I posted this on my Facebook in response to a comment on my status update, but it was so well written that I thought I would repost it here.
Therein lies the problem, that anthropogenic climate change (or man-made global warming as it is typically referred,) still remains a theory as there are other models that can accurately account for the behavior but with an alternate rationale, such as solar activity and the natural ebb and flow of terrestrial temperatures. Until it can be proven without a shadow of a doubt, I do not think calling it scientific fact is appropriate.
One of the major problems I have with the theory is that there is a lot of money invested into turning the theory into a fact so that it can be used in a political sense, which denigrates the credibility of APCC and the scientists that do research into it. If you add “to study climate change” to any kind of grant request, you’re very likely going to get it from a regime that agrees with your assessment. What this has done is bias a large portion of the scientific community, which relies heavily on grants for its research, to have a vested interest in promoting it. What this has also done is create a convenient political rationale to exercise limits on particular industries and increase taxes on corporations and individuals in order to “fight” this threat.
This is the graph they like to use to support APCC.
This is another one they like to use.
This is the one they don't want you to see.
This is all how politics plays an unfortunate role in science. The current Progressive or liberal platform and system of beliefs is built on three major pillars, Social Justice, Economic Justice, and Environmental Justice. While these are all perceived “justice,” a lot of their ideas are the complete antithesis of what we commonly refer to as justice.
For example, whereas Social Justice meant equality back during the Civil Rights Movement, in today’s world it has taken the conventional meaning that someone has committed a wrong and must be punished. It is now the practice of punishing white males for something their ancestors did several generations ago. They continue to fan the flames of racial and gender prejudice to get everyone hopping mad at each other for no reason. It makes me sick to watch guys go on TV and say “white folks greed runs a world in need.” That is <i>very clearly</i> racism! You’re making an assumption about an entire race of people based on some tired cliché. Instead, people should be taught to look past physical identity and towards interpersonal relationships, but this doesn’t bring votes. In the progressive politick, people are split into different groups of people collectively known as a voting bloc. Part of the way they try to keep these voting blocs voting together is through this practice of racial division, so that these people feel isolated and that they can only trust people physically similar to them. This is a divide and conquer strategy. The progressive politician feels better when he has a subset of the vote to target rather than having to go after people individually.
Economic Justice is about punishing people who are wealthy because there are people that are poor. It is the inherent belief in a “zero sum game,” that for every person who becomes rich, there is another person that has become poor as a direct result. Thus, they believe the only way to make people “equal” is to take from the rich and give to the poor, but this is ignoring basic market principals. The market can expand and contract. As it expands, it supports a larger number of people, and as it contracts it supports fewer people. Taxes decrease the overall size of the market and the share of the market that each individual receives, as it decreases economic incentives for people to be in the marketplace. Thus, as a result of this “economic justice,” it creates an even larger disproportion of poor people to wealthy people. A good example of how economic justice fails is the housing crisis. Lenders were forced to give bad loans to poor people who would not be able to pay them back as a result of government intervention, Barney Frank being the primary culprit. As the number of sub-prime mortgages increased, the more money the Lenders lost until they could no longer sustain the debt and collapsed. The collapse of the lending industry rippled into the housing industry, and with an entire subset of the market reeling, the entire market contracted almost overnight. Continued government intervention has only contributed to the continued decrease in the size of the market.
Environmental Justice is the belief that all technology will pollute and destroy the Earth, and that innovation must be stifled and heavily regulated, and those that use and develop technology must be punished. This is where APCC, carbon offsets, pollution limits, the hole in the ozone layer and saving the trees go. The belief is that humans are some malevolent plague upon the Earth and that we only bring destruction to the system of life on the Earth. This is absurd thinking, but I’ll entertain the thought for a moment to demonstrate how it fits into the pillar. As with all progressive justice, it is about punishment. The lives of the first world countries are so much better than the lives of the third world. Most environmental practices usually involve getting rid of first world practices, lifestyles, and technology to instead adopt third world practices, lifestyles, and technology. This is the connection with Economic Justice and Social Justice. It’s all about the zero sum game and <i>perceived</i> equality rather than actual equality.
Overall, the progressive ideal is that the world is not fair, and that everyone who is doing better than everyone else must be punished, rather than creating incentives for everyone to do better.
This is how, in a roundabout way, the liberal or progressive is more inclined to believe in anthropogenic climate change as opposed to the conservative.
