John,
“My intention, instead, is to supplement his contribution…”
All supplements are welcome. However, the above thread is in pursuit of what you have termed in various ways to be serious issues, which implies much more than a supplement but flaws of some kind. Serious challenges are welcome too, but there is an expectation of substantiation based in the proper context of the post. As frequently misunderstandings are cause of disagreement as much if not more than actual deeper disagreement, my last text was to cite a potential candidate for same.
“…in formal declarations made by the United Nations and the EU…”
Per above there can be wide variance and complete contradiction in narratives, the latter of which can and do exist even within the very same organisations. The post indeed notes the contradiction between exampled UN elite and its own body the IPCC (and further in footnotes, even between different layers of the IPCC). Similar contradictions exist both within other arms of the UN and also in other orgs / governments / etc. Other than the given notes, this post does not address / examine such contradictions based on your reference or any other, yet nor does it prejudice in any way what an examination of such may conclude.
“I am keeping alive the recognition that the precautionary meme is still out there…”
Sounds like a serious responsibility ;)
“…it is even lurking in the footnotes of Andy’s post.”
Glad to be of service :)
“Andy appears to deny that his post distracts attention away from the precautionary meme…”
So objective supplements are most welcome, but are you peer pressuring here to police what we are allowed to describe or how, in case such description should erode something else considered useful? What if others disagree with your aim, however noble it may be? And indeed what is considered useful and why? What if someone else thinks this post erodes something different? And who gets to judge? The very many (and many very high) authorities and orgs and influencers listed who propagate the certainty of imminent catastrophe, speak to their own cumulative influence. Characterising this narrative and exploring some directly related issues regarding its presence, as I’ve noted above, does not prejudice for or against other narratives ‘out there’, and to point to an example of one is in no way evidence of any prejudice. Your supplement regarding the issue is indeed most welcome, and anyone is free to add whatever balance and insights they think would similarly improve the post. But your assertion of serious issues and implication of bias regarding same, undermines the positive nature of this contribution.
If your serious issues come down in the main to this ‘distraction’, I submit that this is just a value judgement. While the form of your post may be somewhat different, I think Matthew’s idea is a great one. If you could do a memetic analysis of the domain to show the relative influences of competitive memes, including at least the two of note here and maybe others, or even just more exposition on the changing competitive boundary if evidence for the former is too hard to get hold of, this would be a fantastic contribution that would at least bolster your value judgement. However, *whatever* this analysis would reveal, I do not make such an analysis here, whether of meme populations considered mainly to be under the main catastrophe narrative umbrella, those that are outside it, or those that straddle the boundaries (and which analysis must include relationships to reality that if strong, short-circuit emotive propagation). I have exercised the freedom to describe one thing without prejudice for or against anything else. The act of presenting / describing something is by no means a promotion, and as long as we aren’t in hate speech land or something where rather more care has to be taken (and even then, a social psychology description say of the inner workings of a particular fascist regime including its onerous propaganda, is not in any way a promotion of that regime or its propaganda), the freedom to do so must remain independent of whatever candidate a majority, or even minority, or just someone, wants to back in a related competition, be that candidate a meme or a party or a person.
“…then all I can say is that we are a much more easily manipulated bunch than we like to think we are.”
For your future reference, I don’t believe climate skeptics are manipulated as a group (and in fact they have very little group coherence anyway); I don’t even think this of climate orthodox folks assuming you mean deliberate manipulation (the usual sense of this word). On the whole skeptics pragmatically express main effects in the domain, including the high certainty thing via ‘CAGW’, which the orthodox object to because of this inclusion, and indeed here in these very comments. While also many remain highly cognisant regarding all sorts of subtleties, which they are also perfectly capable of expressing, notwithstanding some others may roll some of these subtleties into more approximated buckets. In short they are people.
“I am happy to reserve judgment on Andy’s claim.”
Wise, shame the royal society abandoned that policy.