QUORA: ‘What further proof do climate deniers need?’

 QUORA: ‘What further proof do climate deniers need?’

I posted this answer:

Proof won’t convince the actual “climate deniers,” because facts don’t matter to them.

There is a mountain of evidence and of analysis by a deep, broad bench of experts, drawing on decades of research of both private and governmental sources, that refutes the deniers’ argument that a climate emergency is imminent (or happening already) and that mankind faces an existential crisis that demands the immediate abandonment of the main energy driver of human civilization, fossil fuels.

Yet the climate hucksters in the political, media, and renewable energy industries who keep peddling their “climate emergency” witch doctory keep denying the full picture for their own self-serving purposes. The terms climate emergency, and the alternate climate crisis, are in themselves logically incoherent terms.* The dissenting and objective view is that warming is happening, is in part caused by human activity, has positive and negative effects, but is mild and manageable. No totalitarian "unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society" need be forced on us, as the UN claims. The objective view holds that climate change has not yet led to meaningful negative consequences, but may present problems in the future. But it is a long term, that is decades and centuries, issue. The best way forward, therefore, is to avoid dramatic, risky short-term disruption and instead pursue pro-liberty (i.e. Capitalist) policies that lead to more prosperity and innovation, the only path to dealing with potential increases in weather extremes while promoting prosperity climate resiliency. 

There is a principle that guides medical practice; “First, do no harm.” That principle should be applied to the issue of climate change. Humans can continue to flourish while continuing to master negative effects of climate change, whether natural or man-induced. Precipitating a massive life-crushing energy crisis is a “first, do harm” utopian strategy.

The facts are readily available and made accessible to the non-expert public by better thinkers, such as Bjorn Lomborg, Ronald Bailey, Alex Epstein, Roger Pielke Jr., Steven Koonan, Patrick Moore, Robert Bryce, and Michael Schellenberger, to name just a few. 

The “climate denier” charge is usually used to smear the people who reject the climate catastrophist narrative and related statist political agenda. But the alarmists who call for drastic immediate action to head off some imagined “climate emergency” regardless of the affect on human lives are the real “climate deniers”—or, to be more precise, people who disregard the full context of climate and the actual evidence. They ignore the true state regarding current climate, which can only be understood in the context of Earth’s climate history. They take on faith what the biased political and media elites tell them “the science” says, but disregard what the science actually reveals.  

My advice to the climate catastrophists is to start thinking about climate. Get all of the facts. The real climate deniers are the alarmists, not the dissenters they accuse of being deniers. To the people who pose a question like “What further proof do climate deniers need?,'' ask yourself; What are the alleged “deniers” saying that the alarmist thought leaders don’t want you to hear? You owe it to yourself to learn. Listen to all of the perspectives and opinions, including opposing views, observe the world around you objectively, and make up your own mind. As a climate thinker, I concluded that human progress, and the freedom that makes it possible, not regression into authoritarian central economic planning, is the best way forward. As Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says in his highly informative book, “Let’s hope real science and reason prevail against the current epidemic of ideology, misinformation, and fear.” (p. 160)

* [Climate is a long term average of weather data taken over decades or centuries. Climate is not real. It is a mathematical abstraction. How can climate possibly be an emergency? An emergency is “a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence or occasion requiring immediate action.” There is nothing sudden about a changing climate.]

Related Reading:

Who is the Real ‘Science Denier’?

Anti-Concept ‘Science Denier’ Exposes Climate Witch Doctors’ Fear of Rational Counter-Argumentation

O'Malley the Climate Witch Doctor

‘Climate Denier’: The Leitmotif of the Climate Propagandist

On Trump and Government Scientists

Ad Hominem No Substitute for Reasoned Criticism