Quantitative, succinct, and dedicated to reality. Craig, as an expert on exoplanets, please write a piece on the hype by research astrophysicists who claim to have discovered life in the universe. They spark a frenzy within the "news media" and podcasts. Misleading claims continue unabated, including the recent cases of K2-18b, the reported phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere, and the BLC-1 radio signal—among many others. In common, the reports are immediately and obviously wrong - such as the lack of any spectral absorption in K2-18b at all and that the planet has a thick hydrogen envelope.
Ha I just wrote a similar piece for this blog coming out in a few weeks calling out a similar problem with covid-19 pandemic research and communication. There are a lot of parallels between climate change and the pandemic in terms of the politicization and the impact of ideologically motivated sci-comm. I cannot believe the paper you shared in this piece..stunning...how embarrassing for science! Note the big blatant DEI section at the end, too.
As a paleoclimatologist, I have been warning the scientific community since the 1990s about exactly this kind of exaggeration. Unfortunately, my warnings have all been informal, in dozens of conversations and public statements, but not publications. Maybe I should have been more formal (and prolific) in my warnings, especially once the panic-induced precautionary principle* became the guiding philosophy for societal action among scientists. It's only gotten worse, and the public has only gotten more cynical about science.
*See Nicotra, J., and Parrish, J.T., 2010, Rushing the cure: Temporal rhetorics in global warming discourse: JAC—Rhetoric, Writing, Culture, and Politics, v. 30, p. 215-237.
Whether it's scientists writing questionable papers or baby boomers focusing on pensions and health care over young people, our whole society seems to have shifted into a "spend down our capital and don't consider the future" mode.
As a climate change scientist by training, I learned long ago that this "field" long ago ceased to be science and instead became propaganda with the full and willing assistance of most of the so-called climate change scientific community. The fact that the rest of the scientific community so far has failed to denounce their fraudulent peers en masse suggests that science overall is a like a rotten wooden ship...just waiting to plunge beneath the waves.
I might make another comment about the title of this excellent essay.
The author points out that we must "pursue truth." This is a very good call to arms. I have noticed that for the last decade or more, that many who subscribe to the current intellectual fads of the moment have been all too willing to discard the very notion of truth, or the desirability of its pursuit.
The problem is that the "woke mind virus" is associated with an abhorrence of the very concept of "truth", or at least universal truths. There are individualized truths; your truth, my truth, their truth, truths based on "lived experience" (whatever that is, exactly), truths based on "fairness" (but only to particular "privileged" groups, which change constantly in their composition), truths based on "belonging" (but only for some; others are to be cast into the darkness forever), truths based on "equity" (which is sort of an invented or repurposed word, stolen from the world of finance), truths with all manner of unusual and unconventional definitions. These "new truths" have little to do with the old dictionary definitions of truth, or the hallowed judicial determination of truth of longstanding, or the concept of truth found in the scientific method, or the result of precise mathematical logical arguments based on a set of assumed axioms or precepts.
These sorts of "new truths" are just created to push an agenda, to bully everyone else into silence by threats or worse. Now, we are called upon to say that sex is not binary and never was, that all males or many males can give birth, without the assistance of any potential new technologies to be developed in the future, that males and females are identical in every possible respect, and so on and so forth. These are horrendous lies, but no one dares point them out.
Some have lost their careers over attempts to counter these fraudulent claims. Some have been expelled from educational institutions, or sent to prison, or fined, or worse. These might seem minor, like an occasional tempest in a teapot, but they speak to a greater threat.
That is, if we surrender to these ridiculous notions, STEM itself is forfeit. If nothing means anything, if data and evidence and experimental results and evidence and the output of predictive models and the scientific method itself are nothing but meaningless rubbish, then what will happen to STEM?
There are very powerful figures, backed with immense resources who seek to silence all dissent. I personally have been permanently banned, for a lifetime, from social media sites for even alluding to the existence of "uncomfortable" published peer-reviewed studies (that dispute some of the ridiculous public claims) in private conversations. This was a step too far for those who worship at the altar of this new puritanical cult that brooks no disagreement from any quarter.
We better start to defend our craft. Or else, we will find ALL our institutions bankrupted, effectively burned to the ground, and our research grants and contracts zeroed.
If we are not allowed to even allude to the existence of universal truths, according to some widely accepted criteria, then what is the point of STEM at all?
It cannot last without the recognition of the existence of some truths that a substantial group of STEM professionals can agree on, at least temporarily during some time period until new paradigms and data emerge.
We have sacrificed the good will that science has managed to accumulate over the last few centuries to promote assorted nonsense. Many of our "leading figures" in science are nothing more than frauds and charlatans.
Does anyone really believe that the earth's oceans are currently "literally boiling"? This is a claim that has been repeatedly made by a political nincompoop who got a D in his "rocks for jocks" course (with no mathematics required) at one of our top institutions. And this grade was awarded at the time when one could get a "gentleman's C" for not showing up, not doing any of the homework or taking any of the exams.
So how did this character get a D?
And then when he was making outrageous unfounded statements about the earth's climate, his professor (who I had many personal contacts with) cautioned him. This politician immediately claimed from his exalted political perch that no one was to listen to the professor since he was a stupid old fool with dementia. And then, the instant this politician got into power, he immediately cut off all funding for our most important data. And this deed has been repeated several times over, every time his party gets into power.
This is in spite of declaring that climate change is the most important issue of all time facing the earth's population and that we are soon to be completely annihilated as a species. And possibly that all life on the planet will be extinguished. And of course, there is lots of evidence of fraud that has leaked out. Things look more and more ridiculous as time goes on.
Even one of the most important promoters of climate alarmism, a somewhat mentally impaired girl who captured the attention of the world's elites and media, has now decided after 10 years or so that climate change is no longer of any importance. She is far more concerned with exterminating Jews now. I suppose that is because it is more of a hot button issue.
This same uneducated fool has campaigned both for and against nuclear power, and for and against windmills. And when asked repeatedly about what should be done, she says she has no idea. She says it is all "up to the scientists". However, she does not know any scientists and does not know any science. And neither do the media covering her. But they do like her scolding the rest of us; "How dare you?"
This is all from the same elite class that insist that the earth's population must be reduced by 99.9% immediately, if not sooner. Sure, let's obliterate the humans on earth to save humanity. I do not even know what to say about this.
As more evidence of shenanigans continue to leak out about climate science and the pandemic and numerous other subfields of science, we start to look like complete fools and clowns, puppets dancing for our political masters so they can get richer and acquire more power.
