{"id":16294,"date":"2012-08-01T08:41:01","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T13:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16294"},"modified":"2012-08-01T08:41:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-01T13:41:01","slug":"climate-science-as-religion-complete-with-confession-and-absolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/08\/01\/climate-science-as-religion-complete-with-confession-and-absolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate science as religion, complete with confession and absolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

In sp!ked<\/em>, Rob Lyons<\/a> explains why the “climate skeptic” credentials of Professor Richard A Muller don’t quite add up, and helpfully provides a guide to the larger skeptic community:<\/p>\n

There has been much rejoicing among eco-commentators. Leo Hickman in the Guardian<\/em> declared<\/a>: \u2018So, that\u2019s it then. The climate wars are over. Climate sceptics have accepted the main tenets of climate science — that the world is warming and that humans are largely to blame — and we can all now get on to debating the real issue at hand: what, if anything, do we do about it?\u2019 However, Hickman had to add \u2018If only\u2019. Apparently, while Muller is the right kind of sceptic, some pesky critics just won\u2019t accept the \u2018facts\u2019. \u2018The power of his findings lay in the journey he has undertaken to arrive at his conclusions\u2019, suggests Hickman, but clearly some people don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n

It sounds like a powerful argument: someone who has publicly taken a position for a few years, before putting up his hands and effectively saying: \u2018You know what? I was wrong, and my fellow travellers were wrong, and we should just fall into line with the mainstream view.\u2019 The conversion analogy is a good one. Here, instead of the unbeliever falling at the preacher\u2019s feet and accepting Jesus into their lives, no longer able to resist the power of the Lord, we have the sceptic allowing the IPCC to drive out the devil of climate-change denial from within his soul.<\/p>\n

Except, like many a modern faith healer\u2019s performance, there\u2019s something dodgy about this widespread interpretation. For starters, Muller was hardly what you would call a climate-change sceptic. By and large, he has been very accepting of the IPCC\u2019s view of the problem of climate change. His claim to being a sceptic seems to relate to his acceptance that the famous \u2018hockey stick\u2019 graph<\/a>, which was the centrepiece of the IPCC\u2019s 2001 report and suggested that current temperatures are unprecedented, was simply the product of some sloppy science.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In spite of the media attempts to blacken the reputations of everyone who fails to fall into line with the IPCC’s orthodoxy, there are many different strains of disagreement with the official line:<\/p>\n

But to a certain extent, this is all a false debate. There is no either\/or. The leading climate sceptics all accept that humans have had some influence on the world\u2019s climate. The argument is about how much human influence there is and what should be done about it.<\/p>\n

Alarmists would argue that greenhouse-gas emissions are threatening to cook the planet and ultimately threaten humanity\u2019s survival. At the very least, they see devastating destruction arising from global warming. For them, the only answer is the rapid decarbonisation of the world economy. Since the world is currently reliant on carbon-based fuels, this could mean an end to the drive for economic growth and the reorganisation of the economy and global politics. Anyone who disagrees is a \u2018denier\u2019. Some alarmists seriously suggest that debate should end now and anyone who continues to question the \u2018consensus\u2019 should be punished.<\/p>\n

A few individuals aside, most climate sceptics think the world is moderately warmer than before, that humans have had some effect, but that most of the variation is natural and not particularly worrisome. Another band of sceptics — those who might be called \u2018policy sceptics\u2019, like Bjorn Lomborg and Roger Pielke Jr — broadly accept the IPCC\u2019s view of temperature change and its causes. However, they think that the answer lies in devoting resources to technological development in the short term rather than a costly and probably futile attempt to decarbonise the world overnight. But even such policy disagreement is too much for the alarmists, who regularly pillory Lomborg in particular, yet it gets dressed up as \u2018scientific fact\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In sp!ked, Rob Lyons explains why the “climate skeptic” credentials of Professor Richard A Muller don’t quite add up, and helpfully provides a guide to the larger skeptic community: There has been much rejoicing among eco-commentators. Leo Hickman in the Guardian declared: \u2018So, that\u2019s it then. The climate wars are over. Climate sceptics have accepted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,28,16],"tags":[245,240,810],"class_list":["post-16294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-media","category-science","tag-climatechange","tag-globalwarming","tag-skepticism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4eO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16295,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16294\/revisions\/16295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}