Why Climate Misinformation Persists
In 2001, I participated in a roundtable discussion hosted at the headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) with a group of U.S. Senators, the Secretary of Treasury, and about a half-dozen other researchers. The event was organized by Idaho Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) following the release of a short NAS report on climate to help the then-new administration of George W. Bush get up to speed on climate change.
At the time I was a 32 year-old fresh-faced researcher about to leave the National Center for Atmospheric Research for a faculty position across town at the University of Colorado. I had never testified before Congress or really had any high-level policy engagement.
When the roundtable was announced, I experienced something completely new in my professional career — several of my much more senior colleagues contacted me to lobby me to downplay or even to misrepresent my research on the roles of climate and society in the economic impacts of extreme weather. I had become fairly well known in the atmospheric sciences research community back then for our work showing that increasing U.S. hurricane damage could be explained entirely by more people and more wealth.
One colleague explained to me that my research, even though scientifically accurate, might distract from efforts to advocate for emissions reductions:
"I think we have a professional (or moral?) obligation to be very careful what we say and how we say it when the stakes are so high."
At the time, I wrote that the message I heard was that the “ ends justify means or, in other words, doing the "right thing" for the wrong reasons is OK” — even if that meant downplaying or even misrepresenting my own research.
I have thought about that experience over the past few weeks as I have received many comments on the first four installments of the THB series Climate Fueled Extreme Weather (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). One of the most common questions I’ve received asks why it is that the scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are so different than what is reported in the media, proclaimed in policy, and promoted by the most public-facing climate experts. And, why can’t that gap be closed?
Over the past 23 years, I have wondered a lot myself about this question — not just how misinformation arises in policy discourse (we know a lot about that), but why it is that the expert climate community has been unable or unwilling to correct rampant misinformation about extreme weather, with some even promoting that misinformation.
Obviously, I don’t have good answers, but I will propose three inter-related explanations that help me to make sense of these dynamics — the noble lie, conventional wisdom, and luxury beliefs.
The Noble Lie
The most important explanation is that many in the climate community — like my senior colleague back in 2001 — appear to believe that achieving emissions reductions is so very important that its attainment trumps scientific integrity. The ends justify the means. They also believe that by hyping extreme weather, they will make emissions reductions more likely (I disagree, but that is a subject for another post).
I explained this as a “fear factor” in The Climate Fix:
Typically, the battle over climate-change science focused on convincing (or, rather, defeating) those skeptical has meant advocacy focused on increasing alarm. As one Australian academic put it at a conference at Oxford University in the fall of 2009: “The situation is so serious that, although people are afraid, they are not fearful enough given the science. Personally I cannot see any alternative to ramping up the fear factor.”
Similarly, when asked how to motivate action on climate change, economist Thomas Schelling replied, “It’s a tough sell. And probably you have to find ways to exaggerate the threat. . . [P]art of me sympathizes with the case for disingenuousness. . . I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening—you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth—that would get people very concerned about climate change. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
From the opening ceremony of the Copenhagen climate negotiations to Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, to public comments from leading climate scientists, to the echo-chambers of the blogosphere, fear and alarm have been central to advocacy for action on climate change.
It’s just a short path from climate fueled extreme weather to the noble lie at the heart of fear-based campaigns.
Bari Weiss observes the dynamics of the noble lie in how many people refused to acknowledge that President Joe Biden was showing the signs of being an 81-year-old man:
Better to put the thumb on the scale—just the lightest of touches—and make sure we get the right outcome. A few white lies for the sake of the Republic seems a small price to pay.
In The Honest Broker, I devoted a chapter to the dynamics of the noble lie in the context of the fateful decision to go to war in Iraq — WMDs! Noble lies have no partisan or ideological boundaries.
For climate and extreme weather, one important difference from the Iraq War or President Biden is that there is no ending point — a war or an election — that allows for an evaluation or resetting of the lie more in the direction of truth.
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/why-climate-misinformation-persists
***********************************************Doctors Being Instructed To Lie To You About The Climate
In theory, people being more political sounds great. Less dreary conversations about the weather and the ‘footie’, and more watercoolers surrounded by colleagues fizzing with enthusiasm about democracy and its pleasures
But the actual practice of this presupposes that we will all be open-minded and curious and – unless we are extremely learned about something – that the opinion of all citizens shall be equal.
This came to mind on reading that the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has this week issued new guidance instructing doctors, as ‘trusted members of the community’, to lecture their poor patients about the ‘dangers’ of ‘climate change’.
This is troubling enough given the average duration of a face-to-face appointment with a GP in England – when you finally get one – is just 10 minutes.
Furthermore, this 11-page document also suggests that doctors should cause even more anxiety to patients by ‘working from home’ and cutting back on tests and prescriptions – in the name of ‘saving the planet’, of course.
So basically doctors are being advised by the RCP to do less of the things doctors have historically been required to do while amping up the scolding about an area they have no training in.
It also urges doctors, after scaring their patients with talk of burning rivers and the like, to keep an eye out for the poor creatures showing signs of ‘eco-distress’ – that is, anxiety and depression allegedly caused by ‘climate change’.
I would venture that if this condition exists in any great numbers, it’s caused not by ‘climate change’ itself but by people banging on about it, alongside the other anxieties that stem from not being able to get a GP appointment, a medical test, or a prescription.
We’re not quite at the stage of those crazy Canucks.
In 2021, a doctor in British Columbia diagnosed a woman with ‘climate change’ – thought to be a world first – after she reported having breathing problems following a hot summer featuring a slew of forest fires.
How many years at medical school did it take to come to this razor-sharp conclusion?
Dr Kyle Merritt opined:
‘She has diabetes. She has some heart failure… She lives in a trailer, no air conditioning.
