The refrain that “environmentalism is the new religion” is common enough, and there is much truth in such a statement. Several years ago, when I was a confused, largely ignorant and idealistic socialist – thus environmentalist – someone (who was also partly responsible for my enlightenment) challenged me to consider the way I critically analyse the various doomsday statements environmentalists were and are prone to making. Even then, in a deep state of group-think, I had to admit to myself that the illiterate peasants of 16th century Europe probably responded to their priests’ exhortations in a similar way.
However, why is this? As a species, most of us are profoundly limited to our own tiny perspectives. For example, we look out over what is actually a gleaming Western city of unparalleled cleanliness, temporarily cloaked in off-coloured smoke caused by a transient climatic event known as a temperature inversion. This event gets us thinking. We think about how we live in only one of a great many cities. Many cities are bigger than ours and many cities are dirtier than ours. Our city is so ugly right now – imagine what effect this ugliness, multiplied across the world, is having on ‘the environment’. It looks bad here, and there must be a lot worse elsewhere. What is the cumulative effect of all this ugliness? It must be appalling. We are ruining our environment.
Of course, such considerations ignore the phenomenal machinations of the earth’s natural processes which dwarf our own so-called ‘footprint’. For all our technological advances, if humankind were to be deleted from the planet overnight, I believe our impact on the surface of the earth would be more or less completely erased within half a millennium – the blink of an eye in terms of this planet’s history. Our earth’s environment is durable because it’s been forged by billions of years of evolution. However, we humans only have an interest in our short lifespans. A priest tells you the marauding army that swept through your village, raped your wife and burnt your house is down to the fact that you have sinned by not obeying some political expedience which nevertheless failed to appear in the popularly-unread bible. An environmentalist tells you your dirty city – as evidenced by an unsightly, temporary smog or something similar – is destroying the earth, despite the fact that the science your environmentalist stakes their legitimacy on is less than kind to such a thesis. Both scenarios resonate with a huge number of individuals in their respective ages.
Humanity’s limited perspectives are a terrifying prospect, and today the most threatening manifestation of this can be found in the widespread acceptance of the environmentalist movement and its demands. We hear environmentalists claiming to act in the names of their unborn children and grandchildren, yet so many of the rest of us do not realise that if their demands were played out to a logical conclusion, the children of tomorrow would be considerably less comfortable; their future considerably less secure than at present.
And here I am, stumped by my own meagre perspective. I am an individual butting against the forces of vast armies who pressure and reassure each other into forwarding a creed I know will be ruinous for our species. They appear to be gaining a considerable amount of traction. How could I, an individual who firmly believes in the power of individuals, combat such a homogenous tide? Where to start, for starters. One thing I am sure of, however – the natural earth will go on, regardless of whether we decide to consign ourselves to misery and decline in our efforts to ensure that fact.
Just been watching a very interesting report (film) about the demise of the Mocha culture in Peru, ca.600AD, I think. They evidently let each others blood for centuries in an effort to appease their (rain) gods but it transpires that cyclical ( & normal) climate change, over which neither they had nor we have any influence, was the culprit. They weren’t terribly well-informed. We?……well, we persist in propitiating the gods of our environmental shamans.
I’m not so sure about the perspective issue in your post. It seems to me that the people who cause the most damage in a society are the very ones who are always claiming some noble motive, some transcendental purpose, and criticizing anyone who disagrees or objects as being selfish and shortsighted.
For myself, I always suspect that the real motivation for many of these supposed selfless, I’m-only-doing-this-for-everybody’s-good types is that they derive their only sense of any self worth from the satisfaction of being one of the chosen few who KNOW what’s really going on, and truly feel they should be allowed to make decisions for all the rest of us poor, short-sighted, clueless fools who only worry about making a living and taking care of our families.
In a way, it’s a modern variation of the old gnostic heresy. The true believers have secret, inside information that only they can decipher and understand, and the rest of us are damned in our ignorance.
As for what to do about it, the answer is to relentlessly respond to any of the typical collectivist nonsense about curtailing individual choices and liberties with a careful, reasoned response citing the facts, not the hysterical, alarmist nonsense that is trumpeted from every tabloid.