Even the public knows that when a single failed bureaucrat with a very checkered scientific record declares himself personally to be synonymous with "the science", that there is nonsense afoot. Who can blame them? It was and continues to be, absolutely disgraceful. If our work cannot stand up to careful scrutiny, even by the least scientifically literate among the public which pays for this stuff then we can expect more consequences.
I notice that belatedly, the National Academies are trying to assist in sensible cutbacks of overspending and waste and fraud. Will it be enough? Will it do any good?
I have no idea.
I noticed years ago that something was amiss in STEM. I saw way too much cheating and far too much promotion of complete incompetents and the lowering of standards.
We really have only ourselves to blame. We lost control of our discipline.
We better get on track towards repairing the damage.
I appreciate the overall spirit of this piece — the call for open, honest inquiry is sorely needed in our polarized discourse. That said, I do want to push back gently on one paragraph that risks veering into what I’d call “soft climate denial” — the type that doesn’t deny climate change, but selectively highlights positive-sounding trends to undercut legitimate concern.
“The Earth is greening, deaths from extreme weather are trending down, human poverty and malnourishment are both projected to continue to improve despite climate change, fire risk is headed downwards, hurricane frequency shows no long term trend, and coral growth is currently at all time highs on the Great Barrier Reef…”
Each of these claims has some basis in fact, but without context, they paint a skewed picture:
• “Greening” is largely driven by CO₂ fertilization and agricultural expansion, but it doesn’t imply healthy ecosystems or outweigh the downsides of climate disruption.
• Deaths from extreme weather are down because of adaptation, not because climate change is harmless — and adaptation isn’t free or equally available.
• Poverty and malnourishment projections improving despite climate change isn’t evidence that climate isn’t a threat; many credible analyses warn it will hinder future progress, especially in vulnerable regions.
• Fire risk and hurricane frequency stats depend heavily on what metrics you choose. Intensity and damage are trending up, even if frequency isn’t.
• Coral growth on the GBR has rebounded in the short term, but scientists are clear that diversity and resilience are declining — and another bleaching event could undo recent gains.
Cherry-picking these “good news” trends, especially without acknowledging the broader and more complex scientific context, ends up sounding like an attempt to reassure away the problem. That’s just the inverse of the doomism you rightly criticize.
Honest assessments do need to report the good and the bad — but this means framing them within the full picture, not just selectively listing hopeful indicators.
BTW, if you have some sources to hand on the points you made, I'd enjoy reading them.
Some thoughts:
• “Greening” is largely driven by CO₂ fertilization and agricultural expansion, but it doesn’t imply healthy ecosystems or outweigh the downsides of climate disruption.
--> Of course CO2 fertilisation is driving the change. That's the point! :) It is helping some ecosystems, even as others suffer. Furthermore, I personally consider it a fallacy that climate change is majorly responsible for ecosystem disruption and especially extinctions. The consensus / evidence points to human over-use of land and sea resources as the primary driver of such disruption. For example:
• Deaths from extreme weather are down because of adaptation, not because climate change is harmless — and adaptation isn’t free or equally available.
Yes, but he point is that humans do adapt, and so the narrative about civilisational collapse is based on pretty much nothing.
Also, not entirely true. As in the reference I linked, rising temperatures are currently directly driving deaths from low temperatures down, and low temperature related deaths account for 90% of temperature-related deaths. So, for the time being, climate change is technically net saving lives.
Most of the places most at risk from heat wave deaths are also the places with the least infrastructure in place to deal with it / the most air pollution, and therefore stand to see the most improvements in guarding against heatwaves in coming decades as things improve on both fronts.
• Poverty and malnourishment projections improving despite climate change isn’t evidence that climate isn’t a threat; many credible analyses warn it will hinder future progress, especially in vulnerable regions.
As shown in the studies I linked, climate change has the potential to slow progress but not to stall it or to reverse it. I never said that was great, but it does argue very strongly against a collapse narrative.
Finally, on fire, a big reason that impact goes up even as frequency goes down is that humans are exponentially increasing the value, density, and interconnectedness of infrastructure, such that natural disasters do more damage even if their frequency is unchanging.
None of that is to say that there is no threat from climate change, but the topic is very nuanced and there is a lot of reasons to be optimistic for humanity. Not so much for natural ecosystems that get obliterated by our civilisation, which is where the term crisis has much more relevant in my view.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Dr. Walton — I appreciate your openness to sources, and I don’t question your credentials or sincerity. My concern is the framing: by emphasizing selected positives without equal attention to risks, your piece risks reinforcing a narrative often used by those downplaying the urgency of climate action. A few clarifying notes, with sources:
1. CO₂ greening
Yes, CO₂ fertilization is contributing to global greening, but this doesn’t imply ecosystem health. Much of the greening favors invasive or low-diversity vegetation, and it’s already showing signs of saturation. Nutrient and water limitations, rising heat stress, and biodiversity loss undercut the net benefit.
🔗 Peñuelas et al. 2017 – Nature E&E
🔗 Zhu et al. 2016 – Nature Climate Change
2. Extreme weather deaths
Yes, adaptation has reduced vulnerability — but it’s uneven. The drop in cold-related deaths (which still dominate today) is expected to plateau, while heat deaths are rising sharply and expected to surpass them as warming continues.
🔗 Gasparrini et al. 2015 – The Lancet
🔗 Ebi et al. 2021 – Lancet Planetary Health
3. Poverty and malnutrition
Projections showing continued improvement assume strong development — but the IPCC and World Bank warn that climate change will increasingly hinder gains, especially in vulnerable regions. Even slowing progress is consequential.
Yes, rising infrastructure costs amplify losses, but it’s misleading to ignore the strong role climate now plays in wildfire dynamics. In the western U.S., Canada, and Australia, warming and drying are clearly driving increases in area burned.
🔗 Abatzoglou et al. 2021 – PNAS
To be clear, I agree that doomism is unhelpful. But nuance isn’t just highlighting positives — it’s giving proper weight to real risks, feedbacks, and limits to adaptation. Many of us raising the alarm aren’t saying collapse is inevitable; we’re saying it’s possible if we get complacent. That’s why selective optimism, even if well-intentioned, can be misleading.
"Many of us raising the alarm aren’t saying collapse is inevitable; we’re saying it’s possible"
This is where I draw the line, personally. I think it is absolutely fine to outline the risks from climate change, but, as I note in the piece, there is so far not one paper actually arguing even for the possibility of collapse with any kind of quantitative reasoning (that I have seen). It is totally unstudied, and all of the evidence available is very far from any sort of catastrophe. I really do not think it is scientifically defensible to argue that collapse is possible without evidence. There is a major burden of proof to provide here for such a claim and it is currently absent.
Thanks for the follow-up — I appreciate the engagement and will take your openness to review sources in good faith.
