Tag: climate and religion

In March 2003, I wrote:

…much of the propoganda on WMD’s has been misleading or dishonest. Sure, Iraq is months away from making nuclear weapons (if someone else gives them fissionable material). The same goes for the Sons of Glendwyr — getting fissionable material is the only difficult bit.

The government had tried to make us think Iraq had a nuclear weapons programme by telling us, effectively, that it didn’t. That was much more revealing than an actual lie, even an obvious lie, because it proved that the government knew the facts and was spinning them in one direction.

Now some climate sceptics have been claiming that the world has not got any warmer for the last ten years. I actually didn’t think that was true: from what I saw there was a confusion between US and global temperatures. I have not repeated the claim here because I didn’t think it was true.

But the World Meteorological Organisation apparently published a statement that begins:

GENEVA, 4 April 2008 (WMO) – The long-term upward trend of global warming, mostly driven by greenhouse gas emissions, is continuing. Global temperatures in 2008 are expected to be above the long-term average. The decade from 1998 to 2007 has been the warmest on record, and the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C since the beginning of the 20th Century.

According to the Deltoid blog I got this from, they put out the statement “to correct the erroneous claims in the media that global warming had stopped”

The thing about the statement is that every factual claim is entirely consistent with the claim that global temperatures have not risen for ten years.

Since they unquestionably rose before 1998, they obviously remain above the long-term average, and likewise the last decade is the warmest on record. Temperatures have obviously risen over the last century. The rest of the WMO statement, (at least, the rest of what was quoted by Deltoid) also fails to contradict the proposition that temperatures have not risen since 1998.

Now, as facts go, it’s a minor one. It’s perfectly true that ten years is not long enough to draw any firm conclusions from. But like the 2003 Iraq claims, the fact of the spin is much more significant to me than what I can actually know for sure. I didn’t know what WMDs Iraq might have, but I knew for certain that the government was trying to make it seem like they had more than was actually the case. I don’t know how strong the evidence for AGW is, but I now know as an absolute certainty that the WMO is trying to make the evidence appear stronger than it is, in both cases not because the authorities are lying, but because they are spinning.

My initial theme here was the difference between Europe and America. One of the most obvious is the importance of religion in America. Various explanations have been put forward for this difference, but mostly they do not account for the discrepancy.

I used to claim that everyone in England who seriously believed in God ran away to America to get away from the Tudors, but that doesn’t explain the rest of Europe.

I have heard it suggested that the welfare state in Europe has displaced religion, but that is too recent to account for a difference in religiosity that is much more longstanding.

I am inclined to a much simpler explanation: religions in America are more successful because they are privatised by the constitution. While the history of religion in Europe is one of religions fighting for state power with which to eliminate the competition, American churches have concentrated their efforts on appealing to the population.

If the US Constitution included an amendment that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of education, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, then I believe the US would have the most successful schools in the world to go with the most successful churches in the world.

What’s the problem with Blair becoming a Catholic?

Some people have problems with Catholicism, either with the church policies, or with doctrinal questions, or with the notion of a political leader of one country being under the authority of a religious leader in another. But only a few people; not enough to matter.

Some people have problems with religion itself. But only a few people, indeed I suspect a majority of British politicians would confess one denomination or another.

Some people have problems with the fact that Blair, as Prime Minister, apparently had some kind of informal attachment to the Catholic Church, without making it public or official. Now we are getting closer to the issue, but by political standards of hypocrisy, this is still very minor stuff.

The real problem for the British is that to take religion so seriously that one would change denomination is just icky. It’s OK to have a religion, but, as with a sausage, one shouldn’t care or take too much notice of what’s in it. That makes people uncomfortable. Part of that is a reasoned objection to the sort of behaviour that might result from taking religion seriously, but I think mostly it’s just that worrying about the details of religion is in bad taste.

Even atheism is frowned on for the same reason. I previously held that one who does not positively believe in some specific idea of God should be considered an atheist, since they are not a theist. But I was wrong. The British distrust declared atheists, because atheists take religion too seriously. It’s like being vegan, only worse — there are, arguably, immediate practical justifications for veganism, but there is no practical justification for involving oneself in the details of religion to the extent necessary to call oneself an atheist. It is much more decent to just go along with whatever public aspects of religion fit one’s social activities, while utterly ignoring any inner content, like everyone else does.

I’ve been moving in this direction a long time, but I think now I better understand why. I will in future be vaguely non-committal about my religion, because anything else shows poor taste.

I’m really worried about the possibility I’m deluding myself about climate. I see something like this, and I’m so certain that it’s basically correct.

I don’t think there’s another case of new science shooting so rapidly into politics that scientific conventions have huge political relevance. Nor do we have new research being shoved into school syllabuses within two or three years.

This immature science is being accelerated in this unprecedented way for political reasons, and I feel justified in opposing it for political reasons.

On top of that, there’s the group effects. Like Pauline Kael allegedly not knowing anyone who voted for Nixon, I don’t know anyone who believes the full orthodox media view of climate change. That’s not entirely true, but the exceptions are people who I wouldn’t believe if they told me it was raining, never mind what the weather will be in 50 years.

