Vaclav Klaus on Global Warming

Vaclav Klaus, the current president of the Czech Republic and a man who lived for many years under communist rule, believes that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity today is not communism, but rather ambitious environmentalism. Though his comparison may be an anachronism given the current threat we face from Islamofascism, it is nevertheless valid. Communism is rightly discredited and mostly dead the world over save for a few pathetic examples.

From the Financial Times article linked above:

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

As a witness to today's worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:

*Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures

*Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided

*Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants

*Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term "scientific consensus", which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority

*Instead of speaking about "the environment", let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour

*Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction

*Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

The fourth bullet point that Mr. Klaus touches upon, where he talks of the dangers of "scientific consensus", brings to mind a new bastardization of the scientific method that the green revolution crowd has introduced called "post-normal" science. Post-normal science is now being employed as proof of Global Warming; it being so important that everyone must act to stop it, regardless of whether or not it is scientifically known to exist.

Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, has this to say: (from a Guardian article via a Belmont Club posting)

Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled "post-normal" science. ... The danger of a "normal" reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow. ... If only climate change were such a phenomenon and if only science held such an ascendancy over our personal, social and political life and decisions. In fact, in order to make progress about how we manage climate change we have to take science off centre stage. ... What matters about climate change is not whether we can predict the future with some desired level of certainty and accuracy; it is whether we have sufficient foresight, supported by wisdom, to allow our perspective about the future, and our responsibility for it, to be altered. All of us alive today have a stake in the future, and so we should all play a role in generating sufficient, inclusive and imposing knowledge about the future. Climate change is too important to be left to scientists - least of all the normal ones.

In other words, scientists cannot be trusted with science, because they may arrive at an unwanted conclusion; therefore the scientific process must be bypassed in favor of "post-normal" science--for the good of the planet. I think the danger in this line of thinking is self-evident.

Unfortunately, humanity's hubris regarding our power to change the environment forces many to take a short view of the world we live in. If one accepts that the earth is approximately 4.4 billion years old, and that for all intents and purposes, modern man appeared on the scene about 10,000 years ago when we stopped a nomadic existence and began farming, one would see that in terms of a 24 hour clock, man has existed for a mere 19 seconds. Geologically speaking, humanity barely registers a blip on the radar. It could be argued that man has done an incredible amount of damage to his environment in a mere 19 seconds, but that would be a short view. I am of the mind that nature is a much larger force and much less fragile than self-proclaimed environmentalists give her credit for being. Environmentalist hubris does not allow me to consider any other conclusion.