#BTColumn – The catastrophic climate cult

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY. 

by Adrian Sobers

“Unfortunately, if you consider Nature your mother, then you find she is a stepmother.” – Orthodoxy: A Modern Adaptation

In his modern adaptation of G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, Peter Northcutt writes: “The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy. Physical nature shouldn’t be made the direct object of obedience.

“It must be enjoyed, not worshipped. Stars and mountains shouldn’t be taken seriously. If they are, we end where the nature worship of Greco-Roman Paganism ended. Because the earth is kind, we can then imitate all her cruelties.”

There are few things more cruel to the soul (and society) than virtues gone wild. We are now so sophisticated, humble, and kind that we no longer know what a woman is (or believe in the multiplication tables).

Truth be told (and it rarely is), there is nothing virtuous about untethered humility or kindness, both are worse than our most terrible vices.

There is nothing noble about telling little Johnny we do not know what a woman is.

(In any event, Little Johnny will eventually discover that trying to understand them will literally turn him into a big version of his name.)

Similarly, we need to distinguish between the noble cause of creation care/stewardship, and the fundamentalist “existential threat”/CO2 emissions are intrinsically immoral narrative of the catastrophising Climate Cult (CCC). The CCC seems bent on eliminating not just any “human impact” on the environment, but humans period and proper.

Reasonable people agree the grass shouldn’t be trampled, but the CCC goes the extra mile and insists that the grass is for worshipping, not walking on. We are already at the stage Northcutt/Chesterton warned of.

“It seems we are trending more and more toward keeping our hands off of things–not to ride horses, and not to pick flowers.

“We might eventually be kept from disturbing a someone’s brain with an argument, or from disturbing the sleep of birds by even coughing.

It seems the ultimate model of human perfection would be a person sitting quite still, not daring to move for fear of disturbing a fly, nor daring to eat for fear of inconveniencing a germ.”

The authors of Minds Wide Shut give a helpful explanation of pseudoscience that is crucial to thinking clearly about climate: “It is possible to accept science superstitiously [read that again]. If one accepts it as unchallengeable and unchangeable dogma, if one takes it as a fundamentalist takes the infallible tenets of his sect, then one is false to the very spirit of science itself.”

They end, “Wince [I usually cringe] when you hear people who profess that they “believe in science,” as if it were one solid block of doctrines to be accepted uncritically and all with equal confidence.”

To sloganise: Science good, scientism bad. According to the Sophisticates, fundamentalism is a particular denomination/defect of Christianity that is usually paired with a particular political persuasion. The Sophisticates, as per usual, are full of it.

Fundamentalism is neither a unique feature of any political persuasion nor a particular point on the spectrum of the Christian faith. In fact, the fundamentalism of the CCC would make any “right-wing Christian fundamentalist” blush. As the authors of Minds Wide Shut remind us: “Not all fundamentalists are in churches.” (Read that again. Even better, apply the instructions in Deuteronomy 6:6–9 to it.)

Fix that phrase as an emblem in your mind and you will realize that fundamentalists are also in the Senate and the judiciary.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, and other members of the Politburo have called for criminalising any deviation from the catastrophising claims (“existential threat”) of the CCC. One must toe the party line and not challenge the catastrophic claims of the CCC.

The authors of Minds Wide Shut note that this fundamentalism “treats all of climate science as on an equal footing. That is not true of any science; quite the contrary, the spectrum of uncertainty is one mark of a science. […] It is one thing to deny the greenhouse effect, and quite another to point out that we need to understand feedback mechanisms better to make accurate predictions.”

They continue, “What is more, it is common to call people “denialists” who object to a particular treaty or method of reducing carbon emissions, whereas a moment’s thought will make clear that whether a given treaty will be effective, or whether an outright ban or cap-and-trade will work better, is a question that involves politics and economics, which are not themselves hard sciences and leave room for intelligent disagreement.”

Those interested in intelligent disagreement should avail themselves of Alex Epstein’s Fossil Future and Steven Koonin’s aptly titled Unsettled. Mr. Epstein, a philosopher, does a good job of explaining the underlying anti-human philosophy of the CCC. (Bad thinking is usually grounded in bad anthropology.) His work is a reminder that philosophy (not STEM) is where the best critical thinking skills are honed.

One of the main issues when it comes to climate, and a good place to start, is addressed by both authors: the fundamental flaw in what Epstein calls our knowledge system. He writes, “the mainstream knowledge system’s synthesisers, disseminators, and evaluators are not doing their jobs properly.” And that is putting it both lightly and charitably.

Remember: Not all fundamentalists are in churches. They are also in intergovernmental organisations, and parliament.

Adrian Sobers is a prolific letter writer and commentator on matters of social interest.