Eschatology and Global Warming

I have long been intrigued by the incongruity of anthropogenic global warming's surprisingly thin evidence base and the adamancy of its advocates. Their use of the term "denier" to describe those skeptical of AGW suggests a state of mind outside that commonly associated with scientific inquiry. I was recently struck by a juxtaposition which may explain (at least in part) this phenomenon.

One side is a book I first encountered fifty years ago, The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn. The other is a new (2017) book, Searching for the Catastrophe Signal by Bernie Lewin. There is a long tradition of millenarian thought in western civilization, and it's not surprising that chiliastic yearning has survived the decline in formal religious practice in the 20th and 21st centuries. This may be the key to understanding the psychology of AGW advocacy. Replace the biblical "end times" with a postulated hothouse Earth and present a millennium of renewable, carbon-free energy sources, and it all fits together pretty snugly.

Nothing but absolute faith in the righteousness of their cause can really explain the maneuvers of AGW advocates in the early IPCC. Even more to the point is their continuing pride in those maneuvers -- several of them are among Lewin's most important sources.

The Pursuit of the Millennium - Norman Cohn - Oxford University Press[/h]https://global.oup.com/academic/.../the-pursuit-of-the-millennium-9780195004564
May 15, 1970 - The end of the millennium has always held the world in fear of earthquakes, plague, and the catastrophic destruction of the world. At the dawn ...

Searching for the Catastrophe Signal: The Origins of ... - Google Books[/h]https://books.google.com/books/about/Searching_for_the_Catastrophe_Signal.html?id...
Nov 21, 2017 - The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the IPCC - is the global authority on climate science and behind some of the most important ...

 

AGW Skeptic Marc Morano Receives DEATH THREAT From Sorbonne University Professor’s Email Account
By P Gosselin on 1. January 2021

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“Even in the USA, we have friends waiting to massacre you”… “a killer will always be very close”
Two days ago, December 30th, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) science skeptic Marc Morano received yet another email threat through the Contact form submission on his Climate Depot site.



Climate researcher Prof. Jean-Luc Melice’s email account appears to be the source of a crude death threat aimed at prominent climate science skeptic, Marc Morano.

Professor at Sorbonne University

The death threat was made using an email account belonging to Prof. Jean-Luc Mélice, a distinguished climate modeling researcher and Director at the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, Sorbonne University in Paris, France.

It’s the latest in a series of threats aimed at Marc Morano of Climate Depot, see background here. . . .

 

The Faith-Based Nature of Human-Caused Global Warming (Dr. Roy Spencer)

 

In pursuit of the millennium. . . .

Tim Barnett, in 1995 in "Estimates of Low Frequency Natural Variability in Near-Surface Air Temperature," wrote:

". . . All these facts make it difficult to say if observe spatial changes in climate are "normal" or due to anthropogenic effects. One or both of these model flaws [in spatial distribution and understated variability] might bias the results of an objective detection study and lead us to believe confidently that an anthropogenic signal has been found when, in fact, that may not be the case. . . ."

He concludes:

"Our results should serve as a warning to those anxious rigorously to pursue the detection of anthropogenic effects in observed climate data. The spectrum of natural variability against which detection claims, positive or negative, are made is not well-known and apparently not well represented in early CGCM [model] control runs."

Quoted in Searching for the Catastrophe Signal by Bernie Lewin, pp. 276-277.

 

Friday Funny: Another last chance to save the world from Climate Change
Anthony Watts
Another last chance, but this is the best one Kerry says. Well, of course it is. THIS year’s climate summit in Scotland is the world’s “last best chance” to avert…

 

That Way Madness Lies
Charles Rotter
A climate scientist spent years trying to get people to pay attention to the disaster ahead. His wife is exhausted. His older son thinks there’s no future. And nobody but…

 

I usually always go back to follow the money. This was a scheme hatched by Goldman Sachs as a method for perpetual annuity income for them vis a vis the carbon credits market. A legislated annuity that guaranteed hundreds of billions of dollars to the owners. One small problem has always been, well, the weather. And it's unrelenting unwillingness to actually exhibit the traits of the fantasy.

I see ol John Kerry is back as the new Climate Czar. How nice that a guy who has his own airforce gets to lecture the rest of us on energy conservation and all....

 

Awaiting the "climate rapture."

Speaking Of Religious Mass Hysteria, How About The Campaign Against Fossil Fuels?
February 13, 2021/ Francis Menton

• 
  In her most recent post, Jane observed the substantial resemblance between the current wave of “gender dysphoria,” and various religious mass hysterias throughout history, notably to some during the medieval period. Yet as much as it may be widely discussed and prominently featured in the media in recent years, gender dysphoria still affects only a relatively small number of people.
  
  
• But how about the campaign against fossil fuels? That also bears great resemblance to religious mass hysteria.
  
