How Can So Many Smart People Be so DUMB?

How can so many smart people be so dumb?

Three months after The Mensa Bulletin published a letter of mine reinforcing the prevalent scientific view of global warming – that it was anthropogenic and continually exacerbated by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a whole swatch of attack letters were published in the recent (June) issue. Not one supported me, and this from a society that claims it represents the top 2% of IQs (e.g. > 130 on Stanford-Binet). One person even affirmed that my letter showed Mensa to be just a “propaganda front” for global warming purveyors and so he was quitting! Now, how smart is that.

The others went off on multiple tangents, though there were at least two letters that were somewhat sensible and made cogent points, though many of these points had so many holes it was like trying to parse a message on Swiss cheese

Example 1 (with my replies):

This was to Mark Steven Altman who attempted to pooh-pooh warming based on what he claimed was the inverse “scare” in the 1970s, concerning global cooling and a new Ice Age.

As I informed him by email:


First, the “cooling” mania in the 70s you referenced was never accepted as a permanent feature by the bona fide climate science community and the talk of a new “Ice Age” was mainly fueled by media morons who didn't understand the subtler points.

Namely that pollutants spewed at the time were concealing much of the warming and spawning a residual cooling effect. (Don't forget the Clean Air Act wasn't enacted until around 1972). So the effects of pollutant mitigation wouldn't be seen for years-decades after that. The phenomenon of “global dimming” (then unknown) is now known to MASK most of global warming via aerosols and pollutants.

Do you want superior information? No BS, and NO “politics”? Then try to access the document ‘Impact of a Warming Arctic’, the 140-page synthesis of the Arctic Climate Assessment Impact document. You can find the link for download here:

http://www.acia.uaf.edu/pages/overview.html

Pay particular attention to Chapter I (p. 22) : Arctic Climate Change, and Chapter II (p. 34): Global Implications.

This document is written by serious researchers, based at a sub-Arctic university research center, not hacks and flakes such as Pico has dredged up (such as “Lord Monckton”)

As this excerpt notes from the Executive summary (page 8):


“These climate changes are being experienced particularly intensely in the Arctic. Arctic average temperatures have risen almost the twice the rate of the rest of the world in the past few decades. WIDESPREAD MELTING OF GLACIERS AND SEA ICE (my emphasis) and RISING PERMAFROST temperatures present additional evidence of strong Arctic warming. These changes in the Arctic provide an early indication of the societal and environmental significance of GLOBAL WARMING.

An acceleration of these climatic trends is projected to occur this century, due to ONGOING INCREASES of GREENHOUSE GASES in the EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE. While greenhouse gas emissions do not primarily originate in the Arctic, they are projected to bring wide-ranging changes and impacts to the Arctic. Thee arctic changes will, in turn, IMPACT the PLANET AS A WHOLE.”I trust that if you do enough research that the points I made about the evidence being “incontrovertible” are spot –on. If you have any questions, I will be glad to assist.

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The last segment was especially important as it gave him a serious source to go to in which to learn the real story of global warming as articulated by real climate scientists, not wonks in a political think tank (like Heritage Foundation, or Hudson Institute, or American Enterprise Institute) with en economic axe to grind and a capitalist agenda that they insist trumps the hard science.

The only other relatively intelligent and reasonable reply came from a Dr. Joyce McDowell (no idea if the "Dr." means physician or an academic doctor). Again, she recycled the usual "hitches" one sees from those who have not researched the issue very thoroughly, including the canard about the "31,000" signatures from other scientists circulating.

Anyway, my response to her is as follows:

Thanks for your interesting letter, which was about the only one in the recent set (published in the Bulletin) that came over in a fully sober and rational way.

What I'd like to do here is address some of your points.

Re: the "31,000" signatories for the document you cite (circulated by the Oregon Institute of Sciences and Medicine) it is interesting that not even 1% of them are published climate science specialists, in peer-reviewed climate journals.

Hence, they would not likely be au fait with the position statement already issued by the largest organization of climate scientists in the world, the American Geophysical Union (of which I am a member, as well as belonging to the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society. I stopped using these qualifications, since I noted the Bulletin never published my letters when I did. Wonder why!)

