It’s about time recent EA comment auteur Holly A. was recognized with a Comment of the Day, and she actually had two strong candidates back-to-back. I chose the second. Both involved the same issue: garbage “climate change” advocacy and activism unhinged to actual facts. In the first comment, Holly impressively examined both the professors and the paper that sparked my post. I responded with gratitude, but noted that the technical details of the paper were not my concern. I wrote in part,
The ethics bottom line remains the same. There is not any “consensus.” The data is inconclusive. The hysteria is manipulated and politically motivated. Spending large amounts of treasure to alleviate a problem that is not well-understood is irresponsible. The news media has no interest in informing the public, and the people and politicians talking most loudly about climate change literally don’t know what they are talking about.
Fair?
Here is Holly A.’s response, the Comment of the Day on the post, “About That Climate Change ‘Consensus’”….
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I would say mostly fair.
As a scientist, here are things I definitely agree with:
1. Lots of problems with peer review AND I also treat peer-reviewed work differently than papers uploaded to the interwebs with zero peer review. Reviewers don’t catch all problems AND they are human and hence vulnerable to bias AND scientists, like all humans, have blind spots once they decide something is “settled science.”
2. Scientific consensus IS actually a thing AND it does not mean what it means in decision making (i.e., that EVERYBODY agrees). So, for example, there IS scientific consensus that evolution by natural selection occurred in the past and continues today, there IS scientific consensus that the climate has changed in the past century. This does not mean 100% agreement (which is actually a good thing, because contrary views keep prodding people to take another look and refine theories etc. in light of data that doesn’t quite fit — see Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, on normal science versus paradigm shifts. There is ALWAYS more to discover, more to understand, new ways of looking at data.
3. Science and policy are different realms with different imperatives. Scientists are trained to conclude articles by considering how they could be wrong, why more research is needed, ways in which their interpretations might be incomplete. Policy makers need to act, and their desire to act “based on science” creates a compelling motive to simplify and distort, and to broadcast to their audience a sense of certainty that most scientists would not endorse, and to NOT couch their pronouncements in qualifying language such as “based on our current understanding, which is likely to change as more data comes in and we refine — or even upend — the presently most popular interpretations.” They want a level of certainty that is a lot easier to find in religious dogma than sound science.
Ethics Alarms 
Gee thanks!
“[T]here IS scientific consensus that the climate has changed in the past century.”
There is?
What does “the climate has changed” mean? Were the instruments used throughout the past century uniform? What’s to say we’re not just accumulating a larger sample size as the years go by?
What does “climate” even mean? It seems to me the only observable phenomena are of the weather. Of course, the scientists maintaining there is a consensus always scold the unwashed by saying “weather isn’t climate” whenever the weather fails to behave the way the scientist all believe it will. Isn’t climate simply a description or typical weather?
And another question, in two words: “Pete Buttigieg?” Really? Are you from South Bend or St. Joe’s County? Pete Buttigieg? A Red Diaper Baby?
(Old Bill): What does “climate” even mean? Isn’t climate simply a description or typical weather?
Yes, kind of!! You have the gist!
The key is that climate looks at longer term patterns of weather — not days or weeks but seasons, years, decades, centuries, millenia
Some examples:
Is it raining right now where I am? = weather How likely is it to snow tomorrow where I am? = weather How many tropical storms are currently in progress in the Atlantic? = weather
The consistent tendency of summer to be warm and winter to be cold = climate The tendency of El Nino years to have one pattern of weather, and La Nina years a different one = climate Changes in average global temperature across decades or centuries = climate Ice Age = climate [ice storm = weather]
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From NOAA:
“Think about it this way: Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.
Weather is what you see outside on any particular day. So, for example, it may be 75° degrees and sunny or it could be 20° degrees with heavy snow. That’s the weather.
Climate is the average of that weather. For example, you can expect snow in the Northeast in January or for it to be hot and humid in the Southeast in July. This is climate. The climate record also includes extreme values such as record high temperatures or record amounts of rainfall. If you’ve ever heard your local weather person say “today we hit a record high for this day,” she is talking about climate records.
So when we are talking about climate change, we are talking about changes in long-term averages of daily weather. In most places, weather can change from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and season-to-season. Climate, however, is the average of weather over time and space.”
Holly, excellent commentary. Expanding on the problem you allude to. The problem with environmental commentary and policy is distinguishing between fact, fiction, and hype. This is made difficult due to the misleading information perpetuated by the abundance of virtue signalers, grifters, charlatans, and ignorant true believers. What is particularly irksome is their constant conflating of weather and climate. Climate is the average of weather patterns over an extended period, typically over multiple decades or even centuries.
I find it interesting that back in the 70s, “The Experts” were warning that we would be facing a global cooling event. Also in the 70s, OPEC restricted the supply of oil below the level of demand, triggering high fuel prices and long lines at the pumps. The gloom and doom that “The Experts” predicted then was that the world was running out of oil, and we had to wean ourselves off our dependence on oil as an energy source.
So far, the global cooling has not occurred, and the oil supply has not dried up. This suggests that the anti-oil cabal may have changed its tune to global warming. When empirical observation did not definitively support the global warming chant, the warning cry became Climate Change. I agree that our climate is changing. It has been since the Earth was formed. I will even concede that in my part of the planet, central New York, appears to be warming. This supposition is based on my experience since the 1970s. What I don’t know is if it is a natural occurrence, or our burning fossil fuels for energy, or both. I also don’t know if we can do anything about it.
“I also don’t know if we can do anything about it.”
Poor areas of The World (Asia, Malaysia, Africa, Mexico, etc.) are on pace to add 700,000,000 air conditioning units by 2030 and a total of 1.6 Billion (that’s Billion with a B!) by 2050.
This makes Climate Criminals (the UNIPCC) recoil in horror. Why? Because they believe everyone, (themselves excepted) should cut back energy usage 50 %.
Despite Lefty trembling like dry leaves in a strong wind (made drier and stronger due to Global Warming) at the mere mention of Climate Change, a hilarious conundrum results: Suffocating White Lefty Guilt requires they feel sorry for poor people…provided they aren’t melanin-deficient, Southern, Religious, Y-Chromosomal Unit Conservatives.
Even then, Lefty’s concern incuriously wilts like August lettuce just shy of their checkbooks…and the prospect of any sacrifice of personal comfort.
Once their vitals resume acceptable levels, ask them three (3) simple questions:
*What have you done,
*What are you doing, and
*What will you do going forward to address this problem?
The great unwashed want merely a fraction of the comforts many take for granted (improved diets, on-demand energy, above subsistence living, etc.), yet satisfying those desires will have a deleterious affect on Mother Gaia.
The (heh!) burning question: What can be done that won’t involve compromising a lifestyle of Brie, Chablis, & Wheat Grass Tea?
PWS
Thanks Tom! Yes, failure to distinguish between weather and climate patterns, and between local and global phenomena definitely muddies the water (hey, it’s really cold here today — what happened to global warming?) and sorting out what impact is plausibly from human activity (carbon, methane, freon–remember the ozone hole?) versus much longer range climate cycles is a fiendishly challenging scientific activity.
The Lindzen paper I linked to in my initial review of his scientific work points out problems with climate models, and climate scientists know there are problems! The models give conflicting predictions, don’t match some things scientists seem to know about earlier periods of climate change, etc. Linking climate change to inputs and dynamics is … a really hard problem. We have a historical record, but we can’t run true experiments.
Re global warming, measuring temperature is relatively easy compared to modelling climate. Piece of cake! The glaciers are actually retreating, ice is melting. That’s easily observable. SO much easier than understanding (let alone predicting) climate change over time…