Watching the Climate Science Bubbles from the Outside

Guest Post by Scott Adams

I often hear from people who are on one side or the other on the topic of climate change. And I think I spotted a new cognitive phenomenon that might not have a name.* I’ll call it cognitive blindness, defined as the inability to see the strong form of the other side of a debate.

The setup for cognitive blindness looks like this:

1. An issue has the public divided into two sides.

2. You read an article that agrees with your side and provides solid evidence to support it. That article mentions the argument on the other side in summary form but dismisses it as unworthy of consideration.

3. You remember (falsely) having seen both sides of the argument. What you really saw was one side of the argument plus a misleading summary of the other side.

4. When someone sends you links to better arguments on the other side you skip them because you think you already know what they will say, and you assume it must be nonsense. For all practical purposes you are blind to the other argument. It isn’t that you disagree with the strong form of the argument on the other side so much as you don’t know it exists no matter how many times it is put right in front of you.

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I noticed this phenomenon when I started blogging about climate change. The citizens who side with the majority of scientists in saying climate change is influenced by humans and the prediction models about doom are accurate have – as far as I can tell – never seen the strong versions of the argument on the other side. (I know because I ask about it.) They have only seen the weak versions presented by their own side. And the weak version of the argument goes like this: “The other side are science deniers and quacks.”

My bottom-line belief about climate science is that non-scientists such as myself have no reliable way to evaluate any of this stuff. Our brains and experience are not up to the task. When I apply my tiny brain to sniffing out the truth about climate science I see rock-solid arguments on both sides of the debate.

Trained scientists might be able to sort out the truth from the B.S. in climate change science, although I’m skeptical about that too. But non-scientists have no chance whatsoever to discern which side is right. I consider myself to be bright and well-educated, and from my perspective both sides of the debate are 100% persuasive if you look at them in isolation. And apparently that’s what most citizens do.

The best way to know if a non-scientist is under-informed is to ask if they have a firm opinion on climate change. If that firm opinion is anything but “I don’t know” it probably means they are experiencing cognitive blindness about the existence of a strong argument on the other side.

Some people deal with the uncertainty around the climate prediction models by saying that even if there is only a tiny risk of global catastrophe, we still need to do all we can to avoid it. But that isn’t as wise as it first sounds. Your life is full of worst-case scenarios that you ignore because you have to. You can’t live a life that manages to the worst-case scenario or else you would never have sex, apply for a job, or drive your car. The worst-case scenario for you EVERY SINGLE DAY involves you getting zika, AIDS, and bird flu right before the brakes on your car fail and you plunge into a ravine.

Does the worst-case scenario on climate change sound catastrophic to me? Absolutely. But so does the worst-case scenario for EVERYTHING. You can’t manage your life to the worst-case scenario. That would be no life at all.

The same applies to governments. Nearly everything a government does has a catastrophic risk in one way or another. Would it make sense to put full effort into avoiding all the imagined worst cases? If we did, we’d be wearing gas masks and protective bubble wrap instead of clothing.

But what if the worst-case scenario is really, really likely, as in the case of climate change disaster? In that case, shouldn’t you manage to the worst case? Well, yes, but only if you are sure the risk is as high as you think. And I don’t see any way a non-scientist could be exposed to both sides of the argument and assign a risk to it.

Given the wildly different assessments of climate change risks within the non-scientist community, perhaps we need some sort of insurance/betting market. That would allow the climate science alarmists to buy “insurance” from the climate science skeptics. That way if the climate goes bad at least the alarmists will have extra cash to build their underground homes. And that cash will come out of the pockets of the science-deniers. Sweet!

But if the deniers are right, and they want to be rewarded by the alarmists for their rightness, the insurance/betting market would make that possible.

It would also be fascinating to see where the public put the betting odds for climate science. Would people expose themselves to both sides of the debate before betting?

*It probably does have a name. It’s a mix of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias at the least, but a special case in my opinion.

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Cartersville Critter
Cartersville Critter

I have the perfect remedy, guaranteed to work every time to those who greatly fear climate change: Move to higher ground you dipshits!

Great article SA.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Only two sides?

I’m still an icer predicting a new ice age.

How did I get left out?

I just get no respect, that’s the problem, I just get no respect.

RT Rider
RT Rider

It’s more than just theory, it’s mostly practice, as in many so-called deniers having modelled complex physical systems and knowing how limited their predictive ability is, but knowing how to compensate for this shortcoming by using experience, such as in engineering.

