I have the education, background and experience to independently evaluate the constant drum beat claiming imminent and inevitable climate catastrophe if we don’t immediately reduce our carbon footprint. I am a luke-warmer who believes that the sensitivity of climate to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is at the bottom of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change range. At that level, climate catastrophe is a very unlikely possibility and the effect is much more likely to be benign.
Unfortunately it is very frustrating to hold my position because the media, politicians and advocacy groups have convinced many that we have to use renewables as a “solution” to what I think is a non-existent problem. As a result I am always looking for a good summary of the issues that I have with the imminent climate catastrophe narrative. The 2018 Global Warming Policy Foundation Annual Lecture: “Global Warming for the Two Cultures” by Dr. Richard Lindzen is an excellent summary that I recommend to those who believe that we need to transform the energy system to do “something” about climate change so that they will have at least heard the other side of the story.
Lindzen begins his talk by describing two cultures in society and the implication of that on policy decisions. Basically the two cultures are those that understand the “science” in general and physics in particular and those that don’t. He explains why this understanding gap is a problem:
While some might maintain that ignorance of physics does not impact political ability, it most certainly impacts the ability of non-scientific politicians to deal with nominally science-based issues. The gap in understanding is also an invitation to malicious exploitation. Given the democratic necessity for non-scientists to take positions on scientific problems, belief and faith inevitably replace understanding, though trivially oversimplified false narratives serve to reassure the non-scientists that they are not totally without scientific ‘understanding.’ The issue of global warming offers numerous examples of all of this.
One of my problems with the media climate change story is that the greenhouse effect is simple. His lecture describes the complicated climate system in enough detail to support my contention that the inevitable climate catastrophe is imminent story is an over-exaggeration.
I particularly like his description of the popular narrative we hear from the media and politicians:
Now here is the currently popular narrative concerning this system. The climate, a complex multifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1-2% perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable – carbon dioxide – among many variables of comparable importance.
This is an extraordinary pair of claims based on reasoning that borders on magical thinking. It is, however, the narrative that has been widely accepted, even among many sceptics.
He then goes on to describe how he believes the popular narrative originated and de-bunks the evidence we constantly reminded supports the catastrophic narrative.
I encourage you to read the entire lecture. I believe it supports his concluding summary of the situation:
An implausible conjecture backed by false evidence and repeated incessantly has become politically correct ‘knowledge,’ and is used to promote the overturn of industrial civilization.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 
Reblogged this on 4TimesAYear's Blog.
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