MIT Burns Its Scientific Credibility - Granite Grok

MIT Burns Its Scientific Credibility

MIT Burns its Credibility

Will the last climate scientist at MIT please turn out the lights – mustn’t waste the energy, don’t ya know! When you are the top ranked Science and Engineering school in the United States, if not the World, your word carries a lot of weight, and articles in your bi-monthly magazine are the word of the science gods. Imagine the temptation, then, to insert your politics into an organ which carries such inherent credibility?

Bill Nye Fake Science Guy
Fake Science Guy
We’re not talking about the run of the mill central planners and socialists at some rag like Popular Science, nosirree, Bob, we’re talking about real scientists, ones who don’t have to don white coats and bow ties to call themselves ‘science guys’…. at least, that’s what they’d like us to believe, until they publish an entire issue of MIT Technology Review predicting our miserable future on this burning planet. Now we can see them for what they are: A bunch of commie enviro-wackos – full blown water melons, in fact, and even paying homage to Obama’s Science Czar, John Holdren!
 

What kind of deranged commitment do you have to have in order to devote a whole issue of a supposedly scientific magazine to a failed theory, which even MIT’s computer whizzes cannot model in a manner which predicts near term weather, much less long term climate? Next thing they’ll be telling us is that Algore is a scientific prophet!

The Propaganda Issue

MIT Burns Its Credibility
MIT Propaganda Issue
Welcome to the Propaganda Issue of MIT Technology Review, where the articles are so scary you’d think it was Halloween, or maybe “Nightmare on Mass Ave.” So bad that a distinguished alumnus walked up to me and said “You should see this: It’s pure propaganda – I’m done with them!”

He’s right, only it’s worse than anything you might expect from “real scientists,” detailing, without ever deigning to prove, the awful misery and suffering of life on Earth after a CO2 tipping point, without offering any evidence of that non-linearity upon which they hang their hats. Let me list a few articles and pull quotes, and yes, two of them are actually labelled fiction – the rest should merely carry government health warnings such as “Believing this garbage can harm your fiscal and psychological health.”

The Editor’s column begins with an ode to John Holdren, and ends with a scary thought:

[I]n 2007, John Holdren, who would later become President Barack Obama’s chief science advisor, famously said, “We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering.
….
This issue of MIT Technology Review rests on the premise that while one should never give up on mitigation, it’s time to start talking more about adaptation and suffering—about the technologies the human race will need in a catastrophically altered world, and about the economic, political, and social realities of living in it.
….
[Read our] chilling fictional depiction of a near-future America, and [and] how living with climate change will mean ditching some of our most basic assumptions about what constitutes a normal, good life. Start preparing mentally for this new world. Because to take action on either mitigation or adaptation, one first needs to be able to visualize the suffering.

(Shorter – we want to scare the sheeple so we can herd them to suit our ends!)

Amping Up The Graphics

Under the accusatory headline of “What would YOU pay to save the World?” editor at large, Brian Rotman, utilizes lurid reds and oranges combined with steepened graphs to make it look like the World is on fire, or will be very shortly – exhibit A:
MIT Gonna Burn: Lurid Graphics

NOAA CO2 Levels
Artificially steep CO2 graph
The article’s premise is that the worst case warming scenario is increasingly likely, even though it presents no data, or even references, to any CO2 tipping point, or even why such a tipping point would exist. The article describes increasingly detailed and complex attempts to map out the impact of runaway warming upon smaller and smaller subdivisions of the globe, and talks about the hard “social cost per tonne” of emitted carbon as if it were a measurable economic fact. We are told to believe that the social cost of a tonne of CO2 is around $40, that some ‘researchers’ price it nearer $400, and that the (dastardly) Trump administration pegs it much lower, between $1 and $7 per tonne. In case you missed it, a few years ago the, oh so righteous, EU’s carbon indulgences credit market collapsed because nobody would buy the credits! (Or Trump’s probably right!)

