Guest Post by Scott Adams
It wasn’t that long ago that climate scientists and their supporters mocked the critics who looked out their window, saw snow in the winter, and declared “global warming” to be a ridiculous hoax.
The climate scientists were right about that. You can’t predict the future by looking at today’s weather, even when the weather is setting records.
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Likewise, my latest understanding of climate science (which is always sketchy at best, and certainly in need of updating now) is that we haven’t yet seen the “signal” of climate change in the hurricane data or the weather extremes. But that view is perhaps a year old. Has science updated its opinion to say the two super-hurricanes and our heat extremes are indeed a credible signal of the beginning of a climate catastrophe?
I watch a lot of news, continuously sampling both sides. I haven’t yet seen a climate scientist weigh in on our recent weather extremes. (Perhaps I missed a few?) So I have no idea whether we are seeing something statistically meaningful right now or not.
Let me put this in more stark terms.
If the recent hurricanes and weather extremes are meaningful in terms of climate change, we really, really, really need to know that. THAT is NEWS. In fact, no news is bigger than that news. Even the risk from North Korea is smaller than the risk of total climate catastrophe. So if the current weather extremes are statistically meaningful, and science confirms, why-the-hell isn’t that the lead story everywhere?
On the flip side, if climate scientists do NOT believe our current weather extremes are meaningful in terms of climate predictions, I’d say THAT should be the lead story too, simply because so many people believe they are seeing the beginning of the end times, climate-wise.
So why is the biggest story in the world conspicuously missing from the news? Keep in mind that climate change is still the biggest story even if the hurricanes are NOT telling us something new. The public wants to know how big the threat is. We’re scared!!!
Instead of that news, we get mostly crickets.
But why?
My working hypothesis is that science doesn’t know one way or another whether the current weather extremes are predictive of things to come. And if they are not yet sure, they would say as much. And that would be a problem for news organizations dedicated to reporting climate science risks as real and dire. If you think the world is best served by convincing the public that climate risks are real, your most socially responsible play in this case is to ignore climate scientists at the moment and let the public believe (without the benefit of scientific support, at least right now) that current temperature extremes are a clear sign of climate collapse.
Take this guy, for example. He’s typical of the what I am seeing on Twitter and even from my friends.
[If Tumblr were not broken right now, you would be seeing an image of a tweet that mocks climate critics for thinking the hurricanes are not proof of climate change. But instead you see this boring text because Tumblr won’t accept an image this morning.]
This fine gentleman believes our current hurricanes are indeed a clear signal of climate change. To be perfectly clear, he could be right. But if he is right, it is not because he is well-informed or smart. It would be a coincidence in this case. As far as I know, climate scientists are not onboard with Roger. They might confirm his gut feeling at some point soon, but for now, Roger is doing his own climate science by watching CNN.
So we have an odd situation in which news organizations can report the most “truthful” version of the reality – according to them – by NOT reporting the best thinking on the topic. Here I’m assuming the best thinking is that it is too soon to know how important recent weather extremes are to our predictions of climate change. But if that story is reported, viewers will get the wrong idea and conclude that climate change is not such a big deal even though these weather extremes are clearly a big deal.
Conversely, by not putting climate scientists on TV, and avoiding the trap of having them say, “We can’t tell yet,” which would be over-interpreted by skeptics, news organizations might be doing the most ethically defensible thing they could do. If they believe climate change is a big problem, and they want the public to agree, these hurricanes are doing a great job of persuasion without the benefit of science. It’s hard for the public to see what is happening right now as coincidence, or a normal variation in weather. It just doesn’t feel like normal. It feels like the first big signal of climate change to many observers because they have been primed for confirmation bias on that topic.
If you are a producer for CNN, and you believe climate change is an enormous problem that the public needs to understand, you would hesitate to allow any segment on the air that conflicts with that objective. For example, you would not give equal time to climate skeptics. And while all attention is on the hurricanes, you might not want a climate scientist to come on the air and say some version of “We have no idea whether these specific weather extremes mean something. We’ll need more data to know if this is a real trend or a blip.” That message would sound to skeptics like confirmation of their skepticism, even though it isn’t. Not even close. But it would be received that way by skeptics because of confirmation bias. Everyone hears what they want to hear.
So the biggest story in the world is largely ignored by news organizations because – and here I speculate – reporting any uncertainty about climate change is not as persuasive as allowing the public to look out the window and generate their own illusions of certainty while also frightened to death.
What would Sam Harris say about the ethics in this situation? Should news organizations lie by omission when they sincerely believe doing so is good for the planet? Or should they put scientists on the air to say “We don’t know yet” and give fuel to the climate skeptics whom they believe are jeopardizing the future of humanity?
I say give us the truth in this case, even if the truth is “We don’t know yet.”
“I haven’t yet seen a climate scientist weigh in on our recent weather extremes.”
What weather ‘extremes’, specifically?; and in order to identify as ‘extreme’, you need a comparison to a sample of size that meets scientific parameters.
