The rule of the Airmen

We all know about power. It is said to be an aphrodisiac. It tends to corrupt (and absolute power corrupts absolutely). Most people want power in at least some areas of their lives. To be powerless - helpless - is a bad feeling. To feel powerful is intoxicating, addictive.

The temptations of power have been well understood for centuries. They were known to the writers of the synoptic gospels, who included worldly power among the snares Satan offered Jesus.

Again, the devil took [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8,9)

One of the most pernicious strategies of power-seekers is to suppress thought. To stamp out unwelcome ideas, to force the whole world into uniformity of opinion, is the dream of all dictators and petty tyrants, from Mao and Hitler to the office manager who won't tolerate any disagreement.

On a political level, the motive is pretty straightforward; if no opinions contrary to those voiced by the controlling authorities are permitted, obedience to the regime is likely to follow. (See North Korea.) On a psychological level, the motive seems to involve an extreme aversion to cognitive dissonance. While few of us relish hearing contrary opinions, most people can handle it with relative equanimity. A minority, however, seem to find it intolerable to know that other views even exist, and still more unbearable that such views are allowed a hearing.

In both cases (political and personal), the unwelcome ideas are characterized as dangerous, destabilizing, deceitful. The intentions of those promulgating these ideas are savaged: they seek to undermine society, tear down the established order, create anarchy, drive us back to the Dark Ages. Those who persist in saying and thinking the wrong things are not just misguided but malicious; they are a cancer on society, rotting us from within. It is only good sense that cancer cells must be eradicated if the host organism is to survive. Suppressing bad ideas is necessary to maintain the health of the community.

In politics, censorship targets dissidents. In personal relations, it targets dissonance.

The alternative is the free and open exchange of ideas, in which people can argue whatever position they like without being shouted down. This approach has two drawbacks for the power-seekers. First, it deprives them of power. Second, it leaves open the possibility that the bad ideas may win out.

It's safer, and more emotionally reassuring, to squelch the offending ideas before they can gain a foothold. After all, you can't trust most people to think for themselves. People are fools, easily duped; they need to be led by the hand and told what to think - for their own good, naturally.

It's well known that people in general suffer from deficiencies in critical reasoning. They're prone to confirmation bias. They draw faulty inferences. They fail to do adequate reality testing. They misunderstand the scientific method. They commit logical fallacies. Letting them think for themselves on important issues is like handing a loaded pistol to a baby. The masses aren't equipped to handle such responsibility. It's unwise, even reckless, to entrust it to them.

None of these caveats apply to the enforcers of correct opinion, of course. Unlike the rest of humanity, they see the truth without distortion. Their faculty of critical reasoning works impeccably. They never exhibit confirmation bias or the other frailties of ordinary people. They're special.

They know The Truth.

While it's possible to differentiate between the large (political) and small (personal) power-seekers, there's no clear-cut division between them. The one group tends to blur into the other. The individual who spends all his time on the Internet trying to shout out or shut down competing opinions is not unlikely to be sympathetic to a political program that promises a crackdown on the same unacceptable thoughts. For instance, some believers in global warming are not satisfied merely to sanitize Wikipedia of demurring opinions; they want the "wrong" opinions to be answered with criminal charges.* Certainly not all zealots are willing to go that far; but some are. From trying to control the content of public web pages to trying to enforce that control through the mechanisms of legal authority need not be a long step.

I thought of this today, in connection with my last post. It was about the "guerrilla skepticism" movement, which tries to erase pro-psi material from Wikipedia. The founder of this movement is quoted as saying:

I enjoy finding pages that look like the “psychic” wrote it themselves and then I come in with the delete button. It is really a powerful feeling.

Yes. The power to delete whole pages of information is, I'm sure, quite a rush.

In this connection, I couldn't help but think of Will Storr's combative interview with James Randi, reproduced in Storr's book The Heretics, and quoted in one of my older posts.

Randi was on record as saying that he would be fine with drug legalization, even if it meant that some users died of overdoses, because such people are a drag on society anyway. Questioned by Storr, Randi reiterated his opinion, leading to this exchange:

[Storr says,] “These are quite extreme views.” ...

