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United Nations and crusading celebrities are simply wrong
Environmental extremism must be put in its place in the climate debate
By Dr. Tim Ball & Tom Harris Wednesday, January 9, 2008
All responsible citizens are ‘environmentalists’, but that is no reason to yield to mass delusions.Part 1: Environmental Extremism
Part 2: Historical and philosophical context of the climate change debate.
Many people are starting to realize that much of what they’ve been told about climate change by governments, the United Nations and crusading celebrities is simply wrong. Not surprisingly, the assertion that “the science is settled” in a field the public is coming to understand is both immature and quickly evolving, is triggering growing public skepticism. Alarmists respond by upping the ante, making even more extreme and nonsensical forecasts, which in turn further fuels healthy public disbelief.
This pattern of exaggerated, and finally ludicrous assertions influencing debate in society is an old story. Extremists and extremism have always defined the limits for the majority. Climate extremism will increase in the near future as purveyors of politically correct but flawed views of climate change attempt to defend the indefensible.
Realization of this misdirection, and in many cases, deception, leads to the next stage in the life cycle of such mass delusions. People begin to ask, “What is the motivation for the scare? How was society so easily misled? Why did so many otherwise intelligent people accept or even promote the scare?
In this and subsequent articles I (Dr. Ball) will suggest answers to these crucially important questions.
Like all philosophies that come to dominate society, climate hysteria is part of an evolution of ideas and needs an historical context. The current western view of the World essentially evolved from the Darwinian view. Even though it is still just a theory and not a law 148 years after it was first proposed, Darwinian evolution is the only view allowed in schools. Why? Such censorship suggests fear of other ideas, a measure of indefensibility.
A proper appreciation of time is essential to this discussion and the larger theme of climate change. Before Darwin, the English church accepted Bishop Ussher’s biblically-based calculation that the world was formed on October 23, 4004 BC. But Darwin needed a much older world to allow the sort of evolution he envisioned as driving natural change to occur. Religion said God created the world in 7 days; Darwin needed millions.
Sir Charles Lyell provided the answer in a book titled Principles of Geology, which Darwin took on his famous voyage to the Galapagos Islands. The combination of long time frames and slow development resulted in a philosophical view known as uniformitarianism.
If such a term sounds more appropriate to religion than science, that is because it is, in essence, another form of belief system. Uniformitarianism is the idea now underpinning western society’s view of the World. A basic tenet assumes change is gradual over long periods of time and any sudden or dramatic change is not natural. Employing a version of uniformitarianism adapted to their needs, environmental extremists can point to practically any change and say it is unnatural, which implies it is man-made. But we know from modern science that natural changes can indeed be quite sudden and extreme – Professor Tim Patterson of Carleton University, in Ottawa pointed out last year in the Financial Post that “Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thousand-year-long “Younger Dryas” cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6 degrees C in a decade—100 times faster than the past century’s 0.6 degrees C warming that has so upset environmentalists.” Happening as it did before the dawn of civilization, it was, of course, entirely natural.
Notice also another illogic inherent in the stance of the extremists. If humanity is not ‘natural’ then who are we and why are here? One obvious answer is we were put here by a greater being, a God. But the entire essence of Darwin’s theory is that there is no God as Darwin was a professed atheist. This debate is actually part of the entire question of environmentalism and the misdirection discussed here. It is also part of today’s debate manifest in best selling books such as Richard Dawkins’, “The God Delusion”, or Christopher Hitchens’ “God is not Great." Dawkins talks almost as if he views Darwin as a God.
Historically, new views of the world take time to filter down and become part of the general fabric of society. Even then, some people never buy in. Over 400 years ago, Copernicus proposed that the Earth revolves around the Sun, yet even today polls in Europe showed a significant percentage of people still believe the Sun goes around the Earth as this seems to match the visual evidence. But for most people it really doesn’t matter - as long as the Sun rises and sets they couldn’t care less. But Darwin’s theory had much greater implication for the average person. To put it in a silly way reflective of the fashion in which he was attacked at the time, Darwin effectively said there is no God and your great grandmother was a gorilla. Now he was talking to, and about, everybody in a personal way.
