Out of masterresource
By Robert Bradley Jr – June 29, 2023
“Rob, your question doesn’t make sense and I don’t have the patience to deal with people like you. Please crawl back under the rock you emerged from or I’ll ban you from my substack. Seriously, the next comment I dislike will be your last, so make sure it’s a jerk.” (Andrew Dessler, below)
Climatologist Andrew Dessler, one of the leading figures on the alarmist side of the debate, is a masterpiece – extremely smart and knowledgeable, but biased and short-tempered. His personality is similar to that of Joe Romm of yesteryear and Michael Mann of today – arrogant, condescending, petty. Dessler is sure that he knows everything there is to know about climate and energy. But in reality he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. (Yes, climate science is highly uncertain and climate models are a mess.) [1]
As an example of Dessler at his worst, consider this quote:
hey assholes We’ve been telling you for decades that this would happen if we didn’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You didn’t listen and now everything is happening. We hope you are satisfied. Enjoy the heat waves, the heavy rains, the rising sea levels, the acidification of the oceans and many other things you damn idiots.
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Here’s a recent exchange with Angry Andy on his substack post, “Is Climate Change Causing the Texas Heatwave?” His post said:
Climate change does not usually lead to extreme weather conditions. Rather, climate change is an amplifier for extreme weather. You can think of climate change as “steroids for the weather”… So climate change doesn’t cause a hot day, but it can turn an ordinary hot day into a record-breaking hot day. Based on that, you might want to ask if climate change is making the Texas heatwave worse. The answer is an unequivocal yes.
I asked in a comment: Isn’t the “greenhouse signal” a sharper increase in low temperatures (compared to high temperatures) – and a greater focus on the coldest regions of the year in winter? If so, what implications does this have for your interpretation here?
dessler: Global warming tends to reduce gradients, resulting in more warming at night, in winter, and at high latitudes. But climate change does lead to warming during the day, in summer and in the tropics. Therefore, this does not affect the interpretation.
bradley: It dilutes the effect. What percentage of (below) 100% is the anthropogenic effect of the Texas Dome compared to the average? This is a quantitative discussion, not just a qualitative one, isn’t it?
dessler: Why are you asking questions that are clearly answered in the post? Please read the last two paragraphs again.
bradley: No it is not. You should pay particular attention to the distribution of warming and how it deviates from the “average” due to summer and afternoons. In general, what is the reduction compared to the average? 10% …. 25%…?
Dessler: Rob, your question makes absolutely no sense and I don’t have the patience to deal with people like you. Please crawl back under the rock you emerged from or I’ll ban you from my substack. Seriously, your next comment that I dislike will be your last, so make sure it’s a jerk.
I thought about ending the discussion here, but went ahead and tried to answer my question and not get kicked off his substack.
bradley: Not trying to start an argument, but politely asking: Is anthropogenic warming the least causative (least intense, least benign) at this time of year (summer) and time of day (afternoon) to refer to your post? current heat wave in Texas?
dessler: See, it’s not that difficult to be polite.
To answer, that’s certainly true for average warming, but I’m not 100% sure that’s true for the extremes. For this or every single event, you need to conduct attribution studies. But we already know the sign of the answer: climate change has made the situation worse than it otherwise would have been. The only question is the extent.
I could have come back with something like, “You’re rambling on about how theory weakens your interpretation of the summer heat in Texas – theory you didn’t mention in your analysis.” That’s legal, not scientific. And while you’re at it, why not mention the vast amounts of concrete that has been added under the “heat dome” over the past few years and decades – and even mention the tens of thousands of giant industrial wind turbines that scientific studies indicate exist? Contribution to the local heating supply.” But that would have kicked me out of his substack. [Update: I just got kicked off from this blog]
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Dessler almost canceled me [Update: he did]. His “Cancel Culture” also applies to economists. And remember what Dessler called the respected scientist Steven Koonin, author of Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Does Not, and Why It Matters? A “climate flat-earther” and “old white dude whose vast experience in the halls of power gives him a unique ability to point out the mistakes other people make?” Nope.”
Final comment
Dessler is an advocate for alarmism, not a humble, cautious scientist. Do you remember the fear of polar bears? In the first editions of his scientific primer An Introduction to the Science of Climate Change (2011: p. 220; 2020: p. 237), Dessler warned of the “extinction of polar bears” as a result of climate change, but dropped it in the third edition (2022). Those are the obvious exaggerations – what about all the subtle ones?
And as for the runaway summers in Texas? We had one in 2011 that Dessler described as the new normal. But that didn’t last more than a decade. But in 2023 (to date), Andy is all over the heat dome as the climate norm. And note that it remains vague, more qualitative than quantitative. Is he trying to be cautious in a sea of weather ambiguity and climate mysteries?
Climate alarmism 2023 continues what officially began this month at least 35 years ago…
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[1] MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel (author of the 70-page introduction What We Know About Climate Change (MIT Press: 2018) explained: “If I had written a book called What We Don’t Know About Climate Science , it would have been an encyclopedia.” Also: “… it’s not about whether there will be a climate catastrophe on the one hand or nothing on the other. That’s not how the world works.”
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