The first is the scientific level. On this level, the discussion is about things such as photon scattering, saturation and extinction rates, spectrum broadening, biological feedback systems, quantum uncertainty lichens and coccoliths etc. The idea that these matters are in some way "settled" is of course ridiculous. If the "jury was in" on these issues scientists wouldn't be continuing to try to refine their climate models. The fact that scientists are continuing to collect data, drill ice-cores, analyse satellite data, measure gas levels etc. is an indication that climate science is still a work in progress. Thinking that we now know all about climate mechanics is as silly as saying that, once Gregor Mendel proposed his theory of chromosomes in 1866, we knew all about genetics.
The other level however, is the political level and this is the interesting one. While the discussions in the scientific community over climate are ongoing, polite and informed, the debate over the politics of climate are uninformed, vicious and bigoted.
So how did a complex question about atmospheric heat become a political hot-potato? After all, few scientific issues end up having political as opposed to religious implications. Certainly, studies of intelligence challenged and threatened long-held but erroneous assumptions about the genetic superiority of Caucasians over other races and men over women - arguments over biology have always had the capacity to upset prejudices. But how did an issue in physics, end up being divided along Left/Right political lines?
In the 1950s, the western world, basking in not-unjustified triumphalism over having won two world wars, was imbued with almost palpable optimism. The western way of life had been vindicated, material prosperity had returned and seemed ensured, levels of education were rising and Science was the hero of the day. Humans were starting to explore space and the optimism of the times culminated in the Moon landing of 1969. Yet, at the same time, in hidden recesses of society, there were pockets of discontent - mainly Communists. Communists, who did not necessarily call themselves by that name, were people who adhered to Marx's theory that capitalism (and, with it, democracy) was a system that oppressed the common people. The fact that the common people were prospering in the post-war period did not seem to faze them. They were staunch defenders of the USSR, despite its treatment of dissidents and brutality towards its satellites and blamed the United States for the cold-war, and just about every other war in the world. Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin and the sight of tanks rolling into Budapest and Prague finally disillusioned a fair few of them and many of them ceased to see the Soviet Union as the utopia they had once thought. Nevertheless, while they acknowledged that Marxism needed some tweaking here and there, they still felt that its fundamental assumption was true - that there was something fundamentally wrong with the western way of life.
Now, I have not been able, in fifty years of pondering this, been able to work out why people who lived in a society with abundant food, free education, a reasonably equitable justice system, advanced medical services, almost full employment and abundant opportunity, should think there was something fundamentally wrong with that society. And of course the idea that our society was fundamentally flawed was considered absurd by the millions of Australians who thought themselves lucky to live here - especially if they had escaped the devastation of Europe. The malcontents and political agitators were considered (quite correctly in my view) to be "ratbags".
Eventually, faced with the difficulty, if not impossibility, of convincing the general population about the inherent evils of our society, these unrepentant Marxists retreated into enclaves where they could relax in the company of others of the same persuasion. Those enclaves were universities, trade unions and the arts.
I hasten to point out that the Australian labour movement was not dominated by Marxists, though several union leaders who were self-declared communists exerted enough influence to split the entire movement in the Fifties. In the universities, Marxists did not dominate the traditional areas of medicine, science or law but were able to acquire significant influence in the faculties of Political Science, Economics or of course, that new and mysterious, largely bogus, discipline of Sociology. To this day, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the almost complete capitalisation of China, there are lecturers and tutors in universities who are unashamedly Marxist.
As for the arts, there are few writers, actors and musicians who would describe themselves outright as socialists, but they nevertheless consistently express, in their plays and books and public utterances, that same deep concern that there is something fundamentally wrong with western society.
The problem for these people is of course that overall, our social system works. Free enterprise and capitalism has provided wealth for most of the population. Wages in Australia are comparatively high, and social services are comparatively generous. While there are always improvements that can be made, there is not much to suggest that the basic foundations of the social system are not working and certainly not enough to justify a revolution. The malcontents had to look around for something else to complain about.
One of the things that they latched onto was guilt. A new view emerged that our society was basically evil because it was built on the dispossession of others. This is a topic in itself which I will deal with another time. The other issue which emerged just as the economic arguments against capitalism were faltering, was the Environment.
