Guest essay by Joel O’Bryan
A read through of the presenter’s abstracts for the upcoming 2014 AGU Convention in San Francisco, December 15-19, I found these two presentation abstracts which caught my eye that I thought would be worth sharing with WUWT readers. Without further ado, here they are with my prefacing comments about both.
· With Halloween approaching, now is a good time to line up your kids for the scariest tale of all, The Extremely Severe Consequences of Catastrophic Climate Change.
Improving Communication About Potentially Catastrophic Risks of Climate Change
Robert Edward Thomas Ward, London School of Economics, London, WC2A, United Kingdom and Nicholas H Stern, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom
Abstract:
Scientific assessments of future climate change tend to focus on central estimates and may understate or ignore the significance of low probability outcomes that may have extremely severe consequences. This relative neglect of tail risks is partly a result of traditions in prediction and forecasting, and conservatism about phenomena for which few data and information exist.
The misinterpretation of such scientific assessments can have adverse results. Even though the central estimates of high emissions scenarios present obvious dangers, the tails of lower emissions scenarios still contain very serious risks which may be overlooked by policy-makers. Economic analyses may omit the possibility of catastrophic impacts, leading to substantial under-estimates of damage caused by climate change.
So how do we avoid these shortcomings and achieve more effective communication about the risks of climate change?
The scientific assessments of climate change differ in significant ways from the formal risk assessment methods successfully employed in other fields. We outline a ‘good practice’ approach to the identification, assessment and communication of potentially catastrophic risks based on examples from sectors such as civil engineering, national security and insurance.
We illustrate how this ‘good practice’ approach could be applied to provide a better presentation of some catastrophic tail risks that are outlined in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The risks we consider include the possibility of ‘extreme’ rises in temperature and sea level lying outside the central projections described in the report, and the plausibility of significant releases of methane from the thawing of permafrost.
Using these illustrations, we examine how scientific researchers can improve their communication about climate change to assist decision-making, and how policy-makers and politicians might respond differently to alternative presentations of information about the tail risks.
· The Ministry of Truth (aka, The Alliance for Climate Change Education) wants your children to join with them and the Girl Scouts with GLEE!! Indoctrinate your children now in the Politically Correct aspects of Climate Change and make them resistant to the reality-based facts and data on Earth’s climate! The proposal in abstract below echoes back to Projection Bias, where people subconsciously assumed that all others shared similar values and positions as themselves (or rather, values similar to how others viewed them).
As Karthik Narayanaswami of Harvard describes in “Analysis of Nazi Propaganda, A Behavioral Study,” the use of Projection Bias has its roots in pre-WWII Nazi youth indoctrination. Projection Bias reinforced the herd mentality, and reduced the opposition to the National Socialism’s cause. Furthermore, the indoctrination efforts also helped strengthen Ingroup Bias by targeting children, youth, and students in their propaganda, as seen in the picture of propaganda targeted toward German youth. This created a strong sense of communal organization, as was seen in the Hitler Youth programs.
Introducing:
Scaling Climate Change Communication for Behavior Change
Victoria Christine Rodriguez1, Matt Lappé2, June A. Flora3, Nicole M. Ardoin1 and Thomas N. Robinson1, (1)Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States, (2)Alliance for Climate Education, Oakland, CA, United States, (3)Stanford University, H-Star, Stanford, CA, United States
Abstract:
Ultimately, effective climate change communication results in a change in behavior, whether the change is individual, household or collective actions within communities. We describe two efforts to promote climate-friendly behavior via climate communication and behavior change theory. Importantly these efforts are designed to scale climate communication principles focused on behavior change rather than solely emphasizing climate knowledge or attitudes. Both cases are embedded in rigorous evaluations (randomized controlled trial and quasi-experimental) of primary and secondary outcomes as well as supplementary analyses that have implications for program refinement and program scaling. In the first case, the Girl Scouts “Girls Learning Environment and Energy” (GLEE) trial is scaling the program via a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for Troop Leaders to teach the effective home electricity and food and transportation energy reduction programs. The second case, the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) Assembly Program, is advancing the already-scaled assembly program by using communication principles to further engage youth and their families and communities (school and local communities) in individual and collective actions.