All of her health problems have all been worsened. And she’s really struggling to stay hydrated.’
I’m sure we’ll get to where Canada is eventually, though. When a society is as single-minded about scaring itself as the Kool-Aid-quaffing Canadians have been for some time, there’s no telling what rabbit holes we’ll race each other to the bottom of.
It’s telling that the RCP document showcases such condescending gems from the World Health Organization as ‘don’t debate the science’ and ‘talk about the health benefits of climate action’.
I wonder what health benefits the people inside the ambulances blocked by Just Stop Oil over the past few years have gained from climate change action?
The NHS isn’t just keen to lecture patients about ‘climate change’, it’s also chasing the ‘Net Zero’ dream.
A rather chilling report published earlier this year in the Telegraph revealed that the NHS plans to introduce electric ambulances to reach green targets.
Paramedics have already expressed concern about the dangerous effect this will have on patients, as ambulances spend hours recharging instead of attending emergencies.
Former chancellor Nigel Lawson once famously said that the NHS is the closest thing that the English have to a religion, which makes doctors the priests.
When the NHS itself follows the new false gods of everything from climate to ‘trans rights’, the stage is set for the mayhem of unbridled magical thinking.
Like the old priests, doctors are often no better than the rest of us; often, they’re worse.
The majority of them may well be driven by the desire to improve the human condition – but the idea that they are somehow holy receptacles of wisdom is absurd.
I’d listen to a doctor’s advice on what to do with, say, a broken leg, because I’m aware that they studied the subjects of sickness and health into their mid-twenties, while I was chasing off to interview gormless pop stars.
But take lessons from them on politics or lifestyle? No thanks.
https://principia-scientific.com/doctors-being-instructed-to-lie-to-you-about-the-climate/
****************************************Dominion’s Proposed Peaker Plant Is a Good Sign for Reliability
In the last decade, many states have made energy policy decisions that prioritize building new renewable energy sources, namely wind and solar, over more reliable forms of power. Often, this comes in the form of renewable portfolio standards that mandate a certain portion of the energy mix comes from wind and solar.
One such state is Virginia. The Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) is a renewable portfolio standard that requires that the state’s largest utilities, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power, both use 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. Despite this mandate, the state’s utilities are doing what they must to maintain a reliable grid.
Earlier this year, Dominion Energy announced plans to build a new peaking natural gas plant to help meet the state’s growing demand for power. Peaking power plants, otherwise known as peaker plants, are power plants that are able to ramp up and down to compensate for the intermittency of other sources of electricity. Dominion may need to construct up to 8 more similar plants over the next decade and a half.
The state’s unique position in the technology sector may contribute to demand growth. Northern Virginia is currently the number one state for data centers in the US. This gives the state immense importance as artificial intelligence and other data intensive applications develop further and are used more widely. With this economic boon comes an obligation for the state’s utilities to rise to the occasion. That means maintaining reliability.
Dominion Energy is Virginia’s largest utility company. The fact that it’s choosing to invest in new natural gas peaker plant capacity right now is a promising sign for those concerned with reliable electricity.
Jeremy Slayton, a spokesman for Dominion, acknowledged the importance of maintaining reliability. “On the hottest and coldest days of the year, when people are running their air conditioning, they’re running their heater, and that demand goes up and up and up,” and went on to say, “And if we can’t meet that demand that means there will be blackouts.”
Even though the state’s growing need for reliable power is difficult to dispute, the move has faced significant opposition from environmentalists and some lawmakers. In March, a coalition of nine lawmakers, including seven Delegates and two Senators, signed a letter opposing the peaker plant because it, “runs counter to the measures the Commonwealth has taken recently to lower carbon emissions and to diversify energy production and storage”. What these lawmakers fail to understand is that the measures that the Commonwealth has taken run counter to reliably keeping the lights on.
In my recent paper, “How to Keep the Lights On”, I outline 9 principles for a reliable electric grid. The fourth principle is “Government should not dictate the electricity mix.” This is because renewable portfolio standards like the VCEA are prescriptive rather than realistic policies. They assume that a power mix can be made to work because the government decided that it would. This is far from the truth.
A reliable electrical grid doesn’t just come about on its own. It’s the result of good decision making and a prudent understanding of tradeoffs (in addition to the physical infrastructure that makes it up). The problem is that for years now the rhetoric and decision making of lawmakers has been out of line with reality and reliability.
It’s great to see Dominion make a decision that focuses on reliability, even in the face of opposition.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/07/30/peaker-plant-reliability/
***********************************************‘Picking Winners’ has been a costly failure, new study warns
As Europe’s EV industry is on the brink of economic crisis, a new study published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation documents the poor track record of governments who cherry-pick technologies in the hope of achieving a policy goal. It warns that the UK is in the process of repeating costly mistakes in the race to achieve Net Zero.
The study reveals that ‘picking winners’ has rarely been successful and almost always resulted in very costly flops.
Written by Martin Livermore, the paper reviews a range of projects from the last few decades in the UK and summarises the factors contributing to their success or failure.
Unfortunately, politicians have not learnt the lessons of these failures and are in the process of repeating mistakes in the race to achieve Net Zero.
The study reviews current Net Zero projects, in particular:
* electricity generation and storage
* carbon capture and storage
* heat pumps for domestic heating
* electric vehicles as replacements for the internal combustion engine.
Martin Livermore warns:
“In each case, top-down targets have been set and a predetermined route set out, with taxpayers’ money used to drive consumer acceptance of technologies that are otherwise uneconomic. A far better use of resources for both the UK population and, in the longer term, for citizens across the world, is to set broad top-level goals and enable competition between technologies and companies so that better, more economic solutions can be developed.”
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All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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