by Andy West
Although a game played on a relatively tiny stage, ClimateBall™ points to fundamental processes, which across the vastly larger global public stage and involving billions of meme transactions annually, have caused the emergence of a cultural belief-system based upon the narrative of ‘certain catastrophic climate-change’.
Introduction
Climate blogger ‘Willard’ has put significant efforts into a large taxonomy of skeptical challenges (the ‘Bingo Matrix’ or ‘Contrarian Matrix’) and brief rejoinders to same. Along with the very useful characterization of especially the rhetoric aspects of the conflicted skeptic / mainstream climate-change blogosphere, as an engagement not based primarily upon rational argument leading where it will, but one with different rules, a kind of ritual or game: ClimateBall™. Everything herein is my own view of ClimateBall, and what it points to.
Willard’s site describing this game, with its interlinked plus well laid-out taxonomy of challenges / rejoinders, has been slowly developing for some time and from its own description is still at an early stage. I’ve found it most interesting, not regarding the domain-related points themselves but from an overall conceptual point-of-view. Although highly aligned to a particular ‘Battleground’, i.e. exchanges that occur within the climate-change blogosphere plus associated forums / knowledge-rich venues / social-media (in the spirit of the game I will term this the Clogosphere[1]), ClimateBall captures some essence of the critical processes that also occur in the much vaster and far less constrained global public sphere (which is not at all climate-science literate).
This article draws comparisons between the battleground of ClimateBall, and the enormously amplified battle playing out across the global public stage: ‘Public ClimateBall’, or ‘ClimateBall Big’. Games have rules, and although there are many constraints in the Clogosphere compared to the global public stage, some of the rules and indeed some of the very same subject material, are present in both environments; yet with very different outcomes. ClimateBall Big is a different league.
In the FaQ for ClimateBall, blogger ATTP (Professor Ken Rice) is quoted regarding the spirit of ClimateBall: ‘[I]t’s a game whether we like it or not. If you’re going to get involved, it’s best that you understand that it is [a] game, how to play the game, and what the rules[2] are.’
The Contrarian Matrix
Each skeptical challenge in the Matrix has its own link, boiled down to the essence of what the challenge is about. For example Historical Times, Consensus, Extreme Events, Renewables, etc.
The ‘But’ precursor
Each skeptical challenge has the word ‘but’ added in front of it. So, ‘But Historical Times’, ‘But Consensus’, etc. This is of course a rhetorical device in itself, yet usefully serves as caution that the challenges might be more about rhetoric and bias than about rational content. This is as seen from an orthodox PoV, but this PoV is the widest net for catching skeptical rhetoric, should this indeed form a main component of the challenge. And if any skeptics arguing each point are tripped over by such a very simple device, maybe the device found out their own rhetoric, or maybe instead they’re just ClimateBall novices, losing the play but not necessarily the point. And the game operates in both directions of course. One could add the ‘But’ precursor to every orthodox challenge, laying the gauntlet that maybe these are not well-founded. While this is hardly the way to proceed with rational debate, an element of ritual gaming has been a part of the Clogosphere for years, in part nourished by newer players sucked in.
To separate the game from rational exchange that has also occurred, it would actually be pretty useful to have a map of it. And a map from any PoV is a useful start. Whether some of the ‘buts’ are actually false positives (in the detection of rhetoric sense), and how much the given rejoinders to each skeptical challenge might also lean upon rhetorical devices and bias rather than full objectivity, is likely recursive within the game. Some points include domain knowledge that itself is disputed plus isn’t easy to untangle from ‘pure’ rhetoric. A similar mapping from a skeptical PoV would be helpful and might not be a mirror image, which itself would be interesting. The identification of as many known fallacies as can be found, would I think help to make maps from any PoV more convincing. Yet much more important than maps, is what the perceptive notion of a game points to.
The Central Square of the Matrix: ‘CAGW’
The heart of the matrix and highest profile skeptical proposition is: ‘But CAGW’, where CAGW = Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. The first rejoinder is: ‘“CAGW” {1} is a contrarian strawman of the scientific established view’. Usage and controversy regarding the ‘CAGW’ acronym is discussed in detail at Climate Etc. here (with a pre-cursor / partner post here); which posts also point out that indeed mainstream science (the IPCC technical papers) does not support certain global catastrophe from anthropogenic climate-change or global-warming, the general meaning of the acronym. But while skeptics might often and inappropriately lay it at the door of mainstream science, they certainly didn’t invent this position. On a massive scale and with a landslide victory (as confirmed below), this is the winning thread in ClimateBall Big. ‘CAGW’ is a focus for both leagues.
Accelerant and inhibitors for the game
If there was no game, fully rational debate would lead only to withheld judgement in the absence of enough evidence, or with sufficient (overwhelming) evidence to choose between candidate theories, the emergence of provisional (almost certain) answers consistent with the evidence. There would be no ritual repetitions, no rules outside the normal process of testing candidates against the evidence. So, what fuels the game? What leads to different rules? A clue is in the frequently emotive nature of many exchanges (unfortunately, often negative emotions).
Many different fallacies and detailed bias mechanisms have pervaded the Clogosphere, these always occur systemically in conflicted domains where group identities are at stake. And the ultimate driver of group or ‘tribal’ identity is emotive (so not rational) conviction about accepted group-values. This is accelerant for the game, which in principle can literally bypass rationality for group adherents. This leads to rules that are more to do with emotive selection and an evolving population of false narrative variants, than with rationality. And ultimately, can create an environment in which emotive content and rhetoric devices have more power than evidence. Oppositely, where emotive convictions are resisted, exchanges drop out of the game and progress rationally. Rational exchange promotes more rational exchange; it’s a game inhibitor.
Battlegrounds: The Clogosphere and the Global Public Space
Having noted all the above, the Clogosphere is actually a place of relative sanity. On average the Clogosphere is pretty climate-literate, hugely so compared to the public domain, which means there is knowledge to feed rational exchanges even if that doesn’t always happen. And notwithstanding enough emotively driven plays to earn their own taxonomy (I look forward especially to the forthcoming sections of the ClimateBall Manual: IV-Climateball Tricks, V-Climateball Strategies, and VI-Climateball Principles), arbitrary evolution of narratives is severely constrained.
To this extent I disagree with ATTP’s quote above; the writ of ClimateBall in the Clogosphere is very far from all-powerful. While there are emotive redoubts and a significant proportion of emotively driven exchanges, and indeed it’s more than handy to have an idea of the game, playing is by no means compulsory and there’s a great deal of rationality too. While a never-ending-audit[3], another useful concept expressed by Willard, can be a very negative phenomenon when executed by a mono-culture, in a domain where everyone of every cultural loyalty and position audits everyone else, a never-ending-audit is net healthy and severely limits the extent to which emotive memes can depart from reality. Without this limit, such memes can achieve run-away evolution, hence asserting an arbitrary mono-culture based upon complete falsehood. For instance, a constant fire-watch on ‘CAGW’ by both skeptics and the orthodox (from very different perspectives and for different reasons[4]), prevents this meme from ever gaining purchase in the Clogosphere. Even as it remains an incessant bone of contention, which contention helps stop the fire-watch from ever lapsing.
Which leads us to what must happen on the battleground of the global public space. This space is essentially devoid of climate knowledge, subject to less rational audit as decades pass, and fosters demonization of any remaining audit functions. Nor is it constrained by any sense of ‘doing science’ or weighing evidence. Plus, it is also several orders of magnitude larger than the Clogosphere. As there are now few countries left where sizeable portions of publics haven’t heard about climate-change, the number of memetic transactions that occur annually in the global public space must be in the billions. Transactions = transmits, receives (much bigger than transmits due to various broadcast functions), and modifications. While smaller, the latter rise as transactions rise, which leads to faster rates of evolution; so narrative variants can swiftly pivot to challenges (such as covid, for instance). From a ‘selfish meme’ PoV, the burdens of evidence, inconvenient rationality and never-ending-audit that clog up the Clogosphere, are all absent; only the gaming ruleset applies.
The game uninhibited: ClimateBall Big
Emotive selection is a major part of that ruleset. Although it isn’t so simple as ‘the most emotive meme takes all’, nevertheless such a meme rises to the top-dog position. And it’s difficult to be more emotive than certain global catastrophe for the planet. In practice, a whole population of associated variants implemented by a plethora of rhetoric devices live under the top-dog narrative, which directly or indirectly sponsors them. This allows for many potent emotive ‘cocktails’ (e.g. ‘hope and fear’) that leverage more support, plus reduces the effect whereby highly emotive variants induce not only emotive conviction, but also emotive rejection at the same time (cultures are polarizing). ‘Softer’ narratives still linked to the top-dog can increase the number of adherents ‘on the sly’, prompting less rejection and pulling in wider (albeit less ardent) support for the overall cultural agenda. A key sub-theme is ‘salvation’ (via a crash Net-Zero program).
So, as a result of runaway narrative evolution the CAGW fairy-story dominates the global public space. As it has slowly captured institutions and the machinery of governments plus mainstream media, church leaders, influencers and uncle Tom Cobbly and all, then less and less rational audit prevents its spread. Relative to the Clogosphere, this is not at all a rational space. Rationality is effectively vanquished. For full clarity, from here on I add the implied ‘certain’ catastrophe (absent salvation via crash Net-Zero) to the acronym, so ‘CCAGW’.
Being free from all encumbrances causes different sub-narrative variants to be surfaced compared to the Clogosphere (which is mainly about science and policy even where exchanges fall prey to ClimateBall). I term the population of narrative variants sponsored by the top-dog theme of CCAGW, ‘Catastrophe Narrative’.
It’s more intuitive that in the Global Public Space, the processes driving masses of individuals to the tune of emotive narratives are largely subconscious. Cultural drives are the oldest and most potent way of aligning human activity, for which no deliberated hoax / conspiracy / nefarious plot is required. Notwithstanding that in any barrel there’ll be a few bad apples, there’s no reason to suppose that this is different for the gaming aspects of the Clogosphere. People aren’t emotive because they’re knowingly pushing a false agenda, but because they deeply believe they’re pushing the truth, and against what is frequently perceived as deliberate resistance; yet such strong (group) belief can blind any of us.
Measuring the game
The overall effect of ClimateBall to date is very difficult to measure, maybe impossible. Particular encounters can be catalogued, but they’re often highly entwined from multiple positions, may well be inconclusive, and the Clogosphere remains stubbornly riven with rationality that undermines or even short-circuits plays. Nor are formal surveys generally carried out on the Clogosphere. Some attempts to characterize websites and traffic seem too simplistic to tell us anything that denizens didn’t already know. From purely the gaming PoV it has a word-war one-ish character, a stalemate punctuated by ritual exchanges that achieve little.
However, measuring the effect of ClimateBall Big is certainly possible. There are quite a number of relevant surveys covering the global public space. And while public authorities are not separately surveyed, for the higher-profile ones at least their clear statements are frequently recorded on the internet, which means a useful catalogue can be compiled. Authority stances both indicate the level of cultural penetration achieved, plus for any given period, what narrative is pushing corresponding publics via authority influence. The section below covers such a catalogue, which indeed demonstrates ubiquitous Catastrophe Narrative from public authorities; the section after that covers the mass response of global publics. Overall, ClimateBall Big has an early world-war two-ish character, a constant conquering of territory – so far memetic Blitzkrieg is winning.
The Catastrophe Narrative Matrix
The Climate Etc. guest post here briefly describes some of the Catastrophe Narrative variants as propagated by many authority sources (from presidents and prime ministers and UN elite on downwards) across many nations, plus supplies an archive file containing many more (179 quotes from 157 sources). I list the more common categories here, and in the spirit of the game that operates uninhibited on the battleground of the global public space, I precede the paraphrased typical variants in each with ‘But’. For precise quotes see the archive, which I reattach here (I’ve never had time to add more quotes since 2018, but there are now many internal links for moving easily around the file). Some particular phrases are more explicit / extreme than in the summary below.
While some seem more obviously emotive memes than others (it’s hard to mistake ‘Earth is a car heading for a brick-wall’), the persuasive potency for all comes from the sponsoring narrative. So, ‘save the children’ from CCAGW. ‘Extreme weather’ because CCAGW (whatever the state of attribution science for any particular event, using CCAGW to emotively convince of its veracity is a memetic falsity). But ‘X is bad anyway’ and it’s causing CCAGW. Nefarious doubters betray us to CCAGW. The new world is ushered by fighting CCAGW. But ‘listen to the children’ who spout CCGAW. And so on. Even in a CCAGW context some make no sense (e.g. blaming earthquakes on CCAGW); since the top-dog sponsoring them all is false anyhow, that’s a side-show.
- Basic / CCAGW.
- But certain man-made catastrophe! But no Planet B. But save the Planet. But all life on Earth. But climate-change catastrophe is real. But the future of every human-being. But “this apocalyptic reality is the elephant in the room”. But a question of survival.
- Emotively overwhelmed conditionals.
- But scary. But passion. But sorrow. But listen to FEELINGS (not the qualifications). Panic! (I dropped this in as it’s now explicit from Greta).
- Fear plus hope.
- Incredibly scary, but “Salvation from climate catastrophe is, in short, something we can realistically hope to see happen”. But new and better world! But new green economy. But one-world government! [Insert to taste].
- Engaging anxiety for children.
- But save the children! / grandchildren / next generation.
- Moral association.
- But noble cause. But climate justice. But climate criminals. But greed. But sacred duty. But willful denial.
- Agenda incorporation.
- But X is BAD anyhow! X = Capitalism / Democracy / Flying / Frakking / Power-stations (even nuclear) / eating meat. Whatever. [Insert to taste].
- Terminal metaphors.
- But Earth is on life-support. But Earth drowning. But Earth burning. But Earth cancerous. But Earth is a car heading for a brick-wall. But heading for train-crash. But heading off a cliff. But into the abyss. [Insert to taste]. But we are “at the limits of suicide”. But we are playing Russian roulette. But unleashing Hell. But giant asteroid equivalent. “About a decade ago I realized we were putting the finishing touches on our own extinction party.” (2011).
- Merchants of doubt.
- But don’t heed doubters! Doubters are immoral / lining their pockets / greedy / dishonest. Doubters = deniers / corporations / fossil-fuel purveyors / mavericks / right-wing. [Insert to taste, essentially anyone out-group on CCAGW]. (Essentially, but don’t listen to the Devil).
- The voice of innocence.
- But listen to the children!
- Attribution reinforcement.
- But extreme weather. But Natural Disasters.
- Deadline deployments
- But Doomsday clock. But the cost of inaction is catastrophic! But only X years / months / days / hours to act! [insert interval / dates to taste, very many have passed].
- Miscellaneous: Cute icons, Ultimate out-group action, No-hopers.
- But Polar Bears. But Penguins.
- But “You cannot pick and choose — if you don’t accept climate change, you should not be given penicillin or painkillers or even visit a doctor…”. Greg Skilbeck, essentially because it’s an “existential threat to civilization”, and science is an all or nothing proposition.
- “But any which way, barring miracles, this civilization is going down. It is time we stopped engaging in the absurd contortions and pretences of ‘climate-optimism’. It’s time now for climate-realism. That entails not only an epic struggle to mitigate and adapt, an epic struggle to take on the climate-criminals, but also starting to plan seriously for civilizational decline and collapse”. Rupert Read.
The mass response of Global Publics
Public surveys don’t generally ask what people think about climate apocalypse and simultaneous salvation, the core of Catastrophe Narrative. However, many questions / answer-options approach this to various emotive degrees by asking about, say, national harm or personal harm, or offering terms like ‘extremely serious’ to describe climate-change, or offering a list of national or global issues from which climate-change can be picked as the single-most or 1 of N most important issues. These allow us to see emotive convictions in publics across nations[5], who have been soaked in Catastrophe Narrative for decades. As Catastrophe Narrative is cultural and contradicts mainstream science (and skeptical science), we expect responses to dominantly conform to a cultural pattern if it has indeed won ClimateBall Big. So, is this the case?
The chart below shows a basic summary (less series, less features) of climate-change ‘most supportive’ responses across national publics, to various survey questions. Text of the questions is listed at the end of this post. Two features of the chart shout out that a strong ‘climate culture’ is indeed being interrogated here; religiosity is acting as the ‘lens’ via which we can see it. But first, some nomenclature and context.
The grey trends are climate-change supportive responses to reality-constrained questions, i.e. those asking about climate-change relative to other real-world issues / policies / financing. Such questions have different strengths of constraint. E.g. picking climate-change (or a related policy) as a single priority from 9 issues, is a stronger constraint than picking climate-change as one of 5 priorities from 12. Picking from national issues is a stronger constraint than picking from global issues (less perceived personal impact from the latter).
The black trends are climate-change supportive responses to unconstrained questions. These are free from the above constraints, allowing full expression of cultural commitments absent any clash or compromise with reality. Such questions have different strengths of emotive alignment to Catastrophe Narrative. And in regard to posited climate-change harms, the emotive ranking is: personal beats national beats global. Because cultures are emotively polarizing, all the black trends should intersect somewhere. This isn’t the case for the reality-constrained responses, as long as each represents a unique and non-equivalent reality.
So, the trendline key is: ‘SA’= Strongly-Aligned, ‘MSA’ = Medium-Strong-Aligned, ‘MWA’ = Medium-Weak-Aligned, and ‘WA’ = Weakly-Aligned. ‘FC’ = Fully-Constrained, ‘SC’ = Strongly-Constrained, ‘MC’ = Medium-Constrained, and ‘WC’ = Weakly-Constrained. Note: the ‘MC’ trend is intuited; I haven’t yet found a series roughly bisecting the space between ‘SC’ and ‘WC’. Note: due to noise, the RH end of ‘MWA’ lands bang on top of ‘WA’. Hence, 1 unit (+1Y) is added to MWA, in order to make the conceptual situation clearer.
The first shout-out is that the systemic differences between the grey and black trends should always occur when interrogating a strong culture. The two different response types will be similarly grouped, and the unconstrained trends will intersect while the reality-constrained ones won’t. For instance, this exactly occurs when interrogating religion (and with basic enough values, across all main Faiths). In one-dimension so to speak, i.e. when plotting faith supportive responses to questions on religiously-orientated values against the same X-axis of National Religiosity, then all the trends must slope the same way. But otherwise, the features are the same. And we know that religion is wholly cultural.
The second shout-out that attitudes to climate-change are cultural, is the apparent paradox that those nations expressing by far the most concerns about climate-change (RH ends of black trends), also express the least priority for climate-change relative to other issues / policies (RH ends of grey trends). And the opposite is true at the LHS, albeit the grey and black trends overlap more. Such a pattern can’t possibly come from the climate or climate exposure of nations, or climate-science or related policy aims, or indeed anything rational. Yet this can arise from cultural motivation; cultures feature fundamental contradictions that may sometimes achieve blatant expression. In this case, it’s due to a dual interaction between religion and ‘climate culture’.
Together, these shout-outs tell us that public attitudes to climate-change are indistinguishable from those for any other strong culture. In the global public space, climate-change is essentially a secular religion. This is the result of ClimateBall Big to date, a memetic game in which Catastrophe Narrative, with it’s top-dog theme of CCAGW, has triumphed.
Consequences
The victory of Catastrophe Narrative in ClimateBall Big isn’t just an academic matter, because real-world phenomena are driven by the cultural attitudes of national publics to climate-change. For instance, the level of climate-activism per nation also follows a simple and dominantly cultural pattern. Perhaps not a complete surprise. Yet so does the commitment to renewable energy (Solar and Wind) per nation, meaning that this does not depend primarily on the climate or climate exposure of nations, nor science or engineering issues, nor objective policy generally. This ought to be a concern to everyone across the spectrum of climate-change opinion, from the skeptical to the highly concerned. Via emotive selection, cultural entities steer us en-masse to pour resource into not solving their touted problem, which maximizes their spread and influence, while a genuine solution would kill the culture. This is likely the main source of animosity in various green groups (and Greta) to nuclear as the heavy-lifter in Net-Zero solutions. And all this is why I probe the big league that determines events, not the little league; yet the concept of ClimateBall is nevertheless a helpful one.
Table and notes
| Question | Measured (CC supportive) response | Data-points, R2, p | Those who choose… | Measured (CC supportive) response | Data-points, R2, p |
| How much of an impact, if any, do you believe climate change will have on your life? | ‘A great deal’ SA | 24, 0.87, 2.2E-11 | Climate-change as important in 1 of Y (National issues) | Point samples confine below | 5, *, * |
| How concerned are you, if at all, that global climate change will harm you personally at some point in your lifetime? | ‘Very concerned’ MSA | 26, 0.45, 1.7E-4 | Fully-Constrained upper estimate from WC (Divide by 6) | FC | n/a |
| Because of human activities, the Earth is close to ‘tipping points’ in nature where climate or nature may change suddenly, or may be more difficult to stabilise in the future. | ‘Strongly agree’ MWA | 17, 0.66, 7.4E-5 | ‘Climate-change’ as important in 1 of 9 (Global threats) | SC | 16, 0.33, 2.1E-2 |
| How much power, if any, do you think International bodies (e.g. the United Nations) have to combat climate change? | ‘A great deal’ WA | 24, 0.8, 4.6E-9 | ‘Action on climate-change’ as important in 6 of 17 (Global issues) | WC | 48, 0.57, 5.7E-10 |
| How serious a problem, if at all, do you think climate change is? | ‘Extremely’ WA1 | 37, 0.49, 1.4E-6 |
Link to Catastrophe Narrative Archive.
[1] From the ClimateBall Manual: ‘More Dance than Sport’. A clog-dance seemed appropriate: Climateblogosphere.
[2] Willard has on occasion noted transgression of the rules, e.g. ‘ClimateBall malpractice’. But purely in a gaming sense, true rhetoric competition driven by emotive bias is never malpractice whatever path it follows. Or from an alternate perspective, compared to 100% objectivity and rationality it is always malpractice, so separating out one ‘transgression’ due to bias from all other transgressions, is not too meaningful.
[3] A key tool of ‘the grey men’ in the 1973 novel Momo, by Michael Ende, via which they steal time.
[4] Both sides in the Clogosphere disbelieve this meme. They disagree only about its source. Skeptics often presume it must be mainstream science that produced and underwrites ‘CAGW’, which as noted earlier is not the case. The orthodox often presume it must be a skeptic strawman, rather the winner of ClimateBall Big. It’s notable though that science has consistently turned a blind eye to the rise of ‘CAGW’ / Catastrophe Narrative in the public domain.
[5] Excluding those where a one-party state suppresses religion, as this warps the lens of religiosity through which we are looking. So China, Vietnam, North Korea. And also for different reasons the US; the same cultural principles hold but there is more complexity due to a 4-way cultural dance (Rep/Con culture, Dem/Lib culture, religion, and ‘climate-culture’). In the rest-of -world it’s only a 2-way dance, religion and ‘climate-culture’. The US scenario can still be tied to the pattern in the chart, but it’s outside the scope of this post.
Good grief andt, are you at a very loose end this very cold and windy day?
Climate ball deserves no more than a passing paragraph in a post about a variety of topics.
Tonyb
Yes, very cold and windy here today. Look deeper, glath-hopper… ;)
Agreed. Those that know it’s a game and understand the dynamics have a better chance at getting the public to the truth than teaching physics.
The Heartland Institute achieve better conference turnout by replacing Austrian climate rappers and ferret-legging by coal mine chaplains with a vigorous post-banquet game of climate ball.
But Heartland. :)
Evenin’ Tony (UTC),
It seems I’ve popped back in here at an opportune moment post(ish) much Storm Arwen excitement? I am similarly astonished!
Nevertheless here’s what Twatter claims is my most recent ClimateBall™ play over there:
https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/1030584098568511488
That’s not the way I remember it though. Has @jack et al. been messing with the historical ClimateBall™ record?
Evenin’ (again) Tony (UTC),
My previous post(ish) Storm Arwen comment seems to have disappeared into moderation.
Are links to Twitter persona non grata here these days? Or perhaps my humorous mangling of the name of said social media venue was strangely similar to an offensive “four letter” word?
Let’s try another experiment? My recent Twitter video report live(ish) from the very cold and windy heart(ish) of Storm Arwen:
https://twitter.com/V2gUK/status/1464652079297929225
This is intriguing. Would anybody here care to try this little experiment?
https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/1464700604555661328
From where I’m sat it provides convincing evidence that Twitter is manipulating its search results.
Your mileage may vary of course!
Jim
My comments often go into moderation so don’t take it personally as a variety of things seem to trigger it.
Here on the south coast we had numerous ships sheltering in Lyme bay as the waves are very minor as we are not affected by northerlies. . It is easterlies that stir the seas up here. I shall watch the local news with interest tonight though.
Tonyb
Hi Tony,
I don’t take it personally, but it would still be nice to know what triggers being banished into purgatory. Then one might hope to avoid transgressing in similar fashion in future.
The waves were definitely on the huge end of the scale here on the north coast. What’s more the wind has caused all sorts of problems for WPD’s electricity distribution grid, including an HV fault at our local substation:
https://V2G.co.uk/2021/11/storm-arwen-blacks-out-scotland/
I suppose I should add a subhead?
“Plus North East and South West England”
Jim
Yes, I think we escaped lightly down here. Very windy but only twigs brought down and no damage from the sea .
Are you able to use Lisa the Leafs batteries to power your house should the grid go down?
I have a small solar generator which would just about power our led lights and a Tv. We are too close to neighbours to have a petrol generator which would provide much more power.
As regards trigger points, mentioning Jos**a used to do it but the system is very eclectic.
tonyb
Good morning Tony,
An excellent question! However the answer is a bit technical.
We had a power cut of our very own in the small hours of this morning. Our supply came back on quickly but our near neighbours in Trevivian have not been so lucky:
https://V2G.co.uk/2021/11/storm-arwen-blacks-out-scotland/#Nov-28-07Z
Lisa requires a DC vehicle-to-home capable EV charging station. We have one of those but it was switched off overnight. That’s because our AC vehicle-to-home charging station was switched on in anticipation of receiving an over-the-air firmware upgrade over the weekend. Sadly we do not possess a AC vehicle-to-home capable EV. They are rather hard to come by, especially the right hand drive versions!
As luck would have it my “professional” alter ego recently offered BoJo some pro bono consultancy on this very topic:
https://twitter.com/V2gUK/status/1463895694922637315
Dear TonyB.
Please suck it up.
Best,
W
Willard
Are you playing Climate Ball? I think you are winning.
best
Tony B
Tony,
I think you’re playing too, in fact I think we’re all playing, including Judy. I also think that you’re the winningest, in fact I think we all are!
Cheers.
Willard
I know you enjoy rolling words round your mouth and savouring them, so without snark, can I suggest you might like the beautifully written books by Author Robert Mac Farlane?
I especially recommend two of his books I have read ‘The Old Ways’ and ‘Underland’
https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/32424/robert-macfarlane.html
On providing this link I note that he has also written a book called ‘Landmarks’ which I was unaware of, so that has gone onto my Christmas present list.
all the best
tonyb
Thanks, Tony!
In return, you might like this RTÉ Ulysses series:
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0610/1146705-listen-ulysses-james-joyce-podcast/
I also recently discovered Wilkie Collins via Phoebe Reads a Mystery:
https://www.stitcher.com/show/phoebe-reads-a-mystery
I should be away in December, so see you in 2022!
Willard.
Excellent. Thanks. I managed to pick up a copy of the latest book from one of my favourite authors -Robert Harris- for only £1 from a local charity shop so that is my next physical reading, and I will start on one of your suggestions on my tablet.
tonyb
ClimateBall is as deeply rooted in the discourse of the Enlightenment as America’s constitution, with which it shares doctrinal foundations in the works of Calvin and Hobbes:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-origins-of-climateball-in-works-of.html
Tsk, tsk Russell,
Unlike Andy you’re forgetting Willard’s trade mark on the term ClimateBall™.
And despite getting that much correct another one of my comments is sat on Judith’s naughty step :(
This theory of human reasoning in the context of complex policy issues is wildly false: “If there was no game, fully rational debate would lead only to withheld judgement in the absence of enough evidence, or with sufficient (overwhelming) evidence to choose between candidate theories, the emergence of provisional (almost certain) answers consistent with the evidence. There would be no ritual repetitions, no rules outside the normal process of testing candidates against the evidence.”
Climate change is a perfectly normal science intensive policy debate. It is however a huge debate, with more than a million words written to date and a million more to come. The issue tree of all this writing is enormous.
See my http://www.stemed.info/reports/Wojick_Issue_Analysis_txt.pdf
It is certainly not a game, but calling it one might be entertaining, like calling war a game.
“Climate change is a perfectly normal science intensive policy debate.”
In the *public domain*, this is measurably not the case (nor do publics have any climate-science literacy). Narrative competition rules, and wholly cultural attitudes result. See the chart. In the Clogosphere as noted, significant rationality stubbornly obstructs emotive bias and narrative competition, but to suggest that this domain is free of the latter elements, would seem to be a huge stretch.
I would reply but I find what you say to be incoherent. I am curious how you measure the lack of normalcy in the debate?
A good way to see the science intensive ness is the postings at WUWT. That different people know different amounts of different science does not change the obvious fact that the climate debate is science intensive.
It’s not often we even vaguely agree David, but there is something in what you say.
“Incoherent” is a bit over the top, but perhaps Andy would care to elaborate upon his point at greater length and/or using plainer language for the engineers amongst us?
Let me add that I find the entire post incoherent. I literally cannot understand most of the sentences. But having studied the internal structure and logic of the climate debate for 30 years I do not agree with the parts I can understand.
“I would reply but I find what you say to be incoherent. I am curious how you measure the lack of normalcy in the debate?”
Goodness me. The chart demonstrates that attitudes to climate-change in the global public domain are dominantly cultural. But I guess if you found everything therein incoherent, you won’t understand the straightforward explanation of same. The attached archive demonstrates the ubiquity of cultural Catastrophe Narrative in public authority sources, but perhaps you found these incoherent too. I noted that it’s likely impossible to measure the effect of narrative competition and bias in the climate blogosphere and associated forums, and indeed there is a great deal of rationality therein that holds such elements in check. I guess you found that incoherent too. Do you think the latter is completely free of bias and rhetoric and emotive input?
> This theory
Nice strawman, David!
Have you found a way to bulldoze your issue trees into binary decision trees yet?
Pingback: Public ClimateBall – Climate- Science.press
It is easy to sell people ideas when there is so much money backing it up and financing it. People are gullible. They do not know how things work. They believe in rhetoric served up repeatedly. Much of it is laziness.
I would like to see temperature measurements inside houses with air conditioners. Summer and winter. Then add both up and divide by two.
It won’t happen. But the heat contribution to external thermometers by air ons and even vehicle engines plays a part. Not just industrial processes.
So take away gas and coal source heating and industry. What do you have ?? Answer. The end of the Industrial Age. But not for China who are financing this agenda to destroy the West for their own supremacy. And it is working very well. China will not stop producing. Even after taking over the world. It is happening. Few want to see it and admit. Prof Clive Hamilton. Canberra wrote of it.
“They believe in rhetoric served up repeatedly…”
You said above, “it is a perfectly normal science / policy debate”, and with the implication that the elements discussed within the post, of which a key one is rhetoric (and the biases that drive rhetoric), took no part in outcomes. Have you read the post?
Mr. Wojick:
It’s not just the money.
Most CAGW believers are not making money from “climate change”.
It’s not just the common human characteristic of having beliefs based on faith
— Most people have beliefs based on faith, and the belief in a coming climate crisis is one of them. As an atheist for 60 years, I see CAGW as yet another religious belief based on faith. These beliefs were not created with facts, data and logic, so can not be changed with facts data and logic..
CADW is a symptom of Belief in Experts, especially government “experts”.
— Almost all leftists trust other leftists (most government officials) to be experts in the areas of their authority. Think of the worship of Dr. Grouchy Fauci. This is a classic Appeal to Authority logical fallacy that affects almost all leftists. … If NASA-GISS makes a climate claim, it just has to be true, assume the leftists !
‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. ~Philip Stott
When did Climatology’s break with reality occur? The break has become so great, Walter Stark (See, “Warmists Can’t Stop Themselves,” Quadrant) is forced to consider if something more is going on in the minds of climate alarmists. It could be that the stars of climate change catastrophism are simply that self-righteous. “Or could it just be that the constant misrepresentation of reality that is now the norm in climate research,” Starck wonders, “has become so ingrained that adherents have difficulty differentiating reality from fantasy, not unlike the condition psychiatrists used to call Pseudologia Fantastica?”
Thanks Andy!
:)
FWIW, I tried to explain my understanding of ClimateballTM in this post.
Hi Ken,
A agree with this paragraph of yours from your 2014 post on climateball.
“It would be wonderful if we could have thoughtful discussion amongst people who broadly disagree, but who are willing to listen to what the other person has to say, give it some thought, and maybe actually agree with some – if not all – of it. Instead, it’s more about scoring points. Find a way to undermine the other person’s argument. Find a way to undermine their credibility. Find a way to dodge their arguments against your position. Don’t necessarily apply the same standards to yourself as you apply to everyone else (of course, you then make out that you hold a higher moral ground). Again, to be clear, I certainly don’t think this is how it should be conducted; it just appears as though this is – sadly – how it is often conducted.”
Perhaps the silver lining of the cloud is a greater understanding of ourselves and why we believe what we believe.
Questions for exploration on this front:
1) What makes a belief a core belief? Investment?
2) Why do we become invested in beliefs? Confidence in self? Order?
3) If we all recognize that it takes more confidence to be self-critical or self-effacing then why is our nature to be defensive?
4) If we all agree that everyone can be mistaken why would we think that admitting being mistaken would be discrediting rather than demonstrating self-awareness, a strength.
5) Why would people align their beliefs 100% to any group beliefs? Isn’t that in itself a display of disrespect for the value of determining the truth?
Ron,
In this context, my impression is that there are possibly two main scenarios. Some people are simply engaging in bad faith, and their goal is to simply score some kind of point. It’s not about developing any kind of deeper understanding, or trying to understand the views that others might hold. The other is that some people do genuinely strongly believe that their view is completely correct and that others are completely wrong and should be strongly debunked. This could be a valid approach if they happen to be correct, but it’s not great if they’re wrong, and certainly doesn’t allow for any acknowledgement of nuance.
“Some people are simply engaging in bad faith, and their goal is to simply score some kind of point.”
This is a key point. I think we can agree that it is too easy to assume someone is engaging in bad faith. Here is my list of influences on that:
1) Everyone is prone to the false assumption that someone else has similar moral values. As far as I can tell the only universal moral value is in the goodness of truth. And, even that has the self-defense escape clause caveat.
2) What is a valid enough self-defense to justify the conscious denial of truth or even intentional deception? Bodily harm? Mental harm? Discomfort? Vanquishing an enemy?
3) How do we determine who is an enemy? Someone who attacks our beliefs?
4) How is peace established with an enemy? Answer: building trust. How is trust established?
5) If our trust is connected with our affinities to family, clubs, groups, nationalities, etc… then it makes sense that those not associated with an affinity are less trustworthy?
6) How do we disentangle beliefs with trustworthiness?
Ron,
I agree that it can be too easy to assume others are engaging in bad faith, but that doesn’t mean that some people aren’t doing so. I do accept that we are possibly prone to assuming bad faith in many circumstances where people are trying to engage in good faith.
In some sense, though, I think this is somewhat beside the point. The point about ClimateballTM is essentially that it’s happening whether we like it or not. So, if someone is going to engage they should probably be aware of the various tactics.
On the other hand, if someone would genuinely like to improve the discourse, all they can really influence is their own conduct/behaviour.
“…some people do genuinely strongly believe that their view is completely correct and that others are completely wrong and should be strongly debunked.”
I think the justification for “strongly debunking” is tenuous if it relies on tactics that disrespect because to do so invites retaliation and distrust. In this regard perhaps rules and rules based debunking is a the key.
Rules imply fairness and mutual application as opposed to Calvinball, (the root of climateball), where the only rule is that there are none.
Ken, I think we broadly agree that climateball is a current reality and that it is counterproductive to good dialogue.
So why is climateball a reality?
a) the denialists, wittingly or not, are obstructing dialogue.
b) the activists, wittingly or not, are obstructing dialogue.
c) both are happy not to explore the other’s pov, (which could otherwise threaten core beliefs).
d) one or both sides are setting aside civil discourse under the irresistible assumption that the other side is deluded and thus irrationally and immoveable.
e) all
Ken,
Why do you think more consensus believers are not trying to make their case with scientific posts like the one on solar preceding this post? Here is an excellent threads like on the dynamics of Earth’s energy flux: https://judithcurry.com/2021/11/21/solar-variations-controversy/#comment-965018
As I read it I was persuaded by both Javier and Girma whenever it was their turn to refute the other. The result is I feel educated on the subject. Why can’t that happen among climate science experts on opposing sides of Climateball big?
Thanks Ron,
Below is Javier’s claim and it’s refutation from my favourite book.
Javier:
“It has been known for a long time that air and humidity above the sea surface follow SST and not the other way around.”
What you are saying is inconsistent with the property of water:
WATER (TIME LIFE BOOK)
A compound slow to boil
Homeowners whose water pipes have burst when the temperature suddenly fell need no other proof that water, unlike most liquids, releases tremendous energy when it freezes. Conversely, it must absorb a great deal of energy – in the form of heat – before its temperature is raised even slightly. An iron kettle used to boil water will be blistering hot long before the water in it is lukewarm. This property accounts for water’s use as a cooling agent in automobile engines. It soaks up an enormous amount of heat without boiling.
In this manner, large bodies of water and the moisture in the atmosphere can regulate extremes of temperature, absorbing heat on hot days, and giving of heat on cold days. Where there is little natural water, as on the desert, temperatures can range from a searing 140 oF (60 oC) to well below freezing at night.
Before the temperature of a substance can be raised, it’s molecules must be prodded into vigorous motion. But in water molecules, the firm grip of the hydrogen bonds must be loosened – a task which requires considerable amounts of heat.
The advent of CAGW and the corona virus has served to show what we already should have known: that many people, even those scientifically trained, tend to believe things based more on their tribal identities rather than the data. And when the data is lacking, or uncertain, or impossible to interpret effectively, that leads to even more reliance on tribal views.It almost seems as if the less specific knowledge we have of a subject, the more firm are the convictions expressed – as we see in so many of the posts on the climate blogs. How can so many (presumably intelligent) people with orthogonal views all be right? How can so many affirmed skeptics continue to do battle with a couple of defenders of the orthodoxies on Climate Etc. when neither side could possibly know what the future will bring because it is too uncertain? Why are so many postings so cock-sure of themselves when there is absolutely no basis for their certainty? Why is there a strong correlation between climate skeptics and mask/vaccination skeptics? Its all tribal. We are all aborigines underneath.
You would find “The righteous mind” by Jonathan Haidt enlightening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind
Climate issues, as religion and politics, have become an expression of our tribal, groupish, righteous nature for most people. Everybody believes the “real” science supports their tribal views.
Donald,
We have chemistry and physics and engineering that is used elsewhere for our benefit, but is violated in the climate change scam.
Example: conventional research has failed to quantify whether and by how much air temperature and CO2 are linked, so the problem is parked and proponents proceed on the unproven assumption that they are linked.
It is this disregard of inconvenient outcomes that is a prime driver for the sceptics I know well – mostly well educated scientists who cannot comprehend the purpose of deliberate prostitution of good science. Geoff S
Plus +1, Geoff
Donald Rapp wrote: “It almost seems as if the less specific knowledge we have of a subject, the more firm are the convictions expressed…”
Humans need answers to fill in the voids of life knowledge. Biologically, our brains fill in blanks and automatically process visual input with bias as exemplified by the Poggendorff illusion that magicians take advantage of to fool audiences.
What we call religion may be a parallel biological bias to fill in gaps. The scientific method might simply have been an artificial trick to overcome a natural tribality that became a liability for civil society.
Shamanism has historically been well acquainted with weather as well as plagues. A climate alarm or plague is natural partner to authority’s natural bias toward authoritarianism. Could the sincere scientist that has the right message to be promoted by authority, a type of selection bias?
Donald *
> “It almost seems as if the less specific knowledge we have of a subject, the more firm are the convictions expressed…”
I don’t think it quite works that way. I think the more “motivated” a person is, by way of ideological/identity investment, rhe more firm are their convictions – often independent of the level of specific knowledge.
For example, there are a lot of people here who do have specific knowledge and who are absolutely certain of their views, despite the “wickedness” of the topic at hand. The fascinating aspect of that situation is that if there’s a main theme of this blog it may be that the uncertainty demands respect.
Also interesting is that then many of those same folks weigh in with total certainty on issues where they have no real specific knowledge, and in fact where there’s an even more fundamental problem in that they’ve confused opinion and personal interpretation with fact.
(Early) mornin’ Joshua (UTC),
“It may be that the uncertainty demands respect”
Which suggests to me that now is a good time to introduce that well known philosopher of science Nassim Taleb into the conversation once again:
“Climate models and precautionary measures”
The popular belief that uncertainty undermines the case for taking seriously the ’climate crisis’ that scientists tell us we face is the opposite of the truth. Properly understood, as driving the case for precaution, uncertainty radically underscores that case, and may even constitute it.
Jim –
Yup. I missed that earlier.
The irony here is that “skeptics” largely ignore the implications of the uncertainty, and while yelling “UNCERTAINTY” frequently ae totally certain (beyond what the evidence supports).
Donald Rapp:
“It almost seems as if the less specific knowledge we have of a subject, the more firm are the convictions expressed…”
“Why is there a strong correlation between climate skeptics and mask/vaccination skeptics?”
The two cases are the same in that there’s a lack of knowledge. The same in that the fixes are of questionable value.
So it can be framed as adopt this or wait. As the voluntary versus the coerced. I’ve said the climate wars were practice round for the pandemic wars. How are the two cases different?
If you sneak 50 wind turbines onto a grid service area, not much happens. Prices go up a quarter penny per kilowatt or less. When people lose jobs and schools shut down, that’s a bigger deal. When billions of dollars are borrowed, printed, or conjured and thrown at people, that’s a bigger deal.
They are similar in that the rich can afford a pandemic and it falls mostly on the poor. It’s Teslas and working from home for the rich. The rest can eat cake. Our climate heroes seem to hate the poor. And value them less than the Earth’s health.
One should have strong convictions upon witnessing clown shows on such large scales.
Why the strong correlation? It’s self evident.
“One could add the ‘But’ precursor to every orthodox challenge, laying the gauntlet that maybe these are not well-founded.”
Andy, the whole point of the ‘But’ is to discredit any logic without the need to invoke any. It is exactly the same device as equating any pov as racist; it require no further proof or logic. Even easier than that, all one on the left needs to do is say the source was one associated with the right and they are excused from listening or engaging, other than to automatically call the view racist. Because everyone on the left knows that everyone is the right is motivated by racism at the core. The convenience of this tool has led to the teaching of “critical race theory” in schools. It facilitates the control of any narrative.
Tools of religion are increasingly being employed with the label of science.
I did point out that it’s a rhetoric device; yet a very simple and not powerful one.
Dear Ron,
The “but” indicates a deflection.
Since it’s your main weapon, of course you’ll whine about that.
Cheers.
Hi Willard, congrats for having your “matrix” front and center.
When you write: ‘The “but” indicates a deflection’, are you saying you agree that your common use of the “but” is a tool of deflection? Or, are you saying I am pointing out the “but” to deflect from a more important point, that I am in fact engaging in climateball?
“Since it’s your main weapon, of course you’ll whine about that.”
What is my weapon? What am I whining about? Isn’t the “but” in fact a tool of deflection by accusation of whining or parroting of a debunked point, thus a trump card to discredit any statement as unworthy of response?
One of the hard things I find sometimes with sincere engagement of someone from the left is that they seem like they are almost always accusing the other of exactly what they are doing themselves. It is so very hard to know if they see this or are sincerely blind to it.
When you coined climateball where you thinking the skeptics were sincere in their skepticism? Or, did you think they were just making excuses to defend their denial? Were you implying that they were playing climateball?
This is truly interesting.
Mornin’ Ron,
“This is truly interesting.”
Quite so!
Don’t forget Willard’s trade mark though!
Ron is barking up the wrong tree- Climateball is the Anthropocene answer to the 20th century rule-less game of Calvinball
Tens of millions of Americans followed Calvinball in Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, for decade, until the comic strip’s juvenile antics gave way to an even sillier climate strip styled Watts Up With That?, of which David Wojick has written”
A good way to see the science intensive ness is the postings at WUWT. That different people know different amounts of different science does not change the obvious fact that the climate debate is science intensive.
That seems fair, for only Breitbart and Fox better display how differently people can display different amounts of scientific incomprehension:
.https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-origins-of-climateball-in-works-of.html
Ron,
You’re sweating it too much.
The “but” indicates a fork from an ongoing exchange. Suppose we’re talking about Climate ball. “But leftists” would deflect from that.
That’s what you just did.
See? Simples.
Hope this helps,
W
Ron –
Maybe I can help. Think back over your comments here through the years.
How many times have they contained a “but librulz” or a “but Marxists?”
Ron –
Oh wait. I didn’t even read your comment in full before I wrote my comment. I only read Willard’s comment. But then I went up and read your comment athat he was responding to, and imagine my surprise when I read…
> One of the hard things I find sometimes with sincere engagement of someone from the left…
Too funny.
Perfect.
Willard, Joshua, so you are saying that the groups that emphasize the political priority of concern to climate mitigation or “climate justice” are not correlated with the left? Or, are you saying I do not have the right to make that assumption? It is so difficult to engage when no assumptions are allowed. Are we allowed to call people on the left liberal? Or, is that something only a person on the left is allowed to do? Is it like the N word? I am just asking for your sincere reply. I hope I don’t get a snark answer with “librulz” in it. BTW, Joshua swears that has nothing to do with mimicking a rural person.
Andy is correct I believe in recognizing the powerful tribal aspects at play. Joshua and Willard feel inoculated from being tribal by accusing me of being tribal. But I would like to point out for the record that they seem much more invested in the benefits of personally bonded to each other by the shared cause.
> so you are saying that
It’s your third miss by a mile, Ron.
I’m saying that we’re discussing Climateball, not your favorite target.
*You* want to make it about your favorite target.
*That* is the function of the “But” word.
My contributions are quite simple here. You misconstrued the “but” in the Bingo. I’m correcting your misconception. And while doing so I’m **showing** you the point behind it.
I have no idea why you pretend that this represents your best shot at good faith. But keep going! See if I care.
It won’t prevent me from moving ball forward.
Ron –
>… Joshua, so you are saying that the groups that emphasize the political priority of concern to climate mitigation or “climate justice” are not correlated with the left?
No. Where do you get that from?
> Or, are you saying I do not have the right to make that assumption?
No. Where do you get that from?
> It is so difficult to engage when no assumptions are allowed. Are we allowed to call people on the left liberal?
That question is obviously based on an (incorrectly assumed answer to those above absurd questions. Besides, you’re “allowed” to do whatever you want and I don’t get to determine what you are and aren’t “allowed” to do anyway.
> Or, is that something only a person on the left is allowed to do?
This, likewise, seems based on (weird and wrong) interpretations of what I said.
> Is it like the N word? I am just asking for your sincere reply.
The sincere reply is that you completely (and bizarrely) misinterpreted what I write.
> I hope I don’t get a snark answer with “librulz” in it. BTW, Joshua swears that has nothing to do with mimicking a rural person.
So now we get but rural person.
> Andy is correct I believe in recognizing the powerful tribal aspects at play. Joshua…. feel[s] inoculated from being tribal…
I do t feel inoculated from being tribal, Ron. That would be silly. Only silly people feel inoculated from being tribal, imo.
> by accusing me of being tribal.
I want accusing you if bring tribal. I was pointing out how you deflect with but librulz.
> But I would like to point out for the record that they seem much more invested in the benefits of personally bonded to each other by the shared cause.
I Iove how you point out your opinion “for the record,” Ron.
Willard,
In re-reading your “The “but” indicates a deflection.” I now get it. You are sincerely explaining that your use of the “but” is a shorthand penalty call out in climateball for a deflection, which is a foul (as it should be).
If that is correct in your meaning my question still stands: ‘Isn’t the “but,” in fact, a tool of deflection by accusation of whining or parroting of a debunked point, thus a trump card to discredit any statement as unworthy of response?’
Just because there are predictable logical retorts to commonly made points shouldn’t mean that the penalty whistle should be blown and the play stop. Why not let the conversation develop to see if new ground can be found?
Do you not admit that calling the “but” is counter-productive? If following old ground is just too uselessly redundant for you the question could be asked what is your purpose here. It’s like calling a penalty on a chess opponent for making the most logical counter. If you wreck the board each time that happens then how can you expect other players take you as a sincere rule follower? Never mind you have a friend that gives you a high-five when you do it.
Are climateball rules equal to for each of the debate’s use? Or, is there an inherent advantage given to those who have the righteous cause?
> You are sincerely explaining that your use of the “but” is a shorthand penalty call out
Not at all, Ron. Where do you see any rulebook? Most of my comments get deleted here. Do you think I’m a referee? I’m not saying you should not try to deflect. In fact, I expect you to fight for it!
Try to make it about me. See how that’ll work for you.
Besides, what would be the goals? In fact, where are they?
Something tells me you don’t recall Calvinball. What’s the first rule of that game?
“So now we get but rural person.”
So the “but” can be used to squash the making of any side point as a penalty deflection rather than giving a reply to the aside if one disagrees. And that is not a deflection? (Of course, it is.)
Should I write these rules down? Do you have to play by them too? I really don’t want to because you can endlessly take offense or discredit the question or questioner by their association with dangerous or discredited beliefs.
Ron –
> I really don’t want to because you can endlessly take offense..
I have taken no offense to anything you have written and it is highly unlikely I will take offense to anything you write going forward.
> or discredit the question
I have answered your questions, or pointed out how they seemed to be based on misinterpretations of what I said.
> or questioner by their association with dangerous or discredited beliefs.
What dangerous or discredited beliefs do you think I’m discrediting you for being associated with?
I don’t think your beliefs are dangerous. They’re just your beliefs. I’m not in a position to discredit you or your beliefs.
Is all of this really just because I pointed out your often repeated pattern of introducing “but librulz” or “but Marxists” into so many conversations?
It seems like an extreme reaction my pointing out something that’s so obvious.
Just one of so many examples:
https://judithcurry.com/2021/10/31/week-in-review-science-edition-130/#comment-964526
> so you are saying that
It’s your third miss by a mile, Ron.
I’m saying that we’re discussing Climate Ball, not your favorite target.
*You* want to make it about your favorite target.
*That* is the function of the “But” word.
My contributions are quite simple here. You misconstrued the “but” in the Bingo. I’m correcting your misconception. And while doing so I’m **showing** you the point behind it.
I have no idea why you pretend that this represents your best shot at good faith. But keep going! See if I care.
It won’t prevent me from moving my ball forward.
Willard wrote: “It’s your third miss by a mile, Ron. I’m saying that we’re discussing Climate Ball, not your favorite target. *You* want to make it about your favorite target. *That* is the function of the “But” word.”
Willard, I agree that deflection and ignoring points are counterproductive to dialogue. My point is that when someone counters a point by accusing the other of deflection that in itself can be a deflection. It is more optimal to simply remind the other of the original point and or respond to the counterpoint with another point, even if it momentarily deviates from the direction you desire.
If you agree with this then my point is that the “but” is counterproductive because it ends the dialogue with an accusation based on an assumption that the other is either intentionally deflecting or making a discredited argument. BTW, any response that is too heavily loaded with assumptions is counterproductive. In the ideal conversation one politely disagrees when they come upon an unaccepted assumption and then one elaborates as to why they disagree in a form that allows a reply.
Dissecting differing assumptions can often look like deflection but it actually is the necessary excavation that can reveal the bedrock of common ground.
Ron,
This is not about my desires. I wasn’t talking about your favorite target. You kept trying to make me talk about your favorite target. I never mentioned it, you did. Not only that, but you blamed *me* from trying to deflect away from your deflection!
Check your last try:
You see the “but”?
That’s exactly why I add a “but” in front of all the Bingo squares.
It’s really simple.
And no, “but leftists” isn’t a way to dissect different assumptions, whatever you might mean by that!
‘Check your last try:
Dissecting differing assumptions can often look like deflection but
You see the “but”?’
I have no beef against the word “but.” It is a great tool to allow one to acknowledge an assumption while adding context by pointing to other assumptions that could change the implied conclusion. That is perfectly fair and productive dialogue. What is unfair and unproductive is to attack one for using “but,” which is exactly what the climateball “but” foul is.
> It is a great tool to allow one to acknowledge an assumption while adding context by pointing to other assumptions
You keep using the word “assumption,” Ron. It may not mean what you make it mean. For instance, there is no need to discuss any assumption behind “but leftists” to recognize that it deflects from the topic at hand.
So once again you’re trying to use me as a springboard for your pet topics. More so when one of them is good faith exchanges. You should have enough evidence for now that this kind of manipulative behavior won’t work against me. So I must applaud your courage for still trying!
Godspeed.
“How many times have they contained a “but librulz” or a “but Marxists?”
Meanwhile COP26 ends with a demand for $1 trillion a year to be paid to “poor countries” by “rich countries” that would have no impact on CO2, but must be done in the name of “climate justice.”
But we must not discuss that, because that would be a “deflection” under the rules of ClimateBall. The dreaded ‘but librulz!” fallacy that requires us all to merely nod in feigned agreement while decidedly not paying the bill.
In that respect, Climate Ball has been very successful. Willard et al are winning their game- global leaders will continue to meet periodically and make declarations they have no intention of meeting because they’re necessarily ridiculous (made so by the demands of the climate crusaders).
Climateball only has one rule- do not honestly analyze anything climate crusaders say.
The best example is that an entire political party and it’s media handmaidens can dash about calling climate change an “existential threat” while simultaneously making it the center of their matrix to declare that “catastrophe” chatter is a strawman built by merchants of doubt.
What good faith discussion can you have with people who say it’s bad faith to take them at their word?
> their word
With this “their” you’re spilling all the contrarian beans, Jeff.
I could say that it suffices to show you’re dishonest, but then I also have a more than a decade of your comments.
“…but then I also have a more than a decade of your comments.”
And in those 10 years climate crusaders have managed to shutter nuclear power plants, switch electricity production to gas and oil, and introduce western nations to the joys of rolling blackouts.
And then meet in Scotland to claim nothing has been done in 10 years. The nerve!
See Andy?
Jeff’s contributions are the perfect illustration of why “But Nukes” and “But Politics” are Bingo squares.
See Andy, Willard’s bingo squares are designed to shut down actual discussion about actual realities.
They are designed, in fact, to ensure that 10 years from now global leaders can gather to tell the press that only they can (someday) solve the non-catastrophic existential climate crisis and, by-gosh, you need them because this time they’re really gonna do it. Pinky promise.
See, Andy?
Jeff’s still trying to present his recursive monologues as a discussion.
There’s nothing wrong with your Bingo squares, as long as you treat them as a map and not an Ethos. And so remember than some rhetoric content does not mean all rhetoric content, and unless you actually exercise your rejoinders to demonstrate their rational strength, no-one has any idea whether they are themselves subject to significant bias or not. You just push CB to win, every time. That for instance there are issues around nuclear within the green movements is obvious, exploring these issues with your debater could potentially benefit you both, and everyone else too. Pressing CB to exit every time, only creates more rhetoric conflict.
If only I knew how to treat a Bingo as an Ethos, Andy!
What if I told you that Jeff was pushing “But Nukes” to lose every time?
It takes two to tango, you know.
>If only I knew how to treat a Bingo as an Ethos, Andy.
It doesn’t require your knowledge. Only that you’ve become emotively addicted to your Bingo.
Is that an intervention?
I should have known!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
“What if I told you that Jeff was pushing “But Nukes” to lose every time?”
You would be wrong.
Jeff’s position hasn’t changed in 10 years: people are problem solvers, if you propose a problem, propose a solution. Then evaluate the solution options.
While CB continues, this has been done numerous times. Nuclear always wins. Wind and solar always lose- too expensive and too unreliable. This isn’t red/blue, conservative/liberal, denier/believer. The list of people who acknowledge this includes alarmists (Hansen), establishment Democrats (Tom Friedman), Progressive activists (Michael Moore).
Climate crusaders don’t like that, so they stress catastrophism in an attempt to make the non-solution seem rational.
Unfortunately they made some headway with this – which is why Europe has non-functioning renewable portfolios and has to burn oil to heat homes and businesses this winter. Until they can restart old coal plants.
Politics? Do it competently. Tripling the price of heat to appease the left is incompetent politics. But have at it. IMO the incompetent always collapse and crusaders who are willing to wait decades for windmills to work are telling us there’s no urgency.
I note that a clone of Andy’s article has now appeared over at WUWT.
Do you suppose that the clientele over there will find his purple prose “incoherent” too?
Guy R. McPherson:
20 August, 2011
“About a decade ago I realized we were putting the finishing touches on our own extinction party, with the party probably over by 2030.”
https://www.countercurrents.org/mcpherson200811.htm
Only less than a decade left to verify Guy’s prediction.
Ron: “I hope I don’t get a snark answer with “librulz” in it…that has nothing to do with mimicking a rural person.
Dream on, Ron—
A Long ago, <i.Variety headline declared :
STICKS NIX DENIAL HICKS
IMO not really worthy of taking 30 minutes of my time to wade through this.
Bravo, Andy!
Many on both sides of the climate debate can’t seem to grasp that culture is upsteam of science. Keep pounding it.
:)
Social “non-sciences” are not my strength. There is too much BS in them and not a proper methodology. I have problems understanding this article.
Some comments:
“we know that religion is wholly cultural.”
But religiosity is cross-cultural and widespread. Religion appears to be a cultural evolutionary advantage, as proposed by David Sloan Wilson’s: Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (2002).
“attitudes to climate-change are cultural”
This is so obvious as to question why it needs to be demonstrated, but if engaged in demonstration the methods and data for the figure should be provided. Is it based on a cross-national study or in a mix up of studies with different questions? The methodology in social studies is often very questionable, particularly when the conclusions align with desired explanations.
“In the global public space, climate-change is essentially a secular religion.”
Of course it is at the level of non-scientists. People are asked to believe in something that appears to explain phenomena beyond their comprehension by a caste of climate initiates and asked to engage in sacrifices to bring about salvation. The apocalyptic narrative is appealing to Judeo-Christian cultures even when atheists, because the narrative is present in multiple manifestations while we grow up. Orientals don’t respond to that narrative so much and are a lot more skeptical towards that part. Where are the extinction rebellion demonstrations in Orient?
Scientists are trained to trust scientific results not directly related to their subject of research, so it is not a belief in a secular religion, but professional confidence for them.
Global leaders are hypocritical Pharisees. The problem is known for the past 40 years. If it was so serious as they claim emissions would have been reduced by now. Since emissions have been growing unabated it is clear they don’t believe their own narrative.
Javier –
> But religiosity is cross-cultural and widespread
This question largely hinges on how you’re determining the criteria you attach to religion/religiosity.
– “This question largely hinges on how you’re determining the criteria you attach to religion/religiosity.”
No it doesn’t. You are a polemist. I am not interested.
According to Wikipedia 59% of the world’s population identified as religious, 23% as not religious, in 2012. I have no further interest in the matter.
Javier –
> No it doesn’t. You are a polemist. I am not interested
Lol.
People who study this issue note that the definition of “religion” varies. If you simply mean beliefs about supernatural beings, then it’s fairly uniform across time and cultures.
However, often, people have a more nuanced definttion of “religion,” – say including religious institutions with priests and the like. In which case there isn’t the dame degree of uniformity across time and cultures.
So the question of uniformity would depend on your definition of religion and religiosity.
But if it makes you feel more correct to argue by assertion and call me names, have at it…
Javier –
I was referring to something like this:
-snip-
The definition of religion is a controversial and complicated subject in religious studies with scholars failing to agree on any one definition. Oxford Dictionaries defines religion as the belief in and/or worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.[1] Others, such as Wilfred Cantwell Smith, have tried to correct a perceived Judeo-Christian and Western bias in the definition and study of religion. Thinkers such as Daniel Dubuisson[2] have doubted that the term religion has any meaning outside of western cultures, while others, such as Ernst Feil[3] even doubt that it has any specific, universal meaning even there.
-snip-
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_religion
But like I said, if calling me names and then stomping your feet and going home works for you, that’s fine with me.
This convo has been enlightening. It gives me a window to help in parsing your comments when I can’t follow the technical details. You’ve given me some information for evaluating probabilities. Thanks.
Javier –
This is the kind of information I was referring to:
-snip-
The definition of religion is a controversial and complicated subject in religious studies with scholars failing to agree on any one definition. Oxford Dictionaries defines religion as the belief in and/or worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.[1]
Javier –
This is the kind of information I was referring to:
-snip-
Others, such as Wilfred Cantwell Smith, have tried to correct a perceived Judeo-Christian and Western bias in the definition and study of religion. Thinkers such as Daniel Dubuisson[2] have doubted that the term religion has any meaning outside of western cultures, while others, such as Ernst Feil[3] even doubt that it has any specific, universal meaning even there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_religion
The d*finition of r*ligion is a c*ntroversial and c*mplicated s*bject in religi*us st*dies with sch*lars fa*ling to agr*e on any one def*nition. Oxf*rd Dicti*naries def*nes religi*n as the beli*f in and/or w*rship of a sup*rhuman contr*lling power, esp*cially a pers*nal G*d or g*ds.[1]
Javier –
For some reason, the text in that last comment wasn’t getting past the filter – hence the replacement of vowels with *’s.
At any rate, thanks for providing a window into your reasoning processes. Often I can’t evaluate the technical comments that you make, but in this thread you made it quite clear the type of approach you bring to your analysis (at least sometimes).
So here, you’ve given me a window into evaluating the probabilities related to the reasoning in your more technical comments.
Thanks for that.
Javier:
Your point 1)
Cultural as in ‘cultural entity’, not as in, say, ‘traditional features of society’. All cultural entities whether religious or secular work on the very same mechanics, the same rules, notwithstanding that they all have different core cultural narratives so different surface features. Those mechanics / rules rest in turn on Group Selection (in the context of multi-level selection), which is DSW’s big thing. While in principle each main Faith is a separate cultural entity, religions are by far our oldest cultures. Likely many thousands of them have gone extinct, but for those Faiths still running today they’re also pretty old, around a couple of millennia for the main Faiths. Because they have for so long run in parallel, so to speak, and because they operate in highly overlapping narrative space (so creation myths, life-after-death, spirituality etc), which is not the case for a secular culture like Communism say, then if the values that they react to are basic enough, they will all act as though they are part of a single entity, and this is easily demonstrated (see the paragraph immediately under the chart). Although it wasn’t intended as a demonstration of this, the included chart does show it, see below.
Your point 2).
If something is not demonstrated, folks will quite rightly question whether it is so 0: And circumstantial evidence, while there’s heaps and heaps of it, isn’t the same as hard social data. But I didn’t have much space left to include detail! The included measurement is at the national level, which enables many independent attitude surveys to be covered, and they all fit the same single framework, lessening the chance of any particular survey being misleading. The chart is a basic subset of the full framework. For the straight linear series (so also no complex methodology at all) I find 20 such (13 independent plus 7 more that are related), covering a range of attitudes to climate-change across overlapping subsets of 66 nations, having R2 values with National Religiosity that span four series with 0.32<R2<0.46, nine with 0.49<R2< 0.6, four with 0.64< R2<0.73, and three series with 0.78<R2<0.88. Even the least of these is strong for social psychology, the highest are outstanding.
