Monday, August 26, 2013
Climate Denialism
I posted last year on the reasons for climate denialism among educated Republicans. This is a less philosophical take, published this week in my local newspaper, The Yancey Common Times Journal.
Locally, public denial
of climate change comes almost exclusively from a Confederate
re-enactor who has a PhD in one of the subdisciplines of physics. Of
course, this individual covers for more covert denialists. Being
fair, the editor of this paper will continue to publish his letters.
But this does not give equal weight to his arguments. His key
assertion is that, contrary to the claims of climate scientists, US
temperatures are going down rather than up! He “proves” this via
graphs which he manipulates to show false peaks and valleys. If the
graphs are incomplete, or falsely labeled, this is easy to do. What
enables him to do this is the lack of scientific literacy in the
general public. We can be thankful that we have competent science
teachers like Chris Bocci to help alter this pattern.
The issue, even for the
most conservative politicians – yes, sadly this is about politics,
driven by partial and distorted science – is not whether global
temperatures are rising, but the cause. The alarming melt of the
polar icecaps along with the world's glaciers and the rapid increase
in desertification – including the American Southwest – all
testify that the world is warming, much more rapidly at the poles
than at the center. What these politicians, fueled by a few renegade
scientists, claim is that there is no proof that this is being caused
by human activity. There is not space here to marshall the data that
show that, to the contrary, we are the Flood.
More than 95% of the world's climate scientists are convinced by
this data, and a steady trickle of deniers among them is shifting.
The prime example is Richard Muller, Berkeley scientist who completed
a study recalculating 1.6 billion pieces of climate data last year
that showed “essentially all of this increase results from human
emission of greenhouse gases” (“The Conversion of a Climate
Skeptic” NYT op-ed, July 2012). The study's main funder was
the Koch brothers, who have heavily supported the climate denialist
lobby. Oops!
Why
are conservatives in denial? Because they have no doubt that we are
the all-powerful king of species, and that anything we might do to
curb our power would be willful abdication of our kingship. The
paradox is that while we are told in Genesis that we are made in the
image of God, godlike. Yet we usurp Him, working more and more
against Creation rather than with it. Indeed, a secular
pseudo-environmentalist recently wrote a book called The God Species, in which he
argues that we are capable of undoing any mess we have created
through our godlike creativity.
Are
you uncomfortable yet? I am. As a college humanities teacher, one
of my favorite teaching texts was the Book of Job. The whole of this
magnificent Creation mirrors the glory and power of God, not man. We
may be made in His image, but we are also capable of sin. The best
path when we recognize our sin is to ask forgiveness and try to right
our path, not to enter ever more deeply into it.
We
are comfortable (like Job's self-satisfied friends) with the benefits
of a fossil-fueled world. Rather than moving away from our personal
comforts and the vast corporate profits riding on them, it might be
easier to trust technocrats to save us from ourselves and the fossil
behemoths. As we approach the point of no return with respect to
climate disequilibrium, the most tempting action for the God Species
is to seed the poles with sulfur dioxide, which would simulate a
global series of volcanic eruptions, cooling the atmosphere by
blocking the sun's incoming rays. Leaving aside the multitude of
unknowns in this scenario, one thing is clear. If we resort to this
desperate move, we will have no more blue sky until we stop injecting
sulfur dioxide. How important is blue sky to you? How does it
compare to the benefits of the internal combustion engine and
unlimited electricity?
The common thread that
drives denialists is pride and arrogance. This is true of
technocrats from the scientific-industrial complex, the captains of
industry and their handmaids on the political right. Only chickens,
crying liberals, would turn back when we are on the verge of
bioengineering our crops and children, and geoengineering our
atmosphere. Right?
Isn't
it odd that it's the liberals who align with the New Testament values
of social justice? Friends, the “Christian right” is not
Christian at all, but cheerleaders for a state religion that has been
the bane of the West since Constantine. (And let's not call it “Old
Testament” religion, for the Jews have a doctrine called tikkun
– the necessity of mending the world that we have broken.) We lack
New Testament literacy as well as scientific literacy. We are badly
lost, in a state of alienation from our Creator, not only with
climate denialism but in the monstrous overreach of the majority in
Raleigh - sadly by all
three branches of
government. But that is another subject, rightfully the domain of
folks fired by the social gospel, sponsors of Moral Mondays across
our dear beleaguered Old North State.
Comments:
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2 questions:
1. what would you call someone who's the opposite of a "denialist"?
2. you write "The common thread that drives denialists is pride and arrogance." what do you see as the common thread that drives people who are the opposite of "denialists"?
1. what would you call someone who's the opposite of a "denialist"?
2. you write "The common thread that drives denialists is pride and arrogance." what do you see as the common thread that drives people who are the opposite of "denialists"?
and a third... do you have room in your dichotomy for people who don't necessary "deny" that climate change "is" or that people have a hand in it, but who mis-trust the politics of those who decry "denialists"?
thanks!
thanks!
1) the usual term is "climate hawk." I have used the term "climate warrior" before. Interesting that military terms are used, though the ancient origins of warrior did not necessarily have military connotations.
2) good question. I'd say that it is the same common thread. Christians call it original sin.
3) Indeed, you point to the danger in writing op-eds, that of simplifying. Try it yourself in 750 words. there is of course room for this mistrust. I have a problem with knee-jerk varieties on the left and the right. Go back in my blog and read of my struggle in being educated about nuclear power. My succeeding letter to the editor, when challenged, went into the due diligence involved in questioning my own assumptions about nuclear power. In the wake of Fukushima, that struggle continues, because it is hard to trust either side. One could say that our ideologies, which we prefer to call "values" are simply a mark of original sin. Highly-educated people can ignore the facts and soudn theories due to the fact that ideology trumps reason in most of us. Note that early Friends were so named becasue they sought truth, and Fox's predecessor equated Reason and Christ. WE have strange beginnings.
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2) good question. I'd say that it is the same common thread. Christians call it original sin.
3) Indeed, you point to the danger in writing op-eds, that of simplifying. Try it yourself in 750 words. there is of course room for this mistrust. I have a problem with knee-jerk varieties on the left and the right. Go back in my blog and read of my struggle in being educated about nuclear power. My succeeding letter to the editor, when challenged, went into the due diligence involved in questioning my own assumptions about nuclear power. In the wake of Fukushima, that struggle continues, because it is hard to trust either side. One could say that our ideologies, which we prefer to call "values" are simply a mark of original sin. Highly-educated people can ignore the facts and soudn theories due to the fact that ideology trumps reason in most of us. Note that early Friends were so named becasue they sought truth, and Fox's predecessor equated Reason and Christ. WE have strange beginnings.
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