{"id":328934,"date":"2024-05-14T08:10:16","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T06:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=328934"},"modified":"2024-05-14T08:10:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T06:10:18","slug":"many-of-the-climate-experts-surveyed-by-the-guardian-in-recent-propaganda-blitz-turn-out-to-be-emotionally-unstable-hysterics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=328934","title":{"rendered":"Many of the \u2018Climate Experts\u2019 Surveyed by the Guardian in Recent Propaganda Blitz Turn Out to be Emotionally-Unstable Hysterics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0BEN PILE<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Guardian<\/em> last week published its survey of \u2018climate experts\u2019. The results are a predictable mush of fire-and-brimstone predictions and emotional incontinence. This stunt may have convinced those already aligned to the newspaper\u2019s ideological agenda to redouble their characteristically shrill rhetoric, but encouraging scientists to speculate and emote about the future of the planet looks like an act of political desperation, not scientific communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the purposes of creating this story, the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u2019s Environment Editor Damian Carrington contacted 843 \u2018lead authors\u2019 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change\u2019s reports (IPCC) and 383 responded to his questions. The actual substance of the survey does not seem to have been published by the paper, but the main response Carrington wanted to get from his respondents was an estimate of how much global warming there will be by the end of the century. \u201cWorld\u2019s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5\u00baC target,\u201d claims one\u00a0headline<\/a>. A graphic in the article shows the responses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The obvious problem this raises is that such a wide range of views on the next three quarters of a century discredits the notion that the IPCC represents a \u2018scientific consensus\u2019 on climate change. The \u2018consensus\u2019 \u2013 the putative expression of agreement by the worlds \u2018top climate scientists\u2019 \u2013 is the lynchpin of the narrative, epitomised by the Guardian<\/em>, that the climate debate is between scientists and denialists. \u201cSeventy seven per cent of climate scientists expect a rise of at least 2.5\u00baC,\u201d explains the chart. Well, yeah, but 23% of climate scientists do not. And a good number of those connected to the IPCC believe that there will be just 1.5 degrees of warming \u2013 a third less warming than is anticipated by their colleagues at the other end of the spectrum. Clearly, there is, or needs to be, a debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This in turn raises the question of why this survey was necessary at all. The IPCC\u2019s main output is an Assessment Report (AR), of which six have so far been produced since 1990. Each AR consists of three main volumes, each produced by a Working Group<\/a> (WG), whose focus is on assessing the available research on \u201cthe physical science\u201d (WG1), impacts and vulnerabilities (WG2), and mitigation options (WG3). A Guardian<\/em> opinion survey is hardly going to shed any light on science that these scientists, who authored the reports, have not already published. It would seem rather silly to ignore the thousands of pages of summaries of the state of scientific understanding that hundreds of scientists and other experts have compiled and substitute it with a DIY opinion poll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opinion isn\u2019t science. Even scientific opinion is not science. Yet Carrington seems to believe that tapping into the emotions of scientists is of greater value than reading their work. And all sorts of mush seems to have been unleashed by his project. \u201c\u2018I am starting to panic about my child\u2019s future\u2019: climate scientists wary of starting families,\u201d claims one headline<\/a> based on the survey. According to the article, the victim of the panic is a Professor Lisa Schipper, whom Carrington describes as \u201can expert on climate vulnerability\u201d. Schipper\u2019s profile<\/a>, however, reveals her actual occupation: \u201cI am particularly interested in socio-cultural dimensions of vulnerability, including gender, culture and religion, as well as structural issues related to power, justice and equity.\u201d I\u2019m smelling a rat here, and more than a whiff of humbug. Schipper is not a climate scientist at all, as Carrington seems to imply in both his headline and his article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another article \u2013 an interactive page on the Guardian<\/em> website<\/a> \u2013 claims: \u201cWe asked 380 top climate scientists what they felt about the future.\u201d The article quotes, among others, Lorraine Whitmarsh from the University of Bath, who tells Carrington:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[Climate change] is an existential threat to humanity and [lack of] political will and vested corporate interests are preventing us addressing it. I do worry about the future my children are inheriting.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But Whitmarsh is not a climate scientist either. According to her academic profile<\/a> at Bath, She did a BA in Theology and Religious Studies with French at the University of Kent, graduating in 1997. She followed this with a Masters in \u2018Science, Culture and Communication\u2019, before completing a PhD in Psychology in 2005. Now Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), Whitmarsh researches \u201cperceptions and behaviour in relation to climate change, energy and transport\u201d and \u201cregularly advises governmental and other organisations on low-carbon behaviour change and climate change communication\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have discussed the nature of climate psychologists\u2019 work before in the Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/em>. And of course, CAST<\/a> is of that lofty academic milieu which wraps naked Stalinism in motherhood-and-apple-pie. \u201cWe want to work closely with people and organisations to achieve positive low-carbon futures \u2014 transforming the way we live our lives, and reconfiguring organisations and cities,\u201d says the group\u2019s website. What it doesn\u2019t have an answer to, however, is people who do not share CAST\u2019s radical ideology and do not want their lives, cities or organisations transformed or reconfigured by self-regarding shrinks \u2013 who are manifestly the ones in need of help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are of course a number of respondents with scientific backgrounds who have replied to Carrington. But these scientific credentials do not seem to have made those who own them any more rational. \u201cSometimes it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken,\u201d says climate scientist Ruth Cerezo-Mota, who at least appears to hav<\/a>e a PhD in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, \u201cafter all the flooding, fires, and droughts of the last three years worldwide, all related to climate change\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But perhaps Cerezo-Mota forgot to read IPCC AR 6 in which her colleagues conclude<\/a> that any detectable increase in floods and meteorological and hydrological droughts cannot be attributed