> And even if the problem did exist... <
What really disturbs me about the whole Climate Change thing is how they have shut down debate. All topics in science - new or old - must be continually debated. And that debate used to be encouraged.
But not when it comes to man-made Climate Change. All debate is forbidden! You gotta wonder why.
That has disturbed me greatly, too. I hate to see science corrupted, hate to see young people in despair over a fake catastrophe (that is curiously always a decade or two away, and has been for decades, yet they never seem to catch on).
Our elite (who are mainly essentially gnostic or atheist, both of which naturally tend toward hubris and nihilism) seem to be ushering an age of “men become as gods” — according to them, mankind is always the author of a just-over-the-horizon worldwide catastrophe and mankind must become its own savior. “Science” is the great idol, and none may question how the idol is carved by the priestly class. Real Science, as you correctly point out, is never completely “settled” but continually challenged.
I am old enough to remember The Population Bomb (We’re All Gonna Starve), Global Cooling (We’re All Gonna Freeze), The Hole in the Ozone (We’re All Gonna Get Fried to a Crisp), The Coming Dark Night of Air Pollution (We’re All Gonna Die in the Dark Wearing Gas Masks), Peak Oil (We’re All Gonna Die at the Gas Station When the Pumps Run Dry in the Year 2000) etc., etc. etc.
Civilization did not disappear from the face of the earth as mass starvation laid waste every continent as predicted, we did not die in the dark while wearing gas masks in 1985 as predicted, we did not wake up in a new Ice Age in 1990 as predicted, the gas pumps did not run dry in 2000, and we didn’t turn into crispy critters, either, even though we still have that pesky hole in the ozone layer.
Despite the dire Global Warming predictions of Algore and friends, polar bears are not extinct, the polar ice caps are still there, as are the snows of Kilimanjaro, the state of Florida is not under water ... I could go on and on.
Yet they keep beating the doomsday drums. Any questions from the “science denier” heretics and it’s excommunication (”cancel culture”).
Why are so many still bowing to this failed idol of dodgy “science” and lending their ears to its Vestal Virgin Greta? I’m still scratching my head, but maybe G.K. Chesterton had it right: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
All this doomsaying began in earnest back in the late 1960s/early 1970s, about the time of the Sexual Revolution when we began birth-controlling and aborting ourselves out of existence. “It’s for the good of the planet” we reassured oursrlves. Sacrificing unborn babies in abortion mills was somehow “for the good of future generations”. “The Planet” has become more worthy than “The People” nowadays among a very vocal set.
Our low fertility rate (1.78) is not as dire as Japan’s (1.36) or Europe’s, but it’s well below replacement (2.1). Non-Hispanic whites and Asians have the lowest rates, while Hispanics have the highest. “Results from the 2010 Census showed that racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 91.7% of the nation’s growth since 2000. Most of that increase from 2000 to 2010—56%—was due to Hispanics.” — according to a 2012 Pew analysis.
So, are white people hating on themselves because they sense they are dying out? (And we are a rapidly graying population — which is why we are importing people to prop up the pyramid schemes of Social Security and Medicare — luckily, we have a handy pool of Hispanics to draw on, unlike the Europeans who import from the Muslim World and have a keener sense of their culture dying out than we do.)
We exhibit all the signs of a decaying culture. I think many, if not most, of us sense that on some level. Are we attracted to these apocolyptic visions dreamed up by our “science” because we’d rather believe We’re All Gonna Die than face the fact our Western European Christian culture may be dying out? Are we hating on ourselves and blaming every ill on ourselves in order to convince ourselves we “deserve” it and “The Planet is better off without us”?
Meanwhile, it has been reported that polls show over a third of Americans under 45 plan to have no children or fewer children because of climate change.
Or is it just another symptom of a decaying society?