The wider framework covers more features / series and for instance non-linear series which are responses to questions with mixed elements of reality-constrained and unconstrained questions (that occupy a predictable envelope). Pretty much every type of public survey available from the mainstream pollsters is covered, these are not academic surveys and they have very straightforward questions in most cases. Not only is bias not a problem in most cases, it is *helpful*. To see cultural attitudes better, cultural bias in surveys picks it out better. If questions are equivocal, responses are more equivocal too, which doesn’t mean populations aren’t full of emotive / cultural conviction, because *majorities* respond with same if emphatic questions are asked (being either emotively for or against), but sufficient engagement must occur. The only bias that’s a problem is pre-selection bias, because then one is only seeing a specific window on the data. Regarding all main Faiths acting as one, per above, these are all represented in scattered / different places along the X-axis, yet nevertheless all contribute to the very same trends. So all Faiths act as one in respect of their interaction with ‘climate culture’. I had no space for such finesse, but for instance the cultural theory also says that many years ago, before church leaders signed up in a big way to Catastrophe Narrative (and some time to take effect), the black / unconstrained trends should slope the opposite way. There isn’t so much data from back then, but for the World Survey Wave 5, this appears to be the case for a 2005-2009 window. Another confirming factor.
Your point 3.
Well it’s all very well saying ‘of course it is’, and I sympathize, but the culture itself and so uncle Tom Cobbly and all, claim this is not the case. So being able to prove it from hard social data is in a different league to circumstantial evidence (such as that you provide), no matter how much of it. And what is not appreciated generally is that these same bulk public attitudes across nations are determining serious policy. So as noted at the end of the post for instance, this includes the commitment to Renewables across nations, which follow an expected cultural pattern and so are nothing to do with the climate or climate exposure of nations, or with technical or engineering issues, or with mainstream scientists or whatever it is they think, or indeed rationality generally. And this is demonstrated at the link (to a prior post here). I think it’s more than reasonable when making claims that all these things are cultural, in the face of the global culture itself that is dominating both public and policy and likewise public authority, plus is falsely claiming that it is underwritten by science, that the claims can be proven.
For the first time since I began using the internet in 1996, I’m going to comment on an article I did not read. Very creative but way too long and complicated. Mr. Wojick’s comments make sense.
I did go to Willard’s website, curious after calling him Will-ard the Dull-ard here in the comments section. Well, I’m not changing that nickname.
Five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
To add some of my thoughts about climate change
in an attempt to make this comment of some value:
Real climate science (REALITY)
= study of past and present climate, collecting and analyzing data.
Many questions still need answers.
“Climate Change” junk science (FANTASY)
= Scary, always wrong predictions of a future climate crisis that never shows up, after 64 years of wrong predictions … so far, starting with oceanographer Roger Revelle in 1957.
No data.
Only speculation.
Predictions of rapid, dangerous global warming, that can not be falsified, and do not resemble actual mild, harmless global warming in the past 45 years.
Climate speculation based on the false claim the future climate can be predicted, and the future climate can only get worse. Never better.
Every day I post several article on climate science and energy
on one of my blogs — the best articles I read that day. Not this article !
Over 266,000 page views so far — doing my part since 2014 to refute
the Climate Liars:
www(DOT)elOnionBloggle(DOTBlogspot(DOTcom
Several years ago John Christy identified the playground for climateball:
“Why do we argue about climate change?
The reason there is so much contention regarding “global warming” is relatively simple to understand: In climate change science we basically cannot prove anything about how the climate will change as a result of adding extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
So we are left to argue about unprovable claims.”
There you have it: the future is by definition a matter of opinion, and despite the sciencey facade, it is another arena for pessimists and optimists to confront each other.
2014 article by Christy:
https://www.centredaily.com/opinion/article42846180
We debate unprovable claims to avoid discussing the provable ones: such as you will not power New York City with solar panels and windmills in February.
Indeed. Since global warming/climate change is a stool with three wobbly legs, there are many suppositions lacking support.
https://rclutz.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/climate-stool.png
Javier –
> Orientals don’t respond to that narrative so much and are a lot more skeptical towards that part. Where are the extinction rebellion demonstrations in Orient?
That’s a fascinating comment, at multiple levels.
Do you have any idea of public opinion among “Orientals” on climate change? On what evidence do you base your view on what “Orientals” think and why they think what they think?
It appears extinction rebellion has problems gathering traction in Asia and Africa, and climate protests there are not very populated. For example, XRANA (Extinction Rebellion-Affinity Network of Asia) is a group of 15 activists from 6 countries.
https://xranaorg.wordpress.com/about-us/
Do you have any evidence that the apocalyptic narrative has wide support in Asia or Africa?
Javier –
> Do you have any evidence that the apocalyptic narrative has wide support in Asia or Africa?
Apocalyptic narrative is too vague a term for me to give a meaningful response. And of course, focusing on outliers at the extreme ends of the spectrum, while convenient for pushing a narrative, doesn’t lend a whole lot of value to the broader discussion anyway, imo.
The evidence I’ve seen – although it’s far from conclusive – is that there’s widespread concern in Asia about climate change, about on a rough par with the US when you consider the entire population. I wouldn’t have any idea about Africa, but in general, in the US, the question is much more politicized than elsewhere and so I’d expect that pretty much anywhere else there’s a fairly consistent acceptance of the “consensus” view as expressed by institutions like the IPCC.
Of course, support for policy options across different nations is a complex matter, contingent on many economic, social and political interaction effects, and I’d see no reason to expect some kind of uniformity.
So, you only have your opinion, …right.
Javier, I think most can agree that beliefs are associated with political affinities.
If science replaces aspects of religion then it would follow that political authority would have influences on science. If this is so perhaps nations interested in untainted science should rethink the notion that governmental funding of science does not inevitably lead to politicizing it.
> It appears extinction rebellion
“But Alarmism” and “But Scapegoat” rolled into one bait and switch.
Well played, Javier!
Injecting some data into this sub-thread, which may help:
https://wearenarrative.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/gwacc5-xr-sa-trends.png
XR global activity anti-correlates with national religiosity, for all regions / ethnicities / political systems / economies / whatever. This is an expectation from the broader cultural pattern as shown in the chart in the main post. An ‘unconstrained’ attitude from that chart is shown as a contrast (in orange).
In highly religious nations there is far less impetus for activism, because huge majorities *appear* in unconstrained trends to express the greatest concerns by far about climate-change. And there are far fewer people to drive activism, because the core cultural believers in climate catastrophe amount to the ‘FC’ trend (or less, this is an upper estimate). XR activity in irreligious nations is not an expression of major / mainstream groundswell, it is the expression of tiny minorities who are very highly frustrated because massive majorities of their local (i.e. national) populations show almost no concern for climate-change (LHS of black trends).
Evenin’ Andy (UTC),
“Injecting some data… which may help”
In my experience that should certainly not be taken for granted in the ClimateBall™ arena!
P.S. the chart for Children’s Strike for Climate groups is the same.
Ron: “…I think most can agree that beliefs are associated with political affinities.”
This is only the largest factor in the US, but religion and ‘climate-culture’ itself are very close behind – it’s a 4-way cultural dance.
Outside the US, *at national level*, it’s essentially only a 2-way cultural dance, religion and ‘climate-culture’. Hence the patterns on the chart in the head post. And the activism pattern anti-correlating with religiosity across nations, as noted to Javier and Joshua’s discussion.
Andy, if personal beliefs are only associated primarily with political affinity in the US, and even in the US this is relatively new, is this a potential global trend? What was the main driver in the US?
A. The Media?
B. Academic establishment?
C. Hippy and Hollywood culture activism taking power?
D. All the above?
Adding data will sure help with that squirrel, Andy!
Or will it?
Here’s some more data about “Orientals”:
Source: https://www.undp.org/publications/peoples-climate-vote
SIDS stands for Small Island Developing States, which may or may not be oriental enough for Javier.
These numbers indicate that Newscorp’s last stand will be in Africa.
“Andy, if personal beliefs are only associated primarily with political affinity in the US, and even in the US this is relatively new, is this a potential global trend? What was the main driver in the US?”
It’s not that new in the US; the bit that’s new is the change in the relationship between religion and climate-culture (the black trends in the chart slope oppositely pre-2009). This will have changed the balance of the 4-way cultural dance in the US somewhat, but the political polarization started before then and partially masks it.
I’d say none of your A,B,C really, and yet they might all be involved. Cultures are emergent, coalescing as policed consensuses around emotively selected narratives. Dem/Lib and Rep/Con in the US have a much greater public participation in tribalism than the left/right in most other countries at present, driven by emotive political narratives. It’s easy for any science-related topic having some genuine uncertainty (and even some that don’t, such as evolution), to get dragged into this generalised political conflict, and this is made more complex because religion is involved as a third cultural player, actually allied to both parties (they are both majority religious), but asymmetrically weighted to Rep/Cons. As a fourth big cultural player (‘climate culture’) pushed into the pack with a narrative based on CCAGW that over the years was winning ClimateBall Big hands down, it’s almost inevitable that acceptors and rejectors of this new-kid-on-the-block would align from the existing rift. (So neither side from knowledge, both cultural). IOW, cultural alliances / oppositions are also emergent, albeit not always so predictably as this example. Constant narrative interactions throughout the whole of society determine these outcomes, and likely acted via your A,B,C and many more channels. If one wants to know the details on how, this needs deep knowledge of US politics, history, religion, social structures and a whole bunch more I don’t have. But if you only need to know the big picture and the outcome, you only need to know about cultural mechanics and survey results (of which in the US, Dan Kahan’s data is great).
Apart from Australia, which at the moment still obeys the rules of the chart in the main post but has gotten more polarized in recent years, I wouldn’t say a big trend to more political polarization is evident. For instance all the main parties in the UK back near net-zero policies, and this is the more common situation outside the US. However, once net-zero downsides become clear to publics, these will act as a strong constraint (so the ‘SC’ or even ‘FC’ lines in the chart), which means small minority support in all nations. How that will find political expression, if it does, I don’t know. There are glimmers of would-be populist parties or existing populist parties aligning to this, and certainly more negative public reactions recently (in the UK, XR backlash has cased some of this), but this hasn’t really found main expression yet.
Ron, I put in a chunky reply on your A,B,C, but it dropped into moderation. No doubt it’ll pop out soon.
I know the feeling Andy,
One of my replies to you has recently suffered a similar fate.
:(
Willard, I downloaded the details of the People’s Climate Vote back in Jan / Feb. Unfortunately it appears to be seriously compromised by pre-selection bias. It harvested participants via an advert in phone-gaming apps. I don’t recall the exact wording of the ad from back then, but it was styled as some kind of fun / gaming way to send a message to world leaders about the planet. Whatever the wording, for results that are comparable this seemed to produce very different outcomes to surveys with normal sampling. I didn’t follow it up in detail, there are plenty of surveys that don’t involve filtering for folks who want to send world leaders a message. Doesn’t mean it can’t tell us something I guess, but given it’s so methodologically different to all the others, quite what does it tell us?
Andy,
I point at
[A1] it appears to be seriously compromised by pre-selection bias.
and I also point at
[A2] I didn’t follow it up in detail
That is all.
“I didn’t follow it up in detail”
Indeed. But enough to see it was very different to unfiltered others that broadly agreed.
The opposite to “unfiltered” isn’t “biased,” Andy.
‘The opposite to “unfiltered” isn’t “biased”’
Yes, it exactly is. The filter biases towards *something*. Who knows what? I personally have no idea.
Oh, Andy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics
Oh dear, Willard.
Thanks Andy. You larger reply emerged from moderation, where I guess my replies seem to go for a while each time. BTW, do you know if someone is actively managing moderation or is it AI?
On a) b) c) I did not mean that there was an organized power behind it. The rational explanation certainly is as you posit, that culture emerges from the natural selection process for the narratives that fit with other existing narratives and indoctrinations. Propagation and why and who is another dynamic. That was my question about a) b) c).
As I think all the skeptics have noticed, there would be zero alarm about CAGW if there was no A but instead warming was a natural trend. James Hansen and company’s alarm came after the birth of the environmental movement and fit the narrative.
One arrow the environmentalists have in their quiver is that even if they are wrong about the C or the A in CAGW they are doing society a favor by increasing environmental mindedness. My answer to that though is that they already had me since I was a Wolf Cub Scout. My concern is that good causes can also be undermined by over-reaching on policy narratives.
Ron, thanks for your reply.
Re moderation, I think pretty simple algorithms dump into the bin, and Judith periodically digs out the non-junk ones manually.
Re good causes, yep, cultures are especially good at hi-jacking good causes for their own benefit.
Regarding hijacking good causes for benefit, I bet Al Gore never mentioned that the US’s Clean Air Act of 1970 was signed into law by Richard Nixon.
Environmentalism was supported by both left and right in the 1970s but since the right was more aligned with big industry at that time the left made it political cudgel to paint the right as uncaring about the environment. This was reinforced by the truth that the right were less caring than the left, whom adopted religious doctrine level environmentalism, painting man as evil (sinful). Redemption was made available as the Dem lever at the ballot box.
Al Gore was seen an old time religious charlatan by the right, which discredited global warming to them. This provided an opening for the left to amplify the issue as another example in their narrative to vilify the right as uncaring on environmentalism. The US’s leftwing narrative about racism being associated with the right was the motivation for Biden to agree with China that asking questions about Covid’s origin was racist. And the travel ban that Trump imposed against China (too late) was, of course, racist.
> Regarding hijacking good causes for benefit, I bet Al Gore
But Scapegoat.
“But Scapegoat.”
How is the Al Gore a scapegoat? You will have to explain that one, Willard. Also, why is the rule at ATTP that mention of his name is snipped? He received a Nobel Prize for a scientifically gaffed feature documentary. Apparently the science had negligible importance to the Peace Prize committee. But they loved a cause for the need to awaken the public to global actions through global coordination, which is why the IPCC shared his prize. Mann in particular felt it was rightly his. After all, it was his falsified graphic that Gore’s film used twice, first as MBH and a second time mistakenly labeled “Dr. (Lonnie) Thompson’s Thermometer.” (Thompson had Mann’s hockey stick graphic in his ice core paper and the movie production staff lifted the better looking graph. Oops.)
> How is the Al Gore a scapegoat?
Srsly, Ron.
I mean, with all due respects.
Are you freaking kidding me with that silly sealioning?
But ATTP moderation
Andy,
Yes, I remember the People’s Climate Vote survey very well. Their sampling method was eye-poppingly bizarre. You are quite right that it would take further assessment to understand exactly how it may have invalidated the results, but the argument that sampling bias cannot be assumed is unsupportable. By only canvassing X-Box jockeys they probably came near to capturing the views of typical teenagers, but to think that only asking X-Box jockeys would serve as a filter for finding your typical 60 year old is strange to say the least. Can we really trust that the world of computer gamers speaks for us all?
Willard, if Al Gore is not allowed to be mentioned does that extend to John Kerry, Barack Obama, AOC and Michael Mann? These are precisely the people who are most influential to the religious. And, it is the religious that are most active in entering the field of climate or writing federal policy.
If you are saying the Al Gore does not speak for you then you need to elaborate. You can’t just roll your eyes because “everyone knows he is a charlatan.” He is one of YOUR leaders. What comes out of his mouth or Nobel Prize documentaries is what is accepted into the brains of the masses.
How is your view on any climate issue? I have never heard you speak on one. Would that be a sacrilege?
Yeah Willard. Why aren’t you “allowing” Big Al to be mentioned?
Next you’re going to say that unicorns can’t be mentioned.
Ron,
Let’s take stock.
Javier talks Orientals. Then about XR. Classic bait-and-switch about a favorite scapegoat.
Then you go “but religion.” Andy piles on both Buts.
Then you go “But the Press,” “But Academics,” “but Hollywood,” and “But Alarmism.” And now you’re into Al Gore, your favorite Mike, and whatnot.
What was the topic again?
Orientals.
Has Javier supported his claim?
No, he has not.
So I called his bluff.
Since it’s easier for you to rehearse the Bingo than to address that point (it would require to read a report), and since every Bingo square has the potential to release a little bit of dopamine, you do as you always do.
You’re at Judy’s here. You are free to post whatever you please, as long as Judy’s can post it. I, OTOH, can’t even post a link to the website that is the topic of this post.
CB is a bit like baseball. So stop whining. And do continue.
My reply: https://judithcurry.com/2021/11/27/public-climateball/#comment-965279
Ron –
Javier made a gross generalization about “Orientals,” their views on climate change and why they have those views. I didn’t ask him about the popularity of XR in the “Orient,” or the prevalence of “prophets of climate doom.”
I asked him for the evidence he used to make such a gross generalization, and to state as fact the reason why that generalization holds.
In response he threw gorilla dust. That’s his prerogative. But it doesn’t answer my questions
My own impression, and it’s merely an impression, from having worked extensively with many Asians from different countries over decades, and having traveled and lived for extended periods quite a bit in Asia during that period, is that the issue of climate change is not politicized in most Asian countries as it is in the US. Hence, we don’t see the same level of polarization there as here, either. That is true, imo, for a variety of reasons but “religiosity” is, at best an interacting or mediating but not casual variable. My sense is that most Asians basically accept the “consensus” view of institutions like the IPCC. It varies to a good degree across country, of course – again for a variety of reasons. And, not unsurprisingly, from a policy standpoint there are significant differences across countries in Asia as well.
The whole issue of differences in political polarization in Asia as compared to the US is a quite complex one, and the related analysis is not well served by pontificating self-appointed experts who double as climate change fanatics of the sort we find, by definition, here in these pages.
But it’s fun to watch nonetheless.
Willard: “Let’s take stock…Andy piles on both Buts.”
Your stock-take appears to be mistaken. I supplied data on XR activity, which is what it is – how is supplying data a pile-on? Even if you dispute the data in some way (which is absolutely fine if you have justification), defining any presentation plus discussion on same as automatically illegitimate, is irrational. I never mentioned ‘Orientals’. My frequent references to religiosity, are all within the context of the relationships as (basic) summary charted in the head post. These are all justifiable on that data, but again if you have legitimate challenge to same, this is unable to emerge if debate is simply declared illegitimate.
A knee-jerk reaction of ‘but X’ to almost all lines of discussion is a cheap ClimateBall play that is much clumsier than any individual play coming the other way. Sometimes it may have been proved right, and sometimes it may not. However, no-one ever gets to find out because the conversation is *always* deflected via this play to a rhetoric dance. The issues are frequently not presented as though they’re each overwhelming cause, they’re typically contextual. Plus this play implies that you aren’t able to actually isolate and point out competitive content in a way that would help your debater see it, and all other participants too. If more likely this isn’t the case and you are simply choosing this path, bear in mind that in the long-run it simply raises the overall level of such conflictual content, by acting out the caricature of the person that some at the fringes may well be inappropriately convinced that you are. The level of thought that has gone into the ClimateBall concept, suggests far more productive use of it can be achieved than a universal blunt club. Your useful part in the never-ending-audit of all positions on all other positions, could surely be more productive.
Joshua asks, “Yeah Willard. Why aren’t you “allowing” Big Al to be mentioned?”
For context, Willard was in charge of moderation at ATTP’s the last time I was censored there a few years ago. He was kind enough to educate me on my infractions: No Mann hockey stick, No Inconvenient Truth or Gore, No impugning climate science, were among the spontaneous rules a skeptic might encounter from Willard there. He was kind enough to tell you (post snip).
We now have Willards running our Dept. of Energy and Dept. of Transportation, even our Dept. of Justice.
The question still stands:
Exactly why Willard are we not allowed to mention Big Al?
For more context:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/subverting-democracy/#comment-64568
For even more context, we can look back at Ron’s comments at Lucia’s.
And for 20% more context, whining about moderation belongs to But Debate Me.
I had forgotten ATTP had threatened to ban me before he got to know I was friendly and polite. Actually, I had just stumbled onto the realization about at ATTP then that I was insulting people’s religion and questioning sacred thoughts, threatening wellbeing and thereby violating safe space. I learned to try to be more sensitive but at the same time not be cowed from rational analysis.
I think I understand why you can’t give a rational reason why a former senator and VP, leader of the climate movement, can’t be mentioned.
Al Gore may never be a topic of post at ATTP but Gore is a central player in Climateball Big, IMO.
> I was friendly and polite
Not really, Ron.
You’ve been your hypocritical self, like here.
Willard, I try. Sometimes I lose patience and become uncool.
So you know, I love friendly hippies, like Dennis Hopper’s character in Easy Rider, sharing his tokes with the country lawyer, (Jack Nicholson).
Hippies are cool, not up tight, like a lot some engineer types who have left some impatient comments here on Judith’s width of embrace of squishier (no offence, Andy) science .
Your style indeed improved over the years, Ron. Still too much rope-a-dope to my taste, but then that’s just me.
Enjoy your Xmas times with yours,
W
Javier –
Let’s go back to my original reponseb
> Do you have any idea of public opinion among “Orientals” on climate change? On what evidence do you base your view on what “Orientals” think and why they think what they think?
I didn’t ask you how many “Orientals” use tidy with XR (or how many “Oriental” prophets of climate doom that are).
I asked you for evidence regarding (1) your characterization of the views of “Orientals” on climate change. Note that “Orientals” is not tiny group of people,across many different nationalities (and governments) and, (2) what evidence you use to base your theory (stated as fact) as to why that large and diverse group of people view climate change the way in which you characterized their beliefs on the topic.
I still await an answer to my original question. Gorilla dust won’t get it done – even when thrown by a scientist.
J & J:
Look at the chart in the head post. There isn’t room for all nation labels, just some example ones at the top. But for X-axis values, Hong Kong is about 31%, Japan is 33%, South Korea is 41%, Taiwan is about 59%, Singapore is about 71%, Indonesia about 81%, Malaysia about 85%, India 93% and Thailand 100%. So although there’s a weighting to the RHS, they span most of the attitude range. As is the case for all nations charted, their attitudes at national level are fundamentally different depending on whether they are responding to unconstrained or reality-constrained questions (or actual scenarios, e.g. policy response). See the paragraphs associated with the chart that explain more. These are cultural responses; national religiosity (also completely cultural) is the window via we we can see them.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/18/a-look-at-how-people-around-the-world-view-climate-change/
J: I’ve seen this survey in my wanderings. The main post chart shows ‘pure’ reality-constrained and unconstrained questions. If you mix elements of each type (from memory I think this was an unconstrained choice of 3 levels in a longish constrained list of X threats), you simply get intermediate results that occupy an envelope between where the ‘pure’ trends for each element alone would be. So in other words, not very useful. Many surveys mix elements this way; it is a mistake from thinking that they are interrogating rationality, when they are actually interrogating culture, which does not act in at all the same way. So when you look for the next one, try and find pure RC or pure U types. The results are still meaningful to the extent that they occupy a predictable envelope, but if there’s not enough data-points to populate the envelope, this may not be obvious (plus you wouldn’t be looking for this envelope anyhow, unless you knew responses were cultural).
Joshua,
Javier asked you, “Where are the extinction rebellion demonstrations in Orient?”
You responded, “That’s a fascinating comment, at multiple levels.
Do you have any idea of public opinion among “Orientals” on climate change? On what evidence do you base your view on what “Orientals” think and why they think what they think?”
So Javier made a comment that you did not refute but by demanding direct evidence of Oriental’s cultural bias for or against apocalyptic narratives. Since in the political activism realm absence of voices is indirect evidence Javier asked you a legitimate question: where are the XR demonstrations?
Javier made no claim that he is an expert on Oriental public opinions. He based his view on their lack of concern over climate extinction versus their very vocal concern for losing their voices to the iron hand of China imposed official state doctrines.
Ron,
You’re at it again. Now it’s “But China.”
Whether or not Javier is an orientalist matters little. He made a claim about orientals. The onus is on him to support it.
No. Switching to XR won’t do. First, because it appeals to his ignorance. Second, because it rests on a silly counterfactual.
I actually refuted Javier’s claim:
https://judithcurry.com/2021/11/27/public-climateball/#comment-965202
Not that it’s my job to adjudicate Javier’s crap. Just because it’s an interesting question. And I can follow up on this:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/18/a-look-at-how-people-around-the-world-view-climate-change/
If you look at the chart, you’ll see that the first country is Greece.
What’s the second country?
See the 3 comments about oriental countries, plus this survey, starting at ‘J & J’ at 12:48 today. BTW, the data I provide there, which references the chart in the main post, shows oriental countries represented across almost the entire attitude range.
Keep repeating But Data, Andy. I might fall for the irrelevant correlation you’re trying to make!
Excellent, step forward. If you think the correlation is irrelevant, demonstrate this! If you can’t, your continued rejoinder of ‘but data’ is just clumsy ClimateBall, aka running away, in this instance. If the data or its context is too far outside your knowledge area to meaningfully consider (albeit it is only simple linear series and for more straightforward than most stuff to do with physical climate), then merely acknowledge withheld judgement. This is fine. However, it is irrational to use a blunt ClimateBall club to attempt delegitimization of the data.
Response dropped into moderation…
> If you think the correlation is irrelevant, demonstrate this!
Easy peasy:
Javier made a factual claim.
That factual claim is false.
No correlation required.
You say the correlation I reference in my post is irrelevant.
I say, if you think so, demonstrate this.
And then you swerve off to talk about some random other issue and / or correlation that someone completely different raised which forms no part of my content.
What are you thinking?? Are you thinking??
C’mon, Andy. Here’s the claim:
That claim is false, and nothing about XR will make it true. In fact, if Javier knew anything about XR, he’d know why it’s not in Asia. The Asian perception of AGW has very little to do with it, to say the least.
To mention XR is simply a silly scapegoating device.
Classic bait and swich.
This is my area of study. You already know this.
Please desist.
Willard.
Not only is it false, it was *me* who provided the definitive data to show it was false, after noting the study that you linked has pre-selection issues, and was much worse for demonstrating this point (whether to do with the preselection or not, I don’t know). But what has any of this got to do with the price of fish? I am Javier’s nanny suddenly, or anyones? No I’m not, you are just playing again.
> But what has any of this got to do with the price of fish
The price of fish is Javier’s claim, Andy.
This is overly silly.
Go to sleep.
So you use CB as a club to hit person Y for person X’s claim. Charming.
I have an opinion that differs from your opinion. While you state your opinion as settled fact, I speak to the complexity and uncertainties involved.
Same old same old.
My opinion is based on evidence: Media reports on climate apocalyptic manifestations show they take place overwhelmingly in Western countries. The little prophet of doom is from a Western country.
The geographic asymmetry of the apocalyptic climate cult is obvious. My explanation of it is my opinion only. But western countries culture derives from an apocalyptic religion, so it is hard not to see the similitude.
Javier –
> My opinion is based on evidence:
Your opinion is based on your interpretation of the evidence thsr you have selectively examined. And then you’ve stated your opinion as fact.
As opposed to my opinions, which were qualified as opinions, and which spoke to the materiality of definitions, and the importance of uncertainties.
Nicely done!
– “Your opinion is based on your interpretation of the evidence thsr you have selectively examined.”
Anecdotal evidence is evidence nonetheless. If I am wrong you should have no problem demonstrating it, yet you don’t seem to be able to provide contrary evidence.
Who are the Asian prophets of climate doom? Where are the demonstrations of their climate doom cults (like XR) taking place and how populous are they?
That you can’t provide evidence speaks volumes of your opinion’s value.
Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. Still valid. The idea that our own existence as a species is at risk from climate change is a popular delusion that is taking place in Western countries. No amount of sacrifice is too big to prevent that.
“The geographic asymmetry of the apocalyptic climate cult is obvious.”
Indeed the geographical dependence of climate culture can be charted. But it’s actually due to the relationship between religion and climate culture. It is expressed approximately geographically only in that religiosity is approximately geographic, because irreligiosity spread outwards from NW Europe. And due to the fact that NW Europe is extremely cloudy too, this results in peculiarities such as the higher the commitment to solar energy of nations, the more of them are in cloudier locations where it is less useful. See the last chart here:
https://judithcurry.com/2020/11/19/cultural-motivations-for-wind-and-solar-renewables-deployment/
Javier –
> Anecdotal evidence is evidence nonetheless. If I am wrong you should have no problem demonstrating it, yet you don’t seem to be able to provide contrary evidence.
I haven’t said you were wrong. I asked you for evidence. In response you provided weak evidence in support of an opinion stated as fact. And to do it, you whittled down the conversation to a tiny sliver of the focus – XR.
>Who are the Asian prophets of climate doom? Where are the demonstrations of their climate doom cults (like XR) taking place and how populous are they?
So you want to pigeon-hole the conversation. into soms kind of discussion about a tiny sliver of opinion as if it substitutes for a more general argument – the general public sentiment about climate change – and your imagined explanation (with zero evidence provided) for why there might be different views among the public among “Orientals” as compared to the public in other regions.
It’s not my job to provide evidence for why you’re wrong because you get ornery when I ask you on what basis you state an opinion as fact.
> Anecdotal evidence is evidence nonetheless
And absence of anecdotal evidence ain’t anecdotal evidence of absence either, Javier.
I hope you don’t make that mistake in your cornfield of research!
Joshua | November 28, 2021 at 4:31 pm |
Get it right
I haven’t said you were wrong.?
should be I said you were wrong
as in
– I asked you for evidence.
angech –
Maybe it’s just me, but my sense is that your comments have gotten just weirder and weirder.
If I think someone is wrong, then I say something on the order of “You’re wrong.”
If I think someone might be wrong, and I’d like to know more about whether they’re wrong, I ask them to explain their reasoning. IOW, I say something like “On what evidence did you base your opinion.”
Joshua | November 29, 2021
“angech – Maybe it’s just me, but my sense is that your comments have gotten just weirder and weirder.”
“If I think someone is wrong, then I say something on the order of “You’re wrong.”
If I think someone might be wrong, and I’d like to know more about whether they’re wrong, I ask them to explain their reasoning”
It does not work like that as you know.
The mere fact of asking for proof is saying that you think they are wrong.
There are three levels of knowledge.
If I know someone is right
If I do not know if someone is right or wrong.
if I know someone is wrong
In between are grey areas of uncertainty.
Of being right or wrong.
Get it right
I haven’t said you were wrong.?
means – I said you were wrong
as in – I asked you for evidence.
Andy, ClimateBall™ should not be confused with RealClimateBall™, albeit both are parochial 21st century revivals of the beloved 20th century game of CalvinBall™
[Copyright 1985-95 Bill Watterson] Details at the Calvinball Wiki:
https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Calvinball
As Climateball lacks a Climate Consistory, like Covering Climate Now or CFACT, players invent rules continuously, assuring no game is like another, as rules cannot be used twice, the cardinal rule that rules cannot be used twice excepted.
Besides disinformation, tautology, non-sequiturs and solicitation of idiocy, the game may involve hockey sticks, croquet mallets, public relations firms, the invovcation of assorted Deities and iterated model intercomparisons , & Fox news video editing of all the above.
Key Features of ClimateBall include
• Zones/Sectors of Consensus and Denial, each with a self-appointed Consistory of the Elect, or as they are known in the Sector opposite, Conspiracy of the Preterite, for nothing is more Calvinist than Calvinball
•The “Opposite Pole” An emblem players use to signal that their data actually have the wrong polemic sign, like anomalous cooling; waving the pole reverses the sign of the anomaly by eliding it with its opposite. Players must disclose this but as it is the Opposite Pole. non-declaration counts as disclosure.
• The “Very Sorry Song”
Modeling games are such a bore!
Too many rules,
And ways to keep score!
ClimateBall scoring is better by far!
It’s never the same, it’s always bizarre!
You don’t need a team or a referee!
We can’t lose if we all agree!
“…players invent rules continuously…”
The deeper rules of narrative competition and emotive selection are subconscious, and cover any possible inventions because ultimately if these subconscious forces get to dominate, they are actually driving all inventions. Hence we still expect to see the (usually straightforward) cultural results no matter the Machiavellian complexities along the way, and however they are constructed. In practice, the climate blogosphere is far too rational to let the subconscious competition get to this stage, despite the emotive plays and rhetoric devices so often seen. But the global public space is far less subject to constraints, which is why CCAGW has won ClimateBall Big, and the culture associated with that narrative dominates public attitudes (as shown in the chart in the head post) and also policy expression.
> In practice, the climate blogosphere is far too rational to let the subconscious competition get to this stage
What stage, Andy? It’s unclear from what you write.
I haven’t invented any rule, BTW. There’s a Manual, but it’s more about goals, moves, tricks, strategies, principles, and my own playbook.
