Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on July 8, 2019 by curryja |
by Judith Curry
It’s getting worse.
About 5 years ago, I wrote two blog posts on climate scientists’ pre-traumatic stress syndrome:
- Pre-traumatic stress syndrome: climate trauma survival trips
- Pre-traumatic stress syndrome: climate scientists speak out
Mother Jones has a new article on the same topic It’s the end of the world as they know it: The distinct burden of being a climate scientist. The following scientists were interviewed: Kim Cobb, Priya Shukla, Peter Kalmus, Sarah Myhre, Jacquelyn Gill, Katharine Wilkinson, Eric Holthaus, David Grinspoon, Ken Caldeira.
Lots of ‘trauma,’ read the article to get a flavor. This sentence pretty much sums things up:
“There’s deep grief and anxiety for what’s being lost, followed by rage at continued political inaction, and finally hope that we can indeed solve this challenge. There are definitely tears and trembling voices.”
End of civilization?
The title of the article is: “It’s the end of the world as they know it.” Some selected quotes:
“I’m tired of processing this incredible and immense decline”
” . . . knows of a looming catastrophe but must struggle to function in a world that does not comprehend what is coming and, worse, largely ignores the warnings of those who do.”
“it’s deep grief—having eyes wide open to what is playing out in our world”
“I lose sleep over climate change almost every single night”
“Climate change is its own unique trauma. It has to do with human existence.”
“I have no child and I have one dog, and thank god he’ll be dead in 10 years.”
Soooo . . . have any of these scientists read the IPCC Reports? I’m not seeing this level of ‘alarm’ anywhere in the IPCC Reports? Where the heck does this ‘end of civilization’ stuff come from?
In a tweet about the article, Lucas Bergkamp asked:
“How can these scientists produce any reliable, objective data?”
Gotta wonder. Sarah Myhre states:
“I have anxiety exacerbated by the constant background of doom and gloom of science. It’s not stopping me from doing my work, but it’s an impediment.”
Apart from ‘impediments’, what about flat-out bias in research introduced by this extreme world view?
Hardiness
Not all climate scientists are similarly ‘afflicted.’ My previous blog post included statements from Suki Manabe and Gavin Schmidt, who were not afflicted in this way. The Mother Jones article includes statements from David Grinspoon, Ken Caldeira and Michael Mann, who also do not seem to be so ‘afflicted.’
“Caldeira offers a blunt comparison: “I had a girlfriend once who was a social worker who had to deal with abused children. She had to deal with real shit every day. Climate scientists have it easy.” And Kate Marvel, a climate scientist and science writer, went even further in a tweet in January: “In a world where people have to deal with racism, inequality, and resurgent fascism, the notion that climate science is uniquely depressing is…weird.”
In my earlier blog post, i discussed the concept of psychological hardiness, excerpts provided below:
<begin quote>
And also inform yourself about psychological hardiness (something I learned from days at U. Chicago and hanging out with grad students in Salvatore Maddi’s group). Excerpt from Wikipedia:
The coping style most commonly associated with hardiness is that of transformational coping, an optimistic style of coping that transforms stressful events into less stressful ones. At the cognitive level this involves setting the event into a broader perspective in which they do not seem so terrible after all. At the level of action, individuals high in hardiness are believed to react to stressful events by increasing their interaction with them, trying to turn them into an advantage and opportunity for growth, and in the process achieve some greater understanding.
The ‘pre-traumatic stress’ thing clicked a link in my mind to my old U. of Chicago pal Colonel Paul Bartone, a military psychologist and a member of the hardiness group. The following paper seems relevant: A Model for Soldier Psychological Adaptation in Peacekeeping Operations. I think these concepts are relevant for what is going on with Parmesan et al. Seems like skeptics are more hardy?
The psychology of all this is probably pretty interesting, and worthy of more investigation. But Jeff Kiehl is right – whining scientists aren’t going to help either the science or their ’cause.’
<end quote>
Mann seems peculiarly hardy in this sense: “But Mann, who has had to contend with death threats and campaigns to have him fired from Penn State, derives motivation from being in battle.”
Antidotes
This ‘affliction’ of climate scientists seems rather trendy in some sort of ‘woke’ sense. If you do not aspire to such trendiness, what might you do to overcome this affliction?
“Professionally coping with grief is part of the job training for doctors, caregivers, and those working in humanitarian or crisis situations. But for scientists?”
To figure out how these afflicted climate scientists can become more hardy, it is useful to speculate on the reasons for their ‘affliction.’
Ignorance may play an important role. Few of the scientists interviewed are experts on attribution. They seem to blame everything on manmade climate change, and are extrapolating future consequences that are much more dire and with higher confidence than than those from the IPCC. Clearly an issue for Greta, but one would hope that actual climate scientists would dig deeper and be more curious and objective.
JC antidote: Apart from blaming anything negative on manmade climate change, take a step back and assess how the planet and the human race are actually doing. Take a look at humanprogress.org, or follow them on twitter @HumanProgress. Global life expectancy is increasing, global poverty is way down, global agricultural productivity is way up, global child mortality is way down, the planet is greening, etc. Heck, even the corals are doing really well, following the 2016 El Nino.
A lot of this affliction seems to be about ‘ego’:
“I had to face the fact that there was a veritable tidal wave of people who don’t care about climate change and who put personal interest above the body of scientific information that I had contributed to.”
“his anger was driven by the fact that his expertise—his foresight—was not broadly recognized.”
JC antidote: Try reading some literature on history, philosophy and sociology of science – you will become more humble as a scientist and less likely to believe your own hype. Read Richard Feynman. Hang out at Climate Etc. Listen seriously to a serious skeptic.
Having your ego wrapped up in having your research influence policy (frustrated policy advocates), keeping ‘score’ in a personal war against skeptics, seeking fame, generating book sales and lecture fees and political influence, etc. can all come into play in influencing how a scientist reacts to the ‘threats’ of climate change. Scientists might get ‘upset’ if they don’t think they are sufficiently successful at the above. This is something else — not pre-traumatic stress syndrome.
Roger Pielke Jr tweets:
“The whole phenomena of climate scientists identifying evil enemies who have obstructed revolution, transformation, restructuring is not reality-based, but a reflection of power fantasies & a complete lack of understanding of how political and societal change actually happens.”
JC antidote: focus more on being a scientist than being a politician. You might know what you are doing as a scientist. You are very unlikely to be effective as a politician, and your political activism will contribute to the appearance bias in your scientific research.
“It’s the end of the world as they know it.”
You mean their funding is finally being cut off?
And I feel fine!
You beat me to it!
“You mean their funding is finally being cut off?”
