It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was on here pouring scorn upon the efforts of two psychology professors who were claiming to know how hapless folk such as you and I could fall into the trap of disbelieving the scientists. Theirs was a counsel that supposedly had two major benefits: By following their advice others could avoid the same ‘anti-science’ trap and, even better, they would be ready and prepared to deal with those who had. Like bedbugs, the anti-scientific are deemed a growing problem, but these two psychologists also have a serious pesticide. Or so they say.
Such academics can only think that way because they presume for themselves an understanding of the science that is superior to the sceptic. As far as they are concerned, sceptics had the option of thinking things through carefully, but chose instead to reject scientific authority and replace it with their own sloppy version of thinking. Trust in science is very much seen as the hallmark of the critical thinker; they see no room in the critical thinker’s armoury for re-evaluating the significance of scientific consensus.
And why does all of this matter? It’s because such ‘anti-scientism’ can lead to all sorts of dangerous perspectives, such as those held by people who insist on vaccines being properly tested, or that the risks of net zero should be properly thought through. Or maybe you are one of those people who even doubt the need for a precipitous transition to net zero. Perhaps you can’t see the urgency. How anti-scientist is that?
Not very, according to Roger Hallam, founder member of Extinction Rebellion. In a recent proclamation he explained that failing to see the urgency has nothing at all to do with anti-scientism – in fact it is quite the opposite. If you want to be a critical thinker, like he is, he says the very last thing you should be doing is listening to the scientists. ‘But how come?’, I hear you ask. Surely organisations such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have been claiming scientific endorsement for their eschatology from the very outset. So Hallam, of all people, must surely be the first to condemn anyone who disbelieves a scientist. Well he might have done in bygone days, but no longer. This is how he puts it now:
Some of us have attempted over the years to responsibly communicate the extreme and cascading risks, and the severe consequences of not taking emergency action. Despite founding the movement on the precautionary principle we found ourselves being ground down. For years we were moderated, and moodsplained by experts from narrow disciplines who demanded we change our press releases, our lectures, and play down the reality and potential speed of catastrophic consequences.
So if one cannot trust ‘experts from narrow disciplines’, who should you trust? Why, Hallam, of course:
The rapid heating and extreme events of the last year demonstrate that overall predictions of institutionalised climate science were less accurate than the conclusions of generalist scholars and leading climate activists, who better saw the frightening signals through the noise produced from siloes, hierarchies, and privilege.
You see, it’s the generalists and activists that we should have been listening to all along, not ‘institutionalised climate science’. But how was it that institutionalised climate science got away with so many years of ‘moodsplaining’?
Because these people carry an identity associated with ‘authority’ they were not challenged enough by journalists, lay people, or activists.
It turns out that there is little difference between a climate change sceptic and your average doomsplaining cult leader. Both dislike the idea of authorised facts and both wish that journalists and laypeople would do more to challenge it. The only difference is that, whereas we are wracked with uncertainty and worry about practicalities, the doomsplainer general is on a moral crusade and lives by a truth known only unto him and his followers. As Hallam puts it:
We committed five years ago in October 2018 to live in truth. Our movements need to look directly at that truth and act according to reality. That means being in resistance, standing for peace, justice and freedom.
I have no reason to believe that Hallam is being insincere here. I suspect that he has created for himself the persona of the repressed messiah who is, nevertheless, only too willing to forgive the blasphemers just as long as they are prepared to repent. Why else would he say this?
Understanding how this repression happened is important. We would welcome any career climatologists, academics and journalists who undermined our communications in public to make amends, especially as they have influenced attitudes amongst those who judge us.
Far from encouraging others to follow the scientists, Hallam wants the scientists to follow him! And before you dismiss his megalomania too readily, you should reflect upon the fact that his amnesty has already resulted in a degree of success. Only seven days after his sermon on the mount, a massive 70 scientists responded by plighting their troth to the activists. Well, when I say scientists, I mean doctors of music, socio-spatial planning, social and cultural anthropology, sociology, clinical psychology and education, etc. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the founding member of the Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion.
So it was really just another bunch of generalists and laypeople, rather than the mass conversion he must have hoped for.
I may mock, but it’s a start. Hallam is a man in resistence and he stands for peace, justice and freedom. Previous messiahs have achieved a great deal more with far less scientific support, and never forget that there are grandmas prepared to climb gantries for this guy.
