H. L. Mencken once remarked that “the urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.” I made much the same point in a recent op-ed about our new science czar John Holdren (go here). I first became aware of the quote from a July 24th article in INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY on climate change. Here are some highlights:
Ignoring Science
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, July 24, 2009 4:20 PM PTClimate Change: A new scientific paper says that man has had little or nothing to do with global temperature variations. Maybe the only place it’s really getting hotter is in Al Gore’s head.
Because he must be getting flustered now, what with his efforts to save the benighted world from global warming continually being exposed as a fraud.
The true believers will not be moved by the peer-reviewed findings of Chris de Freitas, John McLean and Bob Carter, scientists at universities in Australia and New Zealand.
Warming advocates have too much invested in perpetuating the myth. (And are probably having too much fun calling those who don’t agree with them “deniers” and likening skeptics to fascists.)
But these scientists have made an important contribution to the debate that Gore says doesn’t exist.
Their research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, indicates that nature, not man, has been the dominant force in climate change in the late 20th century.
…
“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”
These findings are largely being ignored by the mainstream media. They simply don’t fit the worn narrative that man is dangerously warming the Earth through his carbon dioxide emissions and a radical alteration of Western lifestyles mandated by government policy is desperately needed.
…
Despite efforts to keep the global warming scare alive, the growing evidence that humans aren’t heating the planet is piercing the public consciousness and alarmists are becoming marginalized.
Sharp Americans are starting to understand H.L. Mencken’s observation that “The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.” That pretty much sums up the modern environmentalist movement.
It’s good to see this important research being published in a high-impact journal. The global warmers are already jumping on it, quite predictably. For example, some blogger called Tamino claims:
Something about the fact that their analysis involved time derivatives of temperature and SOI. Whatever. Plus lots of chanting of the word “deniers”.
In the said op-ed, Bill notes that the method is, “Find a problem, catastrophize it and make scientists the saviors.”
I would add “or create a pseudo-problem”, after problem.
This is otherwise known as the Hegelian Dialectic. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
A practice to be found almost everywhere in politics, and now science, these days.
Why? Because as long as the public is unaware of this method of population control, they are subject to it.
Public awareness is vital here. Let them know they’re “being had”, how and why. Though the ‘why’ is obvious – power and $$$, fortune and glory.
The main problem with “global warming” is that no one even knows what the temperature should be.
No one knows how many glaciers should exist.
No one knows if ice caps should exist.
No one knows…
Dr Dembski,
“the urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.”
That Mencken quote should be taped to the bathroom mirror of every true believer in any creed, so that when they wake up in the morning and brush their teeth, they can think about it.
It reminds me of the Devil tempting Christ with worldy power, but diminished to the level our humanity. Thank you for sharing it.
Yes, Nakashima, especially tape it to the mirrors of the true believers in chance and necessity.
Mr Joseph,
Why pick on one group? The whole point of the quote was the universality of the impulse.
Nakashima,
I just wanted to make sure all believers were included.
Mr Joseph,
For sure, Richard Dawkins needs to read it every day, as much as any religious leader.
This is a good place to quote C.S. Lewis:
Jehu, your quote seems to fit the evangelical Christian movement disturbingly well.
Anthony09,
That depends. It fits some parts of the evangelical Christian movement disturbingly well. However, there are other parts which take Lewis’ comments to heart (and previous comments by Jesus), and are strong on religious liberty. (Those schools of thought do not always correspond to denominational labels.)
It is of interest that the official policy of the Discovery Institute is not that ID be mandated, or that naturalism not be allowed to be taught, but that discussions be allowed to take place without fear of reprisal. This would seem to be the opposite of tyranny.
Who can we trust to rule over us?
Anthony09,
I think it fits liberal paranoia about evangelicals. It does not fit any evangelical I know. Evangelicals seek to change society through evangelism, not top down government mandates. Hence the term “evangelical.”
The groups now labeled “evangelical” have themselves historically been subject to religious persecution and are well aware of the corrupting influence of government on religion and are very keen to maintain and preserve religious liberty.
As a point of interest, many nations in Europe have official state churches but actual belief is much lower than in the United States.
Jehu,
“As a point of interest, many nations in Europe have official state churches but actual belief is much lower than in the United States.”
This is illustrated by the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands. It was “unofficially” the official state church of the Netherlands. Meaning that if you wanted to be a state official, you had to be a member. There were several denominations that broke from the DRC, including here in America, The Reformed Church of America, and the Evangelical Free Church.
Lets remember why Roger Williams had to go to establish Rhode island. It wasn’t that the Puritans hated theocracy, they just wanted their own theocracy! Even in America, a plural society has been a hard lesson to learn.
