Attack of the apologists - updated


Global warming advocates sound more and more like Christian evangelists

For a long time, I've seen strong parallels between some of the more extreme Christian apologists and the global warming advocates. It's one of the reasons that I have a hard time taking the global warming arguments seriously.

As a Pagan, I've had to deal with extreme Christian apologists both on and offline. It disturbs me to see the same tactics used by the global warming crowd. I'm also appalled that people who would not tolerate "tricks" used by radical Christians are only too willing to embrace those tactics if they are used for the "right reasons."

Let's take a look at one example, pointed out by Wadard at Global Warming Watch. The entry's title is "The Four Stages of Global Warming Denial."

Wow, we have all sorts of stuff here to tip us off to the thinking that we'll deal with. I'm not going to deal with the science of the global warming arguments, I've done that elsewhere. Instead, I want to examine the psychology.

First of course is the unspoken (but severely over-emphasized) assumption that global warming is an indisputable fact. Second, it's now set up the whole Us versus Them, Black versus White, Good versus Evil, True Believer versus Unwashed Yokel.

Please note that this is the classic apologist, if a bit rudimentary. The Elect are privy to a special knowledge that obviously proves the point, and only someone either ignorant or who is Evilly Motivated can possibly choose anything else.

The important bit is that we are now dealing with EITHER/OR thinking. Someone is EITHER with us, OR against us. There is no other possibility allowed by the thinking.

Long time readers will know this is one of my cues to immediately start looking for a third alternative, and possibly a seventh.

Moving on to the entry itself.

1. Global Warming doesn't exist. It's not happening.

We've all heard people claim as fact, without citing sources (or at least not credible ones), that "actually, the Earth is cooling" and such things.

Facts: Every year since 1917 has been warmer than 1917. Here's a report by NASA with this choice cut about record-breaking 2005: "Record warmth in 2005 is notable, because global temperature has not received any boost from a tropical El Niño this year."

At this point, the author has reinforced the assumptions laid out in the title and raised the stakes.

Under these assumptions, in order to "prove" global warming doesn't exist, any critic first has to prove their expertise beyond any criticism. That can't be done, even if you are a global warming supporter. The burden of proof has moved from the global warming arguments to the credibility of the skeptics. Cute little trick, if you can get away with it. Even cuter if you can keep people from examining the credibility of your experts.

But next are the cherry-picked results. First notice the way that the "evidence" is submitted, almost as if every year since 1917 has shown an ever-increasing temperature rise. Except we know that isn't how it happened, some years were hotter, some years were cooler.

Notice too the artificial boundary of 1917. That is less than a century, barely a blip in the lifespan of the planet. A thousand years would be better, ten thousand would be better still. Unfortunately for the argument, that would raise significant doubts.

Which is the whole problem. After all, the global warming argument rests on the assumption of human caused change in the environment. If similar changes happened without human action, then the argument loses it's moral power and it's immediacy.

2. Okay, it's happening, but humans are not causing it.

Here we have all the "sun getting brighter" and "natural warming cycle" theories. They are all real possibilities, but have been discarded by scientists who looked at the evidence and concluded that they were not the causes of the current warming of the thin atmosphere of our planet.

Facts: It's not the sun ("According to PMOD at the World Radiation Center there has been no increase in solar irradiance since at least 1978 when satellite observations began. This means that for the last thirty years, while the temperature has been rising fastest, the sun has shown no trend.") and it's not a natural cycle (if it was, it would be incredibly slower than what we're seeing now and it would still need a cause).

Another cute move. Any objections to the "first stage" are neatly covered by the second. Personally I never heard of the "sun getting brighter" theory, although I suppose it might have something to do with the increased sunspot activity over the last century or so.

I'd love to know how the length of a natural cycle was defined. For example, a day seems like a pretty short cycle by these standards. Yet there are some areas on Earth that can vary as much as forty degrees F in a single day. A year is a pretty short cycle too, and we all know about the seasons.

Again we have an artificial boundary of thirty years. Does that mean that the last thirty years were hotter than the previous century? How about the previous thousand years? The previous ten thousand?

But the cutest bit of this tactic is that the global warming apologists get to define the conditions of the argument at this point. If you accept this bit, you have to deal with his arguments and conditions before you can go on with any other criticisms. And it you don't, your arguments are disqualified by default.

3. Okay, humans are causing it, but there's nothing we can do about it, we can't go back to the stone age, it would ruin our economy, it's worse to act than not to act, etc.

Or in the words of the new anti-Kyoto Canadian "Environment" Minister Rona Ambrose: "that would mean that today we would have to take every train, plane and automobile off the streets of Canada. That is not realistic."

What do these people think Global Warming will do to the planetary economy? We can't look into the future and know exactly what the consequences would be, but what we can deduct doesn't sound good: Potentially millions of eco-refugees, disruptions in food supplies, heat waves and weird climate phenomenons, stronger hurricanes, flooded coastal areas, the possible cascading of species extinction (remember, animals can't turn on the air conditioning - when their environment changes rapidly, they can't artificially "adapt" like humans, and if the bottom of the food chain is affected, it will have effects on everything above), major changes in oceans, etc. Acting now is clearly the cheaper and better choice and countries that took important steps in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, like Germany, are hardly "ruined". Some big businesses like insurance companies understand that, but a much broader consensus on action is needed among the powerful corporate players of the world.

