Dangers of Climate Change Evangelism :
Save your children from a future where instead of decisions being made rationally they are made on "of course thinking", dogma and they are not free to say "I don't know or I don't believe ".

every time Climate catastrophe theory is mentioned it's accompanied by mountains of irrationality.

I see a lot of parallels between the irrationality of religion & the huge amounts of irrationality that accompanies any talk of Climate catastrophe theory. So I am worried about connecting Climate catastrophe theory with the Brights, but if you are convinced yourself of the rationality of the book then I guess that's OK.

For my own amusement I outline some parallels, Only bother to read them if you have time. We can have simple black and white view of world of or the real technicolour one which is a pain in the ass to explain :

1. Worry : Religion : people spending a great deal of their lives worrying about a fictious afterlife. Climate Catastrophe theory : people spending a great deal of their lives worrying about unlikely unquantifed future catastrophes.

2. Belonging to a group that doesn't say "I don't know" : People like religion cos of the certainty. But it's an important part of science to be able to accept there are times when we don't know.

3. Sacredness : some things being regarded as unquestionable. I came out of the Climate Change Tunnel more than a year ago, but I never until recently thought to challenge how Global Temperature or CO2 levels are calculated. It certainly not like calculating easy things which don't vary with place and time. I have to accept the scientists really know what they are doing, but the techniques they use to come up with these numbers seem very fishy to me.. check for yourself.

4. Trust in Authority : The High Priests understand, but we mere mortals cannot so we have trust them. Sure the total science is so beyond mere mortals like me, but I can spot the lies. I am subject to stream of earnest appeals as regards Climate. This is almost followed by a big claim, which smells fishy. And sure enough after a couple of hours of research these big claims turnout to be untrue or outrageous exaggerations. This is why I won't bother to read the book. (you don't need a degree in fashion to see the emperor's nudity)

5. Disproving it is impossible - We can't prove negatives like "there is no God", or that "there will be no climate catastrophe in the next million years"

6. There's some good things about it so what's wrong with accepting it ? "Well religion does have quite a lot of nutty bits, but it gives people moral guidance", they say. The answer to which is yes, but that's saying it's OK to base your entire life on something that's a lie, so many decisions end up being irrational. My philosophy is we should have low consumption lives for a variety of reasons. Coincidentally this would reduce CO2 dramatically anyway. So why should I be concerned about Climate Catastrophe Theory Religion ? I am not going to say catastrophe theory is a lie, but it does ascribe a magnitude of certainty to something which is an unquantifed maybe. ie saying we are certain when should be saying "We don't know yet", If people worry about CO2 that should be good, but it often seems that the focus on CO2 stops people thinking about the big picture are irrational decisions are made e.g. That it's OK for us to have another million children and to build another 1000 Tescos Saver Centres as long as they buy some Carbon offsets.

7. Ultimate Magnitude - "what ! how can we say this is unkown, when it's the most important thing in life." This is unaccompanied by any probability statistics. What is certain is that in the next 23 years cigarettes will be the cause of early death for 200 million people. ... Forget to say your prayers, you'll go hell. Murder someone, you'll go hell. If we do something about CO2 however tiny then that makes us good.

8. Hysteria - Results from the above fallacy

9. Need to Evangelize - I think it's a fallacy to say one person doesn't make any difference, but what is true is that someone who can get 200 million Chinese to have a car-free lifestyle is a real effect. Athiests don't have a similar motivation to evangelise.

Getting a new light tube is seen as good, yet it's pathetic getting your own tubes cut would prevent a million times more CO2 It's this licence to be irrational that is the worrying thing about Climate Catastrophe theory.

What Stott and Lord Lawson said

- sees many danger is this Ecofundamentalism that has arisen
- It's replacing protestantism as a religion. We like to blame ourselves for things.
- Stotts warns about environmental correspondents who have replaced science journalists, they have become to believe so passionately now they are like priests so won't print criticisms.

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November 2007 a Stew Green Opinion

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