Educate yourself, and refuse to accept the protestations of purity of motive or good intentions on the part of the radicals. They have no right to claim either, and you do.
There’s some truth in the old adage that it is the First Class minds who cause the trouble, but the Second class minds who clear it up.
Patrick B
(proud holder of an Upper Second, 1963)
This strikes me as an excellent posting.
The only disagreement I have is with:
I believe our impact on the surface of the earth would be more or less completely erased within half a millennium
Near my home town, there is a village that died, along with its young males, during the First World War.
I’d say a single century would be enough to qualify for more or less completely erased. Puny mankind.
Best regards
Our earth’s environment is durable because it’s been forged by billions of years of evolution
It’s quite amusing that in an anti-environmentalist screed, you channel Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis.
For all our technological advances, if humankind were to be deleted from the planet overnight, I believe our impact on the surface of the earth would be more or less completely erased within half a millennium
It is quite inconvenient for your argument that the impact on the surface of the earth from humans more than 500 years ago has not come close to being erased.
Even then, in a deep state of group-think, I had to admit to myself that the illiterate peasants of 16th century Europe probably responded to their priests’ exhortations in a similar way
To me it seems quite the opposite. You, assuming you are not an expert in the field of climatology, seem to have chosen to ignore the opinion of people that have rigorously investigated the issue according to the scientific method, and instead choose to believe claims that do not stand up to scrutiny – as long as the people who make those claims promise you paradise while requiring no action of you (and of course, the people making those claims stand to profit greatly from your inaction).
I can certainly see parallels to the deceived illiterate peasants in your attitude.
veryretired:
You’re right, though the small perspective issue is what makes the prophecies of environmentalists (perhaps the most rabid of the breed you describe very nicely in your comment) credible to ordinary folk. They’re the ones I was largely referring to in my post.
Felix :
Funny, I thought I was channelling common knowledge.
Probably because we maintain it as thus? Certainly, in some arid areas, you have a point. Structures in a small fraction of the earth’s landmass may take longer than half a millennium – some less, as Nigel mentions above (incidentally, thanks for the compliment, Nigel). An enormously tiny fraction of human-assembled structures may require a few millenia to dwindle away – take the Pyramids of Giza, for example. My general point stands, despite your pedantic prodding.
Oh dear. Aren’t you doing the exact same thing by “ignor[ing] the opinion of people that have rigorously investigated the issue according to the scientific method” and, using this method, devastatingly debunked the various doomsday predictions of your precious experts and scientists who seem happy to ignore science when it doesn’t suit their panicked hypotheses?
I guess you’re one of the types veryretired lucidly described above.
Felix wrote: It is quite inconvenient for your argument that the impact on the surface of the earth from humans more than 500 years ago has not come close to being erased.
Please could we have some supporting facts for this. Firstly (doubtless in favour of Felix’s case), what specific examples are there of 500-year old impacts remaining? Secondly, of the average over all impacts from humankind from 500 years ago (and not more recently maintained), what proportion remains?
Best regards
As for what to do about it, the answer is to relentlessly respond to any of the typical collectivist nonsense about curtailing individual choices and liberties with a careful, reasoned response citing the facts, not the hysterical, alarmist nonsense that is trumpeted from every tabloid.
Educate yourself, and refuse to accept the protestations of purity of motive or good intentions on the part of the radicals. They have no right to claim either, and you do.
protestations of purity of motive: lovely; reminds me of Blair.
veryretired very good thinker: should be, at least somewhat, in charge.
Best regards
veryretired, veryright!
One of the many points where I find the green agenda to be flawed is the extinction of species. They are forever harping on about some Andean tree frog being on the brink of extinction. Well, this sort of thing happens all the time and always has and somehow life has managed to muddle through. Extinction can be good, in a real sense we only have tigers because we don’t have T-rex.
I read an interesting article a while ago on the BBC website. Scientists had found that many species were failing to adapt to the change in other species behaviour which they are dependant upon for food. They either arrive too early or too late and so everything becomes out-of-sync. The usual reaction from people when told about this is – ‘but surely nature will just adapt’. But of course, that is simply an unverified assumption.
