I have read this argument carefully. It is strongest when it points to real complexity in climate science, but it overreaches in what it concludes from that complexity.
Yes, climate science involves uncertainty... especially around cloud feedbacks, aerosols, and some biogeochemical cycles. But uncertainty in the details is not the same as uncertainty about the core mechanism. The basic physics: greenhouse gases trap heat and human activity is increasing them, is not in serious dispute within mainstream science.
Where the piece goes wrong is in treating “this is complex and imperfectly known” as if it implies “we don’t really know how bad it is.” That doesn’t follow.
Climate sensitivity is not unknown; it is constrained within a range that is narrow enough to meaningfully inform risk assessment and policy!!
It also draws a false symmetry between “catastrophism” and “denialism.” These are not mirror errors. One aligns with multiple independent lines of measurement and modelling; the other requires rejecting or downplaying them. Calling both “narratives” flattens an important epistemic asymmetry.
Finally, the idea that “follow the science” is meaningless because science is messy misses the point. Science is not a set of tidy answers: it is a structured way of narrowing uncertainty. In climate science, that narrowing is already strong enough to support action under risk, even if it is not perfectly precise.
Complexity does not cancel knowledge. It is exactly why probabilistic knowledge is useful at all!
And here's another point to add to my comment above: there’s also a practical problem here. By framing climate science as mostly narrative and fundamentally unclear, the article risks encouraging epistemic suspension, in other words: if everything is “just narratives,” why trust any conclusion?
But in practice, that kind of scepticism doesn’t stay neutral. It tends to produce inertia!
When you blur the line between “uncertain but well-supported” and “basically unknowable,” you don’t become more rational, what happens is that you become less likely to act.
And in climate change, where delay has real costs, that drift toward inaction matters a lot. The writer appears to encourage it.
In my defense I was trying to argue that climate science is frikkin' awesome, it's the people talking bollocks about climate that are "just narratives."
Look, I'm a climate bro. I'm all for action. But the bias to action for action's sake has locked climate orthodoxy into a series of absurdities that are just not tenable, either politically or thermodynamically. We're failing to get on top of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations AND destroying the political constituency to support effective climate responses at the same time. Doing more of what we've been doing, harder, is just going to mean failing like we've been failing, more.
I think your clarification is much stronger than the original article. Critiquing performative or politically counterproductive climate discourse is perfectly fair. My concern was that the essay sometimes made criticism of climate messaging sound like criticism of climate science itself! Even if unintended, it risks leaving readers less inclined to see meaningful, informed action on climate as both possible and worthwhile. When human beings are encouraged to be skeptical it is only natural to disengage.
I agree that the left-right narratives are unhelpful, but it seems like a fool's errand to expect people to check their need for a narrative at the door. As you say: This is almost impossibly hard even for those who try to do it in good faith. A better alternative would be to try to construct a compelling narrative around the things you talk about in your piece. But I understand that this, also, is very hard to do, because this narrative would probably be perceived as pretty boring, since it has to take into account so many unknowns. It seems humans not only need to construct narratives, but also for those narratives to push the right emotional buttons, so that people feel satisfied with them.
For what it’s worth, I think you’re already doing it. “It’s more complicated, actually” is itself a narrative, and your last several posts pushing it have left an impact on me, at least.
Narratives about complexity can be boring—or they can be sufficiently polemical and dissident to seem fresh and exciting. I think yours feels validating in context because there’s a real opening for people to think “Hey, yeah, I actually *am* confused that none of the big predictions on either side are bearing out!”
"The reason we don’t know is that the relationship is mediated by aerosols and clouds, but the science of aerosols and clouds is in a mess, with mongo error bars reflecting basic confusion about what causes what and how. There is a lot of very sophisticated research going into this problem right now, but those researchers will be the first to tell you they’re not close to solving the problem."
The cloud/aerosol issue has been a known problem for a good 20 years now. Dr Judith Curry wrote a ton about this and from what I recall her position was that we know neither the sign nor the magnitude of their overall impact on climate. As far as I am aware we still don't. We have got better ideas how some parts of the system work, but the overall question of how much do clouds contribute to global warming (or cooling) remains an area where the uncertainty remains unconstrained.
We may not know much about the climate, but we do know how to bankrupt ourselves, and many countries and U.S. states are well on their way to doing just that.
The hope we will find a technology that will let us reasonably sequester carbon from the atmosphere that's net carbon negative... is hope. It might exist - but it simply might not exist.
