Climate alarmism is an all too typical scientific scam replete with failure to follow the scientific method and many of the common illogical fallacies going back to Aristotle. The difference is that its proponents have had almost infinite resources to sell their scam, especially taking into account the “free” media support supplied by the mainstream media. But scam it nevertheless is since the scammers are benefitting from their efforts.
The consequences of successfully selling the scam in the US, as has occurred in Western Europe, are so large that the US economy would probably never recover its former growth and resilience. There will always be more decarbonization that can be “achieved.” Household income would grow little if any. Workers would be condemned to current real income or less for the indefinite future. Electricity would become increasingly unreliable and expensive, as in South Australia. And without substantial economic growth real estate values and pension liabilities would become even more unsupportable than they already are.
We can now say that all these sacrifices in convenience and economic welfare would have no significant effects on the weather or climate. The scammers claim that continued human-caused carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will result in a wide variety of adverse outcomes if the US does not meet their demands. Storms will be more destructive. Sea level will rise more rapidly. Global temperatures will rise catastrophically. But all this can be avoided if only humans will cause much less CO2 to be emitted into the atmosphere. They claim that such reductions are inexpensive and will cause few complications or inconveniences on the one hand but that human-caused CO2 emissions must be prevented on the other. To date none of these alleged effects have occurred. A more accurate analysis would show just the opposite. CO2 is a necessity of life itself since it makes possible green plants, the basis for animal life on Earth, and improves plant growth at current atmospheric levels
The Necessity to Keep the Scam Going
One of the main requirements of such scams is that the scammers keep it going. Any major slip-up or failure to take precautionary action can result in disaster for the scam. This is apparently what happened a few weeks ago when some prominent alarmist modelers decided to scale back their temperature forecasts, probably because the forecasts were continuing to be much higher than actual temperatures. They accomplished this by means of an article in a prestigious journal that the public very rarely reads. John Christy and other climate skeptics have been emphasizing this disparity for some time, and the climate alarmists may have decided that retreat was needed before more damage was done to their cause.
The main justifications offered for climate alarmism are expensive general circulation models, which cost taxpayers many billions of dollars but prove nothing except that garbage in results in garbage out. Even the United Nations, which is responsible for developing the scientific justification for the scam, has stated that climate cannot be usefully modeled. Instead what is needed is an entirely different approach so far used by only a few researchers that does not attempt to build models of coupled, non-linear chaotic systems such as climate. This appears possible based on available research but has never been undertaken by the climate alarmists, perhaps because they know what the conclusions would be.
The scammers have never offered any valid scientific evidence that any reductions are needed or that there would be any benefits at all. There is significant evidence that their ultimate goal of zero human-caused CO2 emissions cannot be achieved no matter how much is spent and at the cost of reducing other needed expenditures that would actually benefit humans and their environment. In other words it is a worthless scam that only benefits a few at great cost to the many. It helps sell newspapers and television news. It allows politicians to claim they are environmentalists. One of my professors, Richard Feynman, would have called it cargo cult science. And he would have been correct.
It is time to bring climate alarmism-inspired reductions of CO2 to an end and use the vast resources devoted to it to solve the many unsolved problems that would actually benefit from their use rather than on a non-problem that government can do very little if anything about.
Doc Carlin and I seem to agree climate change is cargo cult stuff. It’s a cult or belief or theology that the climate is changing. There is said to be scientific evidence on behalf of this belief that is overwhelming. Anyone who does not accept this is a flat earther, a scientific ignoramous or a scoundrel in the pay of fossil fuel interests.
The original cargo cultists were isolated Pacific Islanders who connected headphones made from coconut shells with straw to emulate radio communications with incoming planes carrying cargo. This showed modest understanding of the outside world and its scientific technologies.
Imagine if the New York Times and other champions of fake news covered cargo cults today. The reporters would go to the Solomon Islands and report to their loyal readers that the coconuts and straw approach DID work even better than radio waves and electronics! The Times thereby champions a Democratic Party endorsed theology over genuine technology. This is what the president aptly calls fake news.
Imagine what a scandal there would be if the Times claimed an isolated tribe without benefit of technological education could really use coconut shells to communicate with airborne pilots. Yet this fake reporting is what happens each and every time the mainstream media Endorses climate change. Alarmist scientists and the fake news media spout a dense fog of techno jargon, unthinkingly saluted by democratic politicians. Politics pretending to be environmental science.
This fraud hinges on a great many serious academic scientists in the United States not speaking out and instead going along with absurd nonsense thru acquiescent silence. A nation of sheep.
Whereas the Washington post once sought the truth on watergate, now the post and other left wing flunkeys cover up and endorse the lies of the climate cultists.
While the scam may be typical of some others within niches of science, the massive endorsement of this particular scam by the mainstream media and mainstream academia are what elevate this into the greatest fraud ever sold as science, within human history.
