From the American Council on Science and Health comes this interesting but awkward moment in science communications.
By Alex Berezow
Recently, I gave a seminar on “fake news” to professors and grad students at a large public university. Early in my talk, I polled the audience: “How many of you believe climate change is the world’s #1 threat?”
Silence. Not a single person raised his or her hand.
Was I speaking in front of a group of science deniers? The College Republicans? Some fringe libertarian club? No, it was a room full of microbiologists.
How could so many incredibly intelligent people overwhelmingly reject what THE SCIENCE says about climate change? Well, they don’t. They just don’t see it as big of a threat to the world as other things. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of them felt that antibiotic resistance and pandemic disease were the biggest global threats. One person thought geopolitical instability was the biggest concern.
I told them that I believed poverty was the world’s biggest threat. The reason is poverty is the underlying condition that causes so much misery in the world. Consider that 1.3 billion people don’t have electricity. And then consider how the lack of that basic necessity — what the rest of us take completely for granted — hinders their ability to develop economically and to succeed, let alone to have access to adequate healthcare. If we fix poverty, we could stop easily preventable health problems, such as infectious disease and malnutrition.
Was I booed out of the room? No, the audience understood why I believed what I did. But woe unto you who try to have a similar conversation with climate warriors.
Woe Unto You, Bret Stephens
Conservative columnist Bret Stephens, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, landed a new gig at the New York Times. His very first column, “Climate of Complete Certainty,” caused much weeping and gnashing of teeth. And probably the rending of garments. What did he say that caused so much outrage?
In a nutshell, his thesis was that certainty often backfires. He used the Hillary Clinton campaign as an example; in his view, certainty of victory was one factor in her defeat. Next, Mr. Stephens drew an analogy with climate science, worrying that the certainty expressed by the most vocal proponents of major climate policy reforms are speaking with a sense of certainty that is not well-founded. He warned against taking imperfect models too seriously and the dangers of hyperbolic doom-mongering.
It often irks me when political commentators write about science, usually because they haven’t the foggiest clue what they’re talking about. But Mr. Stephens’ article used reasonable and cautious language, and to my knowledge, he didn’t write anything that was factually incorrect. He simply concluded, as I myself have, that doomsday prophesying is wrong — and even if it was right, it convinces few people, anyway. (Do the antics of the Westboro Baptist Church change anyone’s mind?)
Yet, the reaction was swift and entirely predictable. Vox, whose stated mission is to “explain the news,” called Mr. Stephens a “bullshitter.” GQ ran the headline, “Bret Stephens Is Why Liberals Have Every Right to Be Dicks.” And Wikipedia (whose founder is going to try to solve the problem of fake news) labeled him a “contrarian.”
All that because Mr. Stephens warned against speaking hyperbolically. The concept of irony appears to be lost on his critics.
Can Smart People Disagree About the Threat of Climate Change?
What so many in the media (and apparently the climate science community) fail to understand is that people have different values and priorities. Foreign policy analysts are terrified of North Korea. Economists fear Brexit and a Eurozone collapse. Geologists, especially those in the Pacific Northwest, fear a huge earthquake. Experts across the spectrum perceive threats differently, usually magnifying those with which they are most familiar.
That means smart people can accept a common core of facts (such as the reality of anthropogenic global warming) without agreeing on a policy response.
Yet instead of being a place to debate a policy response for complex science issues, the media have chosen to be an extension of the militant Twitterverse. Even if you are just discussing courses of action, you are not allowed to deviate from climate orthodoxy lest you be labeled a science-denying heretic.
Perhaps journalists should spend more time talking to microbiologists.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
1.3 billion people live without electricity? Yeah? Does that include the Amish/Mennonite communities who, when the world didn’t end in 2000AD as they believed would happen, still decided to abstain from electricity?
