Re: climate change denial
Doug asks
“James, you’ve always struck me as a rational person …So how is it that you’re so at odds with “mainstream science” … on this one?”
To which I have to reply, first, is that a rhetorical question, or
are you really asking?
Really asking.
Second, “mainstream science” is an oxymoron. Science is not faith;
not faith in its findings (which are always provisional); nor faith in its
methods (which are many). Being at odds with received opinion is what
science is.
Well yes and no. If most scientists agree on something, my instinct
is to think they’re onto something. I realize that that that requires
a certain delegation of authority from a nonscientist, who can’t
judge the scientists’ work on their own terms, but scientific
authority is just one of those things that seem well-proven enough
that it’s not worth the argument.
Fourth, I know when I am being railroaded, and I am surprised that you don’t. Indeed I am constantly surprised that people who would not
dream of accepting a government, or United Nations’ or government scientists’ argument that terrorism demands special government powers lap up
the same argument when the threat is ‘climate change’ (as if ‘climate
change’ was anything but tautology).
We live in different countries. In the U.S., climate change - at
least until recently - was dismissed as nonsense by much of the
Republican party and the corporate class. The Dems have long thought
it was for real, but are paralyzed in doing anything about it, given
the whole American set-up. The war on terror wasn’t worked out by
scientists, but by frightening politicians.
Fifth, arguments put by the environmentalists that anthropogenic
climate change is upon us are so palpably dishonest and contradictory, that
no sane person could adopt them without a wilful suspension of disbelief.
When I see the IPCC report that water levels might rise by an inch in the next
century cited to support the argument that they will rise fifteen feet,
then I think that the case is wilfully alarmist; or similarly, when I see
conjunctural weather patterns, like Britain’s recent floods or Hurricane Katrina attributed to anthropogenic climate change on page one of the
newspapers (only to be retracted at a later date on page 21 later on).
Look, there’s a lot of weird weather lately, and I’ll bet it can be
proved.
Sixth, all the people who want me to worry about climate change are
the same ones who lied to me about the dangers inherent in genetically
modifed foods, told me that one third of the British public would have CJD by
1997, also that one in ten people in the UK would have contracted AIDS, told
us that DDT was so dangerous that we ought to prefer malaria, told us that
nuclear power was innately dangerous (but seem to be having a rethink),
continue to tell us that building dams is wrong, opposed the MMR vaccine on
specious grounds, have conspired to wreck the UK housebuilding sector, and are basically people I would not trust to change a lightbulb.
Scientists told you those things, or enviros? I never believed the
stuff about GM, CJD, universal AIDS. DDT, nuclear power, and dams
have some serious problems though.
And lastly, Doug writes
“unlike Alex Cockburn, who has an aristocrat’s distrust of science
as being too complicated and wonky, especially now that he’s become country
gentry with some quirky opinions (as Lou Proyect put it recently).”Lou Proyect, Alex Cockburn; it is not really such a hard choice, is
it?
Funny how things change. Five years ago I’d have agreed with your
choice in that simple A/B; now I wouldn’t.
Doug