Willard:
The stage of runaway evolution of emotive narrative (this is made clear in the head post), as occurs in the global public domain.
Yes, I read your manual. Though I know you have much to add.
In replying to Russel’s point about invention, I wasn’t referring to anything you’d invented (you’re essentially mapping, not inventing). But to the deeper rules of narrative competition and emotive selection, which if it does get to the runaway stage, ultimately drives all strategies.
Andy,
It’d be hard for you to read my manual. It hasn’t been published yet. In fact I still have to write it!
There’s no real dichotomy between emotions and reason.
You haven’t answered my question: what stage?
A mere editor’s request.
Yes, I read such as exists :) I look forward to more.
“what stage?”
Is that not clear in the comment above? The stage of ‘runaway evolution of emotive narrative’ (this is where emotive selection dominates narrative competition, triggering cultural behaviours in many individuals that bypass rationality and which eventually result in a policed and false cultural narrative – it’s how religions arise).
Thanks, Andy.
A stage of ‘runaway evolution of emotive narrative’ sounds a tad alarmist to me, Andy, but at least I understand to what you’re referring.
Well it happens constantly in humans in many domains at once and has done throughout history and long long before. So in that sense, it could hardly be more normal or mundane. It can produce very negative cultures, it can produce benign cultures, and indeed a single culture can be the former at one stage and the latter at another. Dominant cultures leave evidence of their presence in attitudes; look at the chart showing attitudes to climate-change across nations, and the 2 groups they are in. This chart is classic culture; the paragraph immediately below the chart notes that the same type of patterns can be chart for religion (alone).
That’s a lot of words for “But Religion,” Andy.
I personally think that everything is like a religion except religion, which is like a language game. You might prefer to take it from someone who studies that kind of phenomenon:
https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/patreon-sample-decoding-academia-chris-on-religion-ritual
So “it’s complicated” is the most cutting-edge answer.
Your problem is that AGW is the top dog in your cultural fight. That means it’s hard for you to argue that it’s bias and irrationality all the way down. Hence why “But CAGW” is the central square of the Bingo, incidentally.
You still worked well enough. Kudos!
“That’s a lot of words for “But Religion,” Andy.”
So you choose to ignore the data? And not engage with or challenge the explanations for same. What is your own explanation? Or are you just hiding behind ‘But’?
“Your problem is that AGW is the top dog in your cultural fight.”
Why is that any kind of problem? It’s not ‘my fight’; the attitude data demonstrates the result in the global public domain. CCAGW won ClimateBall Big.
“That means it’s hard for you to argue that it’s bias and irrationality all the way down.”
In the global public domain, of course this is so, and *measurably* so; it is narrative competition and emotive selection rules only, which is *why* CCAGW won ClimateBall Big. Exactly *why* global attitudes match the chart in the main post.
In the climate blogosphere, it is not. You yourself and many others of the mainstream camp help mightily to keep CCAGW from gaining a foothold in this (far smaller) domain, by constantly pointing out that is is *not* supported by mainstream science. You are right. The skeptics help too, by pointing out constantly that this meme is nonsense. They are right too.
With these two disparate pieces of rationality, you *both* help keep it from gaining a significant foothold in the blogosphere. As the main post points out you only disagree, incessantly, on it’s source. The orthodox say it is a skeptic strawman; the skeptics say it is a invention of the mainstream science the orthodox bloggers defend. Both are wrong. It came from the overwhelming landslide win of CCAGW in ClimateBall Big in the public domain, which is why that is the centre focus for that much huger game, as well as the central square of the Bingo, which in this little league case so usefully helps to prevent it dominating the blogosphere.
Willard, sorry reply dropped into moderation. No doubt it’ll be dug out in due course…
P.S. It’s not about religion in any case. This is just a lens which we can use to chart an independent climate culture (because cultures interact) with a main narrative based upon CCAGW, the winner of ClimateBall Big.
> So you choose to ignore the data?
Your interpretation isn’t data, Andy.
(That’s “But Data,” BTW.)
“Your interpretation isn’t data, Andy.”
You don’t say. The data is the data. Basic summary in the chart. So engage, put forward a different interpretation. Or simply say why mine is wrong. If you can’t, or indeed anyone else can’t, then my interpretation stands.
(That’s “But Data,” BTW.)
That’s “running away”, btw.
> So engage.
You simply handwaved to your irrelevant pet topic, Andy. That’s not a way to “engage.” Neither did you “engage” when you tried to dismiss a study that clearly refuted Javier’s claim by misrepresenting how statistics work.
I’m not here to provide you or anyone room service. If you want me to act as your monkey, you’ll have to pay me.
Have you ever considered that contrarians are losing ground not because of some irrational religiosity, but simply because reality has a liberal bias? Kidding. It is well known that contrarians cannot lose:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/can-contrarians-lose/
Pointing out that a survey has issues is not dismissal. If this is about the ‘oriental’ thing, then I also pointed out the data which shows oriental countries right across the attitude spectrum. So that would be balance, objectivity.
If you define everything you don’t want to talk about as a ‘but’ or a hand-wave, then you are wilfully steering away from rationality. Hands across your eyes.
ClimateBall as a map is useful, ClimateBall as an ethos, can only produce irrationality.
Bother, yet another in moderation…
Take your time, Andy. No rush. As long as it’s today. Next month I’m gone.
Here’s the kind of thing that you present as supported by “data”:
Why should anyone engage with that? In fact, how could I? That’s too deep psychology for a closet behaviorist like my character.
I prefer simpler things. Relevance. Commitment. Informal reasoning. Basic pragmatics.
Then ignore that comment. And btw ‘Pet theory’ is a rhetoric device.
Just look at the chart. A few associated paragraphs explain what the trends are, and what they imply.
‘irrelevant’ you say. Well this is ‘basic pragmatics’. Linear series only. Go for it. Give your logic chain for why my explanation of this data for the global public domain is wrong, or indeed irrelevant (which may be harder the ‘wrong’ in practice, given that it shows the attitudes of global publics to climate-change).
> Then ignore that comment
Notice how your new block proceeds, Andy. There’s an implicit “yes,” and also a “but just ignore.” In other words, you dismiss once again what I said.
The problem with that block is that all your contributions are of that kind. Everyone here knows that’s your thing. There’s no amount of data that can support or invalidate your theoretical considerations.
You are free to interpret the AGW support as some kind of religulous meme machinery. I am free to remind you that contrarians oppose an established viewpoint, and that you’re constantly using blocks such as “then ignore that comment” and pulls like “then engage.”
***
You know why I’m insisting on such infelicities? To help you understand how the CB Manual I have in mind goes beyond the Bingo. And to underline that there’s some pragmatic logic behind that madness:
I could have written a thesis on this. Perhaps I will one day. For now, I believe that the doctoral ritual (wink wink) is not worth it.
Best,
“In other words, you dismiss once again what I said.”
I didn’t. You won’t understand some of the comments until you first understand the more basic explanations and the data they come from, i.e. your basic pragmatics. It works this way around, so we can come back to the comment. It won’t work backwards.
I invited you to the pragmatics, you ran away again.
You can indeed write a thesis on CB. But you have ceased to objectively map it, you have adopted it as an ethos. Given it describes a memetic system, then everywhere you exercise this ethos, with it’s self-protecting memes of ‘but everything’ and such, it’s only-game-in-town approach, you will *create* a barren plain all around you where indeed rationality is much denuded. There is only one God and his name is X, or in this case, CB.
Btw to correct you a couple of times I do not think a culture in the public domain has grown around ‘AGW’, but around ‘CAGW’. The attached archive shows it is ubiquitous in the public domain, the chart shows it dominates public attitudes. But once again, you run away from the chart, from the pragmatics you invited, and you deflect, ‘but dialogical’. So easy, isn’t it? You are no longer mapping ClimateBall, you are ClimateBall.
Once again I drop to moderation, rather frustrating..
Andy –
I’m curious. If you were wrong on some of this, what would that look like?
And please note – I often have trouble understanding what you write. For my sake, if you do answer, please try to keep technical or specialized terminology to a minimum. Try to dumb it down a bit for me.
“If you were wrong on some of this, what would that look like?”
But Popper.
Kidding. I agree with you Joshua. Andy, your thesis needs to be dumbed down for us. What exactly are the correlations and exactly how tight are they to prove that climate change beliefs are more cultural than otherwise similar beliefs.
> You won’t understand some of the comments until you first understand the more basic explanations
Lots of presuppositions there, Andy. For starters, that I don’t understand what you wrote about for more than a few years, and that your pet topic provides a basic explanation to Javier’s factual mistake.
In other words, unless and until we discuss your pet topic, you will continue to bait me.
I can assure you that Javier’s factual mistake does not rest on any interpretation you may have. Even your “data” (actually a moot correlation between religiosity and AGW endorsement) falters on the observation that Euros are less religious and endorse AGW more than anyone else.
Contrarians lost the battle of public opinion. You can try to explain that phenomenon away all you want. It does not matter.
I suggest instead that you try to backtrack in the Contrarian Matrix:
https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/
Level 0 and 1 are gone. Level 2 is in critical condition. For Level 3 and 4 there are fair chances. Still lots of play before we get to Level 5, tho WAGATHON is in da house!
J & R:
Take the chart. If the responses weren’t cultural…
a) the grey and black groups couldn’t diverge in that manner (leading to the apparent paradox that the nations most concerned about CC, are also the ones stating the least priority for action / policy on CC).
b) the above response groups should occur for *any* strong culture. Read the paragraph immediately below the chart. Interrogating religion (alone) gives the same patterns. This confirms expectations for cultural explanation, because we *know* religion is purely cultural. If the responses were *not* cultural, they wouldn’t have these patterns in common with the interrogation of religion (and for basic enough values, all Faiths act as one).
This tells you ‘cultural’, but not necessarily ‘what culture’. Other steps say it is a culture in it’s own right (based on the CCAGW narrative ubiquitous in public authority), in the archive. For instance, the varying strength of alignment to this narrative within the black trends. For instance that far enough back in time, the black trends should be reversed (less data then, but it does confirm so – see the comment to Javier on same). Etc.
But above is enough for you to start with. And it’s very straightforward, ‘pragmatic’, to quote W. Ask away.
In practice, there are tons more series and more features, J – for instance the mixed-mode I mentioned to you, series where unconstrained and reality-constrained elements are mixed, so occupy a predictable envelope in which nations are more-or-less randomly scattered within. About 27 international (non-US) series from maybe 18 surveys so far all fit into the same single framework – only a very basic summary is shown. None don’t fit, *except* where there’s pre-selection bias – only that one UN survey where data was obtained through the gaming advert so far – although typically the envelope ones are ambiguous. They don’t have enough data to fill the envelope, nor is it often possible to figure from just their text construction *which* constrained and unconstrained trend should form each bound of the envelope. For the primary linear series (about 20), r-squared values are strong to outstanding for social psychology. They blow away the social predictor literature – for the sociologist prof and social psychologist I shared with, this is both good and bad, the bad part being gatekeeping will be a very major issue.
“In other words, unless and until we discuss your pet topic, you will continue to bait me.”
Inviting you to discuss the actual topic of the head post, including the pragmatics you say you prefer, is not bating.
If you don’t want to discuss it, this is fine too. But then you can’t simply say it is wrong because it’s wrong, or it’s wrong because ClimateBall, which is exactly what you are doing.
“The problem with that block is that all your contributions are of that kind.”
Fallacy.
“Everyone here knows that’s your thing.”
False appeal to the authority of the audience.
“There’s no amount of data that can support or invalidate your theoretical considerations.”
Fallacy.
You are CB.
W – one more dropped in the bin for a while 0:
Andy –
So I’m going to take this in baby steps:
> Take the chart. If the responses weren’t cultural…
So your primary thesis is that in general, public response on climate change is cultural?
If so, I agree.
But I would append my own view: the relationship between “culture” and views on climate change is moderated by attributes of “culture.”. In specific, to what degree it is politicized and to what degrees people are identified along concordant lines of political identity. Hence, views on climate change in Asia: Mostly acceptance of the IPCC’s conclusions (with some variability across Asia) even with less associated politicization.
Now what did I get wrong there? In terms of your view and/or what I appended?
In the unlikely event I got nothing wrong, what are you sayng that’s related about religion (again, please, baby steps! Baby steps! You took giant steps in that comment above).
>So I’m going to take this in baby steps:
Always the best way!
>So your primary thesis is that in general, public response on climate change is cultural?
Yes.
>If so, I agree.
Cool.
>Now what did I get wrong there? In terms of your view and/or what I appended?
Nothing, except magnitudes. In some cases the order of precedence is such that the first / second order beliefs wipe out the others. Please read the end-note on the US where this is *not* the case, so you have to map the first four. Everywhere else, you only need to map the first two. If the lower order beliefs were getting in the way too much (at *national* level, which is what is being measured here and allows many independent surveys to be leveraged), the R-squared values for the depicted linear trends would deteriorate systemically (i.e. not just due to measurement noise or whatever). Yet not only do even the weakest of the R-squared values blow away the predictor literature, the strongest are absolutely outstanding, and too *all* the independent surveys fit the same single framework, meaning that they are all basically agreeing, hence a particularly poor measurement or outliers on a particularly weak series, are not misleading us. There is much more to explain, but I think this covers your step; you are looking at the global interaction between a ‘climate culture’, and religion.
Andy –
So we got 1-1/2 baby steps behind us.
But then you took about 100 baby steps after that, or many 3 giants steps.
Take one baby step after “public views on climate change are basically cultural and largely take shape in relationship/context to political valances/overtones, etc.”
Specifically related to religion.
Baby step.
J:
“Take one baby step after “public views on climate change are basically cultural and largely take shape in relationship/context to political valances/overtones, etc.”
Sorry, maybe I did take too many steps. Yes, they take shape wrt *all* other cultural influences, and also fresh to the analysis so to speak, we don’t know yet whether they have some cultural contribution *in their own right* or not, *as well* as being influenced by all of the others, whatever those may be…
>Specifically related to religion.
…and of which religion is only one. We have to delay more on religion to later steps.
So above was actually a step. There’s potentially intrinsic and (multiple) external cultures in play.
In the next step, we only have to acknowledge that every such contributor to the overall cultural attitudes on climate-change, whether intrinsic or external, has a different *level* of contribution.
Agreed?
Andy, it looks like most here agree that views on the CG are correlated with culture. Those familiar with US politics know very well there is a strong divide along party lines. This is my question: what data shows that CG is more related to culture identify than other global problems like ocean pollution or nuclear weapons or Islamic extremism?
Point being: although it may be true that CG beliefs are driven by emotive narratives, what if all views are increasingly getting bias, not from legacy religions but from new secular religions? In this case the bias tendencies in human culture have remained flat and only have given the illusion of progress from legacy religious authorities. If so, can that be measured? How do we know that even a secular scientist is not being blinded by heavy cultural bias? If so it would point to the need for reforms in science.
On a related point, I thought I understood your post to see that the nations with the strongest beliefs on CG had the least priority for sacrifice (paying). Is this indicative of their awareness of local criticism of their beliefs by competing cultures as compared to countries where culture is homogenous and they thus are not aware that foreign scientists might be biased or corrupted by foreign culture wars?
Ron:
>what data shows that CG is more related to culture identify than other global problems like ocean pollution or nuclear weapons or Islamic extremism?
Due largely to Dan Kahan’s work, its accepted that attitudes in the US to CC are indeed cultural. But it’s not just due to political polarization as is usually assumed, it is a cultural 4-way split, rep/Con, Dem/Lib, ‘Climate-culture’ in its own right, and religion. In the rest-of-world the former two are missing (no heavy equivalents elsewhere), and so only the latter 2 interact (which is what the chart shows). So given the world hasn’t acknowledged cultural dominance outside the US, no-one is likely to be comparing measurements with other issues. But in principle, you can draw the same *kind* of chart for any issue; but you may need a different X-axis if you are looking for a culture that doesn’t happen to interact with religion (very well), which Climate-culture, being so existential and global, definitely does. IOW the data doesn’t exist, but I doubt whether nuclear weapons or ocean pollution have strong cultural components across the globe, just for a start their total footprint as issues is tiny compared to that for CC.
>Point being: although it may be true that CG beliefs are driven by emotive narratives, what if all views are increasingly getting bias, not from legacy religions but from new secular religions?
Without the data, we don’t know. It could be so. I’ll wager there are new secular religions around extreme trans rights and so-called ‘anti-racist’ culture, but how to measure and prove it. These issues are far from global (Western phenomenon) and likely haven’t bee around long enough and widespread enough that religion can be used to measure them. Plus, are there even any worthwhile surveys to work with? There are lots for CC.
“How do we know that even a secular scientist is not being blinded by heavy cultural bias? If so it would point to the need for reforms in science.”
As Lewandowsky of all people pointed out. Scientists are human too, and subject to all their biases. But even for climate-change, scientists are not separately surveyed almost ever, and probably never at all for other topics. Which means we can only surmise from the healthy sunlight of open science and free speech. When ranks close, ones it is highly likely that something isn’t right.
>On a related point, I thought I understood your post to see that the nations with the strongest beliefs on CG had the least priority for sacrifice (paying). Is this indicative of their awareness of local criticism of their beliefs by competing cultures as compared to countries where culture is homogenous and they thus are not aware that foreign scientists might be biased or corrupted by foreign culture wars?
It’s much simpler than that. The X-axis is related to religiosity and it is a direct effect of this. All the religious leaderships have signed up to catastrophe narrative, so the flocks are comfortable with this narrative *as long as there’s no reality constraints*. There Innate Skepticism (see post of same name here), is disabled. However, when reality constraints appear, the flocks aren’t buying, they revert to their deeper cultural values. There Innate Skepticism is re-enabled.
Andy, I see now I butted into the baby steps of you explanation to Joshua of the evidence for religious influence. I will play on Joshua’s side for argument. How do we know that any of the bias from rationality is on the part of the CC activists as opposed to those known to have strong legacy religion affinity?
Ron,
Not sure I can answer that, but…
The measurements cover (representative samples of) the *entire populations* of each nation. We know from characteristics per above and hopefully to be repeated in baby steps, that this comes from two cultures, religion and climate culture. So, albeit there is an average per nation, about which individuals per nation will be spread, in essence *everyone* in each nation can only be so far from that average. If you want to see more detail, you have to measure actual sub-groups, and such measurements may not always be available. But you can make assumptions. For instance ‘true believers’, for want of a better word, who even when reality bites will place CC above every other issue, cannot be above the FC trend at most. And some measurements are available. As expected, XR activity and Children’s Strike for Climate activity are very strongly indeed anti-correlated with religiosity. So you can use this as a proxy for ‘activists’ generally. Also, in general, the belief represented by the black lines, is kind of ephemeral, it disappears when reality constraints appear; the belief represented by the grey lines is more ‘solid’. So your question may get into, ‘what kind of belief / bias’!
Andy –
> So above was actually a step. There’s potentially intrinsic and (multiple) external cultures in play.
Can you explain what you mean by “intrinsic and …external cultures?” I don’t know what that means. How they are measured as distinct.
> In the next step, we only have to acknowledge that every such contributor to the overall cultural attitudes on climate-change, whether intrinsic or external, has a different *level* of contribution.
Agreed?
Well, obviously agreement would depend on me understanding what intrinsic versus external culture means.
But near as I can say… It’s long been my view that much of what folds into “culture” is actually about identity. It looks like culture on the outside – say, I’m a librul, or he’s pro-big government, or she’s anti-government overreach or they’re for protecting bodily autonomy, etc. But what we find is that when we break a lot of that down, what’s really driving the “culture” is actually just a sense of identity, a sense of us and them. A sense of “the other.” I think you and I have been back and forth on this, and it may be unresolvable. I think there’s plenty of evidence supporting my view. My latest example is how con and libz have reverse each other on views on government overreach and bodily autonomy when looking at quarantining with Ebola (conz in favor to protect our community, llibz against because it violates freedoms) versus COVID (the reversal is obvious).
I’m not sure that’s directly relevant (it may not be if I understand intrinsic versus external culture), but it may be….
At any rate, that’s the next baby. step and I get get past that yet. My legs aren’t long enough.
Andy –
Another thought occurred to me.
It seems I’ve taken my first baby step towards understanding your thesis. The 2nd baby step has been extended but is awaiting confirmation before footfall is safe
In the meantime…I think it might help me to understand your full thesis if you can describe for me any correlations you might have found that weren’t consistent with your thesis. Are there any? That’s kind of like asking you what it would it would look like if you were wrong. Only maybe more of a baby step in that direction.
J:
Now you are taking more steps! But maybe that’s good, as long as they don’t trip over each other.
>…what’s really driving the “culture” is actually just a sense of identity…
Absolutely, and I don’t think we have any beef between us that.
In fact maybe it’s an opportunity to introduce a foundation concept, which is that cultures themselves, such as a religion or a very tribal political group (let’s keep them ‘strong’ for now, so they stand out more), are essentially in-group / out-group engines definition and reinforcement engines. That is their ‘purpose’, if you like. The narratives via which this is achieved are emergent via emotive selection, and trigger behaviours in us (as bequeathed from evolution), that keep the group together, such as narrative policing, demonization of out-groupers, etc. So this fits exactly with the ‘othering’ of the out-groupers that you mention. This process works better if the narratives are as far from the (domain) truth as possible, because any challengeable ties to reality will be challenged, so a group of a million would soon have a million opinions. Whereas a narrative so far from reality as to be a complete fiction, is actually beyond challenge (the religious ones are easier to fit to this picture, but it’s not a big stretch to grasp that the ideals of say Facism or Communism are fictions of this nature too).
So, back to intrinsic and external. I only mean something really simple here…
Let’s say we have are looking at a society which we don’t know, and which has some cultures in it, and some narratives in it. But which belongs to which? Well anthropologists use cultural consensus theory, i.e. wherever they can map a consensus, this marks an in-group boundary, and where the consensus fails, that is out-group. Due to the above consensus enforcement, you can take the culture and consensus as synonymous. But where there are several cultures, there may be a problem, because cultures can ally with each other, and they can oppose each other, and (unintuitively) they can do both at the same time.
So when I say an attitude about a particular narrative could come from intrinsic and/or extrinsic culture, I mean that such a narrative may not be just a neutral (acultural) one that is influenced by say cultures X and Y. It could be intrinsically a cultural narrative in its own right (say, culture Z), that then also happens to be influenced by the alliances or oppositions from X and Y. Or it may be an acultural narrative (i.e. something that *isn’t* cultural *in its own right*) but which nevertheless still has influence from X and Y.
So for example, say culture Z is religion. And culture Z has asymmetric relationships of some kind with political cultures X and Y. But say we also didn’t know this to start with, and begin by attempting to measure attitudes to narratives from Z. We *must* assume that Z *might* be cultural *in its own right*, i.e. intrinsic, first. Because if we don’t, our interrogation may go horribly wrong. If we assume responses to interrogation about Z will be largely rational, but only influenced by X and Y, then *we may get the wrong answer*. Because cultures all have hypocrisy built into their hearts that could stymie the test. If we assume Z is intrinsically cultural to start with, and this turns out not to be true, it is essentially an acultural narrative that is only influenced by X and Y, then no harm done, and we will merely confirm that the intrinsic cultural hypocrisies didn’t occur, and then we can more safely map how much X and Y influence the chosen narrative across nations, say. Suffice to say that pretty much the entire social predictor literature is *not* assuming attitudes might be cultural in their own right first, so tests pretty much all fall over.
So to jump to your last question (albeit this might be jumping a lot of steps), I set out with the hypothesis that attitudes to climate-change were *cultural in their own right*, i.e. intrinsic, as well as being influenced by other (so external) cultures. [Lots of clues, e.g. from narrative analysis, and more clues at Kahan’s place, but this is all circumstantial until proved).
So what would it look like if this was wrong? In this case, the chart in the main post would look very different. You may still get trends with religiosity, but the very systemic way the reality-constrained and unconstrained trends are grouped, i.e. with very different bandings, and with the black ones intersecting plus varying with the *emotive* strength of the questions, are classic culture. The intersect of the blacks is because cultures are polarising. The reality-constrained trends are different because cultural untruths must yield to reality (in degrees), otherwise we would never have become so subject to them. If you interrogate religion (alone), you get the same two groups, likewise with the black ones intersecting and the grey ones shallower and not intersecting. It’s a cultural signal. Luckily for my theory, not only is climate culture interacting with religion, it is competing and co-operating at the same time, which accounts for the reality-constrained and unconstrained trends not just being in different groups, but sloping in opposite directions as well. This cannot happen for anything but a cultural cause; think about it – how can anything physical or even rational, both correlate and anti-correlate at the same time, with the ‘most supportive’ attitudes to climate-change. But this is easy for cultural drivers.
I’ve probably overshot the mark. We skipped past different levels of influence and all that. Feel free to step back / question…
Fix: Suffice to say that pretty much the entire social predictor literature for international (non-US) attitudes to climate-change, is *not* assuming attitudes might be cultural in their own right first, so tests pretty much all fall over.
Opinion versus fact? Kristen Barnes (Ponder the Maunder) at 15 years old had this figure out. Instead of celebrating her perspicacity, she was demonized. So many of us fail to realize, our society is fundamentally dishonest. When Al Gore claimed there was a scientific consensus of opinion that humanity was causing global warming, he was being dishonest. All of academia that stood by quietly was being dishonest. What was the consensus of opinion among the German people about the opening of an eastern front with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 — all good up to now but this… I don’t know… maybe this is a big mistake? But, who cares if they were right or wrong – they turned their backs on atrocities and crimes against humanity occurring under their very noses and all of them deserved to be defeated in anyway possible even if they were right about a few things that should have been obvious to anyone.
The best outcome of Climateball is the return of modernised (and modular) nuclear power generation. I’m beginning to suspect this is the endgame of the UK conservatives apparent climate zeal. Rolls Royce is a big winner. I hope they succeed.
Plus vast amounts of mobile distributed energy storage?
As outlined by my “professional” alter ego on a Twitter thread this very evening (UTC):
https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/1465076096207142917
Or will Rolls Royce also be tasked with massive reinforcement of the UK’s somewhat dilapidated electricity distribution grid?
The cocksure and vainglorious attempting extreme weather attribution
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00185-x
have an uncanny knack of selecting weather events driven by notable lows in indirect solar forcing producing deeply negative North Atlantic Oscillation episodes for several months. And then use their anti-science to defend Extinction Rebellion activists from prosecution.
The UK 2007 and 2012 summer floods, a decidedly negative NAO regime through those summers, and the Saharan plumes of summer 2019, which were not physically possible without deeper negative NAO conditions. Such negative NAO summers are predictably more common during centennial solar minima. CET daily maximum temperatures show several episodes of brief hot plumes in otherwise cooler summer months, in the 1880-1890’s.
ClimateBall™ players who are good sports should abandon it in favor of playing RealClimateBall ® .
Better a game that comes with its own ball than one encumbered by a trademark.
Vainglorious and perspicacity in the same thread. Wow.
Climateball and Calvinball share the same facts.
A mischievous child in need of good parental discipline but denied by his mother resorts to making up his own fantasy world to ignore troubling realities.
Such as his parents actually being in charge of him.
In Climate ball it is the determination to avoid certain unpalatable scientific facts and to enable an ongoing fantasy to deny these facts.
Facing up to the reality of the need for fossil fuels if we wish to continue our normal happy lives despite the ongoing harm they do and the sheer impractability of any effective short term solutions not involving population control or poverty is avoided, evaded and erased by fantasy
Of course the converse is true with many skeptics as well
Mornin’ angech,
“The reality of the need for fossil fuels”
Surely you cannot be serious? What if Bill Clinton hadn’t “cancelled” the LMFBR for example?
Jim Hunt | November 29, 2021 at 6:14 am |
You seem to have missed my point angech?
True.
Which is “What if the development of ‘new’ nuclear power was 25 years ahead of the current state of play?”
Basically what if’s are another form of Willard’s buts.
One can speculate endlessly about possibilities.
We are where we are for a reason.
Life moves on.
Quite happy to indulge in speculation
We are where we are because the introduction of widespread nuclear technology could not match the abundance of fossil fuel [1] and the risk of the technology getting out into the hands of enthusiastic amateurs like the Twin Towers Bombers [2] was too great.
Every Nuclear sub could sit in dock and power a small city
The technology has been there for 25 years.
All the developed countries could build 20,000 each tomorrow, if they wanted.
Except Australia.
Good morning Angech (UTC),
“The risk of the technology getting out into the hands of enthusiastic amateurs like the Twin Towers Bombers was too great”
What a shame that nuclear “power stations” were originally primarily designed to produce plutonium for bombs rather than generate electricity?
“Every Nuclear sub could sit in dock and power a small city. The technology has been there for 25 years.”
And as I may have already mentioned, that is exactly what’s happening in the Russian Arctic:
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/nuclear-safety/2021/02/state-developers-plan-flotilla-floating-reactors-russian-east-arctic-coast
Getting back on to dry land, and returning in the direction of the OP, the “renewables” tribe loathes the “nuclear” tribe and vice versa. From where I’m sat post Storm Arwen we need “both of the above” PDQ. With as little “coal” as humanly possible:
https://V2G.co.uk/2021/11/the-great-davidstow-blackout-saga/
What if the gazillions of dollars spent on Covid-19 were to be matched by similar R&D spending in a similar time frame on energy efficiency and energy generation? A Manhattan Project style effort for the 21st century?
Pigs might fly!
Jim Hunt | November 29, 2021
Mornin’ angech, “The reality of the need for fossil fuels”Surely you cannot be serious?
–
Jim, you and I have lived on fossil fuels all our lives.
Look at the graded and bituminised roads which link, service and protect us.
Your overseas holidays pre Covid.
Your I pad and computer.
Carpets on the floor and food in the fridge.
The only way a modern western man can become a true AGW supporter is by getting rid of every possession and bank account he has, turning off the electricity, taking off one’s clothes and leaving the house.
–
Sorry for the rant but the complete denial of the reality of what true carbon net zero actually means is widespread among my friends , family and current society.
Pretending to be green.
Buying carbon pardons and pretending to be green.
If the share market doesn’t tank I will be gradually accumulating fossil fuel shares.
Not because I like them.
Because they are not going away any time soon.
You seem to have missed my point angech?
Which is “What if the development of ‘new’ nuclear power was 25 years ahead of the current state of play?”
IAEA “Advanced nuclear power systems” from 1984:
https://www.iaea.org/publications/magazines/bulletin/26-4
Alternatively (for TonyB in particular!) “What if the once Great Britain had concentrated on our engineering heritage rather than the so called ‘Big Bang’ in the City of London?”
Hi angech.
What I would like to discuss is the planet theoretical blackbody temperature being a highest temperature a planet without-atmosphere average surface temperature may reach…
I very much disagree with that concept. I’ll think that concept is mathematically expressed as:
Tmean ≤ Te
which I disagree with.
What actually happens in my opinion, and which is embodied in the Planet Rotational Warming theory is:
Tmean ≤ Te for planets and moons with a lower planet surface (N*cp) product
and
Tmean ≥ Te for planets and moons with a higher planet surface (N*cp) product.
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Jim
I am far more impressed by Brunel than by Barclays.
Afternoon Tony,
And presumably you also prefer Messrs Rolls & Royce to the likes of EDF & CGN?
Yes, especially when they evolve with such things as modular reactors. We do need the City but it is too large a proportion of our econ0my.
tonyb
That’s no longer such a problem Tony.
Post Brexit a significant chunk of the City of London is moving to Frankfurt!
angech | November 29, 2021 at 5:24 pm |
Jim Hunt | November 29, 2021 at 6:14 am |
You seem to have missed my point angech?
True.
Which is “What if the development of ‘new’ nuclear power was 25 years ahead of the current state of play?”
Basically what if’s are another form of Willard’s buts.
One can speculate endlessly about possibilities.
We are where we are for a reason.
Life moves on.
Quite happy to indulge in speculation
We are where we are because the introduction of widespread nuclear technology could not match the abundance of fossil fuel [1] and the risk of the technology getting out into the hands of enthusiastic amateurs like the Twin Towers Bombers [2] was too great.
Every Nuclear sub could sit in dock and power a small city
The technology has been there for 25 years.
