During the recent Covid-19 pandemic, Peter J. Hotez, professor of paediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine, wrote a Scientific American opinion piece that spoke of an emerging threat that he believed should concern us all:
Antiscience has emerged as a dominant and highly lethal force, and one that threatens global security, as much as do terrorism and nuclear proliferation. We must mount a counteroffensive and build new infrastructure to combat antiscience, just as we have for these other more widely recognized and established threats.
He paints a picture of a political right-wing engaging in a disinformation campaign, and of an interference with an otherwise scientifically sound programme – actions that he maintained would result in many dying unnecessarily:
Despite my best efforts to sound the alarm and call it out, the antiscience disinformation created mass havoc in the red states. During the summer of 2020, COVID-19 accelerated in states of the South as governors prematurely lifted restrictions to create a second and unnecessary wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Given his strong views, and the bellicose manner in which he chose to express them, it is not surprising that Hotez recently teamed up with Professor Michael Mann to write of the triple threat of global warming, a “cadence of pandemic threats” and, most importantly:
…a well-organized, financed, politically motivated, and steadily globalizing campaign of disinformation and attacks against mainstream science that makes it extremely difficult to mount an effective global response to the climate and pandemic threats.
Of course, Hotez and Mann are not alone in promoting this narrative of a burgeoning threat to humanity. For example, in a recent PNAS article, Phillipp-Muller et al wrote:
From vaccination refusal to climate change denial, antiscience views are threatening humanity.
So confident are the authors in the reality of the phenomenon that they dedicate the whole paper to analysing causes and suggesting countermeasures:
Building on various emerging data and models that have explored the psychology of being antiscience, we specify four core bases of key principles driving antiscience attitudes. These principles are grounded in decades of research on attitudes, persuasion, social influence, social identity, and information processing. They apply across diverse domains of antiscience phenomena…Politics triggers or amplifies many principles across all four bases, making it a particularly potent force in antiscience attitudes.
But what exactly is antiscience? Is it well-organized? Does it primarily emanate from the right-wing? And is it an attitude that represents an existential threat to humanity on a par with nuclear war?
The authors of the PNAS paper seem to have no doubts regarding the basis for antiscience — it’s simply a case of pathological psychology:
Distinct clusters of basic mental processes can explain when and why people ignore, trivialize, deny, reject, or even hate scientific information—a variety of responses that might collectively be labeled as “being antiscience”.
Once one starts out with such a premise, it becomes remarkably easy to formulate ‘frameworks’ and ‘models’ to give the whole thing a scientific veneer. And since science is upheld as the epitome of the rational venture, any resistance to scientific findings can be readily dismissed as a retreat from reason.
Indeed, in their book, Science and the Retreat from Reason, John Gillot and Manjit Kumar present a thoughtful treatise explaining why, despite the obvious benefits of the scientific method and its resulting successes, society has nevertheless grown wary of the technocratic future that it offers. Yet nowhere within its 250 pages does the book use the term ‘antiscience’, or speak of it as a phenomenon resulting from politically inspired disinformation. Furthermore, perhaps because it was written back in 1995, it doesn’t see the retreat from reason as an existential threat requiring ‘new infrastructures’ to ‘mount a counteroffensive’. Instead, a lack of faith in science is seen as stemming from a post-war disillusionment. Basically, science had gained the reputation of being the handmaiden of a belligerent military, and it became very difficult to maintain high levels of trust in a sector of society that delivered the threat of atomic annihilation. Furthermore, developments such as genetically modified food and the various attempts to control and exploit the environment did little to endear those who buy in to the idea of a purity of nature. As such, it was the liberal left-wing that led the movement against science in its practical realities. The idea that antiscientific attitudes are the reserve of the right wing is a relatively modern invention.
Of course, none of this should be used as a reason to question the potency and integrity of the scientific method. However, I sincerely doubt that this is why anyone would come to ‘ignore, trivialize, deny, reject, or even hate scientific information’. It isn’t the scientific mind that some people distrust – it is the scientific community. It is the recognition that science is a social enterprise and, as such, is not immune to the problems that can emerge when humans interact and compete. Seen in this light, antiscience is not a pathology of thinking but the label invented by those who are comfortable with such issues in order to stigmatize those who are not.