Climate Scepticism 
Your posts are so instructive, John.
The new Word-of-the-Day added to my vocabulary is ‘eschatology’!
At first, I assumed it was a euphemism for Hallam’s ‘scatology’ emissions.
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It’s interesting to note that “anti-science” climate sceptics are denied a hearing at the BBC, while “anti-science” climate alarmists are granted a dedicated interview of almost an hour in which to promote their views. That’s what passes for balance at the BBC these days, I suppose.
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Hallam is, by repute, a farmer who would rather be fiddling with his carrots than founding and organising climate groups. So I wonder if he pays any attention to the outpourings of scientific farming or whether such science is not be headed on semi-religious and consistency grounds.
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You’ve got to read between the lines of Hallam’s proclamation to realise that he understands the science sufficiently and has read enough to offer some scientific justification for the imminent arrival of the “horrors of a 1.5 °C plus world”. He sees the world ‘boiling’ all of a sudden and he’s angry that narrowly focussed scientists did not forecast such an acceleration in global warming. Thus, he says:
“Aerosol pollution matters decisively to our global climate. There are other factors deserving of more serious attention such as forest cloud seeding and ocean health. Many factors were sidelined by scientists who were narrowly focusing on CO2. In addition, IPCC processes did not find an adequate way to address issues of extreme risk where data was deemed insufficient or where there was higher uncertainty *, such as aerosols, methane release from permafrost, and feedbacks from wildfires or droughts rendering sinks incapable of sustaining their role in the system. This misled other scientists, academics and activists including us.”
He’s obviously taken the time to read stuff. But it’s all stuff that can be blamed on our activities, not mother Nature. That’s important, because if he focussed instead upon natural explanations for climate fluctuations, his rebellious world would collapse and his raison d’etre might evaporate in the light of a new, inconvenient truth, i.e. that politicians, the target of his obsessive ire, might not after all have it within their power to control the weather and climate, if only they were to act more urgently. He completely fails to mention Hunga Tonga, and from what I have been reading very recently, that remains the number one suspect for the sharp rise in global mean surface temperature which started this summer. Not Hallam’s ship fuel “aerosol termination shock” which he believes “matters decisively”. Hallam is all for science, but it must be on his terms and it must function only to serve the needs of his Doomsday cult.
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Joe,
There seems to be a word to cover everything. And if there isn’t, somebody will step forward to create one. ‘Eschatology’ has been around for some while, but I have to admit that ‘moodsplaining’ was a new one on me. I’m not sure of its origins but it seemed to take off in response to an article written this August by Prof. Jem Bendell:
“Let’s tell the moodsplainers they’re wrong and then get back to work”
From the above article I glean that it was invented by one of the ‘end is nigh’ brigade, and refers to those who insist that it isn’t too late and one should not give up. Consequently, despite its seeming generality it is only supposed to apply to one type of mood musician. So, all in all, it’s a pretty crap word. To counter it in my article, I thought I had made up the word ‘doomsplainer’, only to find out it already existed:
“Doomsplaining: When someone ‘helpfully’ explains that the world is headed toward inevitable collapse.”
https://grist.org/language/code-red-glacier-blood-megadrought-the-defining-words-of-2021/
So I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that ‘moodsplaining’ was invented in response.
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Mark,
You are quite right to point out the stark double standard employed by the BBC. Giving a platform to those who challenge ‘institutionalised climate science’ is a false balance that implies uncertainty in the science — unless the challenge is in order to pursue policies that fall in line with left-wing, liberal thinking.
Not for the first or last time, the BBC’s supposed impartiality is exposed as a sham.
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Alan,
I cannot honestly answer your question. But they do say that Jesus could make a damn good dovetail joint. Does that answer your question?
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Jaime,
What Hallam seems to be claiming is that he has previously been misled by the scientific establishment, but he won’t let it happen again. Yet, as you quite rightly point out, he continues to follow developments, choosing only to believe what suits him. I suspect we are all doing something similar, but not with Hallam’s evangelistic tendencies.
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If it walks like a nutter, talks like a nutter and looks like a nutter, there’s a very fair chance it’s a nutter.
