…”captures the self-defeating arrogance and tone deafness that has characterized the American environmental community for decades.”
2 thoughts on ““Zero Room””
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…”captures the self-defeating arrogance and tone deafness that has characterized the American environmental community for decades.”
Comments are closed.
Yeah – this issue of lower climate sensitivity is becoming central, and a lot of people are still being gobsmacked by it. Nate Silver of 538 ran into this same “self-defeating arrogance” in his recent very popular book. He was talking about over-fitting, and made the mistake of suggesting that climate models would have fit the data better if they hadn’t overfit to the last quarter of the twentieth century, when of course temperatures were rising faster than they have recently. That would still mean global warming, but with a somewhat lower sensitivity.
AGW people reacted with fury at the idiot (their hero, till then and since) who stuck his head in where it wasn’t wanted. Poor Nate Silver: He thought he agreed with the AGW and disagreed with the “deniers”. How could he have known that some of the most important “deniers” just believe that the sensitivity is somewhat lower than the IPCC central estimates?
Suppose you (or I) agree with the so-called consensus that human civilization causes warming, but deny that warming causes catastrophe? Suppose we agree there is a problem (short of a catastrophe) but deny that international treaties among governments offer any effective solutioins? Suppose we agree that technology brought to market will affect the future, but deny that bans on one special kind of technology (nuclear) are historically justified, or that tax subsidy to one other special kind of technology (say, solar electrovoltaic) is desirable?
I guess we’d be deniers, then.