Most of the information relevant to arguments about climate, as about many other things, is obtained at second, third, or fourth hand, with the result that what you believe depends largely on what sources of information you trust.
David, are you aware that 60 Climate Scientists signed a resolution to "go on strike" last year. They object to the "whitewashing" done in the IPCC reports and by the "Climate Moderates" who currently dominate the field.
They want the world to know that things are MUCH WORSE than the "Moderates" are saying.
Also last year a Climate Scientist, who was a buddhist, set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court. In protest of a ruling that weakened Biden's proposed Climate Legislation.
David, surveys of Climate Scientists show that 80% think warming will be over 2.5C. Over 60% think it will be 3.0C or HIGHER.
88% think they will see "catastrophic impacts" from Global Warming "in their lifetime".
65% say that Global warming has affected their choices about having kids and where to live.
Do you really think ANYONE with half a brain cares about this?
Do you really think you are "proving" anything other than that you have your head in the sand?
Here's a clue David that I understand the Climate System infinitely better than you. Last year I said there was going to be a "super El Nino" in 23', 24', 25'.
The new forecasts are for a MONSTER EL NINO by this Fall.
Last year I forecast the Ukraine War wouldn't stop until Putin has the land and has liquidated the Ukrainians.
The DOD has said that they expect the war to drag into 24'.
Last year I forecast that Global Agricultural failure was imminent and that 800 million to 1.2 billion people are going to starve to death over the next five years.
That's about to start happening.
The Climate Crisis is here David. You are just to blind to see it.
"Last year I forecast that Global Agricultural failure was imminent and that 800 million to 1.2 billion people are going to starve to death over the next five years. That's about to start happening." You should bet Bryan Caplan on this, considering how confident you sound in your belief and how willing Caplan is to take bets with people, it should be free money.
No idea who that is. I have several $1,000 bets with people on this forecast from last year. People who wanted to know if "I was serious".
When I was in the Navy I spent a few years in Japan. I studied Kendo and Bushido among other things. If you make a bet with me and lose, you had better be prepared to pay. I will find you.
Most people who learn that, back the fuck off and shut up.
My confidence level is extremely high because I understand the science and what it says.
You should try arranging a bet with him, he's extremely friendly (bcaplan@gmu.edu) or (@bryan_caplan), he has a public betting record (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qShKedFJptpxfTHl9MBtHARAiurX-WK6ChrMgQRQz-0/edit) with a pretty impressive track record even if he does like to bet people with atypical views. He recently appears to have lost his most recent AI bet with Matthew Barnett and would presumably pay on the agreed upon date. I'm sure he'd be happy to take a bet against you.
Agreed, Caplan is a super friendly guy, and would probably give 5:1 odds on this. He is totally good for a large amount of cash too, so you could easily find your retirement, at least to a low cost of living country.
He hasnt quite lost it yet...GPT got an A on one paper (or two, now?), but must on 5 out of 6. But it has until 2030, so he is pretty much conceeding that bet, but like his Brexit bet, he will wait it out.
He won his Brexit bet by about 2 weeks. If the government hadnt delayed and pushed back and delayed again and again, he would have lost it.
Just because the experts say so doesn’t make it so.
I don’t know anything about global warming, but when you point undecided people like me to evidence that the field is in fact corrupter, then that’s a good reason to at least be skeptical of the conclusions of the experts.
If your response is to point to a tiny number of crazy experts, you’re really not getting the point. That’s especially the case when you provide no source whatsoever for some of the claims you make.
You don't understand "Science". It's a "social process" just like all other human endeavors. Sciences follow a process that has been studied and described. The most famous study being the one that produced the book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Kuhn.
You probably haven't read it but you have heard the phrase "paradigm shift". That's how Kuhn describes what happens when an old paradigm collapses and a new one replaces it.
Science is done by people and is funded by even more people. People are social, political creatures. There is always a political component in science just like everything else in our social realities. To not understand and accept this, is to be naive.