Are you aware that until 1925, housing was commonly NOT wired for electrical usage in general? Seriously, there is a huge flaw in that statement alone. People survived quite well for multiple millenia without electricity. I have two antique oil lamps that provide more than adequate lighting to do things if the power goes out. I’m hardly left in the dark, and no, I do not have a working TV, haven’t since 2012. Don’t want one. That doesn’t mean I’m bereft of the latest headlines or don’t know where to find the best prices for grocery shopping. I have a daily paper delivered to my front door. Wednesdays are the day the sale papers appear in my mailbox, no electricity involved at all.
Living without electricity does NOT make anyone poverty-stricken. I’m surprised at anyone saying that living without it makes you automatically poverty-stricken. That is just not true. Poverty is more a state of mind than an economic level.
The problem is that now billions are reliant on electricity through grids, without adequate backup alternatives.
Sara, think of the millions who live in apartments, inner city slums, hospitals, nursing homes, trailer parks, and all the big cities in the US. The death rates without electricity would be catastrophic. And things would get worse over time with, the breakdown in law enforcement, roving packs of looters and killers, lack of water supplies, sewage collection, transport and treatment, lack of medical care, mass starvation, pandemic diseases, and the failure of many other things.
The entire infrastructure that provides your groceries, newspapers, lamps and even roads, it’s entirely dependent upon electricity. You are rich enough (as a society) to be able to afford decent living conditions without much electricity, simply because the society on which you depend has adequate and cheap electricity.
‘afford decent living conditions’ – I think that depends on what you mean by ‘decent’. I’ve visited an Amish harness maker to get repairs done to bridles and saddles, and not only was his entire house ‘decent’, there wasn’t a power/phone line pole for miles in any direction.
Loss of infrastructure that you are used to will create a greater sense of havoc and catastrophe than it would if you were not dependent on it.
The assumption that we are only well off, and can only have ‘decent lives’ if we have electricity is incorrect. If this were 1817, you’d be wondering whether or not you could have gas piped into your home for lighting and how much it would cost to install the latest innovation, the flushable toilet.
And yet, as I said previously, it was not until 1925 that wiring houses for electricity became and common thing. It wasn’t that it was not available. It was that not everyone though it was necessary and certainly was not required.
Granted, Chimp, but there are plenty of people who are, and have been for some time, ‘off the grid’ and either do without electricity intentionally, or generate it themselves. Included in that ‘do without’ part are people whose lives are still nomadic and do not use or need electricity, and people who still live in primitive environments where no electricity is available and in many cases is not wanted. Three places I’m referring to are the Amazon basin, Mongolia where nomadic herders still move their sheep from one place to another seasonally, and parts of southeast Asia, never mind the Amish/Mennonite communities who decided to continue with their non-electricity lives. I think we could learn something from all of them.
You have a point Sara. I am accustomed to electricity and modern convenience. But I can also live completely without if need be, and am set up for it. Not that I want to go back to my cave, but I could if need be. I would probably miss the internet though, since then wouldn’t get my daily fix of WUWT. We all still need a sense of connection…belonging. Some of these ultra poor poverty stricken people are the happiest people on earth.
When I look back at my life, some of my happiest times when I was younger were when I had nothing, no electricity, and no direction home. Freed of any possessions. So, maybe the Bhutanese have it right: It’s not the GNP of a country, but the Gross National Happiness (GNH)
Ron, do you bother reading what you write? “Some of these ultra poor poverty stricken people are the happiest people on earth.”
I’ve lived there, and they ain’t happy folks. Especially when their kid gets sick, the nanny goat dries up, etc.
Sara,
I’ve lived without electricity both at home, by choice, and abroad because it wasn’t available. When I was a kid, we used a windmill to pump water and outhouses for sanitation. We cooked with wood indoors in the winter and outdoors in the summer.
But even people living off the grid in the US benefit from the fact of electricity available elsewhere. For instance, as a kid, my family had cars and farm equipment made of aluminum, smelted by electrical power from the then-under construction Columbia River dams. The world could not feed itself today without electrical power, and fossil fuels, of course.
