Climate Change Denial: A Model of Inconsistency

Image source: chadwickschool.libguides.com/greek_gods

If you're familiar to any considerable degree with the ongoing debate between monotheists and non-believers, you've probably seen or heard an atheist drop something akin to this startling bomb onto the conversation at some point...

"Truth be told, you and I agree much, much, much more than we disagree."

Now, why would anyone say something like that during an oft-heated back-and-forth lasting for hours, days, and sometimes even months (we do have the Internet and online forums these days to drag the argument out indefinitely, if participants wish, ya know)? To understand why this statement is in fact true, let's look at how modern-day religious people in the West and Middle East and non-believers answer the following questions...

Are/were Ra, Shu, Geb, Osiris, Horus, etc. real?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

Are/were Zeus, Apollo, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, etc., and their Roman analogs real?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

Are/were Odin, Loki, Freyja, Thor, Yggdrasil, etc. real?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

Are/were Tecciztecatl, Nanauatl, Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, etc. real?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

Are/were Apu, Supay, Apocatequil, Ch'aska, Kuka Mama, etc. real?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

Are/were Ganesha, Vishnu, Shiva, Lord Brahma, etc. real?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

Are/were Gitche Manitou, Storms-as-He-Walks, Pah, Malsumis, Haashchʼéé Oołtʼohí, Angwusnasomtaka, Torngasoak, Sedna, etc. real?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

Is/was the Golden Calf real?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

Is/was Ba'al real?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

Is the Dalai Lama truly the enlightened reincarnation of all the lamas or tulkus that precede him (i.e.: a living god)?
Monotheist: No.
Atheist: No.

(And so on in a seeming unending loop until we finally get to...)

Is Yahweh (or whatever name you care to give the God of Abraham) real?
Monotheist: Yes.
Atheist: No.

Briefly and simply put...

"From a plurality of prime movers, the monotheists have bargained it down to a single one. They are getting ever nearer to the true, round figure."

- Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

Similarly, despite the eyebrows that might raise over it, this statement is also true.

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) advocates and deniers agree on the science about 99% of the time.

To see how this is the case, let's once again pose some illustrative questions to both sides...

Have you ever aggressively criticized epidemiologists for their usage of computer models to solve mysteries or make predictions in their field?
AGW Denier: No, never.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

Have you ever aggressively criticized geologists for their usage of computer models to solve mysteries or make predictions in their field?
AGW Denier: No, never.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

Have you ever aggressively criticized microbiologists for their usage of computer models to solve mysteries or make predictions in their field?
AGW Denier: No, never.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

Have you ever aggressively criticized hematologists for their usage of computer models to solve mysteries or make predictions/diagnoses in their field?
AGW Denier: No, never.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

Have you ever aggressively criticized oncologists or pathologists for their usage of computer models to solve mysteries or make predictions/diagnoses in their field?
AGW Denier: No, never.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

Have you ever aggressively criticized seismologists for their usage of computer models to solve mysteries or make predictions in their field?
AGW Denier: No, never.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

Have you ever aggressively criticized nuclear physicists for their usage of computer models to solve mysteries or make predictions in their field?
AGW Denier: No, never.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

Have you ever aggressively criticized mathematicians and physicists for their usage of computer models to assist the military in making battle predictions?
AGW Denier: No, never.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

Have you ever aggressively criticized neurologists for their usage of computer models to solve mysteries or make predictions in their field?
AGW Denier: No, never.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

(And so on in a seeming unending loop until we finally get to...)

Have you ever aggressively criticized climatologists for their usage of computer models to solve mysteries or make predictions in their field?
AGW Denier: Yes, all the time.
AGW Advocate: No, never.

Just like monotheists have very nearly narrowed it down to the real number of gods, but refuse to take that final, irresistible, and unavoidable step toward maintaining logical consistency, climate change deniers almost hit the mark on the real number of computer models that have proven useless to scientists trying to improve the predictive capacity of their chosen discipline, and therefore are indeed worthy of their ignorant criticism.

Zero.

And, FYI, deniers, no matter how much you really, really, really want it to happen, no one is going to stop attempting to predict future climate, mmmmkay? It's not going to happen. EVER. So, unless you have a better alternative than computer models to offer the world for its much-needed climatic forecasts, you can go ahead and shut yer ever-flapping, horribly misinformed, pointless pie holes until you do.

Thank you.

Computer Modeling Updated Again with No Denier Reaction This Time

Unless your spaceship just landed on this planet, like, uh, yesterday, or something, you're probably aware that climate change deniers constantly cry, moan, wail, and wet their diapers whenever computer simulations DO NOT PRECISELY MATCH OBSERVATION.