All the developed countries could build 20,000 each tomorrow, if they wanted.
Except Australia.
Jim
Bad luck as 70% of all Euro trades happen in London and Franfurt has gained a tiny amount of Londons business.
By many measures London is the largest Financial centre in the World.
I would like to see a much better balance between finance, technology engineering and leisure and throw in energy, food etc.
tonyb
Evening Tony,
Depends who you listen to?
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/deutsche-boerse-says-relocation-euro-clearing-london-inevitable-2021-09-27/
The European Union is due to decide by year-end on how to shift clearing in euro denominated swaps to Frankfurt from the London Stock Exchange’s LCH arm, which accounts for about 90% of the activity.
Jim
Sorry, couldn’t be bothered to read through 2 pages of Reuters cookies preferences -a direct result of the EU love for bureaucracy.
Andy, you say you “term the population of narrative variants sponsored by the top-dog theme of CCAGW, ‘Catastrophe Narrative’.”
Though I fear the first C has been lost in translation, can you tell us if CCAGW come into being before or after John Podesta commissioned the ” Troglodyte Narrative”?
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2016/10/what-we-callthe-troglodyte-narrative.html
As noted in the post, the first ‘C’ is added to represent the generally implied ‘Certain’. See the attached archive, which covers Catastrophe Narrative samples from a wide range of authority sources in pretty much all twentieth century up to 2018; I haven’t updated since then. The problem with delving back much further is that most stuff wasn’t recorded on the Internet.
Good morning Andy (UTC),
Re your first ‘C’. Since it’s now emerged from moderation, may I direct your attention once again to the thoughts of Taleb?
https://judithcurry.com/2021/11/27/public-climateball/#comment-965126
Climatic “Black swans” and suchlike.
CBS for short?
Not really my bag, Jim. I’m mainly interested in those concepts that are emergent via emotive selection. The straight certainty of climate doom as emergent in the public domain doesn’t essentially require or lean upon any sophisticated scientific arguments, even though an intrinsic (and false) part of the narrative is indeed that it’s 100% backed by ‘the science’.
The certainty part of CCAGW in the public domain, like the rest, comes simply from a process of emotive selection, so not from rationality of any kind, whether it is right or wrong.
Good old John Podesta. He paid for Joe Romm’s propaganda machine all through the George W years.
Then he joined the Obama team helped the man double oil and gas production and told the greens to go stuff it.
https://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/john-podesta-natural-gas-environment-energy-104836
John Podesta reminded us all this is just politics
Thank you, Andy.
May the wind be at your back , and aWayback Machine primer land at your feet, for it is a capital mistake to forget that the Internet never does.
Unless, of course, you have entirely forgotten yourself.
Here you are pontificating to the Curia of Chico circa 2013 :
The Catastrophic AGW Memeplex; a cultural creature
The hypothesis for a single, simple, scientific explanation underlying the entire complex social phenomenon of CAGW
Guest essay by Andy West
Whatever is happening in the great outdoors regarding actual climate, inside, truly inside, in the minds of men that is, overwhelming evidence indicates that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is a self-sustaining narrative that is living off our mental capacity, either in symbiosis or as an outright cultural parasite; a narrative that is very distanced from physical real-world events.
The social phenomenon of CAGW possesses all the characteristics of a grand memetic alliance, like numerous similar structures before it stretching back beyond the reach of historic records, and no doubt many more cultural creatures that have yet to birth.
Having painted a picture of CAGW from a memetic perspective in fiction last December, see the post:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/15/wuwt-spawns-a-free-to-read-climate-sci-fi-novel/
I realized that many people instinctively sense the memetic characteristics of CAGW, and typically express this in blogs… Yet these folks appear to have no real knowledge of how truly meaningful and fundamental their observations are. Hence I have provided a comprehensive essay which attempts to fill in this knowledge gap, and indeed proposes that the entire complex social phenomenon of CAGW is dominated by memetic action, i.e. CAGW is a memeplex.
Over to you Willard –
Yes, I was on the right trail long ago. I know have the data to demonstrate it.
Morning Andy,
Since the ‘T’ word seems to get me moderated…
Waddabout the precautionary principle?
P.S. I hope you enjoyed my SF story.
T word? (Misuse of) precautionary principle important in science / science periphery and some policy areas, but in true ClimateBall Big essentially everything is wiped out by the *certainty* of global climate catastrophe, the emotive conviction to which has no need of that sub-theme, and to some extent contradicts it. Generally, while there’s some ‘doomer only’ folks, most public adherents also hold a simultaneous emotive conviction to salvation (via whatever means such as crash net-zero, and indeed before such specific means even surfaced more widely). As it’s a belief-system, it’s perfectly fine to have simultaneous conviction to *certain* doom yet also to salvation. Yer go-to expert for the precautionary principle entanglement is John Ridgway, who commented above.
oops, comment about SF story was to Russel.
Jim, reply dropped into moderation…
C’est la vie à Climate Etc. Andy!
Mornin’ Andy,
‘T’ is for Taleb. “Fooled by Randomness” etc.
Some scientists say that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is already doomed.
Should I learn to stop worrying and love fossil fuels?
https://youtu.be/P6WD7B_I_9c
The 0,04% CO2 content in the very thin Earth’s atmosphere…
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
The largest doctor’s organization in the US, the AMA, is split on whether to jump into the climate fray as “trusted voices” of physicians. The proponents point to CO2 causing asthma near industrial centers thereby disproportionately affecting the vulnerable poor. Here.
The people we trust to put us under do the most critical operations are spending much of their time being informed by AOC and John Kerry and, yes, Al Gore.
This is not just silliness, Willard.
AMA Logic train 1:
CO2 comes from burning fossil fuel, which in some forms causes air pollution, which is more likely to occur in industrial areas, which is more likely to have lower cost housing, thereby exposing low income people to air pollution. Air pollution is one of the potential causes of respiratory diseases. (“But smoking.”)
AMA Logic train 2:
CO2 causes climate change, which is likely responsible California’s droughts, which are the cause of wild fires, which produce a lot of aerosols, which likely cause or exacerbate respiratory diseases. (“But forest management.”)
Ron,
I did not write this post. So you’re lucky I spotted your comment. You can thank MattStat’s “But Science” and “But Evidence.”
Next time, try to make sure you post it somewhere I can see.
“The largest doctor’s organization in the US, the AMA, is split on whether to jump into the climate fray as “trusted voices” of physicians. ”
The largest medical on the contrarian side in the Climate Wars seems to consist of osteopaths , homeopaths and DIY pharmacologists . During the three month peak of the epidemic , Watts Up With That ran 235 posts on do-it-yourself coronavirus cures using hydroxychloroquine, and other quinine derivatives down to and including Schweppes Tonic Water, culminating in the trusted voice of Willis Eschenbach’s suggesting readers follow his example and take a potentially fatal 4.5 overdose of chloroquine.
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2020/04/of-quinine-and-chloroquine-willis.html
In fairness, I should include vets, since purveyors of horse and pigeon remedies compete with radiative forcing deniers compete for sound byte space on Fox TV.
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/08/cures-pigeon-lice-horse-worms-so-why.html
“purveyors of horse and pigeon remedies”
v-v dear, never use aspirin. It is a dog remedy.
RusselL S,
Where I live in Victoria, Australia, the Chief Medical Officer has enormous powers under emergency Covid legislation.
In early 2020, in the very early stages of Covid, with others from the Health Department, this CMO published an out-and-out green believer paper in the high-level Australian Medical Association journal.
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2020/212/8/acting-climate-change-and-health-victoria
………………
This was not a thought bubble paper. It listed a practical series of actions with severe potential impacts on the public, such as –
“contribute to whole‐of‐government emissions reduction to meet net zero emissions by 2050;
“prepare whole‐of‐government and sector emission reduction pledges;
develop and implement adaptation action plans, detailing the risks and impacts on systems (including health and human services); and
“endeavour to ensure that any decision made by the Victorian government and any policy, program or process developed or implemented takes account of climate change.”
Having observed the overall scientific weakness of the paper, I asked for it to be retracted, with several pages of reason why it was not merely faulty, but also unsafe.
I had little more than office-girl response to declare that my reasons were not valid.
If this is a game, then it needs some rules, especially those based on the Scientific method.
Geoff S
There is currently a strong circulation blockage at about 5 km. This is a very wintry circulation pattern for Europe.
https://i.ibb.co/wg6zBjb/500gz-anomalies-nh.png
Willard’s site describing this game, with its interlinked plus well laid-out taxonomy of challenges / rejoinders, has been slowly developing for some time and from its own description is still at an early stage.
The site is worth a quick purview. It avoids discussion of the details of any of the evidence, and does not address any of the shortcomings of evidence or the exaggerated claims made for CAGW. As I have found so far.
For example, authors in peer-reviewed articles (Romps et al, Koutsoyannis, O’Gorman et al) presented here at Climate Etc have reported a 6% increase in the rate of the process generating rainfall (or rainfall itself, the hydrological cycle), globally or over a specific region, over the past century. The hypothetical effect of a doubling of CO2 concentration is calculated at 4 W/m^2. How such a small power increase can produce such a large increase in the hydrological cycle has not been addressed in the published record (I invite readers to link or quote evidence that I am wrong).
Even in peer-reviewed articles the evidence supporting calls for immediate extreme action to fight global warming (and CAGW) has been called “full of cavities” and such, without evidence-based rejoinders.
There is good evidence for some propositions that are not easy to reconcile.
1. CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming.
2. Warming over the past 100 – 135 years has been 1K – 1.25K, spatio-temporally averaged.
3. Land use changes and urbanization have caused some of the warming.
4.. There is an approximate 1000 year periodicity in temperature measured by proxies; if that represents an actual mechanism, some of the recent warming is due to that process; the mechanism has not been fully characterized.
5. CO2 increase over the past 135 years, rainfall increase over that time span, and temperature increase over that time span have been beneficial to plant growth – cultivated and uncultivated.
6. Global mean temperature, and temperatures in some specific places such as the Great Barrier Reef, the Mediterranean basin, Indonesia, and S.W. China have been higher than they are today.
7. The costs of projects to mitigate CO2, labor, money, resources, are greater than the costs of adapting to the forecast changes in climate.
8. The computational models used in making forecasts cited as support for strong mitigation efforts, while admirable achievements of human effort, have so far proved to predict more warming than has occurred after the forecasts have been published.
Willard’s site is a place to spend a lot of time reading abut claims and counterclaims without reading about any of the detailed evidence.
I would argue that the hydrology is much more affected by high levels of galactic radiation (primary and secondary).
https://i.ibb.co/c1wmhJh/onlinequery.gif
Thanks Matthew. Just to be clear, 3) Land use changes and urbanization heat islands (UHI) are non-climate effects. Although they raise the temperature a the nearby temperature sensors collecting data they are not melting Greenland or warming the oceans. In fact, deforestation increases albedo which cools the planet. So, to the 1C to 1.25C 150-year data rise, “But UHI.”
Kim, S.Y., 2011. Public perceptions of climate change and support for climate policies in Asia: evidence from recent polls. The Journal of Asian Studies, 70(2), pp.319-331.
“While generally aware of climate change and seriously concerned about its effects, Asians turn out to be the least willing to bear the costs of climate change mitigation as compared to the residents of other regions of the world.”
Not surprising that those least willing to bear the cost are least willing to demonstrate.
Vintage 2019:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/18/a-look-at-how-people-around-the-world-view-climate-change/
Dmitri surely has more think tank work to do!
See the 3 comments about oriental countries, plus this survey, starting at ‘J & J’ at 12:48 today. BTW, the data I provide there, which references the chart in the main post, shows oriental countries represented across almost the entire attitude range.
Interesting what religions have to say on it with their vast insights into science.
Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, some protestant churches avow it is real, presumably from on high.
Buddhists, Dali Lama, seem convinced.
Have not really heard a peep out of the Muslim community, Hindu hierarchy [do they have one] , Confucians or other Buddhists.
–
“global climate change is a major threat to their nation.”
A lovely question.
I would agree with that.
I would not like an iceberg earth at all.
So would nuclear wars, Comets hitting the earth, a Super Krakatoa and a team of Godzilla’s.
Were they given a choice of choices
Were they given a choice of rankings?
Were they given a choice of probabilities?
Were they asked if they actually cared?
Would they give up their car to stop it?
Finally A survey of people were asked if climate change could conceivably be a major boon to their nation
After all they could finally go to the beaches in Sweden and England [majority said yes]
French could grow more grapes further north, River flooding would block Franc off from Italy.
Majority said yes [97%]
Sahara and Saudi Arabia higher rainfall and more clouds .
Dictators [ sorry majority] said yes.
Less flooding in Cambodia.
More rice in china, wheat in the Gobi desert,
Yes Yes Yes.
Australia, a land of droughts and flooding rains No B…. way, we have had climate change for ever here and its worn us out.
Official statements on climate-change from all the main Faiths are recorded here: https://fore.yale.edu/Climate-Emergency/Climate-Change-Statements-from-World-Religions
angech –
> I would not like an iceberg earth at all.
This is perfect.
Usually, when certain “skeptics” want to dismiss the significance of polling on views on climate change, they point out that with the question “Do you think climate change is happening,” there is ambiguity in the question. If someone tries to argue that answers of “no” mean that the respondents reject the notion of even natural climate change, these “skeptics” argue that the respondents were actually just answering that they don’t think that Anthropogenic climate change is happening. IOW, they interpret the term “climate change” to only be referring to anthropogenic climate change.
(Of course, there is some merit in that argument.- even if not as much as “skeptics” like to claim, as seen with the similarity in responses when the question is targeted more specifically).
Anyway, to help us see how motivated reasoning works, here you pipe up to argue that the question about whether climate change is a threat is being interpreted as meaning “Do you think that iceberg earth is a danger,” and not as a question referring to AGW.
Whatever works, eh?
Joshua | November 29, 2021 Good to see you..
angech – > I would not like an iceberg earth at all.
“This is perfect.”
Yes,
Expected from the son of a chimney sweep though.
when “skeptics” want to dismiss the significance of polling on views on climate change, they point out that with the question “Do you think climate change is happening,” there is ambiguity in the question.
(Of course, there is some merit in that argument.
A lot of merit.
“Anyway, to help us see how motivated reasoning works, here you pipe up to argue that the question about whether climate change is a threat is being interpreted as meaning “Do you think that iceberg earth is a danger,” and not as a question referring to AGW.”
To be fair, Joshua you are using motivated and unfair arguing here. nothing new, as this is the playbook for people who like making assertions rather than addressing the merits of the argument I put forward above.
You change the question from whether “global climate change is a major threat to their nation.”
to a mere climate change is a threat.
Dropping the words, global and major.
Why did you do that?
Why do you continue to do it?
I guess that is, as you put it, ” how motivated reasoning works”
So as to your statement,
When people ask about global climate change and describe it as a major threat in their question.
They are not talking about simple, benign helpful AGW which saves lives, gives more food production and a bigger ocean [a good thing].
‘Usually, when certain “skeptics” want to dismiss the significance of polling on views on climate change, they point out that with the question “Do you think climate change is happening,” there is ambiguity in the question.’
Any true scientist would understand that it’s impossible for a lay person to know if climate change is happening without providing them first a lesson on definitions and then the data charts. Therefore it is an unanswerable question. Anyone who responds either “yes” or “no” without inquiry is simply repeating what they think the proper response is for their cultural identity.
This question is even more subjective than asking someone when human life begins. Because in that case all the parameters are very well understood and the reproductive cycle is very predictable. It is more akin to the question “are people becoming lazier in each progressive generation.” It provides an opportunity to project biased belief because the measurements are beyond the possible perception of personal experience.
Even if someone notices that winters in the mountains are producing less snowfall in their town than 30 years ago that still has no bearing of GMST because we know that climate changes locally naturally. Unbiased data is the tool of science.
BTW, I think Andy’s work is very valuable. Even Willard’s work to organize the points and counterpoints are valuable. The next productive step would be to audit them. Would that be fair, Willard, or anyone?
Ron –
> Anyone who responds either “yes” or “no” without inquiry is simply repeating what they think the proper response is for their cultural identity.
I’ve made essentially this argument many times in these very threads and as a result been subjected to all manner of insults and derision (not that I particularly care, but it’s an interesting form of response).
For example, I’ve pointed to data on how many people actually don’t know about and/or understand basic scientific data related to climate change, but yet are quite confident in their opinions on the topic.
My own view is that this dynamic is largely moderated by strength of ideological identity. For example, people towards the right-most extreme of the political spectrum are very convinced in their views on climate change, and that they know enough relevant evidence to make an informed decision (that AGW isn’t happening, of course). And this is true despite evidence that they don’t know even basic, relevant information.
It’s not surprising when you think about it, IMO. That’s rather precisely how motivated reasoning works, and identity/ideological orientation is a critical “motivator.” The stronger the identification, the more certain people are in their views in spite of any attendant uncertainty.
And so we see here, and at places like WUWT (and no doubt websites on the other side of the political spectrum) highly people who are undoubtedly highly identified ideologically who are very, very certain about their views on climate change (know anyone like that, Ron?).
Mix that in with basic human psychology and cognitive attributes (making sense of the world through pattern-seeking), and viola, you have the climate wars.
Ah, but here’s a problem.
> Any true scientist would understand that it’s impossible for a lay person to know if climate change is happening without providing them first a lesson on definitions and then the data charts.
Here at climate etc., we have many scientists, or at least scientist-adjacent discussants, who often argue that “lay person” climate “skeptics” know EXACTLY what’s going on with climate change – even though those “lay people” lack the sufficient technical skills and/or knowledge to make an informed decision.
Interesting, isn’t it?
So the distinction you draw between “true scientists” (no true Scotsman, eh?) and “lay people” is not a very robust one in reality. Plenty o’ scientists, also, become quite certain about their opinions on issues where they lack familiarity with sufficiently supporting evidence. We had a nice illustration of exactly that point provided in this very thread by our much beloved Javier!
More than happy for audit. I’ve already reached out to a social psychologist to help on that. Very early days, but good so far on the overview of the main outputs of the measurement aspects.
Ron Graf
“BTW, I think Andy’s work is very valuable. Even Willard’s work to organize the points and counterpoints are valuable. The next productive step would be to audit them. Would that be fair, Willard, or anyone?
That was not fair, Ron.
Funny but not fair.
Willard’s weakness, the kryptonite for Willard, is the mentioning of auditing or the Auditor.
Who has done so much work demolishing CAGW shibboleths that Willard and others have taken on attacking him at every opportunity.
I would say the destruction of good peoples reputations and legacies is one of the saddest by products of Willard’s otherwise important contribution.
I would note here that Judith Curry, Steven McIntyre, Roy Spencer and Roger Pielke, Jn have been subjected to an unending torrent of abuse and denigration at sites that two of our apologists here frequent and have condoned .
But it is all right as it is just part of the game of Climateball which excuses incivility.
> the kryptonite for Willard, is the mentioning of auditing or the Auditor.
Try me, Doc:
neverendingaudit.tumblr.com
Angech, I agree that the skeptic climate scientists have been the subject of endless smearing and abuse at the other site that we sometimes visit where Willard is trusted by the proprietor with the keys to the shop. The difference in the rules between the two sites show a microcosm comparison of capitalist values, where the free marketplace of ideas is protected, versus the autocratic values, where centralized efficiency of truth propagation is justified because “the truth is known”.
At this site the rule is to show respect to anyone genuinely trying to convey a point. If the point is seen a ridiculously wrong or even malicious the site guideline is to not respond at all rather than to belittle or retaliate.
In this post we are testing whether the climate science debate is a scientific debate or a religious debate. (And either side is subject to irrationality.) If religious the rules can be asymmetric, justified by the innate impurity of the non-believer. The doctrine is protected from audit because doing so breaks the rule number one of questioning faith. The may be some rational justifications put forth, i.e. “settled science,” but they could be masks for the actual reason which is orthodoxy and loyalty to the faith. The rationalization for that is “for the good of the righteous cause,” evangelism.
Andy, commenting to Willard, wrote in part: “Is it that you have come to enjoy playing so much, that you no longer *want* there to be any rationality in the climate blogosphere? So you simply *define* it to be all irrational, hence can play ‘but’ for ever more to your heart’s content, and tell yourself this is justified?”
Willard perhaps is gaining fulfillment by doing good work for the cause but lacking the technical skills to be effective on the scientific debate, (which he openly admits). But he believes in his trusted authority on faith and needs to contribute for the cause in ways that he can. (The fact that this has earned him the keys to a climate physics website is another topic.)
I commend Willard for voicing willingness to accept audit. I credit Andy for helping us examine the climate debate through a lens that can enlighten us more than just looking at the hard science.
But Debate Me is a bit silly, Ron.
I’m at Roy’s.
See you there in January.
Science by polls of laymen, very few of whom will have even basic climate science knowledge, asking about the future climate, which no human has ever been able to predict.
Only a d i n g b a t would take a poll like that seriously. And only a f o o l would think such a poll had anything to do with real science
> Science by polls
[JAVIER] But Alarmism
[TROGLODYTE] But Science
Willard, your writings and research are amazing. Lets look at your “but science” page first. It has a link to unravel the “falsification fallacy.”
Here.
Talk about vanquishing a straw man! This is ridiculous. There are endlessly nuanced discussions among skeptics on the radiative complexity, fluid mechanics and thermodynamics of the hydrosphere. If anything the skeptical arguments fail, (as Andy points out), because they are exploring at a the extremely high level when the debate is being won by Climateball Big at the reptilian brain response level, fear, faith, and salvation for the soul.
Willard and company would not be caught dead arguing a rational scientific point (except to retort “but science”).
There is no “real science.” Science is just a method to acquire knowledge. It has proven superior to any other method in the fields that are amenable to its methodology. Any knowledge acquired through the use of science is susceptible to revision, modification and rejection. There is no place for beliefs within science.
Imperfect use of the method is usually termed pseudoscience, but not always. Social sciences (the subject of this blog post) are pseudoscience. The scientific method cannot be applied properly and they incorporate beliefs and assumptions that cannot be tested, so much less confidence can be placed on the knowledge thus acquired.
Climatology has a great deal of pseudoscience. Models violate the scientific method as they work by circular reasoning. The answer depends on the programming. They are built over lots of untested assumptions about the many things in climate that are unknown and thus cannot be programmed. The knowledge acquired from models should not be considered evidence and should not be used to build a corpus of climate theory, much less to make predictions and determine policies.
However, much money has been put into climatology and certain answers are being demanded. Models can provide them, so climatology has derived into pseudoscience. There is a very strong economic and professional incentive into climate pseudoscience. Climate pseudo-scientists out-compete those that adhere to the scientific method.
Humans are not well endowed for science. Our brains have evolved for social interaction and cooperation with problem-solving capabilities as a side-effect. Evolution has placed huge biases in our brain processes that interfere with a proper application of the scientific method. We can see those biases working in blog comments all the time. Nobody is free of those biases. To follow the scientific method one has to trust it more than one trusts oneself. That requires a lot of training and a lot of time. That training is usually only acquired in the fields that adhere to the scientific method and clearly not by everybody in those fields. Physics, for example, is going through a crisis caused by lack of adherence to the scientific method. The whole string theory is built on very thin ice, and one only needs to read the following article:
Hossenfelder, S. and McGaugh, S.S., 2018. Is dark matter real?. Scientific American, 319(2), pp.36-43.
to see the size of the problem.
And the problem is that in modern science, funded by governments and big interests within a highly competitive environment for funding and publications, adherence to the scientific method is a handicap.
> There are endlessly nuanced discussions among [contrarians] on the radiative complexity, fluid mechanics and thermodynamics of the hydrosphere.
None of them refuted so far AGW, and in fact your claim isn’t remotely relevant to the point that AGW is unfalsifiable, Ron!
If only you could read properly before you type, that’d help you put less feet in your mouth!
“None of them [high level science debates] refuted so far AGW, and in fact your claim isn’t remotely relevant to the point that AGW is unfalsifiable, Ron!”
I am not sure if you meant to say AGW is unfalsifiable because if that were so then science is useless as a tool to determine if AGW exists.
But Karl Popper.
CS suffers from such amazing complexity in a uncontrolled environment that endlessly complex dynamics are at play. We are gaining puzzle pieces very slowly as compared to the level of certainty being pronounced every 7 years. This is bad science. Many original very basic questions remaining unanswered. This allows political forces to craft their own narratives and attach them erroneously to “settled science.”
For example, CO2’s atmospheric warming ability uncertainly is unchanged since 1979 Charney Report. Thus the IPCC’s range for warming per 2XCO2 remains a span from a beneficial 1.5C to a problematic 4.5C. Further, it’s well within the realm of feasibility that it is 1.0C if feedbacks are net 0, or less if net negative.
But facts.
“If only you could read properly before you type, that’d help you put less feet in your mouth!”
Incoherent and uncalled for. -2 points
Christos Vournas | November 29, 2021 at 6:56 am |
“Hi angech.
What I would like to discuss is the planet theoretical black body temperature being a highest temperature a planet without-atmosphere average surface temperature may reach…
I very much disagree with that concept. That concept is expressed as:
Tmean ≤ Te which I disagree with.
What actually happens is:
Tmean ≤ Te for planets and moons with a lower planet surface and
Tmean ≥ Te for planets and moons with a higher planet surface ”
–
Good,
The best way is to conceive of a true BB [black body] temperature that would approach the SB concept in real life.
This can only be achieved by having a uniform globe of radiation around a planet.
Further the source of the radiation would have to be totally transparent to the radiation coming back out.
To prevent back radiation problems.
A bit like Willis’ steel globe model at WUWT but not really.[ that has back radiation.
In such a setting the energy in would truly equal the energy out. [apart from the Curious George random U235 and the JJB internal heat of some planets type arguments].
This in itself creates other problems such as why the energy does not go into and be “stored” in the planet. as well as radiating out.
The answer that energy cannot be stored.
As it is in balance it is easy to see that what goes in on one side is coming out on the other side everywhere,
Now in this setting is does not matter if the planet is rotating or not, smooth or not.
Whether it is still or rotating infinitely fast the radiation reaching the planet is exactly what comes out.
That is the true definition of a black body and its temperature.
That concept is expressed as:
Tmean ≤ Te
Part of the problem is that a spinning planet with a single source not only has the day night differential but also a pole to pole differential.
It mat be that an infinitely fast spinning planet single light source may not reach uniform saturation at the poles compared to the equator.
I am sure maths has already provided an answer.
Nonetheless the temperature must rise as the planet spins faster to closer to the average of an all saturated planet.
There would be a cut off point which for the purpose of this discussion would be that of a black body temperature corresponding to that scenario.
Note that the shape of the surface of the planet does not lead to a higher than black.body temperature.
The sun cannot put more energy into it.
At full speed the effective globe surface is that of a larger sphere taking in
the same amount of radiant energy per square meter as that of the smaller sphere [CG, consider the source to be far away enough to be a point source, please], hence at the same BB temperature.
Tmean ≤ Te .
I note you have comments I do not understand about absorbance and reflectance etc. The principles and explanation I have put out seem quite clear.
You cannot get extra energy from a point source than what is coming in.
As the planet rotates faster it approaches black body or rotating planet black body mean temperature and cannot go above it.
I realize that this will probably not satisfy you but perhaps you could go through my examples and explain the mistakes.
Thank you, angech.
I am a MSc mechanical engineer, I knew nothing about planet temperature. So I was like everyone else, I simply believed in what climate scientists said.
For a mechanical engineer the Climate Science is a completely different scientific area.
Also I am a retired teacher in a Technical School, what I did was teaching students everything about mechanical engineering.
Every time, in the class, I had to explain themes from the very basic principles.
Thus, when I got myself “involved”, I started from the very first term – it was the planetary average surface Albedo.
In my understanding of the reflection, the Albedo for smooth spherical surface does not entirely cover the smooth spherical surface specular reflection issue.
I searched in the Internet for publications describing the parallel incident radiation on the smooth spherical surface reflection – there was none.
Then it was when I looked for the analog the Drag Coefficient for the smooth sphere in the parallel fluid flow.
The Drag Coefficient for sphere is Cd = 0,47
Drag Coefficient is a measured value. It is the portion of the parallel fluid flow’s incident on the sphere energy, the sphere’s resistance. When a sphere is hit by 1 Newton it has to resist with 0,47 Newton for the sphere to stay there…
So the 0,47 is the portion of energy left for the sphere to deal with (it is the “absorbed” or, in other words, the accepted portion of the incident parallel flow’s Total interacting with sphere’s surface energy).
Back to planet surface not-reflected portion of the incident solar flux.
For a smooth surface planet with Albedo a=0 the not-reflected portion of the incident solar flux S would be as an analog to the drag coefficient Cd=0,47 as:
Φ*S where Φ = 0,47
and in the general case:
Φ(1- a)S is the not-reflected portion of the incident solar flux S.
We have, theoretically, the Φ for different surface roughness ratio varying
0,47 ≤ Φ ≤ 1
And we have surface average Albedo “a” theoretically for different planets’ varying
0 ≤ a ≤ 1
Notice:
Φ is never less than 0,47 for planets (it is because of the spherical shape).
Also, the coefficient Φ is “bounded” in a product with (1 – a) term, forming the Φ(1 – a) product cooperating term.
So, Φ and Albedo are always bounded together. The Φ(1 – a) term is a coupled physical term.
Fortunately for our research, the planets’ multibillion years the surface History has shaped planet surface either for smooth Φ=0,47 version, or for the rough version Φ=1, and there is only the Triton (Neptune’s satellite) which has the value of Φ somewhere in between 0,47 ≤ Φ ≤ 1.
Table of results for Te and Te.corrected compared to Tsat and to Rotations/day for smooth surface planets and moons with Φ=0,47
Planet…….. Te…….Te.correct…..Tsat…Rot/day
Mercury…..440 K…….364 K…..340 K…0,00568
Moon………270 K……224 K……220 K…0,0339
Earth………255 K…….210 K…..288 K….1
Mars……….210 K……174 K…..210 K…0,9747
Europa…….95,2 K…..78,8 K…102 K…0,2816
Ganymede..107,1 K..88,6 K…110 K….0,1398
As we can see, for the very slow rotating Mercury (0,00568 Rot./day) and for the slow rotating Moon (0,0339 Rot./day) the Corrected theoretical blackbody temperature is
Te.correct > Tsat
Mercury 364 K > 340 K
Moon ,,,,224 K > 220 K
But for the faster rotating
Earth,,,,,,,,,, 210 K < 288 K
Mars,,,,,,,,,, 174 K < 210 K
Europa,,,,…78,8 K < 102 K
Ganymede..88,6 K < 110 K
the Te.correct < Tsat
– – – – – – –
Here are the rest of the planets and moons in our solar system. It is those which have rough surface, and, therefore, the Φ=1.
The blackbody temperature for these planets and moons is not corrected, because Φ=1.
Planet…….. Te…………Tsat……Rot/day
Ιο………….95,16 K…..110 K….0,5559
Calisto….114,66 K…134±11 K…0,0599
Enceladus…55,97 K…75 K……0,7299
Tethys………66,55 K…..86 ± 1 K….0,52971
Titan………..84,52 K…..93,7 K……0,06289
1).Triton..(Φ=1)..35,4 K…38 K…..0,17021
2).Triton..(Φ=0,47) .29,29 K .38 K..0,17021
Pluto………..37 K…………44 K…..0,1565
Charon…… 41,90 K…….53 K……0,1565
We see that for the rest of the planets and moons the theoretical blackbody temperature Te is also smaller than the satellite measured mean surface temperature Tsat.
Te < Tsat
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Thus the theoretical (the mathematical abstraction) planet blackbody effective temperature formula:
Te = [ (1-a) S /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴
is corrected as:
Te.corrected = [ Φ (1-a) S /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
“The blackbody temperature — is the same no matter how fast you spin the planet. It doesn’t change with spin.”
That is why the planet blackbody temperature Te is a mathematical abstraction!
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
No,
I gave you an explanation of why the surface temperature is highest for a black body which an infinitely fast rotating planet can only approach, not go over.