The Apollo Alliance has been pushing a plan to create cleaner infrastructures and systems and eventually eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels. The Chicago Climate Exchange has been doing really good things too. Many others, like the folks at WorldChanging, have been putting together a vision of a "bright green future", working on solutions that would actually stimulate the creation of a better tomorow and improve things on most if not all levels of society. There are lots of good ideas and solutions available right now. We've waited long enough. Lets act.

Now he's pounding home the point that global warming not only exists, it is inescapable.

EXCEPT IT STILL HASN'T BEEN PROVEN!

Instead, we have every attempt to shift the debate away from global warming to the credibility of the skeptics. That doesn't speak well of the science. And sure enough, we've lost the "facts."

I do know that government control of the economy is a really bad idea. Anybody remember what happened when Hawaii tried to control the price of gasoline? How about what is happening now with the Medicare drug benefit?

I've no problem with private sector alternatives. I have every problem with government imposed "solutions." The difference is that people get to choose with the private sector. If I can handle choices in the bread aisle, I can handle choices in the energy market as well. But, the alternatives have to equal or better existing solutions before they can compete.

For example, I live in rural Arizona. An electric car with a range of only 60 miles is going to leave me stranded. That is not even considering how that electricity got generated in the first place. or the fact that it takes several hours to "top off." Bottom line, an electric car today is an expensive toy with no practical benefit for me whatsoever.

With the current state of technology, there is no practical alternative to a car. Or to the trucks that handle shipping all over the nation. Or to the planes that let people travel fast. No amount of legislation or regulation can change that, no matter how good the intentions.

Look at history. Revolutions in technology happen because they can do something better and cheaper than the existing way. Sad to say, alternative energy technology hasn't reached that state yet. And as long as there are government subsidies, it probably won't.

4. Okay, it is possible with technology, efficiency/conservation and smart planning to do something about it, but it's going to hurt the bottom line of "dirty" corporations.

Well, a pusher is never happy when an addict is trying to get rid of him, and the end of slavery hurt the bottom line of slave owners. But very few people will say that these aren't the right things to do.

Frankly, we can live with a few big companies making less money, especially considering the alternative. The stone age didn't end because there was no stones left, and we didn't keep blacksmiths in business forever after they weren't needed anymore. But even the Exxons and Shells of this world have a choice: they have huge resources and could - if they wanted to - become pioneers in clean technology and profitably survive the transition our society now has to go through. We're not talking about investing 1% of their benefits in clean technologies and doing massive PR campaigns; we're talking about a real commitment, something proportional to their scale. But lets not wait for them to move... If they don't, others will fill that role.

Well, a pusher is never happy when an addict is trying to get rid of him, and the end of slavery hurt the bottom line of slave owners. But very few people will say that these aren't the right things to do.

Frankly, we can live with a few big companies making less money, especially considering the alternative. The stone age didn't end because there was no stones left, and we didn't keep blacksmiths in business forever after they weren't needed anymore. But even the Exxons and Shells of this world have a choice: they have huge resources and could - if they wanted to - become pioneers in clean technology and profitably survive the transition our society now has to go through. We're not talking about investing 1% of their benefits in clean technologies and doing massive PR campaigns; we're talking about a real commitment, something proportional to their scale. But lets not wait for them to move... If they don't, others will fill that role.

What we have here, is a distinctly socialist agenda masking itself as commentary on a stage of denial.

Companies and corporations are in business to make a profit. Any increased cost will drive up prices and be passed along to the customer. The owners and shareholders demand profit.

What's more, the owners and the shareholders aren't the "super rich." Most of them have average incomes.

As soon as there more profit to be had, the companies and corporations will trip over themselves trying to get it on the shelves at a slightly lower price so they can undersell their competition. How do I know this? Because it happens all the time.

Record albums to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs to MP3 files. Just keep government regulation at a minimum and the free market does the rest. We end up with something that sounds better, is cheaper to make, and much more flexible than what we started with.

Fewer companies is a bad idea. Can you imagine the limitations on computers if Micro$oft was the only game in town? We'd still be using text and MS-DOS for everything. Forget about the world wide web or graphics or multi-media. Hard drives might have made it to the 50 megabyte size by now. Under those conditions, I could almost promise you that a good computer with a hard drive and printer would probably set you back around $10,000 or so. Instead, competition by many companies means that today's computers are one-tenth the price and a few hundred times as capable. For a couple hundred dollars, you can get a PDA that do more than one of the early PCs.

Now, notice what I haven't done with this entry. I haven't gone after the science behind the global warming theories, I've just gone after some of the tactics used by some of the more extreme global warming apologists. I WANT a debate on global warming. I just want the politics taken out of the arguments. I don't want skeptics discredited BECAUSE they are skeptics, and I don't want bad science accepted because it is the "right thing" to do.


— NeoWayland

Posted: Sun - August 6, 2006 at 07:06 PM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved