Article A triple threat to humanity: Climate change, pandemics, and anti-science

[C C]

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2024/12/a-...i-science/

INTRO: Over the past decade, many of us in the scientific community have come to appreciate the existential threat we face today—a threat unlike any we’ve witnessed since the days of the U.S. and Soviet Cold War in the last half of the twentieth century. While even today the specter of nuclear annihilation remains, especially given the escalation of hot wars in Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Iran, we now face entirely new twenty-first-century forces that place the future of humankind in even greater peril.

Our newest and gravest challenge may not feel as acute as the 1980s Cold War threat of mutual assured destruction (MAD). There are no missiles with nuclear warheads crisscrossing the oceans. But it is every bit as real, posing a threat to civilization and our planet. This NextGen MAD consists of three synergistic components.

The first component is the unprecedented warming of our planet and temperatures that one of us (Michael Mann) highlighted more than two decades ago while still a postdoctoral researcher in the form of the now-famous “hockey stick” curve. The warming of the planet and its impacts—which include coastal inundation from melting ice and intensified more deadly hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires—is taking an increasing toll on our civilization by any measure, be it loss of life (which can be measured in millions of lives per year) or economic costs (which can be measured in trillions of dollars per year in lost GDP globally).

Look no further than deadly temperatures that exceeded 50oC (122oF) this past summer. More than 2,000 Americans died from extreme heat in 2023, a tragic new record. The death and destruction will continue to accelerate as long as we fail to address the problem at its source: chiefly, our ongoing reliance on fossil fuels for energy and transportation.... (MORE - details)

[Syne]

In doing this research McIntyre and McKitrick had legitimately accessed Mann’s public college web site server in order to get a lot of the source material, and whilst doing this they found the data that provoked them to look at the bristlecone series in a folder entitled “Censored”. It seems that Mann had done this very experiment himself and discovered that the climate graph loses its hockey stick shape when the bristlecone series are removed. In so doing he discovered that the hockey stick was not an accurate chart of the recent global climate pattern, it is an artificial creation that hinges on a flawed group of US proxies that are not even valid climate indicators. But Mann did not disclose this fatal weakness of his results, and it only came to light because of McIntyre and McKitrick’’s laborious efforts.
- https://fromtone.com/the-rise-and-fall-o...key-stick/

[confused2]

In doing this research McIntyre and McKitrick had legitimately accessed Mann’s public college web site server in order to get a lot of the source material, and whilst doing this they found the data that provoked them to look at the bristlecone series in a folder entitled “Censored”.  It seems that Mann had done this very experiment himself and discovered that the climate graph loses its hockey stick shape when the bristlecone series are removed. In so doing he discovered that the hockey stick was not an accurate chart of the recent global climate pattern, it is an artificial creation that hinges on a flawed group of US proxies that are not even valid climate indicators. But Mann did not disclose this fatal weakness of his results, and it only came to light because of McIntyre and McKitrick’’s laborious efforts.
- https://fromtone.com/the-rise-and-fall-o...key-stick/

I don't think you (Syne) are in any doubt about the difference between 'global warming' and local micro-climates but I suspect you find it expedient to pretend that you do.

Bristlecone pines live on mountains at an altitude of about 2 miles. We could look at things like lower temperature lowering humidity which reduces cloud cover and actually increases temperature on the side of a mountain. OR we could say conditions 'up there' are anomalous compared to ground level measurements. Another possibility is to suggest the bristlecone micro-climate is a good guide to global temperature, selecting the data that suits our purpose and using it to claim global warming happens without an increase in CO2 so the CO2 hypothesis is false. This type of data selection doesn't prove anything except that you're more interested in memes than truth. The same thing may apply to the hockey stick guy - fortunately we now have an increasing amount of 'good' satellite data which is where the real science can start.

[Syne]

If you had read the source, you'd see that that's just a part of the problem with how the cores were selected and grouped... often greatly limiting the number of samples used without justification and grouping areas further apart than available nearer samples would warrant. This all smacks of sampling bias... and all working in a single direction, by climatologists whose careers hinge on finding support for that narrative. Conveniently, from the 1990 to the 2001 IPCC reports, they added an "uncertainty" smear to obscure and help narratively erase the Medieval Warm Period, leaving only the recovery from the Little Ice Age (both of which had been accepted, even by the 1990 IPCC, for decades).