My, oh, my, how these infantile twits can carry on worse than a two year-old who wants out of the crib.

Strangely, though they demand perfection, they especially hate it when the data or algorithms upon which the models are based get adjusted/updated and results improve, even though near-exhaustive explanations for the changes are often provided. No, really, if you're not as childish and intellectually-lazy as Anthony Watts and Steven Goddard, you can find rather pedestrian reasons and clarifications after like five seconds of searching the Web.

Maybe strangest of all is the fact that when you ask these screwballs for an alternative future-climate predictor to replace the computer models they hate so much, this is the deafening response:



Yeah, I know. I can't figure these denier wingnuts out either.

You and I, dear reader, both know there's no comparison, but because deniers can't understand climate models or how they work at all, they look at them like, say, a really bad sweater that Grandma bought them. For some bizarre reason, they'll go ahead and wear an article of clothing they hate, rather than letting Grandma know what they really want for the holidays or their birthday next time, or just simply returning it and getting something different. If their ignorant, unhelpful reactions to models which include no descriptions of what they would prefer we use to make climatic forecasts are any guide, they have to think doing nothing but moaning and groaning out loud about Grandma's horrific gift to anyone within range of their voice will somehow magically make a situation they find untenable better. How I don't know.

So much to my surprise, deniers didn't make a single, solitary peep when this study was released recently, declaring that, by changing a critical assumption made by basically every scientist in the field and re-running the computer simulations over again, the results began matching observation much, much more closely.

Apparently, if you assume dark matter only has gravitational effects, and does not interact at all with light, your computer models spit out something that does not reflect reality and that looks like this with many unobserved dwarf galaxies orbiting larger galaxies like our own Milky Way:



Now, if you tweak the computer models just a wee-bit, and let the simulated dark matter interact ever so slightly with radiation like photons and neutrinos, you get something that looks a lot more like what we actually see when we look out at our galactic neighborhood which has very few dwarf companions:



Man, how did that modeling fudge and flip-flop escape climate change deniers' notice, not produce a flurry of puerile tantrums, and—?

Wait, wait, right, never mind. My bad. I forgot. Climatology is the only field of scholarly inquiry that deniers would prohibit from using and refining computer models. Everybody else, including cosmologists and astrophysicists, can do whatever they like with their digital simulations, and deniers won't care a lick or shed a single tear over the alterations. Nope, not one vicious accusation of hypocrisy or professional misconduct will be made. No email accounts hacked. No public misinformation campaigns funded and initiated by think tanks dedicated to science denial. Miraculously, none of that will go down as long as the scientists in question aren't climate experts. Sheesh, how did I let that absurd state of denier affairs slip my mind? Well, in my own defense, I guess that's what can happen when you don't obsess irrationally over one area of study, and instead you treat all scientists and their research, regardless of discipline, in the same democratic, levelheaded manner.

Note: Dark matter study analysis and pictures courtesy of Brian Koberlein.

Down with Disease

This is a highly-technical but engrossing talk given at Yale about infectious disease and climate change. Before watching this, I would have expected a more direct correlation between increased temperatures and increases in diseases like malaria, but it turns out the story is much more complex. For one, it seems malaria is not quite so happy to see higher temperatures as previously thought. Now, that would be good news for the broiling hot tropics (what little good news these areas can hope for), but possibly bad news for higher latitudes where the temperatures approach malaria's sweet spot. Also, wealth leads to less exposure to the natural world (indoor climate control, screened doors and windows, etc.), and therefore less exposure to vectors of transmission like mosquitoes, so, as the continent's economy improves, Africans may remove themselves from conditions which facilitate the spread, leading to a decrease in malaria, even were it the case that it preferred 40+ °C. But that reduction assumes climate change will not negatively impact the region's economic growth, something Kevin Lafferty points out in the video is rather presumptuous. See? Like many things in science, it gets complicated quick. We can be thankful dedicated professionals like Lafferty take the time to conduct field research and draft complex analyses in an effort to quantify and understand all the factors and variables involved. We can also be thankful scientists like Lafferty appreciate that computer models greatly aid the effort, rather than disparage them. Notice how heavily Lafferty relies on them for predictions in his basic parasitology research and for understanding climate change impacts such as disruptions of host/parasite populations. Splitting the baby in situations like this must drive deniers mad. After all, in order to maintain the denier delusion that computer models of the climate are inherently flawed and worthless, they have to willfully ignore their usage/efficacy elsewhere in science, such as parasitology.