Exactly. As much like the instant conversion into rabid anti-trumpers at CNN/NBC because: million dollar paychecks; it could be that this is just more acting to convince the simple minded to send more public grant money.
For whatever reason, Alaska is seriously cutting university funding. link
There are some folks who have to be educated at universities. There are some folks who could be educated much less expensively at community colleges. In the Canadian province of Ontario, you can get a four year engineering degree at a community college.
University should not be a continuation of high school for people who want to delay adulthood. There are some programs where the scholarly activity is at a sub-elementary school level. link The universities have to get rid of that crap. Feelings are not evidence. The universities should be forced to re-evaluate their priorities and justify their existence.
…they should be sued for offering crap like ” advanced underwater puppeteering”
they know it’s a s c a m and we let them get away with it
Latitude: I have a professor friend, now retired, who told me that with the politically motivated surge in enrollment, a number of decades ago, standards had to be dropped, pre-unuversity courses had to be given to teach English grammar, remedial math, how to take notes, basic logic, reasoning…. and following this, they had to design courses basically for people devoid of adequate intelligence and learning capability to avoid mass failings of students. Now there is an establishment of dummy professors in meaningless fields awarding PhDs to empty headed people with with information free scholarship.
This mass deteoriation of university scholarship can be laid at the feet of lefty demagogue manipulators. Their is no question this has to be righted and there is going to be a lot of suffering when it happens.
Here’s some actual advanced underwater puppeteering:
https://youtu.be/sgkk-MMif-4
“University should not be a continuation of high school for people who want to delay adulthood.”
I would argue that this is now their primary function.
Higher Education benefits the greater population by helping to keep unemployable young adults from cluttering up the school leaver job market.
Not saying it is a sustainable business model, just an observation.
Higher education is a means of bailing out the banking sector by creating false justification for giving loans.
Normally to get a loan you need a source of income. Student loans are given on the basis of a presumed future income, without any assessment of whether the course you are entering has any employment prospects.
Unlike other debt you can not escape a student loan debt by declaring bankruptcy. They knew this was creating unpayable loans and protected the banks from having to write off debts by this measure.
Politicians are astounded how earnest and responsible a nowadays 16 ager can be.
They dearest need her support.
World ends at 10:00…Film at 11:00
Greenwich or other time zone?
Nothing really matters
Zulu
“I’m not wearing any pants. Film at 11.”
“Moscow in flames, missiles heading for New York. Film at 11.”
H/T Kentucky Fried Movie.
11:30 in Newfoundland
Nothing raises money like scaring the useful idiots into thinking that their money will be worth nothing tomorrow because of some impending doomsday.
“One of the things that all religions have is a narrative of doomsday. There has to be some kind of overarching fear of the future.” – Greg Graffin
Well… that stuff you call money is more likely currency, and compounded inflation has always made that much less valuable over time – Practically worthless, by comparison. So they’re right, in a way, in the future, your cash will be worthless.
Especially compared to ‘land’, which is mostly on Earth.
What a bunch of neurotics.
Have you ever heard the Caltech seismic researchers weep for all the Californian’s about to lose their lives with the next 7.1 on the San Andreas? Or the Hurricane charting scientists lose sleep over anyone living in Florida? Or weather researchers wail over the elderly who will surely DIE with the next polar vortex?
Nope.
Only climate scientists are sufficiently “human” to gnash their teeth, and tear their garments like an Old Testament Prophet over their “vision” of the future.
Take a look at this out of California:
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The depth of the grief and despair is real for these people.
Oh … I thought it was a Monty Pythonian traversty …
No, Python stuff is actually funny.
In the 1840s, “Millerism” became a popular mania from the States to England.
It was Miller’s very thoroughly calculated date for the end of the world.
I wonder if interviews with those caught up in the movement would have responded similarly to the same questions?
Bob H
William Miller was a phenomenon in his day, and his work was accepted by, I would say, the majority of Americans. When the expected events did not occur in the manner they imagined, some of his congregation persuaded him to sign onto a new date they created for later in the same year, 1844. Miller reluctantly and belatedly agreed to support the interpretation. When nothing happened as imagined, he recanted and stuck with his initial conclusion (Spring 1844) and assumed that something promised happened, but not in the manner expected, and which would eventually come to light.
The Millerites eventually divided into various sects, some of which still hold to his original date. The root problem is that they expected an allegorical prophecy to occur literally. In a sense they assume an outcome and then adjust the storyline until it suits the moment and the small chance that their suppositions will be validated. Sound familiar?
Miller, bless his honest soul, did not like this approach at all.
“William Miller was a phenomenon in his day, and his work was accepted by, I would say, the majority of Americans.”
Not likely. It was a fringe movement that originated in the Burned-over district of western NY state. It spawned the 7th day adventists and jehovah’s witnesses, both of which are still minor players.
12-21-12
I have that 12-21-12 on a few T-shirts. They were practically giving them away in 2013,
I still wear it as a reminder to myself to never pass up an opportunity to profit from others’ stupidity and fear.
In the new millennium marine science literature I read, mostly biology, there more often seems to be a negative view or approach, from climate change, overfishing, habitat loss, etc. Maybe the problem is that we older ones were trained to look at the glass as “half full,” a skeptical, thoughtful philosophy because the glass is not full yet. Now many may have been trained to look at the glass as “half empty” apparently a pessimistic, not so thoughtful, philosophy because the glass is not empty yet. No wonder they are angry. Probably not that simple as this may sometimes just be the group code.
In the engineering world, we would not say that the glass is half empty or half full. We would say the glass is the wrong size for the volume of liquid it contains.
Not if you want to prevent sloshing and get a free topoff to boot.
Over fishing and eutrophication for nutrient run-offs are real problems for marine ecosystems.
But CO2 is a dummy’s game to dupe the ignorant public into expensive actions that do nothing but mis-allocate finite resources away from the real problems.
Making people and nations poorer with ignorant energy policies designed merely to advance global socialism is the real threat to the marine ecosystems simply becasue as nations get poorer less and less regard will be paid for those real problems.
Thus The Tragedy of the Commons is a problem created by a lack of affluence human societies.
Browsing a NEW YORKER magazine in a dental office i cam across an article by Patricia Marx called “Singin’ in the acid rain” a very strange article about a future imagined dystopian world due to CC and etc. The author is like the Jussie Smallett of CC imagining many things that are just a paranoid fantasy. These people are unhinged.
I expected to read something about attracting research funding, but… nothing. To say by omission that the thing that powers all climate research does not influence it seems incredibly naive.
Maybe this generation has lived with so little real trouble that they conflate their drama with trauma.
