Climate Change As Religious Dogma

Originally published at The Roots Of Liberty, February, 2015.

Earlier today, an internet friend of an internet friend posted this comment:

So they have a truth which is unalterable, it’s beneath them to debate with outsiders, they have texts full of dire prophecies I mean predictions that never seem to come true. They sell indulgences, err ‘carbon credits’ to offset one’s past transgressions. And anyone who challenges them is branded a heretic aka ‘denier’ with calls for such people to be imprisoned.

It’s a succinct distillation of the alarmist side of the global warming debate. The true believers offer to the world a dogmatic presentation that includes human sin, human redemption through penance and suffering of a particular sort, the promise of a better future if today’s pleasures and comforts are foresworn, prophets, heretics, apostates, a priest class, different rules for the masses than for the elite, the aforementioned indulgences, widespread belief, and most importantly, “facts” and history that are utterly immune to question, challenge or refutation.

In other words, it has all the makings of a good, durable religion. So, let’s give it a religious name. Let’s call it warmism.

Now, let’s look at the last point of the second paragraph. Specifically, let’s consider how warmism deviates from proper scientific rigor and rational analysis by considering the ubiquity of logical fallacies used by its devotees.

• Ad Hominem: “Denier” is a common and harsh challenge, aimed even at those who believe that AGW is real but not of sufficient magnitude to warrant the prescribed action. It’s intended to raise the specter of “Holocaust denier” and discredit the person rather than his arguments.

• Argument From Authority: Anyone who doesn’t believe in warmism has no credibility because climate scientists (the aforementioned priest class) says he doesn’t.

• Appeal To Authority: A variant on the previous fallacy, wherein smart, educated and pedigreed people who are warmists are trotted out as proof that warmism is real.

• Asserting Expertise: “I’m a priest/scientist/climatologist, I’ve devoted my life to warmism, I know more than you do.” Herein we will also find Argument by Prestigious Jargon and Argument by Gibberish, wherein a lot of fancy words and long arguments will be used to demonstrate that warmism has smart people who believe in it.

• Appeal to Widespread Belief: There’s an endlessly repeated statistic out there – that 97% of scientists believe AGW is real. Apart from the repeated refutations of that figure and apart from the false correlation between believing it’s real and agreeing that the prescribed solution is necessary, is the simple fact that it doesn’t matter if 97% of people believe something if that something is wrong.

• Argument Ad Nauseam: Widespread and constant repetition of the 97% statistic proves its validity, and by extension the truth of warmism.

• Argument From Adverse Consequences: The potential consequences are so catastrophic that we dare not risk inaction. This one traps even rational, well-meaning people, who don’t factor in the consequences of the prescribed action. This latter has a bit of Nirvana Fallacy about it in that there’s a presumption that the prescribed solution’s cost is only to people who either can afford it or deserve to be saddled with it.

• Excluded Middle/False Dichotomy: Either you are a warmist or you are a denier. Those who are “lukewarmists,” who believe anthropogenic global warming is a real phenomenon but don’t consider it catastrophic or actionable, are lumped in with the heretics and pagans that are dubbed “deniers.”

• Genetic Fallacy: If you’re a climatologist (or the subset of “scientists” who are warmists), your arguments are presumed correct. If any bit of your funding or any argument you pose derives from an organization thought to be anti-warmism, your arguments are presumed invalid with no consideration of their merit. Similar to Poisoning the Wells, wherein a heretic or apostate presents an argument from a particular source and that source is “known” to be anti-warmism, the facts of the argument don’t matter – the argument must be wrong because the source is heretical.

• Psychogenetic Fallacy: Those who like to drive their SUVs, those who like cheap gas, cheap electricity and cheap home heating are biased against warmism, so their arguments have no validity.

• Argument by Dismissal: Deniers are wrong. End of story.

• Argument by Vehemence: Shout “Climate Disruption!” Shout it, shout it, shout it out loud. Follow the lead of Orwell’s sheep, who bleated their mantra to exclude contrary statements and drown out disagreement.

