When Hysteria Dictates Policy

Tom Finnerty23 Jun, 2024 2 Min Read
The "huge mistake" of climate "science."

The Climate Discussion Nexus has begun a series of webinars in which their director, Canadian historian and journalist John Robson, sits down with some important figures in the ongoing climate debate to give them a chance to air their views, which are generally anathema in mainstream forums.

The first of these webinars was with Roger Pielke Jr., professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of the widely read Substack newsletter, The Honest Broker. Pielke was an interesting choice for CDN, since he is more of a subscriber to the "anthropogenic global warming" narrative than that institution is. That said, as his aptly named newsletter indicates, he really is an honest broker, someone who isn't scandalized by alternative viewpoints and is willing to argue in good faith with people he disagrees with on these topics.

One area where Pielke and Robson are decidedly in agreement, it must be said, is in the overwrought government responses to "climate change." And those responses have been justified by what both agree is bad science.

Early on in their discussion, Robson asked Piekle about a recent piece of his entitled, "Climate Science is About to Make a Huge Mistake." Pielke explained much more thoroughly than this space will allow how the guiding light of climate science is a scenario called Representative Concentration Pathway (or RCP) 8.5. RCP 8.5 predicts an almost exponential growth in global carbon emissions, and it is widely acknowledged by climate scientists to have already demonstrated as wrong, even an hysterical worst case scenario. And yet, it is still widely used to inform climate policy.

The faultiness of RCP 8.5 has become a bit of a scandal in the climate science world, and so there is now a concerted effort to update the normative scenario on which climate modeling is based. Unfortunate, says Pielke, the "huge mistake" climate science is about to engage in is to tweak RCP 8.5 rather than tear it down and start again. Perhaps the reason for this is that any really dramatic downscaling in climate predictions would be read (rightly) as a retreat from the "climate change" narrative which has become a kind of religious doctrine at this point. And those scientists are reluctant to surrender their roles as the new religion's high priests.

There's a lot more in this wide-ranging discussion. Give it a watch.

Tom Finnerty writes from New England and Ontario.

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One comment on “When Hysteria Dictates Policy”

  1. According to the Eco-Nuts from back in the 1970's Earth was suppose to be a dead rock in space orbiting 3rd from the sun. Looks like the Earth isn't as Fragile as they claimed

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