It Did Not Happen, But If It Did ...

I’ve been looking at the climate recently, or rather the arguments about climate change, and I’ve noticed something.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve dipped my toe into the warm water of the climate debate.  I’ve done so before, if I recall correctly, over at Craig-Land.  I was in discussion with someone who was leaning towards a fundamentalist viewpoint and his position was along the lines of “there’s no such thing as detrimental, human-caused climate change (because my god is in charge and wouldn’t let that happen) and, even if it did, it would not be so bad, because you’d be able to go to Canada for beach holidays”.  I wrote this off as religiously inspired insanity, but I am wondering if I was too quick to do so.

This “deny and support” approach isn’t limited to religious people who think that their god is firmly in the driver’s seat.  I’ve also observed it from other high-profile deniers, like Holocaust denier (I was tempted to make a reference to Godwin in the title of this article but decided that it was too oblique).  Take David Irving as an example.

David Irving is a revisionist historian who writes favourably about Hitler. He’s also an antisemite.  Basically, he’s got a position along the lines of “the Nazis did not kill all those Jews, but if they did it would not have been such a bad thing”.  I know that he’s never come out quite as strongly against Jews as to say he wanted them all to be killed, but he has called them his “traditional enemy” and his work is certainly lapped up by people who are enamoured of the idea of a “race war”.  These particular followers of Irving hold very much to the “it didn’t happen, but if it did … it would have been totally okay” idea.

Another example has been in the news as much if not more than the climate recently, Donald Trump.  There have been quite a few denials of his which were immediately followed by “but it would have been totally okay”.  Take the non-sacking of Robert Mueller, the issue was that Trump (allegedly) tried to get Mueller removed as Special Counsel and denied it in a tweet:

As has been incorrectly reported by the Fake News Media, I never told then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller, even though I had the legal right to do so. If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn't need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself

In other words: “I didn’t do it and even if I did do it, it was okay (because I had the legal right to do so)”.

I saw an example of this sort of thinking recently on the climate, from a darkly hilarious site put together by the Galileo Movement:

Burning fuels containing carbon produces CO2 and water vapour. A tax claimed to stop global warming by taxing carbon dioxide is a tax on rain.

The CO2 is beneficial to plants and the water vapour forms life-giving rain. The craziness of taxing life-giving CO2 is based on deception and erodes our economic security.

Clearly this snippet is not the full story.  There are other parts of the site that argue against human impact on CO2, for example:

Some politicians considers (sic) that the tiny amount of CO2 in air is a significant fact for the man in the street. Let’s explore that. Although Nature controls CO2 levels in air, the numbers themselves are entertaining:

Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe;

It’s concentrated in and on Earth’s crust. Carbon enables life on Earth. It’s the key ingredient. It’s in all life forms. Even radical Greens understand that carbon is essential for life and that carbon dioxide is essential for life on Earth.  Every cell in our body contains carbon. It’s part of our DNA. It’s the second most abundant element in the human body;

Carbon dioxide is less than 0.04% of Earth’s air. It’s just 0.0385%;

In round figures, that’s one molecule of CO2 in every 2,600 molecules of air;

Annually, of all the CO2 produced on Earth, Nature produces 97%.   All human activity—farming, mining, manufacturing—produces just 3%. Nature produces 32 times more than all human activity;

CO2 only stays in the air a short time before removal by plants and oceans. It becomes part of animals, plants and soils and is dissolved in oceans. Most studies estimate 5-7 years in air. Recent studies estimate as little as 12 months.  Nature recycles all CO2 out of the air. That recycling is part of Earth’s carbon cycle, essential for all life on Earth;

There’s 50 times more CO2 dissolved in oceans than is in Earth’s entire atmosphere;

Combining these facts and numbers and using round figures produces this:

In every 86,000 molecules of air, a mere 33 are CO2;

Of those 32 are from Nature and at most 1 is from human activity;

How can 32 molecules be essential for all life on Earth yet one be catastrophically destroying life on Earth? It cannot. That’s absurd;

That’s irrelevant though and more absurd because Nature alone determines CO2 levels. It doesn’t matter how much CO2 humans produce, the level in air is determined by Nature. If we produce more O2, Nature simply releases a bit less from the oceans. If we cut all human CO2 production, Nature would simply release a little more from the oceans.

It’s illogical to think the human CO2 affects climate when we cannot even affect the level of CO2 in the air. It’s crazy. It’s ignorance or deceit.

So, we humans have not been affecting CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but even if we had, it’d be okay because CO2 (together with water vapour) is good.  Plus, Nature has our back.

Interestingly, this is not a new observation – that certain people tend to deny what has happened (or is going on) while also claiming that if it did happen (or was happening) is okay.  There was research done in the bad old days (the 1950s) on juvenile delinquency and they came up with the notion of “techniques of neutralisation”.  While not well supported by further research, it’s an interesting theory – by which I mean it’s an interesting way at looking at a phenomenon, but not so much explaining the phenomenon. 

Particularly salient are denying the injury and denying the victim, which we can think of as denying that a crime (injury) took place and asserting that what happened was okay (and thus there was no victim).

I’m not the first to note that climate change deniers, Holocaust deniers and Donald Trump act like criminals who are trying to neutralise their actions and/or positions.  What I do intend to do, however, is be alert in future to efforts at denial that come together with a justification or minimisation.

(Another example that came up recently, on Oh No Ross and Carrie, was that of the congregation of Tony Alamo.  Tony Alamo died in prison after being found guilty of sexual assault on minors [although the specific charges related to transporting minor across state lines for the purpose of sex, in order to make the charges Federal, rather than State of Arkansas].  His congregation simultaneously deny that he was guilty of the charges and assert that it's okay to have sex with a "woman" as soon as she reaches menarche, which in extreme cases can be very, very young but usually happens between 9 and 15.  According to Reuters, one of Alamo's alleged victims was 8 when she was first molested.  So, Tony's surviving ministry claims that Tony is innocent, but if he did it, it was okay.

By the way, it is purely coincidental that Tony Alamo Christian Ministries believe that environmentalism is Satanic.  I only recalled that when retrieving the link.  On the other hand, there's a strong link between political conservatism and climate change denial and between religious nut-jobbery and political conservatism, so perhaps it's not such a coincidence.  It'd be okay if it was.)