I start with the assumption that we are pathetically ignorant, seriously deluded and insufficiently humble. So, a new idea that contradicts common views is always welcome. It might be mistaken, but so are current views, as we will come to understand in due course. I've posted on this theme before.

Eccentrics. One sandwich short of a picnic. A screw loose. History is littered with sometimes charming enthusiasts who go a bit over the top, following a line of reasoning beyond the pale, shocking, outraging or just titillating more sober and cautious types. Sometimes they are vindicated as knowledge increases over time and their musings are shown to have been prescient. Hannes Alfven, 1970 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, is one of my favorite examples of this.

for much of his career Alfven's ideas were dismissed or treated with condescension. He was often forced to publish his papers in obscure journals; and his work was continuously disputed for many years by the most renowned senior scientist in space physics, the British-American geophysicist Sydney Chapman. Even among physicists today there is little awareness of Alfven's many contributions to fields of physics where his ideas are used without recognition of who conceived them.

There's something especially ugly about the way we treat heretics, and it's growing uglier.

[I]n the early years of the twenty-first century, Western societies have become prey to powerful illiberal, intolerant and anti-democratic influences. Those who question prevailing cultural orthodoxies are often treated as immoral, evil people and their arguments depicted as a form of secular heresy.

Many influential figures have a cavalier attitude to free speech, believing that ‘dangerous’ ideas should be repressed. Disbelief in today’s received wisdom is described as ‘Denial’, which is branded by some as a crime that must be punished. It began with Holocaust denial, before moving on to the denial of other genocides. Then came the condemnation of ‘AIDS denial’, followed by accusations of ‘climate change denial’. This targeting of denial has little to do with the specifics of the highly-charged emotional issues involved in discussions of the Holocaust or AIDS or pollution. Rather, it is driven by a wider mood of intolerance towards free thinking.

I think that the trend began some years ago but it's true that it has gotten much worse in the last five or so. It's closely related to the culture wars that have ravaged society for many years, and part of the existential crisis of the left, which has gone off its rails since the implosion of communism, and the exposure of its record of atrocities undermined any claimed ethical and intellectual credibility. There are other factors as well, it's not simply explained, but this one looms large.

Free thinking always provokes the wrath of dogmatic moralisers. People devoted to experimentation and the exploration of new ideas, including philosophers and scientists, have traditionally faced being branded as heretics. . .

The act of denial has been transformed into a generic evil. This is clear in the way that the stigmatisation of denial has leapt from the realm of historic controversies over genocides to other areas of debate. Denial has become a kind of free-floating blasphemy, which can attach itself to a variety of issues and problems. One environmentalist writer argues that the ‘language of “climate change”, “global warming”, “human impacts” and “adaptation” are themselves a form of denial familiar from other forms of human rights abuse’ (6). It seems that some people can no longer tell what a difference in opinion looks like – it’s all just ‘denial’.

The charge of denial has become a secular form of blasphemy. A book written by an author who is sceptical of today’s prevailing environmentalist wisdom was dismissed with the words: ‘The text employs the strategy of those who, for example, argue that gay men aren’t dying of AIDS, that Jews weren’t singled out by the Nazis for extermination, and so on.’ (7) This forced association of three highly charged issues – pollution, AIDS, the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews – shows how denial has become an all-purpose blasphemy.

It isn't just Furedi, many have been speaking up about this leftish behavior, especially in its "watermelon" version, which has attracted some of the most vicious and mean spirited activists to the cause of climate change.

JONAH GOLDBERG SPANKS ELLEN GOODMAN for a silly column comparing people who disagree with global warming theater to holocaust deniers.

This sort of behavior by global-warming enthusiasts is offputting, and justifies those who compare them with religious fanatics. As Arnold Kling wrote the other day:

The Left's religion often comes dressed up as science. Marxism is one example. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century is another. The Global Warming crusade is probably another.

On a practical level this doesn't matter that much to me -- as I wrote before, we should probably be acting as if global warming theories are true regardless -- but acting as if isn't the same as crushing all dissent. And I can't help but feel that for people like Goodman, getting to compare people you disagree with to holocaust deniers is the main point, and global warming is just the excuse. Don't want me to get that impression? Don't act that way, then.

The usual perpetrators, Democrat and Labour bottom feeders, are busily hunting witches.

The Senatorial Inquisition of AEI:

Spurred by the allegations that the American Enterprise Institute sought to "buy scientists" to challenge the IPCC report, four Democratic Senators wrote to AEI President Chris DeMuth to challenge AEI's actions and demand an apology. . .

The article in the Guardian that the Democratic Senators are seeking to leverage seems to be pure bunk given the actual content of the AEI solicitation letters mailed to various writers asking for analyses of the most recent IPCC report and offering to buy articles on the subject. This is what publishers, including the Guardian, do - they pay for content and make money publishing it. Think tanks do the same thing, and often charge their clients big bucks for reports and analyses of current issues.

There is something exceedingly ugly about the Democrats in the US, Labour in Britain and the left in general these days. The numerous and severe defects of the Republicans in the US and the right in general do not excuse the behaviour on the left. From my independent perspective - which finds both wings to be vile - the balance seems to be tipping to the left. They are worse than the right at this point, and seem to be getting worse all the time. They seem to have lost interest in their own core principles in the naked pursuit of power.

Politics is stupid, and increasingly it is also disgusting.

Update:

Arnold repeats his doubts.

To be fair, it is not the global warming that has taken place so far that has people's knickers in a twist. It's the global warming that models project for the future. Some of that is projected even if our GDP grows no further, based on feedback effects from the existing level of CO2. Some of it is projected based on additional increases of GDP and more CO2 in the process.

These statistical projections are highly uncertain. In fact, I do not think that the climate modelers have anywhere near enough data to make usable predictions.

99 percent of the people who knowingly tell you that global warming is real and that the science is conclusive have no clue about statistical modeling. The statistical challenges of climate modeling that scientists understand among themselves are quite different from the popular conceptions that imagine some concrete certainty. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never before in the field of public policy have so many had such confidence in model forecasts based on so few meaningful observations.

I often write as if I had few doubts, including only a perfunctory caveat now and then such as "assuming that the scientists are right". But I do listen to those such as Arnold who have serious and credible objections which derive from their particular skills, and which I can't refute.

Update:

The idiocy of Lakoffian framing.

But there are two issues Nisbett does not discuss. They deserve an airing. First, Goodman indulges in a typical liberal rhetorical maneuver to frame the issue of climate change skepticism in apocalyptic terms, not only undercutting her laudable main point but also casting grave doubt on her credibility.

"Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future," Goodman writes.

Excuse me, but being skeptical about the scientific basis for global warming is nowhere near on a par with Holocaust denial. That is an utterly offensive statement — one that seems to comes up more and more in liberal discourse about climate change. If this is reframing the issue, count me out. I'll take run-of-the-mill catastrophism, thank you very much.

The second issue is this: What role should journalists play in reframing climate change from one of catastrophe in the making to a moral and religious issue, a corruption of science issue, and an economic issue, as Nisbet puts it?

I would argue that it's not the job of a daily news reporter to reframe the issue, at least not per se. A daily reporter's job is to ask challenging questions designed to elicit news and essential information, and to go where the story leads.

The dalliance of the left with this deceitful practice is a nasty habit they must break to stop the bleeding. If all they are is a gang in pursuit of power with no principles or programs for good governance then they have nothing at all and the world will continue to trend rightward. Honest engagement with threats and opportunities is required to offer a credible alternative.