Essay by Eric Worrall
PHD student Sanam Mahoozi asks whether we should all follow Mexico’s example and elect scientist leaders like former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to guide us through the climate crisis.
Can Scientist Leaders Help Countries Fight Climate Change More Effectively?
Sanam Mahoozi
Contributor
Jun 29, 2024,01:33pm EDT
Updated Jun 30, 2024, 02:21am EDTIn early June, Mexico made history by electing its first-ever female president, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, a scientist with a background in physics and advanced degrees in energy engineering.
Her victory has since sparked a discussion about whether leaders with scientific expertise can have a positive impact on pushing forward climate policies worldwide.
In the past, the combination has been a boon for environmental causes.
For example, Margaret Thatcher, the former UK Prime Minister, was a trained chemist who raised awareness about global warming in a powerful speech at the United Nations in 1989 back when a lot of people weren’t taking the issue that seriously.
Then there is Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor of Germany, who with a doctorate in quantum chemistry, played a significant role in advocating for the 2015 Paris Agreement.
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Let’s see what Rachel Kyte, professor of practice in climate policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford said about this topic in an interview with Forbes via email.
For women, “we can look at a number of leaders who have a science background, if not climate science, who have been able to lead their countries into ambition on climate action.”
“Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel come immediately to mind. They were able to ask questions of the scientists and understand its implications for action, unrelated to the ideological position of their parties,” whether conservative, religious or liberal.
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Let’s see what Dr. Peter Gleick, member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, co-founder and Senior Fellow of the Pacific Institute said about this topic in an interview with Forbes via email.
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Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sanammahoozi/2024/06/29/can-scientist-leaders-help-countries-fight-climate-change-more-effectively/
Scientific knowledge isn’t an automatic guarantee of political competence. The disastrous mishandling of the Peter Ridd academic freedom case demonstrates that groups of scientists are just as prone to making bad decisions as anyone else.
Angela Merkel was also a political incompetent, in my opinion. She might have been a motivated advocate of green policies, but her green policies were largely responsible for Germany’s energy crisis. Merkel’s 2011 decision to shut down Germany’s nuclear reactors increased Germany’s dependence on Russia.
There was plenty of warning Russia was an unreliable energy partner. President Trump tried to warn Germany about the consequences of its reckless energy policy in 2018, when Merkel was still in charge. The German diplomats laughed in Trump’s face.
Margaret Thatcher is an interesting case. While it is true Thatcher had a big hand in promoting the climate issue in the early days, in her 2002 memoir, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World (New York: HarperCollins), she expressed dismay at how concern about climate change had been used as an excuse to promote global tyranny, and criticised exaggerated claims of scientific certainty. It is truly sad that greens who cite Thatcher as a right wing green leader consistently fail to provide a more complete picture of her views.
… The doomsters’ favorite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else.
Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism. All this suggests a degree of calculation. Yet perhaps that is to miss half the point. Rather, as it was said of Hamlet that there was method in his madness, so one feels that in the case of some of the gloomier alarmists there is a large amount of madness in their method.
Indeed, the lack of any sense of proportion is what characterizes many pronouncements on the matter by otherwise sensible people. Thus President Clinton on a visit to China, which poses a serious strategic challenge to the US, confided to his host, President Jiang Zemin, that his greatest concern was the prospect that “your people may get rich like our people, and instead of riding bicycles, they will drive automobiles, and the increase in greenhouse gases will make the planet more dangerous for all.”
It would, though, be difficult to beat for apocalyptic hyperbole former Vice President Gore. Mr Gore believes: ‘The cleavage in the modern world between mind and body, man and nature, has created a new kind of addiction: I believe that our civilisation is, in effect, addicted to the consumption of the earth itself.’
And he warns: “Unless we find a way to dramatically change our civilisation and our way of thinking about the relationship between humankind and the earth, our children will inherit a wasteland.”
But why pick on the Americans? Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, has observed: “There is no greater national duty than the defense of our shoreline. But the most immediate threat to it today is the encroaching sea.” Britain has found, it seems, a worthy successor to King Canute.
