This started off as a response to Barry's message in the Hurricanes and Global Warming thread but I decided to turn it into a new topic because it isn't about ths issue of a possible connection bewteen hurricanes and global warming...it is still a response to Barry however. I think he's right that we need to focus more on the ideology behind the fear of global warming than on critiques of the science.

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There isn't always a clear line between science and philosophy/world outlook.   Science itself has always been an arena of struggle just as much as society at large.   We can see this in  the global warming debate with the appeals to 'consensus'.  Science is supposed to be about discovering the truth and consensus has nothing to do with that.  People tend to think that the views of the majority have a greater likelihood of being correct than those of the minority but the history of science has shown this to be wrong again and again.  In science as in every area it's hard to swim against the tide and easy to go along with what everyone else seems to believe. And in the global warming/climate change area it's especially difficult because it's all tied in with a particular world view.  Those who argue against the standard view are characterised as not only wrong but bad.  Their views are seen as dangerous to the future of the planet.


When Galilleo proposed that the earth revolved around the sun, the Church saw this as heresy because it contradicted the biblical view of the earth as the centre of the solar system. 


People such as Tim Flannery insist that it is science that has convinced them that global warming  threatens the future of humanity. But their starting point is  ideological whether they realise it or not.  Like the Church in Galileo's time they have a conception of how things are meant to be and they treat any other view as heretical. 


This is particularly clear in Flannery's  book "The Weather Makers"  where  he  returns again and again to the "eco-pop" Gaia hypothesis.  This is the view, proposed by James Lovelock (1979)  that the Earth itself is a living organism. Flannery writes:

Lovelock argued that Earth was a single planet sized organism, which he named GAIA after an Ancient Greek earth goddess. Anyone who has lived close to nature will recognise such a thing Lovelock was describing but because his arguments seemed mystical they discomfited many scientists.


The atmosphere, Lovelock concluded, is Gaia's great organ of interconnection and temperature regulation. He describes it as 'not merely a biological product, but more probably a biological construction: not living, but like a cat's fur, a bird's feathers, or the paper nest of a wasp, an extension of a living system designed to maintain a chosen environment.

                               

                              
                                  Gaia - mother earth



Although (briefly) acknowledging that the Gaia hypothesis is deeply teleological and does not seem to be compatible with  natural selection, Flannery  likes the idea too much  to relinquish it  :

Does it really matter whether Gaia exists or not? I think that it does, for it influences the very way we see our place in nature. Someone who believes in Gaia sees everything on Earth as being intimately connected to everything else, just as organs are in a body. In such a system, pollutants cannot simply be shunted out of sight and forgotten, and every extinction is seen as an act of self-mutilation. As a result, a Gaian world view predisposes its adherents to sustainable ways of living.

 

So this is where Flannery begins, not with science but with a world view in which the human "place in nature" is preordained by a greater power (Gaia or mother earth).  All of the scientific findings, theories. conjectures that he goes on to report in his book are interpreted in this light. 



In the Age the other day Flannery said:

"Do you really need to know the science? Ask anyone particularly in rural Australia, the older generation out there. Ask them what is happening," Dr Flannery said.

"We know there are changes occurring in the atmosphere. Is it due to CO2? Yes. There is your science."

That's a fairly incredible statement for someone who is described as "one of the world's leading writer-scientists and thinkers in environmental science."


First he says that "the science" isn't actually all that important, a few anecdotes from  older and rural Australians  should be enough, and second he says that all we need to know is that increased C0₂ is causing atmospheric changes.  Underlying all of this is not science but a world outlook based on   fear  of change and a desire to  preserve things as they are.  This in turn is based on a  notion that  "the web of life"  is in some sort of precarious balance  which could easily be tipped into a runaway unstable state with the potential to destroy us all.


At that point he says, Gaia probably couldn't "sort it out" and bring things back into equilibrium:

I frequently hear people say that all will be ok with climate change because 'Gaia will sort it out'. When Lovelock argued that 'there must be an intricate security system to ensure that exotic outlaw species do not evolve into rampantly criminal syndicaes'  that disrupt Gaia's thermostat, he seems to agree. Yet notwithstanding the destruction of human civilisation through the agency of climate change, it's difficult to imagine just how Gaia would 'sort it out'. And even if she does manage to rid herself of us, we would take so many other species with is that the repair job to Earth's biodiversity would take tens of millions of years.

The idea that we humans could easily destroy ourselves and possibly most other life on the planet has taken such a firm grip that it is treated as some sort of established truth which needs no justification. 


It's a slightly mixed up view which sees us as both all powerful (we can easily upset the balance of nature) and quite vulnerable ( we will change the natural world in ways that we can't deal with).  Furthemore it operates from the premise  that any reduction in biodiversity would be intrinsically wrong (ie that all species should  have equal rights to the planet.)


I think we should look after the environment  and I also think that in general,  species diversity is a good thing.  But it's a good thing because it's good for us (humans).  Huge numbers of species have become extinct since life began and that process will continue. We humans will almost certainly be replaced by something else - or perhaps merge into something else. 



Meanwhile  it's necessary  to oppose attempts to hold us back by spreading  mythology about there being a natural way that things "ought to be".  The garden of Eden? yuck! How boring and uneventful.  We should eat more apples.


 

THE PRESENCE OF GAIA "As a new dawn approaches Gaia emerges from our sleeping planet. The radiance of her aura lights up the heavens and her 'presence' gives confidence to the birds and animals to venture forth, secure in the knowledge that she will protect them. A river of life flows out to all corners of the earth, renewing and restoring. What greater 'present' could she give us!"