On the question of collapse: I agree entirely that it’s important not to overstate the case. But I’d gently suggest that “absence of quantitative collapse models” isn’t the same as absence of evidence or of rational concern. Risk-based fields — from epidemiology to financial regulation to national security — routinely plan for low-probability, high-impact scenarios. Climate risk should be no different, especially given the deep uncertainties around tipping points and system interactions.
There are peer-reviewed studies that explore societal fragility in the face of compound climate stressors, particularly when interacting with inequality, political instability, and food insecurity. Notably:
Kemp et al. (2022): Climate Endgame in PNAS, which argues for precisely this kind of probabilistic risk analysis around worst-case outcomes — including global or regional collapse.
These don’t claim collapse is inevitable or even likely — but they do argue that it’s plausible enough to merit serious research, especially given how little we currently model systemic fragility in integrated assessments.
So yes, the burden of proof matters — but so does the precautionary principle. And I’d argue that exploring possible collapse scenarios is part of a scientifically defensible response to uncertainty and risk.
"exploring possible collapse scenarios is part of a scientifically defensible response to uncertainty and risk" - yes, but that involves actually doing science, not publishing pictures of floods and made-up histograms as in Ripple et al :D
I know these papers. Both argue that we need to study this topic - I say as much in my comment piece - and neither have any results yet to say that this possibility is a thing. In science, you cannot rule out something for which you have no evidence, but you also should not take it that seriously. I would also argue that there is a lot of evidence against the possibility. From where I am standing, the mechanism by which climate change threatens us more than AI, war, and resource over-use is unclear.
The situation is summarised neatly in Steel et al PNAS 2022:
“Despite discussing many adverse impacts, climate science literature, as synthesized for instance by assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has little at all to say about whether or under which conditions climate change might threaten civilization.”
Hi Clifton - thanks for your comment. I would like to reply quite robustly, to put your mind at ease and to defend my scientific integrity. I am an Earth Scientist at Cambridge, and I have chosen my words very carefully in the short space available in this piece.
First off, I completely reject the description of "soft climate denial — the type that doesn’t deny climate change". Read that back. Climate denial that doesn't deny climate change? You need a more accurate term here, because of course at no point in my article did I dispute the existence of climate change. It's inaccurate and shouldn't be said about the piece or my thought process.
I don't like the word denier anyway, as it is unscientific. Any scientist is allowed to dispute a hypothesis / theory if they back their view up with evidence. The term deny is designed to make it seem like the critic should be automatically dismissed as they are up against something indisputable.
Anyway, what you go on to say is very different, which is to say that I have cherry picked some aspects of the situation to underplay it and, in so doing, unfairly dispute the consensus that climate change is harmful. I would again push back completely on this. This was not an article evaluating the actual risk from climate change. It was a call to review the impacts in a scientifically defensible manner.
The review by Ripple et al highlighted did not cite or discuss any of the studies I highlighted, but should have. I am of course aware of the many debates about how to assess the trends in the data and the future projections, all of which is dealt with in immense detail in the papers linked. My paragraph is self-evidently not a statement that 'everything is fine', but a statement that there is a lot of nuance here that does not line up with the idea of impending apocalypse - on which every serious Earth Scientist should probably be able to agree, in my view.
So, I disagree completely with the statement that my article is an inversion of the made-up doomerism. It's not. I state in the first sentence that climate change is a real phenomenon, and merely ask that the field actually reviews the impacts honestly. If and when I write an actual assessment of the future impacts myself and don't include the negatives, you can criticise these things more fairly. Though, that won't happen :D
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Just to be clear: my comment wasn’t meant to question your credentials. I recognize your academic background and the quality of your research — that wasn’t in doubt. My concern was with how one paragraph might be interpreted, especially in today’s polarized climate discourse.
I used the phrase “soft climate denial” not to label your intent, but to describe a style of argument — one that lists reassuring datapoints without context in a way that can unintentionally echo familiar tropes used to downplay risk. The fact that you believe in climate change doesn’t negate how that paragraph may land with readers, particularly those primed to hear “the crisis is overblown.”
You say the article wasn’t intended as a full climate assessment — which is fair. But if the goal is to push for honest, balanced evaluations, it’s important to avoid replacing alarmism with selective optimism. That’s still a distortion, just in a different direction.
I did appreciate the broader spirit of your piece. My comment was meant in that same spirit — of open, critical engagement in the pursuit of truth.
This is a nice sentence, except that you apparently do not really mean it. What you clearly would prefer is that everyone else just be silent so you can spew nonsense, unimpeded.
I can provide lots of references to work showing issues with your forgone conclusions, such as:
Are Climate Model Forecasts Useful for Policy Making? by Kesten C. Green and Willie Soon.
But would you read them? Or just vacuously dismiss everything, including contradictory satellite data and ice accumulation data and all kinds of other stuff?
And that is why we are where we are. And the public who are paying for this disaster are becoming more and more annoyed.
As I have said repeatedly previously, perhaps it is time for climate scientists to get completely off the government dole. And have to self-fund, totally. Because what we are doing now is sort of a disgrace.
Thomas, I genuinely appreciate discussion — but not bad faith or deflection. You’ve repeatedly dismissed climate science with sweeping generalizations, cited long-debunked sources like Willie Soon, and avoided engaging with peer-reviewed data that runs counter to your view. That’s not inquiry, that’s performance.
I’m happy to discuss credible research, but not blog posts that circulate in denialist echo chambers or calls to dismantle public science funding. If you’re sincerely interested in sources, we can talk about recent attribution studies, observational trends, or IPCC methods. But if the goal is just to throw rhetorical bombs, I’ll bow out — life’s too short.
which compare Milankovich climate estimates to paleoclimate data, including the motions of all the planets and include geometrodynamics, and get half a dozen or more significant figures of agreement.
But of course, you would rather just go with handwaving and consensus.
By the way, I see you favor "concensus". Well, if we relied on consensus, we would not have Newton or Maxwell or Einstein or Bell or any number of other scientific luminaries.
And I am sure that you think there were NO errors whatsoever during the pandemic and the response. And the disease originated in a wet market in Wuhan. All based on OVERWHELMING consensus. To the point that if you said otherwise, you would have destroyed your career and might have even ended up in prison. So you keep arguing that way. It is VERY compelling.
Now tell me about deseasonalization. And who discovered the first climate feedback mechanism? Published in Nature.
Of course, you are correct. There are a mix of positive and negative observations.
However, there are many indications that both our modeling and data analyses are substandard. We still do not have real confirmation of measurable statistically significant anthropogenic influences on the global climate system, aside from localized heat island effects. Undoubtedly these exist, but our technology is still too primitive to reveal them.
