The truth matters regardless of state propaganda and lackey public intellectuals

From At least five interesting things for your weekend (#13) by Noah Smith.  The subheading is Climate messaging, antitrust, Chinese consumption, the Fed and inflation, marriage and happiness, historical data, and some Star Trek recommendations. 

One of the five is 1. Climate scientists and public messaging.  

Climate scientist Patrick Brown and several co-authors recently wrote a very important paper about the impact of climate change on wildfires in California. It was published in Nature, one of the top scientific journals. Basically, when the temperature is hotter, it dries out plants more, making fires more common. The upshot:

So far, anthropogenic warming has enhanced the aggregate expected frequency of extreme daily wildfire growth by 25% (5–95 range of 14–36%), on average, relative to preindustrial conditions…When historical fires are subjected to a range of projected end-of-century conditions, the aggregate expected frequency of extreme daily wildfire growth events increases by 59% (5–95 range of 47–71%) under a low SSP1–2.6 emissions scenario[.]

A 25% increase in fire is certainly enough to worry about, but not enough to explain monster fire years like 2020. Presumably there are other factors involved. In a post over at The Free Press, Brown admits that he and his co-authors avoided mentioning some of these other factors in order to get published:

[I]n my recent Nature paper, which I authored with seven others, I focused narrowly on the influence of climate change on extreme wildfire behavior. Make no mistake: that influence is very real. But there are also other factors that can be just as or more important, such as poor forest management and the increasing number of people who start wildfires either accidentally or purposely…[Including these] would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers.

And Brown alleges that this sort of behavior is pervasive, because of pressure for climate scientists to stay on message:

This type of framing, with the influence of climate change unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers. For example, in another recent influential Nature paper, scientists calculated that the two largest climate change impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and damage to agriculture. However, the authors never mention that climate change is not the dominant driver for either one of these impacts: heat-related deaths have been declining, and crop yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change. To acknowledge this would imply that the world has succeeded in some areas despite climate change—which, the thinking goes, would undermine the motivation for emissions reductions. 

This story sounds somewhat plausible. I’ve written about scientific experts’ noble but misguided impulse to fudge their conclusions when communicating with the public, out of fear that the raw, unfiltered results would lead to policy mistakes. Scientists aren’t experts at public policy or public opinion, and so when they try to shape the messaging around their results, they often mess it up.

Read the whole things for links and the complete argument.  Smith goes on to argue that

That said, Brown may be overstating his case here. One of the reviewers on his paper actually suggested that he and his co-authors include factors other than climate change in their assessment of wildfire risk:

The second aspect that is a concern is the use of wildfire growth as the key variable. As the authors acknowledge there are numerous factors that play a confounding role in wildfire growth that are not directly accounted for in this study (L37-51). Vegetation type (fuel), ignitions ( lightning and people), fire management activities ( direct and indirect suppression, prescribed fire, policies such as fire bans and forest closures) and fire load.

In their response, Brown et al. demur, arguing that it would be too hard to include all those other factors. They were apparently not being fully honest with the reviewer; their real concern, as Brown admitted in his post, was to avoid violating a specific narrative that they thought the editors wanted (60% of Nature papers are traditionally desk-rejected, meaning the editors never even send them out for review). But the fact that the reviewer was willing to suggest the inclusion of non-climate-change-related factors suggests that there isn’t a generally recognized code of silence about that topic.

Smith gets sucked into a focus on the efficacy of the messaging rather than the important issue - are the concerns well established and do they affect how we do climate forecasting.

Since the beginning, it has always been clear that the climate is always changing, sometimes in accordance with known cycles or conditions, and sometimes not.  Based on the argument of the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument, the questions have always been:

Is CO2 the solitary driver of climate change?

If not the solitary driver, to what degree (percentage) is it the driver?

Are the current and anticipated CO2 levels strongly correlated with global warmth in the historical record?

If global warming is occurring, are we properly taking into account the positive aspect of global warming (higher crop yields and the like.)

Is there any empirical evidence that increasing CO2 levels (independent of warming) have any other negative impacts such as storms, desertification, etc.

The answers, as we understand the data now are:

Is CO2 the solitary driver of climate change?  It is definitely not the only driver of longer term climate change.  

If not the solitary driver, to what degree (percentage) is it the driver?  We don't know but it seems probable that it might be a small percentage.

Are the current and anticipated CO2 levels strongly correlated with global warmth in the historical record?  Unknown.  We have had warmer periods with both higher and lower CO2.

If global warming is occurring, are we properly taking into account the positive aspect of global warming (higher crop yields and the like.)  No.  Only niche climatologist address both the positives and negatives.

Is there any empirical evidence that increasing CO2 levels (independent of warming) have any other negative impacts such as storms, desertification, etc.  IPCC so far is affirming that there is no or only weak evidence connecting CO2 concentrations and storms, flooding, desertification, glaciation retreat, etc.  

For more than two decades it has been somewhat clear that the bedrock research of IPCC has not supported to the vernacular arguments for major public policy interventions.  If CO2 is either not a climate warming driver or only a small percent (5%), then the philosophical and empirical argument for many public policies goes away.  Policies which have necessarily led to centralization of energy decision making, major reductions in life quality for the bottom three quintiles, a major transfer of wealth from government to the top decile of the population, and no measurable achievements during the timeframes which have been forecasted.

Specifically, if CO2 is not the sole and singular climate warming driver, then the current empirical underpinning for the following policies evaporate.  Without them, the welfare of the bottom 60% improves and the wealth opportunities for the top decile are reduced.  

Decarbonization of industry goes away.

Renewable energy economics (wind, solar, to some extent hydro) goes away.

Regulatory burdens on consumer goods driven by decarbonization goals such as regulation of gas stoves and refrigerators go away.

Electric vehicle subsidies and policies go away.

Walkable cities and carless cities go away.

Urban densification goes away.

Net Zero goes away.

Much of the predicate supposition for ESG goes away (environmental, social and corporate governance) goes away.

Smith is dismissive of the consequences of Brown's argument that the publishing institutions of science have been substantially silencing the debate of empirical evidence that is contrary to the interests of parties with a vested interest in the historical propaganda of the AGW lobby.  AGW has always been wrong.  CO2 is not the sole driver of environment change and it has always been more than conceivable that CO2 is only a small part of global climate.

If that turns out to be the case, the hundreds of billions of dollars of scarce capital being diverted to all the above policies, at the expense of the welfare of the bottom 60%, will prove to have been a massive malinvestment (or fraud).  Brown's argument is consequential, and for some reason Smith wants to acknowledge that there is the basis for Brown's argument but also wants to sweep it away into a corner somewhere that doesn't matter.

It matters.