It is easy to see where the comfortable position would come from. Scientists do know about phenomena such as groupthink. They are well aware that the structuring of academia is such that scientific enquiry is marshalled both by sources of funding and by influential figureheads (not to mention a growing tendency for prosocial censorship). And yet they can look around them and see a broadly uncorrupted society of individuals who are personally motivated only by the desire to understand how the world works and how best to further the interests of humanity. They are ideally placed to understand just how much effort has gone into validating a particular finding, and so must find it highly frustrating to see vociferous and vehement rejection emanating from those who enjoy no such advantage. When the challenge has a political foundation, their disquiet is bound to be all the more profound. They are the scientists and practitioners of the scientific method, so this challenge is, by definition, antiscientific to them. And if you have an ego like Michael Mann’s, combined as it is with a victim complex, you are going to imagine you are surrounded by an orc army.
There are certainly plenty of science communicators on the internet who are only too willing and eager to defend the comfortable position and to cruelly mock the ‘antiscientist’. See, for example, some of the output from Professor David James Farina, aka Professor Dave. As is often the case, he specialises in debunking easy targets such as Flat Earthers and proponents of Intelligent Design, but along with that comes a regrettably condescending and arrogantly dismissive attitude towards anyone who isn’t fully on board with the idea that only credentialed scientists are qualified to criticise other scientists. But this isn’t a debate that is going to be settled by lampooning your local crackpot. The issues are far too nuanced for that.
For example, let us return to the Covid-19 pandemic and reflect upon its use as an example of an explosion of the antiscience movement. There was indeed no shortage of opinion expressed on subjects such as the safety and efficacy of vaccines, the importance of masks, lockdown strategies, mobile phone masts, etc. Some of the advice given wasn’t particularly well thought through and there was no shortage of downright conspiracy and pseudoscience in the air. But throughout it all, politicians were anxious to maintain the mantra that they were only following the science, no matter how many twists and turns that entailed. The reality, however, was that there was never any single science but a plurality of sciences offering different perspectives. As Dr Elisabeth Paul et al point out:
“Anti-science” accusations are common in medicine and public health, sometimes to discredit scientists who hold opposing views. However, there is no such thing as “one science”. Epistemology recognizes that any “science” is sociologically embedded, and therefore contextual and intersubjective.
The paper illustrates the point by tracing the history of claims made on behalf of the various vaccines employed, pointing out many inconsistencies and contradictions in the various narratives as the crisis unfolded. The paper finishes with some very wise words:
Rather than uncritically continuing to perpetuate the “follow the science” vs “anti-science” dichotomy, let us all look in the mirror and reflect what really constitutes science. If nothing else, this involves the curiosity of deliberating the multiple perspectives arising from the different lenses of inquiry. Being open-minded and critical does not immediately equate to being “anti-science”, as some medical and political thought leaders want us to believe.
The message given is that scientists are themselves very often to blame for the lack of trust they encounter within the public, and this is basically due to them adopting an overly dogmatic attitude:
To regain public trust in science, it is high time scientists acknowledge the limitations of their methods and of their results, and to provide decision-makers, populations and healthcare providers with appropriate tools to judge how to best apply particular research results to individuals and communities.
None of this is to accuse scientists of corruption or of engaging in a hoax. They are simply dealing with complexities that have to be honestly portrayed as such. As Dr Paul et al put it:
Here, understanding the dynamics of how knowledge is socially constructed and used is crucial. This is because health interventions, and what is determined to be science, can often be captured by combinations of favoured scientific practice, pathway-dependency, vested interests, politics, louder voices, or, regarding our immediate concern, by ideational hegemonies that prohibit wider dialogic knowledge production.
Very often, by being defensive about this, scientists become their own worst enemies. Too often, sceptics are accused of failing to understand the scientific method, but the reality is that they usually understand it all too well. They are just not that convinced that it is all that relevant when evaluating a scientist’s latest earnest statement.
There is a certain hubris to be detected within those who speak of existential threats from an organised antiscience movement, since it implies that there are those with dark motives who fear the spotlight of scientific truth being shone in their direction. No doubt there is much that is irrational in modern discourse and we would all do well to take whatever benefit there is to be had from listening to the scientific voice (that is why the Trump administration’s DOGE purge is so worrying). However, that is a long way from uncritically accepting all that has been said in the interests of ‘following the science’. I’m sure that those on both sides of the debate would argue that being legitimately open-minded and critical is not being ‘antiscience’. Unfortunately, however, we are still a long way from agreeing upon what constitutes legitimacy, and this is as true for the climate change debate as it is for any.
