CLIMATE
& APOCALYPTIC GLOBAL WARMING?
Casual reflections written for a weblog
(https://archive.org/details/climate_202102)
(https://www8.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/Climate.html)
by Kristo Ivanov, prof. em.,
Umeå University
(February
2021, version 231204-1430)
CONTENTS
Democracy or identity politics
Asperger autism or technocracy
Environmentalism and the age
gap
Political correctness and politics
Other worries: poverty and weapons
Greenhouse, orbital forcing and accuracy
Computer simulations, prediction,
extraterrestrial life
The following, is a slight revision of an original
text written in February 2019. It was an excessively long insert in a blog of mine, and it
is to be read with consideration for my disclaimer about my later
research.
By the year 2018-2019 climate change and global warming had come to be
considered by the world's mass and social media as well as by "big
science" and in the political discourse as being the main and most urgent
problem of mankind because of apocalyptic visions about the future of
humanity.
Scientific competence
I do not claim scientific competence in discussing
whether these judgments on "the most urgent problem of mankind" are
beyond any doubt but I wish to advance my doubts at the cost of being relegated
to the role of "climate change
denier" in the "global warming
controversy" (as illustrated in particular in Sweden by
individual cases of "dissidents", exemplified in English here, here, (and
playfully here about Two
Cheers for Heresy on Global Warming).
Also in Swedish sites such as here. I must
emphasize, however, that I see myself as competent for understanding what
"scientific" means, and that I am wholly positive and
supportive for the attempt to care for and improve environmental conditions and
sustainability, only they are not made into the absolute most urgent universal
priority among all ongoing suffering in the world. In this respect I am of
the same opinion of the well-known physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson who, as
summarized in Wikipedia, "is skeptical about the simulation models used to
predict climate change, arguing that
political efforts to reduce causes of climate change distract from other global
problems that should take priority."
I do oppose the "moralistic" tone with which
the supposedly established truth of global warming is presented as if it
were no longer debatable, classifying dissidents as conspiracy theorists or
worse. With due regard for the differences I sense that "climate change
denial" is being regarded in a way that recalls former suspected God's
denial or atheism, and in modern times Holocaust denial as much worse than
atheism. In fact I suggest that climate moralism when
it refers to the “Anthropocene” means simply
that it sees Humans as substitutes for God in their unbridled exploitation of
the world. It recalls in my mind, once more, Chesterton's controversial
quotation that "A man who won't
believe in God will believe anything". (Applied
here as "who won't believe in God's Apocalypse must create his
own".) And I would add that today who won't believe in God will substitute
it with "science", something that becomes obvious when the one of the
two main Swedish morning newspapers' editor in chief (Dagens Nyheter, November 1st
2020) inveighs in an editorial against the other newspaper
for its "denial" of the climate crisis, where denial consisted in its
affirming the need and right of questioning scientific findings established by
the would be "scientific community" seen as represented the United
Nations', UN's, climate panel IPCC. The second
newspaper (Svenska Dagbladet),
despite the famous democratic freedom of the press would not have the same
(moral?) right as e.g. Wikipedia's accounting of criticism of IPCC. It is
interesting to note the controversiality of anything
that questions anything about climate change, and the risk of being classified
as “denial”. An example is all the scientific fuss reported in a recent paper
in Science (May 6, 2021) on “Does acidification alter fish
behavior?” dealing with fraud allegations about evidence that ocean acidification - a knock-on effect of the rising carbon
dioxide (CO2) level in Earth’s atmosphere - has a range of striking effects on fish behavior, such as making them
bolder and steering them toward chemicals produced by their predators.
Democracy or identity politics
In fact I believe that scientifically incompetent
editors in chief, and many other people's vociferous commitment to
save-the-climate movement, is less a commitment to godly democratic 18th
century's "general will" or today's
UN than an expression of "identity politics". I did already consider
this in the section on "Censorship of
talk about religion" of my article on Information and
Theology. Even people who have not contributed in any way to determine
and counter the dangers of global warming can cheaply feel proud by boasting
about their understanding and approval of the "overwhelming scientific
evidence" of an impending climatic catastrophe, and feel self-righteous
for caring about the salvation of the whole humanity, with their own
grandchildren to start with. As I write in a text on Information and
Theology, "all this happens while
they claim to worry for climate change that may affect their grandchildren
but ignore present, ongoing massive suffering of neighbours
or the poor all over the world (illustrated or exemplified by shocking videos and photos)." My
scientific advisor West Churchman (1913-2004) who dedicates the whole first
chapter of his last book (Thought and
Wisdom, 1982) to "Future
generations", kept repeating in his late life that about 40.000 children
in the world died every day (not equivalent to child mortality) because of
starvation and related causes. And this despite of worldwide availability of
food, the problem being its distribution. A question arises
about how long will we have to wait until additional 40.000 children die daily
because of climate change: a change that is claimed to be a worldwide priority
while world politics during more than a half a century could not agree to care
of neither starving children nor for disarmament of nuclear weapons, which
could wipe out climate and humanity in a few hours.
