“HUBRIS” A Hard Look At Climate Change
Preface
Imagine a movement so bent on
achieving its political objectives that it is willing to corrupt science to
meet them. Imagine governments around the globe, first adopting and then
promoting this official science for more than two generations. Imagine that they
are willing to use their regulatory power to implement a massive program of
social engineering in order to “save” the planet. Imagine the United Nations
leading this movement and insisting that a global effort is required. Imagine
the movement’s leaders believing that people around the globe must change their
eating, heating, cooling, lighting, toilet, transportation, manufacturing,
entertainment, even housing habits and reject values that are critical to their
prosperity, happiness, and welfare, confident that humans can adapt and revert
to simpler, more primitive, more local lifestyles, have fewer children, and
embrace lives presumed to be more in harmony with nature.
Imagine thousands of scientists
engaged at public expense in developing a convincing rationale for this
unprecedented project. Imagine that these scientists are willing to compromise
their integrity in pursuit of the role of a single factor that they insist
controls the most complex and chaotic earth system, a molecule – carbon dioxide
– that is literally the building block of all of life. Imagine that they
believe that by reducing its miniscule – .04 percent – presence in the
atmosphere, the planet will cool and climate will stabilize at an optimum
level, a level seen only in micro-seconds of geological time. Imagine
scientists who dismiss the work of hundreds of their colleagues and believe
that their work must be suppressed. Imagine a scientific movement dominated by
greedy grant farmers and cheered on by the media, insisting that there is no
further need to study the science and that governments need to start
implementing its preferred policy of worldwide social engineering.
Imagine that many leaders of this
movement believe that the world’s population needs to be thinned down to a billion
people within a generation or two. Imagine that some of the movement’s most
revered leaders, even as they advocate that ordinary people must curb their
consumption and live simpler lives, pursue lifestyles that consume more energy
and other commodities in a year than an ordinary family of four would need over
its lifetime. Imagine a movement whose leaders habitually dissemble and mislead
and justify this on the claimed greater good they are pursuing. Imagine
politicians, civil servants, scientists, activists, and the media flying from
one exotic location to another as they plan what must be done to coerce changes
in our lifestyles, even to the point of sacrificing human freedom and
democracy.
Most thoughtful people would
conclude that only Hollywood could come up with such a bizarre plot. A little
more thinking, however, and they might connect the dots. There is such a
movement, and it has demanded our attention for more than thirty years. It has
devoured billions of dollars in public money and has inserted its menacing
tentacles into every aspect of modern life. The UN and all its organs are the
leading force behind it, but most governments of the world support it in one
way or another. Elites, the media, and even religious leaders, have embraced
it, even though they seem poorly informed and ignore its demands while urging
others to adopt sharply reduced lifestyles.
The public face of this science,
climate science, is part of a worrying new trend: the emergence of “official”
or consensus science. In this perversion of real science, policy becomes the
goal of scientific enquiry rather than its result. Over the last thirty years
and more, public policy has focused increasingly on dealing with risks to
health, safety, and the environment. Much of that policy ostensibly relies on
scientific findings. In their decision-making, governments increasingly look to
scientists and have resorted to funding science that meets their political need
for certainty. Consensus on controversial issues is critical to governments.
Ever since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, activists have stood
ready to convince governments of all manner of risks to humanity and nature,
and scientists have obliged by reporting findings that satisfy activist
political needs. Once governments acquiesce, it is critical that scientists not
undermine their decisions with awkward new findings. Public policy is not
easily reversed. The result is a potential monster spewing out more and more
regulations, presumably making us safer and healthier and safeguarding the
environment, but also substituting social for personal responsibility, reducing
freedom and choice, and creating an ever larger, more costly, and intrusive
public footprint.
For many years it seemed that the
public agreed that there was a need to take action to control the globe’s
climate, but that support has steadily eroded as people have begun to realize
the enormity of what is being demanded, the flimsy ground on which this demand
is based, and the impact of what would need to be imposed. Public support has
declined further as sceptical scientists have pointed out more and more
problems with the underlying scientific hypothesis, as engineers have indicated
the extent to which purported energy substitutes are not up to the job, and as economists have calculated the
enormous costs and minimal benefits. Only general scientific illiteracy has
kept the project afloat.
The movement advocates
fundamental changes in lifestyles and succeeds by spreading alarm based on the
alleged adverse consequences resulting from human-caused (anthropogenic)
changes in the climate system. The movement points to the prospect of
catastrophic results if those changes are not imposed by public authorities.
Alarmism best describes this phenomenon. Critics of the movement are
characterized as sceptics because their criticism is grounded in scepticism of
various aspects of the science, the economics, and/or the politics of climate
change alarmism. Some alarmists refer to sceptics as deniers, a term used in
the pejorative sense. Sceptics do not deny climate change or the role of
greenhouse gases (GHGs). As explained further in the scientific chapters, many
sceptics consider the role of anthropogenic GHGs to be relatively minor and the
prospect of catastrophic changes to the climate to be minuscule, thus obviating
the need for anything other than appropriate adaptive measures.
This book dissects the global
warming/climate change movement in all its ramifications. It analyzes the
evolving science of climate change and places its pursuit and findings within
the broader context of modern scientific praxis, identifying its strengths and
weaknesses and areas of agreement and disagreement. Unlike the popular meme
that the science of climate change is settled, the book demonstrates that in
proper scientific practice, no issue is ever settled; scepticism is at its
heart. Climate science is no exception. The book further argues that, as with
other ambitious UN agendas, from the New International Economic Order (NIEO) of
the 1960s to sustainable development in the 1990s, embrace of these movements
by governments has a predictable life cycle, starting slowly, building
momentum, and then gradually fading as a more realistic appreciation of the
issues intrudes. While the primary movement is withering on the vine, its
effects linger for generations. Governments may never meet the primary
objectives of the global warming movement, but they have succeeded in embedding
many of its tentacles into public regulatory policies and programs. Multiple
interests have become dependent on these policies and will fight to maintain
them, including thousands of officials whose careers are wedded to them. As so
often happens in public policy, the unintended and harmful consequences become accepted
practice, despite their costs and annoyance.
The world will be a better place when
governments agree to tame this monster and refocus their energies on issues
within their competence; when religious leaders and other elites accept that
they have fallen prey to a movement whose motives are much darker and more
damaging than they realize; and when the media adopt a more balanced approach
and provide the public with the critical assessment that is often missing from
their reporting. It is time for all three to accept that the UN is pursuing a
path that can only result in a less prosperous and more divided world.
Author: Michael Hart
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