The term "climate change"
is a generic term that means
little in real climate science.
Earth's climate
is always changing,
locally and globally.
No one denies that.
As used by leftists,
"climate change"
means much more.
Their "climate change"
most resembles a secular
religion, based on beliefs,
that apparently can't be
falsified.
Beliefs based on "faith",
like beliefs of conventional
religions.
As an atheist, since i was
old enough to understand
the word, I accept that most
people like to be part of
a bigger group, such as a
traditional religion,
or the secular climate
change "religion".
People seem to be
very uncomfortable
with unanswered questions,
and not knowing what the
future will bring --
religions give them "answers"
stated with great confidence,
and anyone who disagrees
will be ignored, or character
attacked.
Those "answers" all sound
silly to me, but my "answer",
to those mysterious questions
( " I don't know " )
sounds just as silly to them !
In real science, theories
that can't be falsified
are rejected
as wild guesses.
If you predicted significant
global warming in the next
decade, as was common
in the late 1990s,
and the global average
temperature in 2018
was about the same
as in 1998, your theory
has been falsified by
temperature observations.
But it seems that the belief
in a coming climate catastrophe
remains, no matter what the
temperature observations are.
Warm summer
= climate change
Cold winter
= climate change
No major hurricanes hit the US
48 states from 2005 to 2017,
for a record quiet period
= climate change
A major hurricane hit in 2017
= climate change
The claimed "solution"
for EVERY imagined coming
environmental catastrophe,
since DDT in the early 1960s,
has ALWAYS been the same:
A more powerful government,
issuing more regulations,
and higher taxes on energy.
I say "imagined" catastrophe
because NO catastrophes
ever happen.
The predictions
have been
100% wrong.
But never mind analyses -
- the mainstream media
is too busy publishing new
scary predictions, to go back
and analyze the old scary,
always wrong, predictions
they published in the past.
"Climate Change" is wild guess,
always wrong, scary predictions
of a coming climate catastrophe,
that never shows up.
Predictions of climate doom
probably go back over one
thousand years.
Serious predictions,
by a respected scientist,
supported by some
other respected
scientists, seemed to start
with oceanographer Roger
Revelle, in 1957, who was
Al Gore's idol.
To his credit, Revelle
never became hysterical
about global warming,
but he was always concerned
until his death in 1991.
Revelle, however, created the
"model" for getting government
science grants --
Using calm, very confident,
predictions of a coming crisis,
that needed further study
In the next few decades
most scientists did not
make wild guess predictions
of the climate far in the future.
But in the mid-1970s,
after 35 years
of mild global cooling,
while CO2 levels in the
atmosphere rose significantly,
some scientists got attention
and fame by predicting another
ice age ( never mind that we
were already in an ice age, because
Antarctica was covered with ice ! ).
The predictions ramped up
a lot in the late 1980s, when
the UN's IPCC was launched,
but they were for global
warming, not global cooling.
A very relevant question:
How many decades
should people wait
until they stop believing
scary climate predictions,
and start celebrating
the actual mild, harmless
global warming, that consists
mainly of warmer, winter nights,
in high latitude ( cold ) areas,
where people love warming ?
I started reading
climate science
articles and studies
as a hobby, in 1997.
That day, probably
in the first hour,
I stopped believing
the long-term climate
forecasts that got
me interested
in the subject !
There was no evidence
anyone could predict
the global climate in
the next year, much less
in one hundred years.
And the use of a single
statistic, the global average
temperature, never made
sense to me !
No one actually lives in
the average temperature.
The goal of studying climate
change should be to understand
what causes climate change.
That remains a mystery.
And that means climate predictions
are meaningless climate astrology.
Or they are left wing politics
with an ulterior motive
of scaring the general public,
so they will demand that their
government "do something".
Leftists love the government,
and when in power, they ALWAYS
want to do more, and they never
let a crisis "go to waste" as an
opportunity to seize more power
for the government.
It doesn't matter whether the
crisis is real or imaginary,
as long as people believe it.
The coming climate crisis
has been an imaginary crisis
for over 60 years !
It's possible some people
will believe in it
for their entire life !
Today there seems to be
a contest for who can get
published the most scary
climate change predictions
-- I call them "scary climate
campfire stories".
A common theme:
Claiming the future climate
will be even worse
than previously predicted.
Strangely, the new prediction
is telling us something
that no one ever notices:
The old prediction was wrong !
And if the prior forecasts failed,
why should we expect a better
forecast this time ?
