Via Andrew Sullivan, I read that the FrumForum’s Andrew Gelman is unhappy about the way that “the newest way to slam a belief you disagree with — or maybe it’s not so new — is to call it “religious.” For example, “Market Fundamentalism is a quasi-religious faith that unregulated markets will somehow always produce the best possible results,” and so is global warming…”
Professor Gelman is being a little too sensitive.
For my part, when I argue that for some people a belief in anthropogenic global warming seems to have taken on distinctly religious characteristics, I am primarily referring to the way (1) that it appears to be based as much on faith as science and (2) that it quite clearly satisfies certain spiritual and emotional needs. You can think that such a comparison is unfair, but it’s not necessarily insulting to religion as such. I will, however, admit that my view of what some of those spiritual and emotional needs might be is less flattering.
However, while we are on the topic of using religious analogies as an insult in the climate change this story from the London Times is not altogether unamusing:
A warning that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research……Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as “voodoo science”.
Um…
I think climate change is pretty well established science. But I fully agree that the way the left politicized it was horrible and amazingly counterproductive. It was the left, far more than the right, that made it into identity politics. And precisely because its become identity politics it means that it’s unlikely anytime soon that the right will get on board. And that’s tragic.
They could have made it largely bipartisan with a few fringe on the right. But identity politics trumped all. Both the right and the left now have it as a kind of quasi-religious issue. The left because to deny it is to commit a kind of “scientific” blashphemy (rather than simply being ignorant, confused or the like). It’s not enough to educate people on it, one always has to slam ones foes. And the right, of course, sees it all as a conspiracy. A kind of holy inquisition by the left while they are the Protestants being persecuted who have the Truth that must be protected at all costs.
It’s a terrible mess.
Established science? Climate change is an utter fraud. We’ve been fed a steady diet of lies, half-truths, and distortions for years.
I think there’s some merit to AGW as a theory but I think there’s not nearly enough certainty about it in detail to actually make the kind of policy demands that are debated these days.
The real problem is that the scientists and policy lobbyists have essentially merged into one group so lack of certainty on details is brushed aside and corners are being cut in order to create a better policy pitch. The target policies pursue long-held goals which those parties have always been interested in whether there’s warming or not, reduction of emissions, protection of endangered species, restriction of capitalist activity, redistribution of wealth, government command of the economy.
It basically amounts to advocacy science, a highly normative affair far removed from the traditionally, descriptive nature of science. After all you almost never hear about climatologists merely reporting findings without the harshest of warnings and finally an “Unless we do this…” attached. It’s hard to explain how this politicization has become so thorough but I imagine there’s a mix of self-selection i.e. people with a particular worldview being attracted to this science, selective advancement through political and academic bodies (grants, promotions, publication) and ultimately the peer pressure that is only magnified by the intensely political character and the very high stakes involved (what’s a little lying if you can save the planet?)
Since 2000 the atmospheric carbon dioxide level has increased by an amount equal to 21% of the increase from 1800 to 2000. According to the average of the five reporting agencies (four since Climategate), the average global temperature has not changed much for several years and during the seven years from 2002 through 2008 the trend shows a DECREASE of 1.8°C/century. This measured SEPARATION between the increasing carbon dioxide level and not-increasing average global temperature is outside of the ‘limits’ of all of the predictions of the IPCC and ‘consensus’ of Climate Scientists. The separation has been increasing at an average rate of about 2% per year since 2000. It corroborates that, at the present CO2 level, atmospheric carbon dioxide increase has no significant influence on average global temperature.
Climate change is natural.
The on-going temperature decline trend was predicted.
All average global temperatures since 1895 are accurately predicted by a simple model. There was no need to consider any change to the level of CO2 or any other greenhouse gas.
The model, with an eye-opening graph, is presented in the October 16 pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true. (Replace all references to PDO with ESST which is short for Effective Sea Surface Temperature).
It is pure rubbish. It is nothing more than a political move to transfer wealth from the middle class into the hands of the elite, or at least those who would like to become “The Elite”. Read this quote from the article that broke the story.
Climate scientist Peter Taylor said: “I am not surprised by this news. A vast bureaucracy and industry has been built up around this theory. There is too much money in it for the IPCC to let it wither.”
Source: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/152422/The-new-climate-change-scandal
It’s very interesting to notice how satellite imagery of the melting glaciers is totally ignored by commenters who claim the glaciers are not melting. It’s also interesting to read about the alarmist outrage vented toward alarmist predictions. In the process only the alarmists get any notice from the media.
Here’s a link to a nice, quiet, journalistic recital of demonstrable facts about 2 very large, significant glaciers in the Himalaya range.
http://udumulasudhakarreddy.blogspot.com/2009/11/climate-change-himalayan-glaciers.html
Suppose one grants that the National Academy of Sciences has a 10% chance of being correct in their assessment of AGW. Suppose further that, if correct, there is a 10% chance of the worst-case scenario occurring. Given said assumptions, is it unreasonable to advocate for precautionary measures to address the potential problem? I believe we call this… insurance.
Now, if someone is unwilling to even give the NAS a 10% chance… I’m sorry, but that strikes me as flat-out anti-science. We’re not talking about a single lab’s questionable results; this is an entire field with multiple avenues of investigation ranging from ecology to physics to atmospheric chemistry. Should the entire field be wildly off-base… I cannot think of any field of scientific endeavour that has blundered so significantly in the last century; the lone possible contender is human biodiversity, a far smaller field that is directly up against what has mistakenly become the the central assumption of leftist thought (no group-level differences between human populations in politically sensitive traits). Can anyone think of another example of a field gone so wrong?
