Global Warming Denial

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In a The Boston Globe op-ed piece, an hysteric woman named Ellen Goodman makes a remarkable assertion:

“I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.”

Aside from her poor style (“I would like to say,” no, you are saying it: “Let’s just say,” well, let’s), there are several troubling things about this paragraph.

(1) Global warming is, of course, not “impossible” to deny. Many of our leading scientists do so all the time, or at least they “deny” that the earth is warming due to human activity. My colleague has done of nice job of debunking Al Gore’s fast and loose use of global warming statistics. See here.

(2) A denial is typically a religious or legal act. One denies a doctrine (say, the virgin birth of Christ) or a criminal charge. But one is skeptical towards or unconvinced of a scientific theory. By using the word denial the writer implies that the those who are skeptical about the current pop-science fad of global warming are either heretics or suspects. And who wants to be accused of either of these misdemeanors?

(3) When the hack writer needs to impress upon his reader the evils of going against his opinions, a reference to the Nazi’s is inevitable. “So you disagree with my view? Well so do the neo-Nazi’s?” “To doubt my view is like doubting the Holocaust.” Though old and hackneyed, this rhetorical thuggery has seemingly not lost any of its power to convince the unwary.

(4) The writer of this article gives us just one example of the global warming propaganda that is being pushed by various interests. The agenda behind this campaign has nothing to do with science and everything to do with political control and social engineering. We will be hearing much more about global warming in the coming months so be prepared.

Like the coming ice age that was predicted in the early 1980’s, this fad will pass. Hopefully, not too many evangelicals will be duped by it.

13 thoughts on “Global Warming Denial”

  1. Glad to see you addressing this topic. I know a person who is currently writing a paper on this topic taking the position that we needn’t worry about global warming. Unfortunately, they aren’t taking the scientific rout and, according to this person, we needn’t worry because we will be raptured soon anyway.

    P.S. I admit that reference to the Nazi’s is now the ace up everyone’s sleeve but you must admit that it can often be used legitimately and effectively.

  2. I think the point is to see a bigger picture that is emerging:

    1. Holocaust-deniers should be imprisoned.
    2. Gore-deniers are the same as holocaust-deniers.

    The deduction is obvious.

    Both premises are absurd, of course. But (1) is in place just about everywhere in the West except the USA. Our rulers cannot just put (1) into place here, because too many people still value the first amendment; so they are heating up the water more slowly. The case of Zündel, in which the man was dragged from his house and extradicted, is the first wedge. Pacifist Zündel was technically not a US citizen. But US officials still conspired to have him extradicted for the crime of running a web site. Next will be the “hate speech” legislation.

    The full-fledged gulag for thought-crimes against the regime is in full tilt in Europe and Canada, and we are protected by the thinnest barrier imaginable. The first amendment will not be repealed; it will be slowly dissolved with acid.

  3. Great article. You guys should also check out this article by Paul Watson which exposes this fraud.

    And here is the documentary which Watson refers to above. It consists interviews from experts who are varifying much of what you guys are posting and more.

  4. I don’t see Goodman or Gore arguing “So you disagree with my view? Well so do the neo-Nazis.” In fact, I’ve never seen the neo-Nazi view on global warming published, and don’t even know if there is such a thing. In fact, I could imagine a neo-Nazi being on either side of this issue. No, I think Goodman and Gore are both (though with a slightly different angle) appropriating that rhetoric a bit more subtly than that.

    What’s interesting is that Nazism (or perhaps we should say, the popular caricature of Nazism), as “a movement that stifles opposition to marshal the power of the state for a particular end” would apply par excellence to many in the global warming movement, including both Gore and Goodman.

    But we’re too polite to point that out.

  6. EAB– maybe there is a silver lining here. Gary North once observed that the moment Evangelicals jump on some idiotic humanistic bandwagon, it is a sure sign that the secularists are about to abandon it and move on.

  7. Did North provide a time table from evangelical endorsement to secular abandonment? It might not be a bad idea to put some money on this… :)

    I say around two years: long enough to pass some ridiculously tyrannical legislation, and to allow evangelical leaders get on their soapboxes. Sad to say, these modern evangelicals have a seemingly endless capacity for dogged stupidity.

    EAB

  8. Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, is a Global Warming “Denier.” He has received five death threats for his heresy. Here is his comment.

    “I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal.”

    See the full article here.

    Yes, this is the rhetoric of the Global Warming-mongers.

  9. A video from a BBC documnentary first aired on March 8th, that includes those comments from Ball is available to watch online.

  10. The ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’ documentary is excellent, but it was made for channel 4 in the UK not by the BBC.

  11. JAD’s link is the same as Josh’s (#3). I deleted the duplicate because it was causing PHP formatting problems.

    It is quite good. I recommend viewing before the censors take it down. It looks like Google has taken down the clean one but if you search it looks like there are other images up there.

    Strengths:

    1. bringing home that correlation does not entail causality
    2. indicating the extent to which money drives much of science today

    Minor cautions:

    1. There is still a bit of “trust the scientist” (just: different ones) rather than “listen to these reasons.” (However, there is much less of this than in Gore’s video, and it may be that any popular presentation must inevitably appeal to authority to some extent.)
    2. There is a bit of political agenda here too: namely, the need for the third world to “develop.” However, this need will easily be incorporated by the left — they must increase, and we must decrease, until we are all equal. Therefore, this is a shaky basis to oppose the warming movement, though it may give political capital for a while.
    3. We need to be careful with what can be inferred on (apparent) time scales that exceed on the order of thousands of years. The good news, though, is that still gives a lot of information.

  12. Snow fights in Saudi Arabia? Yes, it seems the Arabs, like the rest of us, are having a cold winter.

    Asked whether the frigid temperatures of the northern hemisphere provided any evidence against his views on global warming, Al Gore responded: “Well first off, it is a lot warmer south of the equator and, second, just think how cold Saudi Arabia would have been if global warming was not occurring.”

    [Well, maybe he did not say these things, but I wonder what he would say.]

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