The AGU site for their position statement:

http://www.agu.org/outreach/science_policy/positions/climate_change2008.shtml


Re: climate models being "notoriously complex" - yes, we do know that. However, a number of major gains have been made that radically enhance accuracy of said models. Two papers you may find of use to update your appreciation of climate models are from Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, and should be available on their site (www.agu.org)

1- 'Simple Versus Complex Climate Modelling' - Vo. 89, No. 52, 23 Dec. 2008

2- 'New Study for Climate Modelling: Analyses and Scenarios'- Vol. 90, No. 21, 26 May 2009


The article covers in commendable detail -at a reasonable level - what the European Commission is currently doing with their ENSEMBLES project which aims to provide policy makers with information from the latest climate modelling analyses.

ENSEMBLES, as the paper notes, is primarily concerned with quantifying the a (politically relevant) aggressive mitigation scenario. What happens by what time, if we cut CO2 emissions by so much?

Their working scenario thus far (given existing assumptions and variables) leads to a peak in the CO2 equivalent concentration in the atmosphere of nearly 535 parts per million in 2045, before eventually stabilizing at 450 ppm. Even so, the concentration peak is precariously close to what many (e.g. the late Carl Sagan) have claimed is at the cusp of the runaway greenhouse effect.

A warning given in the piece, and cautionary note for all over-simplistic takes, is that while simpler models often give useful results they almost uniformly show a modest warming only, of say 2C in the time period up to 2100. Once one factors in complexities, for example removing the current global dimming factor (which masks two thirds of the warming) things change and fast. You now see warming levels ramped up to the 5-6C range or again - close to what'd be expected in the runaway greenhouse scenario.

Another complexity input that is surely allowing us to inhabit a fool's paradise, is that related to cloud cover (which you also reference in your letter). In fact, though planetary albedo depends primarily on cloud cover it is the least well studied climatic parameter. Clouds are very poorly parameterized in climate models as a whole. This has led to an ongoing debate over the past five years of whether in fact the sign of albedo change is positive or negative. (See e.g. ‘Can Earth’s Albedo and Surface Temperature Increase Together’ in EOS, Vol. 87, No. 4, Jan. 24, 2006, p. 37)

As the authors note, though there is some evidence that Earth’s albedo has increased from 2000 to 2004 this has NOT led to a reversal in global warming. The authors cite the most up to date cloud data released in August, 2005 from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP). The data – from a range of meteorological satellites covering the entire Earth, discloses the most likely reason for the anomaly is primarily in the redistribution of the clouds.

Thus, as the authors point out (ibid.):

“whereas low clouds have decreased during the most recent years, high clouds have increased to a larger extent leading to both an increase in cloud amount AND an increased trapping of infrared radiation.”


Re: solar irradiance, the problems are not as intractable as you might think - provided one attends to the proper sources!

Perhaps the most definitive paper ever on the possible variations of the solar constant was: 'Solar constant - Constraints on possible variations derived from solar diameter measurements' Sofia, S.; Okeefe, J.; Lesh, J. R.; Endal, A. S. (Science vol. 204, June 22, 1979, p. 1306-1308.)

Their data, acquired for the interval between 1850 and 1937, set limits of variation on the solar radius to about 0.25 arc second. The Sun's actual aperture in seconds of arc is ~ 1920". So we are talking about 1.3 parts in ten thousand of change

Most recent space-based observations appear to show a variation in solar irradiance of at least 0.15% over the standard 11-year solar cycle. (E.g. Parker, E.N., Nature, Vol. 399, p. 416). However, even with this higher percentage ascribed to solar changes, the heating effect is nowhere near comparable to that induced from man-made global warming. (See, e.g. Martin I. Hoffert et al, in Nature, Vol. 401, p. 764).

As the authors in the latter study point out, the heating component arising from greenhouse gas emissions from 1861-1990 amounted to anywhere from 2.0 to 2.8 watts per square meter. The solar variability component detected over the same period amounted to 0.1 to 0.5 watts per square meter. Thus, even the MAXIMUM solar variability amounted to only a fraction (25%) of the MINIMUM power input from human-induced greenhouse warming!

