Random Thoughts on a Fluid, Dynamic, Chaotic System
And No, I’m Not Talking About the Biden White House
Climate Denier POV as Seen from the Hoi Polloi Seats
I recently read a Twitter/X post on the nuclear energy thread from a person, a nuclear engineer, who wrote that she was frustrated in trying to explain to non-scientist friends and neighbors the need to take the likelihood of catastrophic climate change seriously. While I, a non-scientist, am a strong supporter of nuclear power, I do not believe the catastrophic climate change scenario and certainly do not believe that climate change is in any way unnatural, unprecedented or an existential threat.
First, I should probably say that I just turned 80. I have seen a lot of existential threats come and go, yet the planet still exists, seems hardly to have changed significantly, in fact, from the moment I first realized that earth was a planet and that I was existing on its curved surface and in its life-sustaining atmosphere. Nevertheless, since I am representative of the science semi-literate hoi polloi whom the believers are trying to herd back into the flock, I thought it would be useful to understand where this climate denier is coming from. Such an understanding may give the true believers some insight into how to effect my conversion or at least to understand the origin of denier apostasy.
The blip of global warming first appeared on my radar screen during the summer of 1988. I had read about NASA’s James Hansen‘s testimony before the Senate. I was taken aback because the last I knew the threat, if any, was global cooling, and some scientists even speculated that we were about to enter another ice age.
Back in the day, at my college at least, we had something called the common curriculum. Every student, regardless of major, had to meet certain basic academic requirements. One of those requirements was two semesters each of a biological and a physical science. I chose physics. It was physics 101, one could say physics lite, because it was light on the math and did not have a lab requirement. Physics Department profs took turns teaching the class in the brand new theater/auditorium to several hundred students. The professors probably rotated because no one really wanted to stoop to conquer these math-averse, non-science majors. One thing they agreed upon, however, was that anyone passing the class should have a thorough grounding in what science is—and is not—and be able to recognize the difference between a scientific argument and a pseudo-scientific marketing spiel.
The course syllabus did not include much on climate and/or weather. One thing I can recall is a professor saying that we were approximately 10,000 years out from the last ice age so we were probably due for an encore fairly soon in terms of cosmic time. If any of us were planning to live a thousand years or so, we should take proper precautions against the cold. That was scientist humor, you see. In those days you could have a sense of humor, even if strained, about scientific matters. You were not a heretic if you made a joke about Boyle’s gas law or Bernoulli's principle. Even ice age humor was tolerated.
The summer of 1988 was a very hot summer even in Maine, although where my wife and I were located, at the end of a narrow peninsula with ocean on both sides, we always had a cool breeze. We were usually a good 10° cooler than Portland or Brunswick where that summer they had quite a few days in the 90s, very hot for Maine. It was the first time I really appreciated the concept of schadenfreude. I was able to mostly avoid the heat, and I took guilty pleasure in lording it over friends who were stranded on urban heat islands without air conditioning. I really did not give much thought at the time to it being record heat until reading about James Hansen‘s testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on June 23, 1988.
Again the idea of the planet experiencing a heat stroke surprised me, having recalled my college physics and a National Geographic issue that had a cover story on a possible imminent Ice Age. I had read similar stories in Newsweek and other publications I subscribed to at that time. It was, however, very hot that summer, so Hansen at least made me take a second look at his evidence. I started paying attention to the warming issue and doing some background reading.
Political Science
By the mid 90s, I had concluded that climate science was mainly political science. I didn’t argue the subject much because I knew I was in a minority among those who had any awareness of the subject, which at the time were not many. I did, however, stumble upon a number of legitimate scientists who questioned the alleged 97% consensus, the late Dr. Fred Singer and Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, then of the University of Virginia, among them. There were also Dr. Roy Spenser and Dr. John Christy, formerly of NASA and the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Later, I would discover Dr. Richard Lindzen, Emeritus of MIT, and Dr. William Happer, of Princeton.
I also discovered the non-Hollywood side of Michael Crichton. For me, Crichton bridged the gap between serious science and skeptics among the reasonably well informed and curious of the alleged science deniers (moi). Crichton was, after all, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and did medical research so he was at least qualified to comment on the degree of rigor of so-called climate science.
Crichton slew herds of sacred climate cows. The more he slew the more my skepticism grew. One of my favorite Crichton moments came during a question period after a presentation at a Manhattan bookstore discussing his book State of Fear, his brutal takedown of junk climate science. He was particularly dismissive of the biased and inaccurate reporting to be found on the New York Times science page.
A young, attractive, preppy-looking woman stood up with left leg locked, hand-on-cocked-hip, and a look on her face that screamed eye-roll. Rather than asking a question, she made a statement. Sounding rather like an expat valley girl, she lisped that she found it hard to believe that the New York Times’ publisher, editors, science page editor and science reporters could all be lying or getting it wrong about global warming (the preferred term then).
Crichton, with a facial expression of tried patience and a near-to-delivery pregnant pause, said, “Well…work on it.”
Global Warming Is Not A Crisis
Global Warming is Not a Crisis – IQ2 Debate Motion: Global Warming is Not a Crisis
Intelligence² US audience confirms 46.22% to 42.22% in favor of the motion. Speaking for the motion: Michael Crichton, Richard S. Lindzen, Philip Stott Speaking against the motion: Brenda Ekwurzel, Gavin Schmidt, Richard C.J. Somerville Moderator: Brian Lehrer
A debate in New York City
March 14, 2007
It has been thirty-six years since Hansen’s well orchestrated Senate performance in a conference room deliberately made uncomfortably warm for effect. Even longer, has the Reverend Al Gore been pontificating, spewing his climate hell and brimstone sermons. Yet, not one of the dire predictions made by Reverend Gore and other acolytes of the climate religion has come true. That has not stopped them, however, and that is the main reason why I have become an apostate. In actual science, when outcomes are not to one’s liking, the scientific method demands that one reassess, revise one’s hypothesis, no matter how beloved it has become to one’s self-identity, not to mention one’s self-importance.
