Right Wing Nut House

My latest is up at Pajamas Media, and it’s about global warming and the battle between neanderthal Republicans and the Marxian dolts who want to politicize the science of global warming to achieve massive wealth redistribution.

What’s a rationalist to do?

The fact is, Republicans are terrified of their base, which seems to have abandoned reason and embraced a fanatical anti-scientific viewpoint on climate change. Rather than attempt to carefully weigh and balance arguments, there is a rush to posit conspiracy theories about the motives of climate change advocates. Unfortunately, this attitude has been fed by statements like the one from Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III, that climate treaties are beards for wealth redistribution.

This is hardly a secret, nor is it anything new or conspiratorial. The Kyoto accord made wealth transfers to developing countries the centerpiece of the treaty. And the IPCC’s motives in this regard dovetail nicely with those of the developing world and their NGO advocates who stand to receive a nice sized slice of any developmental funds that result from this massive redistribution of wealth.

But just because the motives of many climate change advocates are questionable, even evil, does that mean the entire global warming proposition is a fraud? There are still those hundreds of scientists and their dogged, 30 years of research and experimentation into the question of whether man-made industrial activity is having an effect on climate. They and their findings are not going away no matter how many “conspiracies” are uncovered or how many UN flacks reveal the true nature of their efforts.

You can’t fault the scientists if their research and conclusions have been hijacked by politicians greedy for loot and power, and far left activists who wish industrialized society and its capitalistic excesses would simply disappear. The problem won’t go away because many conservatives seek to hide in their cocoons and echo chambers, assuring themselves that global warming is a myth and nothing need be done about it.

This is a symptom of movement conservatism’s larger problem of rejecting authority and expertise as the product of elitist thinking. Science is especially vulnerable to their skepticism because it is so easily misunderstood. If it is beyond the ken of “ordinary” people to understand, then it is suspect. Any appeals to “authority” are dismissed automatically as an attempt to use “credentialism” to put one over on the people, or claim competency where none exists.

Right on cue, my loving fans - who never bother to read what I write - skewer me in the comments for rejecting their version of reality - i.e., no evidence, no warming, no nothin’. Is it any wonder that the scientific community has abandoned the Republican party? Nuance and subtlety escapes the notice of these ideologically obsessed freaks. If it ain’t black, or it ain’t white, it ain’t real.

In matters where lay people are not capable of properly weighing scientific argument, an appeal to authority is not “elitist,” it is necessary. In the case of the global warming, skepticism is warranted, not denial. How much are humans responsible for rising temps? Does it matter? A larger human imprint on climate buttresses the Marxist’s position; a smaller one, the skeptics. The evidence is mixed and at times, contradictory. All the more reason to slow down, as Bjorn Lomberg so wisely suggests.

Breaking the momentum of the alarmists will be a real chore. They have most large corporations on board their gravy train now and, coupled with the greedy eye that developing countries are casting toward the trillions of dollars to be transferred from industrial democracies to the kleptocrats in Africa and elsewhere, it will be very difficult to address the problem of global warming in any rational or realistic manner.

It certainly won’t be addressed as long as the anti-science conservatives and anti-capitalist, one worlders continue to use and abuse science to achieve their own political ends.