Anthropocentric Global Alarmism, Part II

Archimedes ^† said, "Give me a lever long enough and a proper fulcrum, and I shall move the Earth." Liberals today see world government as the leverage to institute their ill-considered policies. They have found their fulcrum in the issue of Global Warming.

By asserting that mankind is endangering the climate, liberals are using time-worn techniques of psychological manipulation in an attempt to gain control over economics, institute a measure of world government, and show a triumph of science over theology. Blaming capitalism for all the world's ills as they do, in Global Warming they see a chance to lay at its feet the price, and exact tribute for their cause. They insist that the cures for Global Warming require subverting both the nation and prosperity before the needs of "the planet". And since traditional religions did not predict climate changes, and don't offer solace for this problem, Global Warming is an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of the atheistic world view.

Whether we call it Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW), Anthropocentric Climate Change, or whatever (ACCOW), or something else, the concept is both simple, and bizarre. The path by which the idea of AGW has arrived at mainstream acceptance is the usual one: a weird theory is proposed, which masks incredible complexity with apparent simplicity, along with the alleged potential for disaster.

So by repeatedly having a cow over having ACCOW, liberals are using the technique of the Big Lie: repeated assertions take on the aura of truth.

In Part I of this series, I touched on the resistance to change as it relates to having ACCOW.
But the ACCOW controversy is really dominated by the fear of looking stupid. Not wanting to be wrong, scientists in government and academia would follow the consensus opinion off a cliff, and figuratively speaking, many have. Having done so, it now will be very difficult psychologically for them to reject the "consensus" opinion.

Another aspect of ACCOW which ropes people in is the principle that

Experts in the psychology of human error have long been aware that even highly trained experts are easily misled when they rely on personal experience and informal decision rules to infer the causes of complex events.

Humans tend to think that what they themselves personally experience generalizes to all people, all places, and for all time. While often accurate, hasty generalizations can lead to ruinous results.

Liberals tend to be more urban, and in cities every passing vehicle and belching smokestack shows to the city-dweller a clear link between heat and pollution. This makes them more willing to accept the notion that CO2, which makes up a tiny fraction of greenhouse gases and an even tinier proportion of the atmosphere, can have anything like the massive effect that proponents of having ACCOW suggest.

This all follows a pattern, that of the boy crying wolf. Since the 1970s, there has been a procession of looming disasters about to doom the planet. Liberals now talk about climate change, and condemn as in denial anyone who is less than apoplectic about having ACCOW.

Liberals are understandably excited about the opportunity to change society, and at the prospect that in Global Warming we can seem man despoiling the commons. It's the perfect chance to do what the threat of the previous looming disasters about to doom the planet could not. Each of the following was to be the beginning of the end of mankind, and possibly all life on Earth:

• Overpopulation
  It is odd that the Earth has managed to support its burgeoning population, given the hysteria that led to the attempted extermination of the 'lower races', and the current worldwide practice of prenatal infanticide. But perhaps these outcomes have done their grisly job.
  
  
• Pesticides
  Let's sing it, shall we?
  

  Hey farmer, farmer
  Put away that DDT now
  Give me spots on my apples
  But LEAVE me the birds and the bees
  Please!

  It is a terrible irony that the pesticides needed to replace DDT have done more damage to the birds and the bees than DDT would have, while also allowing millions of deaths due to malaria that DDT use may well have prevented. While resistance, effectiveness, and side effects have to be weighed, the hype surrounding DDT's alleged dangers artificially increased the number of people who died from malaria, as well as needlessly complicating agricultural production.
  
  
• Nuclear Winter
  I must have missed it. Of course, now that only Israel is being threatened, liberals seem unconcerned by nuclear war.
  
  
• Ozone depletion
  There's a hole, there's not a hole. Go figure.
  
  
• Deforestation
  Goodness me, people figured out that if they want to chop down their trees, they'd better get busy growing them. And when the 'old growth' trees are all gone, we'll just have to wait for more, or learn to to do without. Hardly seems worth it to do without now so we don't have to do without later.
  

But those problems either didn't materialize or weren't anything like the disaster we were told they would be. It seems likely that, while there will doubtless be changes coming if the Earth gets warmer, it's hardly worth having ACCOW over it.

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 ^† This is in paraphrase of Archimedes, who actually spoke Greek, not English. At least, that's what I'm told; I wasn't there.

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