Writer Charlie Smith names names of canadian columnists and commentators who will be remembered, if they are at all, as useful idiots of the denial industry in the most catastrophic con of all time.
I’ve read numerous books about climate change by such authors as Ross Gelbspan, Tim Flannery, Jeremy Leggett, Andrew Weaver, David Suzuki, Gwynne Dyer, Christian Parenti, James Hansen, and even Jeffrey Simpson (along with Marc Jaccard and Nic Rivers).
Long ago, I came to the conclusion that only a moron would deny that carbon-dioxide emissions caused by human activity are contributing to climate change.
But people like Wente, Adler, Ferry, and Murphy are clearly not morons, even though I disagree with them. They’re high-functioning people who’ve done remarkably well in life. They’re articulate and, on occasion, quite amusing commentators.
I’m perplexed why they would so steadfastly deny the reality of human-induced climate change in the face of disappearing glaciers, disappearing Arctic ice, huge droughts between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, and massive fires in Greece, Australia, and Spain. This is not to mention the years of careful scientific work that has made the case that we’re creating a potential catastrophe.
It’s easy to suggest that they’re bought off by the oil industry. I used to think that Murphy, for instance, might have arrived at his views because it generated hefty speaking fees from greenhouse-gas emitting industries.
But I was convinced otherwise after recently seeing Murphy taking obvious glee on CBC at poking a stick at Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is concerned about Canada’s dreadful record. Murphy truly believes what he’s saying. And I think Wente, Ferry, and Adler are in the same camp.
The only explanation I can come up with is psychological. They’re so full of hubris—so full of egotism—that they’re incapable of admitting they’re wrong. To do so would be to acknowledge their own imperfection.
All this points to a troubling degree of narcissism within the Canadian media.
One day, I’m sure, they’ll be held up as complete fools by subsequent generations. They’re the Neville Chamberlains of our time.
The former British prime minister tricked himself into thinking that he could negotiate with Hitler. And many Canadian commentators have deluded themselves into disbelieving something as obvious as human-induced climate change.
Maybe we should pity them because I have a hunch that history isn’t going to be kind.
Psychobabble and dubious historical references …nice! Next it’ll be psychiatric diagnoses and Genghis Khan, or Alzheimer’s and Nero. Keep them coming!
It’s not my imagination. You’re becoming even more hysterical and incoherent.
Denial will do that in the face of growing reality.
I love it. I knew this would bring em out!!
Humans are naturally irrational and are only able to do simple math (I owned 20 sheep, but there were births last night and now own 23). With training, people can understand the difference between linear an exponential math, but many people forget that there is a huge difference between adding 3 sheep and adding 3 zeroes. Most of us have never seen a million dollars (6 zeros) but humanity is sitting at 7 billion (9 zeros) and there comes a point when some people can only think about the zeroes rather than the amount. True climate deniers (not the ones working for “big oil”) still cannot wrap their tiny minds around the fact that 7 billion people could affect Earth’s climate. They also forget that humanity quintupled (x5) in only 111 years from 1.5 billion (in 1900) to 7 billion (in 2011) and now continues to grow at a rate of 1 billion every 12 years which now sounds like linear growth, but it is still growth. We should all be very worried.
There’s a book in you, neilriek. Start here, then contact Grist 😎
Dyscalculia is a diagnosis applied to people who cannot understand “simple” arithmetic. The example I gave is closer to explaining semi-advanced math to people who (without a good science education) are only one step away from Shepard folk. But here is a quote from Carl Sagan who was much more succinct than I could ever hope to be:
“We have designed a civilization based on science and technology and at the same time have arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster. We may for a while get away with this mix of ignorance and power but sooner or later it is bound to blow up in our face.”
I think about statements like this whenever I hear a climate-denier say “don’t worry, be happy”.
Sagan also had a few things to say about big numbers. “Billion” used to be considered a suffix of “astronomical” proportion. He seemed to miss the fact that it was also used to represent the size of the human population! If all 7 billion of us lived a natural life, Earth could probably handle us. It is a different story when all people want to live like those in the industrial west.
I don’t think the term Hubris is an example of psychobabble. It’s far too ancient for that.
The inability to shift or even qualify one’s opinion in the face of overwhelming evidence is very likely prompted by pride in one form or another. Many ‘skeptics’, of course, have changed their position, but it’s significant the least qualified have been the most reluctant to change – which may tell us something about why they were ‘skeptical’ to begin with. It never did have anything very much to do with science.
You guys are embracing “remote psychology” of strangers, not me. Palm reading can’t be far.
I see omnologos is in his usual incoherent form. Pity.
Regardless, it is interesting that I found this quote yesterday on the subject of Chamberlain and the appeasers:
“So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent…. Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger…. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now….”
– Winston Churchill, November 12, 1936, House of Commons
As you can imagine, this gave me a momentary pause to reflect that things have not progressed all that much in the last 75 years.
Larry Oliver
a/k/a @tweetingdonal
Larry – please return to your senses. I’m resolute we should reduce obviously harmful emissions (black soot) and adapt, adapt, adapt to current and future climates. I’m also totally against wasting money in Maginot-like initiatives such as government sponsored decarbonization (it’s bound to happen but only at its own pace). Finally I won’t stand idle as freedom hating would-be world saviors try to use fear to remake society to their own sad liking. You should reserve “impotent” to seventeen years of no progress at COP talks.
Suddenly the subject’s changed– ‘omnologos’ starts out claiming that trying to understand what’s wrong with Wente et al. is somehow wrongheaded or even absurd– but I don’t see straight up denial here– just slippery avoidance.
On the new topic just started by O, there’s a lot we can do to get decarbonization under way, and speed it up (despite years of denial that it was even possible from the industry and from energy economists, advanced economies have already reduced their energy per unit GDP substantially). At current energy prices a lot of these investments pay even without factoring in the externalities of climate impacts and ocean acidification.
Better insulation, more efficient vehicles, ending subsidies to fossil fuel companies, providing support to greener energy sources (justifiable because of the reduction in costs related to pollution and climate change)– all these measures are long overdue, economically efficient, and determinedly opposed by oil, coal and other vested interests. For decades the cheapest barrel of oil has been the barrel of oil saved by greater efficiency– and with greater efficiency in energy use, the costs of shifting our infrastructure from fossil fuels to sustainable sources of energy drop dramatically.
You want the ‘freedom’ to trash the world and ignore the price you’re imposing on our children? And you’re smug and arrogant and slippery about it to boot? I’m not impressed.
Bryson Brown
Heartland Institute, American Enterprise, Competitive Enterprise, CATO, all the denialist “think” tanks, all of them started out, and continue to, fighting for the “freedom” of tobacco addicts to blow smoke in your baby’s face.
It’s who they are. its what they are.