This is mainly a catch up post for new readers who won’t recall the old days.
Listen to the podcast at YouTube, BitChute, or Gab. I’m late on this!
STATE OF THE WEATHER
You will naturally have noticed the increase in global warming posts. Which they now call “climate change”.
I used to believe in global warming, the story of which I put in How I Became A Renegade Scientist. I won’t repeat any of that here. But I do want to emphasize certain other points of science from the old days that are going to arise.
Nobody can, or should, believe in “climate change”. The reason is simple: “global warming” had a definite meaning; “climate change” doesn’t mean anything. Rather, it means whatever each listener wants to mean each time they hear it. It functions like “racism” does outside science.
That global warming became “climate change” is one reason, but not the most important reason, that I lost, and why you should lose, confidence in global warming. Let’s discuss that before the review.
It is true that in the early days of climatology a majority of scientists were concerned about global cooling and the looming ice age. This was exacerbated to some degree because of fears of nuclear winter. See The Horrible Predictions Of Climate Change.
Global cooling had its brief, albeit modest, fame. But the weather failed to cooperate. It got warmer, and then we had “global warming”. Everybody remembers that.
But again, alas, the weather failed its alleged masters. And that’s when we got this mysterious thing called “climate change”.
“CLIMATE CHANGE”
All (and not just a consensus of) scientists agree that the climate of the earth has changed before, that it is changing now, and that it will continue changing until the last trump. The temperature, its geographic and altitudinal distributions, the oceans, precipitation, everything—none of it has remained constant. All is ever in flux. The processes of change are inexorable: it cannot be stopped.
So it is perplexing to hear demands to “Fight climate change!” You may as well scream “Battle gravity!” or “War against electromagnetism!” You will achieve the same result.
The objection will be that is the human contributions to climate change that must be battled: that ought to be stopped or minimized.
It cannot be stopped. That is an impossibility. Not while people live. It can be minimized, but only in the same sense that it can be stopped. Which is to say, you must eliminate people to stop or minimize human contributions to a changing climate.
Any other argument about human contribution involves uncertain costs and benefits of amorphous actions, all of which rely on the quality of models and trust in politicians. More on models in a moment.
Meanwhile, the term “climate change” became a cudgel. Any bad weather event was called “climate change”. And not just weather events, but really bad events of all kinds were, and are, being tied to “climate change.”
Nothing good, though: “climate change” is incapable of any good. It is purely bad. It is always frightening, something which must be avoided at all costs.
“Climate change” thus serves the same purpose as wily unscrupulous evil gods did in pagan religions.
This is why nobody should “believe” in “climate change.” It does not mean anything fixed. It does not describe something that can be stopped.
DENIER!
“Climate change”, while still around, is falling out of popularity. They tried out “climate disruption” and a host of other apocalyptic terms as replacements, settling (for now) on “climate crisis.”
Which brings up “climate denier”. My answer when confronted with this is to always say, “Yes, I deny there is a climate.” This usually leaves the yeller perplexed. The reason is simple.
Because “denying” “climate change” has nothing to do with denying the climate changes, which, as said, everybody accepts. It means only that you do not want the “solutions” to the “crisis”, “solutions” the “Denier!”-crier badly wants.
Here’s a speech I did on this (this was seven years ago, and I’d change a bit here and there, but the core idea about true believers is sound): YouTube Link.
REMEMBER THIS
A small increase in global average temperature means almost nothing, and even less than nothing (i.e. it’s a benefit), which is all that global warming promised us.
If “climate change” is a threat, it is only because of those things that are affected by the changing weather, and not the small averaged temperature increase.
But those things affected by the weather are necessarily less certain than changes in the weather, which are themselves uncertain. The whole—the claims of “climate change” married to the bad things said will happen—must therefore necessarily be less certain than “climate change” itself.
If you haven’t already, read these:
Why You Don’t Have To Worry About Climate Change: Multiplication Of Uncertainties
How To Generate Massive Scientific Over-Certainty With These Four Simple Tricks
CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE PREDICTIONS FROM A SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE
The last is a talk I gave at the Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales in Madrid in 2008. I did a poor job, unnecessarily making things complex by introducing math. The basic idea was sound, but the method of communicating it was not.
BAD SCIENCE & STATISTICS
Now some highlights of the worst and badly over-confident science. We’ve done hundreds of articles over the last decade, and we’ve seen certain patterns. First, No: climatology is not a pseudoscience.
Consensuses (or is it consensii?):
Consensus in science (best!)
Time series are handled very, very baldy—not just in global warming, but everywhere. Here are some favorites:
Let’s Try This Time Series Thing Again (a five-parter)
How To Cheat, Or Fool Yourself, With Time Series: Climate Example
The Data Is The Data, Not The Model: With Climatology Time Series Example
Netherlands Temperature Controversy: Or, Yet Again, How Not To Do Time Series
Another is in complexity of temperature observations and estimations:
Global Average Temperature: An Exceedingly Brief Introduction To Bayesian Predictive Inference
Homogenization of temperature series (why it goes bad)
NOAA Whistleblower Claims Data Were ‘Adjusted’ to Make Global Warming Seem Worse
That “1-in-27 Million Chance That Earth’s Record Hot Streak Is Natural” Is Preposterous
Don’t even get me started on dust, a.k.a. PM2.5:
The Epidemiologist Fallacy Strikes Again: Premature Birth Rate Edition
The Epidemiologist Fallacy Strikes Again. EPA, CARB, And Air Pollution
Every bad things is caused by climate change. Here is only a scant sampling of the hundreds of papers we have reviewed:
Science Says Global Warming To Cause More Heart Attacks At Night, But Only For Crazy Men 60-64.
Global Warming Increases Disastrous Music: A Scientific Paper
Paper Claims Surprisingly Strong Link Between Climate Change And Violence
Zombie attacks might increase due to global warming, study shows (for some reason this was one of the biggest posts ever)
“Deniers” and our Expertocracy.
Elena Kagan’s Blind Love Of The Expertocracy: SCOTUS Slaps The EPA
Long Live The Expertocracy. Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution at 80
Death To Those Who Call For Death For Climate Change Denial!
Models and attributions:
Why Models Run Hot: Results From An Irreducibly Simple Climate Model
Attack Of The Black Swans From Outer Space! (another Taleb fantasty)
Model Selection and the Difficulty of Falsifying Probability Models
Lancet Says 1 in 6 Worldwide Deaths by Pollution: 67% More Than Coronadoom
I have a cameo in Climate Hustle, and Climate Hustle 2.
The bizarre:
There are many, many more. To find them, try the Classic Post page, or the search—which doesn’t work as well for old posts, since my old site was hacked (as described in the Renegade post linked above).
Buy my new book and learn to argue against the regime: Everything You Believe Is Wrong.
Just caught up with this long, invaluable essay on the climate hoax.
Great work!
If Leprauchans, Lilliputians, toy poodles, chihuahuas, church mice, midgets, dwarfs, Tom Thumb, Fiorella Laguardia, Robert Reich, Janet Reno, Hillary, Janet Yellin, Tony Fauci, and other such deformed creatures of morally-defective shortness (it's enough to make me short of breath!) cause the climate to change (it's so damn fickle that we call the wind, Maria,) how would we describe the longitudinal aggravations of turbulant climate caused by long-tall moral freaks, like the Obamas and Bidens?
I lol at shorter people battling climate change. That’ll be my excuse. I’m just a bit too tall.