The Blue Marble: Hot Air: Tracing the Roots of Global Warming Denial

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Hot Air: Tracing the Roots of Global Warming Denial

If you're reading this, chances are you're well-versed in global warming, maybe even "eco-anxious." But to get inside the heads of those still in denial, there's a helpful piece by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books. Since it's an 8,000-word essay, here are some of the most provocative passages:

"It is strange and striking that climate change activists have not committed any acts of terrorism. After all, terrorism is for the individual by far the modern world’s most effective form of political action, and climate change is an issue about which people feel just as strongly as about, say, animal rights."

"Unfortunately, the climate debate came along at a time when the Republican Party was wilfully embracing anti-scientific irrationalism. One way of telling this story – adopted by Kim Stanley Robinson in his novel Forty Signs of Rain – begins with the Scientists for Johnson Campaign, run by a group of eminent scientists who were worried about Barry Goldwater’s apparent eagerness to wage nuclear war. Their campaign had a considerable impact, and when Richard Nixon got to the White House four years later he was convinced that scientists were a dangerously anti-Republican political lobby. Nixon shut down the Office of Science and Technology, and kicked the presidential science adviser out of the cabinet – an effective and still unreversed removal of science from the policy-making arena in the US."

"I suspect we're reluctant to think about it because we're worried that if we start we will have no choice but to think about nothing else."

He quotes James Lovelock: "I am old enough to notice a marked similarity between attitudes over sixty years ago towards the threat of war and those now towards the threat of global heating. Most of us think that something unpleasant may soon happen, but we are as confused as we were in 1938 over what form it will take and what to do about it. Our response so far is just like that before the Second World War, an attempt to appease. The Kyoto agreement was uncannily like that of Munich, with politicians out to show that they do respond but in reality playing for time."

He very briefly touches on the energy-industry's war on science: "The techniques in play were learned by the tobacco lobby in the course of the fights over smoking and health."

For Mother Jones coverage of global warming denial, read here, here, here, and here.

Comments

Or, for more coverage on global warming denial, click on the banner on the top of this webpage. Once there, you can read all about the Pacific Research Institutes's findings into how global warming doesn't really. I am being serious. Mother Jones is taking ad-bucks from global warming denial campaigns. Seriously. Just wait for the "An inconvenient truth? or a convenient fiction?" banner to come up...

Posted by: Ed Vertising on 04/19/07 at 8:46 PM Respond

Quick reminder:

Ecoterrorism is not environmentally conscious.

In fact, it's a bit like so-called "pro-lifers" who sets off explosives in populated areas.

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 04/20/07 at 7:07 AM Respond

Ed Vertising are you Ad Vertising? What is your point, you are just adding to the obfuscation. Sooner or later the world is going to have to deal with the destruction of our planet, it may be occurring bit by bit but it is occurring. More children are growing up with asthma. When do you porpose we start dealing with GW, or GWB. Just how long do you want to wait.
In Ohio we have had restrictions for many years due to acid rain.

Posted by: bobt on 04/20/07 at 11:28 AM Respond

bobt,

Minor correction (very minor from a human standpoint, or even a multicellular life standpoint) The planet is fine. It's our habitat that's majorly scrod. The planet actually doesn't care about the life that's along for the ride.

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 04/20/07 at 12:39 PM Respond

Hey Bobt, I think you got me a little twisted. I was pointing out that Mother Jones is taking advertising dollars from a think tank that is trying to discredit global warming science. I am someone who is very worried about global warming, and was pointing out that accepting money from such an organization seems to be a little contrary to Mother Jones' stance on the issue as shown by this article. I suggest in the future you try to read things a little more thoroughly, be a little less eager to use words like obfuscate in situations where you are just confused, and instead focus on putting question marks after sentences that appear to be questions. Good luck not looking so clueless in the future!

Posted by: Ed Vertising on 04/21/07 at 10:59 AM Respond

One is left unable to decide who are the biggest fools, conservatives on the political right, who believe that a few dollars more for Exxon/Mobile are more important than the message of peace and love for our children and their future God implanted in our conscience. Or, self-appointed 'progressives' on the political left, who pretend that we can save the planet ourselves, without help from or teaching our children about the God who created it and that somehow, our planet, conscience and everything else on our planet appeared out of nowhere from nothing as a result of random unquided processes. Maybe I'll mail the question into Jeapardy and ask Alex Trebeck, to which he may well reply, that's why Someone believes that our planet Really, Really, Really, is in jeapardy.

Posted by: Richard Aberdeen on 04/23/07 at 1:02 PM Respond

I don't think any reputable climatologist is denying global warming. The dispute is whether it is man-made or just part of the natural cycles of climate change. I wasn't here 15,000 yeras ago but these same scientists tell me there was an Ice Age.

Posted by: Jon Dunn on 04/23/07 at 1:04 PM Respond

Jon Dunn,

Few, if any, reputable climatologists are denying that global warming is human caused. The legitimate debates are about the amount of it, when the 13 tipping points will each be reached, and what local effects will be at various places on the planet.

Richard Aberdeen,

Teach your children whatever you want. I just hope you're not advocating teaching religion in public school. Religion bears a large part of the blame for our destruction of habitat on this planet. Be fruitful and multiply is a horrible thing to do. It implies we have a right to more planetary resources than any other species on the planet. We don't.

Religion has also caused additional warfare in our already war loving species, which takes a huge toll on the environment, far greater than its benefit in reducing human population. And, it doesn't even reduce the population painlessly. It does so with great suffering, especially in cases where a religious point is to be made, e.g. The Inquisition.

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 04/23/07 at 8:27 PM Respond

One more point, for any who still think there is any debate about whether global warming is human caused, please read a detailed post I typed in from The Weather Makers on a different thread.

http://www.motherjones.com/blue_marble_blog/archives/2007/04/4106_weird_weather_w_8.html

Thanks.

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 04/23/07 at 8:30 PM Respond