Global Warming Fanatics: This Generation’s Flat-Earthers
Image by Scott Spiegel via Flickr
No longer content to compare global warming skeptics to mere Holocaust deniers, Al Gore recently implied that climate doubters will someday be seen as this generation’s Klansmen.
In an interview with the Climate Reality Project, Gore declared that the civil rights and climate change movements are similar in that both harbor a profound moral component. (Honestly, Gore’s new comparison lacks the punch of “Today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin.”)
The bloated old walrus offered his awestruck, rosy-cheeked interviewer a two-pronged strategy that global warming believers should adapt from anti-racism protestors to “win the conversation.” First, global warming fanatics should persuade non-believers through facts; second, they should confront “inappropriate” statements by expressing loud disapproval just as if they were racial slurs.
I could be wrong, but I think in order to “win the conversation,” you have to actually have a conversation first, at least one in which both sides are allowed to speak. Yet the Goracle is notoriously reluctant to accept invitations to debate climate change skeptics such as brilliant mathematician and former Margaret Thatcher advisor Christopher Monckton—probably because he knows Monckton has enough logic and facts at his disposal to mop the floor with Gore.
In his Climate Reality Project interview, Gore claims that it is no more difficult for warming adherents to “win the conversation” on global warming than it was for pro-equality Southerners to “win the conversation” on racism. In other words, put Gore on record as stating that it’s no more accepted fact that people should be judged by the content of their character than it is that the folks who overestimated the impact of Hurricane Irene on New York City by an order of magnitude can tell us how many degrees warmer the planet will be in 100 years.
Gore also chides Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry for claiming that the world’s scientists are in on a vast conspiracy to profit from preventive actions to halt climate change. In fact, Perry said no such thing. What Perry said is that climate change has become a politicized issue—which it has—and that key researchers have been caught shielding data from the public—which they have. Perry also noted that scientists have been stepping forward en masse to express skepticism about climate change science—which is true.
It is also true that a prevailing orthodoxy has set in regarding climate change, such that skepticism is discouraged, and only research expected to confirm the outlines of preordained alarmist conclusions is deemed fundable by government agencies and even most private foundations. It’s unlikely that scientists the world over think as objectively about climate change as they would if there were equally large gobs of money for research opposing the notion of manmade global warming.
But back to Gore’s ludicrous race-climate comparison: Since he brought it up, it’s worth noting that most climate change skeptics these days are Republicans. In contrast, the most recalcitrant racists from the 1950s and 1960s were Southern Democrats—like Gore’s father, Al Gore Sr., who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Bull Connor, whom Gore cites for his brutal act of turning fire hoses on protestors. So comparing Republicans to civil rights opponents may not be Gore’s best rhetorical move.
Meanwhile, noted climatologist Paul Krugman advances the skeptic-bashing on another front by sneering that Republicans are “anti-science,” “anti-knowledge,” and “anti-intellectualism.”
Let’s see: What does the science tell us about climate change? For one thing, it tells us that there has been no statistically significant rise in global temperature over the last 16 years, even though CO2 emissions have increased. It tells us that there has even been evidence of global cooling over the last 11 years.
The science tells us that 9 out the past 11 winters have delivered above-average snowfall and below-average temperatures to North America, Europe, and Asia.
The science tells us that H20, not CO2, is by far the biggest greenhouse gas—though I don’t recall Democratic politicians’ calling for a ban on sprinklers watering the neatly manicured lawns at their beachfront resorts.
If all of this were really about the science, then climate “scientists” would be aggressively working to falsify accepted hypotheses, challenge conventional knowledge, and test the rigor of their models—not toadying up to politicized government funding agencies that hand out taxpayer-funded research money like candy.
Far from resembling Gore’s smear of narrow-minded segregationists, climate change skeptics have demonstrated abundant open-mindedness and courage in their willingness to confront institutionalized wrongheadedness and public acceptance of falsehoods. These qualities suggest that, if right, global warming skeptics will someday be seen as this generation’s moral heroes.
Related articles
- Rick Perry Picks Up Endorsement of Sen. Jim Inhofe, Climate Change Skeptic – ABC News (news.google.com)
- Al Gore and the silencing of debate (usapartisan.com)
- Al Gore: People Should Stand Up To Climate Skeptics The Way We Stood Up To Racists (huffingtonpost.com)
- IBD: Perry vs. Gore (junkscience.com)
- Al Gore Compares Climate Change Skeptics To Civil Rights Era Racists (businessinsider.com)
Scott Spiegel
Interesting article, but it attacks a phantom foe. Reputable scientists are warning that human pollution produces chemicals and compounds which, in sufficient quantities, can cause climate change. The scientific community is cautioning that humans MAY cause climate change, not that we actually are.
By the same token, there is little dispute that Earth’s climate is indeed getting warmer — an objective fact confirmed through ice core samples, sediment deposits, fossilized vegetation, etc. The scientific community has merely suggested that humans MAY be contributing to it, but that is far from being proven and any ethical environmentalist will readily admit that no direct link has been established.
My point is, and always has been, that since the only factor we can control is the potential human contribution to climate change, then let’s control it. We are not doing any harm by taking a cautious approach. Also, most of the pollution that potentially causes climate change (coal burning, oil refining, etc.) is something we don’t want in our backyards anyway, so what’s the big deal in trying to reduce or eliminate it?
Respectfully, my criticism of this article, and it should be taken as constructive, is a lack of citing to verifiable sources. Citing to your own prior articles does not provide validity to your arguments. Nor does citing to other websites which apparently do not cite to any verifiable sources themselves. Surely, some university has done some research on this issue and published an article or some other objective sources are out there.
Also, beware of using false support for your argument. Any meteorologist will tell you that global warming does not mean that the planet will get warmer universally. Warming starts off by affecting weather patterns. The change in patterns can lead to several years of colder winters as the prevailing winds change and bring down more polar air than normal because previous weather patterns never took the prevailing winds that far north (or south, as the case may be). The fact that our recent winters have been colder and had more snow than usual only proves one thing: our recent winters have been colder and had more snow than usual.
For myself, I flatly reject any argument that scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to fool the world into thinking that man is causing global warming. To start, conspiracy theories are the last bastion of the weak-minded. Second, have you ever seen scientists at a convention? You can’t get them to agree on what should be offered on the muffin table, you’ll never get them to agree to conduct a conspiracy.
1