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Catweazle666,
I think there may very well be a good deal of delusion involved here, bordering on mental illness. But putting that aside for a moment, I think the bottom line is that he is just a climate science sceptic whose scepticism just happens to have taken him in a very different direction to you and I. In fact, I hate the term ‘anti-science’ as I think it rarely applies. I use it in this article only because that is how sceptics are described. As Jaime has intimated, it doesn’t actually apply to Hallam any more then it does to us. But as Mark has pointed out, the media have much more time for Hallam than they do for us. Also, psychologists have a lot more to say about us, even though, as you suggest, Hallam is a much more obvious candidate for their attention.
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I must say that I haven’t noticed any climate change things here in darkest kent. the sea is in the same place the sky looks the same, the shops are still open.
I am currently in even darker Snowdonia and it is true that here it has rained a lot ,although the natives dont seem overly perturbed.
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Mahatma Hallam thinks that a new update…
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biad080/7319571
…of the 2019 Scientists’ Warning open letter…
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/1/8/5610806
…validates his oft-repeated and oft-debunked claim that science says that climate change will kill six billion people by 2100.
The open letter’s update doesn’t actually do that, of course, but it does come quite close if read while wearing egomaniac-looking-for-proof-of-prophecy spectacles (pat. pending). It says that by the end of this century 3-6 billion people might encounter ‘severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change.’
Eleven of the update’s twelve authors are actual scientists or have a scientific background of some sort (the twelfth is prolly a bit of a spiv), which is a good tally for such things, so perhaps Hallam will start loving scientists again.
(If he ever stopped. Despite his recent attacks on Michael Mann and other scientists, Hallam has always come back to science in one form or another to prop up his eschatonanism. For example, until recently Hallam would defend his de-bunked six-billion prediction by saying something like, ‘OK, yeah, I could be wrong, ha ha ha, but here’s a scientific paper, OK, that says it’ll be one billion, OK, ha ha ha’. The cited scientific paper was written by an electrical engineer and a systematic musicologist – whatever that is – and was published in a predatory journal, but it’s science, science, so be quiet.)
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Difficult to take seriously an attack on “narrow disciplines” from someone who studied for a PhD in Protesting. (Wiki doesn’t know if he finished his course. Is the doctorate awarded the day you’re arrested, or only when you’re found guilty?)
Hallam’s big theory is that climate change will result in us (us males, that is) witnessing our mothers and wives (Freudians will note the conflation) being raped over a table before having our eyes poked out with hot pokers. Sophocles said as much with reference to Oedipus in the Mycenaean warming period. Which just goes to show.
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A song…
It’s such a complicated ga-ame. XTC.
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Hallam’s distorted vision of ‘the Science’ seems almost tame compared to Botanist Wong, the current darling of the BBC – unlike deceased Botanist Bellamy, who was cast out into the wilderness by the BBC for being right. Wong’s warped assessment of ‘the Science’ is just so breath-takingly cult-like, ideological, bereft of all reason. He makes stuff up and bends facts like they were plasticine in a child’s play pen, his very own to play with and do as he pleases, in blissful ignorance of the big bad world outside. Quite remarkable.
“We are in a climate emergency. None or a very, very, very small percentage of the scientific community would disagree with that.
“I don’t know what the latest data is but previous data that I’ve seen is we’re talking one percent so there is a huge consensus on that.
“So I think it’s really important to have – if you’re into impartiality – fact-based reporting (and to) report things the way they are.
“For example, it may be contentious to some people that the Earth is round but it isn’t taking a side to show a picture of the Earth taken from a satellite showing it’s round.
“It isn’t being impartial to explain about things I don’t know about, geology and astronomy, those things are just facts.
“So I don’t think it is taking a side to do that,” Wong continued. “I think there is a potential to be taking a side in how the mechanics of how you want to address that climate change because there is a bit more of a diversity of opinions on exactly the right way to do it.
“But that’s different from talking about it as a factual reality. I find that as a scientist it can be quite dispiriting because the factual reality is the world is a beautifully complex place.”
He takes the mythical, Cook-fabricated so called 97% consensus on climate change, bumps it up by two percentage points, renames it a consensus on a climate emergency and then compares that to an affirmation (observationally confirmed) that the earth is round! Then he moans that he is dispirited as a ‘scientist’ because some people don’t agree with that ‘factual reality’! Good grief. Wong’s comments to GB News make Hallam’s comments to the BBC seem rational! At least Hallam doesn’t pretend to be a scientist; he’s just critical of them because they failed to forecast the era of global boiling which is now upon us!