Climate Scepticism 
Thank you, John, for a measured and balanced analysis. This phrase struck home:
Distinct clusters of basic mental processes can explain when and why people ignore, trivialize, deny, reject, or even hate scientific information—a variety of responses that might collectively be labeled as “being antiscience”.
The problem I have with it is that it has the potential to include within its bandwidth those who (from a perfectly reasonable viewpoint) question the assumptions, possible biases, and inputs of those delivering “scientific information”. And these days, it seems to me “scientific information” seems to be decreasingly about what I would in my fuddy-duddy old-fashioned way categorise as “real” science and increasingly about the output of models. I cannot bring myself to accept that computer models comprise science in any meaningful sense. Their results are dictated by the information fed into them and the assumptions made in their creation. That being the case, it strikes me as being eminently reasonable, and pro-science (or, rather, pro-the scientific method) to desire as much information as possible about those assumptions and possible biases with a view to questioning the validity of the outcome.
Covid, and the policy response to it, as about as controversial as climate change and Brexit, so it’s dangerous territory for me to venture onto. However, while I had been losing confidence for some time in the “follow the science” mantra, which seemed to be producing more and more bizarre and inappropriate policy responses as time went on, the key moment for me was when the South African variant emerged on the scene. I listened to an interview with the South African lady epidemiologist, who explained that it was spreading rapidly, but that it wasn’t having a particularly damaging effect on the vast majority of her patients. Her conclusion, which I immediately endorsed in my own mind, was that this was good news. As one might logically expect, as the virus mutated, it was mutating in a way that made evolutionary sense – it was now in a form that spread more quickly but (by and large) didn’t kill its host – thus further enabling it to spread. My conclusion (as a non-scientist) was that most of us could now catch it in relative safety and develop natural immunity, whereafter we could put the whole wretched business behind us. Instead, much of the scientific community (and politicians who insisted on “following the science”) deemed this new rapidly-spreading (but relatively benign) variant to be an appalling threat, especially as it was emerging in the autumn in the northern hemisphere, and was immediately followed by a campaign to lock us all down again for Christmas. I listened to a subsequent interview with the South African lady, and couldn’t help coming away with the impression that she thought her colleagues in the northern hemisphere were calling it completely wrong. She seemed utterly bemused by the response. Was she anti-science? Am I? Are the scientists who wanted to lock us down again in the face of a benign but fast-spreading variant?
I think the anti-science label is as sinister as the “denier” label. It’s yet another attempt to shut down debate. Fortunately, the anti-debaters are losing. It must look like whack-a-mole to them. Scepticism is – happily – growing.
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Mark,
Your South African example nicely illustrates the point regarding a plurality of ‘sciences’. It’s the case of the same data leading to completely different notions of what constitutes an intelligent response. There is a process involved here: Data firstly has to be marshalled and interpreted in order to generate information. The information then has to be judiciously employed, at which point we have intelligence. All along the way, choices have to be made, and there is a lot of scope for variety — all in the name of the science.
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Upside -Down Mann –
Stephen McIntyre 3/9/2009 regarding choices that have to be made.
“The problem with these sorts of studies is that no class of proxy (tree ring, ice core isotopes) is unambiguously correlated to temperature and, over and over again, authors pick proxies that confirm their bias and discard proxies that do not. This problem is exacerbated by author pre-knowledge of what individual proxies look like, leading to biased selection of certain proxies over and over again into these sorts of studies.”
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Pretty dumb, ain’t it?
A moment’s reflection of those great minds should have led them to the answer, which is that politicisation of science makes this inevitable.
If the debate concerns the taxonomic affinities of the Siphonaptera, then a large chunk of the public are not going to be “anti-science” no matter what the science says. But if the debate concerns scientists using their findings to tell the public that they must engage in this or that behaviour or purchase this or that good, or have this or that freedom curtailed or removed, then they should expect vehement opposition.
