Swing to Cold Foreseen
Of course, the possiblity of this swing to extreme cold was foreseen by the climatologists with their magic computer models (well, you know the deal with computer models: garbage in-garbage out. The designer has to know the right questions to ask). As soon as they changed the name of the coming crisis from "Global Warming" to "Global Climate Change," the advocates of this worldview strengthened their position. After all, opponents can and have challenged "warming" because the temperatures don't always support it. But how can anyone deny that the weather changes?
Weather Not Getting More Extreme?Global Climate Change is supposed to include visitations of radical weather: blizzards, droughts, floods, etc., all leading to an eventual planetary-wide climatic desolation zone. However, there are scientists who debate that there is any increase in the severity and frequency of the hurricanes that hit land, tornadoes, droughts, etc., and with data that supports their side. Some of them acknowledge that the temperatures may be rising, by one degree a century, but also state that the increased carbon dioxide, so demonized by the green rhetoricians, will contribute to a lush and bountiful environment.
Death, Taxes, and Climate Change
Our world climate does undergo changes, in as much as we can ascertain with our so-brief study of the phenomena. The question is, how rapidly is it occurring? And how much effect does our energy usage have? The next question is, does this justify agencies imposing limits and taxes on us, and denying us the benefit of our oil, natural gas and coal reserves? It has been said that many of the anti-capitalist activists turned from red (socialist) to green in the past decade, and they seem to be motivated not as much by concern for the environment as for positioning themselves to a political and economic advantage.
Fraud Exposed
The exposure of faulty data-gathering in East Anglia University in England, the international center for global-climate studies, has vindicated the protests of many scientists throughout the world who refused to march in lockstep with the "consensus." However, when it comes to those members of the public who embraced the spectre of Global Warming with religious fervor, a mere exposure of spurious data is not going to be enough to dampen their enthusiasm for micro-measuring their carbon footprints, seeking new ways to reduce them, and most particularly, intoning evangelically and piously to the rest of us about the necessity of "living green."
Fraud No Impediment to True Believers
Belief in Global Warming is a matter of faith, as it has been observed. It also has a great similarity to another pattern of behavior, that related to "Subversion Myths." The study of Subversion Myths is applied to the observation of some Pentecostal Christians' ongoing crusade against devil-worshippers, and often groups or companies that are not in any way associated with devil worship get identified and targeted: i.e. Proctor and Gamble, Lucent Technologies, etc., as well as various New Age groups. I suppose it includes the conspiracy theories in which white supremacists blame Jews or the Roman Catholic Church for every bad thing that ever happened in the history of mankind.
Subversion Myths: A Game That All Can Play
Subversion Myths behavior can be applied to the general public who have adopted Global Warming Fever, and it can be predicted that there will be a sizable population who will not abandon their apocalyptic adrenaline rush, but merely shift it to another bugbear.
The following information about the operation of subversion myths is taken from "Raising the Devil" by Bill Ellis, 2000, U. of Kentucky Press.
1. Like all myths, subversion myths are cultural grammars that link together bodies of information that are otherwise difficult to comprehend.
In the case of Global Warming, the myth is a scientific and climatic grammar/hypothesis that links the temperature data together and interprets it. Non-expert spokesmen, such as Al Gore, communicate the information to the public.
2. They cannot be proved: the individual facts may be verifiably true, but the pattern into which they are constructed ultimately rests on an act of faith.
The Global Warming hypothesis was stated, then the supporting data was gathered. The choice of a hypothesis is an act of faith; "we believe this is true, now we are going to prove it." Ideally, the reason that a hypothesis suggested itself in the first place was that the data already seemed to point to it to a reasonable degree.
Initally, some scientists constructed the pattern, now endorsed by a "consensus" of scientists. The individual temperatures may indeed be true, but they have been interpreted into a specific trajectory.
3. The power of subversion myths lies in the underlying pattern that they construct out of the facts, not in the accuracy of the individual facts that they link together.
Concern over the specter of the destruction of the environment and the extinction of species, (already primed by years of distress over the fate of the Rain Forest), moves the hearts (more than the minds) of the true believers. Global Warming is not entirely a new pattern, but an enlargement of the doom and gloom we have been hearing about for years.
The pattern of Global Warming has been established by the scientists, and most of their adherents don't even necessarily know the particulars, only the steps we are being urged to take to halt our meltdown.
Some of the facts have been exposed as false: the glacier in the Himalayas is not melting at a rapid rate. The data that did not support the hypothesis was discarded. The reduction in the number of stations recording temperatures in the past decade has occurred primarily in the colder climates, thus skewing the results. There are more polar bears now than there have been for forty years (5,000 in 1970; 25,000 now).
But a crisis is a crisis for a' that.
4. It follows that the disproof of any factual statement in the subversion myth does not discredit the perceived pattern. Individuals promoting a subversion myth may be exposed as frauds, or even admit that they have perpetrated a hoax. This does not, however, affect the perceived truth of the underlying myth. The number of facts linked by any subversion myth is open-ended and so will always be too great for even the most committed debunker to challenge. In any case, the pattern allows believers to revise and update the myth by adding facts from emerging events.
If the glaciers aren't melting, then there's the polar bears. If there aren't the polar bears, there's the fact that they live in ice and there's less ice in the Arctic. (However, there is evidence that polar bear populations thrived in earlier global warming periods.)