The fact that seasoned politicians can say such ridiculous things – and get away with it – illustrates the degree to which the new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes….
Read more: https://www.amazon.com/Statecraft-Strategies-Changing-Margaret-Thatcher/dp/0060199733 (pp. 449–50)
The Forbes author also quotes our old friend Peter Gleick as an authority, which is pure comedy. Gleick was forced to resign as chair of the AGU scientific ethics committee, after he was outed for using a social engineering computer hacker trick, impersonating the identity of a real Heartland Institute officer, to obtain unauthorised access to internal documents. To add to the mess, Gleick included a fake document with the leaked stolen documents, which he claimed was forwarded to him by an “anonymous source”.
In the original leak, Gleick did not clearly differentiate the fake “anonymous source” document from the real documents he stole from Heartland.
Unbelievably, Gleick is still a member of the US National Academy of Sciences – which in my opinion begs the question of what level of immorality or depravity is required to get someone ejected from that organisation.
I don’t know what kind of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo will make. But having a background as a scientist offers no reassurance that she will be a competent leader. The signs in my opinion are ominous – in 2019, while serving as leader of Mexico City, Claudia introduced a raft of radical green policies. If Claudia turns out to be another green policy obsessive like Angela Merkel, Mexico could be about to experience some German style energy price pain.
Sheinbaum claims to be an energy/climate scientist. Which means she isn’t one. She is a greenie socialist left of Obrador with ‘climate science’ pseudocred. Won’t end well for Mexico.
But it will make UC Berkeley even more famous.
The trouble with really smart people is that they can convince themselves of really stupid things. The scientific method can serve as a reality check but only if it is used.
And of course when you mix science with politics you get politics.
When you mix science with politics, you get political CONTROL.
Very nice Eric. The answer to our green leaders question is a strong no. The so called scientists leading the CAGW cause are liars and cheats. Clearly being a scientist does not guarantee truthfulness, honesty and integrity. And what about leadership? There are precious few true leaders. Being a good leader is damn hard work, you have to make difficult decisions, ones you don’t like. You have to pass on orders or chores to your people that you don’t agree with. You better be prepared for resistance from both above and below you. Even your most well thought out plan may not work or causes problems down stream. You must be able to recognize things like that and adjust or abandon your idea. It sucks but that’s too bad for you. I don’t have to like my leaders and I don’t have to agree with them always but I want a capable leader who will listen and one I mostly agree with.
A leader’s first and really only job is to facilitate the success of the team.
When the team succeeds, the leader stands aside and puts the spotlight and accolades on the team.
If the team fails, the leader stands in front and takes the blame.
When was the last time you saw a leader live up to those attributes?
I can’t say I have ever been enamored with any of my bosses. Having said that I have had some damn good bosses, problem is you don’t always realize that until they are gone.
I had one, once, who was good from the moment I was introduced to the day he retired.
Once in a lifetime, a career spanning nearly 50 years.
Herbert Hoover was our 31st president. He was a brilliant man and very skilled in engineering but unfortunately he wasn’t a great president. His biggest flaw is he didn’t understand Economics and that lack of knowledge was part of the cause of the great depression. He agreed to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which cut off foreign repayments of WWI loans. That meant taxes needed to be raised to make up for lost revenue. When the Fed double the prime rate, the house came tumbling down. He attempted to simulate the economy which didn’t work. FDR copied what Hoover attempted on a much grander scale and as the result, the economy didn’t return to normal until after the Truman tax cuts.
In government, you need to be a generalist having knowledge of many fields. What you don’t know, you have to be willing to learn from good experts. Specialization is for insects.
You need a JOAT, not a GOAT.
Did you read that story in Analog as well?
That goes back a while.
There were a number of JOAT stories, a lot of them send-ups of classics such as “Blowups Happen”. I’m pretty sure there were also references to the great detective Shirley Combes.
I’m trying to recall the author, without much success.
I have a collection of Analogs spanning 40 years.
