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gjm comments on Parapsychology: the control group for science - Less Wrong
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Some people have conjectured in the past that we might be in danger of a sort of global cooling. (Note: some things said about this by those who profess to disbelieve in anthropogenic climate change are false.) Understanding large-scale climate phenomena may help to predict natural disasters like hurricanes. The climate is extremely important for life on earth (human life included). I think there would be plenty for climate scientists to do "if the scare of global warming were eliminated".
(In fact, there is near-total agreement among climate scientists about global warming. So probably most changes in climate-scientist opinion on this topic would make for greater uncertainty and therefore more funding...)
[EDITED to add: At least one person has downvoted this; no one has replied to it. I would be interested to know what about it is downvote-worthy; it looks OK to me even on rereading. If I've made some idiotic mistake, I can't fix my brain unless someone points it out to me...]
I suspect the issue is the vague nature of the 'some things said about this' comment. Yes, some things said about it are undoubtedly false, but some quite incisive things said about the conjecture are true!
Oh yes, for sure. That comment was a lazy shorthand for something like this: "Some unscrupulous people have played up past conjectures about global cooling in order to discredit what is now said about global warming, and a great deal of what they have said on this subject is bullshit. By referring in this context to global cooling, I am not endorsing any of that bullshit." But that seemed like too much to cram into a comment that was actually about something else, and no way of making it much shorter sprang to mind.