Asperger autism or technocracy
To begin with I wish to pay my recognition to the
young schoolgirl Greta Thunberg for the
final insight that fixed my present convictions and doubts. Her influence on my
insight was accomplished after her becoming suddenly world famous at the age of
15, for her commitment to the struggle of combating global warming. It reminds
the historical similar case of another girl, noted as her spiritual
precursor who at age 12 also "silenced the
world" at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, long before
Internet social media that could have made her equally famous. Her name: Severn Cullis-Suzuki. Disregarding whether it is
true that Thunberg's becoming famous was promoted by her involvement in a
public-relations PR scandal or not the account
is that in one of her interventions during a 15 minutes interview at the
Swedish public television she acknowledged more
specifically that her interest and commitment were related to
her diagnosis of Asperger-autism. As I note
elsewhere, her behavior also recalls the behavior attributed to supposed, so
called indigo-children and
displayed by cases of child prodigy at the edge
of both infantile
omnipotence and savant syndrome. It all means
complex psychic trouble. She explained that she sees the world in a different
perspective from the "outside", in black-and-white, and has
difficulties to understand other people who get distracted by what she sees as
empty talk in "social games". So, she acknowledges that the problem
is exceedingly complicated but seen in black-and-white the solution is so
simple that even a 5-years old child can understand it. Indeed I
know of adults, not the least engineers, who seem to reason in these matters as
a 5-years old child: "We" ("They") must simply make
"them" ("us") stop emitting carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.
It is also interesting to suspect the same psychic
frame in highly if not excessively and exclusively gifted mathematical minds
such as Alexander Grothendieck “considered by
many to be the greatest mathematician of the 20th century”. On the net can be
found (as per 7 April 2021) an obituary asked by the
prestigious Nature magazine where is mentioned (here below) his joining a
political-ecological group Survivre et vivre [Survive and live],
which recalls both the message of this present text of mine, as well the
psychic problems associated with the mathematical mind as suggested by Jan
Brouwer in my essay on computers as embodiment of
mathematics and logic:
"In 1969, for
reasons not entirely clear to anyone, he left the IHES where he had done all this work and plunged into an
ecological/political campaign that he called Survivre.
With a breathtakingly naive spirit (that had served him well doing math) he
believed he could start a movement that would change the world. But when he saw
this was not succeeding, he returned to math, teaching at the University of
Montpellier."
I see some ultimate implications recalling William Akin's conceptualization of Technocracy and
the American Dream where engineers are also managers and politicians.
They may be able to determine behavior in their civil society but probably will
not be able to limit ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide in poor needy
countries and by armed forces in recurring wars and exercises on land, in air,
water and ice all over the world. Least of all will they be able to counter the
horrors of any war going on in the world right now, or ultimately the risk for
a nuclear holocaust.
All this while Greta Thunberg engages in climate-change advocacy, such for a
"lecture tour" from Europe to the USA in a supposedly climate-saving
sailboat, a trip that despite all care, has been
criticized for being more polluting than if she had taken an airline's round
trip (see, in German, here in Die
Welt 16 August 2019, and here). It is a
premonition of what good old national and world politics and professionally
planned PR efforts will make out of scared good naive children and good
intentions: "the road to hell
is paved with good intentions", which is one main
tenet of the "system" idea. A hint: "Greta Thunberg
and the plot to forge a climate warrior: The teenage
activist wants nothing more than to change the world. The shadowy cabal behind
her has other goals." (by Dominic Green, The Times, October 10
2019)
In other words: discussions about who are
"We", and the why there have been evil, wars, religion, philosophy,
and diplomacy in the history of humanity, including the last two world wars,
are relegated to "social games" and to "Them". It is an
attitude that emotionally attracts the secularized general public that is tired
of the of the complicacies of world's evil, corruption and suffering and feels
the need of a natural innocence of childhood (that also may be a background for
the ignored causes of pedophilia), all in oblivion of the theological meaning
of Infant Jesus and of
teachings of the Lord of the Flies. At the same time
"we" show that we are morally superior, and in particular morally
superior if we are children who teach adults to be more altruistic and to think
about their children and future generations (instead of the fifth commandment
"Honor your father and your mother", Exodus 20:12). As if adults
did not do that already, think about at least their own grandchildren
but must be taught by them to think about them. A child's reproach is then
"Everybody thinks only about himself but I am the only one who thinks
about me". Or "People only care about themselves; I'm the only one
who cares about myself". It is related to "Everyone thinks
of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Compare
with the Matthew 7:5 "You
hypocrite! First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see
clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." Children's plea for
the adults to think more about them and their future instead of about other
ongoing tragedies is then the only egoistic plea that serendipitously, with
rhetorical power, can claim to be altruistic. This despite children not having
had even the time to acknowledge the ongoing suffering and evil inte the world, the less so when autism implies difficulty
to feel empathy.
