Denial

For the record, I am not a “climate change denier.” Climates change. Our climate is changing. No denial.

What I do deny is something distinct. I deny that you know enough about climate to

• shame me for my skepticism,
• call the study of Earth’s climate a “settled science,”
• or oust anyone from a position of employment or station for not agreeing with you.

How can I be so confident? Well, all my life I’ve avidly read about how science gets done. And I know that shaming and bullying tactics are not part of the “public testing” of conjectures and hypotheses that do constitute the mainstay of science.

Further, I grew up within a religion, and I know a cultist when I encounter one — and every anthropogenic global warming (AGW) activist I have ever met is a cultist. And, from my reading, many, many scientists are cultists too. And worse: too many scientists serve as the charlatan “prophets” who run the cult.

And I know a little something about economics, enough so that I cannot be fooled into thinking that public policies may be primarily judged according to the standard of good intentions. To the contrary, climate policy, like any other policy, requires a truly scientific scrutiny. Any proposed program requires the careful comparison of the likely benefits of the program with the costs of said program, and those costs must be understood in terms of lost opportunities. Making an argumentative gambit like “we cannot afford to do nothing” will not cut it with me. I know that doing nothing is often better than doing a risky and dangerous and costly something.

Further, I have a bit of common sense, too. And I know that the common charge by AGW fanatics, against skeptics like myself, that any corporate grant ever taints every pronouncement by a skeptic, much more plausibly counts against current AGW “climate science.” If “he who pays the piper calls the tune” applies against corporate grants, it applies even stronger to the government grants sector. Government grants are easier to get, and the money is more plentiful — other people’s money, unattached to the standard of profit and loss, corrupts more universally and with general negative effect. A never-ending tax-funded gravy train is hugely corruptive of science. The subsidized university system itself has corrupted science in many fields, with replicability rates of published study results having been demonstrated, recently, to be alarmingly low.

Model-based “science” of complex phenomena, whether of climate or society, is rarely anything more than mere scientism, and when such work is accompanied with heresy hunting and doubt shaming, the models can be dismissed — especially if they never are successfully predictive — or even retrodictive (that is, prediction of the past). Climate scientists who sport alarmist models of climate change have yet to trot out a model that even predicts recent trends, much less future trends along with future magnitudes.

Arguably, climate science jumped the shark years ago. And the damage it is doing to public appreciation of science and the calling that is science is as incalculable as . . . future climate.

Some day, I suppose, there may be a science of climate with some predictive validity. That day is not here yet.

The crazy extent to which seemingly legitimate scientists have nosed themselves into cultish climate dogmatism is, in fact, very funny. But they aren’t laughing. They are so serious they do not see the ultimate joke that they’ve perpetrated upon themselves. Mark Twain once quipped that “Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” That was a joke. We are not meant to take the joke seriously.

Being a smart person means not falling into traps easy to spot. Mark Twain was jesting. If you try to change the weather system, the climate, you will make of yourself a laughing stock.

Accept your limitations. Deny certainty in the sciences of complex phenomena, and accept that the role of the scientist is not that of priest or court wizard. Give up the hubris of World Savior, and, in accepting these limitations, accept your limited responsibility, too.

Become an apostate to cultism, and, by doubting, deny intellectual legitimacy to all cults. Including the cult of “science.”