My collection dates to 1971 and I think I am missing one issue that was lost in the mail somehow. Prior to that I had a friend who loaned me his copy. My motive for returning everything was it kept the supply of new books coming.
But being able to pick “good experts” is also a critical attribute.
Being a scientist does not mean a knowledge of the engineering required to build a stable, reliable and economic grid any more than any layman.
I think that has been soundly demonstrated.
Paraphrasing a good friend of mine, climate science isn’t hard, but climate engineering is really hard. Folks don’t always see the difference between science and engineering. Scientists have grand ideas and extend our knowledge of the universe – engineers take that knowledge and design, develop and make things that work.
It doesn’t matter whether you have knowledge or not (and knowledge of chemistry isn’t knowledge of earth’s climate, any more than being a semiconductor expert expressly implies climate competence), what matters is whether you have been bought or not.
Let us start out by examining whether Rachel Kyte has been bought or not. She’s trying to pass herself off as an academic, when merely reading this article makes it ‘highly likely’ that she is a political activist.
Her job will be to bring lots and lots of ‘green money’ into Oxford University and more specifically to her research.
There’s zero evidence the past 25 years that a single green academic has operated as anything but a lobbyist in the field of climate.
First rule of being a Professor: SELL, SELL, SELL! In their case, sell their grant proposals. Sell their consultancy proposals.
Second rule is PUBLISH PUBLISH PUBLISH….
Story tip (?).
By chance I’ve just come across some articles on a recently released survey on the related subject of “public perceptions of scientists’ credibility” by an outfit called the “Annenberg Public Policy Center”.
URL : https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/annenberg-survey-finds-public-perceptions-of-scientists-credibility-slips/
On some of their questions they summarise the results about the sub-groups of :
1) Scientists
2) Climate scientists, and
3) AI scientists
See the attached image for an example.
I doubt an economically destroyed Germany will look back kindly on the Stasi Hausfrau who started it all.
Humanity has both excellence and incompetence in every occupational aspect and field of endeavor: There are good and bad – mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and yes “scientists” too!
Having studied something, or having letters after your name means nothing in my experience. What is that old joke about the meaning of the letters? BSc MSc and PhD stands for Bull Schist, More Schist and Piled higher and Deeper….
I’ve met and worked with so called learned persons whom I would not trust to change my toilet paper roll. And others who were humble, wise, careful, practical and extremely skilled and knowledgeable.
And I also worked with an old Mennonite farmer with barely grade 8 schooling, who taught me more about practical mechanics than any “schooling” ever did or could.
In the world today, politicians are all about being re-elected, holding onto power, and enriching themselves. The consequences are control of the people (for better or worse, usually for worse).
In an ideal world, scientists are about truth. As such, scientists make lousy politicians.
In the world today, scientists are cowed by politicians and grant money and the publish or perish requirements in academia.
There are honest politicians (a few) and scientists with integrity. When we have more honest politicians and scientists who speak up at risk of their reputations, careers, and grants, we will have a better wold.
Is is hopeless, then? Probably. The 11th Commandment was about greed. That commandment never made it down the mountain.
11th Commandment?
Greed was covered in a few of the previous about “coveting”. (They also cover “envy”.)
It’s a greatly mistaken impression that only “the rich” are greedy and only “the poor” are envious.
Every human is born with those faults.
It took awhile, but something better did. I Corinthians 13. (Galatians 6:22-26 also comes to mind)
BUT only those born again are capable (John 3) of growing into and exhibiting that kind of love.
From personal experience, that is still taking awhile.
(Sorry, Mods. Short sermon over.)
Greed, the 11th Commandment, was an anecdote my father favored.
The context was not merely coveting or envy, but acquiring, holding, not sharing, and so on.
So… wait…. we should enshrine (I hate that word) Dr. Joe Biden as our Supreme Leader for life and then some based on his extensive scientific expertise as demonstrated by his complete, rapid, and fully successful transformation of the US economy and energy sector using superior scientific analysis and expertise.
And then we will set him to the task of perfecting the medical procedures to transform children into whatever life form they prefer.