Another False Premise that Underlies Environmental, AGW, and Creationists Views Thriving in a Moral Vacuum.

Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

The perpetuation of the deception that humans are causing the inevitable collapse of the world because of global warming works because of the deliberate exploitation of human traits and frailties. Usually, they are exploitations of ideas and misdirection’s that worked in the past. Despite clear, concise, explanations with evidence under oath before political leaders by well-qualified scientists of what is wrong with the science the lies and deceptions continue. It is hard to believe that all or even a portion of the proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) don’t know what is wrong with the hypothesis. Senator Timothy Wirth instrumental in the creation of the AGW deception was quoted by Michael Fumento as early as 1993 that,

“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

It is hard to believe that a majority of the politicians and public continue to ignore the truth. There is a degree of the Pied Piper syndrome as people just follow the magical music deliberately created by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, there are ominous signs, especially in America, of a growing loss of moral direction. Ironically, Osama bin Laden said the west had lost its moral direction. In my opinion, he was right. However, I don’t want his moral opinion either.

Most of the information and activities related to deceiving the people were deliberate, as evidenced in the emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in 2009. It was evidence that should have led to serious levels of accountability. Instead, it triggered deliberately orchestrated cover-ups that, although weak and easily dismissed, were easily brushed aside. In addition it is easy to quickly marginalize and destroy anyone who questions it. Misuse of the law and other actions that screamed suppression, bullying, and intimidation fell on deaf ears. This is particularly troubling in the US, which claims it is a nation of laws. All this can only occur in a society that has lost its moral direction, that no longer knows or wants to know what is right and wrong. It is a nation that is locking people up for invented claims of crimes when actual perpetrators of such crimes walk free and even gain from their actions.

I can accept that quite a large number of people don’t know or understand what is happening, but I am no longer convinced they would do rectify it if they did. I can understand how the deception is so effective because some of the vehicles involved in its creation, spread, and perpetuation, are arcane. This reminds me of, former Harvard University President Derek Bok’s observation,

If you think education is expensive – try ignorance.

A good place to educate yourself about what is happening and the parallels in history is in the work of Victor Davis Hanson. His observations remind me of Santayana’s warning that those who don’t learn from history will repeat it.

One of these arcane, but pervasive false ideas in history, was supposedly discarded with the advent of modern science, yet it continues to distort how most see and understand the world. It was called The Great Chain of Being and was illustrated in 1579 with a diagram putting everything and everybody in their place (Figure1). Here is one author’s interpretation.

In the Great Chain of Being model described by Tillyard, each kind of object in the universe is allocated a place in a hierarchy, from the lowest kinds of object (rocks and other inanimate matter), through the lower and higher forms of terrestrial life, up to the higher beings and finally to God.

Plato and Aristotle created the original idea, and because their ideas formed the basis for the Christian and Catholic view of the world, called scholasticism, it dominated western people’s beliefs. A good example of how this dominated perception of the World and the Universe was the Ptolemaic geocentric belief that the Sun orbits the earth that Copernicus challenged and changed.

Figure 1: The Great Chain of Being.

There are many interpretations of the idea and as many claims about the impact. It is easy to see how, with its hierarchical view, it easily provides for charges of racism and misogyny, among others. However, I am unable to find any discussion about the concept of a chain as an interlink. The idea that if one link breaks the entire strength and connectivity is lost. Chain is another of those words that automatically create ideas in people’s minds, like “holes” in the ozone, or hot greenhouses, that preset and distort understanding and allow lies and myths to persist. It makes the challenge of removing emotionalism only to consider logic and the facts almost impossible.

The focus of environmentalism is on plants, animals, and ecologies that people find attractive. For years I raised the issue in the context of adaptation and extinction in many forums. I pointed out that many species were benefitting from human activities. For example, pigeons, rats, mice, snakes, and coyotes are all thriving. I would then pause and ask, “Have I mentioned any you like yet?” After another pause, I would say, “Sorry, I forgot, you prefer warm, cuddly, big-eyed creatures like Pandas, Koala Bears, and Dolphins.” It is mandatory for any good alarmist environmental or climate change story to include something for which there is an emotional public attachment. Gore used the Polar Bear and the enigmatic, emotional, environment of the Arctic to spin his tale. It is an unknown region to 99% of the world where so many intrepid explorers created heroic stories to create a frozen fantasyland, and ecology. They created the myth that it is a fragile, vulnerable environment more easily damaged than other places. This is false. In fact, if you look at any area that experienced a catastrophe, it is amazing how quickly they recover. The inability to recover was another of the false stories created by environmentalists. They said the impact of Mount St Helens would take centuries to recover. They were completely wrong.