The biggest risk always has been, and remains, the potential that the positive feedbacks in the climate system could overwhelm the stabilizing negative feedbacks in the system. We do not even know all of the relevant mechanisms or have them properly calibrated. So we are still sort of groping in the dark here, as we have been doing for the last several decades. It is a bit embarrassing, considering the immense investments that have been made.
Since the system is clearly nonlinear, it is of course subject to all the standard nonlinear dynamical effects. And that is the true risk.Tiny imbalances can result in runaway effects, obviously.
My impression is that we have squandered the public interest in this interesting subject by allying ourselves with politicians who are pushing crazy agendas, and with assorted catastrophists and alarmists. And now, the public grows weary and bored. It is a sort of "chicken little effect", analogous to the "boy who cried wolf".
By appearing to be partisans and nonobjective, we look like puppets and imbeciles, or at the very least, dishonest.
Thanks for your response, Thomas. While it’s true that the climate system is complex and nonlinear, your suggestion that we lack statistically significant evidence of anthropogenic influence is simply incorrect. Decades of attribution research — drawing on paleoclimate data, radiative forcing theory, and fingerprinting techniques — show strong, quantifiable human influence on global temperature, ocean heat content, cryosphere loss, and more.
No credible climate model or assessment suggests that we’re “groping in the dark.” Uncertainty exists, as it does in any scientific field, but it’s bounded and continuously refined. Risk management, especially for nonlinear systems, doesn’t require perfect knowledge — it requires actionable understanding, which we already have.
You raise an important concern about public trust. But trust is eroded less by alarmism than by perceived inaction, delays, and misinformation — including the idea that our tools are “too primitive” to detect human impact, which is demonstrably false.
This whole exchange was an interesting read as an outsider.
Here's what I keep observing in exchanges like these.
Public trust is harmed by alarmism if you are politicly right and harmed by inaction if you're politically left.
I'd love to see someone say it directly. The left wants climate change to be an apocalypse because it's a better case for socialist-like wealth redistribution. The right wants it to be less if a catastrophe and more uncertain because of a committed belief in our dominion over the Earth as given by God.
Each side is sick and tired of the other side's tactics. So am I. Climate change can be real, and caused by humans, and we don't have to freak out that it means God is dead or that humans aren't special, nor does it have to mean we will go extinct or soluble only with top down government control and binding international treaties.
What everyone REALLY cares about deep down is protecting their time-honed view of the world, not the climate. And you are all wrong about half of the issue and I'm very very exhausted from the lack of scientific thinking all around. Be okay with changing your view, for real, not just for show in an argument.
No, I am pretty well informed about what the evidence suggests is likely for climate change impacts, and have little time for religious arguments or the socialist utopian thinking of the left.
Since you want me to state it directly, I am quite happy to:
The left wants climate change to be an apocalypse because it's a better case for socialist-like wealth redistribution. The right wants it to be less if a catastrophe and more uncertain because of a committed belief in our dominion over the Earth as given by God.
I agree completely with that statement. However, it does not apply to me. I do not 'want' climate change to be an apocalypse or not. I literally only care about the evidence, which suggests that it won't be.
I agree that there's no evidence for an apocalypse.
It's interesting that you doubt the human-caused part because the climate scientists I know personally, neither of whom are left at all, both seem to be convinced by the data regarding our role in it.
Why specifically do you say that the evidence is weak for that?
BTW as soon as I hit post I realized you could respond telling me you aren't religious which is fair and I apologize. Is it possible there's a non religious motivation to doubt our role in it because the left has so aggressively shamed humanity over climate change that deep down there's a part of you not wanting them to have any shred of a point?
Making things so partisan and sided (for which I personally think the socialist left shares most but not all of the blame) does this. It pushes the middle to the edges. It makes it harder and harder to just talk about all the evidence.
Why do you doubt the human-caused part of the data?
I don't doubt the human-caused part of climate change. Not sure where you got that from in what I wrote?
Again, this isn't about me reacting to unscientific leftist propaganda by dismissing the issue out of hand. The cold hard truth of the data is that climate change is real, caused by humans, and will have a moderate - but not catastrophic - impact in the next 100 years. The doomers do have a shred of a point, but only a shred.
On that shred, the key point I would make here is that I basically fully expect humanity to adapt to climate change, but have less hope for animals. The biodiversity crisis - largely unrelated to climate change, and instead related to how our civilisation uses resources - is very much real.
I have ZERO doubt that humans are affecting global climate. Our tools just cannot measure it, aside from local heat island effects. When we correct for these, we see no warming.
I specialize in pulling extremely tiny signals out of very noisy data. That is what I do for a living.
And I am asserting with pretty strong confidence that we have not done this yet.
I hope to do it. I will sure try very hard to do it.
But so far, I am not impressed. And I worked very closely with the best the US has to offer in this area. Including Suki Manabe, the Nobel Prizewinner. So...
Since this is my specialty, to which I have devoted decades, I would beg to differ. Most of what you are describing is just pseudoscience and nonsense.
I create REAL data-based technologies. Which actually work, instead of relying on hand-waving. Almost every single American uses my technologies on a daily basis, usually more than once. Tens of billions of dollars have been invested in them.
When I look at what passes for "climate science", I see a pitiful mess. And slowly but surely, the fraud and nonsense is being exposed. For example, climatologists do not even know how to remove the seasonal cycles from their data, relying on techniques that were shown to be obsolete centuries ago, and totally discredited. Do not pretend this is a serious discipline.
Without going into great detail, tell me why several Nobel Prizewinners and others have said everything you claimed is a complete load of rubbish. Do they ALL have dementia and you are some sort of super genius able to see what no one else credible can see, even people with much more substantial backgrounds than you? Why do we have to believe YOU, of all people, someone posting nonsense on an internet blog?
But feel free to scream your head off and run around like a lunatic about how the earth is coming to an end. Perhaps you would like to join with those extremists who have repeatedly stated that we need a massive thermonuclear exchange, worldwide, to destroy all traces of humanity, to "save" the environment. Great. Sounds like really a fantastic idea.
Quantitative, succinct, and dedicated to reality. Craig, as an expert on exoplanets, please write a piece on the hype by research astrophysicists who claim to have discovered life in the universe. They spark a frenzy within the "news media" and podcasts. Misleading claims continue unabated, including the recent cases of K2-18b, the reported phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere, and the BLC-1 radio signal—among many others. In common, the reports are immediately and obviously wrong - such as the lack of any spectral absorption in K2-18b at all and that the planet has a thick hydrogen envelope.
Ha I just wrote a similar piece for this blog coming out in a few weeks calling out a similar problem with covid-19 pandemic research and communication. There are a lot of parallels between climate change and the pandemic in terms of the politicization and the impact of ideologically motivated sci-comm. I cannot believe the paper you shared in this piece..stunning...how embarrassing for science! Note the big blatant DEI section at the end, too.