Bleating about it, and seemingly advocating for the “anti-science” voices to be stifled, is only going to make matters worse. In particular, it will lead to a proportion of the public no longer trusting media outlets engaging in perceived censorship of contrary voices. It may drive those people into alternative news sources that are even less trustworthy. Etc.
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Firstly, using Albert Einstein to promote the wonderful advantages of smart meters and any other tech products advertised on television is to me both trivializing and anti-scientific. Other products, tech or not use animals like talking sheep !
I have my favourite video sites for debates on everything from Origins of life , Politics , Climate, Religions Influences and of course Randall Carlsons ‘ views of science, geology and historical cataclysm. There are definitely wrongs and rights in the information being debated, but, does this not give the viewers a chance to either look for more or say ‘ yes I agree’. Even on this site I don’t agree with everything written, but it is good to take it elsewhere and chew it over.
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James,
I couldn’t agree more. Einstein is emblematic of the trustworthy scientist, which is why he is used in the ads. It is also why I chose him for my feature image, to convey the sentiment of a beleaguered group that feels it has done no wrong. But Albert shouldn’t look so aggrieved. It should just be a case of accepting the sort of open debate to which you allude. Nevertheless, scientists such as Michael Mann would argue that it is the sceptics who have the closed minds, since they are resistant to the collective wisdom of the scientific community. There may be some truth to that, but it doesn’t alter the fact that we would sometimes be better off taking our advice from a talking sheep.
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“…scientists such as Michael Mann would argue that it is the sceptics who have the closed minds, since they are resistant to the collective wisdom of the scientific community. “
In this context it seems very apt that we are talking about Einstein. If I remember the story correctly, when Hitler wanted to discredit Einstein (because he was Jewish) he railroaded 100 German scientists into writing an open letter to explain why Einstein was wrong. Einstein’s response was a brilliant rejoinder, an injunction to remember the scientific method of constant questioning existing assumptions and not to rely on consensus. It was along the lines of “Why 100? If I’m wrong it will take only one person to demonstrate my error.“
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Not everything a scientist says or writes is actually science.
Such as their wild guess 100 year climate predictions.
But they make such predictions because governments pay them to do so.
Governments can afford to buy scientists.
And scientists need money for living expenses.
Do you remember when cigarette companies paid doctors and scientists to claim tobacco smoking was safe?
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What is ‘scientific information’ in the public context? It is science communication; the presentation of empirical data and/or the output of models, combined with ‘expert’ interpretation and explanation of that data. Done well, it can be a reasonably faithful summary of the current position of ‘the science’ pertaining to any specific subject. Done badly, even dishonestly, it can be scientific misinformation or even disinformation. Questioning incompetent or wilful science communication with more data, conflicting data or different interpretations of the data is not ‘anti-science’, it is the scientific process in action. By labelling genuine scepticism and alternative interpretations of the data as antiscience and by attempting to pathologize such activity, those people doing the labelling reveal either their deep-seated antipathy to genuine scientific debate or their scientific illiteracy. If one or two people are doing this, then it’s likely just a cock-up; if lots of people are doing it, consistently, coherently, synchronously, at what point do you decide that such coordinated attempted deligitimisation of opponents of The Science is a conspiracy? At about this point I would suggest – with Covid and with climate.
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Jaime,
In my article I have striven to be sympathetic to the scientists’ concerns. There is indeed an unhealthily low level of respect within the broader society. However, it could very well be a reflection of how the scientific community interacts with outsiders, and so much of the blame may lay with them. If they feel that they are under well-organised attack, maybe that reflects the extent to which their own campaigning on matters such as climate change is well-organised and overly dogmatic. They should walk in the sceptics’ shoes for a day, and maybe then they’ll appreciate what it is to be under attack.
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Television scientists could be called the new superheroes of the docu/info multiverse. I was a keen follower of the Universe series with Neil Degrasse Tyson and his army of cosmologists, planetologists , black hole ologists and the neutron star ologist. N. D. Tyson now appears on general scientific shows from Covid discussion to climate to the universe as it expands etc etc ? He can have this rather bullish attitude that he knows everything (since fame came) while others like our pop star scientist Brian Cox are the opposite in manner but still of the I know everything superhero clan. Does their knowledge or will their super knowledge save us from the evils of politicians and climate experts, NO, they are part of it to make money.