[Randi replies,] “I don’t think so.”

“But it’s social Darwinism.”

“The survival of the fittest, yes,” he says, approvingly. “The strong survive.”

“But this is the foundation of fascism.”

“Oh yes, yes,” he says, perfectly satisfied. “It could be inferred that way, yes. I think people should be allowed to do themselves in.” [p. 367]

Shortly afterward, Randi was asked if he has been wrong about anything in his life. He was unable to come up with any items of significance. He is apparently always right. He is the Right Man.

Put all this together, and what do we have? Some people seek the power to control public debate. They rationalize their efforts in terms of protecting the public and saving society, but their actual motives are less attractive. They do it partly because power is addictive ("a really powerful feeling") and partly because they're unusually uncomfortable with cognitive dissonance. They use a variety of strategies to enforce the right ideas, which, of course, are their ideas; unlike other people, they can see reality clearly and are never wrong.

And when it's pointed out that their mindset may be placing them on the road to fascism, they aren't disturbed. ("Oh yes, yes. It could be inferred that way, yes.") Presumably, they believe that if such a government ever does arise, they themselves will be running things. They're the best and the brightest, aren't they? And what's so bad about fascism if it's enforced by the wisest and most cognitively unimpaired among us? It's the rule of the Airmen. Let the most rational and intelligent reign over all the dupes and fools. (“The survival of the fittest, yes. The strong survive.”)

See? Not a very long step at all.

----

* "We have good reason to consider the funding of climate denial to be criminally and morally negligent. The charge of criminal and moral negligence ought to extend to all activities of the climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus." Quoted here.

Comments

[Art]

"Of course there is no proof that all of this is due to the anthropogenic global warming effect of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but I find it highly likely that it is involved." - doubter
---------------------------

So all you have to do is get the Chinese, Indians, Thai, Malaysians, Indonesians, Russians, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Cambodians to agree to quit burning trees and fossil fuels and that will be a good start.

Good luck with that by the way. Getting a consensus among humans to agree on pretty much anything is nigh well impossible - as those of us who believe in life after death can attest.

[Roger Knights]

doubter wrote: Fire seasons have been getting worse every year due to the excessively dry conditions.

There are other contributing factors. Here are a few passages I’ve gleaned from various WUWT threads on the topic—an index to them can be found here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=wildfire

More co2 means more biomass, especially in drier areas. Which means fires in dry areas will be worse.

For years our local forests have been managed by tree huggers and a federal judge. The result of this peculiar combination of expertise is a forest full of trashy undergrowth ravaged by beetles when it’s not on fire.

Bigger more destructive fires have been the result of fire suppression and a growing population. As the USA added 100 million people since 1970, more and more people moved into more forested areas and changes in fire frequency are skewed by the number of fires ignited by humans. During the 20th century era of fire suppression the US Forest Service’s “10 AM rule” dominated, and every attempt was made to extinguish all small fires by 10 AM the next day. Normally those small fires would burn longer and spread further and create a mosaic of forest patches. The remaining forest patches were then buffered from any new fires that started in a neighboring patch and large catastrophic fires are very rare in mosaic habitats. A patchy forest also prevents widespread beetle infestations.

It is clear from many years of study and published works that the thinning action of pre-settlement surface fires maintained open stand conditions and thereby prevented the historically anomalous occurrence of catastrophic crown fires that we are experiencing in today’s Southwestern forests.

Adding to the chances of more fires in the US is the spread of Non-indigenous species:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1999/01/environmental-and-economic-costs-associated-non-indigenous-species
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/54/7/677.full.pdf
http://www.firescience.gov/projects/briefs/05-2-1-13_FSBrief107.pdf

[Barbara]

Art said, "So all you have to do is get the Chinese, Indians, Thai, Malaysians, Indonesians, Russians, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Cambodians to agree to quit burning trees and fossil fuels and that will be a good start."

Nobody will agree to act unless the science indicates that it is necessary to act first. Both climate modellers and geologists can only predict what will happen if we don't.

But if the general scientific conclusions are doubted (as is still the case -you can see that from Roger's contributions), then business as usual will lead where it leads...

the afterlife for billions, I suspect.