Fluid dynamics is a good analogy. Transition from laminar to turbulent flow is chaotic and unpredictable, so the models have limited utility, but we have lots of experience in pipe flow to know how to design and build them to minimize turbulence and reduce losses when necessary.

We have lots of models to predict weather, which we know are mostly shit, but experience tells us what to expect wherever we live.
If I see a forecast for rain in Palm Springs, I know from experience that it’s likely not going to rain, or it’ll be damn little if it does. When I visit England and see a rain forecast, I know damn well it’s going to rain – probably in buckets.

We don’t have any such experience with climate. We know the models can’t predict jack shit because the system they are trying to model is chaotic. Not only that, but we can’t even measure or calculate with any certainty how much of CO2 in the atmosphere is attributable to human sources.

Because of this, we’re supposed to take their word for it, let them implement any regulation they want, and pony up the dough to pay for it. Who the fuck are you, PT Barnum?

Basically, this like what Groucho said, “who are you going to believe – me or your lying eyes.”

Annie
Annie

So, lets look at the worst case from anthropogenic global warming crowd. Depending on who you believe out of this crowd who claim they are 100% in agreement, worst case sea rise is 6 feet by the end of this century, or 10 feet, or maybe even 12 feet. If you look at all of the claims of 100 feet or 200 feet of sea level rise they’re talking about it happening over thousands of years. Anything over 100 years or so is meaningless because technological advances (and technological declines) tend to happen at exponential rates so we have no clue what the technology will look like by the end of the century or how much CO2 will be produced by people at that point. So worst case is around 10 feet of sea rise by 2100, but the more likely case if you believe the anthropogenic global warming crowd is a couple feet or so. Given that the sea rose over 400 feet (at some times fairly drastically) as the last ice age ended a 84 year rise of 10 feet plus or minus or more likely 2 feet plus or minus seems to be a fairly minor change. The fact that they built major population centers on the sea shores and that they might have issues with a 2 foot or 10 foot sea rise isn’t a climate change problem that can be fixed by “fixing” the climate, it is an intelligence problem.

Trapped in Portlandia
Trapped in Portlandia

Hey Annie, there is another significant problem with any sea level rise. All the liberal wing nuts who live on the coasts will be forced to seek higher ground. High ground is typically the red states.

I’m not sure that is a good thing.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Easier to hit your target when you have the high ground. Don’t sweat it.

b
b

It isn’t just about rising sea levels which would force huge numbers of people to move due to the fact a high percentage of the population lives near the sea. It is about how it affects the production of food crops and the growth of diseases, pests, etc. Warmer weather equal more disease.
Can we think of any other field of science where the vast majority of experts in a particular field believe in something and the population rejects it? Perhaps evolution.

kokoda the deplorable
kokoda the deplorable

b………

Would you rather have the world’s farmers growing crops on sheets of ice/frozen ground in a colder world or grow crops in a warmer world?

Vast majority of experts believe in something – they do?, really!! Or, is that what you have been told so you believe it. (Tell as lie often enough and it eventually becomes the truth).

At the end of the LIA, would you expect a warmer or colder world? A warmer world of course – that is why it has been getting warmer for 300 years.
Dufus

Gryffyn
Gryffyn

I wish Scott Adams’ writing was as concise and to the point as his ‘toons.
I have witnessed gradually milder winters and hotter, drier summers in my lifetime. When I set out and tended gardens in the past I never had to add water. Now, in the hottest days of summer my garden would shrivel up without a daily watering. So, is this a change in weather or a mild climate change. I think of weather as daily to seasonal stuff. Once you see changes that extend beyond a few years I think we are talking climate. Are we on the verge of a tipping point where whole systems collapse? People smarter than I am who study climate warn of the possibility. Others, avoiding the Chicken Little approach are more circumspect. As a non-scientist I try to keep on learning.
Anyone here care to move to Beijing, where the smog is so thick that airline flights are being cancelled? I don’t even buy food from China because of the widespread environmental pollution.
I don’t run with the Gore crowd of anthropomorphic climate alarmists. However I do enjoy living with clean air, spring water and local food, and I hope to do so for my remaining allotted years.
Peace and enjoy the holidays.

kokoda the deplorable
kokoda the deplorable

Beijing….that is not CO2; thus not CAGW, not Global Warming, or Global Warming Climate Change.

