In a recent post, I speculated that the global warming advocates would not mind me calling them “kool-aid drinkers” since they use the emotionally charged term of “global warming deniers” to castigate their opponents.
Well it turns out that some of the global warming alarmists are a lot more serious about their association of global warming denial with the Holocaust than I am in my association of global warming advocacy with the kool-aid drinking fanaticism of a Jim Jones follower.
Margo Kingston writes, “Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence — it is a crime against humanity of sorts.”
Mark Lynas is more adamant when he writes, “I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those [climate change deniers] who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put this in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial …”
David Roberts is pretty worked up about this too when he says, “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards [the climate change deniers] — some sort of climate Nuremberg.”
Whoa! These people are more fanatical than I thought. Let’s back away from the gallows in the Nuremberg courtyard for a moment and think about this. When we do, I think we’ll find their comments illogical, ironic and instructive.
First of all, has anyone noticed that the comparison of global warming denial with Holocaust denial is logically flawed? As I recall, we did NOT have Nuremberg trials for Holocaust deniers — we had them for Holocaust perpetrators! It was Nazis, not Holocaust deniers, who killed six million Jews. To be accurate, shouldn’t Lynas say that he puts climate change denial in the same moral category as the Holocaust itself instead of in the same moral category as Holocaust denial?
Perhaps I am taking him and his friends too literally. In their debauch of emotions, the global warming crowd has probably just gotten a little carried away with their rhetoric. After all, I do understand that they actually believe that global warming denial is going to lead to millions of deaths.
But even at this level, I’m a little perplexed by their analogy. Do they really think that global warming deniers intend to kill millions of people in the same way that Nazis intended to kill their victims? For the comparison to have any logical validity, they would have to believe this.
In addition to this logical fallacy, I find the comments of Margo, Mark and David to be more than a tad ironic. If the subject of witch burning came up, I’m sure all three of them would condemn religious institutions for this barbaric practice.
They may have forgotten that many “witches” were executed for their alleged role in bringing about climate change. Europe and North America suffered through a period known as “The Little Ice Age” from 1650 to 1850 and the resulting crop failures and increased deaths from starvation and cold were blamed on witches in many cases.
Now, however, the shoe is on the other foot (or the torch is in the other hand). The climate change crime du jour is not murderous cold brought on by humans cooperating with evil spiritual forces but life-destroying heat brought about by humans cooperating with evil business interests. The witch-hunting is carried out, not by religious zealots, but by scientific fanatics. The Global Warming Inquisition must hunt down those who deviate from orthodoxy and Margo, Mark and David seem quite eager to serve as Torquemada. I’m not suggesting that the belief that certain immoral women were cooperating with demonic powers to cool the planet is on the same factual level as the belief that carbon dioxide is acting to warm it. However, neither is on the same factual level as the belief that people will die if you herd them into an unventilated room and pump it full of cyanide gas. Only the latter act has enough certainty between cause and effect to raise it to the level of a crime against humanity that demands a Nuremberg-style tribunal.
The sentiments of Margo, Mark and David are not only illogical and ironic; they are also instructive. They reinforce a point I made in my previous post where I asserted that intolerance and unquestioning faith are not limited to religious viewpoints but that these traits are common failings that infect all human endeavors — even science.
So I’m rethinking my global warming “kool-aid drinker” label. When I first used it, I thought it was hyperbole. Now, however, I’m thinking it is a pretty accurate description of the fanaticism of some of the true believers in the global warming theory.
Hey Mike,
Thanks for your blog. One quick question and one comment:
1. On a superficial level, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to refer to the global warming advocates as warm-aid drinkers?
2. I heard an interview this week where the world-renown and founding meteorologist for The Weather Channel was being asked about the claims of global warming advocates. I was stunned to hear him explain with scientic detail and clarity the exaggeration (at best) or hoax (at worst) being perpetrated by the now-popular rhetoric.
For example, he said recent measurements actually suggest a cooling of the arctic shelf, not a warming. As a scientist in pursuit of factual evidence (not for or against the premise of global warming), he wonders why news of the most recent measurements don’t make it to the media outlets. He wonders if so many have blindly accepted the premise of global warming, that anyone who might challenge it would ironically appear anti-planet. It is more effective to shut-down the conversation by vilifying “deniers” – even if they do so with scientific measurements from the planet itself. As you suggest, some might even call for Nuremberg-style tribunals. New evidence that accurately and appropriately challenge the view would in essence pour cold water on their warm-aid.
Pastor Wayne writes “I was stunned. . .”
In 1997 a very well known and respected political scientiest, Aaron Wildavsky, published a book titled But Is It True?. In this book he explored what he had found to be a frequent pattern. There have been many instances in which a new science finding raising the possibility of an environmental catastrophe was immediately published and reported on by the news industry. Of course, the news reports tended to grab headlines and public attention. Yet, only one research study had been published. “Upon further review” by the community of scientists, for instance after instance, when scientists failed to confirm the scary finding and even when they found the scary story wrong, the news industry and therefore the public and our political leaders failed to notice. The result? In case after case documented by Professor Wildavsky unconfirmed scientific results came to be widely thought to be true in “the public square.”
One of the cases Wildavsky examined was global climate change, and his conclusion at that time was that this case fit his thesis. Wildavsky even reports on part of an interview in Discover magagine with a climate scientist who had been instrumental in getting climate change to be a public policy issue. Here is part of that interview as quoted by Wildavsky: “. . . like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer us scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. . . Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
The moral of this story? I tell my students that “in politics rhetoric is reality.” When politics meets science, rhetoric wins out, not science.
The fanatacism of the Global Warming Doomsayers would be funny if it were not so scary. Every time I hear Wooden Al say in that condescending tone of voice “The discussion is over…” I feel sick to my stomach.
It is very sad that no matter who is elected President of the United States this fall, we will be stuck with someone committed to “fighting” global warming by forcing all of us to pay higher taxes in order to implement new pie-in-the-sky programs.
The fact is that global warming has NOT been established as a fact. And even if it is ultimately found to be true, the belief that man is causing it and that man has the power to reverse it is ludicrous. How is it that man is causing the Martian polar caps to melt? Why would anyone believe that the current world temperatures are optimal? I suspect that the wooly mammoths frozen in arctic ice might disagree with that contention.
We live in a dynamic earth. The Kool-Aid drinkers would be well advised to concentrate their efforts:
1) First to reliably determine if significant climate change is actually occurring,
2) Then to work out how we can best adjust to those changes, rather than their futile plan to counteract them…
If the earth is getting warmer, then let’s plan to grow cotton in the upper midwest and Canada, and wheat in the arctic. Mike might want to take his real estate business to Alaska.
Or, if the earth is cooling, we need to plan to make some alternative adjustments.
God must be very irritated, or even angry, at the arrogance of those who presume to set themselves up as god!