But I'm happy to wait for history to prove the world is not, indeed, ending. There's a reason they only say "the warmest in the last 1,000 years," as every climatologist, geologist, etc. knows for a fact the earth use to be way warmer than it is today. They're just pushing CO2 forcing in an attempt to fearmonger that it is somehow unnatural and thus irreversible... in a naturalistic fallacy. But if you're willing to cede the CO2 hypothesis, I'm good with that as well. That's actually the only part that makes the narrative suspect, as it's the only argument used to push political agendas and attempts to capture large swaths of the economy.

[Yazata]

I'm sceptical about EVERYTHING in the hideously misnamed Skeptical Inquirer.

As far as existential "threats to humanity" go, I'd say that pandemics might hypothetically rise to that level, if a disease that was as communicable as the common cold and 100% fatal ever appeared. I don't really anticipate that happening and worrying about it doesn't keep me up at night. But it's possible.

Even that might not destroy humanity entirely, since remote islands would probably cut themselves off from human contact and go back to a more subsistance economy. Travel could be kept to a minimum with travelers subjected to lengthy quarantines. Starlink (for as long as it continues to function without new rocket launches) could keep them in contact with other isolated survivors as most of the world goes back to nature. And if the virus doesn't find an animal reservoir in which to replicate, might just burn out and go extinct itself if it's only able to replicate in humans who are all dead or in hiding.

I don't perceive climate change as an existential "threat to humanity" at all. Even in worst-case scenarios it's not going to drive humanity extinct or even destroy modern civilization. So far there's only been about a 1.6 degree C rise in mean global temperature since the industrial revolution. Hardly an extinction level event.

Probably the most threatening worst-case scenario would be if all the speculations are correct that the polar icecaps (Antarctica particularly) are on a hair trigger and might melt catastrophically if temperatures rise any higher. Of course nobody knows that and its all hypothetical and impossible to test before it does or doesn't happen.

But suppose it did happen. Sea levels would rise pretty dramatically and it would devastate coastal cities and even entire low lying countries like the Netherlands and England. But interior cities would be untouched and would probably grow dramatically as they received migrants from the flooded coasts. Russia and Canada would probably love a warmer climate and longer growing season and would likely flourish. If the Sahara stopped being a desert and returned to being the grassland once was, that would be a huge win.

In other words, even in a worst case scenario results would be mixed, with winners and losers. It might impact a lot of established political and economic interests very hard, but it would be far from being an extinction level or even civilization-ending event.

As for "anti-science", that's mostly just a hostile caricature. What it really refers to is the application of scepticism not only to what is already believed to be "woo", but also to proclaimations that are made in the name of science, particularly when that science is perceived as tainted by extra-scientific political motivations and ideologies.

It's ironic when a publication that wears its ostensible "skepticism" on its cover (Skeptical Inquirer) demands instead rank public credulity whenever it's their own beliefs in question.

[Magical Realist]

Yazata said: It's ironic when a publication that wears its ostensible "skepticism" on its cover (Skeptical Inquirer) demands instead rank public credulity whenever it's their own beliefs in question.

Skepticism, in the online group think sense that it has acquired, is a gross misnomer. For one is not really being skeptical per se about certain beliefs without having another belief you accept in its stead. It is the whole reason for doubting those beliefs. Their brand of skepticism then really only amounts to an alternative ideology.

[confused2]

If you had read the source, you'd see that that's just a part of the problem with how the cores were selected and grouped

My guess is that the only reason for bringing up 'The Hockey Stick' is to take the focus away from data gathered over the last 25 years which strongly suggests he was substantially correct no matter how the data was gathered. Showing Michael Mann was 'selective' in his approach to data (in 1999) has no bearing on the data gathered by satellite for the last 25 years - much as you would like folks to believe that it does - it's a transparent attempt at .. you tell me what it is.