The following kind of caught my eye, though. Given the below, I guess it should come as no surprise then that most of the scientists mentioned in this article actually have little to no formal training in climate science (I checked, yet for some reason they are considered experts in the matter). Because it sure looks like they went into climate science because “that’s where the money is”.
Jacquelyn Gill, a paleontologist at the University of Maine who co-hosts a podcast on climate change called Warm Regards, says she’s “not depressed but angry, all the time, and anger can be empowering or debilitating. I swing between both. Being constantly angry is exhausting.” But, she adds, it takes a certain resilience to be a scientist in America: “There are so few jobs, so few grants. You’re always dealing with rejection. You have to have a built-in ability to say ‘(screw) it.’”
[Edited. Mod]
I don’t suppose people were happy when we had global cooling either but of course they didn’t have computer modelling to tell them how bad it was going to get. If there had been computer modelling at the start of the Little Ice Age it would probably have been predicting total ice cover by 1800.
“didn’t have computer modelling to tell them how bad it was going to get.”
During the first Persian Gulf war, Carl Sagan and friends had computer models showing that devastating “nuclear winter” effects that would occur if the Kuwaiti oil wells were all set on fire. Well, they were all set on fire, but those nuclear winter effects never happened. (There was only some slight, temporary, localized cooling.) So afterwards Sagan and friends were called on the carpet for this. You would think that the modelers and the folks who put so much faith in those models would have learned a lesson or two from this, but I guess not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in_the_first_Gulf_War
When you finally realize that man cannot affect the earth processes then you can be less anxious and spend your productive time understanding them and see how to mitigate the potential threats to mankind. For instance, our understanding of hurricanes tell me that it is not wise to build on a barrier island. Don’t build on a flood plain. For 20 years I flew all over the earth as a navigator and finally understood that we have a lot more of knowledge to gain before we can change the process. I am not anxious I am in awe.
I don’t think it’s correct to say man “can’t affect” the Earth processes. We clearly can. The question is, is it due to CO2, and by how much? Those questions have not been answered by any stretch of the imagination.
AAAS.org/Science magazine has blogs where you field a question on any subject. Lots on climate. Much of the membership are academics. You should see the doom and gloom there.
Guess what happens to anyone who is not doomy and gloomy?
This is typical of our present world where everyone is a “victim of post traumatic stress syndrome”. Which is one of those conditions that, if everyone has it, then nobody has it.
I watched a video of a media conference given by officials in Los Angeles, including a sheriff or police commissioner, I’m not sure which… he said “all of us that went through this (7.1 magnitude) earthquake are suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome”
Dude – I’ve actually experienced a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, and at the time it hit I was inside a gigantic building with a concrete roof that, if it fell, me and dozens of other persons who were with me would have died or at least been seriously injured, at a minimum. It startled me, I ran outside while the shaking continued. The roof didn’t fall, nobody died (but in a nearby town one teenaged girl actually was killed when a building collapsed on her).
Sorry – I suffered no PTSD from those few ten of seconds of shaking. Been there done that, earthquakes don’t cause PTSD.
Get overyourselves, snowflakes of the world. If you want to actually experience PTSD, try getting shot or blown up in a real shooting war that goes on and on for years, numbing you to human death, injury, blood, pulped bodies and body parts strewn about, where you have to go about your business killing and avoiding being killed, and watching your friends get killed, and innocent civilians getting killed.
Suck it up buttercups. Welcome to life.
I think if you were in Ridgecrest last Thursday and Friday you might be singing a different tune. At least a more sympathetic one. I experienced that “tens of seconds” of violent shaking. Both of them. And the days of near constant rolling ground motion punctuated by short jolts of many 5+ aftershocks. Of my family I probably had the least anxiety – I do not think I have PTSD, possibly because of a combination of sea legs and a geology background. Something to consider is prior to the 7.1 quake Ridgecrest ALREADY experienced a violent 6.4 the day before. If you look at the intensity maps you’ll see the intensity for the east side of town was as great as the next days quake – the epicenter was closer.
I know lots of people in town. These are not weak self absorbed snowflakes. But living through the two main quakes. And then the what, 3500?, aftershocks, is definitely not unstressful. Sure, there are worst things in the world. On the scale of things this isn’t super serious. I mean, we weren’t washed away in a tsunami or covered over by a red hot pyroclastic flow, but relative to normal “Welcome to life”? Nope, you are wrong.
It’s perhaps not surprising you did not suffered PTSD from *your* 7.1 experience. BTW, which earthquake was this, and where were you relative to the epicenter? I think 30 million people “experienced” the China Lake earthquake(s), but not like the people of Ridgecrest. I wasn’t all the sympathetic myself after the foreshock. My home is twice as far from the epicenter of that quake as Ridgecrest. But for the main event we got it just as bad as Ridgecrest, that violent shaking was like nothing I have experienced before, and the extraordinary 24 hours after…I changed my tune.
You may be living in the wrong place.
A quake of 5.4 or lower is listed as “Often felt, but only minor damage”.
There have been 6 over 5.0 beside the two main shocks.
The vast majority of those multitude of small ones were below the limit of what can be felt.
There have been a crap load of them, and if a quake which is slightly detectable bothers you, you oughta know that they will be going on for years.
Many of them, 50-100 a week at first, large enough to be felt near the epicenter.
Odds are 1/100 the 7.1 will turn out to be a foreshock only.
Odds are 7/100 of 1 or more 6.0 after shocks in the next week.
You live in a seismic zone, one of the most active in the world.
Yes, you are a snowflake if you whine about earthquakes while living in such a place.
The world abounds with places w/ near zero chance of such events.
There will be no warning when a far larger ones devastates a large populated area, and it will likely be felt very far away.
I suggest you do some reading about how incredibly overdue California is for about 8 major quakes.
There has not been a major quake on any of the three California faults with the highest slip rate, in over 100 years.
Normal random chance indicates that 6-8 should occur.
The southern leg of the San Andreas has over 300 years of accumulated strain built up.
The area you are in had a quake in 1872 which dwarfed the ones you just rode out.
7.9.
The Great San Francisco Earthquake was the second there in less than 100 years
Anyone living in CA who is not fully aware of what is surely coming and way overdue is living in a fools paradise.
What is coming are quakes that will probably cause a mass exodus from the state at some point.
I was on Twitter in real time when the quake hit and afterwards, and the number one items that came up for hours and hours were videos of people who ran outside to video and live stream pictures of their swimming pool sloshing around.
I did not see anyone who ran around their neighborhoods to check on neighbors.
Sloshing water in the pool.
If that is not traumatized, I do not know what is.
