Gassing the Greenhouse Debate

There is a rather chilling article at Spiked about how environmentalists are attempting to shut down the global warming debate. The general approach occurs later in the article.

[I]n a report on global warming titled Warm Words: How Are We Telling the Climate Story and Can We Tell it Better?, the British think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research argued that 'the task of climate change agencies is not to persuade by rational argument but in effect to develop and nurture a new "common sense".... [We] need to work in a more shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement'. The "facts" need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.' The IPPR proposes treating us not as free-thinking citizens who should be engaged, but as consumers who should be sold these 'unspoken facts': 'Ultimately, positive climate behaviours need to be approached in the same way as marketeers approach acts of buying and consuming.... It amounts to treating climate-friendly activity as a brand that can be sold. This is, we believe, the route to mass behaviour changes.' [bold added]

What is also very disturbing is that, once again, we find -- on top of this -- that a major scientific organization is involved in left-wing advocacy by means of discouraging a debate supposedly based upon scientific conclusions!

Last month the Royal Society -- Britain's premier scientific academy founded in 1660, whose members have included some of the greatest scientists -- wrote a letter to ExxonMobil demanding that the oil giant cut off its funding to groups that have 'misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence'. It was the first time the Royal Society had ever written to a company complaining about its activities. The letter had something of a hectoring, intolerant tone: 'At our meeting in July ... you indicated that ExxonMobil would not be providing any further funding to these organisations. I would be grateful if you could let me know when ExxonMobil plans to carry out this pledge.'

Not surprisingly, some in the leftist press would say that the Royal Society is not going far enough.

One Australian columnist has proposed outlawing 'climate change denial'. 'David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial', she wrote. 'Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.' [bold added]

The article is worth reading, although it errs epistemologically on the side of subjectivism and scientifically in failing to note that a major part of the scientific global warming debate centers on whether the activities of man are causing whatever warming there might be (e.g., this recent experiment (via HBL) connecting cosmic radiation to global climate variations).

Not only is the global warming debate not over. The people most interested in ending it prematurely are working overtime to do just that.

-- CAV