When given the choice, most people prefer to have power. Most off the grid would like to get on it, to obtain labor-saving devices, refrigeration for food and drugs and of course TV and the Internet. Granted, cooling can be done with propane, but it’s usually delivered by a vehicle or pipeline requiring electricity, and gas pumping generally also relies on electrical power, although not always.
Sara, have you lived for a significant period of time in a Third World Country? And I don’t mean in a city apartment or country villa.
“Most off the grid would like to get on it, to obtain labor-saving devices, refrigeration for food and drugs and of course TV and the Internet.”
Chimp, you just made that up.
Nope. Having lived among people without electricity, what they want is refrigerators, even more than the Internet, about which they know little.
“Poverty is more a state of mind than an economic level …’.
=====================================
Poverty as a state of mind:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RNmdCDV4UbU/UkrNXvFVDtI/AAAAAAAAAGw/GYgc8ZQnayI/s1600/poverty.jpg
Ah, the charms of the bucolic life. Who wouldn’t want their kids to grow up (maybe) there?
The smugness of the comfortable Western mind. Neo-colonialism? Did you mean the White Man’s Burden? Let’s have a contest as to the most patronizing person on this thread. Sara? Chimp? Ron?
Thanks, Sara, you said most of what I was going to say.
To add to your comments, people who live in areas without electricity often choose to. They have decided that the lack of electricity is not the most important thing to them.
‘I told them that I believed poverty was the world’s biggest threat. The reason is poverty is the underlying condition that causes so much misery in the world. Consider that 1.3 billion people don’t have electricity. And then consider how the lack of that basic necessity — what the rest of us take completely for granted — hinders their ability to develop economically and to succeed, let alone to have access to adequate healthcare. If we fix poverty, we could stop easily preventable health problems, such as infectious disease and malnutrition.’
This is bordering on neo-colonialism. How people live is none of our business.
Those 1.3 billion also lack access to a lot of other things, due to lack of electricity.
And what if they choose to do without those things?
‘Those 1.3 billion also lack access to a lot of other things, due to lack of electricity.’
What’s your point? People live in different ways. Once you decide that your way is better, you have taken the first step towards colonialism.
They don’t live like you do. Get over it. Don’t try to ‘fix’ them.
‘If we fix poverty’ is a justification for colonialism.
Betcha those voluntarily living without electricity demand a hospital with it.
[blockquote]no electricity involved at all[/blockquote]
So you wash by hand? You go to the river to get water? Let me know how can you write here without electricity!
The Amish/Mennonites never have had a predicted date for the apocalypse.
PS: For the most part Mennonites do not shun modern conveniences, they just prefer to concentrate on a simpler lifestyle. In several of the towns I have lived in/visited, the best restaurants were run by Mennonites.
The Left has got very desperate and is grasping at straws, their hyperbolic doom mongering has alienated many, I have leftist friends and they are very idealistic, too much so IMHO and it blinds them to reality.
In my view, tyranny that displaces humanity and the right of self-determination (classical liberalism) is the greatest risk to the future of prosperity and humanity. Glimpses of a future apocalyptic vision may be seen in N.Korea, theocratic autocracies, eco-socialist bureaucracies, policy-based evidence and so on.
Specialization induced myopia is the greatest threat in learned circles. Specialization is for insects..Lazarus Long (from Robert Heinlein’s novels).
Climate change has been happening for eons, long before Mankind made use of fossil fuels. Based on the work that has been done on climate models one can conclude that the climate change we have been experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero.
The AGW conjecture is just too full of holes to defend. One researcher found that the basic calculations of the Planck climate sensivity of CO2 ( that is the climate sensivity of CO2 not taking into consideration any feedbacks) is too great by a factor of more than 20 because those making the calculatoins forgot to include the fact that a doubling of CO2 will cause a slight but very significant lowering of the dry lapse rate in the torposphere which is a cooling effict. So instead of 1.2 degrees C, a better value for the Planck sensivity of CO2 is .06 degrees C.
