In recent years I have criticized the Conference of the Parties' unending cycle of annual meetings on “climate change.” And as I have written, part of the motivation for the continuing series of gatherings in exotic and expensive venues lies in the freebee vacations for scientists on many governments' (thus, your) dimes. What are we on? COP30, COP10^6? All of them punctuated by an irate screaming Al Gore or unintentionally droll John Kerry, both admonishing the world for not spending gajillions of dollars on some impossible-to-prove mechanisms to stop earth from doing what it has been doing for billions of years.
All math and all science begin with assumptions. Logic doesn’t underlie logic. Climate-change science isn’t an exception to the rule of axiomatic thinking. Here’s an example from University of California, Berkeley’s California Institute for Energy and the Environment (CIEE). The introduction to “California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment – Core Climate Research” reads,
In the last decade, Californians have endured severe drought, floods, historic wildfires, rising seas, and record temperatures all driven by climate change. Fostering resilience to these impacts requires sustained investment in climate change research and science. *
First, note “sustained investment.” Yep, years, nay decades of continued expenditures with the guarantee that…Well, there’s no guarantee. Keep spending under the assumption that more spending will do something about “climate change.” Keep researching as long as governments keep funding that research.
Second, note “wildfires…driven by….” No mention, of course, that recent “historic” wildfires have little to do with climate, and more to do with weather, bad forest management, decaying electrical transmission lines on 100-year old poles, people intentionally starting fires, and urban encroachment into wilderness areas that adds flammable structures to the wood of the forests.
Third, note “rising seas.” They’ve been rising for 10 millennia. Their rise has pushed people inland from previous coastlines as oceanic transgressions have inundated the lowlands. Think: No coastal communities, no reason to worry about eustatic changes, just as no communities built on fault lines, no reason to worry about devastating earthquakes. We’ve built in disaster zones both before and after we understood Earth’s natural processes. But then, who wouldn’t like a house on the beach, one on a cliffside perch overlooking a city, or one along a river, where a boathouse or boat slip makes for easy weekend sailing?
That “Fifth Climate Assessment” will be available in 2026. “Leveraging diverse expertise throughout the state, the Fifth Assessment will contribute to the scientific foundation for understanding climate-related vulnerability throughout California. It will support on-the-ground implementation and decision-making at the local, regional, tribal, and state levels, focusing on the needs of communities most vulnerable to climate change impacts.”
In an accompanying video, the CIEE shows a raging forest fire, a flooded road, and mentions a tropical storm that hit the state. This is the “science” behind the work of the CIEE.
But it’s not science is it? It’s all reflections of assumptions and individual incidents. Which of these events would not have occurred under a steady-state climate? California has more than one climate type, from arid to semiarid, to Mediterranean, to rainforest, to highland both below and above the tree line. It’s a state that feels the effects of El Niño and La Niña, of a shifting seasonal semipermanent High or Low off the coast, of a cold ocean current off the coast, of air rising to overcome an orographic barrier to the Westerlies and of air sinking off the highlands to make the Santa Ana winds that have fanned the January, 2025, fires in Los Angeles. Which one of these can the Berkeley researchers or the state government affect?
I can understand a need to protect people and infrastructure from devastating natural phenomena. Earthquake-proofing buildings is necessary. Flood control systems are essential though some deluges are just too overwhelming to control. Cleaning the forest floor of flammable debris is prudent. Establishing reasonable plans to enhance human and environmental sustainability should be the focus, not pie in the sky research into how ordinary weather phenomena (exceptional or rare) are harbingers of a catastrophic change that will wipe out humanity and not research based on the assumption that all natural disasters are climate related. No number of electric vehicles will decrease the rate of warming, stop fires from occurring, or hold back encroaching seas.
It’s Not Science: It’s Mostly Folly
*Available online.
**
All math and all science begin with assumptions. Logic doesn’t underlie logic. Climate-change science isn’t an exception to the rule of axiomatic thinking. Here’s an example from University of California, Berkeley’s California Institute for Energy and the Environment (CIEE). The introduction to “California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment – Core Climate Research” reads,
In the last decade, Californians have endured severe drought, floods, historic wildfires, rising seas, and record temperatures all driven by climate change. Fostering resilience to these impacts requires sustained investment in climate change research and science. *
First, note “sustained investment.” Yep, years, nay decades of continued expenditures with the guarantee that…Well, there’s no guarantee. Keep spending under the assumption that more spending will do something about “climate change.” Keep researching as long as governments keep funding that research.
Second, note “wildfires…driven by….” No mention, of course, that recent “historic” wildfires have little to do with climate, and more to do with weather, bad forest management, decaying electrical transmission lines on 100-year old poles, people intentionally starting fires, and urban encroachment into wilderness areas that adds flammable structures to the wood of the forests.
Third, note “rising seas.” They’ve been rising for 10 millennia. Their rise has pushed people inland from previous coastlines as oceanic transgressions have inundated the lowlands. Think: No coastal communities, no reason to worry about eustatic changes, just as no communities built on fault lines, no reason to worry about devastating earthquakes. We’ve built in disaster zones both before and after we understood Earth’s natural processes. But then, who wouldn’t like a house on the beach, one on a cliffside perch overlooking a city, or one along a river, where a boathouse or boat slip makes for easy weekend sailing?
That “Fifth Climate Assessment” will be available in 2026. “Leveraging diverse expertise throughout the state, the Fifth Assessment will contribute to the scientific foundation for understanding climate-related vulnerability throughout California. It will support on-the-ground implementation and decision-making at the local, regional, tribal, and state levels, focusing on the needs of communities most vulnerable to climate change impacts.”
In an accompanying video, the CIEE shows a raging forest fire, a flooded road, and mentions a tropical storm that hit the state. This is the “science” behind the work of the CIEE.
But it’s not science is it? It’s all reflections of assumptions and individual incidents. Which of these events would not have occurred under a steady-state climate? California has more than one climate type, from arid to semiarid, to Mediterranean, to rainforest, to highland both below and above the tree line. It’s a state that feels the effects of El Niño and La Niña, of a shifting seasonal semipermanent High or Low off the coast, of a cold ocean current off the coast, of air rising to overcome an orographic barrier to the Westerlies and of air sinking off the highlands to make the Santa Ana winds that have fanned the January, 2025, fires in Los Angeles. Which one of these can the Berkeley researchers or the state government affect?
I can understand a need to protect people and infrastructure from devastating natural phenomena. Earthquake-proofing buildings is necessary. Flood control systems are essential though some deluges are just too overwhelming to control. Cleaning the forest floor of flammable debris is prudent. Establishing reasonable plans to enhance human and environmental sustainability should be the focus, not pie in the sky research into how ordinary weather phenomena (exceptional or rare) are harbingers of a catastrophic change that will wipe out humanity and not research based on the assumption that all natural disasters are climate related. No number of electric vehicles will decrease the rate of warming, stop fires from occurring, or hold back encroaching seas.
It’s Not Science: It’s Mostly Folly
*Available online.
**
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