Maybe it was the people making jokes from the quake zone, like the girl who deadpanned about her idea of applying lube to one’s whole body when a quake strikes, so that the rescue crews can pull you out of rubble easier.
But mostly people amazed at their dog prancing and yapping by the wavy pool.
Hey, did you know that California also has 8 volcanoes with active magma chambers beneath them?
Including the largest super volcano on Earth, with over 240 cubic miles of magma in a reservoir below it?
Ten volcanic eruptions have occurred in CA in the past 100 years.
None recently.
Hmmm…
My advice, snow flake or not?
Leave.
But Florida is full up if you are a leftist!
How a quake is perceived depends on the geology of the area where the quake occurs. In California a 6.0 is felt but not usually badly except right at the epicenter. On the east coast a 6.0 is felt from Maine to Georgia. The old granite on the east coast just seems to transmit the shaking all up and down the line.
Yes, the attenuation with distance is far greater in the fractured slabs that comprise most of California.
But it is also true that things like dry lake beds can make magnify the shaking.
This occurs with quakes in Mexico City for example.
The crust in the east is very solid and continuous.
And the faults tend to be deeper I think.
They have revised the way quakes are rated since I was a geology student.
The new scale was designed to be similar to the Richter scale, which saturated in strong quakes and was not a very good way to measure total energy release or relative ground motion. It did not take into account, for instance, the duration of shaking, which makes a huge difference.
So now they have a magnitude scale, using regular numerals, and this is a measure of total energy released at the source. And a second number is given that indicates the intensity, which is defined as the effect on people, structures, and the environment from the amount of shaking at a particular location. This is in Roman numerals.
A quake with a magnitude of 6.0 will most definitely be felt, and will frighten some people, and will damage all but well designed and built structures. Chimneys will fall or crack, some buildings will collapse if they are unreinforced masonry or situation on loose fill or soil that undergoes liquefaction.
The magnitude scale is logarithmic, with each number increase of 1 unit meaning 30 times as much energy was released.
I think you may be understating what a 6.0 will do.
A 6.0 in a urban center will kill people and be very disruptive, almost surely.
Out in the desert, depends.
If it causes surface rupture and displacement, there is great potential for any quake to cause a lot of damage to things like roads, bridges, buried water and gas lines, etc. Independent of shaking.
If you are driving on a highway that suddenly shifts 5-10 feet, that could be a real bad day depending on location and traffic and such.
2014, the 6.0 South Napa quake hit North Bay. 200 injured, 1 dead, somewhere around $1 billion in damage.
Intensity was an VIII.
1986, the 6.0 N. Palm Springs quake hit a place called Inland Empire, intensity was VII, 25-40 people injured, a few million in damage.
1987, Whittier quake, 5.9, hit LA. Very disruptive. Intensity was VIII. 8 people died, over 200 injured, some $360 million in damages.
2012 in northern Italy, magnitude 6.1 quakes, 27 dead, over 400 injured, at least 45,000 left homeless, $15.5 billion in damages.
1906 San Francisco quake (MM 7.9) estimated to have been felt moderately over some 6.200 square miles.
The New Madrid quakes (MM 7.5-7.9) estimated to have been felt moderately over an area of some 1,000,000 square miles.
It is amazing to read about the widespread extent of the effect of the New Madrid quakes.
Rang church bells in Richmond, cracked plaster and caused walls to fall in Columbia, South Carolina, and houses shook in Charleston.
I seem to recall hearing that bells rang on churches as far away as Massachusetts.
And people in Ohio fleeing their homes.
USGS estimates that a repeat of that quake now would result in at least 3,500 deaths, 86,000 injured, 715,000 buildings damaged, 7.2 million people “displaced”, whatever than means, and two million homeless at least for a time. Damages and economic loss of $300 billion.
I am sure that these are WAGs though. Could be more or less I suppose, but I doubt anyone can have any way of knowing. It is for sure that outside of the West Coast, the US is not built to withstand earthquakes, and many people would be crushed by masonry collapsing.
Dude – you didn’t read my comment.
I’ve personally experienced a 7.1 magnitude earthquake when I was inside huge cavernous building that was not built to current seismic design codes .. it is amazing that it didn’t collapse and kill all of us inside.
That is vastly different than the millions of Californians who were either inside one or two story wood frame homes and businesses, or outdoors, or in all of the high rises that are all built to current seismic standards for the last 40 some years. The earthquake that I experienced actually killed someone – unlike the recent California quakes. I did not experience PTSD, and nobody I was with experienced PTSD. We were not snowflakes. If this same earthquake had hit a densely populated urban area, it probably would have resulted in more fatalities. But nothing like the really big earthquakes like Alaska in 1964 (magnitude 9.2), or San Francisco in 1906 (estimate 7.9) when no buildings were built to seismic standards.
So my comments stand. Stop being such snowflakes, Califormios.
When hundreds or thousands of you get knocked off in a real life threatening earthquake, like the great one in San Francisco in 1906, then you can start consoling yourselves with visions of PTSD.
Until then, suck it up, Buttercups.
PTS (there’s no disorder) is what kept people from being eaten by large wild predators, repeating dangerous acts, etc. It is normal. Calling it a disorder is enslaving probably millions by labeling them “abnormal”. I call it Post Traumatic Stress Denial. Denial of the reality of trauma and fear. It’s not a disorder. Being a snowflake, however, seems to qualify as a disorder.
Call it what you like. The fact is there are lots of tired stressed people slowly moving back to normality. I don’t think they are denying anything. Unless you think the denial is the reluctance to pick up and move further from the continental edge.
Well, you sure have that spot on.
Suffering from trauma caused by a mostly non-lethal series of earthquakes?
Then you should not be living in California. Or anywhere along America’s Pacific coast that edge the Pacific Rim of Fire.
Meteoroids, meteors and meteorites,
Lightning strikes,
Tornadoes,
Hurricanes,
Hailstorms,
Floods,
Wind blown falling trees,
Tsunami,
Rogue waves,
Stingrays,
Lionfish,
Box jellyfish,
Drunk drivers,
Terrorists,
etc. etc. etc.
There is no such thing as a safe place.
Hyperventilating, or worse desperately trying to convince everyone to hyperventilate over quite non-lethal occurrences is fruitless. Everyone lives with the dangers of their locations, jobs and transport.
Using one’s panic over a mostly non-lethal situation as proof that one should worry or suffer trauma over bogus predictions is absurd.
The trauma most of these alleged scientists suffer most is fear of discovery. Fear of when everyone realizes the falsehoods forced upon them by scammers using global warming as their income sources.
