One of the great things about a change in power, for better or worse, is that what was impossible yesterday becomes today’s fait accompli. So it is with no small pleasure that I read that Trump is cutting $2 billion out of the US federal Environmental Protection Agency, specifically targeting global warming programs, and laying off 20% of the staff through layoffs, retirements and attrition.
Once the regulatory agency is no longer directing billions into proving man-caused global warming, then something like real scientific debate can resume.
The other day I read an article by Adam Pigott over at Milton Conservative. He was threatening to remind climate catastrophists of their pride, folly, intolerance, lunacy, rudeness, persecutions, mania, and stupidity for ever and ever. He writes:
Because the climate scam was too big. You pushed all of your chips into the centre of the table and said “all in” with a smug stare at us sitting on the other side of the felt. And you busted out. Not only have you busted out, but you don’t have any more chips to play. We’re not going to let you have any. From now on, every time you come up with some pathetic attempt to control populations through a fear-based con we will remind everyone of climate change. Every time governments attempt to hijack science to support a political agenda, we will bring up that old climate change bugbear. You are going to be shoved into the corner as the crazy bearded freak standing on the side of the road with his sign proclaiming the end of the world is nigh. We aren’t going to listen to you any more. You have proven yourselves too stupid or untrustworthy to participate in public discourse.
I would like to believe that the climate catastrophists will admit error and be humble. Only the most honest of them will do anything remotely like this, and they are few. The whole edifice was constructed of lies, virtue signalling, herd-like orthodoxy, and smugness, and fed by moral self righteousness. Yet it seems to me that every sort of smelly little orthodoxy is composed of the same elements. Only the orthodoxies change, but not the fact that humans are are inclined to participate in them. I too, would like to fish-slap a few high-minded catastrophists, but I am not going to get the chance. Why? Because we meet only at funerals, or at church, or otherwise pleasant social occasions. Because they have moved on to the Trumpocalypse. Because the folly of the day has moved on. Because by being rude to people you persuade them only that you are rude, not that you are right.
Moral outrage – for which global warming catastrophism provides an enormous ongoing set of occasions – is explored in a recent study by Rothschild and Keefer.
The results are not flattering to the perpetually outraged. A Reason magazine article summarizes its findings.
“Yet this conventional construction—moral outrage as the purview of the especially righteous—is “called into question” by research on guilt, they say.
Feelings of guilt are a direct threat to one’s sense that they are a moral person and, accordingly, research on guilt finds that this emotion elicits strategies aimed at alleviating guilt that do not always involve undoing one’s actions. Furthermore, research shows that individuals respond to reminders of their group’s moral culpability with feelings of outrage at third-party harm-doing. These findings suggest that feelings of moral outrage, long thought to be grounded solely in concerns with maintaining justice, may sometimes reflect efforts to maintain a moral identity.”
and further:
“Ultimately, the results of Rothschild and Keefer’s five studies were “consistent with recent research showing that outgroup-directed moral outrage can be elicited in response to perceived threats to the ingroup’s moral status,” write the authors. The findings also suggest that “outrage driven by moral identity concerns serves to compensate for the threat of personal or collective immorality” and the cognitive dissonance that it might elicit, and expose a “link between guilt and self-serving expressions of outrage that reflect a kind of ‘moral hypocrisy,’ or at least a non-moral form of anger with a moral facade.””
Which, as every conservative knows, is simply that the Left is holier than thou. But the conservative differs from the Leftist not in that one is holier-than-thou and the other is not. Rather, the conservative is aware that he can be a damn fool, and tried to limit his folly, intemperance, and wrath as a matter of manners and personal virtue. So far as I can tell, the Leftist confuses his wrath for his virtue, and thinks that, the angrier he is at some injustice, the more virtuous he is being. Which is what the study just demonstrated.