The climate change debate has entered what we might call the “Campfire Phase”, in which the goal is to tell the scariest story. – Oren Cass (twitter)
David Wallace-Wells has a recent cover story in NYMagazine: The Uninhabitable Earth. Subtitle: Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think. The article has generated a firestorm of controversy and debate.
In terms of what is technically wrong with the NYMag article, Andy Revkin pretty much sums it up perfectly with this tweet:
Scariest stuff isn’t worst-case science; it’s bad fit of @deepuncertainty & time scales with indiv. & collective human risk/response traits.
Apart from the predictable takedowns by the AGW ‘unconvinced,’ there has been substantial resistance to the NYMag article from elements of what is usually regarded as the ‘alarmed’ contingent:
- Mann et al. in WaPo: and ECOWatch: Such rhetoric is in many ways as pernicious as outright climate change denial, for it leads us down the same path of inaction.
- Climate Feedback: Sixteen scientists analyzed the article and estimated its overall scientific credibility to be ‘low’. A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Alarmist, Imprecise/Unclear, Misleading.
- Chris Mooney in WaPo: Scientists challenge story about ‘uninhabitable Earth’
- Ars Technica: In both the popular and academic press, scientists argue against worst cases
If this reaction seems surprising to you, you are not the only ones surprised:
Ryan Maue (twitter): Privately more than one journalist told me they were afraid to push back against the NY Mag climate horrors piece.
IMO, the most interesting articles are those that defend development and discussion of worst case scenarios:
- Joseph Majkut : I for one think that worst case scenarios should be interrogated. Technically and morally.
- Joe Romm in ThinkProgress: Thus, the question remains: what is a plausible worst-case scenario for climate change this century?
- Dave Roberts in Vox: In defense of worst-case scenarios in journalism.
A few other articles with interesting points:
Fabius Maximus: After 30 years of failure to gain support of the US public for massive public policy measures to fight climate change, climate activists now double down on the tactics that have failed them for so long. This post explains why it will not work. Nor should it. Instead they should trust the IPCC and science, showing both the good and bad news.
SF Chronicle: If you honestly believe that climate change will end all life on Earth (it won’t) or lead to some dystopian hell, what policies wouldn’t you endorse to stop it?
Consensus enforcement in the Age of Trump
So, what is going with Mann et al. in trashing the alarming NYMag article?
I saw many such ‘alarmed’ articles (perhaps not as comprehensive) in the Age of Obama, spouting alarmist predictions and concerns. Further, the White House seemed to encourage this, as evidenced by the whitehouse.gov web site and the statements of Science Advisor John Holdren. I never saw any push-back on this from the consensus-enforcing scientific establishment.
In the Age of Trump, alarmism clearly doesn’t influence the policy makers; the best that consensus-enforcing scientific establishment can hope for is to enforce the not very scary IPCC consensus.
And why does this matter to them? Surely this consensus enforcement is antithetical to the scientific process and progress. It seems to be all about ‘action’ — presumably as defined by the Paris Agreement. According to Mann et al., too much alarm makes people give up on attempting ‘action.’ Never mind that the proposed actions will have a small impact on the climate (even if you believe the climate models) during the 21st century.
Others disagree, such as Weizmann and Wagner (e.g. Climate Shock), who push the alarming ‘fat tail’ argument as the rationale for ‘action’ (greater uncertainty increases the urgency for action).
Well, I suspect that neither approach will spur ‘action’ — what is needed are new technologies. Until then, people, corporations and nations will pursue their short-term economic well being.
Deep Uncertainty
In understanding climate change risk, and deciding on the ‘if’ and ‘what’ of ‘action’, we need to acknowledge that we don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will play out (Deep Uncertainty, folks). Four possibilities:
- It is possible that human-caused climate change will be swamped by much larger natural climate variability.
- It is possible/plausible that the sensitivity of the climate is on the low end of the IPCC envelope (1.0-1.5C), with a slow creep of warming superimposed on much larger natural variability.