At present, in order to reverse the process of burning fossil fuels we need millions and millions of years' worth of plants and animals to die and decay under anaerobic conditions... this is not a process that helps us in an reasonable time frame.
All this nonsense about carbon offsets planting trees is just that - nonsense. Those trees aerobically decay and just go straight back into the carbon cycle. It absolutely does not offset burning fossil fuels in the least!
>I’m not trying to make you lose sleep about N2O specifically (although you definitely should.)
Normal people should not lose sleep about anything at all relating to climate change, _even if_ the catastrophists were correct (which, as you point out, they are not).
mostly because normal people have approx. zero influence on it and worrying about things you can't influence is not a good idea.
This is very much not me calling for apathy. Normal people should do the things they can like support sensible climate policies, but _worrying_ about these things is not helpful. I realize that human nature being what it is, people _will_ worry, but I don't think it's wise or helpful to encourage it.
A little humility goes a long way in bridging divides of suspicion. People who are trying to find solutions, not gain power, are usually the first to say they don’t have all the answers. It’s hard to hear them over the noise. I think a lot of the real solutions will come from Japan and Australia. They are both major technological countries running into the leading edge of climate change effects now. The necessity of finding practical solutions serves to concentrate their approach while wary of of undercutting their economies.
We have enough information to know the damage we are causing and enough to know the reversal of this will help stabilize the system while we work out the rest, the 1930's dust bowl taught us that. Deforestation raises and disperses cloud decks thus creating warming , the same in the ocean and nutrient concentrations, we have enough to get on with and much of it is profitable for our economies, there should be no arguments as far as i am concerned just good governance where part of the profitability goes toward furthering science.
I have read this argument carefully. It is strongest when it points to real complexity in climate science, but it overreaches in what it concludes from that complexity.
Yes, climate science involves uncertainty... especially around cloud feedbacks, aerosols, and some biogeochemical cycles. But uncertainty in the details is not the same as uncertainty about the core mechanism. The basic physics: greenhouse gases trap heat and human activity is increasing them, is not in serious dispute within mainstream science.
Where the piece goes wrong is in treating “this is complex and imperfectly known” as if it implies “we don’t really know how bad it is.” That doesn’t follow.
Climate sensitivity is not unknown; it is constrained within a range that is narrow enough to meaningfully inform risk assessment and policy!!
It also draws a false symmetry between “catastrophism” and “denialism.” These are not mirror errors. One aligns with multiple independent lines of measurement and modelling; the other requires rejecting or downplaying them. Calling both “narratives” flattens an important epistemic asymmetry.
Finally, the idea that “follow the science” is meaningless because science is messy misses the point. Science is not a set of tidy answers: it is a structured way of narrowing uncertainty. In climate science, that narrowing is already strong enough to support action under risk, even if it is not perfectly precise.
Complexity does not cancel knowledge. It is exactly why probabilistic knowledge is useful at all!
And here's another point to add to my comment above: there’s also a practical problem here. By framing climate science as mostly narrative and fundamentally unclear, the article risks encouraging epistemic suspension, in other words: if everything is “just narratives,” why trust any conclusion?
But in practice, that kind of scepticism doesn’t stay neutral. It tends to produce inertia!
When you blur the line between “uncertain but well-supported” and “basically unknowable,” you don’t become more rational, what happens is that you become less likely to act.
And in climate change, where delay has real costs, that drift toward inaction matters a lot. The writer appears to encourage it.
In my defense I was trying to argue that climate science is frikkin' awesome, it's the people talking bollocks about climate that are "just narratives."
Look, I'm a climate bro. I'm all for action. But the bias to action for action's sake has locked climate orthodoxy into a series of absurdities that are just not tenable, either politically or thermodynamically. We're failing to get on top of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations AND destroying the political constituency to support effective climate responses at the same time. Doing more of what we've been doing, harder, is just going to mean failing like we've been failing, more.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-kind-of-climate-activism-that
Hey, thanks for responding!
I think your clarification is much stronger than the original article. Critiquing performative or politically counterproductive climate discourse is perfectly fair. My concern was that the essay sometimes made criticism of climate messaging sound like criticism of climate science itself! Even if unintended, it risks leaving readers less inclined to see meaningful, informed action on climate as both possible and worthwhile. When human beings are encouraged to be skeptical it is only natural to disengage.
