Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Daily Caller – The New York Times has provided one of the most inane reasons ever for why we should trust alarmist climate predictions.
Should You Trust Climate Science? Maybe the Eclipse Is a Clue
Justin Gillis
BY DEGREES AUG. 18, 2017
Eclipse mania will peak on Monday, when millions of Americans will upend their lives in response to a scientific prediction.
Friends of mine in Georgia plan to drive 70 miles to find the perfect spot on a South Carolina golf course to observe the solar eclipse. Many Americans will drive farther than that, or fly, to situate themselves in the “path of totality,” the strip of the country where the moon is predicted to blot out the sun entirely.
Thanks to the work of scientists, people will know exactly what time to expect the eclipse. In less entertaining but more important ways, we respond to scientific predictions all the time, even though we have no independent capacity to verify the calculations. We tend to trust scientists.
For years now, atmospheric scientists have been handing us a set of predictions about the likely consequences of our emissions of industrial gases. These forecasts are critically important, because this group of experts sees grave risks to our civilization. And yet, when it comes to reacting to the warnings of climate science, we have done little.
…
The scientists told us that the Arctic would warm especially fast. They told us to expect heavier rainstorms. They told us heat waves would soar. They told us that the oceans would rise. All of those things have come to pass.
Considering this most basic test of a scientific theory, the test of prediction, climate science has established its validity.
…
I don’t ever recall hearing an astronomer claim that we should trust eclipse predictions because climate science is valid. But then, Astronomy enthusiasts probably don’t feel a burning need to cloak the failed predictions of their heroes with a shaky veneer of pan-scientific solidarity.
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scientists told us that the Arctic would [not] warm especially fast.
They told us to expect heavier rainstorms.
They told us heat waves would soar.
They told us that the oceans would rise.
AllNONE of those things have come to pass.1.
(Source: Climate Models Fail, Bob Tisdale, p. 42)
2.
(Source: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/28/trends-in-extreme-rainfall-events/ )
3. a.
— David L. Hagen comment
(https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/20/myths-and-facts-about-global-warming/#comment-1153113 )
b.
(Source: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/26/noaa-another-agw-caused-heat-wave-is-actually-just-natural-variation/ )
4.
(Source: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/28/bombshell-conclusion-new-peer-reviewed-analysis-worldwide-temperature-increase-has-not-produced-acceleration-of-global-sea-level-over-the-past-100-years/ )
D’oh!
“Arctic sea ice loss outpaced the predictions of an earlier generation of climate models”
It is interesting that your evidence amounts to “its worse than we thought!”
Wrong. Again.
The evidence “amounts to”: the models are UNSKILLED.
Are they really that stupid? Probably not. But a very consistent trait of left wing journalists is that they fervently believe that everyone else is stupid. Armed with this assumption and a strong desire to shepherd the masses into a liberal Utopia, they are comfortable saying any nonsense at all, if they believe it will help the cause.
If a climate realist made a similar argument, the author would have a field day tearing it apart in the NYT, then spend 4 paragraphs calling the realist stupid. (Of course, a realist has much more factual information and logic to work with, so would never actually use such feeble rationalizations.)
The author is not an idiot. He is a zealot, preaching to the faithful. If he had good arguments to make, he would make them. He doesn’t.
The old saying, “Red in the morning, sailor take warning, red at night, sailor’s delight” is more correct more often than “climate science” predictions and even many weather reports nowadays…
In central and south America the “scientists” aka priests were excellent astronomers able to predict solar eclipses too, exactly when and where. Instead of teaching the people what it was they told them that the gods were angry and only big giving them money, power and making sacrifices would they be saved from the gods anger.
Did anyone ever notice that Hansen’s scenario C happened anyway?
I predict the sun will rise in the east and set in the west…
When do I get my Nobel Prize?……..
When will the NYT become a real newspaper?
Yes, my liberal facebook friends have been passing the astrophysics = climate alarmism meme, and all I can do is laugh… for the many reasons stated above.
The eclipse was a big deal locally here in Oregon, and I actually heard someone interviewed, saying how great it was to witness something that was bigger than all of us and wasn’t divisive or politicized.
