More on defining "Climate Change"
The term “global warming” is more than just a failed theory, it represents at least 20 years of fear mongering used to promote restrictive regulations and anti-growth legislation. And now it seems that those who have been leveraging the term are just going to shrug it off as though it never happened. Instead, they want to rally around “man-made climate change” as the new threat to the future, taking pains to leave it as undefined as their previously concocted phantoms.
Should the appropriators of the global warming hoax be allowed to simply drop the subject and be let off the hook? Ideally, no. Anyone who attempts to continue arguing a lost debate by playing semantics should properly be called out and made to admit their error. However, the debate over man’s effect on the environment is not structured. The self-proclaimed defenders of the environment need only toss out claims without fear of having to defend them. That is because the debate doesn’t occur behind paired podiums, but in the realm of public opinion.
As far back as this author can remember, one environmental scare has followed another, each with its prescribed political solution and each ecological problem magically going away once the political goal is attained. When is the last time anyone heard about acid rain or the ozone hole? According to various groups on the internet, these things are still problems plaguing us this very moment, but it seems the media stopped worrying about them near the time amendments requiring smokestack scrubbers were added to the Clean Air Act (mid-1990s) or once the UN adopted the Montreal Protocol (1987). Is it possible that if the United States had ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the subject of global warming would have vanished from the major news outlets then?
While it would be fun to rub the fallacy of global warming in some faces, it would likely accomplish little. A better approach would be to counter dubious claims with facts. If the public receives a counter to every climate change claim that is made, more and more they will dismiss the claims out of hand without even waiting for the refutation. Like it or not, no one is going to overtly declare a victor, unless one declares it for his own side. Obviously, claims that the debate was over did not make it so. The fact that the term “global warming” is falling out of favor is about as much victory as one will see.
Now, this is not all to say that the term “global warming” should be left to die. In much the same way the global cooling scare of the 70’s is referenced in debunking global warming, both can be used to demonstrate that the ones crying “man-made climate change” have no idea what they are talking about.
The goal isn’t to convert the “true believers” of man-made climate change. No evidence will sway those ones. The goal is to reach the discerning individual who is looking for answers. It is to make him ask, “Why would one make such unfounded claims?” From that point, all the evidence needed exists to show how environmentalists for years have perpetrated their scare tactics to push onerous legislation and regulation that inhibit freedom and enhance government authority.
Should the appropriators of the global warming hoax be allowed to simply drop the subject and be let off the hook? Ideally, no. Anyone who attempts to continue arguing a lost debate by playing semantics should properly be called out and made to admit their error. However, the debate over man’s effect on the environment is not structured. The self-proclaimed defenders of the environment need only toss out claims without fear of having to defend them. That is because the debate doesn’t occur behind paired podiums, but in the realm of public opinion.
As far back as this author can remember, one environmental scare has followed another, each with its prescribed political solution and each ecological problem magically going away once the political goal is attained. When is the last time anyone heard about acid rain or the ozone hole? According to various groups on the internet, these things are still problems plaguing us this very moment, but it seems the media stopped worrying about them near the time amendments requiring smokestack scrubbers were added to the Clean Air Act (mid-1990s) or once the UN adopted the Montreal Protocol (1987). Is it possible that if the United States had ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the subject of global warming would have vanished from the major news outlets then?
While it would be fun to rub the fallacy of global warming in some faces, it would likely accomplish little. A better approach would be to counter dubious claims with facts. If the public receives a counter to every climate change claim that is made, more and more they will dismiss the claims out of hand without even waiting for the refutation. Like it or not, no one is going to overtly declare a victor, unless one declares it for his own side. Obviously, claims that the debate was over did not make it so. The fact that the term “global warming” is falling out of favor is about as much victory as one will see.
Now, this is not all to say that the term “global warming” should be left to die. In much the same way the global cooling scare of the 70’s is referenced in debunking global warming, both can be used to demonstrate that the ones crying “man-made climate change” have no idea what they are talking about.
The goal isn’t to convert the “true believers” of man-made climate change. No evidence will sway those ones. The goal is to reach the discerning individual who is looking for answers. It is to make him ask, “Why would one make such unfounded claims?” From that point, all the evidence needed exists to show how environmentalists for years have perpetrated their scare tactics to push onerous legislation and regulation that inhibit freedom and enhance government authority.
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