THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND
There are almost unlimited
quantities of information
available to us in this
modern internet world.
Unfortunately, our brains
evolved in an environment
of extremely little information.
Most of what the brain does
happens without conscious
awareness of it.
Our “unconscious mind”
is far more influential
in our decision making
than we realize.
Our conscious mind
can slowly and carefully
reason to a conclusion.
Our unconscious mind delivers
instant conclusions -- feelings,
hunches, and intuitions.
Our judgments are
generally products of
non-conscious systems
that operate quickly,
with little evidence required.
Our unconscious mind
delivers first; hopefully our
conscious mind then reviews
the unconscious mind’s
conclusion to determine
if it made sense.
NEGATIVITY BIAS
Survival requires attention
to possible bad outcomes.
People whose brains gave
the highest priority to bad news
had an advantage.
They were much less likely
to be eaten by lions, or die
some other untimely death.
Through evolution,
“negativity bias”
became a universal
human trait.
An "expert" who predicts
a sunny future is battling
against that human trait.
And people prefer certainty
over uncertainty.
So we are inclined
to believe the expert
predicting a dark future,
because we are uncomfortable
not knowing the future.
With few exceptions,
the "experts" tend to be
wrong about the future.
The exceptions tend to be
lucky guesses.
Some "experts" predict
an uncommon event
year after year,
getting lots of attention,
hoping to be considered
a genius when that
uncommon event
eventually happens.
THE CONSENSUS
People are "social animals".
Deviating too far from
a group consensus
leaves one feeling
ostracized from the group,
People tend to abandon
their own judgments,
under the social pressure
of a group consensus.
And “groupthink” strikes
"experts" too.
CONFIRMATION BIAS
Overconfidence is common.
So is “optimism bias.”
Optimism encourages
people to take action
-- feeling good about
a judgment
is a first step
is a first step
to acting upon it.
“Confirmation bias”:
Once we form a belief,
for any reason, whether
logical or not, we seek
and accept information
that supports our belief,
while avoiding or dismissing
information that does not
support our belief.
We all enjoy having
our beliefs confirmed.
Scientific studies that
support our beliefs
are deemed to be
high-quality work.
Contrary studies
are dismissed.
Peer reviewers do this too!
Some readers will accuse
this blog of cherry picking
data to fit a climate belief.
That can't be true because
I have no climate belief.
I have no idea what the future
climate will be, and never
try to guess.
I do frequently point out,
that based on decades
of wrong predictions,
no one else knows
the future climate either !
After 17 years of climate
science reading as a hobby,
in 2014 I noticed that coming
climate crisis stories
were getting wilder,
but were getting published
with no skepticism.
The purpose of this blog
is to challenge the many
scary climate predictions,
that always "see" bad news
from future global warming,
completely unlike past global
warming, which has been mild,
pleasant and harmless
for over 300 years.
It's true that trends do end
-- 'the future doesn't have
to be just like the past.'
But why do so many people
imagine the future climate
will be a lot warmer
and worse than the
present climate ?
The future could be
better, or worse.
If the future climate
does gets worse,
that could mean
a lot cooler,
or a lot warmer.
PEOPLE LOVE STORIES
People love hearing stories.
People love telling stories.
Every culture does,
so the origins
must be evolutionary.
Stories are an effective way
to transmit knowledge ...
or to transmit nonsense.
An effective story
can't conclude with
“I don’t know”, or
"We don't know" or
“The answer isn’t clear.”
A effective story
must deliver
a conclusion.
An effective story
is mainly about people
-- a few statistics are useful,
but they must be simple,
and easy to understand.
A good story elicit emotions.
If the story involves a threat,
that elicits greater emotions.
Like the coming climate
change catastrophe story.
TELLING STORIES
We create stories that make
the world seem sensible
and orderly.
But some stories are nonsense.
More information
doesn't help,
doesn't help,
because the internet
and computers
promote “data mining”.
and computers
promote “data mining”.
Statistical correlations
can be meaningless,
but they can look like
hard evidence.
Data mining is especially
dangerous for "experts".
There's great pressure
on "experts" to never say
"I don't know", or
"We don't know".
That's too bad,
because the future
climate is
"we don't know".
"Experts" can tell stories
that are compelling, with
lots of data mining, stated
with great confidence,
but false.
Almost all "experts" said
Donald Trump would
never win an election.
SCHEMAS
Our brains are filled with beliefs,
assumptions about the world,
and how the world works.
Psychologists call them “schemas.”
We love stories that fit our schemas.
A story that contradicts our beliefs
is dissonant, and tends to make us
very uncomfortable.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Will man-made climate change
destroy civilization, if we don’t
act immediately ?
Many scientists, activists,
and politicians say so,
completely ignoring
a lot of personal experience
( their entire lives )
with rising CO2 levels
... accompanied by mild,
intermittent, harmless
global warming, for the
past 78 years.
Some people find
their scary arguments
to be compelling.
I find their "arguments"
to be science fraud
-- they are predicting
rapid global warming
from CO2 in the future,
that never happened
with rising CO2 levels
in the past.
They give us
no logical explanation
why future CO2 / temperature
changes would be completely
unlike past CO2 / temperature
changes.