As a paleoclimatologist, I have been warning the scientific community since the 1990s about exactly this kind of exaggeration. Unfortunately, my warnings have all been informal, in dozens of conversations and public statements, but not publications. Maybe I should have been more formal (and prolific) in my warnings, especially once the panic-induced precautionary principle* became the guiding philosophy for societal action among scientists. It's only gotten worse, and the public has only gotten more cynical about science.
*See Nicotra, J., and Parrish, J.T., 2010, Rushing the cure: Temporal rhetorics in global warming discourse: JAC—Rhetoric, Writing, Culture, and Politics, v. 30, p. 215-237.
Whether it's scientists writing questionable papers or baby boomers focusing on pensions and health care over young people, our whole society seems to have shifted into a "spend down our capital and don't consider the future" mode.
Even worse ... they think spending IS considering the future.
As a climate change scientist by training, I learned long ago that this "field" long ago ceased to be science and instead became propaganda with the full and willing assistance of most of the so-called climate change scientific community. The fact that the rest of the scientific community so far has failed to denounce their fraudulent peers en masse suggests that science overall is a like a rotten wooden ship...just waiting to plunge beneath the waves.
I might make another comment about the title of this excellent essay.
The author points out that we must "pursue truth." This is a very good call to arms. I have noticed that for the last decade or more, that many who subscribe to the current intellectual fads of the moment have been all too willing to discard the very notion of truth, or the desirability of its pursuit.
The problem is that the "woke mind virus" is associated with an abhorrence of the very concept of "truth", or at least universal truths. There are individualized truths; your truth, my truth, their truth, truths based on "lived experience" (whatever that is, exactly), truths based on "fairness" (but only to particular "privileged" groups, which change constantly in their composition), truths based on "belonging" (but only for some; others are to be cast into the darkness forever), truths based on "equity" (which is sort of an invented or repurposed word, stolen from the world of finance), truths with all manner of unusual and unconventional definitions. These "new truths" have little to do with the old dictionary definitions of truth, or the hallowed judicial determination of truth of longstanding, or the concept of truth found in the scientific method, or the result of precise mathematical logical arguments based on a set of assumed axioms or precepts.
These sorts of "new truths" are just created to push an agenda, to bully everyone else into silence by threats or worse. Now, we are called upon to say that sex is not binary and never was, that all males or many males can give birth, without the assistance of any potential new technologies to be developed in the future, that males and females are identical in every possible respect, and so on and so forth. These are horrendous lies, but no one dares point them out.
Some have lost their careers over attempts to counter these fraudulent claims. Some have been expelled from educational institutions, or sent to prison, or fined, or worse. These might seem minor, like an occasional tempest in a teapot, but they speak to a greater threat.
That is, if we surrender to these ridiculous notions, STEM itself is forfeit. If nothing means anything, if data and evidence and experimental results and evidence and the output of predictive models and the scientific method itself are nothing but meaningless rubbish, then what will happen to STEM?
There are very powerful figures, backed with immense resources who seek to silence all dissent. I personally have been permanently banned, for a lifetime, from social media sites for even alluding to the existence of "uncomfortable" published peer-reviewed studies (that dispute some of the ridiculous public claims) in private conversations. This was a step too far for those who worship at the altar of this new puritanical cult that brooks no disagreement from any quarter.
We better start to defend our craft. Or else, we will find ALL our institutions bankrupted, effectively burned to the ground, and our research grants and contracts zeroed.
If we are not allowed to even allude to the existence of universal truths, according to some widely accepted criteria, then what is the point of STEM at all?
It cannot last without the recognition of the existence of some truths that a substantial group of STEM professionals can agree on, at least temporarily during some time period until new paradigms and data emerge.
We have sacrificed the good will that science has managed to accumulate over the last few centuries to promote assorted nonsense. Many of our "leading figures" in science are nothing more than frauds and charlatans.
Does anyone really believe that the earth's oceans are currently "literally boiling"? This is a claim that has been repeatedly made by a political nincompoop who got a D in his "rocks for jocks" course (with no mathematics required) at one of our top institutions. And this grade was awarded at the time when one could get a "gentleman's C" for not showing up, not doing any of the homework or taking any of the exams.
So how did this character get a D?
And then when he was making outrageous unfounded statements about the earth's climate, his professor (who I had many personal contacts with) cautioned him. This politician immediately claimed from his exalted political perch that no one was to listen to the professor since he was a stupid old fool with dementia. And then, the instant this politician got into power, he immediately cut off all funding for our most important data. And this deed has been repeated several times over, every time his party gets into power.
This is in spite of declaring that climate change is the most important issue of all time facing the earth's population and that we are soon to be completely annihilated as a species. And possibly that all life on the planet will be extinguished. And of course, there is lots of evidence of fraud that has leaked out. Things look more and more ridiculous as time goes on.
Even one of the most important promoters of climate alarmism, a somewhat mentally impaired girl who captured the attention of the world's elites and media, has now decided after 10 years or so that climate change is no longer of any importance. She is far more concerned with exterminating Jews now. I suppose that is because it is more of a hot button issue.
This same uneducated fool has campaigned both for and against nuclear power, and for and against windmills. And when asked repeatedly about what should be done, she says she has no idea. She says it is all "up to the scientists". However, she does not know any scientists and does not know any science. And neither do the media covering her. But they do like her scolding the rest of us; "How dare you?"
This is all from the same elite class that insist that the earth's population must be reduced by 99.9% immediately, if not sooner. Sure, let's obliterate the humans on earth to save humanity. I do not even know what to say about this.
As more evidence of shenanigans continue to leak out about climate science and the pandemic and numerous other subfields of science, we start to look like complete fools and clowns, puppets dancing for our political masters so they can get richer and acquire more power.
Even the public knows that when a single failed bureaucrat with a very checkered scientific record declares himself personally to be synonymous with "the science", that there is nonsense afoot. Who can blame them? It was and continues to be, absolutely disgraceful. If our work cannot stand up to careful scrutiny, even by the least scientifically literate among the public which pays for this stuff then we can expect more consequences.
I notice that belatedly, the National Academies are trying to assist in sensible cutbacks of overspending and waste and fraud. Will it be enough? Will it do any good?
I have no idea.
I noticed years ago that something was amiss in STEM. I saw way too much cheating and far too much promotion of complete incompetents and the lowering of standards.
We really have only ourselves to blame. We lost control of our discipline.
We better get on track towards repairing the damage.