Of course, then here come the usual suspects.
Not even one day.
“It’s not that they are all stupid, it’s just that they think all of their readers are stupid.”
Of course that is the same as saying they are really stupid. What I have realized over the years that journalist are not very smart. Journalism is mostly about journalist interviewing other journalists.
We respect medical doctors because they are smart and worked hard to get there. There are many jobs that require people to be smart and there are consequences for not being smart enough to get the job done.
Journalists, in general, are not very good at reporting on science. What is most apparent is the agenda of the journalist which most likely matches that of the editors. If you are lucky, an article may have enough facts to draw your own conclusion. With the internet, it is easy to do your own fact checking.
What I conclude about American journalist that they are overwhelmingly anti-American, anti-military, anti-police, anti-business, and anti-nuclear.
If fact checking finds the source of the article is the China Daily News, could it be communist propaganda? If the facts are wrong and derogatory about our country, why not cite the source as communist propaganda and explain how our country is doing it right?
The reason is you are anti-American.
These are the types of questions on IQ tests. These guys are either dishonest, or have a really low IQ.
The last couple sentences of this post are brilliant.
Added point (apologies to anyone who’s already made it): The absence of eclipse denial seems to prove the precise opposite of what NYT says. It shows that a large segment of the population is *not* generally skeptical of or resistant to scientific predictions and conclusions. If some backwards/stubborn/anti-science segment of the population in fact existed, there *would* be eclipse denial. Instead, the skepticism exists as to the unique field of climate science, with regard to certain of its theories and predictions. This indicates that people are smart — they broadly accept the work of scientists, while remaining attuned to distinctions between scientific fields, and possible flaws or weakness in certain areas.
MinutePhysics posted something similar (maybe even linked to the same article) to this on FB and I pointed out the logical problem with assuming that just because physicists are right about orbital mechanics, doesn’t make climate scientists them right about climate predictions. One is well known physics, the other is not even a falsifiable science, i.e., a false analogy. Some nitwit started arguing with me, finally resorting to pointing out his “qualifications.” Apparently he must be trusted because he has a master’s degree in physics and he once corrected a Nobel physicist (he also majored in psychology, though logic seems equally lost on the dullard). He told me that as a layperson, I should either get a PhD or just trust the experts. I didn’t feel it necessary to tell him I already did the PhD thing, and it doesn’t make a difference regarding the veracity of my claims.
Remember, it is never about solar output, but CO2. Therefore during the eclipse, obviously CO2 went to 0 ppm to have such rapid cooling.
The stupid thing about this argument is that one does not have to look at anything as exotic as an eclipse to make the point.
The writer could simply have argued that scientists correctly predict the tides. They do this correctly day in day out, year in year out, over the entire coastal regions of the planet.
This is what passes for science, these days, in the pseudo scientific world in which we now live. The Anthropocene is obviously the age of stupid.
Perhaps next time we read a medical study, we should believe it because it is a sciency type of thing and scinecy guys are right because sciency guys can correctly predict the timing of the tides.
Let’s see… Astronomers can accurately predict eclipses and “Climate Scientists” whose models can’t accurately predict anything… It’ still looks like comparing apples and oranges to me.
Aren’t climate models simply “if” and “then” statements? If this condition exists and if these parameters are such then X could be the result. It seems whomever controls the conditions and the parameters controls the outcome. Flashback to high school 1968, living in an upscale wealthy town. We had access to a refrigerator sized computer that used ticker tape and a language called FOCAL. My project was to write a personality analyzer. The program asked for all sorts of information on a person’s traits but the only thing that mattered was the height, because I knew the height of the person I was going to embarrass. No matter what you entered for anything else, 5’10’ got a good description of one friend, 6’1″ was a good description of another but enter 5’9″ and the program spit out a very nasty, unfavorable description that was very much like my other friend. Teacher knew what I did but because it worked the way I wanted it to he gave me an A. Been skeptical of predictions from computer programs ever since.
