Upton Sinclair said “The one thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history” (or words to that effect.
This may be excusable when considering ancient history, or even a few centuries. If you find fertile land next to a big mountain and you settle down and start farming building a big settlement that subsequently gets annihilated when the “big mountain” erupts, you might be forgiven if the previous eruption was several thousand years ago. But not, you know, if it happened the previous year.
So it is sad that in the relatively short few decades that climate change has become a thing, the discourse has already lurched into 3 false dichotomies.
What’s a false dichotomy? Well anyone who lives in a “democracy” with one shit party and one slightly less shit party should understand this very well.
Any other choice is challenged for “allowing the shit / less shit party win” depending on your preference. In fact in the UK even the attempt to overturn the false dichotomy of First Past the Post was settled with another false dichotomy.
Instead of having the choice of PR, the Lib Dems managed to negotiate out of that and as a result the two options were FPTP and AV (Alternative vote). Aleternative Vote being described as a “miserable little compromise” by…er…Nick Clegg.
This meant voting against AV could be construed as being anti PR and thus you never get the option you want.
But on to Climate. Here these False Dichotomies are going to get us all killed. And Now that we have scored a hat trick, we unfortunately don’t get to go on about it for 60 years like Geiff Hurst, because we’re all going to be dead.
FD No. 1
Blowing hot or cold?
Let’s start at the beginning. In the early days climate scientists knew there was a lot of crap being pumped into the atmosphere and there was early speculation that the particulate matter might have a cooling effect. Explainer.
So before we even got off the ground, there was a false dichotomy where the media question was hot or cold? Preventing a discussion about how hot.
FD No. 2
Let’s say this didn’t last too long, because we can after all measure things. So as temperatures went up the “cooling” brigade ran out of ammunition. However this wee now replaced with another false dichotomy.
Climate change is happening / not happening.
This was a big one and lasted for ages. However it is also a false dichotomy. The argument was presented as largely between “skeptics” and “scientists”. However who are these scientists? Quickly the majority of scientists fell in behind the IPCC consensus as the scientific position. However the FD bit is that this has always been a hopelessly compromised underestimate of climate predictions. That has also been relntlessly interfered with and interfered with.
So the IPCC report is an underestimate of how bad things are.
So lets put this FD is numerical terms.
Imagine the denier position is zero and the IPCC position is 5. The media presentation of this as the debate gives the impression that the severity of climate change might be somewhere in between, like 2.5.
But wait, this is an argument between non-scientists and scientists. What about between scientists who back the IPCC position and other other scientists who recognise its limitations?
These scientists offer worse predictions and let’s say they are a 10. So the debate we had was a 2.5, when it whouls have been a 7.5. Even though this numbering is arbritrary, it highlights the shift in debate when you shake the morons out.
So, we know what we are doing now, right?
Of course not. We are about to launch ourselves into FD 3.
FD No. 3.
Net Zero or not Net Zero?
At the moment in the UK a cabal of empty headed ideaogues led by Steve Baker ar about to “heroically” take on the government over its Net Zero targets.
Out come the wooden heads in the usual places.
So we have to defend Net Zero against this attack, right? No, no, no, no no!
This is voting for the slightly less shit party all over again. The media polarise the debate into more Fossil Fuels vs Net Zero and there is now no space to point out that
a. The UKgovernment is missing all its net zero targets anyway.
b. The UK doesn’t have any plans to get to Net Zero.
b. Net zero is a load of bullshit in the first place.
So, no we can’t talk about those three things, because the media have offered us only two options as usual. Maybe there are only ever two chairs in the news studios.
I wonder if there is time left in this dying civilisation for FD no. 4.