Then there is the issue of feedbacks. The idea has been that CO2 based warming will cause more H2O to enter the atmosphere which will cause even more warming because H2O is the primary so called greenhouse gas. Many like to assume that H2O amplifies CO2 based warming by a factor of 3 or more. But this ignore’s the fact that H2O is a major coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. According to some models, more heat energy is transported by H2O then by both LWIR absorption band radiation and convection combined. Evidence of H2O’s cooling effect is that the wet lapse rate is significantly lower than the dry lapse rate. The feedback also has to be negative for the Earth’s climate to have been stable enough for life to evolve. So a more realistic assessment of the effect of H2O is that H2O diminishes the warmiing effect of CO2 by a factor of 3 yielding climate sensivity of CO2 of .02 degrees C which is trivial.
A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the action of heat trapping, trace gases with LWIR absorpiong bands. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass reduces cooling by convection. It is a convective greenhouse effect and not a radiant greenhouse effect. So too on Earth. The surface of the Earth is 33 degrees warmer because of the atmosphere because gravity limits cooling by convection. The Earth’s convective greenhouse effect is a function of the heat capacity of the atmosphere, the pressure gradiant, and the depth of the troposphere. As derived from first principals the Earth’s convective greenhouse effect keeps the surface of the Earth on average 33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be. 33 degrees C is the derived amount and 33 degrees C is what has been observed. There is no additional warmth caused by a radiant greenhouse effect. A radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed on Earth or on any planet in the solar system with a thick atmosphere. The AGW conjecture depends upon the existance of a radiant greenhouse effect but such an effect does not exist so the AGW conjecture is nothing but science fiction. If CO2 did effect climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened.
Mankind needs to stop spending time and resources trying to solve a problem that Mankind does not have the power to solve. It would be far better to spend those same time and resources solving problems that can be solved by Mankind.
Water vapor is another part of convective heat transfer ..low molecular weight means it partially circumvents gravity. High latent heat of vaporization too. Most get lost in the albedo effect of clouds..trivial compared to enthalpy of vaporization.
Much as I like electricity I doubt it is the single thing necessary to eliminate poverty. Look at the Romans, they didn’t have wiring and look what they did for us.
True. They gave us the society and infrastructure on which to build our society and technology to the point where we could generate and use electricity.
That way we no longer have to survive on slavery to have a decent standard of living, unlike those Romans.
They also had lots of slaves.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
The number one threat to humankind is … stupidity.
The number one threat to the world, however, is an invalid concept, since the world could “care” care less.
Then it looks as if humanity had the seeds of its own destruction built in…
No.
Sounds like they are scientist that deal with science that is not restricted to staying within “the nine dots” of climate seance.
A good example.
Steve Koonin recently wrote
“The crucial scientific question for policy isn’t whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. . . . Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax:”
Wikipedia writes
“Ten days after Koonin wrote this, Jeffrey Kluger in Time [11] called Koonin’s piece disingenuous if not dishonest. Koonin simply used the old debating trick of setting up a strawman to knock down by misconstruing what climate scientists mean when they say the climate debate is “settled.” “…they mean that the fake debate over whether climate change is a vast hoax is finished,” writes Kluger. He goes on to state that every point Koonin made is and has for years been widely acknowledged by climate scientists, very few of whom utilize the kind of overzealous language their critics commonly use.”
The climate scientists themselves may or may not use apocalyptic language, however their followers most certainly do. If wasn’t skeptics who declared that Antarctica would soon be the only continent capable of supporting life.
It wasn’t the skeptics who keep claiming that the oceans are going to rise 100 feet in a century.
PS: Hansen and Mann have certainly made their share of apocalyptic pronouncements, and most people consider them to be climate “scientists”.
Is it just me who sees the hypocrisy in the Kluger comments?
Interesting defense of Hansen.
