As Javier Vinós points out, “Models can’t be trusted. Anything we don’t know is not included, and many things we do know are incorrectly included. Only a fool would trust a model that hasn’t been properly validated.” Forecast models currently assign roughly equal probability to a very strong, strong, moderate, or weak-to-neutral El Niño, yet on X, climate maniacs are trying to spread fear like a plague about El Niño, the Atlantic Current, and everything else related to climate.
Few would claim to trust the “truthiness” of social media content or
its sources, but that no longer matters. What matters is the signal
embedded in the content that triggers a dopamine cascade in the “consumer”
of content–what Big Tech calls engagement, and others call addiction.
It is not that we do not have anything to worry about regarding climate. For example, California’s residential electricity rates are close to double those in the rest of the US, in large part because of the state’s ambitious climate policies and wildfire-prevention costs. Don’t bother telling climate maniacs, but the sun, not politics, rules climate change. What we have is a steady stream of media propaganda, little to none of which is true.