The Berlin's bishop
even experienced a Greta-inspired children's demonstration in
April 2019 as reminding Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, while a
deaconess in the Christian Protestant Uniting Church in
Sweden declares (in
Swedish) the very same schoolgirl to be God's
prophet. Others criticize comparisons with
a modern Joan of Arc. It is also a
felicitous case of successful self-victimization and identity
politics (children as a group) with its well-researched but often ignored smart
advantages (cf. the last paragraph of my text on censorship of
talk about religion). When adults allow
themselves to remain or become childish it is
children who teach and take the leadership (cf. the Bible, Isaiah 3:4,12). The title of
one of the few sober reflections upon the Greta-phenomenon was as article
about When children
protest, adults should tell them the truth. Instead, it is a school child who happens to be invited to talk at the
United Nations in order to tell the truth to the world and challenge the
audience with “How
dare you” to ignore science and the
future of all children like me. One can wonder how such a speech would have
been received at the League
of Nations before the second world
war, with a child warning about the calamities to come by listening to science
and technology (of advanced weapons, c.f. the World
Disarmament Conference), leading to the partial
destruction of the world and death of millions of children, women and young men
(and older men). The question is how would the child’s appeals and warnings
have influenced the conduct
of appeasement 1937-1939, the Chamberlain-Hitler
negotiations and the Munich Agreement.
One main problem, however,
appears when children, childish adults and adults cannot or do not want to
listen to other adults. A psychologist may easily guess that especially an
autistic school child will be tempted to substitute the authority of a cold emotional
neutral “science” and “facts of science” for the authority of emotionally
loaded own parents and her close teachers in school. For this to happen the
child will certainly neither need to know anything about what a fact is
or should be, nor which are the methods of science, whether they follow the
tradition of logical
positivism of whatever other unknown
or controversial tradition. That is, the child will not know what science is or should be, for being listened to and by whom. It will be enough
for the child to be sponsored by benevolent parents who hope that autism is
superseded by passion for the cause, and by passionate specialized scientists
in a new trendy specialty who do not feel responsible for couplings to any
other science, and even less to new or old debates about the politics
of science, not to mention morality
and religion.
Environmentalism and the age gap
Concerning children and youngsters who are supposed to
teach parents and elders: this is a text by and unknown author, which was sent
to me from colleagues in Brazil and was also extracted from my blog. I translated it
from the Portuguese and include it here because it portrays and denounces a
perceived cultural decline that expresses itself in a supposed clash of values
between the oldest generation and the younger ones. I do not know whether the
text in Portuguese was an original. It is related to two earlier blog items of
mine (below) written in Swedish, one about "Gamla och unga" [Elders and
youngsters] and the other about "Fjäska inte för pensionärerna" [Do not butter up
senior citizens], as well as to one item summarizing the whole matter, written
in English with the title "Parents, adult
children, childish adults - Inverted identities?". Their
content ultimately suggests a meditation over the Bible's eschathological content in chapter Mark 13 and Matthew 10:21, such as "Brother
will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel
against their parents and have them put to death."
---------
In the supermarket queue, the cashier says to an
old lady: "You should bring your own shopping bags, since plastic bags are
not environmentally friendly.
The lady apologized and said, "There was no green wave in my time. The
clerk replied, "That is exactly our problem today, ma'am. Your generation
did not care enough about our environment.
"You're right," said the lady. Our generation did not care adequately
about the environment. At that time, bottles of milk, bottles of soda and beer
were returned to the store. The store sent them back to the factory, where they
were washed and sterilized before each reuse, and they, the beverage makers,
used the bottles, a few other times. We did not really care about the
environment in our time. We went up the stairs because there were no escalators
in the stores and offices. We walked to the store, instead of using our car, every
time we needed to go two blocks from home. We did not worry about the
environment. Even baby diapers were washed because there were no disposable
diapers. The drying was done by ourselves, not in these machines
electric dryers. Solar and wind energy really dried our clothes. The younger
children wore the clothes that had been their older brothers', not new clothes.