But you knew that – you just wanted to use wording that confuses those with little knowledge of the subject.

Go peddle your fish elsewhere, it is a month old and smells.

Annie
Annie

Warmer weather equal(sic) more disease? Sure, that’s why the land in the equatorial belt is so barren and unproductive! Warmer weather equals a higher variety of crops that can be grown at more latitudes. Higher CO2 levels equals greener and healthier crops. So there would be more capacity to grow food, not less.

Evolution is not a field of science, it is an unproven theory with some significant flaws, even the scientists admit that. Very similar to anthropogenic global warming. Add the flat earth theory and the sun revolves around the earth theory to scientific theories that have been thrown out by the population among numerous others. Science is not static, every day there are new scientific discoveries and old theories are thrown out. That’s the way it works.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

As Kokoda says, I’m not even convinced that the vast majority of “experts” (in what, exactly?) believe in man-global warming. Asserting “97%, 97%” doesn’t prove anything. I’m open to being convinced that the earth has been warming, even though the evidence is not dispute-free. How many thermometers were dispersed across South America or Africa or Uzbekistan in the 1890’s? Why should we have any confidence in the plucked-from-ass adjustments to temperature records intended to correct for the urban heat island phenomenon? I’ve heard laughable claims about artic sea ice being as its lowest ebb in 1,000 years, despite the fact that satellite data is – at most – 37 years old. The Argo array (ocean temperature-reading buoys) only BEGAN to be installed in 2007 – and adjustments to its data readings (due to buoys being carried along by currents) are, again, plucked-from-ass. Tree rings and ice cores are interesting, but even something as linear as carbon 14 dating methodology has to be re-thought if you realize that you’re not testing the dinosaur bone but the petrified moss on the dinosaur bone. After you convince me that the Earth is warming, then you’d have to convince me that man is meaningfully affecting the rate of warming. Then you’d have to convince me that warming is bad. That’s a lot of convincing. I’m open-minded, but as-yet, unconvinced.

Bob
Bob

Scott, I call BULLSHIT! on your argument that we as “non-scientists” cannot judge the arguments with authority. Anyone who stayed awake in their high school history and science classes knows the following:
1) Global temperatures have fluctuated widely over the course of the Earth’s existence
2) Ice ages and tropical conditions have alternated throughout history
3) Natural causes have had significant climate effects:
a) Volcanoes
b) Changes in the Earth’s magnetic poles
c) Sun spots
d) Solar flares
e) Fluctuations in ocean currents
f) Changes in wind patterns

Looking between the lines, I see an effort to get people to give up the hard, continuing task of forming their own opinions and leave the issue to the scientists — an approach that plays into the hands of the global warming cultists. Again, to your efforts in that direction, I say BULLSHIT!

Dan
Dan

Well said, Bob!

AnarchoPagan
AnarchoPagan

Lets assume that Scott Adams is right and that the climate change argument can’t be definitively settled by appealing to evidence or scientific principles; I suggest it can still be settled by appealing to moral principles. If you are unable to demonstrate (to the satisfaction of a jury) that you are being somehow harmed by CO2 in the atmosphere, not sometime in the nebulous future but right now, then you have no moral grounds to compel other people to pay taxes or otherwise limit their activity to alleviate your fears. In other words, alleged CO2 pollution should be treated like any other alleged tort.

hardscrabble farmer

If there were no agencies, councils, programs, bureaus, studies, funding, taxation or enforcement involved there would be no discussion.

Period.

If it is really and truly a problem that will end life as we know it on Earth (I heard that exact phrase by a scientist on NPR this morning) then I can solve it right now. Starting tomorrow, no more electricity, no more fuel, no more air travel and a lottery where 50% of the reproductive population of the planet is sterilized.

Any takers?

Didn’t think so.

kokoda the deplorable
kokoda the deplorable

NPR = the audio version of WaPo; both owned by the CIA

tim
tim

Back in the mid 1980s I was a grad student at Texas A&M meteorology. In 1984-85, the professors would talk to us about global warming, the CO2 trend, the climatology, and it seemed each had his own amusing pet reason why a “greenhouse effect” due to emissions could create general, catastrophic or even non-beneficial warming was a silly concept. It was obvious to them it was a scam. This was a diverse bunch of scientists, too, when computer modeling was just getting huge in weather forecasting and climate prediction. I always tell young people: Fear not fire but ice! Earth hasn’t been a cinder in a few billion years but she has been a snowball several times. If we could stay in a warm period for just a while, that would be great! Terrible things happen to human populations in cooling periods, even relatively brief ones.