  
• We have the tale of grave sin and the possibility for redemption. We have the priestly caste — politicians of the Democratic Party — that has been anointed to instruct us and lead us into the path of salvation. We have the expulsion of all heretics from the seats of the religion in academia. We have the holy people sermonizing about their own saintliness and our sin. (Greta Thunberg and Bill McKibben come to mind.).
  
  
• By contrast to transgenderism, this fossil fuel hysteria affects us all.

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Step Away From That Semicolon — Now!
Posted on 02 Apr 21 by JOHN RIDGWAY • 9 Comments


There is something about professional physicists that society finds very difficult. You may recall, for example, the hot water that whelmed Professor Alessandro Strumia when he took on the Athena Swan coterie at CERN, daring to suggest that male dominance within the field had more to do with personal choice and gender attributes than it … Continue reading →

 

Inside the Church of Climate
Charles Rotter
Nature doesn’t give us a stable, safe climate that we make dangerous. It gives us an ever-changing, dangerous climate that we need to make safe. And the driver behind sturdy…

 

Climate religion trumped climate science.

Why did the EU invite Greta Thunberg and not Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus?
Charles Rotter
Why did the EU invite the young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg to speak in Brussels instead of the Nobel Prize winning climate economist William Nordhaus? That question is answered…

 

How we fool ourselves. Part III: Social biases
Posted on April 25, 2021 by curryja | 125 comments
by Judith Curry

“Is the road to scientific hell paved with good intentions?” – political psychologist Philip Tetlock (1994)

Continue reading →

 

Andrew Bolt on Biden’s Climate Summit
Charles Rotter
Mr Bolt said Biden’s recent climate summit was a “disgraceful farce”. “I am just gobsmacked that Biden … insulted the intelligence of 39 other world leaders — including our Prime…

Mr Bolt said Biden’s recent climate summit was a “disgraceful farce”. “I am just gobsmacked that Biden … insulted the intelligence of 39 other world leaders — including our Prime Minister Scott Morrison — by making them listen to the ravings of a bizarre parade of alarmists, mystics, New Age tribal women and even a teenager”.

Mr Bolt said with “no scientists around” at the summit, anyone “could claim any wild thing”.

He said the “global warming scare” is now a “religion – with a touch of Marxism.”

 

It's time for the fanatic warmists to be called out as the moral cripples they are.
Michael Shellenberger Eviscerates Peter Gleick
Charles Rotter
In Apocalypse Never, I point to a pattern. Malthusians raise the alarm about a resource or environmental problems and then attack the obvious technical solutions. Malthus had to attack birth…

 

Here's another observation of displaced chiliasm manifesting as climate alarmism.

• Emotion, Decisions – And Climate Change

". . . . This brings me on to my central idea, which is to say this: Society is currently locked in the throws of a major panic attack, precipitated by a combination of technologically enabled hyper self-monitoring and an ‘emotional’ displacement in which perceived threats to society are largely convenient rationalisations. Society is scared and regretful. But, more to the point, the triggers for this may have nothing to do with the manner in which society seeks to rationalise the problem. . . . "

 

The rigid conformity and pressure to conform is the opposite of science. The majority of scientists don’t actually participate as advocates but are locked into conformity for political and financial reasons.

 

There's something to that.

 

Hang on

What do you mean “surprisingly thin evidence base”? Forget about the rest of the giant strawman And the fact you are attributing behaviours to scientists and science readers that are simply not true - that bit is understandable - swim in mud (denialosphere) and all you will know is mud. but how on earth can you have missed the thousands upon thousands of papers published on this subject? There are research papers written by scientists in every country on the planet, Each chapter of each Working Group Report published by the IPCC has hundreds of references

This is just ONE chapter from ONE report chosen at random. There are roughly 50 citations per page and 18 pages of citations

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf

ONE chapter from ONE report (four main reports and the synthesis report) so how the freaking heck can you claim there is little evidence?

 

Another blog



when are you going to post some real unadulterated science?

 

Strawman



And guess what?

No one is listening - except for the denialists who keep telling each other this bulltwang. Real scientists and science readers, you know, the educated Aren’t listening because they do not identify with “alarmism”. I am not alarmed - concerned yes but not alarmed

 

You do realise don’t you that Bolt has no credibility in Australia. At best he is background noise as about as useful as a fart in an elevator

 

A giant edifice of unexamined assumptions built on a thin evidence base.
"Generally speaking, we can observe that the scientists in any particular institutional and political setting move as a flock, reserving their controversies and particular originalities for matters that do not call into question the fundamental system of biases they share."
—Gunnar Myrdal, Objectivity in Social Research

 

Your prejudice is your prison.

 

You mean like Peter Gleick?

 

Merely another demonstration of your prejudice.