But it's true: there was no concern for the environment in those days. At that time we had only one TV or radio at home, not one TV in each
room. And the TV had a 14-inch screen, not a stadium-sized screen which later
will be discarded, as I do not know how. In the kitchen, we had to beat
everything with our hands because there were no electric mixers, they do
everything for us. When we sent something fragile in the mail, we used old
paper as protection, not plastic bubble or plastic pellets that last five
centuries to begin to degrade. In those days no gasoline engine was used to mow
the lawn, a lawn mower was used that required muscles. The exercise was
extraordinary, and you did not have to go to a gym and use treadmills that also
work on electricity. But you're right: there was no concern for the environment
at that time. We drank straight from the fountain when we were thirsty instead
of using plastic cups and pet bottles that now flood the oceans. We reloaded
our pens in ink countless times rather than buying another. We sharpened the
razors, instead of throwing away disposable devices, when the blade missed the
cut. Actually, we had a green wave at that time. At that time people would take
the trolley car or buses and the boys would ride their bikes or walk to school,
instead of using their parents as a 24 hour taxi
service. There was only one outlet in each room, not a wall outlet on each wall
to power a dozen appliances. And we did not need GPS to receive signals from
satellites in space to find the nearest pizzeria. So it is not incredible that
the current generation speaks so much in "environment", but does not
want to give up anything and does not think of living a little like in my time!
Now that you have read this outburst, send it to your friends who are over 50
years old, and to the young people who have everything in their hands and only
know how to criticize their elders !!!
A free class taught by an elderly woman considered outdated.
My main point is that this illustrates what I did
perceive also from engineering colleagues who are very committed to the
struggle against global warming: as engineering researchers they gather
scientific and mass media information about the empirical means by which a
majority of climate scientists gather empirical data that are supposed to prove
beyond any doubt the reality of global warming. Most important for them is to
refer to (the Lockean) "consensus or
tacit consent" of the majority of the world's relevant
authorities", that is, one of reasons that determined the rejection of Galileo's
findings. (This despite of the rejection of such "Galileo hypothesis" in the
establishment's opposition to one main "skeptical"
environmentalist, Bjørn Lomborg). In doing this
they also ignore more moderate views about the climate change as expressed (e.g. in Swedish,
on Youtube) by authorities
such as Lennart Bengtsson. and harassed scientifically
lesser authorities such as (in Sweden) Lars Bern. After that they
claim that "we" but ultimately "they", managers-politicians
all over the world should "listen to researchers" (never the other
way round except for getting research
funds), and do something about it in order to limit the increase of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere. If they don't it is a management failure or a
failure of democracy that entitles to a sort of enlightened dictatorship by a
strong and wise man or elite group, as suggested by philosophy professor Torbjörn Tännsjö in a Swedish
TV program on global warming (Ekdal och Ekdal - Avsnitt 5: Klimat) 12 February
2019. This position of "we-they" ignores the controversy about fact-value
distinction and assumes implicitly a positivistic view of
the world inasmuch the engineers get relieved from any responsibility for the
use and consequences of application of the technology they develop as long as
they are paid by the managers-politicians to do that, while politicians and
policy-makers are free to finance the development of whatever technology and
gathering or creation of any facts that fosters their power and political
goals, starting with their own political careers. This conundrum is well
explained and developed in a classical publication by C.W. Churchman and A.H. Schainblatt: "The researcher
and the manager: A dialectic of implementation" (Management
Science, vol. 11, No. 4, Feb. 1965, pp. B69-B87, followed by extensive
commentaries in "A dialectic of
Implementation. Commentary", vol. 12, No. 2, Oct. 1965, pp. B1-B42).
But the girl mentioned above gets applauses from the
emotionally moved masses who long for and welcome the strong leadership of a
rhetorically powerful ("spiritual"?) leader, a need and hope
expressed by the masses in times of perceived extreme crisis as in Germany
before the second world war, where science, politics and people had reached
consensus that the problem was (not climate but) living space, Lebensraum. No further
comparison. See the contrast with the above mentioned famous biblical Isaiah 3:12 "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women
rule over them", notwithstanding its interpretational
difficulties. They include the embarrassing observation that
Isaiah reproaches the adults whose faults are penalized by such inversion of
roles. And the energy of the leader-girl is powered now by both Asperger and by
the trust in the power of established science, which I elsewhere show
also powered the famous Lucifer effect of the Stanford prison experiment (cf. also the Milgram
experiment). They are applauses for the girl's sincere
rhetorical power, candid way of seeing reported facts, and for something that
should be done by "them", democratic (Nietzschean?) supermen,
politicians, and political systems around the world, supported by technology
and economic means. Implied: "more of the same", more international
regulations with sanctions guaranteed by supposed democratic powers, more
engineering, social engineering and technology will save us from the
environmental effects of technology, ignoring not only politics and most of
the philosophy of
technology, a field that often with wishful thinking announces
the need for a (impossible) "moratorium" in the development of
technology. Not even war imposes a moratorium on technology. On the contrary it
has always stimulated its endemically misdirected development.