Conflating the China Lake earthquakes and climate scientist anxiety is silly.
Failing to get the point of what he is saying is sillier.
“It’s the end of the world as they know it.”
They obviously don’t know everything or they wouldn’t be worrying.
Human self-delusion is such a sad thing to see. It causes all sorts of problems. And then, when you have some individuals deliberately promoting CAGW delusions, that makes things even worse because they agitate the people who are susceptible to outside and inside delusion.
These worriers should seek professional help, except odds are the professional help they seek holds the same CAGW delusions having also been successfully brainwashed. Round and round we go!
I learned a long time ago that just because someone has a degree in science doesn’t mean that their judgement can’t be seriously impaired by subjective ideological concerns, especially when those concerns are amplified with fear mongering. Some minds are just too gullible, no matter how well they’re trained.
For most they don’t actually change their inate thinking process from when they went in to school. For the most part they seek out confirmation bias and continue to run with it. I know of people that took the same toxicology courses I did, got similar grades and yet they have an irrational fear of pesticides to this day. It’s quite odd, because the course didn’t teach Environmental Working Group propaganda, it taught actual toxicology.
I find this with the media as well. Folks that want MSM type of information will not seek out alternate viewpoints. The converse applies as well – Fox-leaning folk won’t listen to anything else. The reality of course is that all media is just click bait now, regardless of the bias. But you have to recognize the bias in the first place. From there you try to dissect out the tidbits of reality and truth.
I went to school with a large number of people who had a “less than knowledgeable” grasp of the subject material in the classes we all took, and yet almost all of the got degrees and many got advanced degrees.
And I know for sure they were incredibly strict in the 1980s compared to now.
Around the early 1990s, it became increasingly problematic to give a failing grade to anyone, even if that was what they earned.
Don’t suggest antidotes. Let them all continue until they have nervous breakdowns. Should shut them up for a while.
Their problem is that they don’t really believe their message. Great Thunberg does.
Pre-traumatic stress syndrome is just fancy term for mental disorder. How much you wanna bet that most of these narcissists are on prescribed psychotropic drugs?
Narcissistic personality disorder describes these people ‘to the T’. Signs/Symptoms (slight changes made in [brackets]):
* Have an exaggerated sense of self-importance
* Have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration
* Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
* Exaggerate achievements and talents
* Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect [world]
* Believe they are superior and can only associate with equally special people
* Monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on [climate deniers] they perceive as inferior
* Expect special favors and unquestioning compliance with their expectations
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20366662
Two names to that diagnostic text:
Rahmstorf & Schellnhuber.
Best description of both 😀
As Napoleon once said, “if you see your enemy making a fatal mistake…..don’t tell them.
Leftists’ delusional and disconfirmed CAGW attributions and predictions will be their Waterloo..
All CAGW’s dire predictions on: severe weather incidence, crop yields, global warming trends, Antarctic Land Ice Mass, Arctic Sea Ice Extents, CH4 levels, coral reef disappearance, climate refugees, desertification, annual snowfall, ocean acidification, etc., have been off by more than 2 standard deviations for almost a quarter of a century or more..
It’s only a matter of time before their predictions deviate from observations by 3 standard deviations, then 4 SDs, and eventually the disparities will be so devoid from reality for a statistically significant duration, the CAGW hypothesis will become a joke…
A joke, which Leftist now propose wasting $100 trillion on to, “avoid and existential threat to humanity.” Yeah, right… Got it..
By the end of Trump’s second term, average CMIP5 CAGW model projections predicted 1.6C of global warming. Once UAH 6.0 global temp anomalies are around -0.2C~0.2C because global cooling from PDO/AMO/NAO/AOO 30-year ocean cool cycles, and further cooling from a Grand Solar Minimum event, CAGW will officially be disconfirmed and tossed in the trash heap of failed ideas.
Once evidence exposing all the: raw temperature data manipulation, knowingly inaccurate and manipulated climate models, attacks on skeptical scientists who knew CAGW was implausible, perjury by scientists and CAGW advocates during Congressional climate hearings, the corrupt CAGW paper peer-review process, etc., are made public, Leftists’ who created this mess will lose a great deal of credibility and power.
So, while CAGW slowly tailspins into the trash heap of bad science, let’s enjoy the benefits of the 0.85C of global warming recovery we’ve experienced since the end of Little Ice Age in 1850: longer growing seasons, less crop frost loss, global greening (equal to TWICE the land area of the continental US), increased plant drought resistance, higher crop yields, increased arable land area in Northern hemisphere, less severe winters, healthier oceans from increased plankton populations, etc.
The slight warming and significant greening of the Earth since the LIA are definitely beneficial and have most likely contributed to the acceleration in the advancement of civilization. The problem is the damage the alarmists will continue to cause until their cause is ultimately deprecated by the truth. Even then, like all terrorists consumed by ideology, the green assault against the truth will go gorilla and we will see a significant rise in eco-terrorism targeting energy companies.
CAGW is the biggest and most expensive scam in modern history.
I think once the CAGW scam is exposed, the blowback against the Left will be profound and they’ll lose substantial political, cultural, academic and economic power.
Leftist ideology is dangerous and immoral. Granted, Leftism will always have its zealots, but most rational people will eventually realize how close it came to destroying Western Civilization through its failed CAGW scam.
Owing to the political NIH so evident as a symptom of TDS, whether or not the political left survives depends on who fixes climate science.
If a right leaning skeptic develops the compelling case for why it’s so wrong, the left will implode since their persistent reaction will be denial and denigration which will make them look foolish and spill over into the rest of their agenda as the truth emerges. It will just take a lot longer for that to happen.
If a left leaning alarmist makes the compelling scientific case for why the claimed effect from CO2 emissions couldn’t be more wrong, the political left will have an opportunity to gracefully disengage. It will piss off the radical fringes, which might actually be a good thing for the Democrats. If the politicians can quickly see how fooled they’ve been to the detriment of those they represent, they will change their minds and their supporters will fall in line.
If the angst riven scientists involved in the Mann made climate alarm industry, are struggling to relax and are worrying about the fate of the planet and the humans’ influence on it. Can I suggest they watch Prof Bartlett’s very simple and very sound videos on exponential growth.
It won’t help them in their anxiety issues too much, but it will give them something real to worry about…
Exponential growth is nothing to worry about. It is continually happening everywhere. Microbes, seeds, animals, their populations, all start small, even one individual, and then start growing as fast as they can. At some point resources, competition, and conditions force the growth to taper off to either a constant level, or to start declining.
This fits perfectly with many, many population models. The human population of the globe is expected to peak somewhere around or below 10 billion. After it has reached a certain level the growth will slow and level off, then maybe decline.