This happens all the time in the sciences. It's usually a generational shift. The old guys die and stop defending the broken paradigm that they built their careers on. Then a new generation takes charge and a new paradigm takes root.
It's a social process.
Climate Science is only 60 years old. In that time there have been two "Climate Paradigms". The first emerged in the 70's and argued that the Climate was controlled by Milankovic cycles and that another ice age was on the way. You still find idiots who believe this.
In the face of continued warming it was clear by the late 80's that the Milankovic Paradigm was wrong. A new Climate Paradigm was needed.
There was a "war" between "Alarmists" like James Hansen, who warned that we didn't understand the Climate System and were taking massive risks by not curbing fossil fuel usage, and "Moderates" who argued that the Climate System was stable and would be slow to warm up. Thanks to the political support of a "pro-oil" Republican Administration the Moderates "won".
The Climate Paradigm since then has been that of the Climate Moderates. This is about to change. A mountain of evidence has accumulated that the Moderates were wrong.
Those "crazy experts" are the next generation of Climate Science. There is about to be a new paradigm based on the new evidence. If you want evidence, read my Crisis Report.
You could have written a post making the same point with about half as many words. Seems like you really like to hear yourself talk about how much more you know than other people.
Anyway, I’ll pass on your invitation. I wouldn’t understand a thing. Like I said, I know nothing about climate science. I am very much undecided on the topic. But I enjoy Friedman’s writing on it precisely because he points out things hardly anyone else will and that even layman like myself can understand and can check for themselves.
Science is great when it works more or less as intended. When it doesn’t, it can have profoundly negative consequences. Friedman has pointed out repeatedly that there is at least some evidence that science is not exactly working as intended in this particular area. And the evidence he has pointed to is stuff any reasonably educated adult can check.
My own opinion is that most problems that rise to the top of the pyramid of the political issues we need to discuss is likely to be a vastly exaggerated problem. I see that with the issue of mass shootings and race, among other things. Is that the case here with climate change? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know.
But if anything, the stuff I’ve seen, including people like you shouting at everyone else that they are right, is likely to make me more skeptical, not less.
The claim is that 97% of climate scientists believe in global warming. But that's not the case. It's 97% of *papers* written by climate scientists, which may indicate more or less agreement.
I've been enjoying your posts and promoting your substack, but it this really a battle worth having? I mean, right below this post is your comment, "My view, as I have mentioned before, is that climate change is real and probably in large part due to humans." So let's stop picking fights on this and focus on the impacts, which is where the real important discussion is to be had and could be had. IMO.
I have posted, here and on my blog, on the impacts. But a crucial part of the story is the unreliability of sources of information that one would expect to be reliable. Given an environment where most academics and most media promote the claim that the net impacts will be large and negative, part of persuading people to reject that claim is persuading them not to trust those source of information.
As I pointed out at the beginning of the post, this is an unusual case because you can check it for yourself rather than having to rely on trusting me or some other source of information,
Agreed. The fact that the climate alarmists routinely lie and fabricate data/results is not widely understood or fully appreciated. We are in effect treating the science equivalent of 2 am fat burning miracle drug ads as solid respectable work that can, and indeed must be, acted upon.
It is strong evidence that sources of information about climate can't be trusted, assuming you can't find, as I couldn't, respectable sources pointing out that Cook lied. But knowing that sources can be trusted doesn't move you to a different conclusion, it just eliminates much of the reason to believe the current orthodoxy, leaving you knowing that you don't know. For evidence of what the truth is, you should look at my earlier climate posts. I argue that climate change is real but that there is no reason to be confident that its net effects are negative, let alone catastrophic.
The comments on your 'Is it really 97%? Climate Falsehood Check' - are no doubt interesting but too esoteric for me.
So I pick up on another aspect of your post that I consider a much bigger indictment of fashionable Climate Alarmism. Your post begins with: "Most of the information relevant to arguments about climate, as about many other things, is obtained at second, third, or fourth hand, with the result that what you believe depends largely on what sources of information you trust." This is well said but still way too flattering to your average Joe (now in the billions) with an opinion on our 'Climate Emergency'.
