The first of the "climate refugees" have arrived here from Tuvulu, which is reportedly sinking.

The rush for Australia is controlled so that Tuvulu won't suffer a 'brain drain'. That can only mean that we will be getting more idiots that we certainly do not need.

One of these "refugees" was described as a medical doctor, so he can't be much of one if they don't want a drain brain. Hopefully he won't be allowed to practise here.

Yuyutsu,

Thank you for the clarification. That helps, but it also makes something else important to address.

You describe yourself as neither affirming nor denying climate science, and as someone for whom it is "not my cup of tea". That would be a coherent position if it reflected your broader views. However, it doesn't sit comfortably with positions you've expressed elsewhere:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=22379#389644

In fact, your posting history is a litany of this sort of rot - which, as I said before, is irreconcileable with "Yuyutsu the Enlightened."

Such words are not the words of someone who simply 'does not relate' to climate science. They reflect a clear, strongly held dogmatic position of someone who does not care about evidence when it conflicts with an already settled worldview and the ego investment bound up in it.

You are, of course, entitled to that view. But once that context is acknowledged, it changes how your earlier sea-level anecdote functions in this discussion. It stops being a neutral recollection and becomes part of a broader denialist narrative, even if that wasn't your conscious intent.

That matters because the anecdote itself doesn't trace back to any scientific source, institution, or prediction. It arose from informal transmission, not from climate science. And informal transmission is precisely where exaggeration and distortion thrive, especially when there is no expectation of later verification.

So the point isn't to blame anyone for what they heard in 1990, or to demand scientific literacy retroactively. It's simply this:

Unattributed memories and second-hand stories can't be treated as evidence of scientific unreliability, particularly when the actual, traceable scientific record shows the opposite.

Once that distinction is made, the discussion becomes much clearer.

Dear John,

«However, it doesn't sit comfortably with positions you've expressed elsewhere:»

Well surely I have and never denied having my views regarding the socio-political phenomenon of claiming "climate-change": this is quite different to climate science.

The social tensions in question are independent of whatever science finds or does not find. People still want what they want (like my brother still wants a private beach in his yard) regardless and no science can change that. At the same time, nothing stops the true knowledge-seeking scientists from continuing their research freely without bias and exchanging their results accurately and reliably with their peers within their respective ivory towers.

In my specific post from March 2023 which you referred to, I suggested how this tension can be levered to help to gradually de-industrialise. This will be good whichever camp you stand with: if you want carbon emissions to reduce then indeed they will as overall industrial output reduces. This unhealthy hunger for energy needs to reduce, unrelatedly to climate, while changing the specific sources of energy is not going to do it.

Yuyutsu,

Your reply this time actually clarifies the issue further, but not in the way you to intend.

You now draw a distinction between "climate science" and the "socio-political phenomenon of claiming 'climate-change'", and suggest your views concern only the latter. But that separation doesn't do the work you want it to do.

Climate science is precisely what underpins those "claims". When you characterise climate change as a cult-like socio-political phenomenon, you are not bracketing science off into some neutral "ivory tower". You are delegitimising the evidentiary basis on which those claims rest, while simultaneously exempting yourself from engaging with that evidence.

That's not neutrality, it's a rhetorical partition to allow rejection of implications without confronting causes.

//nothing stops the true knowledge-seeking scientists from continuing their research freely without bias//

But this is exactly what is contradicted when climate science is framed as cultic, hysterical, or socially pathological. Once you cast the science as an ideological artefact, you are no longer merely critiquing policy responses, you are pre-judging the integrity of the knowledge-production process itself.

As for your March 2023 post: reframing it as a value-neutral strategy to "lever tensions" toward de-industrialisation doesn't resolve the contradiction. Advocating wide-spread impoverishment, mass unemployment, and service collapse as a "win-win" outcome is not a dispassionate perspective.

And that brings us back to the core point...

When evidence is treated as incidental, when outcomes are justified independently of facts, and when worldview is insulated from revision by carving off inconvenient domains as "socio-political", what's operating is not disinterest in science, but attachment to a settled position.

That attachment is what shaped the sea-level anecdote, just as it shapes the policy stance. Once that's acknowledged, the discussion becomes clearer: this isn't about scientists changing their minds, or politics distorting truth. It's about belief preceding evidence, rather than responding to it.

That's the tension I was pointing to.

Dear John,

Firstly, I enjoyed your response.

Now it is exactly your statement which I dispute:

«Climate science is precisely what underpins those "claims".»

No. Real humans do not operate that way.

In this particular case, while I am not saying that scientists have not been discussing climate way before among themselves, the big "hu hah" on this topic started with Margaret Thatcher and her war against coal-miner unions. Her mention of "climate change" was not motivated by learning about it from scientists, but by her ambition to replace coal with nuclear energy, thereby reducing the miners' power.

Whether the claims happen to coincide with scientific knowledge or otherwise, is a totally different question. In reality, those claims - and counter-claims too, were made because that was in the interest of the people who claimed them. In reality, people pick and choose what they like. Science may provide them with ammunition, but I find it silly: nobody will ever be convinced by science if it goes against their interests, so better keep science out of this.

«But this is exactly what is contradicted when climate science is framed as cultic, hysterical, or socially pathological.»

There could be some who do that, but I don't.
I make a clear distinction between climate science and climate hysteria.
Moreover, I do not believe that those who talk that much about climate, really care for the earth's climate - they care much more for the social climate!

«Advocating wide-spread impoverishment, mass unemployment, and service collapse as a "win-win" outcome is not a dispassionate perspective.»

Short term restraint for great long term benefits.

«what's operating is not disinterest in science, but attachment to a settled position.»

And if you haven't been convinced yet that this is the norm, you can review the predictable responses of the same people here, year after year. Can you name anyone here on OLO (besides yourself perhaps) who truly has an interest in science and not just as ammunition?

«It's about belief preceding evidence, rather than responding to it.»

Yes, welcome to the real world...

That's true, Yuyutsu.

//No. Real humans do not operate that way.//

Humans are not purely evidence-driven, and political actors frequently instrumentalise science in service of prior interests. That's not controversial, it's basic political sociology.

Where we part ways is what follows from that...

//...the big 'hu hah' on this topic started with Margaret Thatcher and her war against coal-miner unions.//

Even if one accepts that framing, it doesn't do the work you think it does. The political origins of attention to a problem do not determine the validity of the evidence that later accumulates around it. Germ theory didn't become false because sanitation reform was politically useful, and plate tectonics didn't become a myth because it disrupted institutional geology.

Science does not become optional simply because people behave strategically around it.

//nobody will ever be convinced by science if it goes against their interests, so better keep science out of this.//

That isn't neutrality toward science, it's resignation from it. It treats evidence as irrelevant to belief formation, not because the evidence is weak, but because belief is assumed to be immune. That's a philosophical position, not an observational one.

And that's where the contradiction lies.

//I make a clear distinction between climate science and climate hysteria.//

Yet you also characterise the claims built on that science as socially motivated, cult-like, and interest-driven. In practice, that functions as a standing reason to discount the evidence without engaging it. The distinction exists rhetorically, but it collapses operationally.

//Short term restraint for great long term benefits.//

That's a normative judgement that those costs are acceptable regardless of what the evidence says about alternatives. It's a legitimate value position—but it isn't disinterest in science.

//Yes, welcome to the real world…//

That doesn't rebut my point. It affirms it. And once belief is conceded to precede evidence, the claim to enlightened detachment no longer holds. What remains is an honest, but settled, worldview in which evidence is permitted to decorate beliefs, not revise them.

That's not a moral failing - but it isn't neutrality either. That's the distinction I've been drawing throughout.