Pessimism or Optimism? Neither?

[gnarlylove]

Disclaimer: If all you have to contribute is the normal cliches about climate change, don't waste our time. Close the damn page!

As for serious human beings, the most common and serious argument against anthropogenic climate change is "we cannot help nature. Nature will do as nature does with or without our efforts."

This allows us to look back in ease, to lie back in comfort knowing we can do nothing, that our obligations are zero. Thus we are free from responsibility. In other words, the climate will inevitably ebb and flow with or without humans and all of life. Then the question becomes, is the world going to inevitably be saved/continue? (optimism); or is the world inevitably going to be wiped clean (pessimism)?

This is a very flawed argument and is pitted against the natural inclination of all species, especially the human species. William James nicely carries forth my point,

Take the hypothesis seriously and as a live one. Suppose that the world’s author put the case to you before creation, saying: “I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own ’level best.’ I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?”

Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you say that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity from which you had been momentarily aroused by the tempter’s voice?

Of course if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the sort. There is a healthy-minded buoyancy in most of us which such a universe would exactly fit....

Most of us, I say, would therefore welcome the proposition and add our fiat to the fiat of the creator. Yet perhaps some would not; for there are morbid minds in every human collection, and to them the prospect of a universe with only a fighting chance of safety would probably make no appeal. There are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick of self and tired of vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we fall into the attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chances of things. We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father’s neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea.

And to men of this complexion, religious monism [one-ness] comes with its consoling words: “All is needed and essential–even you with your sick soul and heart. All are one with God, and with God all is well. The everlasting arms are beneath, whether in the world of finite appearances you seem to fail or to succeed.” There can be no doubt that when men are reduced to their last sick extremity absolutism is the only saving scheme. Pluralistic moralism [the hypothesis that the world is to be fought for] simply makes their teeth chatter, it refrigerates the very heart within their breast.

In other words, AGW skeptics who think that they have no responsibility shun the idea as it makes their teeth chatter, hardening their heart in stubbornness. Thus, as James points out, religious notions of absolutism take the fore and are pronounced as so obviously true that one is an absolute idiot to disagree. As in it's so obviously true that humans have no impact on climate. Obviously, the climate does not listen to such thoughts and has clearly been unusually erratic here in Ohio and throughout the globe.

I cannot stand to see my fellow species imbibe such an anti-life, anti-human perspective of no agency. No skeptic of AGW lives their life believing they have no agency except when it comes to this area of climate change. Indeed your local agency is small, it nevertheless contributes to our carbon, the 36 billion tons just last year that would not exist without humans. While natural laws play a role, it is also equally understood that humans have been increasing CO2 output for centuries to the point that we are not witnessing a variety of phenomena humans have sparsely witnessed if at all in our 200,000 years of being. I am not pointing fingers in blame, I am hoping to elucidate the fact that the climate is obviously responding to our agency with increasing pace (IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)

So my point is it's entirely natural to assume you have some local responsibility, local agency in human affairs. So why throw your hands up in this instance only? My guess is it's convenient for AGW skeptics to keep core beliefs and central activities intact. But this is no argument. While it is the goal of human thinking to maintain old habits and shun new thoughts the essential goal of science, however, is quite the opposite: it seeks to be validated and assumes it is always wrong until validation. Humans have obviously been linked to climate change according to all international bodies of science. Only fringe bloggers cry "farse" ya know? the one's that want to continue believing humans have no responsibility?

I trust science's methods over paid bloggers and the human desire for short-term gains by the carbon industry. In this instance only, there is no one to ensure our safety, to off-set our risk. We are indeed risking the very existence of our species at the behest of profit. How childish. The problem is not elucidating the facts but rather becomes raising kids with responsibility to their local and global bio-sphere.

 

[elektra]

I can not help but notice that the solution proposed to stop agw is to massively increase the size of heavy industry polluting more as well as using more oil at a faster rate. The solution, grenade energy is now the heaviest polluter of the earth.

 

[Old Rocks]

I cannot help but notice that you flap-yap a great deal and say nothing at all.

 

[HenryBHough]

The only way to save the planet is to emulate nature's perfect critter.

The lemming.

When they overpopulate they take the matter in hand - or to foot, as it were, and Hey Presto! Problem resolved.

 

[gnarlylove]

Perhaps it is meant for the philosophy forum. The thrust of the OP is that skeptics of AGW offer a weak argument that the world is deterministic when clearly our agency as humans has created a small but important and massively growing change in climate. Instead of pussy footing around the issue and preferring to hate on conservation of resources, AGW skeptics should wake up and realize they are agents in climate change and have a responsibility to be good stewards of the earth. Denying human agency in climate change (which most of them admit is real) is throwing your hands up, it is no defensible argument. And we know it's true from the most elementary thoughts and experience. Our collective activity has transformed the world, especially our lives.