“When I interviewed James Hansen I asked him to speculate on what the view outside his office window could look like in 40 years with doubled CO2. I’d been trying to think of a way to discuss the greenhouse effect in a way that would make sense to average readers. I wasn’t asking for hard scientific studies. It wasn’t an academic interview. It was a discussion with a kind and thoughtful man who answered the question. You can find the description in two of my books, most recently The Coming Storm.”
I just can’t wrap my mind around the “certainty” expressed by climate science practitioners related to CAGW. And the extreme lengths taken to twist data or reasoning, or to ignore or attack contrary information.
The ongoing failure of the IPCC climate models should give anyone pause. Certainly, AR5’s arbitrary cooling the near term model projections is a dead giveaway of models’ unfitness to justify fundamental changes to our societies, economies and energy systems. [I gave that one to Dr. Curry as a comment for her report to the attorneys, and she used it.]
On May 4, 2017, we have moved the sea ice processing to a new server. This implied switching to a newer version of the mapping software GMT (Generic Mapping Tools), from version 4 to version 5.
In principle, everything should stay as before, with one exception:
The newer GMT version also uses newer and more accurate Antarctic coastlines. However, we will stick with the landmask that comes with the AMSR2 satellite date as it was (though it is not entirely up to date) in order to keep the sea ice extent time series consistent.
DMI not updated yet either. Coincidental?
Forrest I go through Judy’s Blogroll to Arctic sea ice blog Daily graphs 4th graph down Arctic sea ice extent had the comment
Some graphs are very unreliable due to the proprietor and his mates but his blog seems to support up to date links
citing , Sea ice remote sensing using AMSR-E 89 GHz channels J. Geophys. Res.,vol. 113,
The other link that is broken is the DMI Daily Arctic mean temperatures north of 80NDMI seems very sensitive to political pressure and adjust their graphs down every time it seems to return to the mean, or above.
So go here for your graphs of sea ice:
https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
and don’t forget this:
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Sea ice extent still tracking 2015/16 with only 2012 and 2007 lower – but thinner, less volume and more broken up, with much less thick/multi year ice I(and most of that heading out the Fram Strait to melt)
going to be a roller coaster ride to a record low in 2017
Yawn, you are boring, Griff.
I’m frightened Toto….
You gonna go up there and fix it are ya Griffy? Good luck to ya. Now get back to making it colder outside, spring is here and summer is comin’!
Notice the change in Griff’s story. Not long ago, it was all about how the ice extents were the lowest EVAH and that this was proof that the arctic had entered a death spiral and soon there would be no ice at all.
Now that the arctic has failed to comply with his earlier pronouncements he’s screaming that while the arctic has rebounded from the lowest levels EVAH (something he previously claimed to be impossible) the fact that ice levels are still low is proof that the death spiral is still around the corner.
Thanks Forrest, and Griff (JCH in disguise? Only joking) Griff I notice DMI is now above 3 of the 4 most recent years. Only a temporary phenomenon I guess?
IMO, the greatest direct and immediate threat to humanity is significant global cooling. Such as a volcanic event like Mt. Tambora in 1815, or Laki in 1783. If we were to miss one crop in the northern hemisphere, then all bets are off that billions wouldn’t starve or die in some type of war or calamity. Perhaps all out nuclear war would also provide this cooling, on top of the misery of the blasts themselves.
Therefore, in the scheme of things, the 1 extra degree from human induced AGW we have managed to warm the planet in the last 150 years is the best insurance policy we have. It would sure be interesting to have a peek around 18,000 YBP, when CO2 was 180 ppmv, and life itself was on the verge of extinction like the 47 species of mega fauna that did go extinct. It is obvious why humanity is doing so well now, and it is because we live in an interglacial, and a pleasant one at that. And it won’t last forever either.
I just hope we don’t find out that CO2 actually is a net cooling agent, and the extra bit of warmth we have been getting is some form of natural variation that would have warmed without us. In the final analysis, a warming world is better than a cooling world, so I am at odds to understand what the fuss is about with a little bit of a warmer world.