• Statement of Conversion: “I used to think like you, back when I was young/ignorant/stubborn. I have seen the light, therefore I am correct and you are wrong.”

• False Cause, False Correlation, Cherry Picking: Hurricane Katrina was unprecedented, musta been global warming. Superstorm Sandy was unprecedented, musta been global warming. Polar vortex! Cold winter! Aha! Global warming!

• Slippery Slope: The most famous of these was Prince Charles’ declaration back in the summer of 2009 that the world only had 96 months to reverse global warming before the damage became irreversible. Act now or things will be SO much worse later.

• Appeal to Coincidence: “Coincidence” is one of the dozens of excuses for the failure of climate models to predict the 18 year “pause” in warming. Seems that it just so happens that the Earth’s natural variability is in a steep short term cooling trend sufficient to mask the warming generated by human carbon emissions.

• Selective Reading: Choose the weakest arguments against warmism, refute them, ignore the others, and thus demonstrate that warmism is real.

• Euphemism/Weasel Wording/Argument by Emotive Language: First it was Global Warming. Then it was Climate Change. Now it’s Climate Disruption. The last one is certainly more emotive – it automatically hangs blame on external “disruptors” instead of allowing people to point out that, yes, the climate changes. It has changed in the past, it will change in the future, with or without humanity. “Disruption” implies that there’s a natural state that may include “natural” variation, but human activity “disrupts” this idyllic natural and kumbaya state of things. Hurricanes and blizzards – both of which existed before humans started burning carbon fuels – aren’t very kumbaya, but that doesn’t figure into the mix.

• Moving the Goalposts: The polar ice caps were supposed to be completely melted by now, and polar bears should be on the verge of extinction. The caps have been thickening and the bears procreating – but never fear, these predictions will come true, just a bit further into the future.

• Common Sense: Humans are pumping carbon into the atmosphere – there MUST be some adverse effect from it.

• Innumeracy: What sounds worse, going from 300 ppm to 400 ppm, or adding one more molecule in 10,000? In addition, 400 ppm is often referred to as a dangerous “milestone,” as if Mother Nature thinks about things in base 10.

While this is by no means an exhaustive review of arguments used in defense of warmism, it covers a good number of the dogmatic defenses used to oppose heresy or challenge apostasy.

Take note, however, that none of this should be considered as a refutation of the theory of anthropogenic global warming itself. The use of logical fallacies in defense of an argument doesn’t obviate the argument, and a debate about the veracity and severity of AGW is a separate matter for another time. The argument at hand is that warmists have, in their zeal, abandoned critical and rational thought in favor of presumptions that are hallmarks of religion and faith.

In some circles, traditional religion and religiosity have fallen out of favor. However, people’s biological affinity towards belief systems of some sort – an affinity demonstrated by the ubiquity of religion throughout human history – won’t be denied, so alternative belief systems have arisen to fill the vacuums in those aforementioned circles. Various forms of mysticism – cults, crystals, new age, Kabbalah, Scientology, etc, have served to quench that biological need. Then came warmism, labeled as “science” but bearing many trappings of religion, as a welcoming alternative for people who want to pretend they’re “above” the notion of faith but still need some sort of faith in their lives. It’s no surprise, then, that priest classes have arisen to sell that faith, and that the structure of warmism has evolved into something that passes the duck test.

There’s little one can do to shake another’s faith, at least in any sort of immediate fashion. However, seeds of doubt can be sown, and in time they might germinate and blossom enough to crack the wall of faith, and so it must be with warmism and warmists. Recognizing the religious nature of their belief, and correspondingly using the language of religion, is an important element of any effort to “convert” warmists into rational beings and thus enable actual, science-based discussions on the topic of anthropogenic global warming. Pointing out, for example, that carbon offsets are little different than the indulgences sold by the Catholic Church in the 1500s might, just might, open an eye or two. An open eye or two might then open a few more, and before you know it, honest debate on a topic that sorely lacks it might actually happen.