I put the last word of the headline in quotes, because in this space, I prefer to use the term "pseudoskeptics" when describing those who claim to be applying scientific analysis to the issues without bothering to actually understand the science involved or stay abreast of even long-ago-published research. The shorter word, however, appears in an undeniably provocative essay at Grist by one Adam D. Sacks, a veteran climate change campaigner.
What to do about pseudoskeptics is a common these in this space, because there are an awful lot of them, and like many other science bloggers concerned with climate change, I spend a fair bit of time responding to their arguments. Some say we're wasting our time. Sacks is one of them. His essay posits that worrying about greenhouse-gas emission is beside the point; they're just a sympton of rapacious consumption and pollution, and unless we get at the root causes, we're doomed. In the footnotes to the piece, which you really should read), he writes:
A word here about the skeptics, with whom we are also obsessed: Forget about them. They may appear to have control of the public discussion, but they are babbling into the abyss. Our enemy is us. By our own unwillingness to face the profound implications of climate change--that we have to reject civilization as currently conceived and come up with something completely different--we are doing far more damage to the cause of preserving life on earth than the deniers could ever do.
This reminds me (again) of the health care insurance debacle. (You know, the one where one side says any bill that includes a public option is unacceptable while the other says any bill without a public option is a non-starter?). A growing refrain is "Forget about the Republicans, the real enemies are Democrats without the courage to accept a single-payer system."
I haven't had time to digest Sack's full argument, which, among other things, takes aim at "our stubborn unwillingness to understand that the battle against greenhouse-gas emissions, as we have currently framed it, is over. It is absolutely over and we have lost." Gulp.
Here's the opening, which dovetails with my previous post on the challenge of changing the way we think about our place in the ecosystem:
In the 20 years since we climate activists began our work in earnest, the state of the climate has become dramatically worse, and the change is accelerating--this despite all of our best efforts. Clearly something is deeply wrong with this picture. What is it that we do not yet know? What do we have to think and do differently to arrive at urgently different outcomes?
The answers lie not with science, but with culture.
I would love it very much if I could forget about the skeptics. There is much to consider. Again, read it.
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"the battle against greenhouse-gas emissions, as we have currently framed it, is over. It is absolutely over and we have lost."
He's right, it's over. If the Greens had only kept the climate alarm truthful this battle would not have been lost. The public does not trust the word of the Greens anymore. Why? For one, the Greens used one of the most untrustworthy investment professionals to represent them, Al Gore, who stands to earn billions from Cap&Trade and through control of the ".eco" internet domain. The greens allowed the EPA to label CO2 a dangerous substance. The Greens made huge gains through a graph called the "Hockey Stick", then it was shown to be more opinion than science. And don't forget the still being used "the science is settled, the debate is over" quashing of debate. The deleting of opinions from bloggs, and even Wiki-pedia was censoring and deleting any science that was non-AGW.
The faddyness of the Green movement has also done damage to their credibility; You're not green unless you drive a hybrid or a Volvo or a Subaru (?). You're not green anymore if you drink water from a bottle. Wind power is not green anymore because it kills bats, and now nuclear power is considered Green (huh?!!). And every once in awhile the spectre of population control rears it's ugly head. The list goes on and on. The public now thinks that environmentalists have truly gone environ-mental.
I like "Deniers."
No, wait, that sounded wrong. I don't like deniers. I like the term "Global Warming Deniers."
That's amazing.
You read all the right wingnuts hyperventilating about how global warming is just a pretext for the Liberal bogeymen to attain complete control over our minds and thoughts...
... and this guy Adam Sacks is doing his best to prove them right.
We have to "reject civilization as currently conceived and come up with something completely different?" No, I think we need to find a nice straitjacket for this loon and then get serious about dealing with the real problem.
> "What is it that we do not yet know? What do we have to think and do differently to arrive at urgently different outcomes?" <
Wrong question, Sacks. "What is it that we know but keep trying to ignore?"
The answer:
The fact that much of climate denialism is part of a _deliberate_ noise campaign.
The fact that there are oily interests -- the people behind Bonner and Associates's forged letterheads, the people behind the Heartland Institute, the people behind the International Climate 'Science' Coalition -- who _deliberately_ inject doubt and fear and noise into every step of the global warming regulation process.
The oily interests won't go away simply because we wish them away. We must sooner or later deal with them. Somehow.
@Duncan: You're right, of course. Sacks does play right into the hand of the right-wing loons who can't separate their ideological baggage from their analysis of the science.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean he's wrong. And amoung Sack's primary points is the need to tell the truth, nor matter how .... er... inconvenient. Oh right. There's nothing new there. Hmmm.
Why are you in such denial that there are people that disagree with you for genuine, intelligent reasons?
I'll give you the biggest reasons why liberals are getting pwn't upon right now: there exist a class of intelligent human beings who have distinct non-liberal political philosophies. Thats right, they are intelligent and not liberal. If you guys can't deal with that then the smackdown will continue until morale improves.
anon:
Constantly shouting that you're "intelligent" doesn't make it so.
Anon is correct: There is a group of "intelligent human beings who have distinct non-liberal political philosophies."
Where'd they go, and why are they hiding?
Global Warming is a reality not more or less real is you're liberal or conservative.