The current population is already doing that. Wealth is increasing rapidly. Many people are choosing to have fewer children. The number of children(births per woman, average) has already dropped below the replacement rate, even in many less developed countries. As wealth increases the trend will spread to most countries. At some point it turn into a steady state, or mankind will start spreading in space to orbital habitats, to the planets, and even other stars.
I’m not anxious about the future. Just kind of disappointed that I will miss the most exciting parts.
The descent to pervasive transatlantic insanity, a dark age, began with the assassination of JFK. We sent the first people to the Moon on July 20, 1969, and the last in 1972. Then the dark age really kicked in culminating now in obvious craziness.
People recommend Solutions, Antidotes ?
See the report : “As Man Returns to Space, He Returns to Sanity.”
Artemis is a good start, this time China is very busy too. Trump is acting on this, space, while the establishment say war, more dark age.
Mental health really lies outside the asylum. Business as usual for even well meaning scientists is a non-starter.
” . . . knows of a looming catastrophe but must struggle to function in a world that does not comprehend what is coming and, worse, largely ignores the warnings of those who do.”
>>
Luke 4:24 And he said, “Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.”
Let’s face it, being the Messiah is a tough Gig, too much blood, fire and pillars-‘o-smoke, and no one wants to listen to you, not enough and you’re just a voice crying in the wilderness. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
“… But this Messiah goes up to eleven! …”
Is that the same Shukla who did very well out of the NSF dollar trough?
They sound like a bunch of late-cycle hippies from the early ’80s. Which most of them are. The “movement” is not going to their likes and, with no way to stay in touch with reality they can’t cope.
The rise of the internet age has put a lot of people in odd situations. I started learning computers years ago and the present situation is not like anything imagined concretely at the time. Even science fiction didn’t come really close. I like science fiction, if it really is fiction that includes science as a realistic milieu.
They are flying high in unrequited dreams.
A little humility would do these people a world of good.
Well you have a range of watermelons. From the Green snowflakes to the hardcore left totalitarians and for the latter it’s all about the struggle and what bigger struggle is there than changing global climate eh? Their leftist Utopia at last. Besides an alternative like world peace is anathema for these perpetually restless revolutionaries.
They could add The Illiad to their reading list. Cassandra had to learn how to deal with being an ignored worry guts a long time ago. There again, she had the eventual consolation of being proved right.
I seem to recall Eric Holthaus admitting on his Twitter page that we went to mental health counselling for anxiety. Sounds as though he should have a lot of company.
The author should have included quotes around the word Scientists in the article’s title. No responsible scientists would treat their profession as a religion (rejection of all data conflicting with their beliefs, lashing out at people presenting differing opinions rather than refuting their statements with supporting evidence, falsifying data to support their beliefs, changing definitions of what their models say in mid-stream when data conflicts with the forecast).
I’m starting to take offense at folks like these being called “climate scientists” in particular, since their educational backgrounds often show little in the way of bona fide climate-related credentials.
Kim Cobb – Biology, Geology, Oceanography
Priya Shukla – Environmental Science and Management, Ecology
Peter Kalmus – Physics
Sarah Myhre – Marine Biology, Ecology
Jacquelyn Gill – Human Ecology, Paleoecology
Katharine Wilkinson – Religion, Geography & Environment
Eric Holthaus – Meteorology, Climate and Society, Geography and Development
David Grinspoon – Planetary Science
Ken Caldeira – Atmospheric Sciences
Camille Parmesan – Biological Sciences
Faith Kearns – Environmental Science, Geology, Political Science
Michael Mann – Math, Physics, Geology, Geophysics
Kate Marvel – Physics, Astronomy, Theoretical Physics
My advice to stressed-out “Climate Scientists” would be, simply, study the statistics of Natural Variation, and realize, actually, nothing at all unusual has happened, is happening, nor is likely to happen. And, don’t believe everything you read…
Michael Moon: “And, don’t believe everything you read…”
…and little of what they write.
The cure for Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder is for journalists to stop giving deranged pansies the appearance of being something more.
They’ll be jumping off tall buildings in droves along with the poley bears and a penguin tucked under each arm with the news-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/glacial-melting-in-antarctica-may-become-irreversible/ar-AAE4OuL
Should The Guardian be allowed to tip them over the edge like this or do they have a higher moral obligation to quash this? The great ethical dilemma of our times.
It’s the end of the world as they know it and I feel fine.
I lose sleep (though not every night because, priorities) over the ever increasing percentage of my already too heavy tax burden getting shoveled toward the “research” that these PTSS afflicted “scientists” perform.
I can understand their professional angst but not to the level of personal anxiety. When a new and potentially devastating theory is held by a scientist, skeptical attitudes will abound. It is the necessary fire that proves the theory nothing but dross, or shows it to be true gold. The scientific attitude should therefor be one of willingness to endure this necessary phase of new discoveries.
I know of this. I am writing a book with the running title, “Factitious Presentation: Birth to Munchausen “, that proposes a new syndrome with genetic beginnings and that can be behaviorally observed and possibly objectively measured and identified as early as Kindergarten. Trust me, I have been in the crosshairs of many for proposing such a theory. But that is the necessary struggles a paradigm shift must endure.
So these snowflakes need to get out of pull-ups and wear underwear. Plus, when has it become okay for scientists to have a potty mouth when speaking publicly?
Some things never change.
Concentrate on good science among the noise. Discovery is still a race albeit with more collaboration and teamwork on difficult projects. The intolerant enforcers of flawed models are forgotten and ignored eventually. The wait time varies though and the young professionals suffer the most and the older ones head to retirement with frustration. Survival of the fittest does win with the arrow of time while bravery involves shortening the wait time.
If they think the world is ending in spite of the fact that everything is getting better, it is not “the appearance of bias”.
It is clownish refusal to recognize that one’s fears are all imaginary.
One thing should be obvious to everyone: One side is correct, and the other side is wrong.
So, how to decide, if one has no actual knowledge of the facts, or the skills and ability to delve into those facts for clarity?
Well, one approach that seems logical is to look at which side keeps predicting stuff that does not happen.
Which side has really bad judgement about what effective strategies might be for eliminating CO2 production (conceding for the sake of argumentation that such a need exists)?
Which side alters data instead of modifying their hypothesis?
Which side ignores entire libraries of information about physical geography, and Earth history, and written and photographic historical accounts ,and archeology, and yadda yadda yadda, and instead focuses intently on a notion with mysteriously unobservable consequences?
And which side is part of a political philosophy that wants to fold all the ills of Man into an overarching theme that has for a solution the granting of all powers and all controls to it’s adherents?