Try to comprehend how long modern technology has been able to record and define hurricanes (how about since 1960 – barely). This ignores the last 6,000 years of recorded history. Maybe there weren’t any hurricanes prior to 1960 or if there were any, they must have been only CAT 1 or CAT 2.
Thats a valid point, one often ignored. Did the Seminoles of FL prior to the spanish use something similar to the SS scale? How do we know what storms came ashore then. We have recorded them much further back than 1960, though, but that doesn’t actually help the GW people. They tell us this with the doomer global warming headlines. Nonsense like ‘Worst storm to strike ____ coast since 193-something” and most storms ove blah blah blah since 1900-something and shit like that. So, these strong storms are rare, but have happened before? A long time ago, long before we hd this alleged global warming?
No one wants to admit ignorance.
But despite living on this planet for millennia, the truth is that man is just about as ignorant about the real basis of climate as he can be.
We’ve only recently graduated (in historical terms, yesterday) from believing in evil spirits and witches to understanding the basics of thermodynamics. Real, verifiable equations can tell you how to reliably design a heat exchanger, an electric motor or a semiconductor. They are MANAGEABLE, have (relatively) few variables that can be reliably measured and yield real, verifiable, reproducible results.
Computerized climate models don’t do this; they have many variables (but perhaps not enough, yet!) and lots of those variables are ESTIMATED, not measured; how much solar radiation (the heat pump that drives the Earth’s systems) actually hits the Earth (as a hemispherical solid) and how much bounces off (reflected by clouds, aerosols, atmosphere itself) ? How can you KNOW if these estimates are accurate? How much input radiation turns into weather and how much into increased vegetation? How much heats the ocean and how much reflects?
We don’t have any idea. Honest climate scientists say so.
We have no way to know if these few hurricanes, after YEARS of nearly none, mean anything at all. But saying “I don’t know, and have no way to reliably measure all the variables” gets you no federal funding.
Worrying about WEATHER is useful; you might decide you need more insulation, stronger walls, tougher roofs or stilts beneath your house (for floods).
Worrying about CLIMATE is pointless; you won’t be around long enough to find out if you were right or wrong. And fudging the data to “hide the decline” means you can’t trust anyone else to get the truth either.
Live your life, and ignore the climate! Deal with what you can deal with, and ignore the rest.
Anybody do any study on the largest object in the Solar System’s effects on weather and climate?
How about any other maybe-causes from outside the Solar System that maybe-have effects on weather and climate?
Anybody read anything about the multiple X-Class burps from the nearest fusion devices in the past few days, that followed M-Class ejections?
If not, why?
https://www.space.com/38057-sun-unleashes-decades-strongest-solar-flare.html
you talking moonbeams?
Yeah, from the secret Space Nazi Moon Base on the dark side.
Of course.
“……that current temperature extremes are a clear sign of climate collapse.”
What current temperature extremes? Is your info from a comic book? The last 19 years showed a significant increase in CO2 added to the atmosphere, BUT no perceptible increase in temperature over that same time period – kinda destroys that Global Warming scare story.
I heard a couple of days ago that if hurricane Irma makes landfall in the US as a cat. 4 or higher, it will be the first time in a hundred years we’ve had two cat. 4 hurricanes make landfall in the US in the same year. So 100 years ago, we had the same situation happen we might be looking at now. Was global warming to blame 100 years ago? These days it seems that every other day something that’s “worse than, hotter than, colder than, (fill in the blank) is reported in the news. What they don’t say, is that the recording only started rather recently in the scheme of things and that we really don’t have a large enough reliable data set to know what the heck is going on.
“The CSU Tropical Meteorology Project team is predicting a total of 11 additional named storms to form after Aug. 1. Of those, researchers expect eight to become hurricanes and three to reach major hurricane strength (Saffir/Simpson category 3-4-5) with sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or greater. These forecast numbers do not include Tropical Cyclones Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don and Emily which formed prior to Aug. 1.
The team bases its forecasts on over 60 years of historical data that include Atlantic sea surface temperatures, sea level pressures, vertical wind shear levels (the change in wind direction and speed with height in the atmosphere), El Niño (warming of waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific), and other factors.
So far, the 2017 hurricane season is exhibiting characteristics similar to 1953, 1969, 1979, 2001 and 2004.”
This was a second update of the original June forecast that was revised in July. While it is unlucky for the two big storms to hit the US and for the extremely hot weather and fires in the northwest, these events are more typical of those seasons that lack an El Nino.
I hope this CO2 shit isn’t settled until after my final barbeque at the crematorium. I want to spew as much CO2 as possible into the atmosphere and don’t want some regulations that I have to be dehydrated and liposucked first to reduce my footprint.
We’re here to help…
https://mojavedesertpatriot.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/and-dumb-asses/
The constant reverberations of “is to” and “is not” with regard to climate change is of exactly zero value in the arena of debate on the subject. No one really knows anything definitive, mostly because the subject is too vast, the myriad of variables involved too complex, and the time frame of human experience too brief. Now, don’t any of you global warming freaks give me the usual bilge, “But, but, but 95% of scientists…blah, blah, blah.” The survey that produced that figure was BS…you know it, I know it, and Al Whore knows it.
Here’s what I know for certain. About six years ago, my home state of North Dakota had such a wet summer that the tops of the buttes were green in late August. Trust me, that never happens. This year it has been drier than a popcorn fart and they’re cutting the grain down for hay. So, what does that tell me? It tells me…what I just said. Nothing more. Nothing less.
If I had been in Harvey’s path, or if I were currently in Irma’s sights, I would be less worried about meaningless, ethereal blathering about climate change, and more concerned with my personal climate changing from “this ain’t so bad” to “how do I keep from getting ka-bobbed on a flying power pole splinter.”
On a more personal level, here in Montana 25% of the wild lands are burning and the resulting smoke is pissing everyone off. It hasn’t really rained since April. It’s been hotter than a fresh-f***ed-fox-in-a-forest-fire all summer. What does that tell the average Montanan about climate change? It tells him he needs to by a high end cooler so he doesn’t have to buy ice every day at the lake. It also tells him not to park in the tall grass this hunting season. That’s it. That’s all.
Climate change is first and foremost a political debate. It’s about the usual human concerns: power, money, control, and who gets what and how much.
Harvey, Irma, fires, and floods are real things that affect real people. Climate change is real too, but not in the way Al the Climate Whore would like you to think it is.
When it comes to the weather. Think local. Act local. Ignore global.
Climate change and or weather does change continuously. Most of the climate change over the last 10K years indicates we are in for a mini ice age. Or maybe a pole shift will cause the huge body of water at the equator to unleash massive coastal flooding. Then of course there is Planet X that will disrupt just about everything. Don’t forget the credible reports of the shut down of the Gulf Stream. What to do? Hard to take seriously anything from NASA, NOAA, or any of the ‘scientific community’s’ BS. Anything from the government is pure lies. Food, water, shelter, guns, ammo, and high ground is to be taken seriously. Something shitty is about to happen. Enough said.
“I say give us the truth in this case,” Please Scott, gives us the truth in all cases, otherwise we become no different than that which we decry.
Has all the industrial toxins we have spewed into our enviorment from water to air done any thing good ? Of course not however there is little we can do to start or stop squat from happening regardless . A couple volcanos blowing it’s top and we could have an ice age mini or larger so in the fabeled words of Alfred E Neumann “WHAT ME WORRY”
Suspect what the author meant to say was, “isn’t it obvious that Trump’s prolific tweets have caused a 3 degree rise in the flat Earth’s surface temperature. While colluding with Putin, they each intend to make billions by buying up coastal property in lands they have devastated. If only Hillary or BERWNIE had won, humanity would be saved, and the USA could be safely merged with Venezuela and Cuba. The Uk would be savagely attacked, and Hillary would be quoted on CNN, “we came, we saw, BREXIT died.”
“Climate change,” you foolish, maroon, is what has been occurring since this gaseous and still settling down to death planet and solar system has experienced since whatever fallacy you believe created everything from nothing. If anyone is fucking up the planet, it is the god damn chinks. Who libtards never accuse of anything bad, because they want Mao cock, all 2″ of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927
We were warned about pulling our of the Paris Accord.
But we did anyway.
Now look at what is happening.
Global climate is much too large a system for humankind to have much influence over. Obviously pollution is not preferred, but every breath you take creates CO2 pollution. Are you willing to stop breathing? I thought not!
The more we learn, the more we realize how little we know about global climate and how it operates. It seems largely self-correcting.
The AGW folks predicted horrendous hurricanes every year for the last 10. They finally got some, are we supposed to congratulate a 10% predictive success rate? No!
I hope Irma isn’t as devastating as Harvey ended up being. That destruction was not because of the strength of the hurricane, but because of the fact that it stalled in place for 3+ days. That was unique, as Texas hurricanes usually move on inland. Here in Dallas (350 miles North) we barely got a couple of sprinkles from it, while Houston got over 40″ of concentrated rain. It eventually moved east before moving on up and out.
Even if this is the new pattern, and if it is because of AGW, what could we realistically do about it? Nothing proposed by Al Gore or the IPCC would makes a rat’s ass of difference.
Oh I think you’re wrong on that part. An additional trillion dollars a year in taxes will go far to influencing the climate. Think more jets for more algores, plenty of graft on top of that, and even more slavishly pro-GW scientists fed from the last couple of % of all that new fiat cash. The climate of laughter and glee will increase accordingly.
Maverick, if they expropriate a Trillion in taxes to fund the AGW idiots, that means that Trillion can’t be spent by other folks. No net change in expenditure, so a mild change in flavor of the trivial effect man actually has on climate.
Let a BIG volcanic event happen, and AGW turns into a mini Ice Age, and quickly!
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as a midwestern farmer of modest means, i would like to see co2 levels double from here. its plant food, you know.