An added complication is that
no one knows if any of the past
global warming was caused by CO2
-- that's an unproven assumption.
Compared with the huge climate
changes the past 20,000 years,
starting with Canada under a thick,
glacier, the climate change in the past
few hundred years, while adding
man made CO2 to the atmosphere
( mainly after 1940 ), has been
unusually stable and pleasant.
STYLE VERSUS FACTS
Statistics are rational.
People are not rational.
A strong, enthusiastic, confident
speaking style has great persuasive
power in story telling.
Consultants tell politicians to make
their delivery style more expressive,
and enthusiastic.
They advise emphasizing points
with hand gestures, and varying
the pitch of the voice.
“Confident, clear, and simple”
is the standard for persuasive
political communications.
Politicians know predictions
are about persuading people,
not being right.
Persuading a person
to not fear the future climate
is NOT just a function
of intelligence and data.
The expression of confidence
during the discussion
is VERY important
-- perhaps most important.
Many scientists realize speaking
about real science -- which is
complex, ambiguous, and uncertain,
gets no attention.
If they want public attention,
and government funding,
they have to deliver bold,
confident predictions
of coming bad news that
must be studied !
"EXPERTS"
"Experts" are very good
at making grand predictions,
and forgetting their
earlier wrong predictions !
Certainty about the future
is so routine, that people
rarely stop to consider how
ridiculous that certainty is.
But then ... the track record
of "experts" prior predictions,
doesn't seem to matter to
producers and editors
who shape "the news"
in the mass media.
Most news stories
involve comments
from "experts".
Predictions are common too.
The story is more credible
if the media boosts
the "experts" reputation
by mentioning hits,
but not misses.
The media do not want
talking heads criticizing
failed predictions of other
talking heads on the air.
If a prediction hits,
that prediction will
probably be in the news,
and people will talk about it.
If a prediction misses,
no one will talk about it.
Pundits “forecast not
because they know,
but because they are asked.”
economist John Kenneth Galbraith
We want accurate predictions.
But then we tend to focus
on the "hits", attribute them
to great intelligence,
rather than luck,
and then we ignore,
or forget about,
the misses.
When there’s a hit, there's
also a person who wants you
to know he or she was right,
and wants you to forget
about his misses !
CONFIDENCE CONVINCES
People unsure of the future
want to hear from confident
"experts" who tell a good story.
As social animals, we are
sensitive to status.
An "expert" has
considerable status.
We respect that status,
and defer to it.
That's why “Ph.D.”
so often appears
next to an author’s name
on the covers of his books,
The media 's popular "experts"
who tell us what will happen
in the future, are a very confident
group of people.
They do not acknowledge mistakes.
They never say, “I don’t know.”
They dominate the op-ed pages
of newspapers, and best-seller lists.
But "experts" who dominate the media
tend to be be the least accurate
"experts".
Researchers have found
financial advisers who express
great confidence in their
stock forecasts, are more trusted
than those who are less confident,
even when their investing records
are the same.
If someone’s confidence is high,
we tend to believe they are right.
People who express uncertainty
are more likely to be considered
incompetent, ignorant of the facts,
or lazy -- unwilling to gather enough
information to reach a decisive
conclusion.
The reaction to great confidence
seems to happen without awareness
-- it seems automatic, and fast.
People will deny that confidence
played a key role in their conclusion
that a person speaking, or writing,
was correct.
In general, people tend to be
more confident when they have
studied a subject for quite a while,
and are able to present data
on that subject to support their
conclusions ( the data may actually
be biased, or inaccurate, but it will still
raise one's confidence level, if it is
BELIEVED to be true ).
OVERCONFIDENCE
IS COMMON
One serious problem
is overconfidence.
Most people are
too sure of themselves.
Example of what happens
to an "expert" who is not
overconfident,
unlike most "experts"
speaking to the media:
Robert Shiller, Yale economist,
speaks quietly, and is
often hesitant.
He qualifies statements,
and mentions reasons
why he might be wrong.
He provides thoughtful
overviews of complex situations,
including the uncertainties.
But people tend to dislike
his uncertainty, and
"hedging his bets".
They seem to prefer
blowhards who are
frequently wrong,
but always certain !
Shiller, however,
has a great track record:
Correctly predicting
the bursting of the
high-tech bubble
of the late 1990s, and
the real estate bubble
that followed !
People can look and sound
more confident than they
really are.
Con men do this deliberately,
when they want to convince
people of something.
Most people are overconfident
to begin with.
When they try to convince others,
of something, they tend to become
even more sure of themselves.
When climate "experts"
insist that they are
100 percent certain
of a future climate,
that will be
completely different
than the past climate,
I believe they are acting
as climate con men.
And this long article
helps explain
why I will never
why I will never
try to convince you
that I know the future
climate -- no one does.
That's the main point
of this blog
-- no wild guess
-- no wild guess
predictions of the
future climate
... plus revealing
climate science fraud
... and insulting
leftist climate change
con men, and women,
whenever that
seems appropriate.
Richard Greene
Bingham Farms, Michigan
May 21, 2019
Patiently waiting for
global warming
to reach Michigan.