All this makes people vulnerable to the massive deception that humans are to blame, and no self-respecting human wants that stigma. You either broke the link or condoned actions and activities that broke the link. Coral reefs are another favorite ecosystem for stoking, poking, and exploiting emotionalism and guilt. In a story headlined

Racing to save Florida’s coral from climate change, scientists turn to a once-unthinkable strategy: ‘assisted evolution.’

The words “assisted evolution” are environmental ‘newspeak’ to make George Orwell proud. What they are contemplating is geo-engineering.

If it was once unthinkable what changed? Jessica Levy, the reef restoration program manager at the Key Largo foundation, said,

“We are looking at a potential complete ecosystem loss, which to my knowledge has not happened in human history,” Levy said. “I don’t think anyone wants to be responsible for that occurring.”

Levy is saying, we don’t want to play God, but if you thoughtless humans don’t listen and send billions more in research funds, you will force our hand.

“We have no choice now,” said Michael Crosby, chief executive of Mote Marine Laboratory, which runs the 19,000-square-foot laboratory on Summerland Key. “These coral are not able to come back on their own. They are really sliding into functional extinction.”

What the heck is “functional extinction”? More newspeak and the cause of this inevitable action is the unproven pseudoscience of anthropogenic global warming.

But as global warming rapidly brings the natural wonder to the brink of extermination, scientists are abandoning their hands-off approach in favor of a once-unthinkable strategy: a massive intervention to manipulate the natural balance of the reef.

In another story about coral reefs, the researchers make an unsubstantiated claim that anthropomorphizes the reef and links it back to human-caused climate change.

“But climate change is really changing that. The reef is battered and bruised. It’s more impacted than it’s ever been before.”

How can a reef be battered and bruised? The terms apply to people, not reefs. It is used to strengthen the link between the inference that it is human-caused climate change that is the issue. Climate change has always caused everything in the world to respond.

The level of deception and exploitation associated with the misuse of science even in this small example is troubling. However, after I wrote this article, two events pushed the lack of morality it exposes off the table. The events push America past a point of moral decline from which, I believe, there is no return. It can only result in a complete collapse of the society following a civil war. America is finished because the events take it into an immoral quagmire from which there is no return or escape. The first was the approval by the City of New York of full-term abortions, that is up to nine months. Kermit Gosnell is serving a life sentence for performing similar abortions and is identified as the biggest serial killer in American history. The second event involved the arrest of Roger Stone. It was an event and action normally associated with dictatorships and police states that have no rule of law. The legal community and society did nothing. Most didn’t even know that the same lawyers who carried out this attack were responsible for an earlier unjustified destruction of people’s lives.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray was an assistant attorney general in 2004 when he heaped praise on an ambitious Mafia-tested prosecutor while promoting him to the top of the Justice Department’s high-profile Enron task force.

Mr. Wray specifically lauded Andrew Weissmann for obtaining convictions against two Enron clients: accounting giant Arthur Andersen and executives at banking dynamo Merrill Lynch. Andersen was finished as a company; four Merrill executives went to prison.

That all sounded very efficient, and I know I was angry at Enron and the Andersen people at the time, but here is what happened later.

Those convictions for which Mr. Wray offered praise in 2004? Mr. Weismann’s cases against Andersen and Merrill Lynch lay in shambles just a few years later. The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 vote in 2005, overturned the Andersen conviction. A year later, the 5^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals erased all the fraud convictions against four Merrill Lynch managers. The jury had acquitted another defendant. “People went off to prison for a completely phantom of a case,” said Mr. Kirkendall.

An estimated 85,000 people lost their jobs related to the demise of Andersen accounting and at least 4000 at Enron. The Supreme Court and Appeals Court rejection of the verdicts meant little or nothing to them. They were the victims of the loss of morality and ethics in America typified by these gross misuses of the law. The ultimate failure is the legal professions failure to launch a massive PR campaign and exposure to what is going on. If things are going wrong and you are doing nothing you are, in many ways, guiltier than the perpetrators of the wrongs. This is a nation of laws that has lost its legal and moral direction. The unchecked power these stories illustrate, confirm James Madison’s concerns,

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”

Nature is not a single chain linkage. So, yes, you can take a link out, and the entire system does not collapse. However, you cannot continue to allow such egregious misuses of fundamental structures of a society and survive.