Summary: The appropriate public policy response to climate change is one of the great issues of our time, driving one of the longest yet inconsequential debates in modern US history. Yet everything comes to an end, eventually. This post speculates what that end might mean for the activists and scientists on each side if they lose. The consequences of defeat might mar the lives of ten thousand people in America (more around the world), yet has been little discussed.

Are you now, or have ever been, a climate denier?

The US public policy debate about climate has run for 28 years, starting the clock from James Hansen’s famous Senate testimony. Although the results have been meager, I suspect it’s like a geological fault. Massive forces moving but locked together, with the stress accumulating year by year. People live on it, complacent since nothing has happened. Then …boom.

There are many possible intermediate outcomes, such as slow political and climate change over generations. We remember the exciting outcomes — ice ages and revolutions — but slow evolution is the most frequent outcome. But sometimes the extreme outcomes become unusually likely. I believe climate is one of them. The political debate has become a game in which nobody claims the pot. It grows to immense size as both sides bet more than they can afford to lose. Each confident of victory; neither prepares for possible ruin. It’s a commonplace in military history.

The outcome will result from a combination of weather and politics, contingent on random (or unpredictable) events. Whatever the outcome, the long-term fate of 21st century climate change might mock it. The good guys often lose in politics.

Here are guesses about some “tail outcomes”, two possible extreme outcomes that illustrate the stakes in this now deadlocked political debate. Either the climate science institutions — and climate scientists — win, or the skeptics win.

Scenario One: hard times for climate scientists

Climate scientists have staked the reputation of their field on an increased occurrence of extreme weather during the next few years. We have read about future climate apocalypses (amidst other certain forecasts about climate change), the end of snow, the looming monster methane apocalypse, more and bigger hurricanes, and nightmarish futures illuminated only by burning coal (based on RCP8.5). Plus the sixth great extinction (since supposedly 30 thousand species go extinct every year).

As a result Leftists frequently speak casually of our certain doom.

What if most of this proves false? Perhaps we will get continued slow warming, without the devastating increase of extreme weather and disruption of the biosphere? Perhaps people will forget the decades of doomster predictions (seldom contradicted by scientists or the major science institutions). Climate scientists will reclaim their bets, without consequences.

Or perhaps the public will loose confidence in climate science (anti-intellectualism has deep roots in US history), a crash in their reputations. If so, government and ngo funding for climate science might vanish like last years’ snow. They’ll rename it (“meteorology” and “earth science” will become poplar names, as scientists rebrand themselves to avoid public mockery).

What do you call a climate scientist? Waiter!

Scenario Two: hard times for climate skeptics

If Trump wins the GOP nomination (likely), and the resulting Democratic landslide takes down the GOP’s Senate and House majorities with him (possible) — expect Congressional “investigative” hearings of skeptics. The results will be unpleasant. But skeptics cannot be easily blacklisted since the major institutions have already cut off most of their funding — and most are either in the private sector (e.g., meteorologists) or well-established with tenure. Younger scientists are protected, most having wisely chosen not to burn their careers on the altar of skepticism — no matter how esteemed it is in science lore.

That’s the mild outcome for skeptics. Their websites will close. They’ll find new causes on the Right, build new hobbies with new communities (as Leftist doomsters have jumped from one certain end-time scenario to another (pollution, overpopulation, Y2K, peak oil, etc).

What if there is severe damage from extreme weather (blamed, of course, on CO2 emissions)? For example, if two cities on the east coasts of Asia or America are hit by large hurricanes — with massive damage and large loss of life. No matter what the buttoned-down scientists deep in the halls of NOAA say (e.g., time needed for study, attribution of weather is difficult), on the next day journalists’ microphones will go to activist scientists announcing their insta-verdicts.

The public uproar might be like nothing we’ve seen since the 1950s, when the unexpected and astonishing Soviet atomic blasts and the fall of China to the red commies led to mass hysteria, “witch hunts” of suspected communists, and loyalty oaths.

The Left is eager to start. They talk about banning them from the news media and suing them. In their fantasies (occasionally displayed to the public) they imagine killing them.

“With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines while making people laugh. …Many people found the resulting film extremely funny…”

— Lizzie Gillet, 10:10 global campaign director.

“The film may have been somewhat tasteless, but it was an imaginative attempt to challenge public apathy over climate change.”

— Statement from the Guardian, a backer of 10:10.

Vengeful Leftists leading an angry public is a combination to fear. Prominent skeptics might be harassed and demonized on a scale far greater than anything seen in generations. “Lukewarmers” might be grilled — “were you ever a skeptic or associated with skeptics?”

History suggests that the only choice Congressional committees will give skeptics is poison or the knife (metaphorically speaking). Fortunately skeptics can easily prepare for these inquisitions by study of medieval confessionals and the accepted forms of self-criticism in Mao’s China. At least they will have lots of company in the dock.

Often unemployment will follow, as companies and universities in self-defense cut them lose (tenure has failed to provide protection in the past, and it is weaker today).

Conclusions

There is no reality-based community in America (as discussed in scores of posts on the FM website, such as Facts are the enemy of both Left and Right in our America). This leaves us ungrounded, liable to extreme and irrational responses to events (as we have seen in our mad wars since 9/11).

The debate about the public response to climate change might provide more evidence if one side wins decisively. With the stakes so high, the reaction of both winners and losers might be dramatic. Oddly, neither side shows any awareness that they might lose — or takes any measures to protect themselves. Time might prove that one side was unwise.

“I offer a toast to the future, the undiscovered country.”

— Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country “.

{A}s I stood sadly at my country’s boundary and looked longingly into the unknown country, which was so near me and yet so far away, some little revelation might be vouchsafed to me…

— From Either/Or: A Fragment of Life by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1843).

For More Information

Please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter. For more information see The keys to understanding climate change, My posts about climate change, and especially these about the policy debate…

There are a hundred fine books about the great climate change policy debate. Here are two that go to the heart of the debate, one for each side.