I appreciate the overall spirit of this piece — the call for open, honest inquiry is sorely needed in our polarized discourse. That said, I do want to push back gently on one paragraph that risks veering into what I’d call “soft climate denial” — the type that doesn’t deny climate change, but selectively highlights positive-sounding trends to undercut legitimate concern.
“The Earth is greening, deaths from extreme weather are trending down, human poverty and malnourishment are both projected to continue to improve despite climate change, fire risk is headed downwards, hurricane frequency shows no long term trend, and coral growth is currently at all time highs on the Great Barrier Reef…”
Each of these claims has some basis in fact, but without context, they paint a skewed picture:
• “Greening” is largely driven by CO₂ fertilization and agricultural expansion, but it doesn’t imply healthy ecosystems or outweigh the downsides of climate disruption.
• Deaths from extreme weather are down because of adaptation, not because climate change is harmless — and adaptation isn’t free or equally available.
• Poverty and malnourishment projections improving despite climate change isn’t evidence that climate isn’t a threat; many credible analyses warn it will hinder future progress, especially in vulnerable regions.
• Fire risk and hurricane frequency stats depend heavily on what metrics you choose. Intensity and damage are trending up, even if frequency isn’t.
• Coral growth on the GBR has rebounded in the short term, but scientists are clear that diversity and resilience are declining — and another bleaching event could undo recent gains.
Cherry-picking these “good news” trends, especially without acknowledging the broader and more complex scientific context, ends up sounding like an attempt to reassure away the problem. That’s just the inverse of the doomism you rightly criticize.
Honest assessments do need to report the good and the bad — but this means framing them within the full picture, not just selectively listing hopeful indicators.
BTW, if you have some sources to hand on the points you made, I'd enjoy reading them.
Some thoughts:
• “Greening” is largely driven by CO₂ fertilization and agricultural expansion, but it doesn’t imply healthy ecosystems or outweigh the downsides of climate disruption.
--> Of course CO2 fertilisation is driving the change. That's the point! :) It is helping some ecosystems, even as others suffer. Furthermore, I personally consider it a fallacy that climate change is majorly responsible for ecosystem disruption and especially extinctions. The consensus / evidence points to human over-use of land and sea resources as the primary driver of such disruption. For example:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm9982 - “We show that land/sea use change has been the dominant direct driver of recent biodiversity loss worldwide.” (Science, 2022)
• Deaths from extreme weather are down because of adaptation, not because climate change is harmless — and adaptation isn’t free or equally available.
Yes, but he point is that humans do adapt, and so the narrative about civilisational collapse is based on pretty much nothing.
Also, not entirely true. As in the reference I linked, rising temperatures are currently directly driving deaths from low temperatures down, and low temperature related deaths account for 90% of temperature-related deaths. So, for the time being, climate change is technically net saving lives.
Most of the places most at risk from heat wave deaths are also the places with the least infrastructure in place to deal with it / the most air pollution, and therefore stand to see the most improvements in guarding against heatwaves in coming decades as things improve on both fronts.
• Poverty and malnourishment projections improving despite climate change isn’t evidence that climate isn’t a threat; many credible analyses warn it will hinder future progress, especially in vulnerable regions.
As shown in the studies I linked, climate change has the potential to slow progress but not to stall it or to reverse it. I never said that was great, but it does argue very strongly against a collapse narrative.
Finally, on fire, a big reason that impact goes up even as frequency goes down is that humans are exponentially increasing the value, density, and interconnectedness of infrastructure, such that natural disasters do more damage even if their frequency is unchanging.
None of that is to say that there is no threat from climate change, but the topic is very nuanced and there is a lot of reasons to be optimistic for humanity. Not so much for natural ecosystems that get obliterated by our civilisation, which is where the term crisis has much more relevant in my view.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Dr. Walton — I appreciate your openness to sources, and I don’t question your credentials or sincerity. My concern is the framing: by emphasizing selected positives without equal attention to risks, your piece risks reinforcing a narrative often used by those downplaying the urgency of climate action. A few clarifying notes, with sources:
1. CO₂ greening
Yes, CO₂ fertilization is contributing to global greening, but this doesn’t imply ecosystem health. Much of the greening favors invasive or low-diversity vegetation, and it’s already showing signs of saturation. Nutrient and water limitations, rising heat stress, and biodiversity loss undercut the net benefit.
🔗 Peñuelas et al. 2017 – Nature E&E
🔗 Zhu et al. 2016 – Nature Climate Change
2. Extreme weather deaths
Yes, adaptation has reduced vulnerability — but it’s uneven. The drop in cold-related deaths (which still dominate today) is expected to plateau, while heat deaths are rising sharply and expected to surpass them as warming continues.
🔗 Gasparrini et al. 2015 – The Lancet
🔗 Ebi et al. 2021 – Lancet Planetary Health
3. Poverty and malnutrition
Projections showing continued improvement assume strong development — but the IPCC and World Bank warn that climate change will increasingly hinder gains, especially in vulnerable regions. Even slowing progress is consequential.
🔗 IPCC AR6 WGII (2022) – See Ch. 9 (Africa), Ch. 10 (Asia)
🔗 World Bank (2020) – Poverty & Shared Prosperity
4. Fire trends
Yes, rising infrastructure costs amplify losses, but it’s misleading to ignore the strong role climate now plays in wildfire dynamics. In the western U.S., Canada, and Australia, warming and drying are clearly driving increases in area burned.
🔗 Abatzoglou et al. 2021 – PNAS
To be clear, I agree that doomism is unhelpful. But nuance isn’t just highlighting positives — it’s giving proper weight to real risks, feedbacks, and limits to adaptation. Many of us raising the alarm aren’t saying collapse is inevitable; we’re saying it’s possible if we get complacent. That’s why selective optimism, even if well-intentioned, can be misleading.
Happy to keep this constructive.
I will check out the sources - thanks!
"Many of us raising the alarm aren’t saying collapse is inevitable; we’re saying it’s possible"
This is where I draw the line, personally. I think it is absolutely fine to outline the risks from climate change, but, as I note in the piece, there is so far not one paper actually arguing even for the possibility of collapse with any kind of quantitative reasoning (that I have seen). It is totally unstudied, and all of the evidence available is very far from any sort of catastrophe. I really do not think it is scientifically defensible to argue that collapse is possible without evidence. There is a major burden of proof to provide here for such a claim and it is currently absent.
Thanks for the follow-up — I appreciate the engagement and will take your openness to review sources in good faith.
On the question of collapse: I agree entirely that it’s important not to overstate the case. But I’d gently suggest that “absence of quantitative collapse models” isn’t the same as absence of evidence or of rational concern. Risk-based fields — from epidemiology to financial regulation to national security — routinely plan for low-probability, high-impact scenarios. Climate risk should be no different, especially given the deep uncertainties around tipping points and system interactions.