Rachel Carson's book The Silent Spring in in 1962 raised the alarm about how pesticides, particularly DDT, had entered the food chain and were not only killing birds but presenting a cancer risk to humans. That fact that Carson was herself fighting cancer at the time added poignancy to her case. Although the book was challenged by the chemical industry and many scientists, who argued that pesticides produced more health benefits than problems, the use of DDT was curtailed and a greater vigilance towards environmental consequences of chemicals was established. This was a Good Thing. The book however was instrumental in planting a new mental equation in people's minds:
Capitalism = Industry = Chemicals = Pollution = Disease.
Shortly after The Silent Spring, an entomologist Paul Erlich, dropped another bomb - specifically The Population Bomb - which predicted in 1968 that the world's population would outgrow its ability to feed itself within ten years and millions would die. Virtually no prediction made by this neo-Malthusian epic ever came to pass (thank goodness: Erlich recommended such remedies as putting sterilising chemicals in water-supplies) but it was enough to scare the living be-Jesus out of a whole generation. (Note that the population at that time was about half of what it is today.) While Erlich's catastrophism turned out to be a furphy, his work still managed to implant another kind of equation in the minds of an entire generation:
Science + Medicine = Population Growth = Food Depletion = Mass Extinction of Humans.
The last work in this trilogy of terror was the 1982 book The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell, which opened with the sentence. "There is nothing more certain than that the world will be destroyed by a nuclear war." Thus, in summary, it appeared that humans were going to extinguish all animal life on the planet, then millions would starve and the remainder would nuke themselves into oblivion.
The problem was, that by the end of the 20th century, all these fears had substantially dissolved. The collapse of the Soviet Union had reduced the possibility of global nuclear war significantly, new developments in agriculture had led to a reduction rather than an increase in famine and there were still birds. The concept of western democratic capitalism destroying itself and everyone else suddenly seemed to have faded. And then, someone revived a decades old theory - first floated in the early 20th century - that carbon dioxide emissions could possibly warm the planet, theoretically to dangerous levels. A new version of Paul Erlich, Al Gore, failed presidential candidate, quickly produced An Inconvenient Truth, a film which showed graphically, if mostly fraudulently, what others had been trying to prove for a century: that western industrialised society was threatening the existence of life on Earth.
Despite the fact that much of the information in An Inconvenient Truth was incorrect, misleading or just plain fabricated, the film became virtually an environmental gospel, shown in schools to children and treated almost as scientific text. It successfully implanted a final equation in the mind of a new generation:
Modern Industry + Consumption = Emissions = Warming = Apocalypse.
The great advantage of Global Warming was that its predictions were set far in the future. Erlich had made the mistake of predicting disaster within a ten year period. When that time arrived, and what he predicted had not happened, his writings were discredited. The global warming alarmists did not make the same mistake. Their warnings were based on predictions about temperatures towards the end of the 21st century. That meant that their hypotheses could not be discredited for at least fifty to seventy years. Even if temperatures did not rise over the next 20 years (as they in fact have not) this could be dismissed as response lag, storage of heat potential, randomness in the system etc. This makes Global Warming the Perfect Scare because it cannot be disproved within the lifetimes of most people alive today.Now the anti-capitalists, anti-industrialists, anti-mining, anti-logging, anti-everything people had something to justify their antipathies. Now they had a stick that they could beat mining companies, oil companies, banks, steel makers and virtually all industry with. Of course the Antipathists - if I can call them that - continued to drive cars, use electricity, shop at supermarkets etc but they could justify their contempt for the people who provided those things: those bastards were destroying the Earth.
So is Global Warming Theory a Left-wing conspiracy? Well... yes and no. We must recognise that there are two interpretations of 'left-wing.' The first is what we might call Soft-Left. This is a commitment to specific social reforms - combatting racism, sexism, homophobia, a commitment to social justice and equality, a desire for clean air water and so on. This however does not clearly delineate people as "left wing" as some or all of those aims are endorsed by people who might be described as Soft-Right.
The Hard Left however can be distinguished from the Hard Right quite easily. The Hard Right believes that nothing in our society should be changed. The Hard Left believes that everything should be changed. That is why the Marxists were against trade-unions: they feared that if workers got better wages and conditions they would be less inclined towards revolution, which is what happened. The Hard Left is not concerned with specific reforms, it wants a massive overhaul of western society and, given the failure of the economic justifications for socialism, the theory of Global Warming has provided then with their best weapon in half a century.
It is no accident therefore that many member of the Australian Greens are socialists and one at least (Lee Rhiannon) is an outright unreconstructed communist.
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