Submitted by Professor Bob Ryan
The debate between advocates of CAGW and ‘sceptics’ is a rerun of an old argument between those who take a pessimistic and those who take an optimistic view of humanity. Following the collapse of communism – an extreme version of the pessimists’ creed – those who took that position had to regroup around a new agenda. This post, which is an opinion piece, argues that in searching for their new Trojan Horse the pessimists discovered, in climatology, the ideal opportunity to bring together science, political expediency and social uncertainty in a way that would enable them to capture the political high ground. – Professor Bob Ryan
Although many of us would prefer it otherwise arguments are won through the heart as much as through the mind. To turn the tide against the advocates of CAGW we should recognise that fact and understand what has been happening over the last 20 years. I believe that it is only through recognising the ‘global warming’ debate for what it is that we can make sense of the violence and antagonism it has generated and come up with a successful counter-narrative to the CAGW position.
Throughout recorded history individual and political opinion has always polarized into two camps. There are those who fundamentally believe that humanity is irredeemably lost, that people must be subordinated to social control and that individual choice cannot lead to desirable social outcomes; and there are those who take the opposite view. This is what I describe as the ‘pessimistic’ and the ‘optimistic’ view of humanity – this distinction has been manifest in many ways: the catholic versus the protestant, the communist versus the capitalist, and now those who support the CAGW version of environmentalism and those who do not.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s the pessimists were in disarray. Communism, the creed which had emerged as the 20th Century expression of the pessimists’ agenda had collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. For a short while those who believed that humanity could, through individual action and freedom, create a better world appeared to have won the argument. The retreating left had to find something – anything – to turn the tide in their favour. They needed a much more sophisticated argument to express their world view – an incontrovertible argument that would allow them to capture the moral high ground and be sufficiently alarming in its implications to win over politicians and populations to their agenda. The beauty of CAGW is that it cannot be fixed by the individual or indeed the individual state. It needs a global solution because if runaway global warming has the potential to wipe out a large proportion of humanity then action to prevent it must be equally drastic.
However, the last dozen years have not been good for those who take a more optimistic and liberal view of humanity. The turn of the century brought a nasty dose of millennium angst and a fundamental questioning about where we go from here. Y2K, the dot.com crash, 9/11, financial boom and bust have all produced fertile ground for the pessimists to regroup and in climate science they found their Trojan Horse. Here was a relatively new science bringing under a single umbrella a wide range of sub-disciplines: geo-physics, oceanography, meteorology and many others – all populated by scientists who whilst not technically involved in atmospheric physics might well be sympathetic to the central CAGW message.
By good fortune for the pessimists, a small sub-group of relatively modest UK and US research institutions had been developing their specialism investigating the recent history of global temperature change and the role of CO2 and other atmospheric gases in regulating the climate. Bring them together with a group of savvy and articulate politicians of the (mainly) left, establish a UN panel with the remit of winnowing out of the scientific literature anything which supported the CAGW position and marginalised anything that challenged it, and the Trojan Horse was assembled.
The attack came on two fronts: first the CAGW narrative had to be sufficiently persuasive to win over those scientists whose research, no matter how tangential to the central thesis, would give it added credibility. With this a claim of ‘scientific consensus’ could be established supported by the various scientific bodies who in one way or other act as mouthpieces for the scientific community. Second, the political agenda had to be captured. In this the pessimists were aided by another social and political change.
Across the major economies, politicians had found it increasingly difficult to relieve their populations of their cash. The old approaches to the taxation of income were no longer viable – so called ‘progressive’ taxation and the ‘welfarism’ it supported were becoming very unpopular. Politicians, who by and large are a pragmatic lot, had to find ways of relieving us of our cash by stealth. In the UK, for example, hundreds of tax wheezes were invented to raise taxes in ways the political class hoped would go unnoticed. Furthermore, stealth taxes are much harder to avoid – no accountant or tax lawyer can reduce the tax you pay when you buy a new TV, fill your car with fuel or buy an airline ticket. So the last 20 years have been characterized by a search for new ways to relieve us of our money. In CAGW, the scientific and moral argument could be made for the ultimate stealth tax. Use energy and we will tax you.
And so we have it: a potent brew of political fundamentalism, fiscal expediency, social anxiety, uncertain science and huge vested interests. I do not think science can now resolve the debate about global warming. It is not that the science is of no consequence – it has simply been marginalised in the much bigger social and political debate that is underway. Scientists are highly specialised, discoveries come in bits and the knowledge gained is provisional. For the young working scientist cracking the next problem and publishing the result is the main priority. They will interpret the significance of what they discover, just like the rest of us, according to their underlying beliefs about the way the world works. But as far as the bigger picture is concerned their views are no better than anyone else’s.