There are peer-reviewed studies that explore societal fragility in the face of compound climate stressors, particularly when interacting with inequality, political instability, and food insecurity. Notably:
Kemp et al. (2022): Climate Endgame in PNAS, which argues for precisely this kind of probabilistic risk analysis around worst-case outcomes — including global or regional collapse.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108146119
Homer-Dixon et al. (2021): Cascade Institute paper on climate tipping points and societal breakdown.
https://cascadeinstitute.org/technical-paper/climate-change-and-societal-collapse/
These don’t claim collapse is inevitable or even likely — but they do argue that it’s plausible enough to merit serious research, especially given how little we currently model systemic fragility in integrated assessments.
So yes, the burden of proof matters — but so does the precautionary principle. And I’d argue that exploring possible collapse scenarios is part of a scientifically defensible response to uncertainty and risk.
"exploring possible collapse scenarios is part of a scientifically defensible response to uncertainty and risk" - yes, but that involves actually doing science, not publishing pictures of floods and made-up histograms as in Ripple et al :D
I know these papers. Both argue that we need to study this topic - I say as much in my comment piece - and neither have any results yet to say that this possibility is a thing. In science, you cannot rule out something for which you have no evidence, but you also should not take it that seriously. I would also argue that there is a lot of evidence against the possibility. From where I am standing, the mechanism by which climate change threatens us more than AI, war, and resource over-use is unclear.
The situation is summarised neatly in Steel et al PNAS 2022:
“Despite discussing many adverse impacts, climate science literature, as synthesized for instance by assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has little at all to say about whether or under which conditions climate change might threaten civilization.”
Hi Clifton - thanks for your comment. I would like to reply quite robustly, to put your mind at ease and to defend my scientific integrity. I am an Earth Scientist at Cambridge, and I have chosen my words very carefully in the short space available in this piece.
First off, I completely reject the description of "soft climate denial — the type that doesn’t deny climate change". Read that back. Climate denial that doesn't deny climate change? You need a more accurate term here, because of course at no point in my article did I dispute the existence of climate change. It's inaccurate and shouldn't be said about the piece or my thought process.
I don't like the word denier anyway, as it is unscientific. Any scientist is allowed to dispute a hypothesis / theory if they back their view up with evidence. The term deny is designed to make it seem like the critic should be automatically dismissed as they are up against something indisputable.
Anyway, what you go on to say is very different, which is to say that I have cherry picked some aspects of the situation to underplay it and, in so doing, unfairly dispute the consensus that climate change is harmful. I would again push back completely on this. This was not an article evaluating the actual risk from climate change. It was a call to review the impacts in a scientifically defensible manner.
The review by Ripple et al highlighted did not cite or discuss any of the studies I highlighted, but should have. I am of course aware of the many debates about how to assess the trends in the data and the future projections, all of which is dealt with in immense detail in the papers linked. My paragraph is self-evidently not a statement that 'everything is fine', but a statement that there is a lot of nuance here that does not line up with the idea of impending apocalypse - on which every serious Earth Scientist should probably be able to agree, in my view.
So, I disagree completely with the statement that my article is an inversion of the made-up doomerism. It's not. I state in the first sentence that climate change is a real phenomenon, and merely ask that the field actually reviews the impacts honestly. If and when I write an actual assessment of the future impacts myself and don't include the negatives, you can criticise these things more fairly. Though, that won't happen :D
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Just to be clear: my comment wasn’t meant to question your credentials. I recognize your academic background and the quality of your research — that wasn’t in doubt. My concern was with how one paragraph might be interpreted, especially in today’s polarized climate discourse.
I used the phrase “soft climate denial” not to label your intent, but to describe a style of argument — one that lists reassuring datapoints without context in a way that can unintentionally echo familiar tropes used to downplay risk. The fact that you believe in climate change doesn’t negate how that paragraph may land with readers, particularly those primed to hear “the crisis is overblown.”
You say the article wasn’t intended as a full climate assessment — which is fair. But if the goal is to push for honest, balanced evaluations, it’s important to avoid replacing alarmism with selective optimism. That’s still a distortion, just in a different direction.
I did appreciate the broader spirit of your piece. My comment was meant in that same spirit — of open, critical engagement in the pursuit of truth.
"𝘐 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦 — 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯, 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦."
This is a nice sentence, except that you apparently do not really mean it. What you clearly would prefer is that everyone else just be silent so you can spew nonsense, unimpeded.
I can provide lots of references to work showing issues with your forgone conclusions, such as:
Are Climate Model Forecasts Useful for Policy Making? by Kesten C. Green and Willie Soon.
https://rclutz.com/2025/05/22/ipcc-climate-models-proven-to-lack-predictive-ability/
But would you read them? Or just vacuously dismiss everything, including contradictory satellite data and ice accumulation data and all kinds of other stuff?
And that is why we are where we are. And the public who are paying for this disaster are becoming more and more annoyed.
As I have said repeatedly previously, perhaps it is time for climate scientists to get completely off the government dole. And have to self-fund, totally. Because what we are doing now is sort of a disgrace.
Thomas, I genuinely appreciate discussion — but not bad faith or deflection. You’ve repeatedly dismissed climate science with sweeping generalizations, cited long-debunked sources like Willie Soon, and avoided engaging with peer-reviewed data that runs counter to your view. That’s not inquiry, that’s performance.
I’m happy to discuss credible research, but not blog posts that circulate in denialist echo chambers or calls to dismantle public science funding. If you’re sincerely interested in sources, we can talk about recent attribution studies, observational trends, or IPCC methods. But if the goal is just to throw rhetorical bombs, I’ll bow out — life’s too short.
Also, there are a suite of papers such as
Quadratic-inverse spectrum estimates: applications to palaeoclimatology
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.1990.0130
which compare Milankovich climate estimates to paleoclimate data, including the motions of all the planets and include geometrodynamics, and get half a dozen or more significant figures of agreement.
But of course, you would rather just go with handwaving and consensus.
By the way, I see you favor "concensus". Well, if we relied on consensus, we would not have Newton or Maxwell or Einstein or Bell or any number of other scientific luminaries.
And I am sure that you think there were NO errors whatsoever during the pandemic and the response. And the disease originated in a wet market in Wuhan. All based on OVERWHELMING consensus. To the point that if you said otherwise, you would have destroyed your career and might have even ended up in prison. So you keep arguing that way. It is VERY compelling.
Now tell me about deseasonalization. And who discovered the first climate feedback mechanism? Published in Nature.
I asked you about deseasonalization. Crickets.
And you think someone of the stature of Willie Soon, and several Nobellists are just full of it?