One side behaves like con artists, grifters, and flim flam experts.
They refuse to address a very long list of problems with their idea, refuse to debate or even acknowledge a difference of opinion, and go out of their way to disparage and marginalize anyone, even on their own side, who offers any hint of criticism, or even a balanced view.
The insist on a revised version of the scientific method that rejects such standards as the ability to make predictions, and instead inserts such things as a corrupted “peer review” process, taking a vote but only counting “ayes”, and such logically fallacious forms of evidence as relying on the opinions of so-called experts (never mind that these are the experts who have a batting average of very close to .000 re validation of predictions). In other words, they have replaced the actual scientific method with the exact way of deciding what is what, that the scientific method replaced!
At the present time, we have an avalanche of media figures and politicians and activists bombarding the world with incessant and shrill alarmism. At the same time all moderation has left the pronouncements of these individuals and groups: Bad weather is now synonymous with “climate change”, and even one hot day in one isolated location is widely cited as proof positive of an ongoing worldwide crisis, even if no actual harm comes from it. But an extended period of record cold and frost in mid-Summer not even a week later, in the exact same spots, is completely ignored!
It is all hype, all the time, with nary a fact in sight.
And where are people like Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann while all this is going on?
While the inanity and exaggerations reach all time high levels, the tendency for actual scientists to speak up and call it out has gone from hesitant to non-existent.
The people who should be telling everyone that the idea of the world ending in 12 years, has no basis in science or even in rational discourse, are instead deafeningly silent.
Add it all up, and it is more clear than ever: This is not a science, it is a weaponized form of disinformation.
The proponents of it range from people who are surely lying, to those who are spectacularly duped, to those who are profiteers with no care for science or truth.
Scattered throughout are conniving politicians, “If-It-Bleeds-It-Leads” media hacks, gravy train bandwagon-hoppers of various descriptions, and several flavors and stripes of agenda driven ideologues.
Hard to say where the people mentioned as being PTSD-suffering insomniacs figure in to it all. Some are likely miseducated, some not very bright but high in what cognitive scientists call conscientiousness, and some just incredibly neurotic.
All should ask themselves how it can be that, while the present has never been better, their assessment for the immediate future is unprecedented doom?
All of this would be terribly interesting but ultimately unimportant if it was like any other disagreement in science.
Instead, the fact is the stakes in this are very high, as high as they could be, and it has nothing at all to do with science.
This is a con, and what is sought is power and money, the stakes are human lives, at risk is control of our own lives and our very freedoms, and the endgame of the loudest voices is global socialism.
Thank you, McGinley, for laying out the sad facts in this way.
Regarding CO2, “eliminating CO2 production (conceding for the sake of argumentation that such a need exists)?” I don’t concede for a minute. Thinking people with a minimal understanding of statistical inference should already be aware that there is NO EVIDENCE indicating that CO2 is a driver of any aspect of climate other than the benign effect of greening the planet, however slightly. It is only a highly debatable theory which depends on a host of undemonstrated improbables, put forth by a now long-dead Harvard professor who renounced the theory virtually on his death bed. (A death bed confession?) Of course, it is always called “CARBON”, you know, that nasty black black stuff that darkens the sky and gives us black lung disease, London fogs, etc.
The human need to paint the past beautiful and the impending future terrible, is deeply ingrained. It goes back at least as far as Hesiod and his descending stages of man. The modern version, with a false veneer of mathematics, starts with Malthus, but in my lifetime the king of doom has been Paul Ehrlich, an insect specialist who gained fame and fortune in the 1960’s by predicting the collapse of civilization through overpopulation. His laughable predictions were taken very seriously by many people who imagined themselves well-informed, but when none came true, he produced more predictions in more books which sold in more millions, and he smirked over the pile as one after another proved false. He was followed by the illustrious “Club of Rome” whose mathematical models absolutely proved that industrial and economic growth were “unsustainable” since we would rapidly run out of natural resources while defiling the planet. They sold millions of copies of their “definitive” final report, and it was worshipfully translated into dozens of different languages. How wise they were!! How noble, saving the earth for us. But, of course, none of it came true; NONE OF IT!
In the late 20th century, we had “catastrophic global warming,” more currently and cynically reworded as “climate change,” (because the warming stopped.) The utter banality of this empty slogan escapes notice completely. Never has there been such a universally accepted slogan containing so little meaning, now sanctified by an international treaty, no less.
The emperor has NO CLOTHES, NO CLOTHES, you idiots. Can’t you see?
Oh, I agree with you.
But the people who are sure that CO2 is going to make the planet unlivable, or so they say, are advocating for policy “solutions”, that are proving not to lower CO2 production much, if at all.
If they really believe it, this is completely inexplicable.
In fact, it is likely impossible for anyone who really thinks what they are saying about doomsday, and has the ability to think critically, to ignore that wind turbines are no solution at all.
If they get what they want, everyone agrees with them some magical day, and we do what they say is the fix for it all, the result will be that CO2 is barely changed!
But all the birds will be dead.
The underlying point is easy to summarize: These people are not even internally consistent in the things they say.
If I can reassure them, they are not alone :
Traumatic stress or crisis is the pathway for how we got income taxes, sales taxes, and now carbon taxes. War and depression were the pretexts for those earlier permanent tax enactments with penalty and interest if you are late in paying them and now in the modern era we need only modeled crisis to be the pretext. Money and power have not changed much though.
In addition to humanprogress.org, a good read is Factfulness-Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling. He made the interesting observation that “Almost every activist I have ever met, whether deliberately or, more likely, unknowingly, exaggerates the problem to which they have dedicated themselves.”
Is China stressing over CC? India? How about Russia? Any developing country other than those who feel ‘reparations’ are due? CC is a fake catastrophe well suited to intellectual masturbation and supported by Western media. I think everyone know who’s propagating the hysteria and for what reason yet “wealth redistribution” remains the elephant in the room of CC.
It is not that they are scientists, which they mostly are not. Eric Holthaus is certainly not in any way a scientists, nor does he claim to be to his credit.
It is that they are all Liberal-Progressives.
Progressives have a form of mental illness that leads to delusions and heightened anxiety for irrational, baseless reasons….
in the Old Parlance of psychology… they are easily prone to phobias. Nothing more.
They just need to get on some good psych meds (Xanax, etc) and stay on them… especially after Trump gets re-elected to control their TDS symptoms.
Even fake movie star scientists know that real scientists should not be shocked by new discoveries that shatter paradigms.
” Eric Holthaus is certainly not in any way a scientists, nor does he claim to be to his credit.”
