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A hotfoot from Mother Earth

07 Oct 2020 | OP ED Watch

Judith Curry flags a piece by “The Ethical Skeptic” saying that a significant impact on climate, including the bit where there’s hot and cold, could be connected to the fact that you’re standing on a planet that’s really hot and complicated inside. Could be. It’s not clear. But what is clear is that climate and climate change are not clear, with a lot of major complicated factors potentially involved from deep ocean currents to the sun way up in the sky, and that an a priori reduction of everything to CO2 that leads you to design computer models that blame it all on CO2 and say told you so is, well, not real science.

It’s a disquieting reflection on the state of the climate debate that, before being able to point out that climate is complicated and the planet is blazing and complex within, the ES feels obliged to fend off “more-sciencey-than-thou” types tempted “to assign me an ‘anti-’ label” by saying “I am a proponent of addressing anthropogenic global warming as a first priority for mankind…. I am gravely concerned about human contribution to the stark rise in global temperatures now obviously underway. Therefore, I am not a ‘climate change denier’ – do not trust anyone who mindlessly employs such weaponized phrases. If they lie to you about this, what else are they willing to lie about?” An excellent question indeed.

“Who is The Ethical Skeptic?” is also a good question, to which he or she replies “No one of consequence” before posting a long defence of their choice to remain anonymous including though including details of a professional background in military intelligence, engineering and science as well as claims to exceptional character and originality. Whoever ES is, they do not suffer from false modesty or the other kind. But we do appreciate their point that the goal is to attack ideas not character.

We also appreciate the ES’s willingness to hit back at weaponized phrases, and the subsequent jibe that “We need fewer children with scowling faces, and more unbiased thinking adults addressing this challenge.” But let us move on from character to ideas. The real point here is the content of the ES’s claim about “the key issue... of observed lithosphere and hydrosphere (oceans) heat, and these measures far-outpacing what atmospheric carbon capture models have predicted”, summarized under the proposed title “The Heat May in Part Be Coming from Beneath our Feet.”

The subsequent argument is long, technical and heavily referenced; ES him- or herself goes on to say that more scientists need to tackle it. As indeed they do. But they can’t until they do something else.

Namely discard the notion that it is either intelligent or virtuous to start with the one-size-fits-all assumption that all warming is man-made and only enemies say otherwise. Accept that we are dealing with a complex phenomenon in which solar radiation and indeed solar wind are important, water vapour and clouds play a key role, oceans are huge and poorly understood and planet Earth is even more so. Accept that computer models are children’s toys in this transcomputable world, or worse, polemical weapons.

Debate ideas not motives. And do it with humility. Is it so much to ask?

One comment on “A hotfoot from Mother Earth”

  1. The Ethical Skeptic writes in a pretentious and opaque manner, inaccessible to all but the initiated (of which there may be just one). This isn't really the manner of science, either. I'll reserve judgment.

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