I am happy to discuss the science in this comment of yours
“What I would like to discuss is the planet theoretical black body temperature being a highest temperature a planet without-atmosphere average surface temperature may reach…
I very much disagree with that concept.
Tmean ≤ Te “
So no terms like higher and lower planet surfaces which on their own are meaningless.
No analogies and unexplained phi symbols and abbreviations only you know, give them names and explanations.
When a sphere is hit by 1 Newton it has to resist with 0,47 Newton for the sphere to stay there…
That is not scientific .
Therefore the rest of your argument lacks a basis to proceed
Hi,angech.
Here it is what I have written 2021/11/27 :
https://judithcurry.com/2021/11/27/public-climateball/#comment-965259
“Hi angech.
What I would like to discuss is the planet theoretical blackbody temperature being a highest temperature a planet without-atmosphere average surface temperature may reach…
I very much disagree with that concept. I’ll think that concept is mathematically expressed as:
Tmean ≤ Te
which I disagree with.
What actually happens in my opinion, and which is embodied in the Planet Rotational Warming theory is:
Tmean ≤ Te for planets and moons with a lower planet surface (N*cp) product
and
Tmean ≥ Te for planets and moons with a higher planet surface (N*cp) product.”
And here it is what you have copy-pasted to further comment on :
https://judithcurry.com/2021/11/27/public-climateball/#comment-965315
“Christos Vournas | November 29, 2021 at 6:56 am |
“Hi angech.
What I would like to discuss is the planet theoretical black body temperature being a highest temperature a planet without-atmosphere average surface temperature may reach…
I very much disagree with that concept. That concept is expressed as:
Tmean ≤ Te which I disagree with.
What actually happens is:
Tmean ≤ Te for planets and moons with a lower planet surface and
Tmean ≥ Te for planets and moons with a higher planet surface ”
And your comment :
https://judithcurry.com/2021/11/27/public-climateball/#comment-965596
“So no terms like higher and lower planet surfaces which on their own are meaningless.
No analogies and unexplained phi symbols and abbreviations only you know, give them names and explanations.”
Next time, when discussing matters with me, please comment the exact text.
angech, the least you can do is to apologies for your inattention.
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
My reaction to what I must only surmise is the ClimateBall concept of discussion exchanges on the topic of climate change is that it would appear to support what I already see too much of on these blogs, i.e., brief back and forth posts that frequently become personal in nature and/or a contest of wordsmithing about subjects that are not related to the main thread.
ClimateBall from my first read about it is a list of the preferred abbreviated replies to, not necessarily the more common arguments from the contrarian side of the AGW debate, but rather a condensed version. If my reading is correct this merely uses the current format (which I do not like how it has evolved) of these blogs but with scripted responses -or at least from the consensus side.
My preference for these blogs would be for posters to present their points of view, evidence, sources and questions related to the threaded topic at some length and await any questions concerning their post. Personal references should be used only to identify to whom a post is addressed. There should be a near complete consensus on maintaining the high standards for posting and not posting. By not posting I mean ignoring posts that are off topic, personal or attempts to present obviously unsubstantiated theories or conclusions.
While the above would be my preferences a lighter version might be acceptable. Either way if rules for posting are established and never enforced some level of chaos is almost certain to reign with learning and being able to have a reasonable discussion getting a short shrift.
My reaction to what I must only surmise is the ClimateBall concept of discussion exchanges on the topic of climate change is that it would appear to support what I already see too much of on these blogs, i.e., brief back and forth posts that frequently become personal in nature and/or a contest of wordsmithing about subjects that are not related to the main thread.
ClimateBall from my first read about it is a list of the preferred abbreviated replies to, not necessarily the more common arguments from the contrarian side of the AGW debate, but rather a condensed version. If my reading is correct this merely uses the current format (which I do not like how it has evolved) of these blogs but with scripted responses -or at least from the consensus side.
My preference for these blogs would be for posters to present their points of view, evidence, sources and questions related to the threaded topic at some length and await any questions concerning their post. Personal references should be used only to identify to whom a post is addressed. There should be a near complete consensus on maintaining the high standards for posting and not posting. By not posting I mean ignoring posts that are off topic, personal or attempts to present obviously unsubstantiated theories or conclusions.
While the above would be my preferences a lighter version might be acceptable. Either way if rules for posting are established and never enforced some level of chaos is almost certain to reign with learning and being able to have a reasonable discussion getting a short shrift.
> The level of thought that has gone into the [CB] concept, suggests far more productive use of it
You conflating the Bingo with the Manual, Andy. And neither are equivalent to the concept. So your condescension is ill-advised.
Look. You’re not the first one who’s trying to fork the concept. That Auditor tried. John (you know the guy who tried to gently nudge you away from a point that ran against statistics) also tried. I really don’t mind.
I mean the concept of CB in an inclusive way. It helps refer to everything we do hereunder. That encompasses stances such as “you are playing games,” “I am above games,” and “let me tell you how *I* would define the game.”
Also, you’re overinterpreting the “But.” It indicates what is usually called squirreling. The Bingo is a mnemonic tool to help build a repertoire. It isn’t meant to program overall strategies. Players all have their play styles. The more the merrier!
Lastly, note how every single of your responses to my comments in this thread defeats any beef you may have about the But. They were all Buts.
Thank you nevertheless for the kind words.
“The Bingo is a mnemonic tool to help build a repertoire. It isn’t meant to program overall strategies.”
Yes, I know.
“Players all have their play styles. The more the merrier.”
Yes, and your style is that you have become far far too beloved of the game, because you play too much and rationalise too little. Why?
“Lastly, note how every single of your responses to my comments in this thread defeats any beef you may have about the But. They were all Buts.”
I don’t have any beef about the buts. It’s purpose as a device is clear. Both when it is wielded by a rhetoric challenge, and in your use of it as a device reflecting such challenges. As noted in the main post however, such usage by no means guarantees that your characterisations are correct, or that your rejoinders might also be just as biased. However, the real issue is that what you more recently slid into doing, is just deploying ‘but’ across the board as a knee-jerk reaction to everything, essentially *defining* everything (except your own august words, of course), as irrational. You have ceased to listen to content, and don’t actually make any effort at all to separate the competitive elements from rational content. How you forgotten how to do this?
If you can *demonstrate* buts, do it! If you can’t, how can anyone rely on your device ever hitting the mark?
And you appear to be very unwilling to acknowledge that it is indeed ‘bias and irrationality all the way down’ in the public domain, so for some reason that escapes me you don’t appear to want to see that CCAGW won. You hide behind incessant ‘but’ and run away from the data, and indeed explanations on same. If you can fault either the latter or the former, do so! Engage. What are you afraid of? If my explanations are so wrong you deem them ‘irrelevant’, this should be easy for you to demonstrate by showing your logical chain in reference to the chart.
Oppositely to above, you also appear to be unwilling to acknowledge that there is any rationality in the climate blogosphere. The writ of ClimateBall is far from absolute. Given you and many others of the orthodox frame have striven mightily to quash memes in this domain, why should you be surprised that this has borne fruit? And both you and the skeptics, for different reasons and from different perspectives, as noted above and in the main post, have *succeeded* in keeping out the main irrationality that won ClimateBall Big, i.e. CCAGW. Victory! Is it that you have come to enjoy playing so much, that you no longer *want* there to be any rationality in the climate blogosphere? So you simply *define* it to be all irrational, hence can play ‘but’ for ever more to your heart’s content, and tell yourself this is justified? Of course this is far easier than analysing and discussing content to help uncover truths, but your easy life from this approach risks undoing any good that has previously been achieved, because your big stick applied everywhere is *creating* emotive conflict.
You can of course just write all this off as ‘but X,Y,Z’. Rather suggesting it may be right.
Andy,
Of course you have a beef against the “buts”: read back all you wrote in The ‘But’ precursor section. I mean, seriously: you do not have a beef against buts but you just wonder if I demonstrated them? Please, very please, there are limits to justified disingenuousness. And once again, the Contrarian Matrix is a completely different project. It’s not even the same website!
I will also note your caricature: you also appear to be unwilling to acknowledge that there is any rationality in the climate blogosphere. That’s not what I said at all! In fact, I am not the one who’s positing some “runaway evolution of emotive narrative”. You are!
So allow me to clarify: how you portray contrarians is first and foremost rationalization. There’s no “inner skeptic” module. Chances are you’re just triggered by the various policy implications that the risks of AGW may carry.
Rationalization indeed implicates some kind of rationality!
Yes I know the websites are different, obviously, yet they have some conceptual share.
“Of course you have a beef against the “buts”:”
No. It’s a perfectly valid concept, and highlights potential rhetoric content.
>”…you just wonder if I demonstrated them?”
If you mean, do your buts always guarantee that not just in your mapping, but as you deploy them individually in the blogosphere, you definitely detected something that was largely rhetoric and minimally rational, then no. There is no such guarantee. A deployment implies that the challenge was a) mostly irrational, and b) most of that irrationality was causal to the skeptic perception of the nonsense meme of CAGW as coming from science. So the wider formula here is but X, so CAGW. But you deploy universally, where significant or very significant rational content useful to the topic may occur, and where strong attribution to the main meme may also be minimal or zero.
In short, the ClimatBall and taxonomy are useful guides, yet not an Ethos. However, you are personally executing constantly as the latter, which can only denude rationality around you.
>”…you also appear to be unwilling to acknowledge that there is any rationality in the climate blogosphere. That’s not what I said at all! In fact, I am not the one who’s positing some “runaway evolution of emotive narrative”. You are!”
No I’m not, in that space. The head post is very clear; the runaway evolution is in the Global Public Space, where CCAGW has won, and NOT in the climate blogosphere, where rationality clogs up the rhetoric / narrative competition mechanisms. It is in the latter that you appear to imply that rationality does not exist; If I’m wrong on that, please confirm.
>So allow me to clarify: how you portray contrarians is first and foremost rationalization.
I have not portrayed Contrarians / Skeptics, or Orthodox / Mainstream, beyond these labels. I have characterised the cultural nature of *global public attitudes* to climate change, indeed measured them as such. This does not translate to the tiny and highly specialised space of the climate blogosphere!
>Chances are you’re just triggered by the various policy implications that the risks of AGW may carry.
As the post notes, no-one of any view from skpetic to highly concerned should want a culture in charge of the global public space. Yet this is *measurably* the case, and per the Archive its principle narrative is ubiquitous within the public authorities, and per the link in last para it is also dominating policy, including renewables commitment across nations. Via emotive selection, cultures steer us en-mass to NOT solve their touted problem.
Andy,
The Bingo and the Matrix are very different. In fact they’re diametrically opposed!
The Bingo is for cheap one-liners that everyone but rookies heard. They’re easy to defuse. It’s a learning tool. An opening book, if you please.
Its generalization is so strong that most of the squares fit Covidball.
The Matrix is for the best contrarians have. The site would need more love, but the purpose is clear. Perhaps you missed this caveat:
https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/notes/
The point, once again, is not about the soundness of the claims being made, but their felicity. Taken as a whole, the Matrix can be interpreted as a minimization process. Each level mimicks Gorgias‘ proof that nothing exists.
It’s not impossible for oracles to minimize.
This is fine, but you’re still missing the main point here. Which is that your useful efforts on the above can serve as a guide and a means to *reduce* overall bias and narrative conflict within the domain. But you wield it like a scythe to corn, cutting down everything and everyone no matter what their content might potentially have yielded. You are not using the information as a guide for domain improvement, you are living it, loving it. The net result (lately), is the creation of much more narrative competition than if you had simply done nothing. Rationality in the blogosphere is far from dead, yet you are denuding it with this ‘blast everything in sight’ approach.
> your useful efforts on the above can serve as a guide and a means to *reduce* overall bias and narrative conflict within the domain. But you
With this “but you” you’re trying to make it about me once again, Andy. I surmise it helps you frame your own stance as being non-aggressive. This comment thread shows otherwise.
Were you really serious about the first claim, you’d realize that your “but you” is more than counterproductive. There’s no middle ground between eristic and dialectic. You just can’t have it both ways.
That being said, to become accustomed to the contrarian playbook indeed brings some peace of mind. But it still takes time, and we’re reaching diminishing returns. I will be away for December anyway.
Best of luck in your narrative deescalation, and season’s greetings.
Andy –
I’m persona most non grata in the room.
… as a characterization….
Another reply dropped into moderation, the algorithm seems to be working overtime at the moment.
Your insistence on wielding CB as a blunt club everywhere, instead of using the knowledge of it to avoid or constrain plays, hence improving exchanges and increasing rationality in the blogosphere, is indeed all about you. To do this is entirely your choice.
Your insistence in trying to make it about me shows that you’re not into increasing rationality as much as you pretend, Andy, whatever “increasing rationality” might mean.
The blogosphere is not all about process. It’s a tiny domain, occupied by individuals, some of whom are influential, as indeed you are. If those individuals can use their knowledge to reduce narrative competition and increase rationality, that’s a good thing. Or indeed be encouraged to do so if they appear to be swimming the other way. Lately you are using your meta knowledge of the domain as a blunt instrument that is creating more opportunity for narrative conflict, and so reducing the space for rational discourse. You could work to reduce the former and increase the latter.
Neither XR nor religious leaders are in the blogosphere.
At least make your special pleading relevant!
Andy –
> If those individuals can use their knowledge to reduce narrative competition and increase rationality, that’s a good thing.
(1) where do you see evidence that’s possible?
(2) How do you know it isn’t happening now? If it does happen, is it always immediately apparent? Does it only happen when people say “that’s happening, Willard, Thanks? Are you all-seeing? Does it only happen if you see it? Maybe you seeing it, makes it happen?
Here’s my view. It doesn’t happen much across in/out groups pretty much by definition. But when it does happen, it’s subterranean. It’s subtle. It moves in little, tiny, tiny pieces. You an only see it indirectly over long periods of time. And as a tribe member yourself, it’s VERY,VERY hard for you to see it. I think you should trust your instincts lsss.
I also think you’re looking in the wrong placec. For it to really happen, good faith is kinda a prerequisite. Ain’t much good faith in these here parts. .
I have to say, I agee with Willard.
You making this about him is poor form. It’s not about him any more than it’s about you. I’m sure you agee it’s not about you, right?
It’s about none if us. We are the symptom of the diseas.
One of the ways to check vital signs, to see if one is suffering from the diseass, is to ask them if this is abour Mike, or Al, or Judith. Take a temperature reading before and after you ask that question. If the temp spikes you know that person’s been infected.
>Neither XR nor religious leaders are in the blogosphere.
Correct.
>At least make your special pleading relevant!
So what are you on about?
You need evidence that confrontational approaches are harmful to discourse and co-operative approaches aren’t??
If what isn’t happening now? Both co-operation and competition happen in the blogosphere.
“You making this about him is poor form”
No doubt. That’s the problem with confrontational approaches; they’re catching. That’s why it’s so very important not to pursue them. Look at our engagement above. We may never get to an agreement after the steps; but it’s knowledge exchange, not memetic / rhetoric conflict. It could all be like that. Willard could help make it so.
“But I only lift my elbows on climate blogs” amounts to special pleading, Andy.
We are on a climate blog. You decided to lift your elbows. Own it.
What on Earth are you going on about elbows for? The head post makes clear the two domains: the climate blogosphere and the global public space, and that very different events take place in each, due to different levels of constraint, vast differences in scale, etc. What happens in one doesn’t translate to the other. There is nothing ‘special’ about each domain. They are just different. So what on Earth point are you trying to make?
Andy
Confrontational approached and co-operative approached don’t move the needle here to appreciably different degrees. Haven’t you been watching?
Do you just trust your instincts or do you trust evidence? Where’s your evidence?
Andy -Willard is exchanging knowledge with you.
You’re acting like only what you agree with is knowledge, by definition. .
Andy –
Willard is presenting you with a model. It’s information. You don’t have to think it’s right for it to be information.
Here – scroll up a bit:
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/11/29/have-we-been-thinking-about-the-pandemic-wrong-the-effect-of-population-structure-on-transmission/#comment-2032726
J: the fact that it’s stuck in WW1 means that we should stay stuck in WW1? Do you need evidence to say that Willard could have acted like you have, i.e. promoting discourse.
“You don’t have to think it’s right for it to be information.”
Of course not!!
Nor is the chief issue my post here, nor would I agree with many of the folks here who feel the blunt end of the ClimateBall club, and indeed I don’t know any of the physical climate-change stuff on either side anyhow. The issue is that the club is applied completely indiscriminately, everyone is cut off at the knees by plays before their contribution could even be assessed. No content separation, no exploration, straight over to the game, every time. You disagree, this is fine. It’s my opinion.
J: comment in moderation…
> What on Earth are you going on about elbows for?
Because you don’t seem to realize that you have been elbowing me for more than a day now.
This does not cohere with your standpoint, and makes you look either like a poseur or a fool.
No doubt it’s far from my best light. Conflictual approaches are catching, yet that is part of my point. You use CB as a means to elbow generally, whether or not some development of their points might well have led to something productive. You used it to club me because *someone else* had made some claim.
> you use CB
One does not simply “use” CB, Andy. It’s not a tool. It’s a process, an event, an happenstance. You’re in or your out. All those who are in, are in. And you can be sure you’re in.
CB is an inclusive concept.
As far as stratergery is concerned, if you elbow me, I might respond in kind. I didn’t, but I might. You know why I didn’t? Because I’m here to make sure that you don’t misuse “CB,” or rather that readers have a better understanding of its design.
Your gobbledygook is the lesser of my concerns. It’s not the ball I came to play. You tried many times to force me to play it. There were appeals to pride, interjections. They didn’t work. So now you’re resorting to elbows.
This will be my last comment here for the year.
Be well.
>One does not simply “use” CB.
Yes nevertheless, you do.
Andy –
> You disagree, this is fine. It’s my opinion.
What do I disagee with? Do you know? I suspect not.
I think the factors that might or mjgnt not move the needle low outside the climateball arena.
This is a problem that “skeptics” and “realists” alike make. They think you can’t watch a CB match and learn something about the world. That’s what I disagee with. It doesn’t matter whether what you’re watching isore or less conflictual. I mean maybe just a tad in the margins it does.
But how would you actually know? Common sense?
That doesn’t work for me. First we are biased interpreters of common sense.
2nd, you need metrics. You need to establish cause-and-effect. You need to control for mediators and moderators and interactions and confounds and spurious variables. Can you do that? I think not. Yet you are entirely confident. Why is that?
Andy –
This filter is the worst! I’ll have to break this into pieces:
> You disagree, this is fine. It’s my opinion.
I’m thinking you don’t know what I disagree with. Do you?
I think a mistake that “skeptics” and “realists” alike make, is to think that you can observe what takes place in the CB arena to understand much of anything about the world.
In reality, what happens with CB doesn’t affect the price of fish.
I mean maybe, maybe, just a tad in the margins…
But how would we know? How do you measure? What are the metrics?
You think you know cause-and-effect?
H*ve you contro*lled for conf*unds, for medi*tors and mod*rators, for inter*ction eff*cts, for spurio*s vari*bles?
I’m gonna guess no. But yet you’re quite confident. I get that it appears to you like common sense. But you, like me, don’t have an unbiased view of common sense.
(Something in that paragraph with the asterisks tripped the filter).
Andy –
Do you play basketball? There’s an expression. Play the ball, not the man. Or maybe it comes from soccer/football – so it might be familiar to you?
It’s an expression that basically describes CB, IMO. CB is playing the man. Playing the man doesn’t advance the dialog. It matters little whether it’s shape is conflictual. Why? Because in the CB arena, it’s all ABOUT playing the man. In my opinion, that’s why people talk about “skeptics” and “alarmists.”
IMO, because it’s about identity. I don’t think it works to talk about “alarmists,” as you like to do, and then say you’re not playing the man, or say your not about identity. IMO, you’re basically all about creating categories of identity and then putting people into those categories. Or outside of those categories.
That doesn’t make you bad. There’s probably a place, even in the best of all possible worlds, to talk about categories. But, (1) if you’re talking about them inside the CB arena, in effect you’re playing the man and you won’t have much of any effect outside of the CB arena and, (2) I’d suggest that to be effective in the best of all possible worlds, the reason to talk about categories is to distinguish commonalities.
You see, we’re all more alike than we’re different. There’s more diversity within categories than across categories.
Now I’m pretty sure that you say that you’re about defining commonalities as well as differences. I can’t interpret what you write well enough to really say.
But I will say that if this is where you’re talking about it, you’re working at cross-purposes with stressing similarities.
J: You’re hugely over thinking this. I’m not objecting to any information or any side, merely the personal behaviour of an individual. No, I didn’t know for sure you’d disagree, but it was a very good bet, which based on your replies appears correct.
Andy –
> No, I didn’t know for sure you’d disagree, but it was a very good bet, which based on your replies appears correct.
What did I disagree with?
The first part of the statement immediately above, of course!
Andy –
This?
> No content separation, no exploration, straight over to the game, every time.
Here? You think I disagree with that ad a xjaracrrizejim of what happens here?
No, I don’t disagree with that.
Is there anything else you think I disagee with?
That Willard discourages proper discourse.
If you do agree, fine, I was only guessing!
Andy –
> That Willard discourages proper discourse.
Hmmm. Maybe.
I think that Willard has little effect on “proper discourse,” because very, very few people here are interested in proper discourse with Willard.
Can you discourage proper discourse with pwolw who aren’t interested in proper discourse? I’d have to think about that but right off the best odd say no.
I don’t think that, usually, Willard discourages proper discourse with ahne sometimes. I’d have to think about that).
Imo, if someone is interested in proper discourse with Willard, they shouldn’t be blaming Willard if they get discouraged, but look inward to see what’s the obstacle.
I bet if you really, really, examined what you were doing very closely. Meditated on it. You’d find a way to have proper discourse with Willard.
And here’s the funny thing about that. It might feelkme you’d have to give something up. That you’d have to avoid expressing a particular opinion.
That’s usually an illusion. It’s usually a self-created obstacle. Because.it serves some internal purpose. It satisfies internal that wants to be blocked. Or, it’s about chasing a dopamine high.
This is about social media.
It’s generic. Nothing to do with my views in particular. Indeed I may well disagree with a wide range of the folks who are not treated as though they have anything to offer. The point is that whatever one thinks of particular views, discourse should be given far more chance to prosper.
Sorry for the gobbledygook. I was on my phone. It’s enormously a pain to edit on my phone and I always forget to check for gobbledygook. But I think it was decipherable.
At any rate, in balance, yes, I guess in a sense I disagree that Willard discourages proper discourse – because I don’t think that Willard is the cause for communication breaking down.
Do you think you’re responsible for when proper discourse breaks down with me?
When discourse breaks down with people, is it always someone else that causes the blockage? Or is it you sometimes? How do you measure it? What are the metrics?
Is there nothing you could do, when you think that Willard is discouraging proper discourse, that would resolve the problem? Have you tried giving him a virtual hug when you think it’s starting to happen? That’s kind of a joke.
But not really.
See above. It’s nothing to do with me in particular; it happens to a stack of folks with a wide range different views to offer. And from long before this post.
Andy –
I think you’re facing a vast and highly complex and ubiquitous phenomenon, and placing it at Willard’s feet. And I think there’s probably a reason why you’re doing that. And that reason has more to do with you than with him.
There is hardly ANY proper discourse in the blogosphere. Even less so between people who have diametric, or orthogonal, or even remotely diverging identities. I can remember only a small handful of people with diverging identities with whom I’ve had proper discourse with through social media. Maybe that’s me? Could be. But I look around and I don’t see my discourse as some kind of an outlier in that regard (although I am probably the persona most non-grata here at Climate Etc.).
In pretty much every case I’ve had proper discourse with non-identity aligned in social media, it (1) was with someone who was, explicitly, interested in proper discourse, (2) someone who was interested in proper discourse with me (3) someone who put in a lot of effort to establish and maintain proper discourse despite divergent views and, (4) required a lot of effort on my part to examine for internal blockages, and eschew cheap dopamine highs.
Here’s someone who I’ve done this with on a regular basis: https://markbofill.wordpress.com/
We fail not infrequently. But we pick up the pieces when we do.
Sure. Not a crime. Not even a misdemeanour. Not even unusual. No big deal. Doesn’t unmake it. I place no domain behaviours at the feet of any individual, we’re all responsible for ourselves. But indeed not worth further discussion.
This entire discourse appears to be a hand bag fight on steroids. Useless at best, tedious otherwise.
+1
As people outside the denizens of this blog understand, Climateball Big is winning. Our science investigations are interesting to us. The masses get their science from Obama, AOC and Kerry, who are supported by the Michael Mann, the hockey team, who are supported by the IPCC, who are supported by Obama, AOC and Kerry.
The masses can be enamored with that science until the climate changes at the same time that current energy policies end up with disastrous consequences of power interruptions and people paying enormous prices for fuel. It’ll be a helluva wake up call.
Like Tyson said “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Ron –
I think you have a category error.
CB is a subset of ideological battles. It’s an outcome.
What’s winning is polarization. Which, of course, means you’re winning.
That’s why you constantly “but libz.” ’cause it works for you. ’cause you think it’s winning. .
Ron – you don’t understand. If you are a lefty, Europe has no energy crisis and renewables are doing great. If you are of the right, Europe has a serious energy crisis and climate change policy. See how it works? Reality is determined by your tribe – otherwise, it doesn’t exist.
I’m enjoying myself this week so much I’ve vowed not to make any disparaging comments. With temperatures 40 degrees warmer than at home and my deck overlooking a golf course’s 4th hole tee box, it’s hard to be critical in this frame of mind.
Anyway, I’ve got all the yucks I can handle just watching the tee shots, so why try to add more with some of my levity about ClimateBall. W needs some peace once in a while.
CKIS says:? I’m enjoying myself this week so much I’ve vowed not to make any disparaging comments.”
You will be in violation of Internet Rule 3b.
After trying to read the article, and skimming the many comments (aka verbal battle) from Mr. West and Mr. Willard, my overall comment is:
In over two decades of interest in the subject, I have never before read so much about climate science with no numbers !
Richard, that’s highly likely because the head post isn’t at all about climate science! It’s about social psychology. If you want some social-psychology numbers then see the chart, which shows the attitudes to climate-change of national publics across the globe.
Richard, never has a movement used so many numbers to avoid presenting numbers.
To whit, New York has a law requiring 70% of the state’s electricity be produced by renewable sources as of 9 years from today.
How many windmills? How many solar panels? How many dams? How much will this cost? Where will they be sited?
Not one supporter of that law will answer a single one of those questions. But they’ll throw lots of other numbers at you.
I have an on-topic post in moderation. It was critical of how this blog has evolved participant-wise.
Try not to take it personally Ken.
I don’t!
Thanks for participating, Ken!
I did not want this comment to be near the beginning of the comment thread, because it appears Mr. West put a lot of time into this article. I have to admit I could not get far before I completely lost interest.I’m amazed that anyone could read the whole article. In my opinion, it was the worst article on climate science I have read in 24 years of reading climate articles and studies. Worst of all, it tempted me to visit Willard’s awful website — there’s five minutes I’ll never get back ! If either person criticized here wants to give me a hard time in return, that’s okay — I believe honesty is the best policy.
Ennui and Troglodyte joining hands,
We should all celebrate!
In return, if you ever contribute something worth my while,
Please rest assured, dear Troglodyte,
That I’ll be the first to tell you!
I’m sure I could prolong that limerick.
But you, more than me, out of that gets a kick.
Willard
If you ever tell me you liked my comment,
I’ll know I made a major mistake,
and will have to issue a retraction !
And my climate / energy website
is better than yours too !
With over 267,000 page views
while yours has perhaps 267 !
Have a nice day !
www(DOT)elOnionBloggle(DOT)blogspot(DOT)com
Nice comment, Troglodyte!
People think non-sense is overrated. Willard is sharp enough to realize its utility when pared with humor. His but-isms are a trap, a mobius loop, an Escher drawing of steps to nowhere. How many has he fooled?
I mean no disrespect when I say he has made an art form of the internet troll. His satire is omnidirectional. He’s a funny guy.
Andy has made a good attempt. Culture is upstream of science. And make no mistake, Willard IS culture.
Andy’s mistake is in thinking he can ‘solve’ Willard. The best he could hope for is a stalemate, which is actually a win for Willard. The better tactic would have been to treat Willard solely as a cultural artifact.
So, Willard 1, Andy 0.
The current state of climate debate can be summed up in two news stories.
Vox in 2019 celebrating the most ambitious climate mandate ever:
“the CLCPA targets 70 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040.”
“And New York accomplished this feat the exact same way all those other states did it: by electing overwhelming Democratic majorities.”
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/6/20/18691058/new-york-green-new-deal-climate-change-cuomo
So…. how’s it going three years later?
Yesterday they had a hearing, and we learned:*
“The state has enough resources to reach about half of its legislated climate goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through 2050, energy officials said Monday, as lawmakers pressed them on clean energy’s anticipated cost to taxpayers to address climate change.”
“The state uses about 27% renewable energy to date, said John Williams, vice president of policy and regulatory affairs with the state Energy Research & Development Authority. Wind and solar comprise about 5% to 7%, he said.
“So we have a good distance still to go,” Williams said. “We have put into motion, you know, enough megawatt to be able to reach virtually half of that 75/30 goal.”
They have a plan for that, right? The quotes above and below are from yesterday. They’ve been working on this for three years, it’s a law.
“Energy Committee Chair Assembly member Michael Cusick, D-Mid Island, asked Williams what percentage of NYSERDA funding is allocated for climate change-related purposes in the current 2021-22 fiscal year.
“That’s a good question,” Williams replied.”
Well, okay, but surely they have a sense of the cost, right?
“The Legislature voted in 2017 to require NYSERDA to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the state meeting a 50% renewable energy goal by 2030. The department has not released the required analysis.”
So. No budget, no plan.
Why not at least have a plan, three years later? To hit only the electricity mandate, they have nine years to triple total renewable energy (about 30 times as much wind and solar if you aren’t going to dam rivers). You need to be in permitting stages now to accomplish that, much less dilly-dallying about writing a budget.
And this is the easy part, climate communication says so. Here’s Vox again: “Those who understand deep decarbonization understand that the electricity sector is key to the process. It is both the easiest sector to decarbonize and a means through which to decarbonize the others. (Electrify everything!)”
So why no plan or budget for the easiest sector to decarbonize? For “those who understand,” this is easy peasy, right?
How does one debate the New York plan in good faith if it doesn’t exist?
The problem with this for crusaders is that the answer to what is the plan and the cost is pretty straightforward math even if nobody will answer it.
If you put down on paper how many square miles of windmills and solar panels you need, how much those will cost, and where you intend to put them… well, you know the end of that sentence, and so do they. And we all know how people would react to it.
*
https://www.nny360.com/top_stories/panel-new-york-on-pace-to-meet-half-of-its-climate-goals/article_3a7308a8-6285-5754-bb91-b4afdfb02766.html
The current state of the contrarian playbook can be summed up by the following:
[C1] As expected, XR activity and Children’s Strike for Climate activity are very strongly indeed anti-correlated with religiosity.
[C2] All the religious leaderships have signed up to [But CAGW].
Contrarians simply can’t lose.
Well played, everyone!
Classic CB.
State facts; forge completely unconnected conclusion that fits into your play and the concept of a game in the blogosphere, in order to then deploy faux irony about the fabricated play.
Power move from Andy:
Get caught in a blatant contradiction. Present interpretations as facts. Use facts to dogwhistle. Epilogue.
You’re a natural!
Maybe you don’t always use facts in that play. In this case, they’re *both* measurable. The first, very obviously so, there is such a correlation. R-squared is 0.75, p=1.3E-9. For the second, many years ago, before the religious leaders signed-up, the unconstrained trends in the chart in the head post would slope the other way. Less data then, but enough to show this is the case. The sign-up caused is what caused them to flip over. Of course, if you have an alternate explanation, go for it.
Maybe correlations aren’t brute facts.
Maybe presenting quotes as data is just bad practice.
Maybe there’s a correlation between the lack of sea pirates and AGW.
Maybe if religion and non-religion to leads “but AGW, maybe everything does.
Maybe consistency is relative, and even facultative.
Just maybe.