Great. You will single-handedly dismantle public funding of science if you continue in this vein. Keep up the good work.
Next, you can tell me you personally are synonymous with "the science". Nice.
Of course, you are correct. There are a mix of positive and negative observations.
However, there are many indications that both our modeling and data analyses are substandard. We still do not have real confirmation of measurable statistically significant anthropogenic influences on the global climate system, aside from localized heat island effects. Undoubtedly these exist, but our technology is still too primitive to reveal them.
The biggest risk always has been, and remains, the potential that the positive feedbacks in the climate system could overwhelm the stabilizing negative feedbacks in the system. We do not even know all of the relevant mechanisms or have them properly calibrated. So we are still sort of groping in the dark here, as we have been doing for the last several decades. It is a bit embarrassing, considering the immense investments that have been made.
Since the system is clearly nonlinear, it is of course subject to all the standard nonlinear dynamical effects. And that is the true risk.Tiny imbalances can result in runaway effects, obviously.
My impression is that we have squandered the public interest in this interesting subject by allying ourselves with politicians who are pushing crazy agendas, and with assorted catastrophists and alarmists. And now, the public grows weary and bored. It is a sort of "chicken little effect", analogous to the "boy who cried wolf".
By appearing to be partisans and nonobjective, we look like puppets and imbeciles, or at the very least, dishonest.
Thanks for your response, Thomas. While it’s true that the climate system is complex and nonlinear, your suggestion that we lack statistically significant evidence of anthropogenic influence is simply incorrect. Decades of attribution research — drawing on paleoclimate data, radiative forcing theory, and fingerprinting techniques — show strong, quantifiable human influence on global temperature, ocean heat content, cryosphere loss, and more.
No credible climate model or assessment suggests that we’re “groping in the dark.” Uncertainty exists, as it does in any scientific field, but it’s bounded and continuously refined. Risk management, especially for nonlinear systems, doesn’t require perfect knowledge — it requires actionable understanding, which we already have.
You raise an important concern about public trust. But trust is eroded less by alarmism than by perceived inaction, delays, and misinformation — including the idea that our tools are “too primitive” to detect human impact, which is demonstrably false.
This whole exchange was an interesting read as an outsider.
Here's what I keep observing in exchanges like these.
Public trust is harmed by alarmism if you are politicly right and harmed by inaction if you're politically left.
I'd love to see someone say it directly. The left wants climate change to be an apocalypse because it's a better case for socialist-like wealth redistribution. The right wants it to be less if a catastrophe and more uncertain because of a committed belief in our dominion over the Earth as given by God.
Each side is sick and tired of the other side's tactics. So am I. Climate change can be real, and caused by humans, and we don't have to freak out that it means God is dead or that humans aren't special, nor does it have to mean we will go extinct or soluble only with top down government control and binding international treaties.
What everyone REALLY cares about deep down is protecting their time-honed view of the world, not the climate. And you are all wrong about half of the issue and I'm very very exhausted from the lack of scientific thinking all around. Be okay with changing your view, for real, not just for show in an argument.
"You are all wrong"
No, I am pretty well informed about what the evidence suggests is likely for climate change impacts, and have little time for religious arguments or the socialist utopian thinking of the left.
Since you want me to state it directly, I am quite happy to:
The left wants climate change to be an apocalypse because it's a better case for socialist-like wealth redistribution. The right wants it to be less if a catastrophe and more uncertain because of a committed belief in our dominion over the Earth as given by God.
I agree completely with that statement. However, it does not apply to me. I do not 'want' climate change to be an apocalypse or not. I literally only care about the evidence, which suggests that it won't be.
I agree that there's no evidence for an apocalypse.
It's interesting that you doubt the human-caused part because the climate scientists I know personally, neither of whom are left at all, both seem to be convinced by the data regarding our role in it.
Why specifically do you say that the evidence is weak for that?
BTW as soon as I hit post I realized you could respond telling me you aren't religious which is fair and I apologize. Is it possible there's a non religious motivation to doubt our role in it because the left has so aggressively shamed humanity over climate change that deep down there's a part of you not wanting them to have any shred of a point?
Making things so partisan and sided (for which I personally think the socialist left shares most but not all of the blame) does this. It pushes the middle to the edges. It makes it harder and harder to just talk about all the evidence.
Why do you doubt the human-caused part of the data?
I don't doubt the human-caused part of climate change. Not sure where you got that from in what I wrote?
Again, this isn't about me reacting to unscientific leftist propaganda by dismissing the issue out of hand. The cold hard truth of the data is that climate change is real, caused by humans, and will have a moderate - but not catastrophic - impact in the next 100 years. The doomers do have a shred of a point, but only a shred.
On that shred, the key point I would make here is that I basically fully expect humanity to adapt to climate change, but have less hope for animals. The biodiversity crisis - largely unrelated to climate change, and instead related to how our civilisation uses resources - is very much real.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm9982 - “We show that land/sea use change has been the dominant direct driver of recent biodiversity loss worldwide.” (Science, 2022)
I have ZERO doubt that humans are affecting global climate. Our tools just cannot measure it, aside from local heat island effects. When we correct for these, we see no warming.
I specialize in pulling extremely tiny signals out of very noisy data. That is what I do for a living.
And I am asserting with pretty strong confidence that we have not done this yet.
I hope to do it. I will sure try very hard to do it.
But so far, I am not impressed. And I worked very closely with the best the US has to offer in this area. Including Suki Manabe, the Nobel Prizewinner. So...
Since this is my specialty, to which I have devoted decades, I would beg to differ. Most of what you are describing is just pseudoscience and nonsense.
I create REAL data-based technologies. Which actually work, instead of relying on hand-waving. Almost every single American uses my technologies on a daily basis, usually more than once. Tens of billions of dollars have been invested in them.
When I look at what passes for "climate science", I see a pitiful mess. And slowly but surely, the fraud and nonsense is being exposed. For example, climatologists do not even know how to remove the seasonal cycles from their data, relying on techniques that were shown to be obsolete centuries ago, and totally discredited. Do not pretend this is a serious discipline.
Without going into great detail, tell me why several Nobel Prizewinners and others have said everything you claimed is a complete load of rubbish. Do they ALL have dementia and you are some sort of super genius able to see what no one else credible can see, even people with much more substantial backgrounds than you? Why do we have to believe YOU, of all people, someone posting nonsense on an internet blog?
But feel free to scream your head off and run around like a lunatic about how the earth is coming to an end. Perhaps you would like to join with those extremists who have repeatedly stated that we need a massive thermonuclear exchange, worldwide, to destroy all traces of humanity, to "save" the environment. Great. Sounds like really a fantastic idea.