In his book (p. 178), Andrew Dessler defines adaptation as “responding to the negative impacts of climate change.” The proper definition is to anticipate and adapt to climate change, to capitalize on the positives and to mitigate the negatives.

This series on Andrew Dessler’s Introduction to Modern Climate Change has urged better and fairer treatment of the non-alarmist side of the climate debate for the author’s 3rd edition (in process).

Part I, “Suggestions for More Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Less Advocacy,” documented how this science text was an advocacy book and failed the scholarship standard of presenting opposing views fairly for consideration. Some contentious areas of debate were ignored and others caricatured. Professor Dessler is revealed to be a deep ecologist in that “when it comes to climate, change is bad.…

” … climate scientists cannot conduct controlled experiments on the Earth…. Instead they use … Global Climate Models, or GCMs–mathematical representations of the Earth that run on computers.”

“Processes operating at smaller scales [than 100 km], such as clouds, cannot be represented explicitly in the models but just instead be parameterized.”

“Parameterizations … [have] ad hoc constructions that are tuned so the model produces a realistic present-day climate. Consequently, parameterizations are one of the largest sources of uncertainly in GCMs.”

– Andrew Dessler and Edward Parson, The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate (Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 19–20.

The above explanation by climate scientist Andrew Dessler (co-author Parson is a lawyer/public policy specialist) opens the door to asking the question: are climate models ready for prime time?…

My September 23, 2019, post, Don’t Debate the ‘Climate Crisis’? (Mann, Dessler, etc. want to assume, not discuss) attracted a critical comment from Master Resource reader David Appell:

Rob, you aren’t honest about what Dessler wrote, and I think you know this. He (obviously) made his point over two tweets, and you only quoted the second of them (“3/” below), out of context.

Professor Dessler in an email added:

… you claim that I don’t want to debate science. The tweet you quoted was one of a string where I make the OPPOSITE statement. However, by quoting it out of context of the surrounding tweets, you misrepresent my position. You also didn’t provide a link to my tweet string, so your readers couldn’t correct your erroneous interpretation. This suggests to me that you KNOW you’re misquoting me.

“It is not a matter of ‘climate denial’ to be concerned about the opportunity costs or consequences of heavy-handed interventions on liberty and living standards. Or to question the motives of those making such calls, whether for reasons of corporate rent-seeking, or ideological opportunism.” (IEA, below)

“It is not a matter of ‘climate denial’ to highlight that if the worst-case climate science scenarios are correct, adaptation is more likely to preserve life and living standards than mitigation or attempting to shut down all economic activity still dependent on fossil fuels.” (IEA, below)

The climate alarmists are losing, but not for the reason they think. And they are so angry that desperate measures are being undertaken, from civil disobedience to calls for the moral equivalent of book burning.

Climate alarm/forced energy transformation are losing because of consumer preference for affordable, reliable energy, or, in more fundamental terms, the primacy of energy density.…