with confidence to anthropogenic climate change. And perhaps she forgot that two decades of wildfire data<\/a> in all regions of the world show significant declines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it is probably for the best that such nervous wrecks do not reproduce. Their grasp on the data is particularly myopic. Despite their apparent belief that the climate crisis is upon us, life for children born in recent years is immeasurably better that of earlier generations. Rather than being dominated by the weather, today\u2019s children are not only far more likely to survive their fifth birthday, they are going to live longer, healthier, wealthier and safer lives than any generation before them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That is, unless these crazy climate scientists get their way. Because they would strip away every last benefit of industry, capitalism,and freedom to \u2018save the planet\u2019, and deny those children the abundant and affordable resources that has created their historically unprecedented position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It goes further than humbug. I sense very little data and science underpins their anti-natalism, but a great deal of ideology and manipulation. So how can we explain these scientists\u2019 views, if we don\u2019t believe that they emerge from science?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One answer might be that, for nearly 40 years now, green ideology has been poured into classrooms throughout the world, without any care for the consequences. It has largely bounced off most people. But several generations of children have now come up through this system into the adult world, through higher education. The institutions of climate and environmental science have increasingly become the centres to which unhinged individuals are drawn. Emotionally unstable people naturally seek reasons to explain their dysphoria and believing there is a crisis unfolding in the skies above their heads (rather than in them) is a way to explain their anxieties. After all, if you were not a climate loon, why would you volunteer your time to the IPCC? Gradually, rational views have been weeded out of these institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that is the implication of Carrington\u2019s series of Guardian<\/em> articles and his survey. It shows that people with no scientific expertise to speak of are nonetheless routinely presented as \u2018scientists\u2019 and experts. It shows that even those with scientific expertise will happily and radically depart from both the consensus position and the objective data on both meteorological events and their societal impacts. And it shows they have no reluctance to use their own emotional distress as leverage to coerce others. Carrington thinks that showing us scientists\u2019 emotional troubles will convince us to share their anxiety. But all it shows is that it would be deeply foolish to defer to the authority of climate science. It\u2019s an unstable mess. Science must be cool, calm, rational, detached and disinterested, or it is just a silly soap opera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Guardian\u00a0last week published its survey of \u2018climate experts\u2019. The results are a predictable mush of fire-and-brimstone predictions and emotional incontinence. This stunt may have convinced those already aligned to the newspaper\u2019s ideological agenda to redouble their characteristically shrill rhetoric, but encouraging scientists to speculate and emote about the future of the planet looks like an act of political desperation, not scientific communication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":328939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691828611,691819140,691828610,691821642,691818262],"class_list":{"0":"post-328934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-1-5oc-target","9":"tag-climate-science","10":"tag-damian-carrington","11":"tag-ipcc-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change","12":"tag-the-guardian","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/08SR.jpeg?fit=1278%2C1278&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1nzo","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":349343,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=349343","url_meta":{"origin":328934,"position":0},"title":"Emotionally Unstable \u201cClimate Scientists\u201d Don\u2019t Like Being Criticized, Run to Daddy (Nature)","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"28\/10\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The Guardian article titled \u2018We have emotions too\u2019: Climate scientists respond to attacks on objectivity is a remarkable exercise in self-pity, featuring climate scientists venting about the supposedly unjust criticism they face\u200b. This is in reaction to the pushback received after publication of an idiotic survey by the Guardian last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate crisis\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate crisis","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-crisis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0what-is-distress.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0what-is-distress.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0what-is-distress.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0what-is-distress.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0what-is-distress.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":274506,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=274506","url_meta":{"origin":328934,"position":1},"title":"What Has Happened to the\u00a0Guardian?","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"19\/08\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers Thomas Jefferson","rel":"","context":"In \"2022 flooding\"","block_context":{"text":"2022 flooding","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=2022-flooding"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/OIG-59.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/OIG-59.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/OIG-59.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/OIG-59.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":328452,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=328452","url_meta":{"origin":328934,"position":2},"title":"A Note to The Guardian \u2013 Opinion Is NOT Science","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"12\/05\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent article in the newspaper The Guardian reports that some of the \u201dworld\u2019s top climate scientists\u201d believe that disaster is soon to occur due to what they claim will be an additional degree of warming on the planet. This is a false narrative. 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Between September last year and May of this, thousands of people all over the world were selected by dialling mobile phone numbers at random.","rel":"","context":"In \"COP 24\"","block_context":{"text":"COP 24","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=cop-24"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/0Greta-Thunberg.png?fit=1200%2C625&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/0Greta-Thunberg.png?fit=1200%2C625&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/0Greta-Thunberg.png?fit=1200%2C625&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/0Greta-Thunberg.png?fit=1200%2C625&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, 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