- It is possible/plausible that the IPCC projections are actually correct (right for the wrong reasons; too much wrong with the climate models for much credibility, IMO).
- It is possible that AGW and natural variability could conspire to cause catastrophic outcomes
We can’t put probabilities on these possible scenarios, the uncertainties are too deep. We can speculate as to the relative likelihoods of these scenarios, but we don’t know, and there will be widespread disagreement. The negotiated IPCC consensus notwithstanding, I don’t regard #3 as any more likely than #2. There are some that regard #1 as the most likely outcome. Apart from advocacy groups hyping alarm, there has not been much serious attention paid to #4.
The IPCC consensus enforcers focus on #3. #2 is the lukewarm position. Michael Mann seems to regard consideration of #1, #2, #4 as ‘pernicious.’
I regard consideration of #1, #2, #4 as absolutely essential for both furthering scientific understanding and for understanding the risks from climate change. #2 gets a fair amount of play from the lukewarmer community (see especially Pat Michael’s book).
#1 and #4 are arguably the most interesting from the perspective of science, and also in terms of understanding the risks. Elements of natural climate variability are active areas of research; what is missing is a synthesis and assessment (something I’ve proposed for red team).
That leaves #4 as not having any serious scientific focus, beyond dystopian articles by journalists and cli-fi novels (and fat tail speculations by economists). #4 deserves some serious scientific attention.
A few additional tweets from Joseph Makjut:
- This isnt about scaring people into action or not but thinking hard about what climate change might look like and who it might hurt.
- Likewise, we should interrogate the scenarios where climate change is rather benign. What-up lukewarmers!?!
- Keeping multiple versions of the future world in your head is hard, but wisdom comes from considering them all.
Back to ‘action.’ The Weitzmann fat tail argument says greater uncertainty increases the urgency of ‘action’ (Taleb is a fan of this argument). I’ve discussed the problems with this argument previously:
- Worst case scenario versus fat tail
- Climate sensitivity: lopping off the fat tail
- Tall tales and fat tails
The point is this. Climate variability and change (whatever the direction or cause) has socioeconomic impacts, and it is useful to ponder the possibilities, independently of ‘action’ on CO2 emissions.
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The focus on a worst-case climate scenario doesn’t pass the logic test. The fat tail analysis addresses only one possible extreme outcome. Probability distribution functions have two tails. In the case of climate change, the tails would represent out-of-control warming on one end and an ice age on the other. To debate one extreme outcome and to ignore the other is to make the same mistake that got the U.S. into the first Iraq war, the one-percent solution. Ask Cheney about it.
If climate data portend small possibilities for a too hot or too cold earth sometime in future, beyond the lifetimes of everyone living today, the most logical action is to do nothing until the science is right. Environmental policies that might be appropriate for the warming case would be diametrically opposite to those appropriate for the cooling case, which I would conclude nullifies any argument to act based on either small possibility of an extreme outcome.
The best estimate pdf is a rectangular distribution. The mode is unknown but lies between the extreme values. The scientific goal should be to narrow the range of uncertainty with better data and models until policies can be developed consistent with the range of possible outcomes. (See “An Analysis of the Mean Global Temperature in 2031” for more details. (http://www.uh.edu/nsm/earth-atmospheric/people/faculty/tom-bjorklund/)
Judith’s 1&4 are both ‘large variability’. If this is the case, then the earth is unlikely to be in any trouble that we can prevent with policy. The cases aren’t exclusive, if we have large variability and low climate sensitivity, then emissions prevention is mathematically idiotic.
So far this latter combo scenario best fits the real data. Here we would look to have a strong civil defence re hurricanes, tornadoes and for floods, engineering (not political) decisions re dredging, floodway works, combined with water storage – manmade or groundwater recharge structures as appropriate. Although not weather, hardened defences re tsunamis, earthquake structural design, etc. These things are not new ideas and without anymore said, we WILL have these things in the future but we have to wait until sanity can be restored.