TrickleUpPolitics
TrickleUpPolitics

I don’t believe in global warming for the simple reason is that I have read article after article about scientists faking data. If they have to fudge the data to make their predictive model come out, I say the whole thing is BS. Add to that the enormous financial benefit comes from perpetuating the global warming lie and their motive becomes clear.

Dan
Dan

Love Scott’s analysis on many topics, but he’s allowing his liberal proclivities to blind him on this one…. the climate-scam is obvious when you look past the noisy obfuscations and look at it for what it is

John Coster
John Coster

Much as I deplore the usual libtard consensus media, most deniers of anthropogenic climate change remind me of whining spoiled brats. I had a girlfriend once, beautiful and tough as nails from up in Maine. She and her brother loved winter. They used to ride the ice flows on the Kennebec River. Both smart as hell and fiercely libertarian. He now manages the snow and ice data center in Colorado, and visits the arctic regularly. He refused to support global warming theories for a long time, but not anymore. The facts are compelling he says. Of course that doesn’t mean that everyone gets a milder climate. Changing ocean currents could freeze tha asses off people in formerly warm areas. The most noticeable effects appear at the poles and if enough of the ice goes, the albedo effect is diminished and a lot of permafrost could thaw and release vast amounts of Methane with all sorts of interesting effects. Now that we don’t have Hillary around to provide us with a counter balancing nuclear winter, why not play it safe? Besides, fuel efficiency and decentralized energy enhances personal freedom. We have solar in VT and no utility bills. The less I’m dependent on multinational corporations and government, the happier I am. Regardless of climate change, allowing your environment to deteriorate is a sure fire way to lose your freedom and real prosperity. I suppose many of my “conservative” friends think Jesus will keep them all snug and warm because they are so special and can do what they want to the environment. It’s the age old story of the tragedy of the commons. Of course global swarming maybe the bigger problem. Over population and relentless consumption. At any rate, the warming warners I have encountered personally include people of very different political backgrounds who have seen the same data. They would include my former almost brother in law and (dare I speak his name?) Al Gore , with whom I went to school shortly after the last Ice Age. Ergo, even though it was 13 below zero yesterday when I woke up, dismissing the likelihood or even the possibility of manmade global warming seems…well… downright stupid. Needless to say, the usual suspects will likely use concern about global warming as a pretext for more nefarious forms of control. But, alas, none of that is of any interest to Mother Nature.

James the Wanderer

Your friend is entitled to his opinion. Which doctored evidence is he using to support it?
(1) If the earth is warming due to CO2, then we can expect more plant growth, as both CO2 and warmth promote plant growth. What is wrong with that again?
(2) If the earth is cooling due to the solar minimum, what do you propose to do about it? Grab the sun and shake it violently to provoke more solar sunspot activity?
(3) If the earth is warming or cooling, what do you expect men to do about it? Put up absorptive / re-radiative umbrellas in space or on the ground? Will Al Gore be in charge of the effort?
Your friend is apparently credulous, and perhaps you as well. Just answer this: in the past there are several predictions about polar bears, sea level, Arctic ice and so forth that were made based on the computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and weather phenomena. NOT ONE has come true. Given the track record of perfect failure, why should we believe you now?

MikeR
MikeR

It makes it hard to make a betting market, that most predictions take decades to verify. Since most climate models are only even _considered_ worthwhile for finding overall global average temperature, we get _one new data point per month_.
There have been a couple of well-known bets by climate scientists, for instance, James Annan (http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2015/01/temperature-bet-update.html). The trouble is that they are betting against Sky Dragons, who believe that it’s going to get _colder_, so that the over-under is no warming at all. Probably most of us don’t expect that.
The really interesting discussion right now in climate science is, What is the climate sensitivity to CO2? Is it 3 or above, as most of the cost work assumes? Or is it more like 2 or less, as some recent work (Nic Lewis) suggests? Makes an enormous difference in terms of the outcomes, and that’s where I would have liked the betting to be.

Ken Finney
Ken Finney

Et tu, Scott?
Ultracrepidarianism much?

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