Do you find it strange that Lord Lawson's climate denying Global Warming Policy Foundation headquarters is in the same building as Brexit campaign groups 'Business for Britain' and 'Vote Leave', along with a slew of other right wing organisations including the TaxPayers' Alliance?
John Redwood, Owen Paterson and Douglas Carswell are all climate change deniers. Leave Means Leave was also supported by some of the UK’s most prominent climate science deniers, such as Peter Lilley, and DUP MP, Sammy Wilson. It was also supported by libertarian Tories calling for deregulation who have previously pushed disinformation on climate change, including Jacob Rees-Mogg John, Redwood, Christopher Chope and Ian Paisley to name a few. The harder the Brexit wanted, the closer the correlation with climate change denial, or at the very least, disinformation, which seems to be a common currency within both movements.
When you think about it, deregulation goes hand-in-hand with hard Brexit and climate denial; both reject experts and involve counterfactual thinking. The assumption is that political reality is not something that exists 'out there’, checkable and subject to independent verification. On the contrary, it has suddenly become something that can be shaped and used as part of the battle for power and anything goes, including obfuscation, misinformation and downright lies, providing they serve the ideological narrative and contribute to the perceived, but totally erroneous, 'greater good'. In other circles it usually goes by the name propaganda.
The usual tactic of climate change deniers against protesters is the sneering charge of hypocrisy, which is usually a tactic to justify doing nothing in the face of an existential problem.
This Jonathan Pie (aka comedian Tom Walker) piece is brilliant and sums up the situation.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas - as is any molecule of gas with more than 3 atoms. The molecule becomes the size of the wavelength of infra red light and therefore absorbs heat. This is not a debatable issue - it's an indisputable scientific fact.
Releasing CO2, that took hundreds of millions of years to be leeched from the atmosphere, back into the atmosphere over a period of 200 to 300 years is bound to have a rather marked effect on the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere unless it's somehow removed. That's just simple logic.
Climate change is a fact and anthropogenic warming is accepted by the vast majority of the world's climate scientists. Depending on exactly how you measure the expert consensus, it’s somewhere between 90% and 100% that agree humans are responsible for climate change, with most studies finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists. The greater the climate expertise among those surveyed, the higher the consensus on human-caused global warming.
You can argue that way back in history there was a consensus that the sun revolved around the earth, but that was not a scientifically established fact - it was a belief.
Those who oppose taking action to curb climate change have engaged in a misinformation campaign to deny the existence of the expert consensus. They’ve been largely successful, as the public badly underestimate the expert consensus. Nigel Lawson is not a climate scientist, by the way.
This is an existential problem requiring dramatic action at government level internationally. The increase of extreme weather events points to just how much of a problem this is. If you're worried about immigration, then this should be a top issue for you, as dry areas are becoming dryer and populations will eventually migrate.
Denigrating people who are protesting for trying to make this a top issue for governments is stupid - it's denialism, pure and simple. It's the action of large toddlers who want to ignore the problem because they don't want to be inconvenienced.
Some people are already making changes to their lives, but only a few. It would take a great effort by a small number of people, or several small changes by a lot of people to solve the problem. The issue about the climate change is that the mountain is so high that we pretend it's not there; it's too huge to fix so let's just pretend it's not there and carry on.
If you want to criticise them, then come up with a better idea. They are achieving their aim of getting people talking about the issue - it's all over the news - the chaos is the point; they are trying to force systemic change. We are past the point where it's sufficient for a few people to plant trees.
The concept of denial itself is well understood. Psychologists consider denial - the refusal to accept facts in order to protect us from uncomfortable truths - to be a primitive defence mechanism.
John Redwood, Owen Paterson and Douglas Carswell are all climate change deniers. Leave Means Leave was also supported by some of the UK’s most prominent climate science deniers, such as Peter Lilley, and DUP MP, Sammy Wilson. It was also supported by libertarian Tories calling for deregulation who have previously pushed disinformation on climate change, including Jacob Rees-Mogg John, Redwood, Christopher Chope and Ian Paisley to name a few. The harder the Brexit wanted, the closer the correlation with climate change denial, or at the very least, disinformation, which seems to be a common currency within both movements.
When you think about it, deregulation goes hand-in-hand with hard Brexit and climate denial; both reject experts and involve counterfactual thinking. The assumption is that political reality is not something that exists 'out there’, checkable and subject to independent verification. On the contrary, it has suddenly become something that can be shaped and used as part of the battle for power and anything goes, including obfuscation, misinformation and downright lies, providing they serve the ideological narrative and contribute to the perceived, but totally erroneous, 'greater good'. In other circles it usually goes by the name propaganda.
The usual tactic of climate change deniers against protesters is the sneering charge of hypocrisy, which is usually a tactic to justify doing nothing in the face of an existential problem.
This Jonathan Pie (aka comedian Tom Walker) piece is brilliant and sums up the situation.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas - as is any molecule of gas with more than 3 atoms. The molecule becomes the size of the wavelength of infra red light and therefore absorbs heat. This is not a debatable issue - it's an indisputable scientific fact.
Releasing CO2, that took hundreds of millions of years to be leeched from the atmosphere, back into the atmosphere over a period of 200 to 300 years is bound to have a rather marked effect on the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere unless it's somehow removed. That's just simple logic.
Climate change is a fact and anthropogenic warming is accepted by the vast majority of the world's climate scientists. Depending on exactly how you measure the expert consensus, it’s somewhere between 90% and 100% that agree humans are responsible for climate change, with most studies finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists. The greater the climate expertise among those surveyed, the higher the consensus on human-caused global warming.
You can argue that way back in history there was a consensus that the sun revolved around the earth, but that was not a scientifically established fact - it was a belief.
Those who oppose taking action to curb climate change have engaged in a misinformation campaign to deny the existence of the expert consensus. They’ve been largely successful, as the public badly underestimate the expert consensus. Nigel Lawson is not a climate scientist, by the way.
This is an existential problem requiring dramatic action at government level internationally. The increase of extreme weather events points to just how much of a problem this is. If you're worried about immigration, then this should be a top issue for you, as dry areas are becoming dryer and populations will eventually migrate.
Denigrating people who are protesting for trying to make this a top issue for governments is stupid - it's denialism, pure and simple. It's the action of large toddlers who want to ignore the problem because they don't want to be inconvenienced.
Some people are already making changes to their lives, but only a few. It would take a great effort by a small number of people, or several small changes by a lot of people to solve the problem. The issue about the climate change is that the mountain is so high that we pretend it's not there; it's too huge to fix so let's just pretend it's not there and carry on.
If you want to criticise them, then come up with a better idea. They are achieving their aim of getting people talking about the issue - it's all over the news - the chaos is the point; they are trying to force systemic change. We are past the point where it's sufficient for a few people to plant trees.
The concept of denial itself is well understood. Psychologists consider denial - the refusal to accept facts in order to protect us from uncomfortable truths - to be a primitive defence mechanism.
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