" "Our previous deference to expert scientific opinion has suddenly waned on potentially one of the most significant issues in human history." "
It has waned because of its own internal contradictions. If carbon dioxide is so bad lets stop it altogether, not just tax it. In a real emergency, say a war, governments will just order people to do things without question with no backchat, and will just shoot protesters. That is normal human behaviour for extreme situations. Now it is a case of let's put in a new taxLOL. Imagine an asteroid about to hit Earth and the governments of the world unite to impose an asteroid tax. Would people be sceptical then?
"Recent revelations that several prominent global warming sceptics are in the pay of the free-market American think tank the Heartland Institute come as no surprise to many who have witnessed the slow descent of the debate from the lofty ''great moral issue of our time" to the cynical "great big tax on everything"."
What this clown fails to mention are all the scientists(and others from Wall St banksters to Algore type wannabe carbon traders) making money out of this scam. Just add up the amounts of money flowing to each side of this question and get back to me on that. By that logic any opposition to anything is tainted because someone somewhere underwrote some costs.
"The partisan nature of the debate suggests the hegemony of science that has characterised the two centuries since the Enlightenment is under serious threat. Scientists, hitherto in the vanguard of modern civilisation, are viewed by many as irrelevant, incompetent or untrustworthy. A particularly mild summer has only strengthened the view that, in Tony Abbott's words, "climate change is crap"."
I doubt that the hegemony of science is under threat, it's just a case of some scientists having a squawk because in the competitive market place for ideas some find it unsettling that they are not taken as seriously as they take themselves when there are other alternative explanations. Some doctors no doubt are feeling the same thing, going from a god-like position giving "doctors orders" to being seen as one opinion among many.
"How have we reached the point where our previous deference to expert scientific opinion on everything from space exploration to hair care has suddenly waned on potentially one of the most significant issues in human history?"
Lumping in space exploration and the AGW story together is designed to get the reader to accept both or neither since space exploration is a reality.As for "scientific opinion" on hair care?? What the?? That's marketing. That's why people don't believe them as much as they used to anymore.
"It's worth considering our predicament in the context of the Age of Enlightenment, since the tensions of that time reflect significantly the tensions now. The most important Enlightenment values were the rejection of arbitrary power, divine right, irrationality, superstition and myth. In part, these were derived through the ascendent discipline of science. Any claim was to be subject to empirical observation and rational assessment. One of the political dividends of this was that dominant social interests were made more accountable to the public interest."
It's only a "predicament" in the mind of the writer, to the rest of us it is the opportunity to explore the issue for ourselves especially given that we will be the ones paying for it. The PTB and the scientists concerned have only themselves to blame. They overplayed their hand and squandered their credibility by trying to scare us senseless, with a variety of more desperate stories the latest being that CO2 may make us fat!!! http://sciencenordic.com/new-theory-co2-makes-you-fat Now really! That is desperation and clearly shows why we don't believe them anymore. It has long since passed from being a scientific question into a political program and all that entails with the use of sophisticated(and not so sophisticated) propaganda/PR/spin techniques.
"In much the same way, climate scientists are now being stigmatised and the status quo defended at all costs by free-market purists who view the whole concept of climate change as little more than a vehicle for the market interventions of big government. Amplified through the populist media, the typical narrative involves a cast of rent-seeking bureaucrats, closet socialists and elites, now joined by the scientific academies of the world in their plot to sabotage the wheels of industry."
Climate scientists are being stigmatized only because they were caught out with the leaked emails showing that they were expressing public confidence and private doubts aka spin at best and lying at worst. As for "free market purists" being the driving force behind the opposition there may be some truth in that but remembering also that the monopoly capitalists and other rent seekers are lined up on the alarmist side as that is where they perceive the money to be.It isn't even about climate anymore as an IPCC official said that it was about redistributing the world's wealth. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/18/ipcc-official-“climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth”/
That's another reason why we don't believe them anymore.
"The ideological rearguard has been bolstered by backyard lobby groups such as the Orwellian-named ''Galileo Movement'', founded by two retirees - an industrial hygienist and an engineer - in order to confront the falsehoods of what it calls "post normal science" and cater for those who "in their gut sense that climate change is natural". The movement boasts Alan Jones as its patron"
Crude sneer there, "backyard lobby groups" "retirees" "boasts Alan Jones as its patron""Orwellian named" Don't see how it could relate to anything Orwell wrote, as he was a stickler for the correct use of English and warned repeatedly about the misuse of language for propagandistic purposes.
"The literature of such groups makes clear the objective to restore the integrity of science is secondary to a desire to reassert order and control in the face of uncertainty and change. Implicit in this view is the doctrine of human exceptionalism and a hankering for the kind of scientific triumphalism that facilitated much of the industrial growth of the 20th century under the assumption that humans could control and exploit the natural environment without limit, a perspective that resonates in particular with many older Australians."
More journalistic dribble.
"To the challenges of our time, we must confront the distortions and false promises of ideology in much the same way as our Enlightenment forebears confronted irrationalities, myths and vested interests .
This involves prioritising science over the politics of global warming. If not, the time for acting reasonably may pass us by."
Well said and a great start could be made by ridding the alarmist side of all politics. Then we may see what is left.
Quite apt, Tell putting this on the conspiracy theory thread as it encapsulates many of the issues existing in other question and the public response to being browbeaten into accepting them(hence the derisory term "Conspiracy theorist" for any heretics).The propaganda, the use of "experts" to tell us what to think( and more importantly what to buy), as in all human societies opinion leaders influence the rest as many like to just fall in line and defer to their so called superiors.