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Readers of this article may have noted that WordPress offers the following Geoff Chambers article as being related:
https://cliscep.com/2017/11/28/social-science-as-organised-ignorance/
I heartily recommend reading it as it provides some detail regarding the ‘evidence’ that has been provided to justify the claims that organised attack has been aimed at climate scientists. Two key points stand out for me:
a) The evidence is not that extensive and tends to rotate around the writings of a select group of social scientists that has its own political motivations.
b) The countermeasures that are suggested seem to be every bit as much a threat to society as is the supposed attack on science that there are supposed to address.
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John – thanks for link back to Geoff, started reading, but — STOP, YOUR ARE AN AGENT FOR THE “denial machine” the AI boomed out.
Only kidding, for now.
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Jit,
I’ve been thinking about the important point you made earlier regarding the politicisation of science and why that is the reason that the scientists invite the unwelcome and critical attraction of the wider community. I would add to this that the politicking has that effect because of the importance of the decisions the science is intended to support. I am reminded of something I wrote a long time ago:
In answering my own question, I went on to say:
https://cliscep.com/2018/03/19/the-scientist-and-the-bluebottle-a-cautionary-tale/
So you are dead right, Jit. It’s all about the politics.
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Speaking of the Covid-19 pandemic and the role that ‘antiscience’ is supposed to have played in killing thousands of people, here is news of a new, interdisciplinary study that paints quite a different picture:
Did governments mismanage the COVID-19 pandemic?
https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/did-governments-mismanage-the-covid
The paper, which “integrates perspectives from many disciplines, including immunologists, epidemiologists, virologists, data analysts, economists, research methodologists, psychologists, medical doctors, and social scientists”, makes the point that there was no single science that could be relied upon to the extent that all other narratives should be labelled ‘antiscience’. Furthermore, it is not at all clear cut to say that ‘antiscience’ cost lives, since ignoring and censoring legitimate scientific challenges mislabelled as ‘antiscience’ had also likely led to more deaths:
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John – thanks for the article link. The opening paragraph tells it’s own story –
“The following is a press release about a new paper in which I was one of 37 co-authors. As we have reported extensively on this substack, it is extremely difficult to get any paper that questioned the ‘official covid narrative’ published in a peer-reviewed journal. So, inevitably to satisfy the reviewers, this article had to make a number of ‘concessions’ to ‘the narrative’ which no doubt our followers would object to. But I believe it is an important development that this paper has now been published.“
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I’m anti-science – which makes me a granny-killer and an extreme weather enabler. I eventually gave up trying to calculate how many grannies I had killed by not wearing a mask/getting jabbed/taking the dogs for 2 hour plus walks during lockdowns etc., according to the latest government figures on the IFR of the latest scary variant. Must have been thousands in total though. I haven’t even tried to assess my contribution to recent hot weather and flooding events because of my refusal to get a smart meter and heat pump fitted, but it must be statistically significant. I’m going to hell in a handcart for sure.
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Given Jaime’s most recent comment, this may be relevant and of interest here:
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/06/07/unmasking-the-greenhalgh-mask-study/
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The point being, the Cochrane review on the effectiveness of masks has gone through several editions, as more and more studies are published, but even in 2020, before the mask mandates were introduced, it found very little benefit in using them, and by 2023, that finding only became even more conclusive, with the addition of high quality randomized control studies. So if you had no symptoms of a respiratory infection and you didn’t wear a mask when Johnson told you it was the law to do so, then you really were ‘following the science’ – and not Communist behavioural scientists like Michie.
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And the other point being that when a gold-standard scientific method was applied, the scientists came to one conclusion, but once the approach was allowed to become “sociologically embedded, and therefore contextual and intersubjective” the opposite conclusion was drawn. And yet in this instance it is the conclusion drawn from the gold-standard approach that would have been labelled as ‘anti-scientific’ at the time. As Dr Paul et al put it, it’s time to “look in the mirror and reflect what really constitutes science.”
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Rather than looking at opinions of science from academics, how about seeing if the scientific community can collectively produce workable policy proposals that will likely benefit humanity? For example, a proposal about climate mitigation.