Instead, the climate clergy simply doubles down on their doomsaying. Rather than tempering their vocabulary of doom, they up the ante, hyperbolizing to an ever greater degree. I am actually encouraged because the average deplorable seems to be increasingly ignoring the scare-mongering or even better, laughing at and ridiculing the oracles as their voices grow ever more shrill in the frustrated knowledge that almost no one outside their bubble is listening to them.
Two of the longest serving men of the climate catastrophist cloth, Albert Gore, Jr., and John F. Kerry, have recently gone way over the top with exclamations of climate Armageddon if something is not done by, say, next Tuesday, at the latest. Gore:
We're still putting 162 million tons (thermal energy) into it [the atmosphere] every single day, and the accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the earth.
That's what's boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers and rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land and creating the droughts and melting the ice and raising the sea level and causing these waves of climate refugees, predicted to reach one billion in this century.
Last, but certainly not least in the hyperbole department, John F. Kerry:
If you wound up with a different president who was opposed to the climate crisis, I got news for you: No one politician anywhere in the world can undo what is happening now.
The only issue for all of us is not whether or not we can get to a low carbon/no carbon economy globally. We will. The only question is, will we get there in time to meet the challenge of the scientists, in order to avoid the worst consequences of this crisis? That is what is at stake.
It’s the biggest transformation in the economies of the world in all of human history. It’s also the greatest business set of opportunities that we’ve ever known in all of human history.
It is a big transformation but not in the way that Kerry implies. The world economy is using record amounts of coal (China is far in the lead, opening or permitting two coal plants per week) and other fossil fuels, and total CO2 emissions are rising not falling, despite our costly efforts.
One positive that I see is that deniers are beginning to lose their state of fear over speaking out against the mythical 97% consensus. Even Crichton was hesitant when he was contemplating writing State of Fear:
I didn’t want to write it. I decided I wouldn’t write it. I had breakfast with a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in 30 years and I told them my dilemma and he said no, you have to write it. I said I might get killed for this. He said, no, you have to write it. I would like to be able to say that as a result of that conversation I decided to write it. I didn’t. I went home and I thought, you know, I’m not writing this. It doesn’t matter. Keep my opinion to myself. I started to work on something else and I felt like a coward and I thought what are you going to do? You have looked at the data and you really believe that it’s in effect but not something that we as human beings should be worrying about. […] It’s low on the totem pole. We ought to be taking care of disease. We ought to be taking care of world hunger. We ought to be taking care of a lot of things before we do this.
Twenty years ago Crichton wrote about the fear mongering being marketed by the warmists even then.
Let’s Stop Scaring Ourselves
In 2004, Michael Crichton wrote an article for Parade magazine that coincided with the release of his novel, State of Fear. In it he talks about all of the “scary things” people have worried about in his lifetime that never came to pass. He concludes the essay with this advice:
“I’ve seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it never came to pass,” Mark Twain is supposed to have said. At this point in my life, I can only agree. So many fears have turned out to be untrue or wildly exaggerated that I no longer get so excited about the latest one. Keeping fears in perspective leads me to ignore more of the frightening things I read and hear — or at least to take them with a pillar of salt.
For a time I wondered how it would feel to be without these fears and the frantic nagging concerns at the back of my mind. Actually, it feels just fine.
I recommend it.
Crichton was way ahead of his time on this topic. Unfortunately, the “scary things” are still being peddled by the self-anointed, self-appointed elites. I have chosen to ignore the climate activists and political scientists. After all, the likes of Richard Lindzen have pointed out that climate science is a relatively young science. We really don’t know all that much about the complex, fluid, dynamic, chaotic system that is climate.
Instead, I choose to concentrate on the proposed solutions to the supposed crisis—the wildly Orwellian solutions espoused by the WEF and the progressive heads of most Western governments. The attacks on freedom of speech and freedom to live one’s life as one sees fit—in short, attacks on the principles of the Enlightenment that made this country successful—are more worrying to me.
If you listen to those who have immigrated legally to the United States from communist or other highly authoritarian regimes—people like Lex Fridman, Michael Malice, Konstantin Kisin, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Yeonmi Park, and others, you will hear them lament the fact that threats to freedom of speech and other liberties that they thought they had left behind are happening here.
Reading Ayn Rand’s We the Living, set immediately after the 1917 Russian Revolution, gave me the eery feeling that what was happening then in early Bolshevik Russia is happening now in the U.S. That realization is what motivated me to write:
If you don’t think that radical climatism can be used as a means to the end of imposing a highly authoritarian state upon the masses, I suggest you think again. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the Green Chicken’s latest—Climate Newspeak: If you think energy policy is on the wrong track, get ready to be accused of a hate crime.
Well written. I, too, was a nuclear engineer once and am a big proponent. When Yucca Mountain was disapproved as a waste storage facility it all went downhill. You have great insight, thank you.
Good stuff, Ross! I too have been following CAGW since 1988, and have reached the same conclusions as you.
I imagine that you're already aware of Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex" quote, but are you aware of this one, buried further down in the speech?:
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
As we are living squarely in the times that Ike warned us about, I'd say he's one prescient president....