Having spent more than 15 years as a climate luke-warmer (and regularly labeled a climate change denier) it is nice to see the small but growing number who agree - global warming is real but it's much ado about very little.
Matt Ridley offered his observations about the state of things in an article in the London Times a few days ago entitled “My Life as A Climate Lukewarmer.”
I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.
This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics.
I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.
Kind friends send me news almost weekly of whole blog posts devoted to nothing but analysing my intellectual and personal inadequacies, always in relation to my views on climate. Writing about climate change is a small part of my life but, to judge by some of the stuff that gets written about me, writing about me is a large part of the life of some of the more obsessive climate commentators. It’s all a bit strange...
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/01/when-climate-heretics-speak.php
Yes, the congenital problem with liberals is that they over think things, they believe that every problem requires immediate action, usually by the government. They believe that they understand every problem that we face and they know what the solution is. This surety extends to things that they truly don't understand at all.
On the other side, the congenital problem with conservatives is that they fear change and they are afraid to act. They believe that society is held together by social mores and traditions and that change threatens both. This fear to act concerning the real problems that we face, that pretty much by definition are problems where the
status quo is not working and some change is required, means that conservatives will almost always be wrong. This in turn means that conservatives must continually fabricate lies to first convince themselves and second to try to convince others that the conservative path of not acting is the correct one. This dependency on falsehoods means that conservatives are subject to a broad range of manipulation by anyone who can consistently fabricate and reliably disseminate the best lies.
In a perfect world neither conservatives or liberals would control the government, moderates would.
The climate change argument is a prime example of the failure of both sides. There is a serious problem with the carbon accumulation in the atmosphere. Unfortunately it is a problem that moves at a glacial pace. This means that one, it is not an obvious problem, year to year there aren't many changes, two, that while we do have (did have?) a long time to react the solutions will themselves take a long time before any correction will take effect and three, the corrections will adversely effect entrenched, powerful, moneyed interests.
Conservatives put their faith in the lies that the entrenched powerful moneyed interests fabricate that nothing has to be done because there is no real problem. That the scientists are spreading lies themselves to promote their own moneyed interests, which is exactly what the entrenched interests, the carbon lobby, are doing.
The liberals see the problems and they believe the scientists but they overstate the problem and have latched on to an expensive, somewhat impractical solution. Primarily because they have previously overreacted to problems with the most obvious and straight forward solution to the climate change problem, nuclear power. Problems that in turn could be solved except that the solutions once again would conflict with entrenched, powerful, moneyed interests protected from those changes by conservatives.
The problem for moderates is that they no longer are the majority where they would decide the best solutions. They, we, are a distinct minority and have no real choice but to support the side that is the least wrong. And since the conservatives are almost always wrong about obvious problems, that has to be the liberal side. Inaction is a poor choice in this and in most cases.
Besides, I would never want to be called 'sceptic.' Which I gather is a British spelling of ’skeptic,’ but is too close to 'septic' for me.