I’ve no comment to make on environmentalism, but certainly it’s easy to make a whole bunch of stuff that lasts for a long, long time. Stonehenge, for example. All those cave paintings. All those celtic hill forts. All those mott and bailey castles. None of them have been actively maintained in the last millenia or so, but they show no sign of going anywhere soon.
The fact is, if you pile some big stones or soil into a big heap, it takes a _really_ long time for them it errode back down again.
Despite constant annual human intervention in the form of increasingly modern industrial farming methods, field boundaries many hundreds of years old are still visible from the air. When they renovated the Royal Opera House they found clear signs of Saxon buildings.
None of this may be particularly catastrophic or significant, but the idea that people have no impact is silly. Life generally has a huge impact on the Earth. Think of all the coal seams, the limestone scars across yorkshire, the chalk hills of sussex, the flint, the coral atolls, all of these caused by life.
Other forms of life have laid down layers of rock hundreds of meters thick across endless square kilometers of the earth. Who’s to say we won’t to in a few more million years?
The process of taking limited input and drawing conclusions without testing and ACTING upon it is known as superstition. There are observations of birds in a controlled environment who, after food was dropped from a random timer, all began to exhibit differing actions that they believed caused the food to appear, bobbing the head, flapping a wing etc. People are prone to do the same, and I don’t have a problem with people acting under superstition, we certainly don’t have the time to apply the scientific method to every action we take in life. Most actions are relatively harmless, others may not be. People are allowed their imperfect understandings in navigating their way through life. The problem is when some become so besotted with their constructions and insist on taking others down their rabbit holes with them, by and large by force or threat of force.
It is precisely the fact that each finite individual ever knows an infinitesimal amount of the total known information, but is master of the knowledge of himself, better than all of the rest, that has me a libertarian. It is a logic that extends from reality.
The process of taking limited input and drawing conclusions without testing and ACTING upon it is known as superstition.
This unfortunately is something I see far more among climate change skeptics than its proponents.
Ignorance is a product of perspective, to be sure. I am reminded about driving around New England, worrying that all the roads and parking lots were eating up all the available land. We’re doomed! Then I went up in an airplane and saw that the roads and associated development only occupied a small portion of the total land, even in New England. You couldn’t even follow most of the roads – they were hidden by forest and dwarfed by farms and wilderness. The reason that development seemed ubiquitous was that I never left the roads! By definition, man rarely leaves areas he has developed. So he thinks that development covers the whole surface.
Not the usual Nick wrote: “… process of taking limited input and drawing conclusions without testing…” This unfortunately is something I see far more among climate change skeptics than its proponents.
Climate change sceptic (with respect to a material anthropogenic effect, at all, and much within our control): that’s me.
The relevant definition (from Longman’s dictionary 1984) of scepticism here is: “an attitude of doubt or mistrust either in general or towards a particular object [or view]”. Synonym: uncertainty.
I think you must be talking about the climate change adherents, and climate change deniers. Both of these seem to take limited input and draw conclusions without adequate testing”. Or is it that we differ on the meaning of scientific testing?
Best regards
As a laymen the best that I can conclude with all the information available to me is that human beings are encroaching ever more and more into animal habitats. Science tells me that when habitat is destroyed animals can become extinct. I can also conclude, because I can see it for myself, that in nature one thing depends upon another. The result of human activity is unpredictable because it is not known what the function of that animal life is.
***This unfortunately is something I see far more among climate change skeptics than its proponents.***
You mean those proponents who believe that there is going to be a 10* increase in temperatures leading to the melting of ice caps, plunging coastlines underwater, turning arable land into deserts, mass extinction of plant and animal species, and catastrophe for mankind, who demand huge invasion of government to “solve” the “problem”, preventing individuals from peaceably producing and trading?
