The ‘Holy Grail’ of politicised climate science is the attribution of single weather events to the unproven hypothesis that humans cause all or most climate change. Like the Holy Grail, it is beyond reach – simply put, it is impossible to attribute a sunny, or rainy, day to long-term climate trends. There are countless influences on the Earth’s atmosphere, many beyond current scientific computation. Despite considerable effort, no ‘attribution’ study proves human involvement, and the suggestions remain little more than imaginative opinion.
But with the growing realisation that global warming has been running out of steam for the last couple of decades, extreme weather events, along with associated ‘tipping points’, are a vital weapon in the drive to politicise climate science, and push forward the command-and-control Net Zero agenda. Difficult, nay impossible, to prove. But happily for the Net Zero activists, help is at hand. Last year, professors Elisabeth Lloyd, Naomi Oreskes and others wrote a paper calling for the level of proof when it comes to the wild claims made by climate change activists should be lowered to “more likely than not”. Climate scientists are said to set the bar “too high” when it comes to proving their claims, thereby conceding too much ground to the ‘deniers’. “In our view, the too narrow focus of climate science on extremely stringent levels of proofs is damaging in a legal context, and can lead to confusion when communicating scientific findings more generally,” they wrote.
Without apparent irony, the authors of the paper point out that a much lower standard of proof was required before cities or entire states were locked down to supposedly slow the spread of coronavirus and argue that the same “level of evidence” should apply when it comes to forcing people to reduce their carbon emissions:
Consider our situation with the coronavirus. We often have to make a variety of policy, practical, and legal decisions based on incomplete information, which also depend on judgements about whether the evidence is good enough. What level of evidence do we need, in the case of the coronavirus, to order a stay-at-home command for an entire city or state? What is the level of evidence required to actively prepare for catastrophic needs for intensive care units in hospitals? If there is an immediate and/or grave threat, as we have seen, it may be better to act on a lower level of evidence than we might otherwise expect.
The philosophers don’t appear to have spotted the circularity in this argument: We should apply lower standard of proof when it comes to assessing claims made by climate change activists because climate change poses an immediate and/or grave threat. How do we know it poses such a threat? Because when it comes to assessing such claims we should apply a lower standard of proof.
Elizabeth Lloyd of Indiana University and Naomi Oreskes of Harvard are both philosophers and historians, and both are highly influential in green activist academic circles. But their scientific philosophy runs counter to the principles set out by the legendary Professor Karl Popper who outlined the basis for today’s widely accepted empirical scientific method. He held that scientific knowledge is only ever ‘provisional’ and, to count as a legitimate, it must be ‘falsifiable’, i.e., capable of being proved false. Hard to see how a scientific hypothesis that is “more likely than not” to be true could be falsified. Citing a fact that was at odds with it could just be added to the “not” column without necessarily tipping the scales against it.
Activists have long harboured ambitions to use the courts to further their aims, where civil claims are usually decided on the “preponderance of evidence” rather than conclusive proof for or against. According to Lloyd and Oreskes, “Scientists typically demand too much of themselves in terms of evidence, in comparison with the level of evidence required in a legal, regulatory, or public policy context.” Stringent levels of proof are said by them to be “damaging”, and can lead to “confusion” when communicating scientific findings to the lay public.
This is an odd argument. After all, if tens of millions of people are definitely going to be made poorer by a climate policy – Net Zero, for instance – surely we need to know with a reasonable degree of certainty that not reducing carbon emissions to zero by 2050 would be even more damaging to people’s welfare, not just that it is “more likely than not”? The difficulty is that the harm caused by Net Zero is immediate and tangible, whereas the harm caused by not implementing Net Zero is speculative and notional.
It won’t come as a surprise that Lloyd and Oreskes are both keen on climate models. “Climate models aid in the attribution of extreme events both through the probabilistic and storyline or mechanistic methods; in both cases, extreme events such as heat waves or heavy precipitation events can generally be attributed to climate change with a high degree of confidence”, they write. Such “advances”, they suggest, “have allowed such analyses to be used as evidence in legal cases involving climate change”.
Overall, the writers suggest that “more likely than not” be considered sufficient proof when it comes to any claims made by climate change activists, including attributing one-off events to anthropogenic global warming. “[I]ts use would increase the odds that the audience for IPCC information understands climate evidence as the IPCC intends it to,“ they write. “Indeed, our argument also applies beyond courtrooms, and more generally to the public discourse on climate change.”