The truth about predictions is that
"experts" are awful at predicting
the future, yet psychology compels
people to take their predictions
seriously !
People want to know what
will happen in the future.
With new predictions,
it takes time to find
out if they were right,
or wrong.
But past predictions
can be analyzed
to see how far off
they were.
Reading old predictions
about the future climate
may sound dull.
But they are
good for a laugh
-- that's why
I include them
on the blog.
The desire to know
the future is universal.
People listen to "experts".
But the "experts"
tend to be wrong,
from overconfidence,
even more than laymen !
American economist
Irving Fisher predicted:
“Stock prices
have reached
what looks like
a permanently
high plateau.”
That was October 17, 1929.
The stock market
crashed
the next week !
Economist John
Maynard Keynes
predicted:
“There will be
no serious consequences
in London resulting from
the Wall Street slump.”
Then Britain sank into
a Great Depression too !
Herman Kahn,
founder of the
Hudson Institute,
in his 1967 book
"The Year 2000",
predicted it was:
“very likely,”
by the end
of the century,
nuclear explosives
would be used
for excavation
and mining.
“Artificial moons”
would be used
to illuminate
large areas at night,
and there would be
permanent
undersea colonies.
Kahn expected
one of the world’s
fastest-growing
economies would be
the Soviet Union !
A 1968 book called
"The Population Bomb",
sold millions of copies.
Stanford University
biologist Paul Ehrlich
predicted:
“The battle to feed
all of humanity is over.
In the 1970s,
the world will
undergo famines—
hundreds of millions
of people will starve
to death in spite of
any crash programs
embarked upon now.”
But there were
no mass famines.
Between 1961 and 2000,
the world’s population doubled,
but food calories consumed
per person increased 24%.
American waistlines
significantly expanded.
America now has
an obesity epidemic !
Ravi Batra’s "The Great
Depression of 1990"
spent 10 months on the
The NewYork Times
best-seller list
-- the paperback
stayed on the list
for 19 months.
The 1990 Recession was mild.
Economists’ predictions are specific.
Their accuracy can be checked.
As a group,
US economists
have never predicted
a recession !
Meaning that economists’
predictions are least accurate
when they are most needed.
In December 2007,
in BusinessWeek
magazine, every one
of 54 economists
predicted the U.S.
economy wouldn’t
“sink into
a recession”
in 2008.
The consensus was that 2008
would be a solid year.
Scott Armstrong, an expert
on forecasting at the Wharton
School of the University
of Pennsylvania, created the
“seer-sucker” theory:
“No matter
how much
evidence
exists that
seers do
not exist,
suckers
will pay for
the existence
of seers.”
Philip Tetlock, was a psychologist
at the University of California’s
Haas School of Business.
In the 1980's, he began
interviewing respected
experts -- 284 experts
—political scientists,
economists,
and journalists
— whose jobs
involve commenting or
giving advice on political
or economic trends.
All were guaranteed anonymity.
Over many years,
Tetlock, and his team,
collected 27,450
predictions about
the future.
Tetlock said the experts
would have been beaten
by “a dart-throwing
chimpanzee.”
“There’s quite a range."
"Some experts are so
out of touch with reality,
they’re borderline delusional. "
"Other experts are only
slightly out of touch."
"And a few experts
are surprisingly nuanced
and well-calibrated.”
What made a big difference
is how they think ?
Complex and cautious thinking
trounced simple and confident.
The bigger the media profile
of an expert, the less accurate
his or her predictions were.
Predictions made by applying
mindless rules, such as
“always predict no change,”
beat the experts.
Another important conclusion,
that's often ignored:
Tetlock only asked questions
about the future for the study.
Because he found that experts
were good at answering questions
about the present and the past.
The world is
too complicated
to be predicted.
But people want to
eliminate uncertainty.
We see patterns,
where there are none.
We treat random results,
as if they are meaningful.
And we love
simple narratives,
over complexity
and uncertainty.
"Experts" that get noticed
by the mainstream media
sound very confident.
We believe because
we want to believe.
Skepticism does
not come easily.
But skepticism
is absolutely
mandatory
for good science.
Skepticism is completely absent
from the climate change "religion".
Skeptics are verbally attacked.
That's why this blog exists.
I could not care less what
any leftists say about me.
They are horrible people,
who attack free speech
with ridicule and character
attacks, try to micromanage
people's lives ... and destroy their
economy, with the "Green Ordeal"
( Green New Deal )