What do you call a meteorologist? He certainly claims to be that.
btw, here’s his latest piece of yellow journalism in the WaPo.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/09/trumps-environmental-leadership-is-sending-us-climate-disaster/
And more at yellow ‘science’ at https://phys.org/news/2019-07-breaching-carbon-threshold-mass-extinction.html
Alarmist bunk!
“Mother Jones has a new article on the same topic It’s the end of the world as they know it: The distinct burden of being a climate scientist. The following scientists were interviewed: Kim Cobb, Priya Shukla, Peter Kalmus, Sarah Myhre, Jacquelyn Gill, Katharine Wilkinson, Eric Holthaus, David Grinspoon, Ken Caldeira.”
The prejudiced polling the incompetent.
Similar to the 97% Concensus simply poll those who will skew the desired results in the required direction
The ‘victims’ of psychological stress among alarmist climate scientists were already predisposed by their constitutions. They are a remarkably unprepossessing lot as scholars and thinkers. The term “scientist” has never been so bandied about by the scientists themselves. It used to be more often used by ordinary folk in awe of them.
To me, the real victims of all this unnecessary fear are school children and people indoctrinated by this phantom science. This abuse should be punished
Commie Bob sums it up perfectly, Universities have largely ceased to be a outstanding par tis of the countries education system, plus its easy to cheat to get that oh so important bit of paper.
They need to get rid of the soft courses and stick to the hard ones such as engineering.
No I am not anti Uni because I never went to one, but my daughter did, she was working at a part time job and did it the hard way as a mature aged student.
Lets go back to what amounts to a form of apprentices, to actually learn on the job. It worked in the past.
MJE VK5ELL
The former Dean of Engineering at the University of Waterloo started out as an apprentice. He seemed to be proud of the fact and seemed to remember his apprenticeship fondly.
Around here, a four year engineering graduate isn’t very productive at the beginning of her career. A couple of years experience is necessary for her to become useful. Starting engineers in apprentice positions would go a long way to fixing that problem.
PreTSD? More like Cassandra Syndrome.
With the exception that Cassandra’s predictions were correct.
How about just plain garden variety neurosis.
and
If you believe crap, it takes a toll. I’m guessing that it afflicts those who Talib calls ‘intellectual yet idiot’.
These people have generated their own mental cage not too dissimilar to the ‘Catch-22’ paradigm but now find that they are stressed by the guilt of building such a big lie.
Some realize that like ‘One that Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’ they are stuck in this insane (modeled) world, unable to escape, caught by their own lies and stupidity. The UN’s nurse Ratched is ably assisted by the deceitful strong-arm tactics of the loudmouths of cAGW (Mann, Trenberth, Jones, Hensen, etc., and the complaint MSM)
Climate Science™, or ‘CO2’s Flying Cuckoos Nest of Catch-22’
Oh ye of little faith. Won’t you ever believe in rocket science?
‘Alex Robel, an assistant professor at the US Georgia Institute of Technology and the study’s leader, said if instability was triggered, the ice sheet could be lost in the space of 150 years, even if temperatures stopped rising. “It will keep going by itself and that’s the worry,” he said.
Modelling simulations suggested extensive ice loss would start in 600 years but the researchers said it could occur sooner depending on the pace of global heating and nature of the instability.
Hélène Seroussi, a jet propulsion laboratory scientist at Nasa, said: “It could happen in the next 200 to 600 years. It depends on the bedrock topography under the ice, and we don’t know it in great detail yet.”’…..
We’re all doomed, doomed I tell yah!
‘The researchers found a precise estimate of how much ice the glacier would shed in the next 50 to 800 years was not possible due to unpredictable climate fluctuations and data limitations. However, 500 simulations of different scenarios pointed to it losing stability. This increased uncertainty about future sea level rise but made the worst-case scenarios more likely.
A complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would be expected to increase global sea levels by about five metres (16ft), causing coastal cities around the world to become submerged.’
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/glacial-melting-in-antarctica-may-become-irreversible/ar-AAE4OuL
FIVE HUNDRED stimulations! Yikes!!!
An average of 500 incorrect answers is not equal to a correct answer
Yes Bryan A,
but out of those 500 incorrect answers some may be statistically close-ish to give the whole darn shooting match a highish confidence level to them almost understanding what they’re trying to research.
Of course knowing which of the 500 incorrect answers are closest is the known unknown due to unknown unknowns.
And with that we can confidently say that the model runs are useful. 🙄
“An average of 500 incorrect answers is not equal to a correct answer”
Well with all that doomsday uncertainty you’re always left wondering if 500 compooter stimulations is really enough or whether 600, 700…? would help get to the bottom of it all. Still when you’re on to something really big with doomsday stuff like this you have to cut it short somewhere to get the message out there and leave the minions to fill in the gaps and minor details.
JimW note: John Kasich sent out a note last week deploring our backing out of commitments to work together to combat climate change, and to request funding. I replied:
Dear John,
I could disagree more, but suffice it to say that the science does not support any expenditure on CO2 mitigation.
And not for the thoroughly practical reason that there will never be enough international agreement and cooperation to accomplish that.
Rather, it’s because the natural experiment has been done, in 1929-1931, when human global CO2 production declined 30% and atmospheric CO2 did not change its languid rise. Not surprising, since our contribution to the annual production is only 4%. Temperature kept rising for the next 10 years. And then declined during the WWII and post-war reconstruction years, when a good deal of CO2 was produced. This slight decline produced alarms about the oncoming Ice Age – see the covers of Newsweek and Time and Science News in the early 70s.
The science does not support mitigation even theoretically, since CO2 produces half its GHG effect in the first 20 ppm and, as Arrhenius noted, declines exponentially after that. We are in the fifth half-life of that decline, which means that the next doubling to 800ppm will add less than 2% to CO2’s effect. We know that global temperature did not “run away” at previous levels of 2,000, and 4,000, and 8,000 ppm. We know that no temperature reversal for the last 550 million years has ever been preceded by a CO2 change.
So CO2 is not in control of climate, and we are not in control of CO2.
On 6/2/2019 9:05 AM, John Kasich wrote:
work with our allies to heal the damage done to our planet.
But, please, not by CO2 mitigation.
The fact that mankind is having a measurable impact on Earth’s climate is undeniable by modern science.
Very true, but not because of nice clean CO2 which warms us and cools us and feeds us. It would be because of paving and plastics and clear-cutting and the like. Particulates in the air are bad, but CO2 isn’t. Submarines don’t even take any countermeasures until CO2 reaches 8,000 ppm.
Of course, we don’t have as much effect on the climate as beetles and termites, but still…
Best wishes,