How very thoughtful of them. Let’s hope climate activists don’t apply the same standard of ‘proof’ when it comes to imprisoning climate change ‘deniers’ for challenging the prevailing orthodoxy. Two years ago, Exeter University associate geography professor Saffron O’Neill said a “solution” to the dissemination of climate misinformation might be “fines and imprisonment”. Misinformation was defined as casting doubt on “well supported” science. Casting doubt on dodgy climate forecasts that are “more likely than not” to be true? Time for a spell of model re-education in Maximum Security.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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ESG is a contrived subject that belongs firmly within the Sociology field and therefore should be added to the curriculums of those places of “learning” within the tertiary sector that feel the need to peddle this crap.
If your business is dealing with interest rates, or making cars, or building homes or whatever then ESG is none of your workload and would certainly eat in to expensive management time whilst providing sweet F A in return for god knows what cost.
Those companies that feel the need to jump on the ESG bandwagon are simply proclaiming that they are badly managed. In these cases “go woke, go broke,” is just reward for management incompetence.
ESG, another disease of the age. A virus which kills poorly businesses.
You gotta laugh.
Curricula – but apart from that,yes.
Indeed. My apologies.
No need to apologise, huxleypiggles:
https://www.grammar-monster.com/plurals/plural_of_curriculum.htm
‘The plural of “curriculum” is “curricula” or “curriculums.”’
‘Both “curricula” and “curriculums” are accepted plurals of “curriculum.”’
The noun “curriculum” has a Latin root, which is the derivation of the plural “curricula.” “Curriculums” (which adheres to the standard rules for forming plurals) is also an accepted plural.’
I prefer “curriculums”. Some people don’t care which is used:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/dr-wordsmith-makes-a-house-call-at-the-tower-of-babel-1099283.html
Wordsmith writes: When it comes to the behaviour of foreign plurals in English, there are two schools of thought. One maintains that you should stick to foreign rules – that the plural of “poltergeist” is “poltergeister” and the plural of “curriculum vitae” is “curricula vitae”. And the other – the Jack Straw school of thought, perhaps – thinks that immigrant words should obey English rules while they are here, and that the plural of “stadium” should be “stadiums” and not “stadia”.
Dear Dr Wordsmith, And which school of thought do you belong to?
Dr Wordsmith writes: I belong to a third school, the A-Plague-On-Both- Your-Schools School, whose motto is: I couldn’t give a monkey’s.’
Many thanks. I too prefer the proper use of words, punctuation and grammar and in this instance I should have used “curricula” but as usual I was posting in haste (
).
On the topic of laughing, I did enjoy this mini clip. Let’s hope they’re verbalizing the general consensus, haha..
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/celtic-fans-sing-you-can-shove-your-coronation-up-your-a-347611/
That’s wonderful. Thanks Mogs.
Consolidation of a diverse banking market into a select few big players. Guess it will make CBDC’s easier to roll out.
Here in the UK we have seen similar consolidation with the energy market with a reversion to more or less the same old ‘big six’.
Net Zero appears to be concentrating the power and the wealth away from smaller players and into the hands of the elites.
“Net Zero appears to be concentrating the power and the wealth away from smaller players and into the hands of the elites.”
So for the Davos Deviants it’s all coming together nicely.
BlackRock does not permit anything that does not support ESG and DIE – they pull the strings
Well, it sure didn’t help.
But that bank now folded so quickly because the Feds signalled through their ridiculous SVB actions that your deposits are only safe with JPM and some other too big too fail banks and that at a ridiculous 100% regardless of deposit size: a bailout of the ultra-rich.
That’s why large deposits now flee regional banks and go the the biggies.
And the biggies then get to pick them up for free, as is custom for a fascist large company oligarchy.
The Bear, Stearns&co. takeunder actually served as the blueprint for these steals and the ones to come.
I doubt they have the self-awareness to understand, but highly paid executives charged with managing woke programs should probably be feeling nervous right about now.
Took most of my savings out of the bank and bought some property. Savings are just numbers on a spreadsheet and can be devalued at the whim of the market. I don’t want to be a victim of contagion and offered 60p in the pound. Like with the hoax pandemic, I don’t trust the authorities