You have to understand something about farm commodities. Prior to modern storage methods, the grain and livestock available to the consumer market had more to do with getting those items (wheat, corn, cattle, hogs) to their respective markets in the cities than anything else, and yes, weather was an important factor. There was no long-term storage for grain the way there is now, no refrigeration for slaughtered hogs or cattle for shipment, no quick transport by air, which is what we have now.
The storage of grains at grain elevators (wheat, corn, soybeans, etc.) is the result of work by Dart and Dunbat in Boston in the 1840s, something that allowed for very long term storage and a quick move to city markets. Meatpacking – slaughtering and processing livestock for public consumption – took place in major cities like New York, starting in the 1850s, and Chicago, starting in 1865. This was all a new way of meeting the demand for meat and grains. Greengrocer goods (fruits and vegetables) were grown locally and frequently sold out of delivery wagons to customers who ordered them ahead. Ditto dairy products – they were delivered by horse-drawn wagons in the cities.
Now these same things are bid on and sold months ahead, and it doesn’t matter if you are talking about strawberries from Florida or from Chile, or apples from Washington or Wisconsin, or potatoes from Wisconsin or Idaho. Even cut flowers are a commodity, raised in Argentina and flown in overnight to buyers. Half of your produce in the winter comes from South America and Mexico.
This is all a modern way of marketing what used to be done locally, and while things might change in a cooling period, I doubt seriously that any markets of any kind would be completely shut down. If you watch the commodities markets at all, the talk about futures prices and November or June delivery means that the contracts being bid on in May, now, are for whatever commodity they represent for future delivery, not what is available in the store this Wednesday. The May beef that you buy this week has been in the freezer section for months, waiting for delivery to the corporate purchaser who bid on the contract back in November.
We aren’t nearly as vulnerable as you seem to think we are.
“Bret Stephens Is Why Liberals Have Every Right to Be Dicks.”
Comments like this are the reason people need to explain civilized behavior to children.
1.3 billion people without electricity , burning cow dung and most of those do not have potable water .
If the USA had to go without fossil fuels for a week the economy would implode .
Eco warriors need a new mascot and paper dragon to demonize if they want to keep cash coming in .
This might no longer be true, but someone once plausibly calculated that the single human activity consuming the most calories was Third World women carrying water from wells or other sources, due to lack of pumping and distribution systems.
I recall my sister telling me that on their privately guided Safari trip to Tanzania, they drove by a small village on the border of the National Park where women were walking 4 miles x 2 trips per day, for jugs of water from a dirty muddy dugout that animals drank from. On the return later the next day, my sister gave them some money for being able to spend part of the day with them and allowing them to take pictures of them with themselves around their camp fire at their grass huts and sharing a meal with them. Those tribespeople were most grateful. Like something you would see out of a 1960’s National Geographic magazine. Now that’s what I call completely unacceptable poverty in this day and age.
I think there are different kinds of poverty, self imposed for example, like a Buddhist monk. Or temporary poverty that we see here in the cities that may be caused by addiction or an economic crash. Or war poverty that one group does to another, because they are stronger and can out of hatred, like what North Korea does to its own people. Or a type of caste poverty that just puts whole swaths of peoples in the poor house and their ability to climb out of that institutionalized poverty is near impossible to break because it is state allowed.
As responsible good citizen’s of the earth, we should be trying to erase basic poverty where these people live so as they aren’t just left to die. Or don’t become the refugees that destabilize other countries, and put them in poverty.
Ron, my church supports this, which is making a real difference to communities like the one you mention:
http://www.wateraid.org/uk
I guess they have a branch where you are
I have a generally low opinion of NGOs, as I do of governmental organizations, but those involved in drilling wells in the developing world, as long as their overhead is low, can do a lot of good:
https://thewaterproject.org/digging-wells-in-africa-and-india-how-it-works
News flash! The new number one threat to mankind is rising sand levels-
http://www.newsjs.com/url.php?p=http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/locals-overjoyed-as-beach-washed-away-30-years-ago-returns-after-storm-35688860.html
So don’t bother asking the way to Dublin anymore.
