Professor Doom

A major problem with environmentalists is that they have no insight into their own beliefs. It's a bit like someone calling himself a 'Christian', but who has never read the Bible -- not even the bits about Jesus. They believe that something called 'science' exists, and has made unimpeachable claims. But they have no idea what these claims are, how they were developed, how they are tested, what limitations and vulnerabilities they have, what confidence we can place in them, and how they may be countered in broader debates about how to respond to them, if at all. Consequently, they believe that everything they believe is given by science absolutely, and that thus they are equipped to vanquish deniers with absolute truth -- the mission that they appoint themselves to, which requires them to observe no normal standards of discussion or debate, for which they are woefully inadequately equipped emotionally or intellectually. The claims they make do not need to be defended, because there is no debate, only science vs denial. And so their claims, to the extent that any sense can be made of them at all, lack coherence, lack discipline, lack relevance to the discussions in which they intervene. They frequently imagine the positions they seemingly fight against. And they invent the motivations of the opposing position, to find evidence of bad faith. They move wildly from claim to unrelated claim -- such as species extinction to UKIP to arctic ice cover -- in discussions that have no relation to those topics, as their points are answered. I call this species of renegade climate warrior the Consensus Enforcer. They are typically anonymous, and have significantly overestimated their abilities. They have little to no capacity for basic comprehension -- perhaps the trait that gives rise to their inability to focus on the topic at hand, and their whataboutery meanderings though every topic in the constellation of green scare stories. And they have no capacity for abstract thought, most significantly for the means by which the truthfulness of a claim can be evaluated, whether science, logic, arithmetic or some other objective process -- for them, truth and institutional authority are synonymous. Consequently they have no ability to understand when their argument is exhausted, when they have argued against themselves, and when they are making a hopeless case. A paraphrased but real argument, for example, from yesterday: "Northern hemisphere snow cover has not decreased" "97 per cent of scientists disagree". The green makes a transparent error. He believes he is arguing with a denier, and that the denier's claim must be false, because the consensus, which he is in possession of and which his counterpart does not, divides the debate into science vs denial. But what the Consensus Enforcer reveals is that he has no capacity for reason. He is a copy-and-paste artist. He has deferred his reasoning and even his ability to read to institutional authority. Nothing could dissuade him from his opinion, no matter how far his own claim is from the actual substance of the actual substance of the scientific consensus (as represented by the IPCC), the authority of which he claims for his argument. The Consensus Enforcer is arguing therefore for a consensus without an object. It is an empty consensus. It is hollow. It can mean whatever he claims it means, like Humpty Dumpty and the meaning of words. And he cannot be corrected, because he has categorically eschewed reason. He is a victim of ideology. Therefore, argument or debate with Consensus Enforcers is a lost cause. It is a waste of time, except to remind ourselves of the mentality of such people. Debate must be with people who believe that debate and reason count for something. People, that is to say, who are worth having conversations with. Your energies are much better spent on taking the arguments against green ideology out into the mainstream.