Hoe zal de klimaathysterie eindigen? Met een knal of stilletjes?

Zoals uit bijgaande afbeelding blijkt, werden de meest dwaze beelden niet geschuwd om de angstpsychose bij het publiek voor klimaatverandering (voorheen opwarming van de aarde) aan te wakkeren. En de campagne had wereldwijd groot succes – wellicht zonder precedent in de menselijke geschiedenis. Maar met de komst van de nieuwe Amerikaanse president lijkt het tij te keren. Als het hem zou lukken de klimaathysterie te beëindigen, is het niet ondenkbaar dat hij – alleen al daarom – als een groot president de geschiedenis zal ingaan.

Hoe zal de klimaathysterie eindigen? Met een knal of stilletjes?

Onder de titel, ‘This is the way the climate scare ends; not with a bang, but a whimper’, schreef Ian Aitken voor ‘Watts Up With That’ (WUWT):

What does the future hold for the climate change debate? Will there ever come a day when we see the headlines across the globe, ‘It’s Official – There Is No Climate Change Crisis’? Hardly – for unless we find some way to leap ahead in the currently highly immature science of climate change and manage finally to pin down the exact direct and indirect (via feedbacks) warming effect of adding greenhouse gases to our atmosphere and the exact effects of natural changes in our climate the outcomes will remain uncertain. …

Ondanks de miljarden die door de jaren heen aan klimaatonderzoek zijn gespendeerd, is er niet veel vooruitgang geboekt ten aanzien van het inzicht in cruciale factoren binnen het klimaatsysteem. Eén daarvan is de klimaatgevoeligheid (het effect van een verdubbeling van de CO2-concentratie in de atmosfeer op de temperatuur), die door de mainstream nog even hoog wordt geschat als dertig jaar geleden.

Having persuaded the world to spend trillions of dollars on fighting man-made climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) really going to admit that the causes of climate change are actually far more complex than they originally thought and so they may have been fundamentally mistaken about both the attribution and quantification of warming?

And what about the UK’s Royal Society and the American National Academy of Sciences, those most renowned of scientific institutions; are they going to admit that they may have put political correctness and scientific funding concerns before scientific objectivity? What about all those climate scientists who have been so careful to tacitly collude with the IPCC and not rock the climate change crisis boat; are they going to admit that their judgments may have been skewed by considerations of the self-interest of retaining their jobs, careers, incomes and pensions? And the many climate research units around the world; are they going to say, ‘Well we must go where the science takes us – if the science says that there actually isn’t a problem then we’ll just have to shut up shop.’ What about all of the senior politicians in the western world who have foisted an avalanche of regulations, taxes and controls on their electorates to ‘fight climate change’; are they going stand up and admit that their scientific illiteracy led them to be completely fooled? Are all those prestigious environmental organizations, such as the WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth going to admit they had only ‘signed up’ to the global warming scare because it happened to suit their agendas, attracted donations and increased their influence? …

Het antwoord is natuurlijk dat we daar nog lang op kunnen wachten. Maar ondertussen loopt de teller en verdwijnen er dagelijks miljarden in het grote zwarte gat van het klimaatbeleid. Dus het zo mooi zijn als er nu wat schot in de zaak kwam.

Helaas is er op dit moment nog geen duidelijk alternatief voor het AGW-paradigma (AGW=’Anthropogenic Global Warming’) – slechts analyses die op een breed en ingewikkeld interactief complex van natuurlijke factoren wijzen, waaronder de zon, oceaanoscillaties, wolkenvorming enz..

It is a very easy to understand, very alarming problem with a very ‘simple’ solution (‘decarbonize globally’) vs. a very hard to understand, very unthreatening problem with no man-made solution (since we are at the mercy of nature). …

Aitken beschrijft de verschillende fasen van de ontwikkeling van de klimaathype.

1) Scientists misreading the evidence, confusing correlation, cause and effect – and then, long before the science is sufficiently mature to warrant it, leaping to alarmist conclusions

2) Scientists then exaggerating the risks (and suppressing uncertainties and contradictory evidence) in order to attract government funding to investigate the potential scare properly

3) Journalists hyping the potential scare in order to drum up public alarm (and sell newspapers)

4) The public, unable to understand the science, over-reacting and clamoring for political action

5) Politicians, unable to understand the science, over-reacting and responding to public alarm by rushing in ill-considered policies to mitigate the perceived risks

6) Politicians increasing scientific funding in order to find more evidence in support of the scare in order to confirm the rightness of their policies

7) Scientists duly supplying more evidence in order to attract further government funding (this evidence being used by journalists to drum up even more public alarm)

8) A rising awareness by scientists that the problem is actually much more complex (and the causes much more ambiguous and uncertain) than they originally surmised – and, anyway, far less risky

9) A rising awareness by the public and politicians that the risks have been exaggerated and the scare is not materializing – and the policies have done, and are doing, more harm than good

10) Scientists, journalists and politicians quietly retreating from association with the scare

11) The scare fading from the public consciousness

Today we are at about point (8). The trouble is that at this point the investment in the ‘cause’ has been so vast (both in terms of money and reputation/ego) that calling a halt has become virtually impossible (although Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord would be a good start).

After (11), in the 2030s or 2040s perhaps, we may start to see many PhD theses being written by psychology graduates about the great global delusion of the catastrophic climate change scare of the early 21st century and the extraordinary story of how a small group of highly politicized scientists and computer modelers brought science into public disrepute as never before by corrupting the scientific process in order to achieve their hubristic and utopian goals.

Aldus Aitken in een analyse die verplicht leesvoer is voor klimatofielen van alle gezindten.

Lees verder hier.

Voor mijn eerdere bijdragen over klimaat en aanverwante zaken zie hier, hier, hier, hier en hier.