By far the greater part of those billions will have zero interest in actually choosing their 'sources of information' - except in the most passive sense. The MSM across the Western world has taken the truth of this 'Climate Emergency' as axiomatic for three decades now. You would have to be unusually intellectually curious to go looking for other possible evidence-based narratives and very few people are made that way. You would have be to be a highly unusual type of contrarian (like (I'm guessing) you, me and the readers of your Substack) to not, over those decades, have absorbed the fashionable climate narrative by a kind of MSM osmosis. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
> That left me with a puzzle — was he a rogue or a fool?
It is not necessarily so simple. As Feynman remarked, it is very easy to fool oneself. Once one succeeds in this and proceeds for a while on that basis, it takes uncommon circumstances to force one into admitting the fact to oneself and either becoming a rogue or accepting that one has been a fool. Compare a completely non-politicized controversy: cold fusion. https://www.amazon.com/Voodoo-Science-Road-Foolishness-Fraud-ebook/dp/B006UF3X30 gives a good overview account, as well as several other examples of these phenomena.
"Tol, however, has published estimates of the cost of warming suggesting that it is negative at low levels and positive but not catastrophic at high levels" I think you got the negative and positive mixed up.
Richard Tol has a good interview with Alex Epstein here https://youtu.be/aqDEJBB0bfc , John Cook also has a really funny YouTube channel and from what I can tell also looking at his blog he fancies himself a expert on critical thinking and truth seeking and misinformation and such.
David, are you aware that 60 Climate Scientists signed a resolution to "go on strike" last year. They object to the "whitewashing" done in the IPCC reports and by the "Climate Moderates" who currently dominate the field.
They want the world to know that things are MUCH WORSE than the "Moderates" are saying.
Also last year a Climate Scientist, who was a buddhist, set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court. In protest of a ruling that weakened Biden's proposed Climate Legislation.
David, surveys of Climate Scientists show that 80% think warming will be over 2.5C. Over 60% think it will be 3.0C or HIGHER.
88% think they will see "catastrophic impacts" from Global Warming "in their lifetime".
65% say that Global warming has affected their choices about having kids and where to live.
Do you really think ANYONE with half a brain cares about this?
Do you really think you are "proving" anything other than that you have your head in the sand?
Here's a clue David that I understand the Climate System infinitely better than you. Last year I said there was going to be a "super El Nino" in 23', 24', 25'.
The new forecasts are for a MONSTER EL NINO by this Fall.
Last year I forecast the Ukraine War wouldn't stop until Putin has the land and has liquidated the Ukrainians.
The DOD has said that they expect the war to drag into 24'.
Last year I forecast that Global Agricultural failure was imminent and that 800 million to 1.2 billion people are going to starve to death over the next five years.
That's about to start happening.
The Climate Crisis is here David. You are just to blind to see it.
"Last year I forecast that Global Agricultural failure was imminent and that 800 million to 1.2 billion people are going to starve to death over the next five years. That's about to start happening." You should bet Bryan Caplan on this, considering how confident you sound in your belief and how willing Caplan is to take bets with people, it should be free money.
No idea who that is. I have several $1,000 bets with people on this forecast from last year. People who wanted to know if "I was serious".
When I was in the Navy I spent a few years in Japan. I studied Kendo and Bushido among other things. If you make a bet with me and lose, you had better be prepared to pay. I will find you.
Most people who learn that, back the fuck off and shut up.
My confidence level is extremely high because I understand the science and what it says.
This is bordering on the Navy-Seal copypasta.
We got ourselves a tough guy!
You should try arranging a bet with him, he's extremely friendly (bcaplan@gmu.edu) or (@bryan_caplan), he has a public betting record (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qShKedFJptpxfTHl9MBtHARAiurX-WK6ChrMgQRQz-0/edit) with a pretty impressive track record even if he does like to bet people with atypical views. He recently appears to have lost his most recent AI bet with Matthew Barnett and would presumably pay on the agreed upon date. I'm sure he'd be happy to take a bet against you.