You reflection of these statements didn’t stretch to any implications of same. I said I expected X to correlate. The fact is I did expect it, and the fact is it does. No mention of pirates or anything in your reflection of same. I said religious leaders signed on to catastrophe narrative. They did. Read their statements yourself. Clearly CAGW and contradiction mainstream science. If they lived in the climate blogosphere, they’d be dead meat at your hand. And we see the effect of the sign-on clearly in social data. Maybe you were just constructing a play.
Best of luck reconciling correlation and anti-correlation between religiosity and AGW endorsement, Andy,
“Best of luck reconciling correlation and anti-correlation between religiosity and AGW endorsement, Andy”
Public domain = CAGW won, so not AGW.
Already done. Reality-constrained trends most supportive, anti-correlate with religiosity, unconstrained trends most supportive, correlate with religiosity. Strengths of each change gradient as expected. Look at the chart of these trends across nations. This is because attitudes to climate-change are intrinsically cultural, and religious attitudes are (naturally) also cultural. Nothing physical or even rational could both correlate and anti-correlate at the same time with the most supportive attitudes. This is no problem for cultures.
It’s ultimately because, as Dan Kahan phrases it, publics don’t respond to climate-change with ‘what they know’, but ‘who they are’. The ‘who they are’ is cultural identity, which regarding these attitudes and for nations not including the US and at national level, is only a 2-way play, religion and climate culture based on CAGW. (In the US it’s a 4-way play). Cultural responses also change systemically between unconstrained and reality-constrained scenarios.
Willard, There’s ample correlation between climate forcing and pirate density.
You just need to know where in the literature to look:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2014/09/ye-arts-climate-pyrates-daily.html
> Reality-constrained trends most supportive, anti-correlate with religiosity, unconstrained trends most supportive, correlate with religiosity.
Try English, Andy.
Somewhat abbreviated, indeed, but OTOH you could have connected it to the other sentences in the comment.
“[C1] .. very strongly indeed anti-correlated with religiosity.” Link, please.
“[C2] All the religious leaderships have signed up”. Link, please.
Or am I supposed simply to trust you?
No, George – you’re supposed to know how to use CTRL-F.
Aren’t you a curious chap?
XR: https://wearenarrative.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/gwacc5-xr-sa-trends.png
Religious leaders: https://fore.yale.edu/Climate-Emergency/Climate-Change-Statements-from-World-Religions
There are no contrarians, Willard the d u l l a r d.
There are Climate Realists who study the present and past climate,
and Climate Liars who make always wrong predictions of climate doom.
Climate Reality versus Climate Fantasy
Real science versus science fiction.
You live in data free climate fantasyland.
(There are no data for the future, just speculation)
But Semantics. But Prediction. But Science. But Data.
If I were to characterize Climateball as a game it would only be in the broadest sense, “life is a game”; the only relevance here being that with Climateball we play it whether we like it or not, within the presence of small company. It’s nonexistent otherwise. Climateball is just part of the inventors organized world view encapsulated in a game we all must play if in his presence. Bingo carries the game with him wherever he goes like Linus and his blue blanket. Do you hear him much not in game form? He wears his blue blanket swag like a superhero robe to coerce his world view upon others. Such game trappings are nice and cozy for a collectivist; its demands attempt to enforce hegemony, with no buts about it.
Few, if any, use bingo cards, almost nobody keeps track of points, most don’t want to play the game. Climateball is not original except by title, and the fact that it’s branded to climate. But how it’s branded is irrelevant. The games only purpose is to stigmatize, shut down unwanted debate; this makes the intent of Climateball sinister unless you’re firmly rooted in the consensus belief system. One won’t score many points arguing against the consensus side unless a so called “denier” makes their own bingo card, but what would be the point of that?
Topical deflections, of the nature targeted within Climateball, have been used in every conceivable argument since humans developed language. Some linear deflections augment truth, some don’t. But if linearity in the game were allowed it would break down the construct of Climateball because linearity is the ideological enemy; yet ironically, without linearity the game could not exist. There would be no points to score.
Linear thinking is at the root of all great solutions, and ideas. Climateball attempts to deny linear thinking, represented as “buts” in a word; this makes the game destructive to reasoning, to rational thought.
In recent history, politically, the use of rhetorical stigmatization has been taken to extreme example. Stigmatizing any questioning of authority by disqualifying certain truths is the ultimate goal for all the totalitarian minded; all collectivist ideologies; this is Bingo. AGW is as much about politics as it is science, it includes all the corruption one associates with politics because it is politics in many ways. Climate science is divisive on the political front; Climateball is a very tiny spoke in the wheel among many similar minded who ply their ideological trade.
Game aside, all argument boils down to the sensibilities behind arguments, using ones skills to be persuasive; it’s the way it has always been. Without linear “free” thought, there’s no progress.
> deny linear thinking
“But” introduces a branch, Trunks. It breaks linearity. And the fact that most contrarian talking points fit into a Bingo should tell you about the “progress” it has to offer.
Your matrix of bingo squares is linear, they all have a relationship to CAGW. If an opponent utilizes one, you deny it, you haven’t broken it.
One can deny a whole linear string of squares, blazing a path to bingo: “but taxes”, “but growth”, “but costs”, “but CAGW”; yet they’re not defeated argumentatively by denying them, nor can a determination be made to what degree of utility for progress be found within branches of linearity without discussion. The linear arguments remain intact, denying an argument doesn’t break the argument. Climateball is destructive to reasoning, to rational thought, because it closes doors; closing doors always blocks all possibility for progress. It’s sinister because it’s a hardened veneer used to protect ideology, it’s actually regressive to thought.
Double binds are not linear, Trunks:
[VLAD] Your “but” denies linear thinking
[ESTR] “But” introduces a branch, Trunks. It breaks linearity.
[VLAD] Your matrix is linear.
All roads lead to Rome. If all roads need to pass by Rome to get to one another, then you have a tree of roads. Trees are not linear.
Basic graph theory.
“If”, an attempt to leverage towards a but. We’re not talking a confused conflict of interest here; all roads may indeed lead to Rome because of that very want; it’s acknowledged that your buts embrace a different tour guide. You’re playing with semantics. Your perspective directs the causality that you want. Your game directly, linearly directs to consensus by default of the but, the game is used to dismiss relevant tangentiality.
Your game has overlapping linearity[ it requires a linear string of bingo square points to acquire a bingo for starters, Bingo. The squares themselves are arranged in straight linear relationships; progressions of interconnected ideas, leading to the central theme.
As the hand bags fly, this below is the reality of “climate change.” But of climate change policy, nothing to do with actual climate.
Energy prices in Europe are repeatedly breaking records even before winter really kicks in, and one of the most damaging cost crunches in history is about to get worse as the temperature starts to drop. A super price spike in the U.K. last month forced some industrial companies to cut production and seek state aid, a harbinger for what could play out widely in Europe just as it contends with a resurgence of the coronavirus. For governments, it could mean tension with neighboring countries by moving to protect supplies. For households, it could mean being asked to use less energy or even plan for rolling blackouts.The trouble is that any fix is unlikely to come from the supply side any time soon, with exporters Russia piping only what it has to and Qatar saying it’s producing what it can. The energy industry is instead faced with relying on “demand destruction,” said Fabian Roenningen, an analyst at Rysted Energy.“We have seen it over the last couple of months already, and in many industries, it will most likely continue and even increase,” he said from Oslo. “It’s just not profitable to operate for a lot of the players in the current market conditions.”
https://time.com/6124191/winter-europe-energy/
That article is a mastery of bias by omission.
Despite two quotes in there making offhand mention of “if the wind doesn’t blow,” the article itself never follows up. What do you mean, if the wind doesn’t blow? Did the wind not blow? Did that have some sort of impact on the supply situation?
Time never asks and certainly never explains the quotes- it’s all an exposition on commodity prices that are suddenly (and inexplicably) in high demand.
And there is mention of gas from Russia and Qatar, but not the US – which was exporting natural gas just a year ago but we don’t want to talk about that because that was the bad old orange man and, besides, we want to end gas production here. Because nobody needs it. Because windmills!
It’s been almost 60 years since I read the 3 Christs of Ypsilanti so I easily could be wrong, but it seems el tres amigos invented their own nomenclature and words, like insinuendo, when interacting with each other. This conversation is bringing back some of those feelings I had as a freshman in college, sans white bell bottoms, madras shirts and canoe cologne, of course. Or maybe I had these same feelings watching “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”.
The main points supporting climate change by climate change enthusiasts) are –
1. There has been an increase in global air surface temperature GST over the last century or so; and
2. sea levels have risen in that time.
This is about all of the tale that can be supported by hard measurements.
To which one might reply –
1A. Temperature has been constant within small limits for as long as we can measure, so the choices for trends in temperature are: it is warming, or it is cooling, or it wobbles around in a noise envelope. It has to do something. Few scientists will quote a figure for how much atmospheric CO2 will change per degree C change in GSAT.
2A. Most scientists accept that sea level have risen almost in linear fashion over the last 7,000 years, long before the Hand of Man. Few scientists will quote the sea level change per degree C of GAST change.
………………
The rest of the climate change story builds on and depends on these two rather uncertain points.
That is not a very convincing start for a movement that seeks to revolutionize present society with extreme act like cessation of fossil fuel burning.
To the hard scientist seeking observational evidence, it is weird.
Geoff S
You have good intentions, and I agree, but some details are wrong.
Both (1) and (2) were NOT happening ONLY in the past 100 years
(1) Temperatures have been rising sine the cold late 1600s — for 325 years — not only in the past 100 years. Some of that warming is likely to be AGW, but no one knows how much. The global average temperature has probably increased by about +2 degree C. since the 1690s, starting during the coldest decade of the Maunder Minimum low solar energy period.
No one was harmed.
(2) Sea level has increased about 400 feet in the past 20,000 years
“Climate change” (CAGW) does NOT build on points (1) and (2), because the warming since the 1600s has been mild, harmless, and people living in that time would have LOVED the current milder climate.
Mild, harmless global warming is NOT what is being predicted !
“Climate change” (CAGW) is nothing more than a series of always wrong predictions, that I trace back to 1957, of rapid, dangerous FUTURE global warming. A fast rate of warming that does not resemble any warming in the past 325 years, not even the 1975 to 2020 warming. It is science fiction — a prediction NOT based on experience. As with all predictions, there are NO data — there are never data for the future. So the predictions are merely speculation, “supported” by a sorry 64 year track record — 64 years of wrong predictions. Every prediction of environmental doom has been wrong, so there is no logical reason to believe CAGW will be right..
Most important: We love global warming here in Michigan, and have been very disappointed that 2021 has been so cold !
Geoff, I agree. The fact that sea level rise has been going on since the last glacial maximum ~23,000 years, with evidence now of many past coastal civilizations underwater does not mean that our civilization is doomed. However, the natural fear of forces beyond us, coupled with the environmentalist realization that many current trend lines are unsustainable, led to an otherwise legitimate alarm bell from scientists to be blown out of proportion.
We need to get off fossil fuel for the undeniable reason that we are foreseeably running out. We don’t need to be using CC as a political cudgel (or Covid) to vilify cultural rivals or form new religions promoting climate justice, scapegoats or salvation. The fact that we are is perhaps a bigger problem than the AGW. This makes Andy’s work highly relevant.
Geoff, you wrote on WUWT: “Would you fly in an aircraft designed to climate change science and engineering standards?”
I think this is related to Andy’s point that the surveys reveal that people with the strongest CC attitudes know deep down that their concern is heavily spiritual, not rational. OTOH, those that have no concern at all may also be influenced by spiritual faiths. Andy admits there is no way yet to disentangle which side’s spiritualism is causing more bias. My stab would be it is with the one that carries CC as an intrinsic narrative, not the one immune to the narrative. Further, the extinction rebellion CAGW is admitted by Willard to be a fringe by holding the center bingo square as the most illegitimated topic of criticism for skeptics. But CAGW.
Willard, I don’t believe you scheduled a month without internet. ;) Sincerely, may you be healthy and safe in travel.
Depending upon what one interprets as being either a word or a paragraph, Andy May’s essay contains 4269 words spread among 85 paragraphs.
A similarly complex set of interactions involving people with conflicting emotional states, opinions, and desires — and involving several modes of influence and persuasion — could be summed up in a single sentence containing just seven words.
‘Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.’
jeffnsails850 –
There are plenty of articles that implicate inadequate wind power as a villain in the European energy crisis. Also, plenty of documentation that climate change POLICY is a much greater threat and currently causing much more damage than climate change ever could. The push for renewables (unreliables) is completely stoo-pidd!!
Then Europe suffered a wind drought. For most of the summer and the fall, wind speeds have been at some of the lowest levels for the past 60 years.
European Grid Destabilized
This has brought the stability of the European grid, with its growing wind dependence, into question and has been particularly damaging in the United Kingdom. There, where it was an act of faith that its offshore wind farms were dependable. But starting in April, the wind gave out, even in the North Sea — its gales transformed into zephyrs.
All this pointed up that the UK’s energy policy has been in chaos for decades. New nuclear has been delayed, and there was never much natural gas storage built in the UK, partly due to confidence in the spot market and the reliability of wind power. “They were caught at the end of the Russian pipeline,” one London trader told me.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/llewellynking/2021/11/27/how-europe-triggered-an-energy-crisis-and-now-is-paying-dearly-for-it/?sh=6109c9da1290
That’s my point. Time magazine didn’t report the story. Readers of that magazine are unaware of what is going on because that magazine intentionally chose not to tell them.
I think there are several problems with that:
1. The Internet is real, so a growing number of educated people are discovering that Time is not a reliable source of information. That’s a problem.
2. Time is not alone in doing this. The NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN et al all are doing this, so there really is a significant number of educated people who believe they are well-read who actually have no idea what they’re talking about. You cannot discuss renewables policy with them because they believe they know the situation and renewables have nothing to do with the situation.
3. IMO, this is partisan, but it’s also inept partisanship. Time doesn’t want people to get angry at the windmill believers, so they divert. The problem with that is that the truth is always (though sometimes slowly) discovered – their political friends can’t escape accountability forever.
Go back to that Vox article I posted above. They were celebrating the fact that by pushing out centrist Democrats and Republicans in 2018 and 2019 they were able to “achieve” a law in 2019 that mandates 70% renewable energy in New York nine years from now. And the only thing they’ve accomplished since the passage is the closure of a nuclear power plant.
They aren’t going to accomplish that mandate- they aren’t even trying. There is no plan, no budget, nothing happening at all. Either they will put forward the plan and lose elections or they will ignore their own law and lose elections. They appear to be opting for the latter based on the assumption they can always blame failure on the one remaining Republican in Albany and Mitch McConnel. And they can do that because Time Magazine et al are standing by to promote that argument.
That is a deeply anti-democratic, anti-science, anti-intellectual approach, but it’s what they’re doing.
test
‘First take the beam out of your own eye’. Matthew 7:3
First of all – I am a climate catastrophist – in the sense of French mathematician of avalanches Rene Thom. In climate it is emergent behaviour in physical subsystems – hydrosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere, biosphere – as tremendous energy cascades through powerful subsystems. Interactions in the Earth’s complex dynamical system result in emergent patterns of spatiotemporal chaotic flows in Earth’s oceans and atmosphere and where climate is the history of state transitions.
Nonetheless we are – in the Anthropocene – writing history on the planet where much more is unknown than known to the level of flows within flows trailing off into viscosity. Not enough computers in the world.
Second – I noticed this week that the 2nd of China’s fast neutron nuclear pebble bed reactors had gone critical. The economic secret to these – or any modular design – is factory manufacture.
RIE,
There is no official Anthropocene. Geoff S
The Anthropocene in common usage started in 1950.
‘The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.
GRADES
5 – 8’ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/anthropocene/
Hi Robert,
“Not enough computers in the world.”
But modulz.
“I noticed this week that the 2nd of China’s fast neutron nuclear pebble bed reactors had gone critical.”
But China
“The economic secret to these – or any modular design – is factory manufacture.”
But technofix. But Nukes.
If you had just gone to your third point I’m pretty certain I would have scored “But renewables suck.” Then I could have called “Yahtzee!”
https://climateball.net/the-bingo/
Literally not enough computers to unpack billions of Navier-Stokes equations required to model the Earth system at cloud resolving scale.
I do not see how this game works. Would anyone mind walking me through how new knowledge enters that game?
For example In August 2021 R. McKitrick published a paper showing that attribution of global climate models might be fundamentally flawed.
I would guess that this information would have a huge impact on that game as I only see tiles with statements that cannot really be upheld if the attribution from climate models is missing.
Ron Graf | December 1, 2021 at 12:55 am |
Angech, I agree that the skeptic climate scientists have been the subject of endless smearing and abuse at the other site that we sometimes visit where Willard is trusted by the proprietor with the keys to the shop.
–
Ron, you hit a nerve with the mention of the Auditor, even if unintentionally.
No matter what line of Climate Ball Willard goes down at the end of the Dark Tower when he opens the door there is the Auditor waiting.
[Steven King Ref].
–
Why this is so is simple.
In the adult world rules are rules, even if nonsensical at times and have to be obeyed.
Climate Science [yes it has science in its name though precious little anywhere else] has to follow adult rules.
Proof, data, evidence, reasoning etc
–
When these rules are followed it is clear that the knowledge base is not enough to be clear on most of the points claimed.
Little children [climate scientists and apologists] keep dreaming up schemes to prove they are right.
The Auditor shuts them down.
Calmly .
Scientifically.
With facts and evidence.
–
True believers cannot face up to this exposure and grilling.
Like vampires and werewolves faced with sunshine, garlic, the cross and silver bullets, they become quite upset.
They attack the messenger, they attack the science and they attack the veracity of the data and facts.
Standard Calvin-ball.
For Willard the Auditor is his personal kryptonite.
He attacks him at every opportunity but never asks himself why.
A simple remedy at this site, where it is allowed, would be to intersperse “but the Auditor says” into your reply.
This will lead people to follow the links to his site and ATTP where mention of The Auditor will automatically lead to very many interesting trips into the human psyche.
Or temporary banning.
Hi Angech,
You wrote: “Climate Science [yes it has science in its name though precious little anywhere else] has to follow adult rules.
Proof, data, evidence, reasoning etc.”
But Science, But Evidence, But Data, But Debate me.
I see some people of gentle sensibilities like K. Fritsch [a genuine good guy] a bit upset here.
This is however, courtesy of Andy, a mild game of Climate Ball with Willard as the co host.
Two bit players, like Joshua and myself have agreed to help rile everyone else up while off in the distance can be heard the soft sounds of cannon fire of people trying to discuss actual facts.
Like world war 1 both sides charge up over the palisades only to be massacred by the grape fire of the Gatling guns.
No prisoners taken .
In this catch 22 Joseph Heller scenario one can only survive by sitting back and counting the casualties.
My position, that of trying at times to play an
[*honest] broker is complicated.
By nature and design I prefer to play the contrarian which precludes honesty.
Pretending honesty though is the shining star on the badge of every true Climate Ball player.
This I guess is the ultimate message for this blog.
The people who play Climate Ball are fundamentally dishonest children.
They have to be children to be innocent of guilt when they do horrible things.
They have to be dishonest to play because the rules are no rules.
Anything counts to win the game.
After all there is a world to save and think about the poor starving children in the future.
In other words anything possible should and must be done as the end justifies the means.
But ATTP moderation
Josh,
ATTP has been very good to me over the years.
So has Willard.
You are probably number 3.
Moderation is expected and annoying but generally needed as some others at the site tend to be very delicate and need protection.
When I control my comments and make sensible suggestions more often than not they will get through.
I always feel a pang when moderated but as said sometimes it is more than deserved others not. Robust discussion, as long as it is both ways like here and often at ATTP is the best way of getting feelings out and science tested.
I have given Willard a good serve here as it is his pet topic and he tends to run rings around people.
While all 3 of you have proven resistant I still have the feeling that you all think a little deeper than the run of the mill denizen there and hope to see you on this side of the fence at some future time.
ATTP in particular at times sees both sides.
You all have my respect in being willing to engage in hostile settings outside of your comfort zones.
Ron Graf,
true.
“True” only in that reasoned debate is mocked as an illegitimate mode of finding the truth. And discourse is only to be used as a tool of consensus enforcement, not exploration.
But religion.
angech –
> You all have my respect in being willing to engage in hostile settings outside of your comfort zones.
I find this zone quite comfortable.
If you’re not looking to feel victimized, you’ll find yourself to be a victim rarely if at all.
That’s why “but […] moderation” is a dodge.
Joshua | December 2, 2021 at 8:46 am |
angech –
> You all have my respect in being willing to engage in hostile settings outside of your comfort zones.
I find this zone quite comfortable.
Sorry Joshua,
I could not resist this bon mot.
Me too. [and me a quasi chauvinist at times!]
I really hate tattoos, and I know quite a lot of other people think the way I do about them. Yet If you do an opinion survey about what’s wrong with the world, very few mention tattoos. Mind you, if you put “tattooing” in a list of twenty things that are wrong with the world, and ask people to choose the five worst, tattooing will be right up there with war, poverty, and climate change. Which is why the UN is proposing to form an intergovernmental panel of dermatologists and art historians to tackle the problem. We should have it licked by 2050 at the latest.
Willard, in suggesting to TonyB that he “suck it up,” displays an unconscious adolescent horror of harmless sexual sport. They don’t need that kind of advice in Lyme Regis. Willard should spend less time on the internet.
If you really hate tattoos, why don’t you stop reading to us from the inside of your eyelids?
You seem to have been reincarnated on the losing side of the climate wars yet again :
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/11/what-did-they-know-and-when-did-they.html
Hydro-power is typically seen as reliable. That’s not so. Coal and Nuclear plants are reliable.
As the frontier of Europe’s energy crisis moves north, the Nordic region faces a worsening power crisis with dwindling water reservoirs hampering the generation of hydroelectric power.
Nordic power prices were five times higher in September than a year ago. That’s hitting everyone from power-hungry factories and miners, to students struggling with their bills. Inflation is rocketing.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-03/europe-s-power-crisis-is-moving-north-as-water-shortage-worsens
Before the world can effectively address any mitigations on anything information sharing and discourse are critical. Authoritarian rarely creates true consensus and even more rarely creates truth.
All can agree that tribalism, partisanship, religiosity, or whatever are the roots of bias in perceptions are destructive to peace, order and general welfare. Nobody will agree that they personally are biased, (least not the authorities).
Therefore one must always keep an open mind to outside group points of view. Therefore discourse is healthy on all scales.
The key is that it must be honest and sincere discourse. This is where it gets tricky. We probe the intentions of outside groups with high skepticism of their motives.
Therefore trust must be built as a pre-requisite of productive discourse.
If we figure out rules that positively propagate trust then all the climate problems and all the others will be a cake walk in comparison.
“Authoritarian rarely creates true consensus and even more rarely creates truth…The key is that it [discourse] must be honest and sincere discourse. This is where it gets tricky.”
Prager framed it very well: “Truth is not a left-wing value. It is a liberal value, and it is a conservative value, but truth has never been a left-wing value.” A truism.
https://alphanews.org/prager-truth-not-politics-is-at-the-root-of-the-left-right-divide/
I regret to say that I am too old and too tired and do not have the time to engage in ClimateBall, however entertaining or informative it may be. But I am still able to observe and would like to comment on my observations.
About twenty years ago I heard the claim that CO2 controlled our climate. I found that statement so preposterous that I decided to investigate climate science for myself. Over these years, I have witnessed the alleged dominance of CO2 being eroded by a number of factors. Natural climatic players such as ocean cycles, cloud coverage and solar cycle effects are being better understood and are beginning to explain quite large influences on our climate.
Of course, during that time there has been a fight back involving rewriting of temperature records, countless unfounded climate scare stories passing as peer reviewed papers and climate models that consistently exceed the boundaries of credibility.
But the direction of travel has not changed. Warming bias offset by unrealistic aerosol cooling still seems to be the crude method employed. It now seems that even the aerosol assumptions were wrong. But inconvenient findings are ignored, even longstanding ones like the logarithmic relationship between transmittance and absorber concentration. Another die hard belief is the one that drew my initial interest. CO2 is not important; it is a bit player like the other trace gases.
Water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas by a long, long way. It warmed our planet millions of years ago, but today it has just a very minor role. The trace greenhouse gases make very little difference. They use the same absorbance bands and water vapour has been there, done its job and moved on. Climate scientists see the mechanism back to front. The new gas on the block is not the driver. It is the old absorption band that is already saturated.
Today, proper scientists use the HITRAN database to understand the relative potencies of the greenhouse gases in realistic atmospheric gas mixtures. The climate scientists construct hugely expensive climate models with a high proportion of the assumptions unknown and probably wrong to try to calculate similar parameters.
This leads me to the conclusion that the belief in CAGW is not logical, it is not scientific, but it does have very powerful financial and political drivers. Criticism seems to be dealt with quite effectively by ignoring it. But Mother Nature has been kind. We are approaching a dangerous time for the true believers. The consequential costs of the belief are rising steeply and the random chance of a prolonged cold spell is becoming overdue. That would make a very sobering combination for policy makers to explain. But it is a very sad reflection on our scientific community that we have to wait for nature to address the failings of some of our so-called scientists.
Peter, excellent comment. Thank you.
Climate polices and actions need to be justified on the impacts of global warming and cooling, not on the projected amounts of warming and cooling. But it seems nearly everyone posting and adding comments on Climate Etc. is dodging this.
The empirical evidence – as distinct from model projections – indicate that global warming is net beneficial, not harmful, and global cooling is harmful. Therefore, we should be taking no actions to reduce GHG emissions.
We need to focus on projecting the impacts of global warming over this century – using empirical data.
Mr. Land wrote:
“We need to focus on projecting
the impacts of global warming
over this century – using empirical data.”
You could not be more wrong.
First of all there are NO data for the future.
The future climate is speculation, with a lot of people claiming
the future climate can only get worse, never better,
which is nonsense..
Speculation by people with no proven ability
to predict the future climate.
What we need to do is the OPPOSITE
of what you recommended — we need to STOP
projecting the impacts of the future climate.
We need to pay attention to current environmental
problems, such as air pollution over many large Asian cities,
particularly in China and India.
We need to figure out how to help the nearly
one billion people with no electricity.
Those are real problems.
Climate change is an imaginary problem
and it is long past time to shut down the
over-active imaginations and always wrong
predictions of doom.
The coming climate crisis is nothing more
than a prediction of doom
… a fantasy that never shows up.
These coming climate crisis predictions
began in the ;ate 1950s.
They are the PROBLEM,
not the SOLUTION.
We have had 45 years of harmless global warming.
In the 65 years before that, we had CO2 levels rising
with very little warming. In the 4.5 billion years before that,
we have no known period when rising CO2 levels
directly caused simultaneous global warming.
4.5 billion years of history and there are only
45 years (1975 to 2020) with a strong positive correlation
of CO2 levels global average temperature both rising..
The climate projections are worse than just cherry picking
1975 to 2020 and ignoring the 4,5 billion prior years.
They ignore that period and predict a much faster warming
rate in the future.
There is no logical reason to believe projections of the future climate,
or want any more projections !
Richard Greene, you have misunderstood my comment. Read Lang and Gregory, 2019, ‘Economic Impact of Energy Consumption Change Caused by Global Warming’ https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/18/3575/htm
https://www.mdpi.com/energies/energies-12-03575/article_deploy/html/images/energies-12-03575-g015-550.jpg
“Figure 15. FUND3.9 projected global sectoral economic impact of climate change as a function of GMST change from 2000. Total* is of all impact sectors except energy.
With energy impacts excluded, FUND projects the global impacts to be +0.2% of GDP at 3 °C GMST increase from year 2000. With the energy impact functions misspecifications corrected, and all other impacts are as projected, the projected total economic impact may be more positive.
The conclusion that 3 °C of global warming may be beneficial for the global economy depends, in part, on the total of the non-energy impact projections being correct, or more positive. Whether this is the case needs to be tested.”
Empirical evidence indicates the economic impact of global warming is likely to be more beneficial than projected by FUND for all impact sectors. The evidence suggests the impacts are likely to be positive or negligible for all impact sectors except sea level rise, for which the negative impacts are likely to be negligible – i.e. similar to or up to twice the impact last century. last century.
Peter
“… but it does have very powerful financial and political drivers.”
Yes, and that includes the media who benefit from writing horror stories about global warming, including the ravages of sea level rise.
Tonight, just by chance, I read a story of a city in Africa threatened by SLR. Saint Louis, Senegal, the story explained, is feeling the effects of rising waters from the Atlantic Ocean. Since I’ve read dozens of stories in the past about how cities were inundated by rising seas and then having found out that other factors were at play, I dug a little deeper. I discovered that structures in the city had been moved in 1659 because of repeated flooding from the adjacent Senegal River. I also learned that there were 9 major floods in the 1800s.
That wasn’t the end of the story. A dam was built upstream from the city to handle the flooding. But mismanagement of the dam during a flood upstream resulted in excessive water being released and in response as an emergency measure they cut a small canal to release some of that flooding which grew into a breach of 1.5 km surrounding the city. The morphology of the coastline has been completely altered as a result and the small amount of SLR is magnified because the natural protection from the ocean’s forces has been eliminated.
What was characterized in the headlines as a new sea level problem really was a natural problem that goes back centuries and was exacerbated by a poorly thought out remedy.
The government and media have a symbiotic relationship. Neither wants to let a manufactured crisis go to waste.
Consequences!
There is a statement in there that hits home for me. With about 20 years spent battling the conflict industry (greenies, enviro-radicals, horse lovers, etc) it quickly became obvious that these people have no desire for a sustainable solution. Solutions mean unemployment for them.
There is no solution for advocates who make money of the problem they claim to be addressing. There is more money in CO2ism than any other special interest.
I am tired of arguing with pre-programmed religion robots who learned science from social media. The braindead are the dominant force in our society now, which makes me wish that all of their doomsday prophecies were real.
But these people
“But these people.”
Joshua, don’t you get it? The climateball bingo is all about “but these people.” It is an transparently infantile tool to delegitimize legitimate debate. “Why,” you might ask, “is it infantile.”
Because, as I have been demonstrating, it is whole asymmetric. Calvinball, where the only rules are that no rules (reciprocity or fairness) need apply. If the skeptics used the bingo “but warming, but precautionary principle, but west Antarctica, but polar bears, but deniers,” well– you should see the point. There would be zero discourse. When there is zero discourse people start driving their cars into crowds of people they think are the enemy.
Instead of “but these people,” a perfectly good argument you could have made is that “Solutions mean unemployment for them,” is the flip side of the accusation of: They are in the pay of “big oil.” Or, they are just selfish (non-coastal) Canadians.
Both are unfair probes of egocentric motive, even if the motive has decent circumstantial evidence. You are the one who taught me this, BTW.
Setting, mid 1930’s, Germany:
[Jewish store clerk] Why did you spit on me for no reason? I am a simple human trying to scratch out a living, just like you.
[N@zi] “BUT HUMAN?”, you Juden are all vermin.
There was no effort, no need for any lateral consideration on this issue; it was bred out of German culture via intellectually inbred political science; settled science.
Good point Trunks. US in 2021 and 1930s Germany = same, same.
How else can we fight these “alarmists” without pointing out how conditions here are EXACTLY like Nazi Germany?
I think the point is that people are pretty much the same. So we must be careful about assuming to be superior, either with our contemporaries or our ancestors (even a certain political movement in the 1930s).
Ron: “I think the point is that people are pretty much the same…so we must be careful about assuming to be superior”
Ron, I expect more from you than this simplistic rationalization.
While I respect a good amount of the analysis you present, and we share much relative to ideology, this particular point of yours is an empty grand gesture. It begs a question though; can you identify when your world view, country, is being threatened to within an inch of its life? I say this because your analysis here doesn’t go the mile relative to due diligence. Is collectivism superior, or is individualism superior? One of those represents liberty and freedom. Picking a a superior side should be easy for a conservative, or libertarian.
Following the rules of civility is admirable, it behooves us to always work towards this. But in contemporary society we’re not pretty much the same as a people, not anymore in the U.S. It pains me to contemplate where it’s all going. Certainly denial is more comforting. With the exception of a few who are walking point, waving a red flag, what I see intellectually is a certain solace in denial, but this is historically typical.