This man has been on the front lines of this battle for decades. frhttps://wattsupwiththat.com/
I agree that the left-right narratives are unhelpful, but it seems like a fool's errand to expect people to check their need for a narrative at the door. As you say: This is almost impossibly hard even for those who try to do it in good faith. A better alternative would be to try to construct a compelling narrative around the things you talk about in your piece. But I understand that this, also, is very hard to do, because this narrative would probably be perceived as pretty boring, since it has to take into account so many unknowns. It seems humans not only need to construct narratives, but also for those narratives to push the right emotional buttons, so that people feel satisfied with them.
I think this is exactly right.
If you figure out how to do it, let me know!!
For what it’s worth, I think you’re already doing it. “It’s more complicated, actually” is itself a narrative, and your last several posts pushing it have left an impact on me, at least.
Narratives about complexity can be boring—or they can be sufficiently polemical and dissident to seem fresh and exciting. I think yours feels validating in context because there’s a real opening for people to think “Hey, yeah, I actually *am* confused that none of the big predictions on either side are bearing out!”
This is the nicest thing anyone wrote to me all week!
"The reason we don’t know is that the relationship is mediated by aerosols and clouds, but the science of aerosols and clouds is in a mess, with mongo error bars reflecting basic confusion about what causes what and how. There is a lot of very sophisticated research going into this problem right now, but those researchers will be the first to tell you they’re not close to solving the problem."
The cloud/aerosol issue has been a known problem for a good 20 years now. Dr Judith Curry wrote a ton about this and from what I recall her position was that we know neither the sign nor the magnitude of their overall impact on climate. As far as I am aware we still don't. We have got better ideas how some parts of the system work, but the overall question of how much do clouds contribute to global warming (or cooling) remains an area where the uncertainty remains unconstrained.
So the underlying answer is we’ll all die laughing?
It needs some edits.
We may not know much about the climate, but we do know how to bankrupt ourselves, and many countries and U.S. states are well on their way to doing just that.
The hope we will find a technology that will let us reasonably sequester carbon from the atmosphere that's net carbon negative... is hope. It might exist - but it simply might not exist.
At present, in order to reverse the process of burning fossil fuels we need millions and millions of years' worth of plants and animals to die and decay under anaerobic conditions... this is not a process that helps us in an reasonable time frame.
All this nonsense about carbon offsets planting trees is just that - nonsense. Those trees aerobically decay and just go straight back into the carbon cycle. It absolutely does not offset burning fossil fuels in the least!
Yes! You've just reasoned out the case for phytoplankton carbon solutions from first principles!
https://oceanvisions.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/PCS-Report_FINAL.pdf
This man has been on the front lines of this battle for decades. frhttps://wattsupwiththat.com/
The better answer is even if it’s not real is it really worth the risk? It’s like people don’t want clean air or clean environments around them.
Agree! My video on my conservative and liberal friends and how they adopt the tribal beliefs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcNJCJND-A8&t=965s
Minor quibble:
>I’m not trying to make you lose sleep about N2O specifically (although you definitely should.)
Normal people should not lose sleep about anything at all relating to climate change, _even if_ the catastrophists were correct (which, as you point out, they are not).
mostly because normal people have approx. zero influence on it and worrying about things you can't influence is not a good idea.
This is very much not me calling for apathy. Normal people should do the things they can like support sensible climate policies, but _worrying_ about these things is not helpful. I realize that human nature being what it is, people _will_ worry, but I don't think it's wise or helpful to encourage it.
So what's your narrative? "It's complicated and we should..."
A little humility goes a long way in bridging divides of suspicion. People who are trying to find solutions, not gain power, are usually the first to say they don’t have all the answers. It’s hard to hear them over the noise. I think a lot of the real solutions will come from Japan and Australia. They are both major technological countries running into the leading edge of climate change effects now. The necessity of finding practical solutions serves to concentrate their approach while wary of of undercutting their economies.
We have enough information to know the damage we are causing and enough to know the reversal of this will help stabilize the system while we work out the rest, the 1930's dust bowl taught us that. Deforestation raises and disperses cloud decks thus creating warming , the same in the ocean and nutrient concentrations, we have enough to get on with and much of it is profitable for our economies, there should be no arguments as far as i am concerned just good governance where part of the profitability goes toward furthering science.
I don’t think this piece needs any tone policing. It was quite a good read and, as far as I can tell, accurate.
What does this word salad even mean?