Political correctness and politics
The success of the campaign for stopping global
warming has unleashed a worldwide storm in mass media and social media, whose
structure is analog to the phenomenon #MeToo movement, and the
hypothesis I advance on the subject, as in my review of a book by Howard S.
Schwartz on political correctness. There, on #MeToo, i write the storm is a
collective hysteria" or "mass psychosis" or "witch
hunt" but must be regarded scientifically as a socio-psychological mass
phenomenon of the type addressed originally by Gustave Le Bon in The Crowd: A
Study of the Popular Mind (1895) including ideas
in the books on the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841),
lately by Douglas Murray's (2019), and
incorporated by Carl Jung in psychological theory, and superficially resumed
under Wikipedia's label of "Crowd psychology". Other
particular hypotheses or attacks have been launched in media, exemplified by
Ross Clark in The Spectator April 23rd
2019, Cory Morningstar (five parts or "acts") in The Art of
Annihilation Jan-March 2019, Brendan O'Neill in Spiked April 22nd
2019, and the virulent "Emotional appeals
for the Social Engineering" by Russ Winter in Winter Watch, September
25, 2019. All this was violently countered in other arenas such
as The Huffington
Post, April 26th 2019, indicating the
infected field of emotional tensions and political exploitation from which
children like Greta should have been protected and treated by adults who
instead indulge in alleviating their burden and responsibility by giving free
rein to troubled children's imagination. This should be so in order to counter
the risk for ultimate serious and possibly mortal mental wounds: it is
dangerous for a child to awaken and live through powerful
"archetypal" roles such as Joan of Arc. The risk appears already when
(especially privileged, informed) children get in panic about their announced
calamitous future while experiencing their ignorance, impotence and
hopelessness in an apparently indifferent adult world, to the point of wanting
to sterilize themselves to spare catastrophes for their future children (cf.
interviews in the Swedish Radio's
"Konflikt" 30 nov.
2019) and paradoxically
blaming the earlier generations): how far is such
self-sterilization from the idea of suicide? Or when children feel downgraded
when meeting accusations of serving political conspiracies or when confronted
by serious, sharp criticism of the type that Swedish readers can read critical
articles so far away as in Russia Today(11 Dec and 17 Dec 2019) and
others analyzing
democracy vs science (by Lena Andersson in Dagens
Nyheter 28 September 2019) where politics
meets ethics, if yet in deficient exclusively secular terms that are typical
for Swedish intellectual life.
Other worries: poverty and weapons
The hype of the climate issue is probably in part due
to that it creates a false but cheap impression of worldwide consensus on the
basis of worldwide popular concern if not panic stimulated by various
historical initiatives, some of them illustrated by the former USA's
vice-president Al Gore's widely advertised "environmentalism". It enables
politicians to divert public attention from efforts to solve highly sensitive
and divisive, daily political issues about welfare, economics and justice. Such
daily important permanent issues of poverty and famine can continue to be
treated according to the old devise of "Divide and rule", while
sacrifices are being required from both rich and (especially) poor for the
indisputable sake of the climatic "survival of humanity". In the
meantime "the truth about
big oil and climate change" could be that "Even as concerns about
global warming grow, energy firms are planning to increase fossil-fuel
production. None more than ExxonMobil" (The Economist, Feb 9th
2019). It is interesting to see that such panic for the survival of humanity
could not mobilize the world's political opinion for a nuclear weapons'
disarmament of a few "advanced" nations of our planet. This to the
point that a Daniel Ellsberg in an interview at the
Swedish public television network, had to remind as in his
book The Doomsday
Machine (2017) that a nuclear weapon's conflagration has
been and still must be considered as an impending immediate reality and a
threat - to begin with - of deaths, destruction of the climate, and famines.
