The main reason you can be assured global warming of doom, a.k.a. climate change, is yet another slow-burn moral panic is that scientists in charge of its theory can never, in public, imagine any good coming out of slightly warmer temperatures.
The few scientists who urge a calm approach to changing weather, or wonder, in public, what’s wrong with a few more pleasant summer afternoons each year, are screeched at, cursed, vilified, and even looked askance upon. Their grants are not funded, their papers cannot find homes in high “impact” journals, they can’t find students.
Impact, incidentally, is what happens when a sack of theories hits Reality. But let that pass.
Public hersteria exists even though all but the zealots, of which there are only a few, will admit, in private, that maybe the weather won’t be so bad. These scientists love their models, sure, for all the many reasons we’ve covered time and again over the years. But—and again this is true for the majority of scientists—the know their models are only models, which they, in private, do not take overly seriously.
In public, though, they do. They have to because every other scientist is seen to be taking the whole thing seriously. Few relish the idea of bucking the Consensus, and being taken to be skeptics. They’ve seen what happens to naysayers and they don’t want it to happen to them.
Problem with all this is that the biggest pains in the asses, the zealots, are the ones who advance to top positions. Not because their theories match Reality better than the other guys’. But because they are the most devoted, and are seen as being the most devoted. Yes, they must have some skill in their field. They have to be able to solve a PDE numerically and must know what vorticity is.
Until such a time when the panic reaches manic proportions. Then ardency counts more than ability.
Overall, the more who are seen to warn that the sky is falling, and the more dramatic the calls, the more the lesser able rise to the top. Once the True Believers have most of the top slots, the movement ossifies. Nothing can break it save some significant shock to the system, or a long time passes and all the zealots die out.
This can be a very long time indeed. Global warming of doom has been with us these last three to four decades, and shows no sign of dissipating. Even before that, it morphed from global cooling of doom.
The same thing is happening with the “transexual” awokening. Nobody at the top in our society, except for a few lunatics, really believes a man is a woman because that man wakes up one morning and says he’s now a woman. The will allow, in private, that the man-not-a-woman is suffering from some kind of dysphoria, and more than a few will acknowledge, off the record, that the guy has lost the thread and fallen prey to an ugly fad.
In public, though, they see the others at the top are screaming and moaning about “trans” “rights”, and this compels them to do it, too. Same result: there are more and more zealots who rise to the highest positions. The whole thing has become a movement which only a few dare question.
The movement has not entirely ossified in the same way global warming of doom has. It could all be ended tomorrow, if some large and important personage, say, Uncle Joe, said “Men suffering from dysphoria shouldn’t compete against women in sports. Come on, man. They’re men.”
That won’t happen, of course.
Fear rules. This is why it does no good to show anybody any “science” which disagrees with the Consensus in either of these areas.
Global warming of doom zealots are always snorting about how hurricanes are increasing and killing everybody. What happens when you show them a plot of the observed number, which shows the opposite? Nothing.
They do not see it. They do not acknowledge it. Publicly. It is as if it the evidence doesn’t exist. They know the Consensus is stronger, so they point to models—the same models that led to their first mistake—which say it is going to be bad.
The most movement you’ll get out of them is words impugning the motives of the guy who showed them a picture of Reality. Or they say they didn’t really mean hurricane number, but some bizarre numerical formula applied to hurricanes shows some change or another in a way that points toward doom.
You can show them a picture of a man who won a swimming context against women. The man is standing there, his pertinents showing trough his bathing costume, his manly physique clear. And they will say…nothing. They are too busy to take you call.
Or they will say the man’s testosterone is lower by such-and-such number of points. They will call you a name for making them confront Reality.
What none of them will do is admit Reality. Not when it could hurt them.
The undramatic and obvious conclusion is, given the size of these movements, is that we live in a time of great cowardice.
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Had to refresh my memory on the origin of the word “zealot” — oh, right, Revolutionary Jews.
Fancy that.
The Global Warming of Doom is one of those topics that once upon a time I used to broadly presume there was some kernel of truth to, even if it was being dramatically catastrophized and overplayed, particularly compared to real ecological problems like plastic everywhere and toxins in our drinking water.
But they’ve pushed it so far, and so dramatically, that you end up taking a look. And like with so many other narratives presented to us, once you take a look, you start noticing things. Maybe this could be a positive outcome from the now-generally-accepted-as-false Corona Doom narrative; people’s faith in the What We Are Told has been shaken, and they might be tempted to have a look, and try to get a grasp on Reality.
It’s just the modern take on the age old ‘The World is Ending grift’ with billions
in advertising and returns in the trillions. It keeps oil and gas prices inflated
and the servants poor until they can move on to rationing and some virtuous
population culling.
