On the constant doom-saying

Earlier I asked this question: How should a layperson process constant doomsday claims that don’t materialize?

I’m not a climate-change expert. Yet I’m an intelligent man who’s read the news for about 40 years. I’ve seen this headline in various publications about once a week—i.e., about 2,000 times.

So the question: How should a layperson process constant doomsday claims that don’t materialize?

A well-meaning person might say: Well, maybe these people are experts, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt. Or perhaps: Maybe they’re generally correct and under-estimated the timeline previously, but this time they’ll get it right.

After a while, though, other possibilities come to mind: They’re overstating what they know because they’re scared. Or: Maybe they’re over-hyping because they have a political agenda.

Those skeptical possibilities grow to probabilities in one’s mind as (1) the number of failed doom-predictions increases, and (2) when those who’ve issued the failed doom-predictions never acknowledge their mistakes.

One marker of honest and scientific thinking is exactly that: The willingness to admit that one’s theory-predicted result did not come to pass. Absent those frank admissions of error, the suspicion grows that the doom-predictor is not functioning as an honest scientist. Rather, the probability is that the doom-predictor is engaging in a combination of fear-mongering and intellectual intimidation.

The issue matters because understanding the climate is important, as is widespread respect for the genuine science that will generate that understanding. Those chronic-doomster semi-scientists (and the journalists and activists who abet them) are thus doing all of us a disservice.

Analogies:

Those in Energy who for over a century have told us we will run out of everything in five years.

Those in Art who for a century have told us that modernist and postmodernist art is genius and that if you don’t see it you must be a barbarian.

Others?