Science became more personal still with the advent of environmentalism, which began with a symbolic event, the usual agent of change. The famous Whole Earth photograph taken by U.S. Apollo 17 astronaut Ronald Evans part way to the Moon became symbolic and changed how we viewed our planet and our relation to it. This image quickly became what anthropologists refer to as a catalytic symbol and was a major trigger that ushered in today’s environmental movement.
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| “In 1948, the British astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle said, “Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside is available...a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.” U.S astronaut Ronald Evans’ well known Whole Earth photo is now considered by many to be the most important image of the twentieth century. It has acted as a catalytic symbol helping change the way we think about our world.” |
An entirely new worldview (at least for the bulk of society) developed, called environmentalism. But, as with all new views, people wondered how far it would, or should, change society, how fast we should implement such changes and what we should preserve from the ‘old ways’. As usual, extremists are defining the limits. They inevitably take the ideas too far or too fast. Extremists also alienate people by assuming they’re the only ones who understand, often complaining that society is now losing more than we are gaining.
At the same time, extremists took on the title of environmentalists as if they were somehow special and the rest of us were not also concerned about, and involved in, environmental protection. How dare they - we are all environmentalists. Yet extremists continue to imply that they care and we don’t and that we must do things their way or ‘else’.
For example, PR Newswire Association LLC (UK) cites the Washington DC based Center for Science and Public Policy (see link on Breitbart news page), “Some voices on the political left have called for the arrest and prosecution of skeptical scientists [i.e. those who question whether human-produced carbon dioxide is causing a climate crisis]. The British Foreign Secretary has said skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and must be denied access to the media.”
Environmental extremists have successfully applied intense emotional pressure – both moral and political - ‘you don’t care about the planet, the children, or the future if you question us’, let alone disagree, they assert. .
Many politicians are caught in an awkward position because, while they understand how environmental extremism poses a very serious threat to our economies, including the ways that have brought us peace and prosperity, they also don’t want to be accused of not caring about the environment. So, most politicians put on the ‘Cloak of Green’, using much of the rhetoric of extremism while trying to avoid implementing the solutions of the extremists. This logical inconsistency is starting to haunt our leaders as truly dangerous legislation is being passed by misinformed and opportunistic politicians based on the sort of empty climate change rhetoric that nearly all of them now use. In Canada, an example is Bill C-288, The Kyoto Implementation Bill. In the U.S., America’s Climate Security Act so strongly promoted by Senator Barbara Boxer, Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is a very serious threat to the American way of life.
Most of our leaders know very well the World is in little danger from climate change, at least not any caused by human activity. But they also realize, as does any thinking person, that there are indeed serious pollution problems that we must continue to address. In an effort to appear ‘green’, politicians are then pushed by party strategists to intentionally confuse the issue by referring to the benign gas carbon dioxide as “global warming pollution” (a favourite trick of Al Gore and Boxer) and speaking of ‘clean air’ and ‘climate control’ as if they were interchangeable. This is amplified by many in the media who, out of ignorance, laziness or opportunism simply repeat the mistake until it becomes part of the landscape. As a result, the emotional pressure to ‘do something about global warming’ mounts and billions of dollars are wasted trying to ‘stop climate change’ - a wholly impossible objective - while real issues are neglected.
In 2008, it is crucially important that the public stay alert for environmental extremists presenting, and media and politicians blindly repeating, natural events as unnatural. Temperature is always rising and falling, glaciers advance and retreat, drought and floods occur over and over - climate is changing all the time and much more quickly than Darwinian-driven western science allows.
There is no question that we have a great deal to learn about the drivers of global climate change. But this is not the primary problem right now. As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” And, in today’s media and politics there is far too much being asserted about climate change that has little, if any, foundation in reality. However, based on what we do know, there is little to suggest that current conditions are anything but natural and well within any previous patterns of climate change. It is time for the general public and mass media to join the ‘skeptics’ and demand more real data and less blind faith in the climate debate.