I received an email from the only “Skeptic” I have on my ‘rational’ list. Dunning of Skeptoid sent out an email pushing a 500 seat presentation by … wait for it… Acclaimed Nobel Laureate… Can you guess… Master of “hiding the decline”. That gave it away. I better not actually write his name in this comment because he might sue me. He is the Mannliest of Michaels…
I had to demote Dunning in my head awhile back. He use to have rank almost with our host here. If he said it, I could be reasonably confident that he had removed his biases. Then I asked him a question related to something he wrote. I pointed at Burt Rutans work. Mr Rutan is eccentric. But the way he does data analysis is that of an engineer trying make things work better. When I pointed at Mr Rutan’s discussion of the data, the immediate response was “I know him personally, he is a conspiracy theorist of the worst sort!”
I have run into this type of slap often. Attempt to point at data to someone who is “good at their job” that contradicts the message and the do not attempt to explain the discrepency, they just slap you.
Richard Mueller of berkeleyearth is on the list of folks that have done that. It happens at weird times. The strongest reactions are when you quote them while pointing at the data point. It has happened often enough to me that I don’t think it is bad behavior on their part. I think it is a balancing mechanism that we all have to manage the dissonance we all have to deal with.
I am listening to RFK, Jr epic “The Real Anthony Fauci”. IVM is the chapter and a discussion between Dr Hill and Dr Lawrie is taking place. Dr Hill seems to be trying to negotiate the dissonance between serving his patients and serving is paymasters. The words sound terrible in the book. All I hear is the guy trying to remain relevant and able to make adjustments to the direction the world take having to manage against a reality that will take him out of that position. As awesome as it is to be honest and have integrity, putting food on the table is also important. One of the great dangers in elevating to higher office is getting ensconced in debt. People who do not get themselves into debt have leeway. People who are in debt that is closely tied to their monthly paycheck are very very susceptible.
What is the difference between a mail piece that says “We can reduce your monthly payment” and “we can own you!”
God help you if you try and ask “what does 0 mean?”
See that 0 on the Global Average Temperature Anomaly graph? What does it mean. Define it for me?
See that ice over there floating in that glass of water…. 0C (if we get it to steady state…)
See that piece of wire with electricity flowing without resistance … Getting close to 0K.. (as long as we aren’t flirting with High Temperature Superconductivity… )
What does 0 A (anomalous temp) mean. Define it for me in way that we can replicate.
If you start the exercise, you run into the first hurdle… What is 0 A for my locale? Then you run into .. How do I make that for the local region. What is the local region.
My answer is PLOT ALL OF THE TEMPERATURES for all time and look at it. Negative temperature mean that your 0 is suspect. There is a reason we use absolute temperatures. But I just said absolute in the context of a measurement. I lost 90% of my audience on this blog.
God help you for the wider world. If the audience isn’t interested, it aint worth discussing.
Feels are so much more important that reals.
The thermodynamic absolute zero temperature is defined as no internal kinetic energy in a defined sample of matter. That does not mean that there is no energy, just no kinetic energy held by the sample’s constituents. The thermodynamic temperature is a proxy for that internal kinetic energy. Light is electromagnetic radiation. That can be absorbed or emitted without a change in internal kinetic energy. Thus, IR is light, not heat. The conversion can happen, but that does not mean that it must happen logically.
That said, we are also in an interglacial period of a geological ice age. It is, indeed, “global cooling” we should worry about more. Also, the Earth’s orbital parameters are variable. The axial tilt is declining. That means that the local summer maximum insolation at the high latitudes is decreasing. Eventually, it’ll get too low to melt ice sufficient to stop major accumulations on perennial ice.
In addition, the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are too low and too near plant starvation levels such that the next glaciation will result in massive primary plant production (it is already often limited by photorespiration now) declines. No plants mean no herbivore food means no carnivore food means mass extinction. The question then becomes can we limit that by returning to the atmosphere the gigatons of sequestered carbon dioxide. Doing so does not necessarily mean anything more than that the lapse rate remains closer to the moist one versus the theoretical dry one. Changing that lapse rate does not have to change surface weather conditions at all. Changing the insolation will. Changing the heat flow from the core to mantle will, too.
Reality and science are constructs of the white male patriarchy.
In the Great Leap Forward both will be abolished for the good of the collective.
Red Guards will be out to reeducate all heretics.
Icepick:
You mean Trotsky’s Ice Axe. I was good friends with the son of the neurosurgeon
who flew from New Jersey to Mexico to do the autopsy. It was an ice axe a fitting
end to a diseased mind that made an impression on a young mind.