Very
interesting - but don’t we have to ‘deny’ a certain amount in public in order
to break the issues of CC and peak oil into bite-sized chunks? A
spoon-full of sugar and all that? Surely if we throw all of the bitter
truth into the argument we will just cause the deniers to become more
entrenched and scare the undecideds.
One thing that fascinates me
about deniers at the moment is the way that their followers tend to call
belief in AGW a religion. Surely one of the
definitions of religion is that it provides a framework for unscientific
beliefs. This being the case, those who do not accept the scientific consensus
should be made aware that they are the ones who are in a ‘religion’. Or
perhaps because of the dangers associated with not believing scientific
consensus in the case of AGW, ‘cult’ is a better
word.
Our MP (John Maples) is a
dyed-in-the-wool Climate Change denier. I’ve recently traced a couple of
his parliamentary questions. Although he claimed in a question aimed at
Milliband that NASA and the Hadley Centre’s most recent statistics point to
global cooling, I can find no evidence for this in anything that they have
published – but there is mention of it on this site: www.heartland.org . The Heartland
Inst. are the ultimate deniers – their agenda (low taxes and the free-market)
is being fuelled by Lord Christopher Monckton. They are intelligent and
articulate. One of the reasons that they scare me is that their fatuous
and contrary arguments are finding their way into discussion forums all over
the internet. And also – so it seems – into our
parliament.
James Pavitt
From:
Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of A&M
Meikle
Sent: 11 November 2009
17:21
To:
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Subject: Re: We have met the deniers, and
they are us
Thanks George - I've only scanned
it but if he's only concerned about the future impacts of the climate change
we've set in motion, I wonder how freaked out he'd be if he also understood
the whole peak energy thing - the falling energy returns from oil and coal,
the rising costs of actually getting these fossil fuels to market etc.
Energy is defined as 'the ability
to do work' - if energy is limited, work done will be limited; if energy is
expensive, work done will be expensive. It's just physics. As I've been saying
for a while now, if we'd talk about 'low-energy' instead of 'low-carbon' we
might just start making the changes that need to be made - and they are
massive. I do not believe there is time to invest in the so-called bridging
technologies of nuclear, 'clean' coal, agrofuels etc... these are just ways to
deny that we have to stop using fossil fuels (which means stop using as much
energy as they provide) and localise.
I don't know how we do this but
not knowing the answer to a problem is no reason to not talk about it &
hope it'll go away. We may have 20 years, we may have 2 - I really don't know
but we should be investing what little financial capital is left into
infrastructure which is appropriate to a low-energy future, not keep
pretending that technology will save the day - technology uses energy, it
doesn't magic it out of thin air. We have to accept that perpetual growth
cannot go on and it's us who have to start changing now - not just keep
talking about it for another 30 years (or even 5!). If we'd kept on track
since the first warnings of the 70s (Limits to Growth, OPEC oil crisis etc),
we might be finding it a whole lot easier now.
Energy is going to become
expensive and that means everything will become expensive - and that means
widening gaps between the haves & the have-nots. And the have-nots will be
pissed - they think we all have rights! Rights are given to people when
society has the surplus energy to afford those rights - otherwise, it's
survival of the richest, which is why I'm so supportive of grassroots
movements like Transition Towns. At least some ideas will be in place when the
politicians, the media & the rest of the mainstream finally wake
up.
Governments print more money to
bail out the banks but not to seriously invest in decentralising electricity
supply, ramping up local food production, insulating every home in the land,
getting some kind of public transport infrastructure up & running so
people can still get about when oil's $200 a barrel or
whatever.
The question should not be whether
to tell but how to tell. We have to stop being afraid of sounding too
radical!
----- Original Message -----
Sent:
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 3:01 PM
Subject: We have
met the deniers, and they are us
A useful contribution
to the debate of whether we tell how bad it is or not (I still say not, but
I get his point)
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-10-we-have-met-the-deniers-and-they-are-us/
We have met the deniers, and they are us
* Adam Sacks
Marc
Morano.
Richard Lindzen.
Bjørn Lomborg.
George W.
Bush.
Names of shame, ignominy, criminals against humanity, against
planet Earth itself. Agents of the lethal delays in our response to
escalating, accelerating, catastrophic global warming.
Yet, as
deniers of climate change, they’re amateurs compared to us. Us
activists, environmentalists, scientists, and certainly Copenhagen
politicians.
Even though we’re believers, not skeptics, our denial is
far more insidious and subtle. So subtle, in fact, that we’ve managed
to convince ourselves that we’re not in denial at all. Quite the
opposite. Why, the thought is too absurd even to
contemplate.
But it’s true.
We’re deniers every time we say
“80 percent by 2050,” or even “80 percent by 2020”; every time we refer to
tipping points in the future tense; every time we advocate substituting
“clean” energy for “dirty” energy; every time we buy a squiggly light bulb
or a hybrid vehicle; every time we advocate for cap-and-trade, or even a
carbon tax; every time we countenance the mention of loopy geoengineering
schemes; every time we invoke the future of our children and grandchildren
and ignore the widespread suffering from global climate disruption
today.
Every time we say these things and more, we’re promoting
denial of dire climate reality, the reality that’s spinning out of our grasp
so fast that we conduct our frenetic climate “solutions” efforts in a kind
of stupor, obsessing with parts-per-million statistics, keeping desperately
busy to ward off our own utter collapse borne of
despair.