I tell myself that for every one of these people, there are several equally qualified who disagree; I know that there is dishonesty on the sceptic side as well as the alarmist side, I am fully aware of my own political bias, and yet I’m still not even able to take seriously the proposition that the argument is settled.

I reckon I’m in the top 1% for intelligence, and I certainly know a thing or two about computer modelling, but what possible basis can I have for the conviction that I am right and a whole lot of experts are wrong? I don’t even have a degree in a physical science.

At least this isn’t some metaphysical question. The issue is likely to be resolved in my lifetime, one way or the other. I’m looking forward to it.

Scott Adams has a very interesting piece on his blog, describing Bjorn Lomberg’s appearance on Bill Maher’s TV show.

The Danish economist’s argument doesn’t fall into the established views about global warming. He wasn’t denying it is happening, or denying humans are a major cause. But he also wasn’t saying we should drive hybrid cars, since he thinks it won’t be enough to help. He thinks we need to make solar (or other alternatives) more economical. That’s the magic bullet. His views don’t map to either popular camp on this issue, and it created a fascinating cognitive dissonance in Bill Maher (a fan of hybrid cars) and his panelists.

Adams went on:

“It looks to me like a classic case of cognitive dissonance . They literally couldn’t recognize that the economist was on their side because he suggested considering both the positive and negative effects of global warming.”

But the economist certainly was not on their side. For Maher and the others, the important thing is that a policy of austerity be introduced, because they consider it morally right. Global Warming is just the excuse. Global Warming is true because it justifies austerity. If Lomberg or anyone disagrees with austerity he is not on their side, whatever he says about the climate. By arguing against austerity, he is removing the reason for Global Warming to be considered true, and therefore he is anti-Global-Warming. Denier! Burn Him!

Adams is imagining a world where observations lead to judgments about facts, which lead to conclusions about policy. That is alien to politicians, and to Maher. For them, policies lead to search for observations which can be connected to possible facts that justify the policy.

I would like to describe myself as in the Adams camp, but in honesty, as I’ve admitted previously, I can’t. The political vision of Gore, Maher and the others is so terrifying to me that it is surely colouring my assessment of the facts concerning climate. All I can do is put up the arguments as I see them, admit my bias, and make sure I don’t hide from evidence that contradicts my position. I’ve yet to see any evidence that I’ve felt I need to hide from.

This is my most detailed piece on climate. This is all of them.

I asked yesterday whether those who believed that concerted effort on an international scale was necessary to prevent climate catastrophe were really willing to countenance what I consider the only realistic approach to achieving that — a war of global conquest by the US.

It was a trick question. The fact is that almost nobody really believes in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) sufficiently to support policies they would otherwise have opposed. I am quite sure that if I miraculously convinced the “media liberals” that the neoconservative world empire was a prerequisite for significant CO2 reduction, they would decide to take their chances with the weather. The “sacrifices” they are advocating are all things they would advocate whatever the weather.

Among the vast majority of people who don’t believe in AGW enough to do anything about it are everybody making investments. Office towers two miles upstream of the Thames Barrier wouldn’t be worth a billion pounds each if investors thought the Isle of Dogs was going to be part of the sea. The policies which global warming alarmism is justifying are causing huge movements of capital; the threat of global warming itself — nothing.

That’s because there’s one thing that people are willing to do about AGW: vote for something pointless. Voting is the cheapest of responses. (Of course, if government actually does something, there may be trouble, but I’m wandering from the point).

Actually, perhaps that is the point. AGW is a good issue for politicians, not because voters agree with the policies, but because it makes the politician look like a good person. The ideal course of action for a politician is to use the issue to show how concerned they are about everyone, do enough about it to show they are genuine, but not actually achieve any policy change that causes anyone the slightest inconvenience, like raising fuel taxes or building wind turbines. As soon as anyone is asked to make real sacrifices (rather than the “sacrifice” of having the policies they’ve always wanted implemented), their estimate of the seriousness of AGW goes sharply down. Looked at that way, the lack of real meaningful action on AGW is not a bug, it’s a feature.

From my January 2006 entry:

… democracy really is a protection as well as a threat. On the really important issues, the people are generally better informed than on issues that have little relevance to them, and I trust them more than I trust the Establishment. If Britain was ever in danger of falling into Communism since 1945, and it may have been, the danger came from the establishment, and our best protection was the proletariat.

I think this is borne out by the story today that the public has not been convinced by Global Warming alarmists:

The public believes the effects of global warming on the climate are not as bad as politicians and scientists claim, a poll has suggested.

The Ipsos Mori poll of 2,032 adults – interviewed between 14 and 20 June – found 56% believed scientists were still questioning climate change. There was a feeling the problem was exaggerated to make money, it found.They may not be able to evaluate the science, but they know propaganda when they see it. It’s a lot easier to see that the issue is being deliberately exaggerated than to predict the future climate. And because significant policies are being put forward on the basis of the claims, the public is giving them more attention than they do “academic” issues like evolution.

Not that I would deny that the public is capable of getting important questions seriously wrong – see Caplan etc. I think the lesson is that the public is better at estimating honesty and sincerity than science or economics, and therefore when seeking to influence the public, modesty is good and exaggeration fatal.