This even disregarding the dangers and environmental consequences of past and
now declassified nuclear weapon's incidents reported by James Oskins as co-author of
numerous books on the subject. To the billions, including refugees,
who ask for immediate relief from poverty, wars, famine and illness, the answer
is that priorities in our world-wide debates are for money and worldwide
efforts that must be spent on climate research and
interventions for the sake of their grandchildren and whole humanity. Let it go
that Ellsberg's sense of urgency was translated into his enthusiasm for Greta
Thunberg's view of the world in "black and white" and wish for more
people having the Asperger's syndrome, instead of their restraining their greed
and having a respect for truth, justice and love of their neighbour
as predicated by major religions. In the meantime, official statistics reports
that half of Swedish marriages end in divorce.
Greenhouse, orbital forcing and accuracy
"Our time's perhaps most crucial research project
" (part 1) was published by the Swedish public television network on 4
February 2019 under the title Vetenskapens värld - Världen i växthuset del 1, available for
display until 3 August 2019 (In the TVDB: "The world of
science: The world in the greenhouse, part 1",). It
started explicitly and symptomatically with the premise that the truth of global
warming would not be debated and promised to go to "the root of the
matter" about global warming, with the strongest argument of science. It
would teach about the respiration of the forests, the cold waters of Antarctic,
and the Keeling curve (graph of
the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere based on
continuous measurements started on the island of Hawaii from 1958, up
to about 100 sites around the globe the present day). The TV program's host
also promises to furnish the spectator with an image of "how everything
hands together: oceans, land, air, and ice". In academia "how hang
together" is systems theory, but people prefer to forget about theory and
focus on logically related empirical findings.
A curiosity, (beyond a beneficial reflection upon the
famous "Little ice
age"): In an article on "Greenhouse and
icehouse Earth" we read: "Without the human influence on
the greenhouse gas concentration, the Earth would be heading toward a glacial period.
Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that
in absence of human-made global warming the next
glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now [...] But due to the
ongoing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth is instead heading
toward a greenhouse Earth period". What is the difference between an
apocalypse within 100 or 50.000 or according to the sun's life expectancy
of "5 billion more years when all life on the surface of the Earth will
already be long gone"? Is it our grandchildren? Or is it
that "more and better of the same", science and technology, may save
the Earth and humanity? It reminds me of West Churchman's quotation (in
his Design of Inquiring Systems, p. 203) of James Hillman's rhetorical
image (in his essay on "Senex and Puer", in Eranos-Jahrbuch 1967, and 2005): "fat
science proclaiming it will save the world while it odoriferously defecates in
public". Maybe this is what all climate change is about, and it has to
do with the philosophy of
technology, which I did mention earlier and which i have considered in an earlier essay.
Returning to The world in the
greenhouse, part 1 I am not going to summarize the arguments
advanced in the one-hour's program-DVD except for noting that, as usual in this
context, they deal with global direct and indirect measurements of temperatures
and carbon dioxide percentages (and averages!) on land, in waters, ice, and
air. In my own work I learned to appreciate all the pitfalls of measurement and
statistics (cf. statistical "averages") in economics by studying
Oscar Morgensten's On the Accuracy
of Economic Observations (1965). More relevant
for natural science is T.N. Whitehead The Design and
Use of Instruments and Accurate Mechanism (1934). It
contains complex guidelines that one wonders whether have been considered in
mass production of climate telemetering instruments.
The computer is also an instrument, rather than a tool (cf. Bo Sundin, ed. Is the Computer a
Tool?, 1980, and there is much more
to say about it.) And meteorology is not precise and accurate
physics but can, rather, be compared to economics. Not to mention the
misunderstanding and misuse of statistics when its presuppositions are not
valid, as indicated in C.W. Churchman's Prediction and
Optimal Decision, (1961, chaps. 5 and 6) on
measurement and probability when there are apparent facts but no theory. It is,
by the way object of a whole chapter III om "Probability as applied to
errors" in the mentioned Whitehead's book. Misunderstandings and misuses
of probability stands also at the basis for not understanding and for not
having seriously considered chance in the interpolations and
extrapolations of levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is, chance
or randomness or "the occurrence of events in the absence of any obvious intention
or cause", which in Prediction and Optimal Decision (pp.
143-170, 259-261) is rightly understood as not having any correlation with
any known phenomenon and, and as such could be a humble
reminder of our (un?)pretentious ignorance. In
face of all this it is easily felt as an extremely bold statement to claim in
panic that plus/minus one or two degrees centigrade, with unclear tolerances and
relations between accuracy and precision, juggling with
"averages" over time and the whole world, not to mention the
"philosophical" balance between statistical
errors of type I and II, will spell doomsday or survival within, say, 100
years. Not to mention the problem of computer simulation from the point of view
of numerical analysis where “only God”
knows whether and how political democracy controls the technicalities of computer
runs of climate simulations, regarding all the mathematical difficulties of
relation between mathematical reality and physical reality exposed in prof.