The positive message is that the tide is now beginning to turn against the pessimists. Climategate and all that went with it gave hope to those arguing against the CAGW orthodoxy. But in the end the revelations were not conclusive. What is and will be conclusive is the fact that the climate is simply not playing ball. The balmy climate of the last 50 years may be coming to an end. Global temperatures appear to have steadied over the last ten year, the rate of increase in sea level is slowing and across the planet things are not quite going the way the prophets of doom would have us believe. It is not decisive yet but in 5 years it might well be, and as further good quality research establishes the role of other forcings in climate change the pessimists will have to look for another outlet for their world view. But be of no doubt – they will. The battle will be reengaged but next time on a different stage.
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Can one be optimistic about being a pessimist?
Best commentors in the blogosphere. Thank you guys for answering my question!
@ur momisugly Jason
Here is another green-socialist example:
“Anti-poverty activist Sue Bradford has revealed she left the Green Party over what she saw as its shift toward right wing politics….
“My position within the party became untenable in 2009, not just because of the co-leadership vote, but also because I could see clearly that a majority of members preferred a cleaner, greener capitalism to the ecosocialist agenda which I support.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10730786
Bob…I think you need to look much deeper into this as a social phenomenon – it is not as simple as thinking that reds became greens in order to further an agenda of social control and dominance – capitalists were doing that well before communism made a bid for global dominance!
I am a close observer of the modern green movement, having helped to found the whole thing in the 1970s and working as scientific advisor to Greenpeace and others throughout the 1980s. The modern greens are not at all the same people. They have become ideologues – closed minded, target-oriented, bureaucratic and most surprising, technocratic – more likely to embrace Siemens, AMEC and GEC as mega-turbine makers, as any small-is-beautiful appropriate technology. They refer and defer to authority in the UN, the Royal Society, the science academies and government chief scientists with no apparent historical knowledge of the appallng history of these organisations on matters of environmental prediction or protection. They embrace the likes of Tony Blair and the dodgy-dossier makers (report of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction) as well as Al Gore and turn a complete blind eye to his banking business and any disclosure of interests. Not for them any hint of hidden controllers, Bilderbergers, high-level corruption or the more mundane academic malpractices in climate research. They speak darkly of democracy not delivering the targets which – to quote from my local Friends of the Earth in the district newspaper, must be met and their critics silenced by ‘whatever means’. They are a modern political phenomenon that I find quite scary….and I am a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist with a long record.
They are no more ‘left’ than they are truly ‘green’. They embrace capitalism – after all it is the only system that will support their own bureacracies – they are funded by the concerned middle classes, whom they feed carefully filtered alarmist information (with the support, as we know, of the science establishment). They get government and EU money to do it! Their support in the media comes via the BBC and the Left-liberal press, not the right-wing tabloids….who are largely sceptical. Yet this agglomeration of interests would happily raise trillions in unavodable carbon taxes and hand that over to the UN/IMF with no democratic oversight, to be spent on ‘development’ of largely high-tech mitigation policies that will decimate the things they apparently care about – indigenous peoples, forests and biodiversity, those in poverty and food scarcity. Natural beauty and landscape hardly figure at all on their balance sheets.
I would say that there is an underlying tendency in any political process for a technocratic and bureacratic elite to seek to instill fear and then manipulate and control things to their own advantage – this transcends left-right politics. George Orwell nailed it.
Socialism is a religion. It may not have a god but it does have a devil. The devil is capitalism. Every problem is due to capitalism. Only by eradicating capitalism can all the problems of the world be solved. That is it. A new religion. Nature abhors a vacuum. So when people stopped believing in sky fairies during the birth of the industrial revolution. When science seemed to give us answers. Some thing had to fill the void in these losers. It was socialism. That’s why socialism has issues with Islam. Even though Islam goes against all of it’s so called values for humanity. It seems to be anti-capitalism. Pol pot meant well. Castor is a nice guy. Bonkers or what.
When shown the errors of their ways they will simply move on. What we need is a new common sense religion that can fill the voids in these losers heads. Can’t wait for the next big deal. Oh joy.
The not so subtle conflation of
AGW with anti nukers as dingbats continues here apace —
The pro nuke trolls continue to be 100 percent catastrophically wrong
down the line–but just keep loudly lying and
metronomically pushing their
smiley face Happy Meal kool aid
while pirouetting away from the truly horrific reality of nuke disaster.