I am perfectly willing to accept REAL proofs of man-caused global warming that will cause massive damage to the point that sustaining life and economic activities will be substantially compromised. Such proof has not been offered, just studies that never are fully released (just press releases to willing outlets are what the average person has access to) and congressional testimonies so rife with qualifications it is laughable that if such conjectural language were applied to anything else, the proponent would be laughed off the hill. I read one record of testimony by a scientist to Congress, that after so many “mights”, and “coulds” and “it is BELIEVED thats” he busted out the logically unassailable “but what if we’re right?” The foreseen is too dire to not spring into action. “What if we’re right?” Maybe I’ll just rub my rabbit’s foot and all will be well, because I have no response to “what if’s”.
Simply put, real proof needs to be offered to use force to make someone do something or stop doing something, and doing as they see fit. Proponents are free to believe whatever they like, and act accordingly, in the conduct of their lives. Their superstitions should not become public policy because they have contrived a secular hell for themselves. The belief that I, mowing my lawn or commuting to work is going to plunge the world into ecological hell, and must be forced to stop doing either, without clear proof that such conduct will, in fact, inexorably do so, is superstition in it basic form.
In the end, the vast majority of people are not climatologists, and are resorting to opinion. But in the arena of public policy, near surety is (or should be) required before force is so wantonly used. If the danger were so clear and present, arguments should be easily sold. Of course mass superstition has installed all sorts of bad law and bureaucratic boobery before now. I don’t doubt public financed researchers and propagandists will eventually win and a little more freedom will pass away.
Nigel: If by skeptic, you mean going with uncertainty about the human contribution to global climate change in the absence of definitive proof either way, then no I don’t have a problem with that. I was talking about those you refer to as deniers. Though I would also include in that those who categorically deny the possibility of human involvement.
(In particular, the assertion that the Earth dwarfs any human activity is too simplisitc – yes the planet in toto dwarfs humanity in toto, but that doesn’t mean that any given process of its automatically dwarfs any given process of ours)
As it happens, I do consider that the scientists who believe in human involvement make the stronger case, but I accept that definitive proof hasn’t appeared yet.
***As it happens, I do consider that the scientists who believe in human involvement make the stronger case, but I accept that definitive proof hasn’t appeared yet.***
Then can one assume that because you have that belief, that you would act according to it, and spend whatever time you care into trying to convince others to behave differently, but would refrain from using force, or ask others to use force, to prevent people behaving as they see fit? That really is the crux of the whole debate as far as I can see, and the one that breaks down into the basic libertarian/statist diametric. So while I may still think that you are superstitious (one can’t draw any other conclusion what with a stronger case presented without proof) in your belief, I certainly would give you leave to act as you see fit, use whatever time and resources at your disposal in trying convince others, and I ask the same.
I hope the Earth does warm. It is F*&$ cold in Germany. But I’m often confused, some “experts state that the Earth could cool. Which is it? If it is going to get cool, I’m going back to the southern U.S.
Nigel and others, I appreciate the kind comments.
Climate change is not something that humans can control. There is no such thing as a global climate which has endured from time immemorial and is now in jeopardy of being disrupted by human activity apart from other significant natural forces.
The Earth has, in its geologic past, been much, much warmer than it is now, with no human input whatsoever. Conversely, I have seen recent evidence of a theory that the entire globe has been covered with ice several times in the past.
The oceans have been much higher, and covered a great deal of what we now have as continental landmasses. The continents themselves have joined up and split apart, each phase of that process producing enormous changes in climate on a local and/or global scale.
The recent geologic era includes repeated ice ages and warming periods, again, none of which has any human causation or control. The most recent cycle, within the last millenium, included a period of colder temperatures called the “Little Ice Age”, which lasted for centuries, until a warming trend began 400-500 years ago.
It may very well be that the average temperatures on the Earth will increase over the next several centuries. It appears that the same trend is occurring on Mars.
The many and varied causes for such changes are little understood, and include the cycles of solar output, the position of the Earth as it wobbles through space, the positions of the continents and subsequent ocean currents, and volcanic activity.
None of these major, significant factors is influenced in any way by human activity, and, indeed, have resulted in various climate anomalies, such as the fact that the first part of the 20th century warmed at a much faster rate than the latter.
Whenever the newspaper starts talking about a heat wave and its historical context, the hottest historical temps are invariably from 1936.