Doomed I tell ya, we’re all doomed!
A leading threat to mankind are CACA advocates who want us drastically to cut back on fossil fuels and get rid of nuclear power.
A few decades ago I attended a special graduate school lecture at the Ohio State University, Ohio, USA. Dr. James Lovelock was the lecturer. In his presentation he gave evidence that on a mass basis bacteria are the “King of Earth”.
From that I deduced, hypothesis, that bacteria were the main biological agent to have the capacity, i.e. mass, to affect the chemistry of the oceans and by way of gas exchange the atmosphere.
Volcanoes such as Pinatubo and Tonga produce punctuated events. The volcanism of the mid-ocean ridges and high pressure liquid/gas phase exchange affects are still not well resolved and could be very large, if confirmed.
I do not give much thought to poverty or tyranny of humans. For such a low-mass group, though well endowed with technology beyond their bodies, I dismiss them as having any significant or long lasting effect on the Earth.
Whatever effect humans might have on earth, we will never be more than a pimple on the posterior of microbes.
The prokaryote group which did have a catastrophic effect on life on earth was the cyanobacteria. The waste gas produced by these first photsynthesizing organisms led to the Great Oxygenation Event, also called the Oxygen Catastrophe. These bacteria not only caused mass extinction in the biosphere, but fundamentally altered the composition and chemistry of the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere of our planet.
Happily, life recovered, adapted and evolved, leading finally to animals and humans, living in an atmosphere and hydrosphere with free oxygen to breath and an ozone layer to protect the surface from dangerous radiation, enabling the evolution of land animals like us.
I should add that even multicellular organisms such as humans contain on the order of ten times as many unicellular microbes as body cells. Our eukaryotic cells however are bigger, so contain more mass.
From the very outset of multicell animals, symbiosis with unicells has been the rule. Sponges for instance harbor so many cyanobacteria or algae that they produce surplus oxygen, despite being animals, and therefore consumers of O2. As shown by lichen, fungi too form such symbiotic relationships with unicells, ie cyanobacteria and/or algae.
Algae are themselves eukaryotes with endosymbiotic cyanobacteria, ie chloroplasts, which have been encorporated into their cells as organelles, same with the prokaryotic ancestors of mitochondria.
I remember sitting at lunch at a scientific conference with eminent professors, who also happened to be microbiologist, physicians, molecular biologists, etc. One of the professors brought up global warming and a few people weighed in. The general opinion seemed to be that nobody had seen evidence that would convince them, scientifically, but most assumed the experts in that field were competent so they were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. No rousing agreement, no demands for ideological purity.
I also remember a student who presented a paper about climate change affecting ocean microbiology. The paper wasn’t very good, and it was dismantled by the faculty in short order. Her last slide was something about how everyone needs to have “faith” in climate change and work to avert catastrophe. Yes she used the word faith in a scientific presentation. Everyone applauds these sort of journal club presentations, but after her final slide there was dead silence followed by brief scattered claps as most stood and left.
My experience in science is that most academics won’t suffer fools or foolishness like that.
But they did when PhD student Michael Mann produced his Hockey Stick that wiped out decades (if not centuries) of research and historical documentation of identified warming and cooling periods. Where were the academics then?
There is a duality in academics where incisive critical thought must coexist with the herd mentality imposed by government funding.
Politics drove formation of the ipcc and their charter to detect a human cause of climate change. Politics drives them to slavishly enforce diversity metrics in every grant application. If there is grant money to be had by pushing the global warming hoax, an academic field will grow to fill the void.
I think that is why this article is important, because critical thinkers in other fields are put into the same boat as non scientists. If the journal club had been offered by Michael mann himself, they probably all would have given him a standing ovation at the end out of respect. But having a student present something published by someone else allowed them all to critique it and expose all the flaws.
I think academic science is very broken for a lot of reasons, but in my experience professors in biomedical research use the scientific method properly, and may doubt global warming but also might not be pulling the bandwagon.