It talks about the imbalanced impact upon the world’s poor, and how tough it is for countries like India to generate enough electricity from solar power, as if they should not be permitted to use the most economical means of large scale power production. It further talks about how the “climate winners” should not leave the “climate losers” behind but should instead pay up (what else?) to ease their pain of living low carbon.

Bjorn Lomborg - Cool ItNever, anywhere, does the article suggest that there may be a different outcome, or that more prosperity will help mankind adapt to whatever warmer, or colder, climate, Nature, and Nature’s GOD, may have in store for us. It is all about GLOBAL political solutions, and of course, “a massive restructuring of wealth” (and YOU will be paying). We could bankrupt ourselves trying to shave 0.2 Deg. Celsius off a rise which is said to be anywhere from 2 to 5 Deg. Celsius, or we could simply prosper and adapt. Bjorn Lomborg favors the latter.

This article even gets into the Green New Deal (now, THAT’s scientific), telling us it’s not so much about the specifics (the GND has none), but about a cry of outrage against what it calls “the twin crises of climate change and worsening income inequality.”

Executive Summary

Because this IS “Technology Review,” every article contains innovations for managing the challenges Mankind might face as climate changes from a variety of natural and anthropogenic causes, which would be quite uplifting by themselves, BUT, every article presumes that a global warming catastrophe, caused by greedy western civilization, of course, is inevitable, and that the tipping point may have been reached already. (Or maybe not – see MIT: Climate tipping point busted – globe needs to reach 152°F before runaway greenhouse effect kicks in.)
This propaganda issue is preaching to us that our future is to regress to the Hobbesian mean: “Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish and Short!” (And no, that’s not a firm of stunted Democrat lawyers!) The essays send the unmistakable message that it’s “Goodbye, Good Life” for our children and grandchildren, and they will blame us for it.

There’s much more (A review of the articles)

In “New economics for climate change” we’re talking Industrial Policy, central planning without micromanagement (an oxymoron if ever I saw one), having economic growth with a Green New Deal, and “set[ting] a direction and then [using] the full array of government instruments to fuel the bottom-up experimentation and exploration.” Sure top down planning ALWAYS causes bottom-up growth – NOT!

Nuclear Power is zero carbon, but gets painted as a wasteland of risk and corruption that we may never recover from.

Agricultural researchers claim that we are living in a “Goldilocks climate” and a few degrees warmer will starve us all, notwithstanding solid research showing plants grow better and are more drought-resistant at higher CO2 levels.

MIT - New York Flood ZonesNew York’s gonna flood: Never mind the poor planning and maintenance of storm barriers and subway entrances which means one good hurricane making a direct hit on southern Manhattan will cripple the city for a long time, we’re talking an assumed sea level rise of 2 feet by 2050 and 6 feet by 2100, again, without a computer model which can be shown to match real life weather and climate changes. Nice maps and graphics showing the edges of Manhattan conceded to the sea, and turned into salt marsh parks for protection, but no proof of need.

Jose Angel Duran Desiga
Jose Duran, Seaweed man
Hot and Hotter – The Seaweed Plague The tropics are already suffering serious effects from global warming Climate Change, and it’s causing runaway seaweed “blooms” in the Gulf Of Mexico and along tropical coastlines. Or maybe, as also mentioned in the article, the proliferation of Sargassum seaweed is more due to fertilizer and pesticide runoff entering the ocean via the Amazon and Congo river systems. And, it might become a useful biofuel, but hey, it’s Anthropogenic Global Warming to blame, yeah!

Bill Solano, Coffee Blender
Bill Solano, Coffee Blender
There (won’t be) a Lot of Coffee in Brazil! Or maybe there will: After detailing successful experiments in Costa Rica to broaden the gene pool of Latin American coffee varieties, and the serendipitous discovery of a hybrid with higher yield AND a much broader temperature range tolerance, the article can’t resist a miserable ending….. “And if the hybrids don’t stand up to climate change as well as hoped? ‘Our most pessimistic predictions will be made reality,’ [said Solano.]”

