The Global Warming Jihad
by Butler Shaffer
For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.
~ Anonymous
In my college days, I was introduced to a book, written in 1841 by Charles Mackay. Titled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, it remains a worthwhile chronicle – at least through the mid-nineteenth century – of some of the consequences of mankind’s periodic collapses into mass-mindedness. If Mackay was around today, he would be able to devote a chapter to the emergence of the latest secular religion: environmentalism.
It is a common mistake for people to assume that religious faith and fervor are qualities to be found only within institutionally-structured churches with formal doctrines and rituals. They are to be found, in varying degrees, within all belief systems, be they secular or theistic in nature. The polar opposite philosophies of Marxism and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism – both of which openly condemned traditional religion – are, themselves, grounded in a faith in various central propositions. True-believers of these doctrines who voiced doubt as to any of the underlying premises, have been subjected to purges as enthusiastically conducted as medieval trials for heresy.
I am a strong defender of the processes of scientific inquiry. And yet, I am aware that most scientists cling to a faith in conclusions that have been widely accepted within their respective communities, and angrily react against any heresies – however well-documented and reasoned – that arise from skeptical minds. When British biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s book, A New Science of Life, was published, the science journal, Nature, editorially described it as “a book for burning?” Nor did most members of the scientific world openly embrace the views of the brilliant science philosopher, Paul Feyerabend, who challenged the idea that there was “a” scientific method. He was of the view that a variety of strategies – including luck, accidents, dream interpretation, fraud, mistakes, and intuition – had played major roles in scientific discoveries. He advocated a theoretical anarchism in the search for truth, believing that such an approach was more consistent with human nature than was adherence to rigid rules of inquiry.
I am equally a defender of speculative thinking, wherein emotions, intuitive insights, and an awareness of the need for inner, spiritual expression, inform our empirically-based searches for “truth” about ourselves and the world in which we live. We spend far too little time examining the epistemological basis for our thinking. The question “how do we know what we know” is rarely taken up even by the more intelligent among us. Most of us prefer the leisurely approach to understanding; relying upon self-styled “experts,” or the outcome of public opinion polls, to advise us of the opinions we are to embrace.
Nowhere is this tendency more evident than in the current secular faith in the causes of, and cures for, global warming. Many who eagerly attack the theistically-based religious views of others, have erected their own temporal icons and composed an alternative set of catechisms in furtherance of their creed. The rest of us are expected to accept, without any heretical doubts, that the prophesies of some scientists reflect a core of certainty within the scientific community as firmly grounded as the heliocentric cosmology. Those scientists who doubt the revealed faith, we are told, are but a handful of ignoramuses at such places as Backwater College or Boll Weevil State.
Perhaps it is the lawyer-side of me that insists upon people presenting evidence for their allegedly empirical statements. Using such a standard has led me to conclude that the Earth is, indeed, currently undergoing global warming; and that it has undergone fluctuations between periods of “cooling” and “warming” since long before humans appeared on the planet. Indeed, astronomers report that other planets – particularly Mars – are experiencing similar climate changes as those of Earth. Unless the apostles of the global warming orthodoxy are prepared to lay the blame for Mars’ increased temperatures and melting ice caps on a transmigration of human-generated entropic wastes, factual evidence would suggest looking beyond Earth, itself, for explanations.
My interest in the study of “chaos” and complexity also reminds me that complex systems are influenced by far too many variables of unknown and incalculable factors to permit reliable predictions. Nowhere is this more evident than in efforts to predict local weather. Indeed, the study of chaos was precipitated when MIT professor, Edward Lorenz, used computers to experiment with weather forecasting in the early 1960s. Lorenz discovered what all of us who have tried to make long-term plans for picnics have learned: predicting the weather is quite unreliable beyond two to three days time. There are simply too many unknown and unknowable factors influencing the weather.
This fact, alone, renders ludicrous a statement offered by Dr. Heidi Cullen, the climate expert at The Weather Channel. Directing her attention to the differences of opinion over the causes of global warming, Dr. Cullen has reportedly proposed that meteorologists who deviate from the established orthodoxy of human-caused global warming should be defrocked of their American Meteorological Association indicia of expertise. The global-warming faith is grounded in the illusion that a system of such immeasurable complexity – hence, variability – as climate, can nonetheless be rendered predictable over centuries of time. What a remarkable presumption, coming from one whose profession cannot accurately predict next week’s weather, but who insists upon a sufficient omniscience regarding the causal factors that reach across the millennia to warrant purging those who disagree with her opinions.
Not to be overlooked in his efforts to ferret out heresies, the governor of Oregon, Ted Kulongoski, wants to remove George Taylor from his present position as “State Climatologist.” Taylor – a prolific writer on weather and climate – uttered the blasphemy that “most of the climate changes we have seen up until now have been a result of natural variations.” Those who believe that there is a separation of “religion” and “state” in America confuse form over substance.
Our culture has been so dominated by scientism that there is a tendency to equate scientific conclusions with objective reality. In his “uncertainty principle,” Werner Heisenberg advised us of the fact that the observer is an integral part of what is being observed. The myth of the “impartial” and “objective” observer is no longer taken seriously by thoughtful people. I may be most sincere in my efforts to cut through appearances and get to the core of an important “truth,” but it remains my choice as to what to study, and it is my thinking that sets up the inquiry and evaluates my observations. We are unavoidably a part of what we are studying.
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