Anti nuke is not pro AGW.
http://www.naturalnews.com/032657_Fukushima_meltdown.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8565020/Nuclear-fuel-has-melted-through-base-of-Fukushima-plant.html
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/06/07/japan-admits-worse-meltdown-nuclear-meltthrough-3-reactors-23671/
http://gizmodo.com/5801376/its-official-fukushima-was-hit-with-a-full+blown-nuclear-meltdown
http://rt.com/news/situation-fukushima-no-control
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/06_33.html
http://notsylvia.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/the-origins-of-the-global-warming-scare-2/
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/theres-more-to-climate-fraud-than-just-tax-hikes/
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/dr-chus-energy-bait-and-switch/
“An optimist is one who upon smelling a rose concludes that it will make a better soup than cabbage.”
-H. L. Mencken
On the theme of politicians jumping on the CAGW bandwagon, it should be remembered that Margaret Thatcher was very enthusiastic at the start, as it gave an excuse to shut down large chunks of the coal industry and screw the miners, especially Arthur Scargil.
Most of you choke on AGW, and quite rightly imv, but seem remarkably willing to swallow this whole! Now, that does make me pessimistic! If only humans and human societies were this simple . . .
” UN panel with the remit of winnowing out of the scientific literature anything which supported the CAGW position and marginalised anything that challenged it”
This is the best description of the IPCC that I have seen.
“Throughout recorded history individual and political opinion has always polarized into two camps. There are those who fundamentally believe that humanity is irredeemably lost, that people must be subordinated to social control and that individual choice cannot lead to desirable social outcomes; and there are those who take the opposite view.”
This is known as a false dichotomy in philosophy. I couldn’t be bothered reading past this point…
Two Russian definitions.
A pessimist is a man who thinks things will get worse.
An optimist is a man who thinks things can’t get any worse.
I’d say Prof. Ryan is on the right track, maybe not US, but concerning EU.
When the wall fell ordinary decent people happily adapted to a new reality, the communist and the other socialist that had been walled up suddenly lost everything, their control, their power, and their faith. These people, who would be religious fanatics if not for their socialism, ran around like delirious headless chicken without their master’s visionary utopia to unite them around. What were the road to utopia? Major capitalist evil to give up everything that is you and you rights to beat and best and pummel to the ground, before finally, everyone could enter utopian society where everyone could, equally finally, live in peace and prosperity.
Does it sound familiar at all when it comes to the climate communist hippie parade?
I don’t mind the climate hippies, not even the crazy ones, in general, or people smoking weed, but I do mind being whipped into submission to pay to enforce their doped up “visions” of a better world, their utopia, their version of garden of eve.
Ann Coulter’s new book ‘Demonic’ is a trenchant dissection of the Liberal Mob.
Before CAGW they successfully blamed natural ozone fluctuations on Freon and inflicted a trillion dollar loss on the world economy.
Before that they successfuly shut down DDT, humanity’s number one weapon against malaria, due to the Rachel Carson hoax.
They continue to double down on Malthusianism, with especially woeful results in China’s severe gender imbalance. All over the world huge swaths of countryside are marred by the windmill fraud, which uses 50 times the steel and concrete per delivered Watt than nuclear power, which kills more birds every year than all the oil spills in the world (and more people too).
All those frauds continue apace, so why do you expect the CAGW fraud to disappear just because of the truth? Now that so many 100-billion dollar frauds have succeeded, they’ll never give up on the $ten-trillion CAGW fraud.
We see that the livlihoods, careers, and reputations of tens of thousands of bureacrats, politicians, crony capitalists, ‘scientists’, ‘educators’, and ‘stakeholders’ are at stake, so they will never, never see reason or heed facts. They still wield tens of billions of dollars for their ferocious causes. Beyond them are the millions of ignoramuses comprising the Liberal Mob, with huge emotional & religious attachment to CAGW.
As the LIttle Ice Age proceeds, they will simply turn up the volume, because it always worked in the past. I love the way they turned on a dime after the recent cold winters, which they never predicted, neatly displaying the Mob’s utter indifference to contradiction: “Global warming, you see, is causing all this snow”.
“For a short while those who believed that humanity could, through individual action and freedom, create a better world appeared to have won the argument. ”
How ironic. It is the “left” (the pessimists), not the conservatives, that thinks humanity can “pull itself up by it’s bootstraps,” although that has been proven false over and over for thousands of years.
Jason says:
June 9, 2011 at 8:11 am
I consider myself an optimist, and I would not be the slightest bit suprised if this is the way things have transpired since the wall came down. However, I need examples of known socialists/communists who ran to the green movement. Do we know of any examples? Anyone by name?
