Uncommon Sense On Global Warming

Crossposted

By Bradley J. Fikes

The Breakthrough Institute is a rarity among progressive think tanks: It repudiates the scare tactics, along with exaggeration and spin used by most left-wing lobbying groups, such as the deceptively named Union of Concerned “Scientists” and Center for American Progress.

This think tank members, such as Roger Pielke, Jr., recognize that the hard work of global warming skeptics is not necessarily “anti-science,” but represents a differing viewpoint that has been shut out of scientific discussion in favor of a phony consensus, driven by the politics of demonization instead of rational discussion. People like Steve McIntyre, (shown in cartoon below), have helped bring down that consensus, although the worst damage has been done by the global warming activists themselves.

The fearsome, well-funded global warming skeptic movement.The fearsome, well-funded global warming skeptic movement.

Now two of the Breakthrough Institute’s leaders have called for environmentalist organizations to abandon the 20-year quest to push all their interests, such as reducing energy consumption, under the global warming mantra. They want these subjects to be discussed on their own merits, without the global warming fear tactics. And I wholeheartedly concur.

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus write in Yale 360 that not only have the wheels come off the supposedly invincible global warming juggernaut, but that the wreckage threatens other environmentalist goals. In short, the hysterical rhetoric has lost credibility with the public. Even some mainstream media reporters are experiencing synaptic activity over facts that have been obvious for months, if not years.

They write:

“While the urge to blame fossil-fuel-funded skeptics for this recent bad turn of events has proven irresistible for most environmental leaders and pundits, forward-looking greens wishing to ascertain what might be salvaged from the wreckage would be well advised to look closer to home. Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy. Efforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future should we fail to embrace green proposals, and to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning, have only served to undermine the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy.”

Amen to that. Shameless appeals to fear don’t work any more. Many environmental goals are worthy in their own right, but they’ve been tainted as propaganda vehicles for global warming. Scientists are pressured to bring their research into line with the so-called consensus, prostituting the integrity of science. Even zoos and aquariums have been turned into propaganda vehicles.

At last, the dirty secret is out. While global warming activists claim to be motivated by science, their true agenda is enacting their far-left, anti-business agenda. Rational environmentalists are wise to keep their distance from them.

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