Climate Grief — Believers mourning — It’s denial and anger (but it sure isn’t science)

Those who believe the Glorious Climate Models (GCMs) are in trouble. Many of them have spent their entire careers soaking in dire predictions, but things are falling apart — (or rather, not falling apart) — the models don’t work, the public doesn’t care, the media are not that interested, and skeptics keep winning Bloggies awards. Spare a thought for them. It’s tough out there for unskeptical people. Children still know what snow is.

Things are unravelling in believer-land and there is pain. They are witnessing “the wholesale destruction of the planet”, or perhaps the death of a hypothesis, which is nearly as bad.

The headline reads:

“Mourning Our Planet: Climate Scientists Share Their Grieving Process”

The 3,000 word extravaganza of psychological pain is published by an NGO aptly called Truthout (think, “LightsOut”?)

“Climate science researchers, scientists, journalists and activists have all been struggling with grief around what we are witnessing.”

There’s an angry professor calling other scientists who disagree “greedy, lying bastards” and talking of backing “you plutocrats, denialists, fossil-fuel hacks “ against the wall. Another professor blames ACD for the driving cause of her depression.

ACD, by the way, is Anthropogenic Climate Disruption. Forget Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) — it is quietly gone, buried in the backyard, thanks to the inconvenient Pause and lack of Global Warming*.

They’re trying on a new term — Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD).

Climate Disruption is everywhere, more vague, scary and infinitely applicable for PR and media.

Here’s an angry professor:

“My overwhelming emotion is anger; anger that is fuelled not so much by ignorance, but by greed and profiteering at the expense of future generations“, wrote Professor Corety Bradshaw, the director of ecological modeling at the University of Adelaide.

”I am not referring to some vague, existential bonding to the future human race; rather, I am speaking as a father of a seven year-old girl who loves animals and nature in general. As a biologist, I see irrefutable evidence every day that human-driven climate disruption will turn out to be one of the main drivers of the Anthropocene mass extinction event now well under way.”

My message to Prof Corety is that instead of being an angry scientist he could try being a logical one.

I’d say “Listen to the instruments, rather than the subcommittees. The weatherballoons, satellites, and tide gauges are telling you that climate sensitivity to CO2 is much lower than the experts-in-unverified models are suggesting.”

Though people are stealing his daughters future, and profiteering too. I daresay they are the ones trashing the scientific method and the economy in the hope they can change the weather.

But Prof Bradshaw’s faith is as complete as his humility is completely-absent:

My frustration with these greedy, lying bastards is personal. Human-caused climate disruption is not a belief – it is one of the best-studied phenomena on Earth. Even a half-wit can understand this. [And university professors too, thinks Jo].

We can hardly argue with “science” like that, can we? The Greedy-lying-bastard Index is irrefutable.

He goes on:

As any father would, anyone threatening my family will by (sic) on the receiving end of my ire and vengeance. This anger is the manifestation of my deep love for my daughter, and the sadness I feel in my core about how others are treating her future.

He of course loves his daughter, and skeptics hate theirs dontchaknow?

Science used to be about dispassionate observations. Now, you’re a good scientist if you are more mean and angry than the next guy:

Mark my words, you plutocrats, denialists, fossil-fuel hacks and science charlatans – your time will come when you will be backed against the wall by the full wrath of billions who have suffered from your greed and stupidity, and I’ll be first in line to put you there.

He thinks he’ll be first in line, but there’s at least a hundred haters already lined up ahead of him. And they want skeptical scientists strangled, jailed, beheaded, or on a good day, just treated as traitorous war criminals. Some fantasize about exploding skeptical kids. Get behind Greenpeace I say.

The University of Adelaide must be proud of his vocabulary-of-names. Still, it’s not like we could expect him to understand the risks involved with models. Professor Corety Bradshaw is the director of ecological modeling at the University of Adelaide.

In a post-modern post-science world Touchy-Feely scientists are all the go

Wallowing in anger can be useful, apparently:

The practice of scientists sharing their feelings runs contrary to the dominant consumer capitalist culture of the West, which guards against – and attempts to divert attention from – the prospect of people getting in touch with feelings provoked by witnessing the wholesale destruction of the planet.

The dominant consumer capitalist culture would never make multi-million dollar movies showing emotional scientists saving the Earth. We need to get in touch with that…

In fact, Joanna Macy believes it is not in the self-perceived interest of multinational corporations, or the government and the media that serve them “for us to stop and become aware of our profound anguish with the way things are.”

The message is that the world is about to fall apart: now is not the time for calm numbers and rational thinking. Get with your profound anguish instead.

UPDATE: See TdeF’s comment #8 on Prof Bradshaw. His career is built on the belief in man-made climate change and he wails about “profiteers”. Thanks to TdF for the details. Apparently we’ll be hearing more from Bradshaw. I can’t wait. I think the University of Adelaide should wear every single word. – Jo

_____________

*I’m referring to the pause in “surface” warming of the Globe, where 100.00% of humans live. There may or may not be warming in the deep oceans as recorded by one thermometer per 250,000 cubic kilometers of ocean. That’s another debate.

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]

please wait... Rating: 9.5/10 (185 votes cast)