Scaling of each program uses online learning platforms, social media and “behavior practice” videos, mastery practice exercises, virtual feedback and virtual social engagement to advance climate-friendly behavior change. All of these communication practices aim to simulate and advance in-person train-the-trainers technologies.
As part of this presentation we outline scaling principles derived from these two climate change communication and behavior change programs.
Yes, the 2014 AGU has something for everyone!!!
The science is settled, but only for the brainwashed!
Brainwashed to the point of frontal lobotomy. How did the Germans not notice how their blonde-haired blue-eyed Aryan propaganda was completely opposite of Hitler himself?
It’s scary how people can become sheep of such magnitude.
If I read correctly, between the lines, the communication of risk assessment for the AGW crowd involves the fact that the highly unlikely event, based on a model which predicts poorly, should be used as exemplars to scare the hell out of common folk
Yep, that’s correct. The idea of Dr Ward is to take the unlikliest of extreme consequences and portray them, horror-movie style, on an unwitting population to enduce them to destroy their economies in a rush to de-carbonization… AND still call it science.
The referenced AGU paper was a great example for me. When I join the lessons from the latest post at Climate Etc about the risks of high solar and wind power penetration with this communication paper I realize we face much bigger risks from wind turbines than we can imagine. This has to be communicated to the people, so I already wrote and submitted an abstract about the subject.
Very large extremes occur at six to seven standard deviations out in a tail. Where do they propose to draw their line?
Scientific assessments of future climate change tend to focus on central estimates and may understate or ignore the significance of low probability outcomes that may have extremely severe consequences.
That’s why by the time it’s reported in the msm it becomes ‘Sea level to rise by up to 30m’ or ‘Climate change to raise temps by up to 10°C’. They always report the long tail in their long tales.
But what about the opposite long tail? “Climate change to raise temps by up to 10 C” should imply an equal probability of “FALLING temps by up to 8 C”. Policy makers should have to worry about both low probability outcomes at the same time.
I guess if you want to force large scale acceptance of nonsensical catastrophist pseudoscience, its helpful to review the last group who successfully forced large scale acceptance of nonsensical catastrophist pseudoscience.
It’s more evidence that the climate change meme is losing its influence.
After all, if fewer people are buying into our story, surely it’s only because we’re not communicating effectively. So if the big bad wolf doesn’t scare people, we need to tell them about the big bad polar bear. ‘Cos we know that as the polar bears disappear, they’re going to get really, really angry.
“But daddy, the polar bear aren’t disappearing”. “Now don’t interrupt, son, close your eyes, listen to the story and go to sleep.”
“Paradox of Science: The less plausible or logical a scientific idea, the more funding it will require.” — Liam Scheff, from his book “Official Stories”
Sorry, I’m afraid that both of these confusing abstracts have completely lost me – even though I attempted to read them twice. Maybe this style of writing is a direct consequence of ‘grant seeking’ warmists living in their fluffy world of make-believe. Utter gibberish. Heaven alone knows how those ‘Girl Guides’ (2nd abstract) are supposed to react to this nonsense.
I had problems understanding the grant-speak garbage.
As a Muslim, it saddens me to say that too many, uneducated young men and women have been persuaded by terrorist leaders to believe they will head straight to heaven if they die in suicide attacks. It is hard to believe that “highly educated” academics have persuaded themselves to believe the opposite — we will all go to hell if we don’t change.
The difference being? In the CAGW religion , all their members are radicalized.
It’s a pre-condition.
It saddens me to think that many educated adults believe in the fairy tales of heaven and hell at all.
Heaven and hell are universal human archetypes. All you have to do is read the literature on consciousness research, specifically related to psychedelics, and you will come to understand this, but only after years of reading and reflection on the implications of this. Or maybe even after a few sessions yourself. It is corroborated by anthropological literature relating to every culture studied on the face of the planet. For materialists to dismiss or denigrate something that is this well established is just a measure of their ignorance. There are reasons motion pictures on the topic sell lots of tickets, mainly because it resonates in the human psyche.
@groovimus
All the wishful thinking, brainwashing, and cognitive dissonance still don’t make such fanciful things true. Just because people tend to want to believe in such things, to make themselves feel better about bad things that happen, doesn’t mean I have to ignore the fact that there is simply no evidence to support them. You’re basically saying that because so many people have believed in it, it must be true. Doesn’t work for me. The same way believing in CAGW without evidence doesn’t work for me.