The Storms Will Get Worse! An uplifting article about localized disaster relief networks which grew out of the aftermath of hurricane Irma, and how one woman in Miami created the model for a Community Emergency Operations Center – locals helping locals, and a focal point for aid. Great article, but the subhead had to be “storms will get worse” in spite of evidence over many decades which suggests otherwise.

There’s a lot of sand around the Sahara! An extended drought, caused by climate change, of course, is blamed for difficulties feeding and watering nomadic cattle herds in the Sahel, and for (potential future) cocoa crop failures in Ghana. The article, again, has remarkably uplifting stories of adaptation and improvements in nomadic herd management and cocoa crop optimization, but this passage is typical of the doomsaying:

Bamako Rainfall Averages Where Alwaly [the herder] lives, in the Sahel, the vast strip of arid scrubland south of the Sahara Desert, temperatures are rising faster than the global average, droughts are more frequent, and vegetation is scarcer. Erratic rainfall has made traditional watering holes unreliable. Animals frequently perish during the search, Alwaly says, and competition for water can easily turn violent.

EXCEPT that rainfall around Bamako (Mali) has been remarkably steady as seen in the graph, as have the temperatures. (World Weather Online)

Code Red: Australia’s Bushfires are getting worse “AUSTRALIA IS TRYING TO ADAPT TO A FUTURE WITH BIGGER, BADDER BUSHFIRES.” Screams the subheading, making the implied statement that global warming is causing the disasters, but wait, that’s not the whole story:
Eucalyptus Forest FireFirst, there is a long history of bad bushfires among the Eucalyptus forests of the Blue Mountains, indeed, the most notorious have their own names like “Black Sunday (1926), Black Friday (1939), Black Tuesday (1967), and Ash Wednesday (1983). The worst, Black Saturday, struck the state of Victoria on February 7, 2009.” Second, people build wooden houses in these highly flammable forests because it’s pretty there, and it smells nice – never mind that nothing burns quite like a Eucalyptus forest – ask the Californians, who fear the heavenly smelling invasive species above all others.
Again, there’s a good story of adaptation – if you really want to live in the middle of a giant pile of kindling! Special windows, steel clad roofs and walls, and a new fire emergency level of “Code Red,” meaning “Evacuate – we can’t save you!” (‘But, Warming!’)

MIT: Coral Reefs Under ThreatCoral Reefs are Gonna Die! “Climate change isn’t just making the sea levels rise; it’s making the oceans warmer. Now some desperate geoengineering researchers are looking into ways to slow that catastrophic trend.” And a quick look at the subheadings shows how wild the ideas are: THE SALT SPRAYER – brightening low clouds over coastal waters; THE SEAWEED FORESTS – capturing carbon in expanded seaweed forests, but then the seaweed needs to be harvested, processed, and the carbon locked away; PUTTING THE BRAKES ON GLACIERS – if we assume they are melting, slow their advance into the oceans by blocking their paths, or draining the melt water from under them…… Then, the article closes with LIVING IN THE RUINS – we have to visualize how bad it can get so we will tackle big scary geoengineering projects to fix the assumed warming. (And this entire issue wants us to visualize BAD.)

Climate Refugees Everywhere Heat, drought, and flooding are going to force migration of helpless people on an unprecedented scale. Cities with promising economies are going to attract more people if a climate shock occurs…. “If policymakers can get a better sense of how many people might arrive and when, they can prepare by directing investment to that area for affordable housing, hospitals, and schools.” Of course the same bureaucrats that can’t get anything else right will centrally plan their cities’ futures based on unreliable predictions of arriving climate migrants. Whatever happened to supply and demand? Haven’t people been migrating to cities for centuries as agriculture became more efficient, and cities offered new opportunities?