If Al Gore lives in an energy-wasting mansion and travels in an extravagant jet, he can justify it by buying carbon-offset credits. He and the fraudulent scientists are up against the military-industrial complex, and it is important that they make their case and save the planet, even if it means making up the crisis.
Already the green-adherents have failed to protest the deceptions of the scientific consensus. The situation is much akin to the liberals' lack of indignation over the spurious autobiography, including government persecution of Mayan Indians in Guatemala by Nobel Prize winning Rigoberta Menchu. She was excused because "We know that the oppression is real, and therefore her story is true in a figurative sense." Harriet Beecher Stowe was able to make quite an impact without misrepresenting "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a biography.
In another example, in 1998 or so, an online group of Christian home schooling mothers were distressed by a news article detailing the conversion of British children to the "Church of Satan" by the deliberate influence of J. K. Rowling, through her Harry Potter series. When it was revealed to them that the article was a parody from "The Onion," their response was, "But I still feel so sorry for those children."
Likewise, Julian Simon, economist, challenged Paul Ehrlich in the early 1970's to a wager: if by the late 1970's, there were not severe shortages of commodities leading to economic crises as predicted by Erhlich in his inflammatory book, "The Population Bomb," then Ehrlich owed Simon $5000, and vice versa. Simon insisted that if there were shortages, substitutions would be made. Not only did Simon win the bet, but also agricultural advances were made, and neither were there the severe famines foretold by Ehrlich. The world has experienced famines since then, but they are traceable to mismanagement or deliberate and punitive power displays, not the inability of our world to feed its people.
Japan's and Europe's populations (other than Muslim) are dying out. China and South Korea and India have severe disproportions of male to female babies due to abortion and infanticide. And yet our progressive elements persist in droning on about overpopulation.
And so, while the data collected by the scientists in on the consensus is not to be trusted, they can't be blamed for trying to shake us out of our complacency, because the threat of Global Warming is so serious. (I do feel so sorry for those children...)5. Widespread belief in a subversion myth is assumed to be proof of its essential truth. Expressed disbelief, conversely, is often taken as evidence for a hidden agenda. Such myths typically hold that subversive groups always try to hide their existence; hence, any overt attempt to show that a subversion myth is not true paradoxically demonstrates that it is true.
The consensus of so many scientists around the world is very convincing for the green believers. It does not occur to them that science is not about marching in lockstep, nor that the truth is up for a vote, but about each scientist doing his best to discover the truth. It does not bother them that consensus is about being static, not about uncovering new information or insights.
The expression of support for Global Warming by celebrities, especially the attractive and the hip, is also quite persuasive for the easily led. The jumping onboard by corporations and legislators, world leaders, while less impressive, also adds to the critical mass of evidence that proves that it must be true. The fact that these people are speaking outside their area of expertise is not important, as most religious are not theologians.
Denials of global warming is inevitably chalked up to conservatives who are too set in their ways to be willing to adjust in order to save the planet; to stooges of the military-industrial complex; to redneck complacency and affection for their hotrods and NASCAR; to Christians who refuse to recognize the supremacy of Gaia and persist in believing that they have God's assurance (in writing!) that they have conquered and subdued Nature; to those who are too self-indulgent to deny themselves the comfort of consumer items and centrally-heated homes; and so on.
6. Therefore, subversion myths can never be disproved. Attempts to debunk them only transmit them to broader audiences. Once facts are constructed into a pattern, people will continue to see that pattern. "It is not true that..." easily mutates to "It is true that..."
The green believers did not require anything tangible as evidence to begin with. The fact that carbon dioxide is already enriching plant life (don't we love the Rain Forest after all?) did not phase them when they were told that it was poisoning our future environment. They will count each plastic water bottle as the one that might break the climate camel's back. Climate change due to the sun's activities is not relevant to them. Evidence of the rise and fall of temperatures in the past two thousand years or more is not significant.
They refuse to see that their prophets might be motivated by profits. They will not acknowledge that their scientists might not be purely devoted to knowledge and saving the world. They will not see that their celebrity spokesmen may be looking for a photo opportunity, or that their activists may be infatuated with power.
7. Subversion myths change targets, however, as soon as one scapegoat is no longer seen as a cultural threat. But a myth attached to one scapegoat will easily attach itself to another, even if the two scapegoated groups have little in common.
The scientists showed great foresight in renaming the coming crisis as "Global Climate Change." If the temperatures this next summer continue to be cooler; if we continue to get colder winters; the next doom to arm ourselves against will be "The Coming Ice Age," and the corporations and agencies that are gearing up to benefit from Global Warming regulations will just hop onto the next bandwagon and continue to plan to hem us in with taxes and restrictions. The crisis may change but their solution and anticipated advantage will remain constant. The greenbelievers will continue their planet-saving tactics but adopt a new mantra.
The previous crisis was the need to Save the Rainforest. It was not a great leap from that to Save the Planet. With a hiatus in their psyches due to a lack of real religion, the green believers are seeking a cause to devote themselves to, so that they can prove to themselves that there is more to them than just their stomachs and loins. They are looking for structure and purpose, and they will follow the cause that seems to pick up speed and mass, that seems inexorable and irresistible and imminent.
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