No doubt Ward and Stern will be flying to San Francisco in December to present their paper. They really need to change their behaviour to make it more ‘climate-friendly’.
I’m thinking walking barefoot ought to be the right mode of transport.
There is also a tail risk of catastrophic cooling. It might even be as likely as the warm-end tail risk.
“It might even be as likely as the warm-end tail risk.”
It’s inevitable actually.
Not inevitable.
There will inevitably be another ice-age but will it inevitably be catastrophic?
In another 1000 years we may have technology that let’s us ignore the problem as a triviality.
The future is never inevitable.
William the Conqueror didn’t dream of Messerschmitts when he invaded.
This year I got a new furnace and AC unit ($11k), and this week got a new boiler for the floor heat ($5k).
Why am I mentioning this? Well, because the people building these things and installing them are fully engaged on the gravy train…. I mean, mission of informing us all about “climate change”. No, I don’t believe there is any shortage of information about the lower probability “possibilities”… not even remotely. I heard several of them this week, so I know they’re out there.
Here’s an example: the furnace no longer vents to the chimney. It now blasts a LOUD blast of lukewarm air to the outside world at waist level. This, presumably, is to demonstrate how amazingly efficient the furnace is, since it extracts so much heat from the combustion that there is hardly any getting outside. Right, sure. I suspect all winter long the north side of my house is going to be filled with slush and below the vent will be solid ice as that slush melts and runs down the sidewalk.
The boiler, which is an almost direct replacement for the old one (in-slab floor heating, VERY efficient, and builds a great thermal mass so even in the event of a power failure in a winter climate it would take days to get the house dangerously cold), but it has a few enhancements. These include an electronic damper to close the chimney vent, and an auto-igniter to eliminate the pilot light. Total cost of this boiler is almost $2000 higher than before.
I also have 2 water heaters, which allows virtually continuous use of hot water. I was informed, strenuously, by the Lennox installer that this was a horrible thing for the environment, and if the rules were to change they would actually be forced to report me. Seriously. For killing polar bears, or drowning NYC, or something.
the non-roof vent is simply to avoid a place where water/snow can get past the roof. Roof perforations are bad: they leak. Most of the cost increase is inflation. Next tme have the nosey installer look into the end of the discharge pipe while you pop/test the satey valve….
Actually, for your furnace, the exhaust leaving almost horizontally DOES have to do with the temperature of the exhaust. That’s also why your new “chimney” is likely PVC pipe and not metal. I had a similar high efficiency gas furnace installed a couple of years ago. The exhaust leaving a typical fireplace, gas furnace, or boiler is usually pretty hot (hot enough to burn you). This creates a thermal updraft in the chimney that carries away all the exhaust gases, and at the same time, sucks fresh air into the combustion chamber. It’s also a big waste of energy.
The newer furnaces are so good at extracting heat from the combustion that the exhaust gases are not hot enough to create a strong updraft in a vertical chimney. So, they have to make it almost horizontal. They also have to add a dedicated air-intake port, and the exhaust is forced out of the system (hence the loud blasting), the things are almost fuel-injected.
They also have to put the exhaust line a a slight angle, usually sloping back toward the furnace. The primary exhaust gas from the furnace is water vapor, which will condense on its way out. Your heat exchanger will either be equipped with a pump, or it will feed straight into a drain. But, either way, you’ll notice the system generating copious amounts of water whether you’re running the heat or the air.
Now, typically, they point these exhaust lines at the ground to keep out rain. I assume this is how yours is configured. But, since it’s just PVC, you can get a couple of elbow joints and point the thing at some angle up and away from the building. Just drill a hole in the lowest part of this so any rain that does get in will drain.
[PVC will resist the rust otherwise exaggerated by that condensing hot water in the sloped exhaust pipe. .mod]
Taking of writing with clarity (see my earlier comment), I found this recently . . . . makes sense.
An Eco Journey
Even though we haven’t asked you whether you can afford it, on your behalf, we have invested all of your money in a brand new top-of-the-range luxury eco-coach. Everyone is compelled to board our coach – as we are taking you on a magical, mystical, ‘green’ trip. You are forced to come along – no ifs, no buts. Once aboard, you will also need to pay extra for your seats at well-above standard inflation rates.