[Doug]

hey Roger would you care to apply your alternative reality reasoning to the refutation of all 176 skeptical arguments listed here

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

it might take you a few hours but I reckon you have the imagination for it

[doubter]

Roger Knights: Anything the West can do that is affordable will be insignificant; anything it can do that is significant will be unaffordable. It is like building a levee against a flood while one’s next-door neighbors refuse to do so. Unilateral action is futile and self-destructive. Therefore, adaptation (and nuclear power) is our only option, and “deniers” are saviors of the West.

At least I can agree with you on this, that attempts to limit CO2 output by just the US, Europe and other Western countries are naive and self destructive - they will only damage their economies without making any significant difference in the overall problem. This is because China, India and the rest of the developing world refuse to take any significant measures on this (and there is no sign they will in the forseeable future).

It seems to me that a bad period for our civilization is inevitable. Caused by acceleratively rising CO2 (which certainly has at least some negative effect), ongoing negative natural climate changes, pollution, water shortages and other toxic results of excessively growing population accompanied by industrialization. For a lot of reasons there really is little we can do about this. It is questionable that any technologically practical and politically achievable measures would be able to significantly alleviate these problems. Human nature is such that for the vast majority short term personal comfort and profit are always more important than the future. That is just the way we are. Humans can't even agree there is a problem.

The major questions are just how severe and how soon. If the anthropogenic global warming skeptics are right or partly right the adverse conditions causing poverty, starvation, disease and war will just be less severe.

[Michael Prescott]

"If the anthropogenic global warming skeptics are right or partly right the adverse conditions causing poverty, starvation, disease and war will just be less severe."

Not necessarily. The Medieval Warm Period was a godsend that helped usher in the Renaissance. Warmer temperatures meant greater agricultural yields, easier travel, more commence, higher standards of living, more leisure time, etc. OTOH, the Little Ice Age played havoc with crops and travel, creating or exacerbating many economic and social problems.

In general, a warming trend is preferable to a cooling trend.

I'm pessimistic about the future of Western civ, but not because of climate.

[Barbara]

Michael, I used the link at skepticalscience.com to look up two of your contrarian arguments:

Doubting the 97% consensus is no.170. Citing the Medieval Warm period is no. 27. See what they say.

Have you seen the latest on Antarctic melting from NASA? Apparently, a 15 feet sea level rise is coming.
http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/

[Roger Knights]

Barbara said at May 05, 2014 at 02:46 PM:

Michael said: “Barbara, it's not at all true that virtually all scientists believe in global warming – at least not in the sense of anthropogenic global warming that threatens our future”

It’s not what I think that’s important–it’s what the experts say (and note that I wrote “climate scientists”, not just “scientists”): NASA says 97%. That’s as high as could be expected for any human forum: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus

Here’s all that NASA says on the 97% at that link:

“Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities[1]”

There’s nothing in those words that contradicts what MP claimed. I.e., there’s nothing about 97% agreeing that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) “threatens our future.” The percentage that agrees with that assessment is much lower, extrapolating from surveys that asked that question.

[Roger Knights]

Barbara said at May 12, 2014 at 01:19 AM:

Art said, "So all you have to do is get the Chinese, Indians, Thai, Malaysians, Indonesians, Russians, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Cambodians to agree to quit burning trees and fossil fuels and that will be a good start."

Nobody will agree to act unless the science indicates that it is necessary to act first. Both climate modellers and geologists can only predict what will happen if we don't.

But if the general scientific conclusions are doubted (as is still the case -you can see that from Roger's contributions), then business as usual will lead where it leads...

Where it’s led to date has been to an increase in the global average surface temperature anomaly of zero over the past dozen years, which matches what climate modelers & geologists said would occur only under a severe, worldwide CO2-reduction scenario. Going back 17 years, the rate of increase has been much lower than predicted under "business as usual."

It looks as though warmist science has been crying wolf. Modelers’ credibility is, as a result, presumably low with many politicians in developing countries in Asia. They don’t see any alarming portents. So why should Asian politicians care what the Magic 8-Ball of “the science” has to say about the future?