This period is remembered in the American Midwest as the “Dust Bowl” period, when whole farming districts just dried up and blew away from the effects of drought and high temperatures.
I agree with Lonborg, and others who do not claim that there is no warming trend, that the question is not whether the earth is warming, but whether the cause is significantly controllable by human action, and whether the Kyoto-style remedies have any cost-effective potential for positive results.
It is the answers to these latter questions which generates such emotional and hysterical response from those whose collectivist mentality requires that the first and only acceptable solution to any problem is the institution of draconian statist controls on individual freedom of choice, and especially on commercial activity.
These demands are not surprising, as it is an axiom of the statist/collectivist mindset that private enterprise and capitalist, profit seeking activity is, by definition, evil, wrong, morally suspect, and the cause of most, if not all, of mankind’s problems.
The indisputable facts of the last few centuries, when imperialism, autocracy, and experimentation with several variations of statist, totalitarian social/governmental models were directly responsible for the deaths of dozens upon dozens of millions in repeated wars and political/ethnic/religious progroms are blanked out as the “solution” to the climate crisis is once again reduced to restrictive state policies and the curtailment of individual liberties.
The sarcastic rejection of any objection on the part of those who consider these repressive proposals suspect is based on the chimera of “scientific concensus”.
Because any number of computer models, constructed by recipients of grant money paid out in a frenzy of research to find impending disaster, seem to predict a period of global warming, or, it has been reported, a period of global cooling also caused by the same factors, we are now supposed to surrender our liberties to those who demand the right to structure our “lifestyles” in a more earth friendly way, because, after all, they are supported by the “concensus”.
This is the same scientific concensus, by the way, which rejected evolution, plate tectonics, asteroid strikes, and numerous other scientific and medical theories which later had to be accepted because hard data could no longer be denied, and the concensus was utterly wrong.
The evidence, supposedly justifying the enormous economic, social, and political costs of allowing massive statist restructuring of every aspect of our lives, is simply not sufficient to prove that human activity is the fundamental causative factor in any ongoing climate changes.
Kyoto was a sham, and is now being abandoned even by the countries most enthusiastic about it originally.
The solutions to any problems which may develop as climate change occurs are much more attainable by a productive economic system which allows the creativity of its citizens to search for answers, rather than a collapsing economy strangled by a myriad of new, restricitve political controls.
The solution to global warming is global human freedom.
The energy of the creative human mind is the ONLY power source which can solve the problems of human existence.
There has been significant changes in the worlds tempreture before, you are right. The diffrence is none of those were accompanied by the release of millions of years worth of cardon dioxide in just a few hundred years by humans.
I don’t know if anyone has caught any of the BBCs climate change series, but the program on tuesday featured an interview by some american pollster chap who back in 2000 did some work for George Bush. George was apperntly disturbed by the large number of reports appearing seeming to confirm that the globe was rapidly heating and there efects on his poll ratings on this issue.
The pollster advice was to question the science, support researchers who didn’t agree and to postion them aggresivley in the media. Low and behold this did indeed become bush’s policy and if he ever speaks about global warming this is exactly what he does and judging by this website the pollster earned his money well.
if carbon dioxide was purple the sky above us would have changed colour in our life times. Now priests in the past may have said this was because of some sinful infrigements by the local peasents but scientist aren’t priests relying on faith to support there assumptions but scientific method. Which as far as i can see has done the world pretty well up until now.
on a slightly different point i work for a university with a world class ecology dept. i was talking to one of the top bods about extinction, and he said we were currently in the middle of a mass extinction comparable to those that have happened in the past. The only exception was that they were accompanied by massive climate change ie ice ages, asteriod impacts etc. The only difference being we haven’t seen the climate change that much, yet. Now tell me that man kind doesn’t effect the globe in a major way.
i do agree on one point though, mankind won’t destroy the earth just our place in it.
One more thing, the same program showed how the bush administration had fundamentally reworded scientific results to make them seem less emphatic than the authours had intended.
I definitely trust scientists more than political appointees.
