I think solar power has much potential in the future, and, although my view on it is more based on potential technological improvements than current economics (as in really competitive as opposed to only in a world of higher energy costs with competitor prices raised by carbon taxes), I’ll accordingly skip what could be said otherwise.
But CO2 emissions relate to far more than electricity generation anyway. In fact, producing iron and cement are among major sources. Also, CO2 regulations would harm development of shale oil as a substitute for imported oil; there is extra CO2 released in the production process. Even the domestic shale gas production expansion of today is opposed by the types of environmentalist groups which build the CAGW movement.
Besides, top groups allied with, supported by, and largely comprising the CAGW movement aren’t really about reducing CO2 alone so much as using that as a lever to try to encourage and someday enforce low material consumption under their general form of environmentalist ideology (where “low material consumption” and “low energy consumption” are ways of not more frankly saying “poverty”). After Germany’s environmentalist Green Party got more influence, they have started a policy to shut down their nuclear reactors, even though that is actually leading to more fossil fuel power generation, which demonstrates strongly how even reducing CO2 is really secondary to their overall goals anyway (although they’d love the kind of power over industry that international CO2 regulation would give them).
Many articles:
https://www.google.com/search?q=germany+coal+power
——
edit:
RACookPE1978’s post at May 1, 2012 at 11:20am makes some good points; technically, I don’t agree with all of the exact language used, but, short of mere nitpicking, that doesn’t matter for the general theme, which highlights well some additional aspects to the matter.
Gail Combs said:
Actually I think the word “groupthink” is a nice politically correct way of saying MOB.
Definition of MOB.
a large or disorderly crowd; especially : one bent on riotous or destructive action.
a crowd bent on or engaged in lawless violence
——————————————————————
Sorry Gail, I must respectfully disagree. Disorderly crowds bent on violence are nothing to do with groupthink, or in-group-out-group, or any of the other many descriptions of why people in groups conform. You may wish to note that these descriptions relate to behaviour in organisational or structured environments, not to street mobs.
markx says:
May 1, 2012 at 11:39 am:
I pretty much agree with everything you wrote. Except for your last paragraph:
“It would appear to be the most unlikely scenario in the world that a third world nation just emerging from years of colonization, a brutal Japanese occupation and then a brutal war to evict the returning French would bother themselves for a moment with ‘spreading communism’ to their neighbours.”
How is that any different from China vs Taiwan? Communism’s #1 goal is to spread itself. The hardship of the proletariat is of no account. Ideology is all, and that is the danger. You can see the same ideology in the EPA, in Obama, in the Department of Education, in academia, etc. They are all totally opposed to American values and American exceptionalism.
The goal is an unelected, unaccountable government ruling over the American people, just like the EU does in Europe.
Well done! Great article!
Groupthink phenomenon, is a disorder too..
Its dysfunction precedes itself.
~Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Mods I haven’t been on here for a while. But one of my comments might have been lost to spam. THank you for checking.
~Chris