By contrast, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (two darlings of the denier side), in a paper published four years ago, estimated a solar irradiance change of 0.4% which is hardly credible (to me) since no previous detailed research gets anywhere near that. (These two authors are global warming deniers, so it would fit that a higher solar irradiance is what would 'fit the bill' i.e. to blame warming miseries on ol' Sol)

My best instinct would be that Sofia et al's remain the best variance results.

John Eddy's radio-carbon data for the "little Ice Age" (cf. 'Historical and Arboreal Evidence for a Changing Sun' in The New Solar Physics, AAAS Selected Symposium, Westview Press, 1979, pp. 11-33) also falls well within the tolerance parameters and limits assigned by Sofia et al.

Moreover, their study has lots of heft because it is tied to actual physical *changes* in the Sun's diameter, as opposed to much more subjective (and questionable) methods.

Re: the "Copenhagen consensus" - it is organized by longtime skeptic Bjorn Lomberg, and composed entirely of **economists**- would naturally have rated global warming lowest in their priorities for challenges facing the world. They are not climate scientists, after all! They’ll be vastly more concerned with economic blowback!

Re: S. Fred Singer, I am familiar with a number of his papers published in Eos Transactions, but let us not fool ourselves that he speaks for the climate science community at large. He does not. He's an "outlier" scientists, like Richard Lindzen at MIT. Until they can produce published work that convincingly refutes the IPCC reports and data, as well as the constellation of papers produced before those reports were issued - all my points stand as noted in my letter.

Hopefully, this missive has served to enlighten.


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Why exactly is it that so many in the High IQ societies share these characteristics of the less well informed? By that I mean they are not in the group of largely scientific minds who accept the theory.

Point of reference here: In their analysis of the extent of scientific consensus on global warming (Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22) , P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24)

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

The authors conclude (p. 24) :

“The challenge appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact (non-existent debate among real climate specialists) to policy makers and a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate exists among scientists”

My question is WHY do the most intelligent folks, from Mensa and also Intertel (as I have found in debates there too) continue to see "debates" where none exist? One would think the real intelligentsia would at least be able to separate themselves from the large segment of the public- mostly brainwashed by the FAUX News and right wing think tanks who continue to believe global warming is a hoax. Doesn't intelligence provide the basis to analyze anymore and arrive at symmetric conclusions to other intelligent beings-humans given the same data? Or, has the political and economic corruption of science come too far to make this possible?

A clue is afforded by Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor, who has referred to the trend of skeptic science sown for political or economic ends - e.g. in imparting ignorance and faux skepticism, agnotology. It is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of these 100%, even such rich theories as quantum mechanics and special relativity). People then extrapolate from the minute doubt to cast a whole pall of rejection on the theory. If it has the slightest morsel of tiny uncertainty, it can't be true! Which is totally insane since no science would be done that way. Every nascent theory or hypothesis would be chucked when the first impasse or major error was uncovered!

Agnotology is derived from the Greek 'agnosis' and hence the study of culturally constructed ignorance'. Proctor notes that when a society doesn't know something it is often because special (often paid) interests have worked hard to sow immense confusion on the issue. People read 'A' then see 'B' ostensibly refuting it, and without a hard science background themselves (at least two years of university physics or chemistry plus calculus), are "lost at sea".

They are unable, lack the basic skills, to do their own research to a respctable standard using the tools scientists in the field possess. SO, they walk away, toss their hands in the air, and assert "Science says anything can be true!"

Not quite.

As for the numerous Mensans and Ilians, maybe they aren't really so dumb after all (getting in on the basis of fouled up SATs, etc.) Mayhap it is the case their lack of (science) education rendered them too gullible and prone to ignorance.

After all, the history of humans clearly shows one can be very intelligent, but also mightily ignorant. Unfortunately, this gross ignorance among the smartest likely means it will be even more difficult to address the global warming problem expeditiously. More than likely, by the time we act now, it will be too late. And our only recourse will be to try to minimize the burn that is to come.