“Electricity would become increasingly unreliable and expensive, as in South Australia. And without substantial economic growth real estate values and pension liabilities would become even more unsupportable than they already are”. – And this would lead to the collapse of the current world order, which, I believe, was mentioned by someone at the UN as the real goal. When will the majority of ordinary people wake up to these dangers?
We are used in the justice system to a prosecution versus a defense. We do not assume that one side is always or 97 percent right. There is debate.
Peer review of scientific manuscripts is supposed to provide independence, but in reality the system is badly biased in favor of warmers. Doc Carlin had to get his book published by a low profile press. University presses must exclude real skepticism and are coconspirators with Gore, Hansen, Obama, et al.
Federal government unions are incompatible with unbiased science. They are implacably in favor of more missions for their members, implacably opposed to skepticism.
The Trump Administration is doing the right thing to add balance to Federal science advisory panels.
The pursuit of honest science, like honest justice, has to rely upon genuine debate. when one political side claims it has all the scientific answers, this invites and yields despicable, shameful abuses of power.
Clearly Mr Carlin has it right as do the previous commentators. What has remained unstated is that the UNFCCC was used as justification for 3 other documents from the 1992 Rio Earth Conference. Without the CAGW perpetuated the real goals of the UN will go unrealized. The documents are The Biodiversity Convention, the Agenda 21 and the Wildlands Project.All of these are available on the UN website at lat check but can be found on the blog, “Agenda 21: Your freedom under attack” on WordPress.com. The Wildlands Project is merely a map of the city centers that will remain and the off limits land we won’t be able to use. Agenda 21 and Biodiversity are each 300+ pages but reference many more documents that are hyperlinked. They constitute a complete takeover of the planet with un-elected morons in charge. There will be no private tranportation, no farms, no single family homes, no secondary roads, no frozen food. Everyone will live in condos in city centers that will supply all needed power and food. Yeah, right!!!
Good post. Also, Michael Davis (above) is right, I think. However, the scammery goes far beyond scientism and outright fraud. There is much that is never published or studied anywhere in mainstream journalism. To find out what I mean, please download and read my book – the result of about 12 years of ongoing research and observation: http://tinyurl.com/ccgwbook. Thanks. [Corrected link included in this comment!]
This is why I started using the phrase Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism, CACA as it describes the outcome of following the CAGW, CACC, CACD or even Hayhoe’s claim of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Weirding beliefs and attempting to follow the path put forward by UNFCCC. What Humans contribute to weather patterns is not evident on more that micro regional scales and we do not have the ability to separate human contributions from natural weather patterns on continental or global scales.
I agree that following the proposed paths will lead to global socialism and a dictatorship overseen by the UN with poverty for all but a select few.
Dr. Carlin is not only clear-minded, but inter-disciplinary and integrative. Few are so well rounded. Many lay people may suspect climate change is poppycock pushed by celebs and southpaw politicians, but Carlin recognizes the economic damage. This is non-obvious, yet serious and unfunny. Carlin is uncommonly firm-minded, no-nonsense, and self-assured to stand up for rational science, in the face of left wing media blowhards and politicians who falsely preach climate hysteria, while enforcing beliefs with intimidating ad hominem attacks that chill free speech upon which genuine science depends. For this, Dr. Carlin deserves much respect.
Feynman alluded to cargo cult science in his well known commencement address at Cal Tech in 1974. I do not know the points of view of the Solomon islanders. For all I know, many islanders may have sincerely hoped to enable return of cargo planes. Such sincerity may be true of many climate change believers too, innocents who have been misled by Fake News and shameless politicians. In his talk, Feynman faulted a scientist who deliberately was not honest with laypeople by not admitting his work had no useful applications. At root, a pre-requisite for good science is honesty. Its excusable to make errors within an honestly intended scientific endeavor, but deliberate errors or knowingly misleading or withholding the truth, these Feynman must have deplored.
The imperative of the honest quest for truth is captured in the title of a classic book by Aaron Wildavsky, two decades ago, “But is it True? A citizen’s guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues.” Published by Harvard University Press. There have been many thoughtful critiques of the US environmental industrial complex, but this book has to be among the best.
Climate alarmists may engage in cargo cult science, studies that are unpersuasive. In the context of climate change, the massive extent of the false hype, involving many nations, of course the UN, and many academics in the US and western Europe seems unprecedented. Seldom have so many educated people suspended common sense skepticism and enabled chicanery via silence. I hope this is not “typical” or the new normal.
I totally agree, Mr Carlin, but the climate scam is nearly 4 decades old, and it has grown SO big, it is So powerful and SO well funded, it has become SO ubiquitous that it is a Hydra – cut off one head and ten grow in its place. How can we kill the Hydra? What is its weakness? Who is the modern Hercules that will perform the task?
[…] Carlin argues here that ‘the main justifications offered for climate alarmism are expensive general circulation […]