I don’t say the before in mean spirit, your approach actually is human nature. Civility is noble, and should be nurtured. But in the current political landscape you should note that the side you seek such a conciliatory tone with will also endorse your view without question, which may seem counterproductive; but they will also take everything you believe away from you that you’re not challenging. I want harmony as much as the next person, but we get what we can’t defend adequately against.
My prior point centers on collectivist ideology specifically; not an ad hoc Idiosyncratic generalization of people. Certainly there are bad actors on all sides in politics, however, this is not at the center the question I posed anecdotally that deals with collectivism; it’s not about individual people. It’s a cultural metaphor.
It is ideological collectivists, today, and in the early 20th century who are/were responsible for tactically creating dysfunctional societies. Let them off the hook, if you will; I tell you now you’re playing into their obfuscation as a practical matter. History is a lesson that can be learned; or repeated. Much of society today believes that National Socialism was of the right; that belief has been buttressed by academia, it’s a widely believed, and brilliant lie.
The right in the U.S. base their philosophy on the founders vision of rugged individualism, this used to be true for the American left too. Learning the distinctions between socialist/fascist/communist left (hard left), and neo liberal/conservative left is critical in order to understand the nature of the divide today; the latter varieties of the American left are almost non existent in contemporary American politics. The Prager link I provided upthread can help describe distinctions between hard left philosophy and liberalism, though it doesn’t delve into the history we’re under threat of repeating. I can describe the history, but don’t have enough time at the moment.
Playing the “but” game is playing the game on hard left terms; all buts lead to Rome consensus, indirectly; but the proverbial shiny distracting object is never Rome.
JT, I think I didn’t compose clearly. What I meant by all people are basically the same is that our social tendencies are biologically rooted. That NAZI’s should not be a taboo reference.
There is not enough evolution of Anglo-European culture in the last 90 years that should make us feel fascistic cultural turns could not happen here or anywhere.
The danger is ideals of liberty are missing from being taught today. I had the same lessons that you received and made similar conclusions. Even more, I have always been both a skeptic and also scientific enthusiast. When in 9th grade the teacher drew the political spectrum I told him the blackboard was wrong; fascism and communism are not on opposite sides. This was ~1974. In ~1980 Ronald Reagan said, There is no right and left, only up or down.” It still has not sunk into the millions who saw the wrong line diagram on the blackboard.
But collectivists.
(and but the US in 2021 = same, same with Nazi Germany) =
I never thought about it before but it was the elderly, Hindenburg, perhaps in a weakened state, that acquiesced to the demands of a radical to hand over the chancellorship on January 30, 1933. Hindenburg hoped it would calm the street violence.
Having a very elderly and infirm leader is a precarious situation.
Ron: “Having a very elderly and infirm leader is a precarious situation.”
Well said. Flaccid hands at the reigns of an economic stress test; implementing pandemic policy—good opportunities for those within this administration whom never let a good opportunity go to waste to philosophically jack boot culture roundabout with.
I couldn’t agree more, though I’d add power. Power and money; blend this with enough intellectually inbred cultish programming is a dangerous concoction.
jt,
Amid frequent talk of powerful people with money, we ordinary folk tend to hero worship those few people who by skill and/or good luck have succeeded in the art of taking money from my pocket and putting it in theirs.
Is this a meaningful qualification for such rich people to assume that they can govern others? Are the owners of major social media qualified, in any way, to censor debate to fit their personal ideals? I think, most decidedly not.
In some ways, given that we elect people to govern, we should prefer governors who have track records in dispensing money, not accumulating it in their wallets.
Geoff S
Geoff: “Are the owners of major social media qualified, in any way, to censor debate to fit their personal ideals? I think, most decidedly not.”
I agree, Geoff. Something must be done about the new woke oligarchy, free speech is at risk. There’s also many woke companies that have quid pro quo relationships with Chinese commerce. Magically, Chinese influence in the U.S. goes on seemingly unchecked. These are serious concerns to say the least.
My issue is mostly with the unelected mega rich who corrupt the system through influence peddling, no matter which party, but especially the rich woke.
“Both are unfair probes of egocentric motive, even if the motive has decent circumstantial evidence.”
Dig deeper into “motive.” People also live in bubbles. If all your friends watch MSNBC they can’t even fathom why anyone would watch FOX and vice versa. Anything coming from the “other” is just automatically dismissed.
Likewise, if you’re in a roomful of climate advocates who’ve been members of anti-nuke organizations for decades, “but nuclear” is obviously just a ridiculous distraction.
A roomful of nuclear engineers would likewise find the idea of “but windmills” to be bonkers.
Amazingly there’s this relatively new bubble now of climate justice- a roomful of financial equality activists somehow trying to make climate theirs.
That’s where the “honest broker” ideation comes from. But the fact is that the bubbles have become so hardened and distant that politics is now the art of pandering to the bubble that gets you elected. If you’re a politician in New York, you have to pick one. Bridging makes you either a “corporate stooge” or a “RINO.”
The only way to break that logjam is to at least create a space for bubbles to communicate. CB is designed to close that space.
One way to do that would be to have an in-depth IPCC review of alternatives to fossil fuels. The sides are so entrenched that wouldn’t produce much. And that’s the problem with the politicization of science- each “team” has no shortage of men and women in white lab coats insisting the other is worse than just wrong.
Jeff – I tried to present data to a lefty family member once and the response was anger. The said member stated mind made up and nothing would change it. So, not only in a bubble, but in an impenetrable one.
People forget how small those bubbles are. The combined viewership of the top rated cable news shows is around 1% of the population. Sponge Bob will attract more eyeballs today than all the climate blogs combined will all month.
The other 99% are what the media calls “centrists.” Those are the people focused on cost and effectiveness.
The claim that New Yorkers will pay the price to move to 70% renewable energy over the next 9 years (from 7% today) is not true.The claim that their is no cost is laughably untrue.
The claim that New Yorkers will tolerate adding a whole bunch of nuclear reactors to their state is not true.
Both bubbles blame each other, but the reason is the 99% centrists.
“If all your friends watch MSNBC they can’t even fathom why anyone would watch FOX and vice versa.”
Half true.
If you watch MSNBC ( or just about every other TV channel except FOX News ), you’ll have no idea what is on Fox News
On the other hand, even if you ONLY watch Fox News, and no other TV news, it would be nearly impossible to not see or hear the leftist / government party line somewhere — it is everywhere !
Richard –
> If you watch MSNBC ( or just about every other TV channel except FOX News ), you’ll have no idea what is on Fox News
>> On the other hand, even if you ONLY watch Fox News, and no other TV news, it would be nearly impossible to not see or hear the leftist / government party line somewhere — it is everywhere !
That is totally false. At multiple levels.
First just the basic level. I sometimes watch MSNBC. I also sometimes watch Fox. In your zeal to “but librulz” you overlook the most simple bacic logic that one can watch both.
Further, just as if you wwatch Fox you’ll
know what’s on MSNBC, if you watch MSNBC you’ll necessarily know what on Fox – because much of the programming MSNBC is targeting what’s on Fox.
Now I suppose we just chalk up your ignorance to simply that you opine on issues you know nothing about (maybe you don’t let not ever having watched MSNBC get in the way of forming an opinion as to what’s on itl.
But actually, we’d have to also include just a basic logic fail. What explains your bizarre binary thinking?
“….if you watch MSNBC you’ll necessarily know what on Fox – because much of the programming MSNBC is targeting what’s on Fox.”
Partially true.
Here’s how it works.
MSNBC “reports” that Kyle Rittenhouse carried a gun across state lines to a far away city he has no connections to where he chased down and shot three Black men who were peacefully protesting the killing of an unarmed Black man by Kenosha police.
Fox reports that literally none of MSNBC’s “report” is true. They then report what the trial discovered- He didn’t carry a gun across state lines (the gun was in Kenosha), the “crossing state lines’ was designed to deceive- he drove 20 minutes to the town where he works and where his dad lives (Kenosha), all three of the men he shot were white and all three were chasing (and either beating or pointing guns at) him, and Kenosha police didn’t kill anyone, they injured a man armed with a knife after the mother of the man’s children called cops to report that he was armed, kidnapping the kids, and she was afraid he would hurt them.
MSNBC then devotes much time to “reports” without evidence that Fox is trying to make a hero out of a bigot.
Fox then laughs at MSNBC and vice-versa.
Richard is right. If you watch MSNBC, you have no idea what was on Fox because what they told you was on Fox, wasn’t on Fox.
But, again, bubbles. The MSNBC bubble dweller “watches” Fox periodically not to learn anything, but to confirm his MSNBC bubble- OMG! Fox is still “reporting” that Kenosha police didn’t kill an unarmed Black man! How could anyone watch that?
What’s missing is a “neutral” news group that can be relied on to tell the truth. We could actually have a decent debate about Rittenhouse- there are actually some good arguments on both sides. We never will though because of bubbles. Your choices are to accept a complete fairy tale, or be reluctant to consider the troubling truth because they want to focus on people who deal in fairy tales
One things I strongly suspect is that a number of “individuals” whom I have argued science with on the internet are actually AI chat bots. It also appears that a disproportionate number of them originate in Australia.
I have also noticed a disproportionate (so it seems) number of rabid co2ists are computer programmers.
I am fairly confident that there are literal armies of AI chat bots out there arguing 24/7 for the alarmist propaganda.
Which makes one wonder: Is there a difference between a bot reply and a “but –” reply?
The root of Climateball Big Is the lack of policing of the media by climate scientists. This started with their own unhealthy discourse, which in turn started with Big government funding and Big media both working together to be influences of hyper-politicization. (We have since seen this also in the NIH, Justice Dept. and USIC.)
The revelation of the Climate Research Unit CRU email leak/hack in 2009 was not “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline.” It was the level of behind the scenes scheming to set the narrative as the top priority over platonic scientific understanding. The emails showed open disdain for the public’s right to have access to publicly funded data. The IPCC was seen putting pressure on tree ring scientists to get rid of the divergence problem to provide a clear signal of unprecedented warming when they knew their data didn’t show.
A good case study would be of the corrupting of Keith Briffa, an otherwise sincere field scientist, who was strong armed by the IPCC into consenting to the altering of his data so as not to get in the way of Mann and Jones’s assigned mission to create the hockey stick.
Briffa is seen in the emails to have been reticent and was not eager to part with science. But in the end acquiesced. In a 1999 email (after MBH98) Briffa quietly pleads his case internally.
Since you worked well, Ron, here’s a little gift for you:
Should be easy to find it. In contrast to the email you quote, this one has a number attached to it.
I added “But Keith” to But Emails.
PS: Just in case you miss the point – no, Keith’s opinion does not establish that your favorite viewpoint follows any platonic ideal more than the one you despise, in fact you got it from a political source that you can’t cite.
Some related news:
https://www.cfact.org/2021/12/04/clintel-trilogy-calls-on-heads-of-government-young-people-and-climate-scientists-to-wake-up/
The message to young people is especially interesting, and new.
Mr. Wojick
Thanks for reminding us about your latest column. In my 24 years of reading climate science and energy article, your columns have been the most consistent. Consistently good articles !
I was not impressed with the letter to young people.
It was science free, even though climate science can be explained simply to young people. But even simple science is not the top priority.
The top priority is teaching children that adults sometimes say things that are not true. And that includes their teachers and government scientists.
Rather than just complaining I wrote a better version of the CLINTEL letter to youngsters — I hope it gets past moderation !
Predictions of the future are almost always wrong. Climate change is a prediction of the future climate. A coming climate crisis has been predicted for the past 64 years, but never shows up. This is typical of predictions.
In fact, every prediction of a coming environmental crisis since the 1960s has been wrong. And that includes every prediction made by climate scientists.
You know of adults who want
youngsters to do as they say.
Those adults include your parents
and your teachers. There are other
adults who want the same thing.
But they are not your parents or teachers.
So they claim a disaster is coming
in the future. And only they can save you.
So you must do as they say !
But the future can’t be predicted.
And that means they are lying to you.
And you should not do as they say
when they try to trick you by predicting
a coming climate disaster …
that never shows up.
Concerning climate science:
Some basic points:
The climate is always changing:
You have been living
with global warming
for your entire life.
It has been harmless.
Did you even notice?
Most of the warming
since the 1970s
was in colder nations,
mainly in the colder months,
and mainly at night..
Did you know that Canada
was covered with a miles thick
ice glacier 20,000 years ago.
By 10,000 years ago it had melted,
with NO burning of fossil fuels.
Did you know that CO2 levels increased
with no global warming from 1940 to 1975?
Did you know there was global warming
from 1910 to 1940 with almost no
increase of CO2?
Did you know Earth has existed
for 4.5 billion years?
Did you know that there is no
evidence that CO2 levels
controlled the temperature
in those 4.5 billion years,
until the 1970s?
Did you know that current CO2 levels
are low compared with the past
4,5 billion years?
Climate science is a lot more complicated
than always wrong predictions of a coming
climate crisis. But predictions of doom
are mainly you are told.
Predictions that are always wrong.
Don;t you want to know the whole story
about Earth’s climate?
Thanks Richard, I will pass this on to CLINTEL.
By the way I prefer David but formally I am Dr. Wojick (philosophy of science).
From your article:
“Climate change is much more than CO2 and CO2 is much more than climate change.”
If Judith was looking for a one sentence summation that’s a winner.
David W.
My second draft of that comment was published on my climate science and energy blog (at the link below) after writing the comment here.
This is my first second draft since I retired almost 17 years ago !
I’ve always thought about how to explain :”climate change” to youngsters before they are fully brainwashed in high school. I think they can handle simple science. But if they believe everything their teachers tell them is the truth, trying to change their minds on climate change will be a lost cause.
https://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2021/12/saturday-morning-climate-rap-teaching.html
A huge problem with AGW in K-12 education is that everything else they are taught is the truth, so the idea of questioning it is never taught. What is taught is our basic scientific understandingly how the natural world works. Atoms, molecules, the solar system, electricity, etc. All really basic.
Richard
“I’ve always thought about how to explain :”climate change” to youngsters before they are fully brainwashed in high school. I think they can handle simple science. But if they believe everything their teachers tell them is the truth, trying to change their minds on climate change will be a lost cause.”
David
“… so the idea of questioning it is never taught.”
Exactly!
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
The good news about “the youngsters” is that Covid is giving them a really good lesson on the willingness of adults to twist “science,” the clear influence of politics on “science-based” rules, and the importance of using critical thinking to grasp that those in charge aren’t always right.
I have high schoolers (vaccinated) and an elementary schooler (in process of vaccination) and can tell you all of them – particularly the older ones – are angry about masks because of the illogical, obviously arbitrary, and clearly political “rules.”
I can’t tell you how many times now they’ve come home railing- “that literally doesn’t make sense, it’s the opposite of what they said before…”
Mr. Lang, in a prior comment, that had no reply button, which may have been a hint to me, you wrote:
” Richard Greene, you have misunderstood my comment. Read Lang and Gregory, 2019, ‘Economic Impact of Energy Consumption Change Caused by Global Warming’”
Your original comment mentioned better climate projections and I replied we need fewer projections — we’ve had more than enough wild guessing about the future climate.
I saw the word “economic” in the title of the study (or book) you recommended in your next comment.
I’m not reading it.
I edited a financial and economics newsletter for 43 years.
Not once in that period did US economists, as a group, ever predict a US recession. Yet we did have recessions. So I could not care less about very likely to be wrong predictions of energy consumption change caused by global warming a long distance in the future.
No one today knows if the global average temperature will be warmer or colder 100 years from now.
The primary problem is that people keep making wild guess predictions for climate in 100 years. And virtually every prediction is that the climate will get worse, never better. Based on what is known about Earth’s climate in the past, today’s climate is actually very good — we should be celebrating !
So should green plants with more CO2 in the atmosphere !
Concerning the quote in your comment:
“With energy impacts excluded, FUND projects the global impacts to be +0.2% of GDP at 3 °C GMST increase from year 2000.”
My comment:
The numbers are meaningless wild guesses.
The scientific term is “baloney”
(Malarkey if you are Irish)
Fact 1: Remove the Earth’s atmosphere or just the GreenHouse Gases and the Earth becomes much like the Moon, no water vapor or clouds, no ice or snow, no oceans, no vegetation, no 30% albedo. A barren rock ball hot^3 (400 K) on the lit side, cold^3 (100 K) on the dark. At our distance from the Sun space is hot (394 K) not cold (5 K).
That’s NOT what the Radiative GreenHouse Effect theory says.
EVIDENCE:
RGHE theory “288 K w – 255 K w/o = a 33 C colder ice ball Earth” 255 K assumes w/o keeps 30% albedo, an assumption akin to criminal fraud.
Nikolov “Airless Celestial Bodies”
Kramm “Moon as analog for Earth”
UCLA Diviner lunar mission data
Int’l Space Station HVAC design for lit side of 250 F. (ISS web site)
Astronaut MMU w/ AC and cool water tubing underwear. (Space Discovery Center)
Fact 2: The GHGs require “extra” energy upwelling from a surface radiating as a black body.
EVIDENCE:
Trenberth atmospheric heat balance model (TFK_bams09.pdf (ucar.edu)) and dozens of clones.
Fact 3: Because of the significant non-radiative heat transfer processes of the contiguous participating atmospheric molecules the surface cannot upwell “extra” energy as a black body.
EVIDENCE:
As demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.
For the experimental write up see:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
CONCLUSION:
No RGHE, no GHG warming, no CAGW or mankind/CO2 driven climate change.
Version 1.0 120221
The albedo/atmosphere make the Earth cooler not warmer.
The GHGs must absorb “extra” energy upwelling from the surface radiating as a black body. The kinetic energy in the contiguous atmospheric molecules make this impossible as demonstrated by experiment.
If either of these points is correct the greenhouse effect is not.
No greenhouse effect, no GHG warming, no man/CO2 driven global warming or climate change.
Version 1.0 120521
GHG help form a multi level layered surface capable of interacting with electromagnetic energy.
In an airless water less planet both the SW and IR hit the solid [if far enough away from the heat source] surface penetrating fewer but much more condensed layers of molecules for a few mm.
Albedo alone dictates how much SW is taken up.
The amount of energy absorbed is possibly over counted as albedo is generally considered to be visible light but it is possible that longer [and shorter] wavelengths might have some reflection as well but this is not mentioned by anyone.
One reason may be an assumption that IR is too widespread in its wavelengths to be capable of being reflected but this is possibly not true.
Ina planet with an atmosphere the level of absorption changes from a few mm to 100 kilometers or more. with most occurring in the final 10 kilometers.
This energy is not stored . Once it interacts with matter it moves back out.
On the way in and on the way out the energy,now a lot more at IR wavelengths can either reflect back out to space, move sideways or go further down.
The energy is not being stored, just continually being redirected.
The mass and the internal energy of the mass does not change [except in a nuclear reaction which is outside the scope of explaining existing energy transfer.
Consequently all the energy goes back out again at the rate it is coming in.
and extremely quickly.
If it did not do this it would buildup in an unstoppable storage feedback loop and become hotter than the original distant source.
We all know it does not and cannot do this or we would have a way of making infinite energy from a finite energy source.
I guess an easier way for people to try to understand this is to consider an impermeable, non conducting perfectly flat surface barrier.
It would have to send all the energy straight back where it came from.
A lot of imponderables here.
If EM had mass then it would have to make the mass it hit move further away due to the force it exerted.
If it reflects it would have to push the mass away twice as hard.
If it had mass the force it possesses would have to have a force vector which would demand one of the two results above.
If not then we would have to say that force meeting a mass reacts in two different ways.
One, a reversal of direction mediated without a change in the mass field settings.
This is possible if one considers a completely reflective [white body].
It does not change in temperature .
Two, a reversal of direction mediated by a change in the mass field setting.
This leads to the mass altering to change of position of where the mass appears to be [movement of a molecule].
At the same time the original energy is sent back in the same direction.
Where the EM energy goes deeper into a layer before being sent back a problem arises with potential reabsorption on the way out which could send it back in again.
Since there are more molecules on the way in than out all of the light will shortly be remitted to space.
GHG are molecules that absorb and re-emit energy rather than reflecting it.
The GHG effect is real and necessary as part of this system.
An argument against this is that there is a finite time between absorption and emission of energy in this setting. The problem with accepting this is that storage of energy would be admissable.
Another is the actual motion of the molecules.
A third the lag in temperatures changing direction after the longest and shortest days occur.
Which in turn would overturn the SB law, as far as I can understand.
I am still trying to work out a way to combine these two apparent opposites.
The albedo/atmosphere make the Earth cooler not warmer.
Yes or no? If no pls ‘splain.
The GHGs must absorb “extra” energy upwelling from the surface radiating as a black body. (aka Radiative Forcing) The kinetic energy heat transfer processes in the contiguous atmospheric molecules make surface BB impossible as also demonstrated by experiment.
Agree or disagree? If disagree pls ‘splain.
If both or either of these points is correct the greenhouse effect is not.
No greenhouse effect, no GHG warming, no man/CO2 driven global warming or climate change.
RF is akin to caloric, phlogiston and luminiferous ether. A made up, hocus pocus, handwavium explanation for the GHE. Neither are real.
Version 1.0 120721
The sun heats the surface
The sun heats the upper atmosphere wherever GHG exists as a lot of the suns energy is IR.
The surface is only heated directly by the SW from the sun that gets through
As some SW is reflected 30% albedo the surface is cooler than if the atmosphere and reflective parts of the surface were not there.
[The albedo cools the lit side.]
The surface heats the air.
Yes by heating the GHG
The thermal resistance warms the dark.
No, the thermal resistance [GHG ] stop the heat from escaping as easily. It still cools down, the opposite of being warmed, just at a slower rate.
Molecules and KE stop at 32 km.
No [ only the vast majority of molecules. KE is even higher at altitude per molecule, they are moving faster to stay up there.
The greenhouse effect and radiative forcing do not exist.
The greenhouse effect definitely exists
radiative forcing should not exist.
The sun heats the surface’
The surface heats the air.
The albedo cools the lit side.
The thermal resistance warms the dark.
Molecules and KE stop at 32 km.
The greenhouse effect and radiative forcing do not exist.
Still going on Fermat with help from another site.
in a^3 + b^3 = c^ 3 = 2a^3 + (b^3 – a^3) [thanks]
c^ 3 = 2a^3 + (b^3 – a^3)
The cube equals the whole left side of the equation.
The left hand side has a double cube in it and a gap.
Since 2a^3 is a cube and c^3 has to be a cube there has to be a gap
(b^3 – a^3) which is a cube
in the expression c^ 3 = 2a^3 + x^3 where x^3= (b^3 – a^3)
If this did not exist we cannot have a^3 + b^3 = c^ 3 which is a surrogate form of this equation.
But if we allow x^3= (b^3 – a^3) , even just the once
the 2 a^3 cannot be a cube [ no doubled cube is a cube of an integer]
Hence whether x3 = b^3-a^3 or not
i.e the gap, whatever it is. cannot be a cube.
The beauty of this explanation is that we do not ever have to know the gap to prove that the gap cannot form a cube with a doubled cube.
angech
“The sun heats the upper atmosphere wherever GHG exists as a lot of the suns energy is IR.”
As depicted on numerous solar wavelength graphics an almost insignificant portion of the ISR is infrared.
Wavelength can be converted to joules by h c/lambda. The longer the wavelength the lower the energy content.
Short high energy wavelengths, e.g. x-rays, cosmic rays, UV at 10^-12 10^-8 m contain a lot and shred and fluoresce molecules.
Long wave incoming IR at 10^- 6 m contains very little energy and passes right through the atmospheric molecules, doing nothing until it hits solid stuff.
BTW you avoided addressing my points by changing the subject to some esoteric topic you obviously don’t understand.
1) Earth is cooler w/ atmos/albedo not warmer.
2) GHGs need “extra” energy upwelling from BB surface which is not possible. See TFK_bams09.pdf (ucar.edu) which contains egregious arithmetic and thermodynamic errors.
Nick Anaxagoras | December 8, 2021
“The greenhouse effect and radiative forcing do not exist.”
You are allowed opinions.
This however is completely wrong.
“As depicted on numerous solar wavelength graphics an almost insignificant portion of the ISR is infrared”
See Wikipedia amongst others
“Sunlight at the top of Earth’s atmosphere is composed (by total energy) of about 50% infrared light, 40% visible light, and 10% ultraviolet light.[48] ”
You can continue your argument .
You can continue on using your opinion on infrared .
It must be some esoteric topic I obviously don’t understand.
The Joules in a given photon of wavelength lambda is E = h c/lambda. The solar spectrum ranges from an X-ray at 10^-10 m thru a UV at 10^-8 m thru visible colours at 10^-7 m to LWIR at 10^-5 m. Between an X-ray of 0.1 nm to LWIR at 100,000 nm there are collectively 2.01E-15 Joules. Between red at 750 nm and LWIR at 100,000 nm there are 3.98E-19 Joules or 0.02% of the total. I’d say that’s pretty insignificant.
The Wiki solar spectrum 5th order graphic curve compares wavelength to W/m^2. Seems to me these are probably obtained from IR instruments and filters. As noted elsewhere IR instruments are calibrated and applied assuming their target is black body. As explained and demonstrated by experiment this is not necessarily a valid assumption. What energy are these IR instruments missing? I don’t know, maybe dark matter energy.
While the above discussion is wonderfully esoteric and perhaps entertaining to the audience it is also beside my two points which are:
The Earth is cooler with the albedo/atmosphere not warmer. Remove the atmosphere or just the GHGs and the clouds, ice, snow and 30% albedo vanish leaving the Earth much like the Moon, barren and hot^3 lit side, cold^3 dark. That totally contradicts the radiative greenhouse effect.
The GHGs need magical “extra” energy upwelling from a BB surface.
The K-T atmospheric balance (TFK_bams09.pdf (ucar.edu)) and numerous clones contain a couple of egregious arithmetic and thermodynamic errors.
ISR of 342 W/m^2 net albedo of 102 or 240 net atmospheric 80 = 160 W/m^2 net/net to the surface. Per LoT 1 160 is ALL!!! that can leave. 17 sensible + 80 latent + 63 by difference = 160. That’s it, that’s all, the REAL balance is closed!
Where does the 396 upwelling come from? Thin air, that’s where.
396 = 333 perpetual, cold to hot loop (violates LoT 2) plus a second helping of 63!
396 is the theoretical “What if?” calculation for a surface at 16 C or 289 K that goes in the denominator of the emissivity ratio.
IT IS NOT REAL!!!
Surface emissivity is 63/396 = 0.16.
This is why IR instruments that assume 1.0 emissivity and display 396 are wrong. An IR instrument can be tweaked to display a black body where one does not exist. In fact, USCRN instrument site instructions tell the technicians to do just that.
Nick Anaxagoras | December 10, 2021 at 11:20 am | Reply
” The Joules in a given photon of wavelength lambda is E = h c/lambda. The solar spectrum ranges from an X-ray at 10^-10 m thru a UV at 10^-8 m thru visible colours at 10^-7 m to LWIR at 10^-5 m. Between an X-ray of 0.1 nm to LWIR at 100,000 nm there are collectively 2.01E-15 Joules. Between red at 750 nm and LWIR at 100,000 nm there are 3.98E-19 Joules or 0.02% of the total. I’d say that’s pretty insignificant.”
You are confusing the range of the energy spectrum per photon with the amount of energy put out at each range.
Deliberately, I expect.
As you seem to know the amount of energy per wavelength.
All hot bodies put out Infra red.
The hotter they are the more infrared they put out, it is not static.
The sun puts out 50% of its energy as infrared.
Despite all the higher energized wavelengths the mass of the energy is infra red because there is just so much more of it.
Not esoteric.
Banal.
Lukewarm. Fact.
This however is completely wrong.
“As depicted on numerous solar wavelength graphics an almost insignificant portion of the ISR is infrared”
Nick Anaxagoras | December 10, 2021 at 11:20 am | Reply
“The Wiki solar spectrum 5th order graphic curve compares wavelength to W/m^2.
Seems to me these are probably obtained from IR instruments and filters.”
IR for the IR, other instruments for the other wavelengths..
” As noted elsewhere IR instruments are calibrated and applied assuming their target is black body.”
IR instruments do not target.
They receive radiation.
From any source.
And measure the amount.
“As explained and demonstrated by experiment this is not necessarily a valid assumption.”
Your assumption that ” As noted elsewhere IR instruments are calibrated and applied assuming their target is black body.” is certainly not valid.
What energy are these IR instruments missing? I don’t know, maybe dark matter energy.”
They are not missing the IR [50%] of the energy measurable.
Now you wish to claim it is insignificant because the sun is putting out mysterious dark energy which cannot be measured?
esoteric indeed.
Once more this is tre’ interesant, i.e. “splaining and disputing the mechanism for a RGHE process that does not exist.
BUT – what have you to say regarding???
The albedo/atmosphere make the Earth cooler not warmer.
Yes or no? If no pls ‘splain.
The GHGs must absorb “extra” energy upwelling from the surface radiating as a black body. (TFK_bams09.pdf (ucar.edu)) The kinetic energy heat transfer processes in the contiguous atmospheric molecules make BB impossible as also demonstrated by experiment.
For the experimental write up see:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
Agree or disagree? If disagree pls ‘splain.
If both or either of these points is correct the greenhouse effect is not.
No greenhouse effect, no GHG warming, no man/CO2 driven global warming or climate change.
Nick Anaxagoras | December 13, 2021
The albedo makes the Earth cooler not warmer.
Yes.
That is the definition of what albedo does.
It reduces the amount of energy available to heat up the earth.
The atmosphere makes the Earth cooler not warmer.
Monty Python anyone?
You define what you mean by the earth first and I will give you a straight answer for each conceivable scenario?
” The GHGs must absorb “extra” energy up welling from the surface radiating as a black body.”
Your premise of extra energy is the first of several faults in this argument.
There is no extra energy.
There is the energy that came from the sun, reached the surface, became IR and is going back out but is reflected back [back radiation] and has to keep going until it can get out.This is what is under consideration.
Second the GHG are absorbing and transferring IR from the surface and from surrounding GHG
“The kinetic energy heat transfer processes in the contiguous atmospheric molecules make BB impossible”
On the contrary atmospheric molecules are simply smaller black bodies , n’est ce pas? As Spinoza said, all nature is one.
Given that at the purely molecular level where the interactions occur everything is acting as a black body, how can you disclaim the whole following the behaviour of the parts?
Kinetic energy as a heat transfer model does not work as it is suggested.
Imagine two molecules bumping into each other like billiard balls and ricocheting off in different directions.
It is impossible.
The similar electron charges preclude molecules at speeds normally obtainable in a planetary atmosphere from ever touching or transferring force by direct contact.
Kinetic energy is always in existence in any mass or molecule where other masses or molecules are to be found.
It is not heat energy in itself.
It is an innate part of how and where mass can exist
You have to understand both rotational physics and direct line momentum in space to appreciate that movement does not and can not represent heat energy in and of itself.
The greenhouse gas theory cannot be debunked .
If you choose to use standard physics it is a well thought out and well explained theory using known truisms like electromagnetic energy and heat transfer to explain a concept of back radiation which must and does exist.
All posturing to the opposite is useless in standard physics.
Other concepts like a radiation imbalance which are blended in with GHG theory are wrong by definition, electromagnetic energy and heat transfer, basic science.
The problem there is the concept of a black body is used while it is useful.
At the start and end of a so called equilibrium.
But then totally ignored in the transition state from one energy level input to another.
Is science supposed to work like that?
The energy must balance at the start, must balance at the end but in between it is not allowed to balance?
What a dichotomy of thinking.
Can anyone conceive of taking it by minute slices between the changes
A process called calculus?
If at every in between step it is still equal, and it is, then at every point energy exchange must be equal with increasing energy in and out.
Unable to conceive what might be happening, due to the changes in kinetic movement, wrongly imagined as evidence of heat energy, rather than as a mass displacement needed for the energy to pass through we create a fictitious ghost of Energy imbalance and use it to misrepresent GHG theory into a malignant terror.