I'm sorry to hear that one of our number has fallen by the wayside. In any serious battle there are casualties, and not all of them are killed physically. Some are burned ethically. There's an echo of this debate in Monbiot and Kingsnorth.
One might recall those lines from the Red Flag.
One might say much the same of the struggle of humanity today to preserve the ecosystem services that are the sine qua non of dignified existence for all.
We do not know and cannot know the future current policy is authoring, exccept that unless we change it we are certain it will be catastrophic, and even if we do, it may yet be. But we have no choice but to try, bringing to bear every resource we can contrive to preserve what is valuebale in our biosphere, including us. The battle is never lost while we humans can preserve our reason and our will.
The most base of all the proposals of the filth merchant foot soldiers (FMFS) is that the battle is indeed lost and we might as well enjoy ourselves and let 'nature' take its course, adapting to its vicissitudes as we can in a kind of secular analog to Judgement Day. As the evidence continues to mount and the future looks bleaker, this appeal to fatalism might well be the most alluring of their siren songs because it appeals to apathy and inertia and to human frailty and self-doubt. It's probably the one which the FMFS, many of whom are creationists and thus believers in punishment for sin, most believe in. Even us secular folk can see a certain dignity in someone having one last drink before the ship slips under the waves.
But whether it is uttered by some sleazy filth merchant or someone well-intended but demoralised advocating asceticism as the answer, the result is the same -- it's advocacy in practice for biospheric armageddon. No significant group of humans will accept anything that can be presented as living like third worlders, and that very much includes third worlders.
The only possible policy is based on devising the means to protect the achievements of civilisation and extend them to those who lack it, while advocating a reprioritisation of consumption away from waste. We ought to focus on looking after the people we have, precisely so that large sections of the world reduce the rate at which they author new people to look after. We must dismount the tiger of growth, but carefully and equitably and soon.
There are ways to do this but indulging in defeatist fantasies about what will be sold as a return to early-holocene type existence are not amongst them. That way lies disaster.
""We have to "reject civilization as currently conceived and come up with something completely different?" No, I think we need to find a nice straitjacket for this loon and then get serious about dealing with the real problem.""
Reality doesn't give a shit what we humans think. There are far too many of us wasting far too many resources and we will fight each other when it all starts to run out. Hell, last century we fought each other over basically bugger all and killed a hundred million or more. We are screwed no matter what we do.
Stupid, greedy, nasty little monkeys.
We will NOT reduce global warming, will NOT reduce consumption of non-renewables, we will NOT learn to live in peace, we will NOT ditch religions and their stupid differences, we WILL run our of all sorts of necessary commodities needed to sustain a global industrial lifestyle.
Ten billion, twenty billion people all wanting a first world lifestyle?
Oceans in terminal decline?
Face it, we are fucked. A hundred years from now most of the world will look like Somalia....shit, much of it does already.
A hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Job,
Best summary I've read in a while. Indeed I think that if you were born after 1960 or so, your most likely cause of death will be starvation, violence, or epidemic disease.
the right-wing loons who can't separate their ideological baggage from their analysis of the science.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean he's wrong. And amoung Sack's primary points is the need to tell the truth, nor matter how .... er... inconvenient.
James, Sacks is surely right that we cannot turn either the climate or the world`s economic system on a dime, but we never could. While we can - and should - try to get a handle on GHG concentrations, we simply have to prepare to deal with what is already in the cards.
But as far as prescriptions for facing our problems, I`m afraid Sacks really has no clue about the institutional underpinnings of open-access commons, so he has no idea how we should translate shared concerns into action.
What you said about "the right-wing loons who can't separate their ideological baggage from their analysis of the science" seems equally true for many on the left.
Those that still stupidly believe we are going to engineer our way through this totally fail to acknowledge how even now, with adequate time, money and resources still available, we can't do diddly shit towards this goal. And somehow, we're going to magically pull this off as the signs of collapse are dropping bricks on our ears?
Bullshit. I'm sick to death of this fantasy lying that is yet offering a technophile solution (that doesn't exist) to a culture problem. Technology WILL NOT SAVE US THIS TIME. The roots to climate collapse are in culture and this culture is absolutely addicted to all of its bright and shiny toys ad infinitum.
There is zero chance of a "equitable solution" based upon anything of decency (or we would have ALREADY achieved this lofty goal).
It is going to be every man / nation / country / region for itself, a return to feudal wars and clashes over resources, food, water, land and energy. There is no possibility at all that "civilization" will finally make this non-violent -- or haven't you been paying attention?
Our efforts to extend our violent reach around the world has grown by leaps and bounds. This is no accident, the military is not ignorant of what's ahead, and neither are the defense industries that are designing these machines.
Right now, we're bombing Iraq and Afghanistan back into Stone Age (while we still can), in an effort to secure future energy supplies for America. This theme will continue all over the world, with Russian and China and a host of smaller countries getting in on the action. And that is exactly how we will "peacefully and equitably" face climate impacts too -- carry a big stick and simply slaughter whoever we must to ensure that our little party lasts as long as it can.
Sacks was dead right and anybody that can't see this fails to understand history. Those that believe we're going to somehow 'maintain' this culture are seriously deluded.