Great story, Tom. I believe it is also exactly what is happening with the climate models. The only thing that matters is the amount of CO2 that gets added to the atmosphere and the assumption of climate sensitivity, which is part of the software. While the models are obviously more complex in the number and the kinds of calculations they perform, the complexity is no real factor in arriving at the desired outcome. When the models performs as designed, the modelers get an ‘A’, not because it models the atmosphere, but because it does what it was supposed to do; project catastrophic warming.
” even though we have no independent capacity to verify the calculations.”
The article couldn’t be more self-contradictory.
With respect to eclipses Solar and Lunar, the average citizen could take a few days to study the Saros cycles then refine their calculations with any of hundreds of both commercially and free available eclipse prediction software.
Gillis’s logic applied to literature: “We should trust Ernest Hemingway because Shakespeare had a mother.” This guy should go on a one-way trip to the arctic with Bill Nye.
Don’t blame the “journalists”. They are trying to make a living in a world where click-bait is the Emperor, and nobody has the time (and lets face it, the skills) to call them out on all their BS.
In this case, they take a (relatively) easy science (predicting where the moon will be) and compare it to a very complicated science (trying to find out what the climate was like in the past) THEN figuring out what it will be in the future.
Remember: people will brag about being innumerate where they would be shamed if they admitted they were illiterate.
I’m predicting the sun will move in the sky today, not stay stationary, though it may appear to be stationary to the untrained observer. The sun will move towards the edge of the horizon, and eventually drop below the horizon. Once my scientific prediction has come to pass, don’t doubt any of my other scientific predictions.
I think we should focus on the fact that ‘this is all they got!’ Instead of calling them stupid, we could express sympathy: “You know, I really feel sorry for these people who have to try and sell this global warming catastrophe. They really just don’t have any logic or facts to support their case. Could you imagine having to write such complete nonsense and try to pretend that it is correct and scholarly? I feel for them. I really do!”
When we call them stupid, it is just more contentious rhetoric, and even Americans are getting tired of it. Everybody calls everybody else stupid. It no longer has any meaning, other than to identify the particular flag you are flying. But if we express sympathy for the poor people who have to be so illogical just to keep their jobs, we might actually start to get some people thinking.
Just call me ‘optimist’!
Engineering predicts eclipses, not scientific research.
I’m not a scientist, but I fail to see the connection between the normal movements of the moon and the the predictions of climate change caused by human activity.
Would some scientist please explain how those two discrete, unrelated activities are related?
One issue is that astrophysics is a pretty straightforward science. While chaos may reign here and there, now and then (usually due to an unknown or unforeseen force acting on an object), climate science deals with something that is semi-chaotic in nature. Not all of the factors are known, and are unlikely to be known any time soon, yet we have people who claim their wholly incomplete and inaccurate climate models are to be trusted. There are thousands, if not millions of factors that need to be taken into account, and even then many will be missing or ignored.
I use models in my job, specifically SPICE, used to model electronic circuit behavior. While SPICE requires only a small fraction of the factors (around 12) as compared to those required in a climate model, those circuit factors being well known, the models still have inaccuracies due to things like circuit layouts that can affect the inductance or capacitance of a signal trace, each which can affect the performance of that circuit. When we actually build the circuit we’ll find that it does not behave exactly as the SPICE model predicted. In most cases the differences are small and can be compensated for. But in some cases the circuit doesn’t work as the model predicted because we missed something. If something as simple as a circuit model using about a dozen factors for each component has inaccuracies, than what about climate models that have hundreds or thousands of factors, some of which we still don’t understand?
We trust Astronomers because they accurately predict the future. We do not trust Climate Scientists as they do not predict anything accurately. We have now woken up to the money -grabbing game of Climate scientists.
“In less entertaining but more important ways, we respond to scientific predictions all the time, even though we have no independent capacity to verify the calculations.”
Huh? Male Bovine Dejecta. The eclipse occurred in the places, at the times predicted, and you needed nothing other than a road map, a clock, and pair of eyes to verify the prediction.
If you write stuff like this, people are going to think you are not very intelligent., And that is a prediction that can be verified by any sentient being.
Forget where I read it, but someone pointed out that eclipses are calculated, not predicted.
https://www.eclipse-chasers.com/article/history/tseStonehenge.html