Paolo Zellini’s book The Mathematics of Gods and Algorithms of Men: A Cultural History (2020/2016). More on this in especially one chapter of my essay on Computers as Embodied Mathematics and Logic.
Most educated laymen and most scientists may have not
yet grasped the exent of "mythological"
capabilities affirmed in the name of science, such in artificial intelligence's
"technological
singularity", and "neuralinks". Most
educated people have no idea about details of the accuracy or precision in
fields such as meteorology, weather and
climate or extreme weather. There is no
democratic control of narrow specialized new research. Or, more generally,
because of the lack of an established overarching discipline of "climate
change and global warming" there should be a recourse to the design of
inquiring systems of metrology (elaborated in chap. 9
of a later book). For now I would not be surprised if the failure of
predictions of causes of future climate changes reveals itself
as a sort of worldwide hoax imposed in the name of politicized big science
where theory is reduced to computer simulations of a network of logically
related, selected empirical findings. Alternately I can guess already now that
if the predictions do not turn to be true, it will be explained by claiming
that it is because whatever measures have been implemented had a stronger
beneficial effect than expected. All this while the opposed climate warming
“deniers” will continue explaining possible continued warming as being the
result of natural causes other than human activity in the anthropocene.
Computer simulations, prediction, extraterrestrial life
The statistics of adduced measurements is based on
diverse "causal chains" of the type that motivated the environmentally
very concerned mathematician Jan Brouwer to distrust non-systemic science, as I
exposed in parts of my essay on computers as
embodied logic and mathematics. That is, the very same hype
of computers that are adduced in "computer simulations" in order to
impress especially laymen about the climate crisis, without any major mention
to the problem of validating models and simulations, which cannot be validated
only against past measurements. And they meet seldom the
mentioned difficulties, considered in C.W. Churchman's "An analysis of the
concept of simulation" (in Hoggatt &
Balderston, eds. Symposium on Simulation Models, South-Western
Publishing Co., Cincinnati, Ohio, 1963, today more available in the author's
summary in The Systems
Approach and its Enemies, 1979, pp. 51-53).
If it is a simulation of reality, what is the future reality after all, when we
doubt the present one? For instance, in the Dec. 28, 2007 New York Times'
article Science and
Soothsaying, environmental scientist Daniel Botkin writes
"My own experience makes me skeptical of how environmental forecasting is
being used." It is echoed by an exhaustingly detailed review of the
forecasting of global warming in a tour de force of seven
articles (in Swedish) by academically trained polymath Krister Renard, especially the
fifth one on climate models.
At this point it could be fruitful to sit down and
analyze other historically predicted "catastrophes" such as the Malthusian one or more
relevantly The Limits to
Growth. A careful reading of the
latter as well as the story of the contribution by the computer engineer and
systems scientist Jay Forrester, not to mention
C.W. Churchman's The Design of
Inquiring Systems, should make the further
development of this blog contribution superfluous, or then revert the whole
question to my reflections on the impossibility of serious debates as presented
in my article on information and
debate. Ultimately it all may be a question of the
western attitude to death and its negation (see here on donation of
organs for transplants) in view of acknowledgment or ignorance of
religious apocalyptic
archetypes and historical examples as of the Classic Maya
Collapse. Sorry for at my age not having the time for
hoping to be able to develop these thoughts in a book, and for entering in
a hopeless debate about it. If you want
a taste of such debates you may start to browse for instance the "pushing of
dangerous myths about climate change". If you
wish you can see me as inspired to humility by the biblical verse Sirach 3:21: "Seek not
what is too difficult for you, nor investigate what is beyond your
power." It may be appropriate for others too, not only those who look for
a climatic apocalypse instead of the biblical one, but also for
those who look for extraterrestrial
life instead of problems of ongoing suffering in
terrestrial life, which is symptomatically ignored even in Nobel prizes in
physics such as in year 2019 celebrating physical
cosmology and recalling "Since ancient times, humans
have speculated whether there are worlds like our own". It is to be
contrasted to Alfred Nobel's
will, that the prize be given "to those who, during
the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to
humankind". Who cares, if "physical cosmology" may enhance
the "science" of climate change and global warming, which is supposed
to be the greatest threat to humankind?
