Why the climate has been warming consistently since 1850 must be the first thing you need to know before taking action.

This week’s issue is devoted to climate change. The stripes on our cover, developed by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading, represent the period from 1850 to 2018. The colour marks each year’s temperature, compared with the average in 1971-2000. We have found that, whether it is in Democratic politics or Russian dreams of opening an Arctic sea passage, climate now touches on everything we write about. To illustrate this, we decided to weave articles on the climate crisis and what can be done about it into all parts of this week’s coverage. As our main leader explains, because the processes that force climate change are built into the foundations of the world economy and of geopolitics, measures to check climate change have to be similarly wide-ranging and all-encompassing. To decarbonise an economy is not a simple subtraction; it requires a near-complete overhaul.  Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief

I will put the title on this last, after I have written whatever I find out I have said when I finish. But it’s about those dolts at The Conversation who, without an ounce of shame or reflection, have decided that they will no longer print comments (and probably, therefore, articles) critical of the ignoramuses who peddle climate change ideologies.

My original choice for the title was “The Monologue” since they no longer think they are about to join into a Conversation about something. It’s not that they are so sure they are right that there is no point in talking about it. They actually now find that they are on the wrong side of the debate; they find that everything they have been saying is complete rot, so they are now going to stop talking about it, and will not give the other side a platform because they have no actual answers to what sceptics argue.

The next title I thought of was “The Solipsist”. Solipsists are self-absorbed jerks who only know what they know so there is no point in debating anything with others since these others who they would be debating don’t really exist anyway. The world around them exist only in theory from what appears inside their own minds. They therefore have no genuine reason to believe people who disagree with them have an independent existence. In the dictionary Solipsism comes out like this: “the theory that the self can be aware of nothing but its own experiences and states”. More philosophically:

Solipsism (/ˈsɒlɪpsɪzəm/ ( listen); from Latin solus, meaning ‘alone’, and ipse, meaning ‘self’) is the philosophical idea that only one’s mind is sure to exist. … As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.

When I looked the word up on Google, there was a further link which asked whether solipsism is a mental disorder. Whatever they say, if someone says that climate change is the most important issue in the world but doesn’t any longer wish to discuss it with anyone else, even if the policies that lead from their beliefs lead to massive harm to millions of others as we abandon proven forms of energy production, then solipsism is a mental disorder, related to narcissism and a disgusting lack of care for anyone else but themselves.

Then I thought about this as a title: “The return of the Schoolmen”. The Conversation is supposedly a forum for academics. This is how the academic world is supposed to work. Someone proposes some proposition and provides reasons for believing it is true. Others then enter into the discussion, with some perhaps agreeing and others disagreeing. The search is, of course, for truth. For the truth to emerge, different sides of the debate must be tested and reason and evidence applied.

To choose an example. Suppose some group of scientists proposed that the use of fossil fuels will for a variety of reasons cause the atmosphere to heat and the climate to change in ways that will create immense harm in say 50 to 100 years. They would then provide reasons for holding these views. Others might be convinced, but still others may think this belief is wrong. The first group provides evidence, such as here is the reason this will happen, and here is some evidence that the process has already begun. Others may look at the evidence, and argue that the process mentioned would not occur as stated, or perhaps the argument leaves out many important variables that also need to be considered. As for the evidence that the process has actually begun, those who disagree might point out that every prediction has turned out to be wrong.

The first group might then respond that they are benevolent social and physical scientists who are interested only in the welfare of others. Others might then reply that those arguing in favour of climate change don’t appear to be all that benevolent but seem to be highly self-interested since they are making a ton of money from this belief, either through the academic grants and promotions they receive, or from the vast amounts of money splashed towards various new and unproven technologies in the form of the billions of dollars governments are lashing out replacing power sourced from fossil fuels.

That is how debate has been conducted during the past 300/400 years since Scholastic Philosophy gave way to the Enlightenment. Scholasticism was based on argument from authority. So and so had said something so that was all the evidence needed. The modern age – the age that has discovered the atom, the electron and then electricity – has based many of its discoveries on actually trying to work out how things work, partly through collective thought about some subject, but also by discussing amongst themselves different possibilities and theoretical alternatives. Today only intellectual cowards argue from authority and close down debate before a firm conclusion is reached.

My only conclusion when looking at Climate Change advocates who will not debate is that we are dealing with Scholastic Philosophers. Because what never happens is that something said by a sceptic is picked up by a Climate Change Scholastic who then replies using reason and evidence. What is done instead is ignore everyone who disagrees, call them names, and as we see from The Conversation The Scholastic Monologue Solipsist, have no intention of getting into an actual debate or discussion. Instead they will if they can close down any debate they are likely to lose in an open exchange of ideas.

They are mediaeval primitives who have no place in a modern academic institution.

AN ADDITIONAL COMMENT ON SCHOLASTICISM: Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough about the point of this post, but it is about the nature or climate science and not about scholastic philosophy. So let me bring the scholastics a bit closer to the tale. Here is Will Durant discussing the scholastics, which to me has an incredibly close family relationship to the preachers of modern climate change theology. Do not doubt that these people would burn deniers at the stake if they could. I have put in bold the statements about the Scholastics that are identical to the approach taken by climate so-called scientists.

The caput Nili of the faults that disfigure philosophy: it dishonours truth in the very search for it. It becomes the apologist of a transient dogma, and falls tragically short of that intellectual conscience, that patient respect for the evidence, that uphill attention to negative instances…. The Scholastics, who are wrongly rated as philosophers, having been primarily theologians, set the fashion for subordinating the search for truth to the promulgation of the Faith…. The great fathers of modern philosophy – Bacon, Descartes and Spinoza – protested against this philosophic harlotry.” (Will Durant. The Mansions of Philosophy 1929: page 9)

That is how I understand both scholasticism and climate science. Backwards and ignorant. If you want to say that something is true, but you are not prepared to search for the evidence to back up your statements and then go where the evidence takes you, then you are a fraud and a charlatan. It may make you wealthy, but your morals are non-existent.