Climate models have been pretty bad, although you would never know that given all the breathless attention given them in the media and by politicians. No predictions made by climate scientists have come close to reality over the long term.

That’s not a reason to not make climate models–the only way you learn how anything works is to keep trying out theories and models until you get closer to an approximation of how things work and what all the variables are.

The failure of the models is not a failure of science; failing models move science forward. Even the best physics theories have holes and fail to predict important phenomena. This is exciting, not a bad thing. There is more to learn!

But of course when you read about climate models in the media, or hear about them from politicians and activists, you are not being engaged in a discussion about how science works, or how climate works, or any other legitimate scientific discussion. Instead you have entered the realm of socialist propaganda. We keep on being told that “science” tells us…whatever horror story…so give me absolute power.

Climate models are being used as a persuasion tool, not an educational one.

Environmentalists are like watermelons: Green on the outside, Red on the inside. The climate science you hear about in the media and from politicians is just sliced up watermelons.

My musings on this matter were…triggered, to use a contemporary term…by a piece in Nature: Human Behavior. Nature, as you may know, is one of, or perhaps the single most prestigious scientific journals in the world. It has been around since the Pleistocene era and has published all the most distinguished scientists over the past two centuries. Making it into Nature is a sign that you have indeed made it.

Unfortunately, though, Nature has caught the woke disease, as has everything that was once true, good, and beautiful. It has taken to publishing nonsense at times. It is not ridiculous, in the way Scientific American is ridiculous now, but it has more inertia towards seriousness than SciAm. Total ridiculousness is on its way.

Watts Up with That pointed me toward the journal article, and it is a doozy. It’s WUWT’s job to comb the interwebs for climate related idiocy so we don’t have to.

Published: 16 November 2022

Climate change and human behaviour

Nature Human Behaviour (2022)

Climate change is an immense challenge. Human behaviour is crucial in climate change mitigation, and in tackling the arising consequences. In this joint Focus issue between Nature Climate Change and Nature Human Behaviour, we take a closer look at the role of human behaviour in the climate crisis.

…

Human behaviour is a neglected factor in climate science

In the light of the empirical evidence for the role of human behaviour in climatic changes, it is curious that the ‘human factor’ has not always received much attention in key research areas, such as climate modelling. For a long time, climate models to predict global warming and emissions did not account for it. This oversight meant that predictions made by these models have differed greatly in their projected rise in temperatures^8,9.

Human behaviour is complex and multidimensional, making it difficult — but crucial — to account for it in climate models. In a Review, Brian Beckage and colleagues thus look at existing social climate models and make recommendations for how these models can better embed human behaviour in their forecasting.

…

The psychology of climate change

The complexity of humans is also reflected in their psychology. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, research suggests that many people underestimate the effects of it, are sceptical of it or deny its existence altogether. In a Review, Matthew Hornsey and Stephan Lewandowsky look at the psychological origins of such beliefs, as well as the roles of think tanks and political affiliation.

Note what is going on here. The claim is not that scientists or policy makers must consider human psychology in order to better make policies that avoid the worst effects of climate change. That is trivially true.

If the best solution you can think of to deal with climate change is to suggest mass suicide, for instance, a person more familiar with human psychology than the average environmentalist would point out that this is a non-starter.

It might not even take a psychologist to notice this. Only an environmentalist or climate scientist would think voluntary extinction was a viable suggestion. Many, such as Extinction Rebellion, recommend this course of action, to which I say “you first.” Psychology may have something to do with how human beings react to changes in the atmosphere, but I would be shocked if psychology changed the atmosphere’s temperature changes directly.

The contention made here is actually much that human psychology does change how gases in the atmosphere behave: this journal article claims climate models fail in their predictions because psychologists weren’t consulted. By focusing on merely physical processes and not the human element, predictions about the relationship between gases in the atmosphere and the heat budget of Earth are incorrect.

Read this again:

In the light of the empirical evidence for the role of human behaviour in climatic changes, it is curious that the ‘human factor’ has not always received much attention in key research areas, such as climate modelling. For a long time, climate models to predict global warming and emissions did not account for it. This oversight meant that predictions made by these models have differed greatly in their projected rise in temperatures^8,9.

Instead of making a model for atmospheric effects of carbon dioxide on temperature, the climate modelers need some X factor of human psychology. Climate change, apparently, is a product of the mind, not of physics.

That is the claim being made. Amazing. The models failed to predict the proper amount of atmospheric heating due to increased CO2 because…we didn’t believe it enough? Is that what they are saying?

It appears so.

I have said before that the modern intellectual believes that reality is merely a construct of the human mind, and I suspect that many of you think I am exaggerating. I am not. When I was in graduate school I was having a nice discussion with another Dukie about physics, and she assured me that gravity only existed because we believe it does.

I invited her to jump out the 3rd floor window to prove her point. She demurred, because as a Western educated person she was still a believer in gravity. Seriously. She said that.

That psychology determines reality is a fundamental belief of many academics today, although rarely physicists or engineers, who confront reality every day and wrestle with it. This is how changing your pronouns changes your biology according to these people. They actually mean it.

Of course, in the case of Nature: Human Behavior, I suspect that the article is merely the result of psychologists wanting to get into the climate grift business, not hermeneutics. After all, we are told by John Kerry that 2-4 trillion dollars a year need to be spent on climate change mitigation, so there are a lot of sweet dollars to chase, and why not a few for psychologists?

I am all for spending money on climate science. It seems very useful to me to know how climate works. We spend quite a bit building physics experiments, and that is an enormous social good. The James Webb telescope, while hideously expensive, is something Americans revel in having. Climate science–and by that I mean science that studies how the climate works, not the political mess we call climate science–is worthy of spending vast sums of money it seems to me. Not 2-4 trillion dollars a year, but a lot. All for it. A better use of tax dollars than bureaucrats.

But what is called “climate science” in politics and the media is not science at all. It is globalist grifting. Anybody who runs around with their hair on fire screaming should be laughed at, not taken seriously. That is not science. Gluing yourself to floors or paintings is not science. It is performance art.

Pay attention to the science, not the posturing. It is fascinating and important. The performance art done by the alarmists is just bad.

A few decades ago they tried to scare everybody with global cooling. pic.twitter.com/hQFH2zvOEt

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) November 18, 2022