I like to terminate in a playfully controversial mood
by imagining that the title of this whole text could have been "The Denial
of Empiricism". Despite of an apparent overwhelming scientific consensus
on the dangers of climate change, political and social reality show the primacy
of psychological, spiritual, and religious (mis)understanding among people and
among peoples of the world. Climate change and global warming may be working as
if they were set up for attacking a straw man while avoiding the real problems. The problems of
climate change are attributed to human greed and egoism, grabbing and depletion
of natural resources, falsity, ignorance of the limits of nature and of the
consequences for others and for the future. The desperation following from such
insights reveals that people do not realize that the struggle against all this,
as against all oppression, conflicts and wars, has been the purpose of great
religions and in particular of Christianity. Secularized and spiritually
orphaned children and childish adults who know nothing about their cultural
heritage appeal to the daddy of science of which they have even lesser
understanding since they do not know how much they do not know, navigating in an
unknown universe, or ocean with the hubris of a proud high-tech Titanic. Desperation and fear of
suffering and death, by adults, childish adults, and even more by children, are
a mirror of the lack of understanding of the meaning of faith, except for faith
in technoscience and democracy.
In such a perspective, the debate about climate
illustrates how humans expect and require regularity and forecasting in the
whole of a nature that they claim to understand, and then their Egos expect to
be able to control. All this while the very same humans cannot understand,
forecast, refrain or control themselves and their counterparts, as shown by
conflicts within and between families and nations in the middle of ongoing
conflicts, wars and suicides. All this
while they try to convince and control others to change their behavior for the
sake of climate, following archetypal role models of climate-conscious illuminati while they forget Jesus,
Mohammed and Buddha. All this going on while science and research is advancing
(toward nowhere?) exploring outer space and galaxies, cosmology and cosmogony, trying to guess
whether there may exist other exoplanets inhabited by
other living beings.
Long after writing the text above I knew about a young
man in his twenties who was convinced by a friend to start practicing veganism and even to
try to induce others into it. I am grateful for his having stimulated me to
think further about the meaning of activism about global climate warming, as
related to friendship, dialog and discussion. It motivated me to a make a
further effort related to this essay, to write a text that is published in my
blog under the title The case of veganism.
An additional insight was offered by the outbreak on
February 24, 2022, of the armed military conflict between Russia and Ukraine,
which motivated my writing of a new essay on The Russia-NATO-Ukraine Information
Crisis. It recalls what I
had written above, about engineers, managers, politicians, and now also climate
researchers and people at large in the Western world that:
they may be able to determine behavior in their civil society but probably
will not be able to limit ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide in poor needy
countries and by armed forces in recurring wars and exercises on land, in air,
water and ice all over the world. Least of all will they be able to counter the
horrors of any war going on in the world right now, or ultimately the risk for
a nuclear holocaust
Now, in August 2022, I can add that I have not seen,
read or heard anyone in climate-conscious Western mass media and social media
who comments the climate effects of the ongoing conflict and to its
prolongation by means of Western help with shipping of military equipment,
ammunition, tanks, etc. Meanwhile Russia is probably the main contributor to
pollution with its air strikes and bombings with consequent explosions and
fires even in ammunition deposits. Nothing is said about such climate effects
while people all over the world are exhorted to use collective transportation,
avoid touristic flights, buy electric cars, decrease public energy consumption
and be ready for lower degree of residential warming in order to counter the
rising costs of energy that follow from sanctions against Russia, which are
countered by stop of its deliveries of fossil fuel to an inflationary Europe.
Meanwhile the issue of climate is downplayed in political fights and periodic
elections. All this is a sad recall of the primacy of politics, ethics and
religion, disregarding the moralistic appeals to “climate science” by children
and youngsters. Meanwhile the main world powers which highly regard and respect
“science” embodied in climate science have lots of their scientists
successfully working in the lucrative industrial-military complex for
development and manufacturing of weapons that will replace the ones that kill,
destroy and pollute the environment.
Long after I completed the text above, I listened on 29 June 2023, a summer-program of one hour and a
half, at the Swedish public radio (“Sveriges Radio”)
by Bo Landin exposing mainly
the problem of environmental pollution and water quality with implications for
climate warming. Very engaging och touching, but
towards the end of the program he exclaims that “we must build our coexistence
and our life on humanity, and words like "social, humanitarian",
having in view the build-up of an "ecological folkhemmet”.
Folkhemmet (literally “the people’s home”) is a
special Swedish word referring to a political concept
that played an important role in the history of the Swedish Social
Democratic Party and
the Swedish welfare state. He also believes that
future scientific progress may repair and solve the lesion to people’s health
caused by environmental pollution.