As yet, we don’t know where we are taking you and we are not sure if there are any brakes on the coach – but we cannot stress enough how important this journey will be in order to save the planet. Those gullible enough to join in with our eco-values are guaranteed the best seats. Those who question what we are doing will stand in the aisle. Anyone who argues will be stowed away out of sight in the luggage bay. We promise, by way of a complicated feed-in-energy tariff, to reward those passengers who bring their own fuel with them – as this will help us to achieve our target of 14,000 miles without stopping by 2015.
As a bonus, every passenger will be issued with a complementary road map full of confusing irrelevant information to read on their journey. It’s also going to be a very bumpy ride as our coach driver is totally blind. Enjoy your trip.
” by the Lennox installer that this was a horrible thing for the environment, and if the rules were to change they would actually be forced to report me.”
Guess you will be riding with me in the luggage bay.
Fear has always been the great manipulator of the masses, enslaving them to the will of the powerful few. But the powerful few have to make that fear convincing. Otherwise the masses can only be controlled with force. In the case of catastrophic climate change, mother nature, rationality and science are simply not cooperating to produce the appropriate amount of fear.
Either the powerful few will watch their potential power whither away, or they will resort to force. I would like to believe that force is not as viable an option as it once was due to today’s (relatively) free flow of information that is unprecedented in human history. Human nature, however, is no different now than it was 1,000 years ago.
Interesting times!
You’ve got it. Mother nature just didn’t play their game and now we are at the stage where the kinds of outrageous nonsense they came up with just a few years ago cannot be support as we get more and more data.
They are like contemptuous old goats staked to a peg, who whilst they huff and puff and look fierce, their antics are just shortening the leash until they just look pathetic.
Remember 50m tidal waves from global warming? What’s it now? 5cm? Remember the “only a few mating pairs living at the poles”, now it’s “we may soon (never today) notice something small”.
We need to communicate climate change better. I know! Let’s double-down on scary, and recruit kids shutting off lights, turning down thermostats, and pestering their parents to shop local. That always works.
By “communicate” they don’t mean communicate but entirely the opposite, because what they really want is for the public to have less access to information and less ability to read all the evidence that proves them wrong”.
In other words, they want to go back to the pre-internet system, where the only people allowed to publish on climate were a few academics (like them) and a few selected journalists (like them).
The second ones sounds like a academic rehash of the 10:10 splatter fest video making it clear to children what happens to those with ‘incorrect ‘ thoughts
Once again let us remember that the words ‘for the good of the people ‘ are often to be heard shortly before something which is no way good and certainly not something the people actual need nor want .
Is there anyone who doesn’t recognize this as old’ time Hellfire and Brimstone Religion, recycled for a new age of gullibility? And OF COURSE you put the greatest fear of punishment into the children, the weak, and the old, because they are the easiest prey!!!
This kind of nonsense is as old as mankind itself. The hardcore eco-warmists aren’t all that far from human sacrifice even now.
GAIA MUST BE APPEASED!!!
Just wanted to point out that the early Christians adopted the locals’ version of hell. The fire and brimstone from the Roman Hades and Hell from the Viking for The Hole, as well as others. I guess today if we sin we will spend eternity studying Earth System Science at Penn State.
These kinds of idiots in academia really are a dying breed as parties like UKIP gain support as a direct result of their anti climate nonsense approach. Now even the UK Guardian is seeing the writing on the wall:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/23/eu-climate-policy-being-taken-hostage-by-ukip-meps-say
Without more overt formatting or font changes, it’s hard to be sure where the quoted abstract ends and the commentary begins. It is also unclear whether the emphasis (bolding) was in the original or added as part of the commentary.
I can guess which parts are commentary but readers shouldn’t have to guess. More to the point, you shouldn’t be stooping to the tactics of the opposition, even when criticizing them. Be clear, be precise and be professional. Please consider updating the post above for better clarity.
They do not want the unwashed masses to use all the energy, much of it need to be saved for the believing elite, so they need to train the masses to use less, don’t cha know.
Bingo!
Is it just me? I find it difficult to differentiate what is quoted from the articles and what is commentary by the blogger.
