The Climate Cargo Cult, By Julius Sanks
“In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this new law that we guessed is right.”
The Climate Cargo Cult
27 mins ago Guest Blogger 1 Comment
By Julius Sanks
“In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this new law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directiy with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”
— Dr Richard Phillips Feynman, Nobel Laureate, The Character of Physical Law (1999)
You can watch him making the point here.
Would that we had Dr Feynman’s ethical approach today! His thinking about the scientific process went beyond comparing theory with experiment. He was also well aware of other ways science could go wrong. In 1974 he gave the CalTech commencement speech. He titled it “Cargo Cult Science.” This speech is arguably the greatest speech on science ever presented. Why? Because in it, he examines completeness. Sadly, I have not found a video of him presenting it.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Cargo Cult, it appeared in various forms in Melanesia during the early to mid-20th Century. The best known, and the one to which Dr Feynman refers, was the John Frum Movement. During World War II, these cultists observed the belligerents using aircraft to move cargo, either by air-drop or landing on airstrips. Wanting this wealth for themselves, though knowing nothing about aviation, they tried to replicate factors they had observed. As Dr Feynman put it:
During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas — he’s the controller — and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.
https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
Dr Feynman then goes on to explain researchers should not only describe their findings; they should also report anything they know of that might make their findings invalid.
And that is the link to the Climate Cargo Cult. Global Climate Warming Change alarmism is replete with examples of cherry-picked data, irrelevant data, bad logic, deception, and stuff that is just plain wrong. There is also a lot of wishful thinking and, of course, fear-mongering. Alarmist claims are often ridiculously easy to debunk.
A recent example relates to Greenland. A University of Leeds team, as described in a press release, claims melting ice is causing all kinds of problems there:
An estimated 11,000 sq miles or 28,707 sq kilometres of Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers have melted over the last three decades, according to a major analysis of historic satellite records.
The total area of ice loss is equivalent to the size of Albania, and represents about 1.6 % of Greenland’s total ice and glacier cover.
Where there was once ice and snow, there is now barren rock, wetlands and areas of shrub.
…
Since the 1970s, the region has been warming at double the global mean rate.
The press release publicizes this paper, which contains a lot of whining about climate change and its effect on Greenland. The paper opens, “Land cover responses to climate change must be quantified for understanding Arctic climate, managing Arctic water resources, maintaining the health and livelihoods of Arctic societies and for sustainable economic development. This need is especially pressing in Greenland, where climate changes are amongst the most pronounced of anywhere in the Arctic.”
How fast is the ice melting? 30 years to melt 1.6% is 0.000533% per year. That does not seem very fast. Indeed, at that rate it will take 18,750 years for the ice to disappear; but only if the ice is not replaced during future winters.
That is Climate Cargo Cult science.
Julius Sanks is an engineer and manager with experience developing weather forecasting systems and environmental satellites, among other things.