What evidence would it require for you to change your mind, and for you to realize that it is not a crisis, and that we don’t have to destroy the economy in the name of climate?
This is a (semi)serious question, but mostly a note to write a longer essay about science and falsifiability, that I didn’t have time or gumption to write tonight.
I doubt very much that you will get a serious reply from a true believer. I have had several polite, reasoned, and amicable discussions with the climate faithful and the scenario always plays out the same way. First, there’s the appeal to authority, implying, well, you’re not a scientist, so what do you know. I then reply that, well, I am a scientist. After claiming that well, you’re not a climate scientist, I point out that I worked in the field of paleoclimatology for more than 20 years, so I’ve got ammo in my guns. I then go through all the problems with “consensus” climate science: e.g., the lack of measured feedbacks, temperature leading CO2 in ice cores, problems with the historical temperature record, the fact that dendrothermometers are good time records and lousy thermometers, that the Hockey Stick is contradicted by scores of more credible reconstructions, the total lack of progress and huge uncertainties in the critical value of CO2 ECS, the admitted overestimation of temperature in virtually all GCM based climate models, etc., etc.
I then try the Bjorn Lomborg approach by pointing out that adaptation is orders of magnitude cheaper than mitigation. Sadly, nothing ever works. It always boils down to “my mind is made up and don’t confuse me with facts”.
In one classic episode, I was having a friendly chat about climate with someone on a cruise. After I went through a partial litany of why I was a skeptic, or more accurately, a realist about climate, he huffed and puffed and said that CO2 has to be a danger, it’s just physics! Then he stuck out his chest and said he had a PhD in physics! I countered with, well, so do I, but what does that have to do with it?
As George Turner and I have mentioned here many times before:
For presumed accelerating sea level rise, how about the lack of need for Sidereal Clock adjustment due to the ocean expansion of the equatorial bulge? This would noticeably slow the Earth’s rate of rotation forcing astronomers to compensate when using high magnification on stellar objects they are tracking in real time. They are forced to compensate for the Earth’s rotation using precision electric motors to keep their telescopes fixed on the same point in the sky. Anybody who knows how to operate a telescope with an equatorial mounting also knows this. Telescopes that use computer controlled alt- azimuth mounts are owned by those that believe in the power of crystals with a few bucks to spare.
Time and star angles are some the most precise things man can measure, both with incredible redundancy and cross checks. Climate scientists have no way to fudge the Earth’s day length, and thus spin rate, and thus changes in mass distribution.
But as for the larger issue, I think most people have too many lazy defenses against changing their world view. They have pre-programmed retorts and canned ad-hoc responses, things they’ve seen used thousands of times by their alarmist peers.
So I try different approaches. Off the top of my head:
Show them they don’t actually care about climate because of where they live, or used to live, or want to live. Those three potential places probably don’t have climates within 5 or 10 C of each other, yet they don’t even pay attention to that.
Illustrate how meaningless a 2 C shift is, in terms of latitude in temperate climates (about 180 miles, north/south), altitude (500 to 1,300 feet vertical per degree C) (surface lapse rate paper), or time. Where I live the spring warming and fall cooling is quite linear with time. Spring lows go up 1 C every 5.8 days and highs go up 1 C every 6.1 days. If they want to know what the devastating effects of a 2 C shift are, during the spring, just wait 10 to 12 days and they’ll experience it. They claim 2 C is catastrophic, yet none of them could tell you within a month what day of spring or fall it was based on temperature, because they don’t actually care.
Ask them what the average annual temperature is where they live. They’ll be lucky to guess it within 10 C, and will likely not get within 15 or 20 C, because almost nobody even cares enough to look it up.
This approach is an interesting one, because they’re virtue signaling that “I’m a good person because I care about climate”, but you’re proving to them that neither they nor any of their friends actually care about climate. Not even a little bit. Some folks better at psychology could probably apply what they know to that approach and optimize it, as if treating some wildly incorrect self-image, delusion, or phobia.
A related approach is to show how meaningless climate is to people, since they’ll happily shift jobs between New York, Phoenix, London, Oslo, or Miami. From that narrow 2 C perspective, that’s like ignoring the difference between Venus and Pluto.
From the perspective of a legal argument, it’s essentially an approach of “You’re wrong on all the facts, and even if you were right, it still wouldn’t matter.”
I note that some research that tends in this direction was recently published and reported here…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/16/claim-weve-pumped-so-much-groundwater-that-weve-nudged-the-earths-spin/
…but I wonder if you think it’s relevant to your question?
Some comments on that modeled study:
Mike McMillan
Reply to Mike McMillan
Reply to
ferdberple
June 16, 2023 10:58 pm
Tipping can be a problem. All that wobbling may by why Brandon keeps falling down.
“… the model was off by … 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches) of drift per year.”
I note in passing that value is very near the average annual amount of continental drift, but I’m sure they took that into account in their study.
Rud Istvan
Reply to
Mike McMillan
June 17, 2023 6:31 am
The mid Atlantic spread rate is 2-5cm/year depending on latitude. That alone, not groundwater relocation, accounts for the slight wobble.
And, in most places groundwater is replenished else wells would dry up and need to be dug deeper. Most don’t.
And when groundwater is pumped it either evaporates and returns as rain, or makes it directly to the sea where there is no mass redistribution.
How on earth did this model nonsense make it past peer review?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/16/claim-weve-pumped-so-much-groundwater-that-weve-nudged-the-earths-spin/#comment-3735081
Questioning a religious zealot about their dogma seldom goes well…
It is a religion and they believe the policies they propose are a benefit even if apocalyptic climate change didn’t exist.
Deprogramming might take the course of asking what they hope to accomplish, and relating how their preferred policies not only won’t help but will make things worse. Get them focussed on outcomes.
And with enough warming, Canada and Siberia become the breadbaskets of the world. Not to mention what might happen if rainfall increased enormously in the Australian outback for instance. There was a time when the Sahara was green I think. Change can be good.
This.
And also why is the present climate so ideal? Can climate change (in either direction) be considered good? Why not?
For me, a common approach is to point out the false certainty in climate change predictions and prescriptions. For example, the IPCC has long been on the record as predicting that climate sensitivity – the amount of heating one gets from a doubling of CO2 ranges from 1.5 C to 4.5 C with the mean at 3 C. That range means a huge range of possible outcomes. We could be decades to centuries away from actual problems (my favored outcome) to already being well past the point where significant adaptation needs to be planned.
Yet they peddle the same narrow range of strategies – a full stop on CO2 emissions within 10-20 years to avoid passing the scary 1.5 C line in the sand with no serious consideration of adaptation. There’s all kinds of assumptions about how the future will turn out.
So what is the actual science here? That peculiarly broad error bar in the most important parameter in climatology, or prescriptions based on predetermined scenarios without regard to what the climate actually does? Similarly, why argue consensus rather than evidence?
I wonder how history will view this bizarre situation?
–A Question For The Climate Crazies–
Maybe they need a test.
What is an interglacial period?
And then 3 or 4 other basic questions.
And final bonus question is, can name the Ice Age that we are in?