Yes, I agree.
It never occurred to me that the Nazi references were in the abstracts.
They were clearly the article going all Godwin. Or so it seemed clear to me.
But other commenters, further up, had a different spin on it.
And now I don’t know at all.
They should have used block quotes for quotes / abstracts. I found it unclear too.
My Apologies to all for the running together of the abstracts’ text and my comments. I had placed text formatting and line breaks in my original submission to WUWT that AW must have had to remove for HTML posting. AW warns of that in the submission instructions, but I don’t know exactly what is OK and what isn’t. My error.
I’ve got to figure out how to do the cool shadow boxes to put things like quoted material and abstracts for any future submissions.
Joel
[Using the typical html angled brackets: {blockquote} insert the writer’s name if you can, add the quoted text, then {/blockquote} .mod]
To help the reader know the identity of a simple quote I always end with square brackets with a name and date or time, such as this.
“To be, or not to be, that is the question —” [Hamlett, 1623]
[however, on this site, the mods reserve square brackets for their use. Not yours. 8<) .mod]
The origins of the Nanny state?
I believe that the original alarm about the health-threatening effects of smoking was sounded in 1938 by the American, Raymond Pearl, generally recognised as one of the foremost biologists of the early Twentieth Century. I don’t know whether the Nazi/German study was inspired by Pearl, but Pearl himself was lambasted by Big Tobacco and its media and Congressional flunkies — maybe even the Koch brothers, too.
This is probably not the best subject to use for decrying the evils of nanny-statism and extolling the virtues of rampant free enterprise. (I note, Jimbo, that you made no attempt to advocate any particular point of view.)
A creepy, offensive, ignorance-increasing call to propaganda dressed up as a science paper.
The elite has ALWAYS claimed that they need to rule over the masses because the ignorant masses don’t know what’s good for them, and need instruction from those who do. Abraham Lincoln described these arguments in his debates with Stephen Douglas, and although he was specifically speaking about the institution of slavery, he made a point of generalizing his argument to include *all* of those who desire to rule over others “for their own good”:
“What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will, whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of this country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent…”
– Abraham Lincoln, July 10, 1858
They got an early start too:
“The people became numerous . . .
The god was depressed by their uproar
Enlil heard their noise,
He exclaimed to the great gods
The noise of mankind has become burdensome . . .”
~from the Summerian Epic known as the ‘Atrahasis’
circa (approx) 1646–1626 BCE
Seems the Elite have appealed to the Gods to shower plagues, famines and ruin on the general populace for eons, just to cull the herd a bit.
The ECO religion has managed to inspire that which few cults have before it, its instilled the desire to commit economic suicide in its followers, which is tantamount to genocide by any other name.
It manages to jump the divide, and en-train all peoples of all religions or of a secular nature, to adopt self destruction as an act of piety.
This conveyor-belt of willing Human sacrifices, trundles passively to the sound of wind chimes and pan-flute musak, along its merry concourse to the charnel pit of history.
Its the equivalent of a some weird kind of mental Ebola, only they’re hopping for 99% kill rate.
Isolation is probably the best protection, can we get an Island sanctuary for the non-alarmists?
Australia anyone?
Agriculture not so scary-
http://blog.nature.org/science/files/2014/06/GlobalLandAg.jpg
I found that, while the global food supply per person has increased over the last 15 years, we have simultaneously decreased the total amount of land we’re using to produce it.
Here’s why my finding could be read as good news:
♦ It means that, compared to a few decades ago, agriculture is the driver behind less terrestrial habitat loss. For example, in the Eastern United States, significantly more agricultural lands are being converted to forest than vice versa (Loveland and Acevedo 2006.)
♦ It also means that the overall intensification of agriculture — producing more crops in the same or even smaller areas — is continuing. And intensification is sometimes a process that can be made environmentally sustainable, by reducing both the use of resource-intensive inputs (e.g., fertilizer, pesticides, and fresh water) and negative outputs (e.g., water pollution and soil loss).