PIPE DREAMS A title much more accurate than the subheading: “CLIMATE CHANGE IS GOING TO TIP INDIA INTO A WATER CRISIS.” It’s going to get hotter, the monsoons will be more extreme, and the Himalayan glaciers will melt, thus India will run out of water.
The reality, as in most of the articles, is far more complex, and brave pioneers are working on solutions. There are insufficient reservoirs to contain those monsoon rains, so most of the water runs off to the sea; pipe networks are old and crumbling so that much of the water for cities is lost along the way; sewage treatment is woefully inadequate…
On the other hand, from the ambitious plans to link multiple river systems, to local efforts to upgrade sewage treatment, to small scale water catchment and storage, there is also much hope. Should India cut back its development because the western elites say so, or should it prosper, adapt, and clean up – the way western societies have over recent decades?

Tapio Schneider, CaltechHow bad will it be? MIT closes out this, ahem, fact filled issue with a Q+A with Tapio Schneider, a climate scientist at Caltech, who is building a new model for climate sensitivity to CO2 with his colleagues from Caltech, Princeton, JPL, and MIT. A couple of quotes:

If there’s so much uncertainty, do we really even know that things will get bad with a lot of CO2?
When you put more CO2 or other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, they absorb thermal radiation. What happens if you put more of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is that everything else being equal, you ought to warm the surface. The physics of that’s completely clear, undisputed by any serious scientist.
Where the uncertainties come in is to say, well, how much warmer will it get? What happens to these little clouds? They reflect a lot of sunlight. If we get more of them and more sunlight will be reflected, it will be less warming. If you get fewer of them, you have an amplifying feedback effect where you get more warming.

Are things worse than predicted?
I think the evidence in recent years—for example, from studies looking at cloud variations over the past decades—points more toward higher climate sensitivity.

If climate sensitivity is on the high side, how worried should we be?
I would be very worried. It would mean higher heat extremes, especially in summer. It means more extreme precipitation in places like the [US] Northeast.
It is possible the climate sensitivity is on the high end of what models predict, and if that’s right then we’ll experience severe impact in our lifetime, certainly in our children’s lifetimes. Simply put, the higher the climate sensitivity, the more worried we should be.

And Now, The ACTUAL Fiction

MIT - World BurningLearning to Live in an APOCALYPSE, by Roy Scranton, author of novels and essays on war and climate change, most recently “We’re Doomed:Now What?”
The subheading of the essay is “Can we cope when the World changes IRREVERSIBLY, and it’s all alarmism from there, with gems like “In the first weeks of 2019, new scientific reports appeared suggesting that we may have passed the point of no return.” Or “…extreme climate events such as droughts and heat waves decrease the amount of carbon dioxide that soil can absorb by as much as half, meaning that not only does global warming increase extreme weather, but extreme weather increases global warming.”
After subheadings like “A new dark age” and “Goodbye, good life” Scranton concludes:

Our lives are built around concepts and values that are existentially threatened by a stark dilemma: either we radically transform human collective life by abandoning the use of fossil fuels or, more likely, climate change will bring about the end of global fossil-fueled capitalist civilization.
Revolution or collapse— in either case, the good life as we know it is no longer viable.

 

OverheatedIf that wasn’t miserable enough, try this: “A full life” by Paolo Bacigalupi traces the miserable life of 15 year old Rue as her family is driven by drought, heat, storms, and economic collapse from dried out Colorado, to sweltering Austin, to storm flattened Miami, to economically collapsing New York, and finally to her grandmother’s apartment in refugee-swamped Boston. There she discovers that her grandmother’s tales of traveling the world, and leading a full life before the inevitable collapse leave Rue struggling to resist the temptation to strangle her grandmother.

And so, having suffered all this insufferable preaching but the world’s supposedly leading scientists and engineers, let us close with the fake science guy losing it altogether with us peons:

Bill Nye Burns The World
Bill Nye, Not safe for children, screams “Wake the F— up!”
Video via Twitchy.com
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