Agreed, Caplan is a super friendly guy, and would probably give 5:1 odds on this. He is totally good for a large amount of cash too, so you could easily find your retirement, at least to a low cost of living country.
He hasnt quite lost it yet...GPT got an A on one paper (or two, now?), but must on 5 out of 6. But it has until 2030, so he is pretty much conceeding that bet, but like his Brexit bet, he will wait it out.
He won his Brexit bet by about 2 weeks. If the government hadnt delayed and pushed back and delayed again and again, he would have lost it.
Just because the experts say so doesn’t make it so.
I don’t know anything about global warming, but when you point undecided people like me to evidence that the field is in fact corrupter, then that’s a good reason to at least be skeptical of the conclusions of the experts.
If your response is to point to a tiny number of crazy experts, you’re really not getting the point. That’s especially the case when you provide no source whatsoever for some of the claims you make.
You don't understand "Science". It's a "social process" just like all other human endeavors. Sciences follow a process that has been studied and described. The most famous study being the one that produced the book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Kuhn.
You probably haven't read it but you have heard the phrase "paradigm shift". That's how Kuhn describes what happens when an old paradigm collapses and a new one replaces it.
Science is done by people and is funded by even more people. People are social, political creatures. There is always a political component in science just like everything else in our social realities. To not understand and accept this, is to be naive.
This happens all the time in the sciences. It's usually a generational shift. The old guys die and stop defending the broken paradigm that they built their careers on. Then a new generation takes charge and a new paradigm takes root.
It's a social process.
Climate Science is only 60 years old. In that time there have been two "Climate Paradigms". The first emerged in the 70's and argued that the Climate was controlled by Milankovic cycles and that another ice age was on the way. You still find idiots who believe this.
In the face of continued warming it was clear by the late 80's that the Milankovic Paradigm was wrong. A new Climate Paradigm was needed.
There was a "war" between "Alarmists" like James Hansen, who warned that we didn't understand the Climate System and were taking massive risks by not curbing fossil fuel usage, and "Moderates" who argued that the Climate System was stable and would be slow to warm up. Thanks to the political support of a "pro-oil" Republican Administration the Moderates "won".
The Climate Paradigm since then has been that of the Climate Moderates. This is about to change. A mountain of evidence has accumulated that the Moderates were wrong.
Those "crazy experts" are the next generation of Climate Science. There is about to be a new paradigm based on the new evidence. If you want evidence, read my Crisis Report.
You could have written a post making the same point with about half as many words. Seems like you really like to hear yourself talk about how much more you know than other people.
Anyway, I’ll pass on your invitation. I wouldn’t understand a thing. Like I said, I know nothing about climate science. I am very much undecided on the topic. But I enjoy Friedman’s writing on it precisely because he points out things hardly anyone else will and that even layman like myself can understand and can check for themselves.
Science is great when it works more or less as intended. When it doesn’t, it can have profoundly negative consequences. Friedman has pointed out repeatedly that there is at least some evidence that science is not exactly working as intended in this particular area. And the evidence he has pointed to is stuff any reasonably educated adult can check.
My own opinion is that most problems that rise to the top of the pyramid of the political issues we need to discuss is likely to be a vastly exaggerated problem. I see that with the issue of mass shootings and race, among other things. Is that the case here with climate change? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know.
But if anything, the stuff I’ve seen, including people like you shouting at everyone else that they are right, is likely to make me more skeptical, not less.
Well here is something good for you then. By the end of this year we will have a pretty good idea who's right.
That's how close we are to everything going South.
The claim is that 97% of climate scientists believe in global warming. But that's not the case. It's 97% of *papers* written by climate scientists, which may indicate more or less agreement.
More precisely, the abstracts for 97% of papers.
