Climate Science: Utter Lack of Self-Awareness

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran yet another advocacy piece pertaining to catastrophic global warming.
In part, the article states,
The “science communication problem,” as it’s blandly called by the scientists who study it, has yielded abundant new research into how people decide what to believe — and why they so often don’t accept the expert consensus. 
"Consensus" has nothing to do with science. Science is about what can be proven and reproduced in an objective manner. The article goes on to say,
How to penetrate the bubble? How to convert science skeptics? Throwing more facts at them doesn’t help. Liz Neeley, who helps train scientists to be better communicators at an organization called Compass, says people need to hear from believers they can trust, who share their fundamental values. 
"Convert"? "'Believers' they can trust"? "Share their fundamental values"?  This is the language of religion, not science.

Of course, the serious issues many climate scientists have with the high-confidence catastrophic global warming hypothesis are not mentioned. It does mention the consensus surrounding the global cooling scare of the 70's but assures us the consensus has it right this time. Does it?

A couple of scientists were engaged in a snarky global warming exchange on Twitter Monday. I have obscured the names because there is no reason to make this personal -- there are plenty of similar examples.
To which a well-known climate scientist replied:
So, as usual, the problem is with the public and their "science literacy." After all, where could the public have gotten the silly idea that global warming would result in less snow?

Oh, wait. They got the idea from climate scientists!
Fourteen years after the article was written, snow is still very much with us. But, does climate science acknowledge the error? No, they blame the public for believing what climate scientists told them would occur.

When I pointed out to the tweeting scientists that the public got the idea that snow would decrease or be eliminated from climate scientists, and that it was silly to blame the public's science literacy for climate science's errors, I got this reply:
When given a chance to further two-way understanding and, perhaps, acknowledging that climate science is often too confident in, for example, 65-year forecasts, we got another rationalization when professional humility might have been a better response. Since the "consensus" is ever-shifting, it is a great way of escaping accountability.

For those of us of a certain age, I guess being a climate scientist means never having to say you are sorry. 

Comments

  1. Agree completely with your thoughts on the disconnect between consensus and science and the religious aspect of AGW believers. Good post.

    ReplyDelete

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