Climate Alarmists Question Climate Exaggeration

“… far too many climate scientists have tilted toward or surrendered to exaggeration and hyperbole, making false predictions along the way. Little wonder why the general public has climate fatigue.”

Bill Gates has joined the reset of the climate agenda heading into COP30, scheduled to begin next week in Belém, Brazil. Gates will not be there; neither will Trump nor anyone from the federal government in their official capacity.

Instead of alarmism, immediate relief from extreme weather and adaptation are the order of the day (see here). COP activists might not realize it yet, but the multi-decade push for mitigation has peaked. Fossil fuels won despite the best (worst?) efforts of governments around the world to prop up inferior energies, the dilute, intermittent, fragile kind.

What is a climate alarmist to do? Hope and pray for extreme weather events to keep the narrative going? (How perverse!) For example, the big bet this year was many super hurricanes to keep the narrative going–and last year to counter Trump at the polls. Neither panned out with ambiguity about the anthropogenic effect on cyclones (number, intensity).

Alarm? Or Hope?

What is the messaging between alarm and hope? Between passivity and climate disobedience to ‘wake up’ the unconvinced public? Between exaggeration and attention? Remember what global-cooling-to-warming Steven Schneider stated at the beginning of the global warming debate?

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change.

With that assumption (CO2 alarmism) came a license to exaggerate.

To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. [1]

A false premise leading to a Hobson’s choice. And far too many climate scientists have tilted toward or surrendered to exaggeration and hyperbole, making false predictions along the way. Little wonder why the general public has climate fatigue.

Michael Mann Navigates ‘Doomism’

The story has to be grim–but not too grim. Michael Mann himself is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He argues all-bad-things from rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and concentrations. His other side warns against “doomism“, believing that inaction will result from a discouraged (if not disbelieving) public. [2]

Climate civil disobedience? Mann has rejected that too. [3]

A Recent Example

Consider this complaint from Rohit P, (“Sharing Stories of our planet and its Species | Responsible Tourism Advocate”), titled ððð‚, ð‚ð¨ð§ððž ððšð¬ð­ ðžð¯ðžð«ð² ð¦ðšð£ð¨ð« ð©ð®ð›ð¥ð¢ðœðšð­ð¢ð¨ð§ ð¬ðžðžð¦ð¬ ð­ð¨ ð¡ðšð¯ðž ð¥ð¨ð¬ð­ ð­ð¡ðž ð©ð¥ð¨ð­.

“Seriously,” he begins, “what on earth are ‘last-chance tourism’ pieces? What’s even ethical about it?

I’ve written before about tourism to Antarctica and other polar regions, this whole idea of rushing to see a place “before it’s gone.” Tour companies deliberately tap into this space, fueling FOMO and capitalizing on people’s fear of missing out on places that may soon disappear. How can something branded as “ethical” tourism also be “last-chance tourism”? It accelerates the very disappearance it claims to mourn….

The article essentially suggested: Yes, last-chance tourism is harmful but if people travel responsibly maybe their emotional grief can be channeled into climate action…. To me, it feels like an oxymoron of the highest order.

It is hard being green.

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[1] Schneider. Quoted in Jonathan Schell, “Our Fragile Earth.” Discover (October 1989), pp. 45–48.

[2] Stated Mann and Peter J. Hotez in their new book Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World:

Doomism produces viral social media content — what’s been termed ‘climate doom porn,’ marked by dramatic but unsupported claims of collapsing ice sheets, runaway warming, and imminent extinction.

Doom porn sells, and it has surely borne fruit for the polluters, petrostates, and plutocrats who are fanning its flames. Consider the vitriol directed at Katharine Hayhoe and Mike [Michael Mann] by ostensible climate advocates who insist it’s too late to act and dismiss our messaging on urgency and efficacy as ‘”‘hopium,’ the implication being that we are selling ‘hope’ in the way, say, junkies on the street might sell drugs.”

… the doomers have risen from relative obscurity to prominence in a political economy where extreme claims and vitriolic attacks go viral and create huge, almost cultlike followings that are indeed — as we will see shortly — readily monetized.

Authentic users soon get entrained into the fracas and join in on the pile-on. As a result, climate Twitter today is filled with toxic doomist messaging and assaults on leading climate communicators who are subject to an endless onslaught of ‘hopium’ accusations from ostensible climate advocates anytime we dare claim that it’s not too late to do something about the climate crisis. This may be the most successful gambit yet in the attack on climate action.

[3] Michael Mann on climate disobedience (Mann. “Throwing Soup at Art Shifted People’s Views of Climate Protests—But Maybe Not In The Right Way,” November 15, 2022) wrote:

My fears were realized…. The public outrage was palpable…. The painting protest, by contrast, seemed bizarre and pointless, with no obvious message about the climate crisis. Who was the target? Van Gogh? Oil paintings (get it)? From a communications standpoint, the protest seemed like an even bigger mess than the soup-splattered painting.

The public, overall, just doesn’t like this sort of stuff. A plurality of [survey] respondents (46%) reported that these tactics decrease their support for efforts to address climate change. A whopping 27%, in fact, said they greatly decrease their support. Only 13% reported increased support…. If we are to win the battle against polluters and their enablers, we will need public opinion on our side not theirs.

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