Those politicians won’t go along with CO2 reduction unless their countries are ones that stand to gain from massive transfer payments, or unless they can be maneuvered into signing an agreement they don’t intend to honor, and/or that contains loopholes for them. (I suspect some such scheme is in the works and that that’s what’s behind the optimism expressed by warmists about the talks in 2015.)

[Roger Knights]

Barbara said at May 13, 2014 at 12:01 PM:

“Michael, I used the link at skepticalscience.com to look up two of your contrarian arguments. Doubting the 97% consensus is no.170.”

MP didn’t doubt that there IS a 97% consensus, he only disagreed with your interpretation of what that is a consensus about. He denied, correctly, that it is a 97% consensus that AGW “threatens our future.” See my comment above for more.

“Citing the Medieval Warm period is no. 27. See what they say.”

Here’s what they say (first two sentences):

One of the most often cited arguments of those skeptical of global warming is that the Medieval Warm Period (800-1400 AD) was as warm as or warmer than today. Using this as proof to say that we cannot be causing current warming is a faulty notion based upon rhetoric rather than science.

That doesn’t contradict MP’s claim that “The Medieval Warm Period was a godsend that helped usher in the Renaissance.” IOW, your implicit claim that the effects of any warming will only range from bad to worse isn’t supported by your citation.

“Have you seen the latest on Antarctic melting from NASA? Apparently, a 15 feet sea level rise is coming. http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/”

Maybe, but not from Antarctic melting alone, which is all that NASA has endorsed. Here’s what RobertScribbler, your source, wrote:

“The amount of sea level rise to result from just the loss of the disintegrating section of West Antarctica described in the most recent NASA study amounts to at least four feet. But looking around the world we also find rapid destabilization of more than 13 glaciers . . . .”

“We also find”—correction: HE also finds.

BTW, the press release didn’t include the words “at least”—that was RS’s sexed-up version. Here’s what it said:

These glaciers already contribute significantly to sea level rise, releasing almost as much ice into the ocean annually as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. They contain enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 feet (1.2 meters).

[Roger Knights]

hey Roger would you care to apply your alternative reality reasoning to the refutation of all 176 skeptical arguments listed here http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

it might take you a few hours but I reckon you have the imagination for it

Posted by: Doug | May 12, 2014 at 11:45 AM

That’s too long. I’ll start with Ben’s list of ten counterpoints by Nuccitelli, when I have time. As for imagination, it’s your side that excels in that department, as seen in this list of links at:

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

A Complete List Of Things Supposedly Caused By Global Warming:

AIDS, Afghan poppies destroyed, African holocaust, aged deaths, poppies more potent, Africa devastated, Africa in conflict, African aid threatened, aggressive weeds, Air France crash, air pockets, air pressure changes, airport farewells virtual, airport malaria, Agulhas current, Alaskan towns slowly destroyed, Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped, allergy increase, allergy season longer, alligators in the Thames, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), anaphylactic reactions to bee stings, ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, animals shrink, Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk, anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic ice free, Arctic ice melt faster, Arctic lakes disappear, Arctic tundra lost, Arctic warming (not), a rose by any other name smells of nothing, asteroid strike risk, asthma, Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty, atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased . . . [etc.]

and all on 0.006 deg C per year!

[Roger Knights]

hey Roger would you care to apply your alternative reality reasoning to the refutation of all 176 skeptical arguments listed here

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

it might take you a few hours but I reckon you have the imagination for it
Posted by: Doug | May 12, 2014 at 11:45 AM

This guy has done the job for me:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-cook-skeptical-science.html

[Lynn]

In regards to the global warming debate I don't think we should resort to derogatory arguments. Its really not definitive either way.

Having said that, personally the way I look at it is- the world has been vastly affected by the changes brought on by a massive human population growth; leading to the destruction of large tracts of forest, pollution of land, waterways and atmosphere etc. Which means conditions now are so vastly different to those that existed in the past I don't think you can compare them.

And you can argue point by point about whose right about climate and how much it is contributing to the planets demise. But we all know changes do need to be made to slow its destruction, and they all help. Just my thoughts .. Cheers Lyn.