It also means that the widespread assumption among many environmentalists that agriculture is just chewing up more and more habitat at a faster rate each year is simply not correct”
This report could do without the added sarcasm. The pathetic subject matter speaks for itself, but adding the snarky tone does nothing but turn off any fencesitter-people who might otherwise be alarmed about reading such naked conspiracies to modify their behavior.
http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/02/improving-food-security-sahel-difficult-achievable
Why the still from ‘Deep Impact’? Or are comet impacts increasing due to climate change? Yes, I suppose they are – climate change causes just about everything else!
I seem to recall reading about someone proposing that the atmosphere would expand due to warming which would cause meteors that would otherwise have missed to be slowed and therefore end up impacting.
I THINK it was meant seriously.
The Union of Concerned Scientists have the ear of Canada’s leftwing National TV and Radio. Yesterday they were claiming that Canadian scientists were being muzzled by the government. Meanwhile, they (CBC) did a piece claiming Miami Beach will soon be under a metre of water.
http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV%20Shows/The%20National/ID/2557505116/
I chose a building site on a hill, and my water to water heat pump keeps 150 gallons of domestic hot water at 110 degrees F all winter long using waste heat from the heat pump, the colder it gets, the more waste heat I get.
Although it looks like folks in Miami have a great evaporative cooling system close(r) at hand. Course they could run a water to water heat pump in cooling mode and live cool as long as they keep it above sea level Always a positive side to anything.
Wayne from the (about to be) Great White North.
Wayne – If the CBC had any morals, they’d do some fact-checking on the official sea-level numbers for Miami and other locations. Same as most everywhere else- a couple of mm per year with some indications of slowing.
The rants about muzzling Canadian scientists are true only in the context of pushback against what has become rampant, anti-government political activity by taxpayer-funded employees, mostly by those in eco-related sectors. I hesitate to call them scientists. Hopefully, the free ride for watermelon NGOs can be somewhat quelled. Who runs our government and economy anyway? / mark on Salt Spring Island
This created a strong sense of communal organization…………………..
“…virtual feedback and virtual social engagement to advance climate-friendly behavior change“.
Translation:
” your individual climate guilt will be re-enforced until you are willing to turn in your parents to the climate police via our website.”
What is the purpose of this: “achieve more effective communication about the risks of climate change?”
There is not presented any solution to the risks, so the only point is to scare the hell out of peoble so they run around like headless chicken.
I had no problem discerning comments vs. the abstracts. A big difference in style, academic obfuscation versus clarity.
Warmhiel!!!!!!
So where is this extreme heat that will cause CAGW? It’s been awhile now, so maybe they could tell us how we have a rise in co2 and yet temps have remained flat or have actually declined.
I don’t know…am I the only one who reads this crap thinking that a bunch of naive teenagers must be in charge?
I’m simply emotionally exhausted by pretending to read this nonsense and figure out what’s wrong – from here on in, the burden of proof is on the idiots claiming the sky is falling (it should have been this way all along).
Maybe if everybody had a real job, where they actually had to worry about delivering some value-add, the amount of BS would go down.
These abstracts are so over the top grant whoring they defy reasonable explanation or opposing comment.
This morning the BBC is touting the scary ocean acidification meme … http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29746880
“He said the current rate of acidification is believed to be unprecedented within the last 65 million years – and may threaten fisheries in future.”
Well, there you go:: believed to be unprecedented. Any questions before we commit civilisational suicide in order to prevent the death of our civilisation?
“Improving Communication About Potentially Catastrophic Risks of Climate Change(, by) Robert Edward Thomas Ward, London School of Economics, London, WC2A, United Kingdom”
Hey Bob,
Pick a name.
Thanks.
From Ward’s AGU paper:
“We illustrate how this ‘good practice’ approach could be applied to provide a better presentation of some catastrophic tail risks that are outlined in the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC. The risks we consider include the possibility of ‘extreme’ rises in temperature and sea level lying outside the central projections described in the report…”
They’re not called “two-tailed” distributions for nothing, so how about the “low end” non-catastrophic tail, which is the tail that is actually doing the wagging these days. The scouts could learn to fear 6-inch sea level rises, half-degree temperature changes, school-closing snow storms, the horror of a few more hurricanes just like those of the past, increased food production, and expansionist polar bears.
Climate Scientists™ will call it “climate insensitivity training”.
I take it they don’t have a session on actually analyzing probability statistics correctly…
How have the mighty (AGU) fallen!