After my last post, musing that I cannot hope to ever discern the human influence of CO2 on the climate – I started thinking about the chances of such stupid scares occurring by pure chance because the climate always has such trends. My thoughts went thus:
In any civilisation that reaches a stage whereby it starts acquiring global data so that it can measure climate globally, there will be by necessity an enormous number of changes any of which could (by the unscrupulous) be tied to climate. And particularly soot, aerosols, chemicals from industry.
So, whereas the modern world is a lot lot cleaner than a few generations ago, the environmental “consciousness” of a world-wide perspective would mean that groups would use these changes to frighten the public. So, it is almost certain that groups – like academia and fiends of the earth would have been ready to abuse science and jump on any change in climate.
Therefore, what is the probability of such change. Let us suppose the climate has three states: pause, warming, cooling (and remember there are many other naturally changing variables that can be cherry picked!!). At the present time we have around 30 years of satellite record & 50 years of CO2 – or around 3-5 decades of real “data”. Because methods change, it is relatively easy to change the more distant past to re-enforce ideas that things are “changing”. So, what is the chance of seeing “something” in 3-5 decades? Lets use 3 decades:
- Trend: Full Cooling/warming = 2/27
- paused trend: warm/cool – pause – warm/cool 2/27
- pause going to trend: pause then pause or warming/cooling then same = 4/27
- Turning: warming then warming or pause or cooling then cooling = 6/27
So, total ways of getting “scary” change = 14/27
As “scares” always use the last few decades – and as it seems to me only three decades would be enough to convince most people that the “experts” had predicted “the” trend (turning point). It seems that the best estimate of the probability of a climate scare – in the first few periods of measurement – is around 50%.
On average, once this scare becomes engrained, the chance of it continuing is therefore 66% (because as we see, the group-think and associated bandwagon effects diverts funding to the alarmists and diminishes the authority and funding for sceptics). So, on average the probability of the length such scares after they start is:
- One decade 33% (leaving 67%)
- Two decades 22% (leaving 45%)
- Three decades 15% (leaving 30%)
- Four decades 10% (leaving 20%)
So, at a rough guess, 50% of societies inventing worldwide measurements will trigger a scare in any one measurement (but there are many such measurements so perhaps the truer figure is closer to 100%). And in general, it is likely that such scares/scams will last around two decades.
In other words, given that the global warming scam is now well on the way out, we are perhaps quite typical – no better – but no worse than would be expected (given the stupidity of academics and others who falsely believe they somehow stop these scares because of their “expertise”).
I think I’ve mentioned before that I did an art project on anthropomorphism of weather, where I illustrated the idea with countless examples ranging from religion to advertising. Curiously all the religions had a great flood myth. It seems we are programmed to perceive weather as being out to get us. Almost as common is the rise of a priesthood to tell us that our behaviour is the reason why the weather is out to get us. It all comes down to bad weather being quite common and a growing trend of bad weather is almost as regular. Strange how we rarely see good weather as the other end of the scale. We see it as the norm. Even the garden of Eden was so nice it wasn’t necessary to wear clothes. They put clothes on because they became aware they were naked, not because it was a bit parky.
I’ve noticed that scientists tend to assume the best case (ie lots of one type of bird like sparrows or kestrels, enough water to fill massive reservoirs, etc) are the norm. They forget that if you start measuring during a boom period (kestrels were one of the only birds of prey left and are now declining probably because other birds like kites are being reintroduced) means that the only direction left is down.
When I was young (listening to BBC) I was led to believe that the “scientific revolution” (almost entirely the work of engineers) meant that our generation were much better than those before (who were stupid and believed nonsense about weather gods). That somehow “science” (meaning liberal academia) was some utopia and that basically good old BBC and academia meant that we had a new world order whereby we would never be subject to the same voodoo witchcraft thinking of previous generations.
Now having seen the global warming religion take off and fall, I know we are no less susceptible to such stupid ideas as the past. Indeed, arguably because of mass communication (aka indoctrination) the lack of practical attachment to the real world outside – our society is even more at risk from these doomsday religions than before.
And the greatest lie of all is this: that somehow we are better than previous generations – less gullible – less likely to be fooled by some shark. But far from it and indeed, from the evidence I see, those most likely to fall for these scams are those who are most arrogant: academics, the BBC, moralistic journalists (and probably bloggers!)