Thread by @clim8resistance

Imagine not understanding why a seemingly scientific injunction to suspend democratic norms, reverse and constrain economic growth and limit material freedoms might have "politicized" the issue.

But it's the "deniers" who are "ideological", right?

https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1316491339421294592

It's all hidden in the putative equivalence of the link between smoking increasing the incidence of cancer and the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere.

But global warming is not cancer. Global warming is not even a first-order problem, as cancer undoubtedly is.

It's the way, way, way downstream consequences of global warming -- nth-order effects -- which are the alleged problems. They are very far from the scientific "consensus". They are not part of it. Very many of them are political. Some are categorically mystical.

There is only superficial correspondence between smoking-cancer and CO2-global warming. Science identified the cancer link, and science identified CO2 global warming potential.

It's the dissent from these claims that seemingly makes the substance of these links, not the assent.

But this dissent does not exist. Zeke et al have to imagine that dissenting opinion in debates about things that have no immediate relationship to the question of CO2's effect *ALL* depend absolutely on "denial" of the scientific claim.

It's a lie.

Moreover, one can defer to the "consensus" without knowing what it consists of, and people who defer to the consensus without knowing what it consists of can demand deference to it from people with a better understanding of its content.

The consensus can mean whatever you want.

But the tobacco link is interesting.

The fact is that, for a long time, it isn't good enough for the risks of smoking to be understood, to be explained to the public by people whose job it is to explain risks, health and science.

The tobacco wars exploded because hungry lawyers and public health zealots wanted to destroy tobacco companies.

Environmental wars exploded for the same reason. Lawyers believed they could extract endless $billions from agricultural chemical companies.

And, as Matt Ridley and Rupert Darwall have pointed out...

https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/1316681568065327104

If individuals were allowed to take their own risks, there would be no histrionics about the actions of the "tobacco lobby". It is ideologues and ambulance-chasers that lower science to the standards of courts.

And it is the same with the environmental movement...

Once the power of the idea that industry could be destroying the planet had been discovered, it became an opportunity for power.

Environmental issues ceased being problems which science could discover solutions to. they became a basis for the regulation of society.

In a normal world, the scientist's job is done when he or she has demonstrated the relationship between smoking and the incidence of cancer. And the doctor's job is done when he or she explains to a patient the risks their lifestyle creates...

But some made it their mission to change the world. They wanted to stamp out smoking and destroy tobacco companies. Noble aims, perhaps. They certainly think so. But in doing so, they had to turn people --everyone -- into supplicants, incapable of making their own decisions.

And the green movement is little different. Solutions to environmental problems which do not require first-order political interventions -- the reorganisation of society and the organising principles -- are of no interest to them. They are anathema to environmentalism.

That is the true resemblance of the smoking-cancer and CO2-global warming link.

"Denial", "deniers", and "denialism" have NOTHING to do with that congruence.

The ideological patterns are identical on Zeke's side of the debate.