Given the known effects of tribalism in political thought, I find myself asking which is more reasonable: that scientists, who are by no means uniformly biased towards liberalism, are united in promoting an environmentalist agenda without scientific merit? Or that the anti-AGW backlash is due to solely to politics and not science?
The charge that it has become a quasi-religion is likely on the mark, but for both sides. I am unwilling to condemn the climate scientists in this matter; they trust my honesty and lack of bias in my field, and so I extend the same courtesy to them.
If I could dictate a new meme for the right, as a self-styled environmentalist, it would be this:
AGW, real or otherwise, is an issue that has been used by the government/business elite and the cultural Marxists to hijack the environmental movement. There are at least 10 environmental issues more important than AGW, even if it is real, that don’t get even 1% as much attention. In no particular order:
Deforestation
Dumping
Overfishing
Overpopulation/Immigration
Air pollution
Water pollution
Poaching
Wildfires
Desertification
Introduced species
These are all proven, immediate, and in many cases dire threats to environmental stability. If we took all the attention, energy, and money we’ve devoted to AGW and applied it to these issues, we could go a long way toward solving them all. But it’s much easier to crusade against a probably insoluble and perhaps imaginary problem caused primarily by the First World than it is to lobby for actionable solutions to real, identifiable problems that in many cases have politically incorrect implications. Plus, there aren’t trillions of dollars to be made in the anti-dumping movement.
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I was discussing this elsewhere.
HBD and AGW
(HBD is the view that different Ancestral populations have socially significant genetic based differences.)
The Leftist take on AGW can be informative for us. It should help us clarify our position on HBD. From what I can tell, most on the secular-right prefer Intellectual openness and politically conservativeness.
That is, we see empirical research and academic discussion as working best through open conversation and intellectual competition. It works best when facts and ideas are separated from politics and morality and when ideas are allowed to compete.
We see society functioning best, when open conversation and intellectual competition is allowed in context to a socially and politically conservative approach. That is, we eschew the radical application of ideas.
Specifically, with regards to Liberal HBD and AGW, the issue would be:
The Left suppresses intellectual conversation and promotes radical politics. Intellectual openness about race is squashed, but radical leftist racial politics is promoted. Discussing Diversity only insofar as it promotes a Liberal-Left agenda is tolerated. Radical environmental politics are promoted and intellectual skepticism about Liberal climatology is repressed. Discussing Climate only insofar as it promotes a Liberal-Left agenda is tolerated.
Leftists, in their progressive-left, fashion, make the case that it needs to be done lest the US reverts back to it’s conservative rightist ways (of their Whiggish all to Whiggish imaginations) or becomes progressive rightist (ie fascist).
The issue, for us, should be: 1) global warming scientific skepticism and 2) political conservatism, versus 3) global warming assuredism and 4) unquestioned AGW political activism. Whether or not AGW is correct, 3) and 4) is still problematic.
With regards to this:
“is it unreasonable to advocate for precautionary measures to address the potential problem? I believe we call this… insurance.”
You tell me.
The claim about Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 was a cockup – like claims made about the loss of all Antarctic ice by the end of the century, it fails even the mosr cursory of logic checks. In fact, such glacial disappearance by 2035 would be a major problem for climate science to explain: so sudden a loss of high-altitude ice which is at least tens of metres thick would be inexplicable under even the most pessimistic of current projections! It’s a real puzzle how it made it past review – I guess it was just that no one who was sufficiently interested actually registered what was basically a single sentence in a nearly 500-page report.
It is worth noting that Pachauri’s ill-judged ‘voodoo science’ remark was not aimed at the specific claim that the glaciers will not disappear by 2035 but at the whole of the Raina report, likely based only on the conclusion that Himalayan glaciers have not been affected by global warming. My suspicion is actually Pachauri had not even read the report but was responding to the rather misleading media claims about it – or perhaps there were personal issues involved. I can’t really see why his responses were so strong, otherwise: there are controversial claims, but nothing in the paper denies or claims to refute global warming. The claim is more that Himalayan glaciers specifically are unusually slow to respond to climate changes – a finding at odds with the conclusions of research such as Bajracharya et al 2007 (oddly omitted from this ‘state of the art review’) but not an insupportible claim, or even one necessarily at odds with general IPCC conculsions (much of the IPCC report discusses the difficulties in attributing cause to specific localized changes, even if you’d never know it from media coverage).
Frankly, it is unsurprising that some errors crept into the IPCC report given its size, scope, and the sheer number of people involved – though it is surprising that so obviously nonsensical a claim as the 2035 date escaped scrutiny till after publication (it was caught before now, by the way). The fact that so few errors are found despite the intense scrutiny to which the report is subjected should bolster confidence in it, really, but unfortunately every goof that does get caught does a disproportionate amount of reputational damage. This is even the case when the goof (as here) is a silly error that is incompatible with the overall IPCC findings rather than being something critical to the theory.
Anyone interested in actually reading the Raina report can find it here, by the way.
PS A previous investigation of the source of the 2035 goof attributed it to a migrating zero – a cited paper apparently projected the loss of Himalayan glaciers by 2350, not 2035. This sounds more plausible that the latest explanation (though not really any less embarassing). I wonder which explanation was correct?