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Jaime,
Thank you for drawing attention to the Wong ‘interview’. Here is the link:
https://www.gbnews.com/celebrity/bbc-impartiality-defended-countryfile-james-wong
It makes for grim reading and underlines just how much lasting damage was done by 28gate. It is thanks to the resulting BBC ‘impartiality’ that we get to hear the likes of Wong declare what, in the interests of impartiality, must go unchallenged. But if anything should be challenged, it should be such declarations. It is such a shame that GB News did not attempt to make that challenge on this occasion but simply let Wong have his say. Journalistic deference to the word of the scientist goes well beyond the BBC it seems.
As a result of the failure of GB News to offer any counterview, someone professing to speak as a scientist is allowed to get away with a statement that is actually profoundly unscientific. It is not the place of scientists to decree what is and is not to be treated as a societal emergency — it never has been, and it never will be. Science has an input but there are too many value judgments involved to treat it as a purely scientific matter that can be settled by reference to a consensus amongst scientists.
And as for sticking to facts, it is a monstrous deception for Wong to take a claim regarding how many scientists believe in the reality of AGW and present it as a consensus on the existence of a climate emergency. Journalists really do seem to have got out of the habit of doing their own research.
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I’m confused – the link is to gbn -, but the vid is “James Wong discusses climate change with Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy CHANNEL 4”
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Dfhunter,
Yes, it is a little confusing. The video has nothing to do with the GB News article. You can ignore the video.
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It looks like Hallam’s fellow prophet of doom has had a bad day in court today:
“XR founder convicted after four-year legal saga”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67288289
The court proceedings make an interesting read since they suggest that if Hallam is mad then it must be a folie à deux. As with Hallam, Gail Bradbrook seems to believe that she is an oppressed messiah who is answering to a higher power than the courts. As she put it, she was trying to stop crimes against humanity and “had permission from nature” to cause £25,000 worth of damage. Acting as her own counsel (since no one else walking the Earth could be found to possess the credentials to do so) she tried to cut the judge out of the proceedings by directly addressing the jury whenever she saw fit. That didn’t end well for her. Said the judge:
“It is evident that Dr Bradbrook, by reference to her beliefs, considers either that the rules that apply to every other criminal defendant do not apply to her or that she is entitled to disregard them.”
“I have a defence as a mother,” she protested, before playing the Ghandi card:
“To quote Gandhi, ‘I have disregarded the order in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience’.”
Oooh! The higher law of our being and the voice of conscience indeed. I’m surprised she didn’t go on to say to the judge, “the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
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John, that’s all very amusing but what I find even more amusing is that the ‘special security glass’ cost £27,500 to replace, but Bradbrook managed to break it easily with a cold chisel and a silly little hammer, not even a proper lump hammer. Look at this photo and contrast it with what the Beeb says about the glass:
“She then used tools to break a large pane of reinforced security glass. The specialist glass cost £27,500 to replace because it had to meet specific security standards and had to be quickly replaced.”
LOL. Reinforced security glass just ain’t what it used to be.
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Jaime,
Someone once explained to me that the law requires that all glass should be breakable if you know where to strike it. Obviously, this knowledge is granted unto the emergency services so that they may gain entry to save lives. But I’ll let everyone in on the secret. You strike it exactly where Bradbrook is shown using her hammer. There, I’ve done it now. The world will never be the same again.
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Perhaps she should protest against herself. According to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Bradbrook
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This thread seems to have morphed into “It’s that woman again”. Nothing wrong with that.
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Did Dr Bradbrook learn her inner peace from Roger Hallam or vice versa?
“Extinction Rebellion co-founder guilty of breaking window at HS2 protest
Dr Gail Bradbrook found guilty of criminal damage to Department for Transport building in 2019”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/01/extinction-rebellion-co-founder-guilty-breaking-window-department-transport-hs2-protest-gail-bradbrook
That sounds very similar to Mr Hallam during his interview with Nick Robinson the other week. Perhaps they have a script to be used by XR members?
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Bradbrook and Hallam are both rebels without a clue.
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