KTM,
Nobel Laureate in 1937 for identifying vitamin C as the anti-scurvy factor, Albert Szent-Györgyi, realized that “a discovery must be, by definition, at variance with existing knowledge”. He presciently wrote of the baleful consequences of “science” by government and foundation grant.
In 1972 he divided scientists into two categories: the Apollonians and the Dionysians. He called scientific dissenters, who explored “the fringes of knowledge,” Dionysians. He wrote, “In science the Apollonian tends to develop established lines to perfection, while the Dionysian rather relies on intuition and is more likely to open new, unexpected alleys for research…The future of mankind depends on the progress of science, and the progress of science depends on the support it can find. Support mostly takes the form of grants, and the present methods of distributing grants unduly favor the Apollonian.”
Congress Should Investigate the Peer Review and Publication Process
Claims like “out of 10,858 peer-reviewed articles only 2 rejected the claim of man-made climate change” are more applicable to Cuban and Russian elections than real science. It simply isn’t plausible that something as complex, dynamic and mysterious as the global climate can legitimately reach a consensus on a single variable being the cause out of an infinite number of factors. If CO2 were truly deserving of a scientific consensus the IPCC models wouldn’t fail so miserably
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/congress-should-investigate-the-peer-review-and-publication-process/
Just a nit, but true capitalist economists hailed Brexit as a victory for the UK’s economic health. They likewise feared a Eurozone collapse long before Brexit, solely because of its socialist policies (the tyranny that is the EU is directly linked).
My gorgeous ex fiance (thank you for that meme Willis) is a microbiologist.She has more than 30 years of experience working in the Mid East and Africa, managing labs and researching drug resistant TB.
Believe me, the last thing on her list of causes is climate change.
Down in the noise.
Minuscule.
Not there.
Microscopic.
Read the NYT article, the fact it would upset anyone is amazing….
It was sort of saying the Emperors clothes dont seem to look as heavy as normal………Never mind the fact he is standing there stark naked with his dong in his hand…
Good stuff. Did Snedley mention that the USA overthrew a secular democracy in Iran in 1953, with the help of the Brits, of course. The darned Iranian gov was going to nationalize the oil and leave BP with nothing so we taught them a lesson and gave them a dictator, the Shah. It’s not even a secret anymore. It’s becoming funny that people who have no problem pointing out that our gov is run by idiots will never question when it comes to foreign policy/wars, we find it unpatriotic to question their judgement. Support The Troops! Support the troops by sending them to the other side of the world to fight and die for corporate interests and bankers.
CIA formally admits role in 1953 Iranian coup – USA Today https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/20/cia-iran-coup-documents-acknowledges-classified/2675911/
The CIA has officially acknowledged its role in the 1953 coup in Iran which paved the way for the return of the Shah.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-23762020/iran-coup-sixty-years-on
Ah, but when our guys get into power, they won’t make any mistakes!
Yawn. Iran without the CIA assisted coup would have been either a USSR puppet or what it is today, a corrupt theocracy with delusions of recreating the Persian empire. The USSR in that period with warm water ports and the ability to conquer the Arab nations in the region would have been a complete disaster. Boring shallow revisionist pap that pretends it was all for BP is incredibly ignorant. The disaster happened when that fool, Carter, decided to be shallow as your analysis and allow the corrupt medieval theocrats to take over. Until then Iran was a wealthy progressive and peaceful nation that posed no danger to the region.
AGW ‘science’ threatens real science and millions of lives by grand funding theft. Science must fight back globally lobbying Government at all levels.
Thank you for a very insightful recounting of what it was like in the pre- climate obsessed world. Your essay reminds me of the distinction between “anthropogenic” and “anthropomorphic”. Both are man-made. But the latter, since it exists as a projection of the human imagination, is much more difficult to rationally discuss.
I’m a philosopher. I believe that a lack of truth is the greatest danger facing humanity…
Is truth easier to define than justice?