Following the UNIPCC special report Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, the 2018 UNEP Emissions Gap Report proclaimed in the Executive Summary, point 2 stated
“Total annual greenhouse gas emissions, including from land-use change, reached a record high of 53.5 GtCO2e in 2017, an increase of 0.7 GtCO2e compared with 2016. In contrast, global GHG emissions in 2030 need to be approximately 25 percent and 55 percent lower than in 2017 to put the world on a least-cost pathway to limiting global warming to 2 °C and 1.5 °C, respectively.“
The targets are based upon cumulative emissions. I will keep this example simple by leaving out the uncertainties and the full policy periods. Just looking at this decade, the cumulative emission figures in GtCO2e are
Constant emissions 535
1.5 °C target 388
2 °C target 468
Forecast emissions 565
Since 2014, every UNEP Emissions Gap Report has forecast emissions would rise this decade. They were correct in this. So why is the scientific community not pointing this out?
The simple truth is that the UN and all the activists do not have the power to control the climate, as they cannot significantly impact cumulative emissions. They act as if they control the world but can only make marginal impacts. For instance, take the UK. 2017 GHG emissions were 0.471 GtCO2e (ONS data), so the difference between constant emissions this decade and a 55% straight-line reduction is 1.3 GtCO2e. It is far less than the error in the estimate of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.
This insignificance is much worse.
In costing, we must distinguish between marginal costs and total costs. The 2006 Stern review claimed the costs of unmitigated global warming were at least five times that of an efficient global policy. Even if this claim were valid, unilateral policy by the UK would have policy costs entirely borne by the UK, and the tiny, benefits of climate costs mitigated shared across the world. So, for a theoretical global 5:1 benefit-cost ratio for a unilateral UK net zero policy for the British people, that switches to worse than 1:1000.
Allowing for the uncertainties in estimating future climate costs and lack of control of UK net zero costs makes the situation worse still.
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If you look in the mirror and you see your reflection, then that is science in action and you don’t need to do any mental reflection other than appreciate the fact that what’s happening is photons/waves associated with the entire visible light electromagnetic spectrum are hitting a microscopically engineered extremely smooth surface and are being bounced back with almost the same energy/frequency, at exactly the same angle as they hit the surface, thus forming a visible mirror image. This is science, no more, no less. It doesn’t need, or indeed benefit from the involvement of any sociologists and certainly not politicians who pretend to be ‘following’ it. They need to butt out.
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mbc: your interesting post reminds me of an argument I’ve made on several occasions pointing out the obvious impossibility of the 1.5ºC target being achieved. Here it is (slightly updated):
In its 2018 Special Report (para C1), the IPCC recommended that, to achieve the Paris Agreement’s 1.5ºC target, global emissions should ‘decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030’. In 2010 global CO2 emissions were 34.0 gigatonnes (Gt). Therefore they’d have to come down to 18.7 Gt by 2030 to meet the target. But, just three countries (China, the US and India) already exceed that (by 2.2 Gt) and all are likely to increase their emissions over the next five years – as are over 100 other countries. Therefore, if the IPCC has got it right, it’s clear that the Paris Agreement’s 1.5ºC target will be substantially exceeded.
References:
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/
https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2024?vis=co2tot#emissions_table
This simple statement seems to me to be quite obviously correct. But we keep seeing papers, opinion pieces and articles that stress the importance of achieving the target. Why?
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Robin,
I believe that is because the target has only ever been symbolic, and questioning badly evidenced suggestions of attainment of a symbolic target whose value was badly evidenced in the first place may be missing the point. It’s an arbitrary but culturally underpinned target that exists only to create the desired sense of urgency and fear. People will continue to reference it for as long as its cultural basis survives and long after all reason has evaporated.
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Here’s the same logic applied to the ‘well below 2ºC’ target:
In its 2018 Special Report (para C1), the IPCC recommended that, to achieve the Paris Agreement’s ‘well below 2ºC’ target, global emissions should ‘decline by about 25% from 2010 levels by 2030’. As 2010 global CO2 emissions were 34.0 Gigatonnes (Gt), they’d have to come down to 25.5 Gt by 2030 to meet the target. But the emissions of just 8 countries (China, the USA, India, Russia, Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Mexico) already exceed 25.5 Gt (by 0.031) and these countries are most unlikely to reduce their emissions over the next five years. Therefore, if the IPCC has got it right, warming of over 2ºC is a certainty.