*************************************************************************
Jason – you do not need to look in the past. The former communists are in Green (and other) parties in the here and now. In New Zealand, Russel Norman, MP and co-leader of our Green party, was formerly a member of the Australian Socialist Workers Party (a Trotskyite, i.e. Internationalist party). He is now the Green’s spokesperson on climate change. Also in NZ, a recently retired Green MP, Sue Bradford, thinking of standing for parliament again for a party to the left of the Greens (!), was a longstanding activist in the Unemployed Workers Movement (founded in the 1930s by Communist affiliates – there is now no Communist Party as such in the country). In Germany, prominent Green MP Daniel Cohn-Bendit (“Danny le Rouge”) was the leader of the 1968 student revolt in Paris (he was exiled, which is why he became an MP in Germany). The UK’s very own Baroness Ashton (EU foreign minister) is believed by some East European politicians to have accepted Soviet money in her younger days when she was secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (a good example of a broad movement led by the radical left). I have read that she is a former Maoist (presumably in her student days), but I cannot confirm that.
These are just a few examples off the top of my head, from memory.
Dear Professor Bob – well done writing this article and having the courage to post it. While I accept the thesis that the radical left in the West (mainly communist and often pro-Soviet at the time) rapidly moved into the green/environmental movement at the time of the fall of the Iron Curtain, I suggest that some of the generalisations used in your article are simplistic and not necessarily helpful, indeed tending to error or personal bias (optimist vs. pessimist, Catholic vs. Protestant, etc.). Perhaps you need to search for better dichotomies than these (and you need to support the dichotomies with hard facts – this means quite a bit of work, I know).
All the best.
On Communism I’d say you have it backwards.
I know that I don’t encourage Communism because of pessimism of human nature but I discourage it because of pessimism of human nature. The old power corrupts. In Communism you give sweeping powers to those in charge. When ever you do that its a recipe for disaster.
CAGW = Computer Aided Global Warming ??!
Here’s my take on elected officials in this Country:
Our Republicans/conservatives/right wingers want my money but don’t care how much money I make as long as I pay a portion to the government.
Our Democrats/liberals/left wingers want my money so they can take care of me ( in a manner suitable to them) but also want to restrict the amount of money I can make as a matter of “fairness”.
Either way, someone is after my wallet.
Thank you all for your comments which have been most interesting and in many cases thought provoking. Many of those who have posted here support my proposition that our social actions are conditioned by our fundamental beliefs about the nature of humanity and I would accept that whilst the pessimist – optimist dichotomy is broad brush that does not necessarily make it false as ‘pompous git’ asserts. I take Paul Deacons point that the dichotomies ‘communist versus capitalist’, ‘catholic versus protestant’ etc are not the only illustrations and need stronger justification. Maybe one day I will engage with that project..
To Peter Taylor: delighted to see you pass by and thank you for your comments. I do hope ‘Chill’ has done well – it deserved to.
Pompous Git says:
June 9, 2011 at 12:04 pm
“Throughout recorded history individual and political opinion has always polarized into two camps. There are those who fundamentally believe that humanity is irredeemably lost, that people must be subordinated to social control and that individual choice cannot lead to desirable social outcomes; and there are those who take the opposite view.”
===============
Seems to me that most of the history of humanity has been controlled by the former group with only rare appearances by the latter. Mostly people try to stay out of the way of those in power, knowing that raising too much fuss will be painful or deadly.
Then some leader type rounds up the peasants to kick out the existing leadership, perhaps succeeds, then the new leaders kill off a few inconvenient people and the people see little change. Even though the new leaders now loudly speak of how much better the lives of the little people will be. Let some group of greens take control and it will be the same.
Probably the only way out of that is to keep the central government as weak as possible and the rights of the individual as strong as possible.
Peter Taylor says:
June 9, 2011 at 11:13 am
All excellent points. I would add your thoughts to what Professor Bob posits and suggest that what we are witnessing transcends mere political ideology and is more akin to some sort of puritanistic religious movement. Environmental catastrophism has always been a powerful draw for various religions and cults throughout history, and some very clever people — likely beginning with Maurice Strong — have found a way to bring it into the mainstream. I am hopeful North America will be the firewall against the further spread of this disease. And it should be considered a disease as it will likely prove to be as deadly as any plague has ever been.
Oh, and thank you Professor Ryan!
Bob, when I stated that the dichotomy you present is false, I did not mean to be offensive and hope you did not take it that way. However, the assertion that you are a member of of only one of two possible camps is not borne out by my life’s experiences. I have been labelled both a communist and a reactionary, because I fall somewhere in the middle. There is no middle in a dichotomy.
I am reminded of a remark made by one of Geoffrey Blainey’s students in regard to his supposedly being right-wing: when you are at the extreme left, nearly everyone is right wing.