Bjorn Lomborg’s book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, deals with a number of points you raise, Alex – especially regarding the “mass extinctions” you mention. I suggest you get hold of a copy and have a read.
If you knew anything about this site and the people who frequent it, you would not be so misguided as to assert that opinions contrary to yours were formed based on any information supplied by the Bush administration.
I realize it may come as a shock to you, but it is possible to have actual opinions different from yours without being a dupe or a fool. A little less condescension and a bit more awareness that there are very rational positions contrary to that of you and your friend the ecologist would serve you well.
Although, if you are an academic, you’re mind is probably already so closed and walled off that any appeal to rationality and empirical evidence is most likely futile.
I also note that he made no effort to address veryretired’s point about static solutions. Even if the alarmists are right, the Kyoto approach is flawed. Personally, I think the whole global warming issue is about redistribution of wealth [via energy consumption & economic output]. Smells like global socialism to me.
i wasn’t being condesending, or at least i didn’t mean to be. I wasn’t sugesting anyone was a fool, i was just trying to engage in debate.
Funnily enough i think i agree with you about Kyoto, i don’t want to be forced by a govt to do anything. To me it suggests that only ‘they’ can save us, which is nonsense, its my planet and ill do my bit in my area and in my home.
I try to save energy in my own home because i want to (it also saves me money). You on the otherhand can use as much energy you like it’s up to you, i’d like to convince you otherwise but you seem to have wayed up the facts for yourself. You may have a different conlusion to me, fine, at least you’ve thought about it.
I do think though it is important to incourage our industries to come up with novel ways of providing energy. Being in the forefront of new technonlogies can be very important for a nation eg electricity and steel in the US and Germany which British engineers just didn’t seem to see the value of at first.
Oh yes, not that i’m saying he’s wrong (i haven’t read his book for a start and i’m no scientist), but the Lomborg guy was one of the people who benfited from a bit of bush cheerleading.
That is freaking rich. How about all your environmental scientists who have and continue to benefit enormously from this industry they’ve created? You don’t think they have an interest in sustaining it? A trifle naive on your part, I’d assert.
Oh. You haven’t read his book. Well – say no more. Like the alleged state of the polar bears, you’re on thin ice.
Dear James
you only sugested i read the book yesterday, i’m a quick reader but…
also why does that mean i’m on thin ice, i never contended he was wrong, anywhere.
Mr Linborgs the only climatologist i know thats even remotley a household name.
anyway…
so what explanations does linborg comeup with instead of the massive amount of known greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere over the past few hundred years? I really am intrested!
Well, you haven’t read his book, yet you lump him in with a group of those who allegedly benefit from “Bush cheerleading” – whatever the hell that is (though I doubt it’s good). A trifle presumptuous, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it be sensible to take a look at what the man’s saying before you rush to judgement? I mean, that would be the rational – no – scientific approach, wouldn’t it?
Also, Lomborg isn’t a climatologist. He’s actually a statistician – something that the enviro-scientists flayed him for. In fact, it was pretty much the only criticism (if you could call it that) of him that rang true. And describing him as a household name is somewhat hyperbolic. He is certainly a heretic amongst the green cognoscenti, however. In the mould of Galileo, I’d go so far to say.
I think you’ll find the argument revolves around how much actual damage these gases are wreaking, rather than whether they were/are produced or not. If you really are interested in Lomborg’s rationale, I suggest you hit the link I provided above. Go to Amazon.com, pick up a second hand copy of The Skeptical Environmentalist and find out for yourself, rather than asking me to lay it all out for you. If you aren’t willing to do that, then I respectfully suggest that silence is your safest option.
Alex, just a couple of things to consider in your thinking about this.
Mars is warming. We (and nobody else we know of) is releasing any green house gases on Mars.
Fossil fuels are just one of the smaller parts of stored carbon. My (strickly layman’s) understanding is that it is far and away outstripped by the amount of carbon stored as calcium carbonate (limestone, dolomite, etc). To get anywhere near historic levels of carbon dioxide (which is admittedly something we most emphatically don’t want to do) we would have to figure out how to release incomprehensibly large amounts of carbon from limestone.
Damn those Martians and their cheap air travel!