Above all this applies to eugenists and their frenzied totalitarian socialist schemes to impliment their vision of a better human race…
Update:
As readers will be aware, a blogger named Tamino wrote a piece purporting to debunk the original paper by by McLean, de Freitas and Carter, which found that the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later, and claimed to have shown that natural forces related to ocean heat cycles are the dominant influence on climate.
Recently, Bob Tisdale has written a reply at http://wattsupwiththat.com/200.....#more-9594 which argues that the global temperature increases in recent decades are largely due to the multiyear aftereffects of significant El Nino events. These aftereffects are themselves caused by subsurface waters from the Pacific Warm Pool being transported to the surface and remaining there after the El Nino event has ended. One of the limitations of regression analysis is that it fails to capture these aftereffects.
In other climate-related news, Richard Lindzen, who is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has recently written an article entitled Resisting Climate Hysteria in Quadrant Online. The article is prefaced by a quote from President Vaclav Klaus:
After setting out several arguments showing that the hysteria regarding potentially catastrophic man-made global warming is at odds with the known facts, Lindzen continues:
The article is not long, and is well worth reading.
Another newsworthy item is the recent study by Clement et al., published last week in Science, which shows that since the 1950s, periods of warmth over the northeastern Pacific Ocean have coincided with less cloud cover. The authors cautiously speculate that this might be evidence of positive cloud feedback. If true, this would mean that clouds serve to amplify the global warming caused by CO2. Climatologist Roy Spencer discusses the study in an article in his blog . He commends the study’s authors for their caution in stating their findings, and concludes:
Doug Hoffman, in his blog The Resilient Earth, provides an additional perspective:
Finally, the oft-expressed fear that human greenhouse gas emissions could cause another Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (a catastrophic event 55 million years ago, when atmospheric temperatures warmed by 5 to 9 degrees Celsius globally, and the Arctic sea surface temperature soared as high as 24 degrees Celsius, or 75 degrees Fahrenheit) is scotched by Doug Hoffman in this article . Hoffman concludes that it would take mankind at least 2,000 years to trigger such a catastrophe at the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions and concludes:
Not being a climatologist, I don’t feel qualified to express a firm opinion on who’s right and who’s wrong in the debate on global warming. But of one thing I am sure: there is still a real debate. People who try to tell you that “the debate is over” are playing a political power game.
Great article. Global warming stuff is an excuse to tax and control more. The sun deniers are the true deniers.
The sun’s cycles coincide with the earths temp. The club of Rome wrote in the 1960’s how they’d hijack the environmental movement with the global warming agenda to bring in a global government and more taxes. The goal is to tax everyone to just short of a tax revolt and leave the taxes at that level.
I hope you guys know Al Gore admits that your global warming taxes will go into his bank account directly. He actually admits this.
Anyone else hear of HAARP?
The good ole USA (and other countries as well) is pumping high level energy into the atmosphere. This is moving the ionosphere which causes the stratosphere to also shift.
And that changes the jet-stream pattern…
While global warming may be bad science, it has been shown to be excellent politics. Global warming is an issue tailor made for democrats. Americans see the Democrats as strong on the environment. The Republicans on the other had are considered to lean more closely to business interests. With American presidential elections so close global warming may have been the deciding factor in electing Obama. Al Gore knew when he started the global warming hysteria that the msm would uncritically support him. Global warming has been a very successful, and practical political strategy.
Supporting intuitions & evidence that Global Warming [hysteria] was intelligently designed for control:
Case#1 Personal experience of EU/Czech President Vaclav Klaus [and a very sharp/intelligent man] with communism – Note his criticism of Al Gore:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....&NR=1
Case#2 Al Gore’s recent comment:
Source:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/.....Governance
Flashback to the 60’s literature The Report From Iron Mountain. Controversial literature that at the time was viewed as a leak, but a few later was claimed to be a hoax. Whic is it? All I can say is that since that time, it has been somewhat ‘prophetic’ literature:
Except (consider if any modern day topics stand out):
Global Warming fits the bill as such a substitute for war. Other outside threats are international terrorists living in remote caves,and pirates off the coast of Africa to the Indian Ocean.
Just saying.
JGuy,
You’re a pretty pessimist guy, aren’t you? If there is any truth to what you posted above, then humanity is in deep trouble. The ideological rift between Muslim and Christian nations is a measurably dangerous threat. It will not be replaced by Al Gore’s antics any time soon, in my opinion.
The environmentalists are panicking because they know that the climate is not cooperating. They sense that they don’t have much time and, lately, they have become rather hysterical. When the public begins to sense that it’s being taken to the cleaners by a bunch of power-hungry crooks, many very prominent heads will roll, so to speak. Not that the alternative is much more appealing, mind you. Cheers.