So there you have it John: another symbolic target.
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Robin,
Indeed. Everything that can be said regarding the 1.5C target can also be said of the 2.0C target it superseded. They would say the target had to be revised in the light of new evidence of the climate risks we face. The truth is that it had to be revised in the light of evidence that the existing target wasn’t having the desired political impact. Schellnhuber’s the guy:
The Limitations of Limits – Climate Scepticism
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John, thanks for the reminder. I have just re-read the Limitation of Limits, and am glad that I have done so.
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Robin Guenier @ 08 Jun 25 at 10:41 am
Your 2015 notes on the Phillipe Sands Lecture got me thinking about the effectiveness of climate policy. In particular, that in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Treaty 1994 a distinction is “made “between Annex I countries (referred to as “developed” countries) and non-Annex I countries (referred to as “developing” countries)”. Only Annex 1 countries are obliged to cut their emissions, yet only account for about a third of global emissions, and that share continues to fall. The Paris Agreement 2016 Article 4.1 continues that distinction. The implication is that the ability to control, let alone cut global emissions, is severely constrained. Yet advocates of climate mitigation fail to realise this lack of power.
A little example based on CO2 emissions only from IPCC AR6 WG3 SPM, ignoring all uncertainties. Values in GtCO2. The warming target is for 2100. All emissions numbers are in GtCO2.
Historical cumulative net CO2 emissions from 1850 to 2019 were 2400 GtCO2
From Table SPM.2 | Key characteristics of the modelled global emissions pathways.
limit warming to 1.5°C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot – 2020 to net zero 510, net zero to 2100 -190, gives 320 budget to 2100.
limit warming to 2°C (>67%) 2020 to net zero 710, net zero to 2100 -140, gives 570 budget to 2100.
The 1.5°C target is achieved by 2020 emissions of 43, a 43% reduction by 2030, net zero in 2050, and then net emissions changing by -1.5 per annum through to 2100.
If global emissions increased by 1% per annum, through to 2100, cumulative emissions would be 2380, or almost exactly the cumulative 1850-2019 and mid-way between the >50% chance of limiting warming to 2.5°C and 3°C. This is also about 7.5 times the 1.5°C emissions budget.
Now, suppose that the developing countries with 70% of emissions follow the 1% increase baseline and the developed countries follow the 1.5°C pathway. Emissions are 1762, or 74% of the baseline, despite developed country emissions being just 13% of the baseline. Warming would be limited to 2.5°C, not the baseline 2.7°C. The limited benefits (or reduced disbenefits) of developed country actions would be spread across all countries. Cutting emissions is a policy that harms the people of the country, even if the costs per tonne of CO2 saved are aggressively minimised.
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For anyone who might be interested my 2015 notes on the Phillipe Sands Lecture can be found HERE.
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Hot on the heels of their “Debunking Handbook” and “Uncertainty Handbook”, we now have the following handbook from the pen of Lewandowsky and Cook: “The Anti-Autocracy Handbook: A Scholars’ Guide to Navigating Democratic Backsliding”
https://zenodo.org/records/15696097
On this occasion they are joined by a cohort of similar-thinking academics who have felt it necessary to offer advice to colleagues (particularly scientists) who feel under threat from the growing menace of totalitarianism. It is clear from reading their handbook that it is the ascendancy of a right-wing, peddling “populism, polarization and post-truth” that they see as the font of all anti-science sentiment. Accordingly, the pamphlet focus much of its attention on the Trump administration and its purges within the corridors of academia.
As I mentioned in my article, I have some sympathy with such concerns in the USA. But I don’t see right-wing ideology as the sole cause of a growing anti-science sentiment. Scientists should do more to look at themselves. For example, are they too willing to take up a political opinion and dress it up as white coat objectivity? This handbook certainly seems to find nothing wrong with the politicization of science:
Really?
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Yep, the BBC and the Guardian are very happy to air their ‘expert’ opinions as fact.
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Their credibility suffers terribly in my eyes, but that doesn’t matter.
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The handbook is quite a meaty document containing plenty to exercise the eyebrows — certainly too much to do justice in one comment here. I may write a follow-up article that takes the handbook as its focus.
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