I've been enjoying your posts and promoting your substack, but it this really a battle worth having? I mean, right below this post is your comment, "My view, as I have mentioned before, is that climate change is real and probably in large part due to humans." So let's stop picking fights on this and focus on the impacts, which is where the real important discussion is to be had and could be had. IMO.
I have posted, here and on my blog, on the impacts. But a crucial part of the story is the unreliability of sources of information that one would expect to be reliable. Given an environment where most academics and most media promote the claim that the net impacts will be large and negative, part of persuading people to reject that claim is persuading them not to trust those source of information.
As I pointed out at the beginning of the post, this is an unusual case because you can check it for yourself rather than having to rely on trusting me or some other source of information,
Agreed. The fact that the climate alarmists routinely lie and fabricate data/results is not widely understood or fully appreciated. We are in effect treating the science equivalent of 2 am fat burning miracle drug ads as solid respectable work that can, and indeed must be, acted upon.
Call now, supplies are limited.
Wow. I haven't been following this closely, but if this is true it seems like a bombshell, and changes my view of the whole subject.
It is strong evidence that sources of information about climate can't be trusted, assuming you can't find, as I couldn't, respectable sources pointing out that Cook lied. But knowing that sources can be trusted doesn't move you to a different conclusion, it just eliminates much of the reason to believe the current orthodoxy, leaving you knowing that you don't know. For evidence of what the truth is, you should look at my earlier climate posts. I argue that climate change is real but that there is no reason to be confident that its net effects are negative, let alone catastrophic.
Relevant posts are:
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/william-nordhaus
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/a-climate-science-textbook
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/land-gained-and-lost
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/climate-two-metapoints
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/climate-the-implication-of-uncertainty
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/climate-change-the-problem-of-sources
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/my-first-post-done-again
There will probably be more.
The link to the datafile, given as
https://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/media/erl460291datafile.txt
is giving me a "file not found" now. Is there a more reliable link?
The comments on your 'Is it really 97%? Climate Falsehood Check' - are no doubt interesting but too esoteric for me.
So I pick up on another aspect of your post that I consider a much bigger indictment of fashionable Climate Alarmism. Your post begins with: "Most of the information relevant to arguments about climate, as about many other things, is obtained at second, third, or fourth hand, with the result that what you believe depends largely on what sources of information you trust." This is well said but still way too flattering to your average Joe (now in the billions) with an opinion on our 'Climate Emergency'.
By far the greater part of those billions will have zero interest in actually choosing their 'sources of information' - except in the most passive sense. The MSM across the Western world has taken the truth of this 'Climate Emergency' as axiomatic for three decades now. You would have to be unusually intellectually curious to go looking for other possible evidence-based narratives and very few people are made that way. You would have be to be a highly unusual type of contrarian (like (I'm guessing) you, me and the readers of your Substack) to not, over those decades, have absorbed the fashionable climate narrative by a kind of MSM osmosis. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
> That left me with a puzzle — was he a rogue or a fool?
It is not necessarily so simple. As Feynman remarked, it is very easy to fool oneself. Once one succeeds in this and proceeds for a while on that basis, it takes uncommon circumstances to force one into admitting the fact to oneself and either becoming a rogue or accepting that one has been a fool. Compare a completely non-politicized controversy: cold fusion. https://www.amazon.com/Voodoo-Science-Road-Foolishness-Fraud-ebook/dp/B006UF3X30 gives a good overview account, as well as several other examples of these phenomena.
"Tol, however, has published estimates of the cost of warming suggesting that it is negative at low levels and positive but not catastrophic at high levels" I think you got the negative and positive mixed up.
Richard Tol has a good interview with Alex Epstein here https://youtu.be/aqDEJBB0bfc , John Cook also has a really funny YouTube channel and from what I can tell also looking at his blog he fancies himself a expert on critical thinking and truth seeking and misinformation and such.
A negative cost is a benefit. At low levels, he's saying global warming is beneficial to humanity.