There is a big #5 that is ignored here and on all sides of the debate generally and that is the earth is not a passive actor being shoved around by CO2 or even by climate variability. It’s the virtually certain idea that it’s systems react to shifts in conditions to try to restore itself back. Le Chatelier’s Principle that works on all systems not just chemical reactions. Climate sensitivity that might be determined in a lab experiment (the oft clarioned linear thinker’s:’it’s physics’ ) is irrelevant to climate change if the earth largely resists the change, say, a la Willis Eschenbach. A wonderful case in point is the unexpectedly virulent greening of the planet that alarmists, knowing that it both flattens the atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulation and is an endothermic (cooling) reaction (maybe even a bigger sequestration and cooling in plankton in the world’s oceans.)
Finally, we should start the research by revisiting Bertrand Russell’s orbiting tea pot.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
because we should recall dangerous anthropo warming was given its real birth by Maurice STRONG, a communist high school drop out, who created UNFCCC, IPCC, the Stockholm Accord, Kyoto, and Agenda 21 and who said it was our duty to bring down western civilization!
“a communist high school drop out”
Maurice Strong was a high school drop out.
He was a socialist too.
He was also a businessman
in many private sector executive positions
and serving on boards
That strongly suggests he was not a communist,
nor did he go to a “communist high school”
I’m glad he’s dead, however,
he left behind counterproductive
UN environmental organizations
A thought just occurred to me: Playing the uncertainty angle would seem to offer many funding opportunities — as many funding opportunities as claiming … humans are definitely the cause of catastrophic climate change and here are more funded research results to back up that claim.
So, all is not lost funding wise, dear alarmists. Just get LESS alarmed and more uncertain, and the funding gravy train will continue. Oh, and a most unanticipated result might ensue — you actually get closer to the truth.
‘The climate change debate has entered what we might call the “Campfire Phase”, in which the goal is to tell the scariest story.’
Actually, I think it started there, because that’s already the standard methodology used by those who push it.
The specific subject doesn’t matter.
The “Campfire Phase” was started by Al “The Blimp” Bore in the mid-1990s
His fairy tales were bigger and better than the mainstream CO2 fear mongers.
He made a lot of money.
Good thing — a hot air blimp like Mr. Bore needs lots of gas.
By denying that CO2 is the problem, we are putting this gas out of focus, which marginalizes a minority gas.
Skepticism in the area of current climate science, then, is akin to racism. Such discrimination cannot continue in an enlightened society, lest we further fertilize the seeds of injustice that will grow into the tangled vines of abuse of our children’s children. There, … there is MY campfire story to add to the lot.
Kernoodle:
You should not have said that.
It’s only a matter of time before climate skeptics are being called racists,
since “science deniers” is not a powerful enough character attack.
My theory:
Any white person who disagrees with a leftist for long enough,
on any subject, will eventually be called a racist
Ever watch “The Storm Channel” (formerly, and actually, “The Weather Channel”)?
Years ago I could watch it and have an idea of what the weather my friends in other parts of the country might expect. The “Local Weather on the 8’s” included the record high and low for the day.
Not anymore. Now they only seem to focus on storms. On there rare day when there are no storms, then we hear about the deadly drizzle that could devastate Dallas.
They only seem to want to leave the impression of danger rather than just give us a weather forecast.
PS Their local forecast for a couple of days or more out stink.
The Weather Channel even names the storms.
The storms have teams to name them and publicize them
(the storms have producers, business managers, publicists, hairdressers,
make up artists and novice reporters who have to go outside and stand
in the horrible weather while reporting on the storms, like you wouldn’t
believe there really was a storm if they sat in a dry TV truck
and aimed the camera out the windshield)
Storms are big time entertainment now
“The Weitzmann fat tail argument says greater uncertainty increases the urgency of ‘action’”
Yes. This is the classic “don’t just stand there, do something!” argument popular amongst alarmists. Get off you fuzzy butt and move! Go do something! Run in circles and shout!
It’s a truly worthless approach to problem solving but we’ve proven it burns calories and reduces visceral fat.