A letter to an authoritarian climate alarmist might go like this:
Dear Cardinal Ethereos of the Church of Gaia:
You asked me a while back how I dared to dissent in the face of the overwhelming evidence that man-caused global warming was real, dangerous, and urgently in need of action. There was considerable asperity in your tone. You thought I had no right to differ from the consensus.
The answer I ought to have given at the time is simple, though the issue is complex and multifaceted. I am a Protestant and a heretic by nature, and I do not trust received wisdom. I come from a tradition of people who defied the Church of another time, and went to war to defend that view, or sailed across the ocean to escape obligatory religious conformity.
In order to answer your question better – and to your mind more seriously – one has to divide the anthropogenic global warming issue into two parts, scientific and political. The scientific part is by no means settled, despite an enormous propaganda exercise that would have most North Americans and Europeans believe that it is.
I think Patrick Moore sums up the non-alarmist view best and most succinctly.
Plants want 1000 to 2000 parts per million to grow best, and the earth now has only 600 parts per million, even after recent increases. CO2 is the staff of life.
The science is not settled, but you would never know this because of the intense propaganda on the political front. Here I side with James Delingpole, who said that the CO2 thing is one branch of the culture wars.
I leave that aside for a moment. Why are 97% of scientists convinced of anthropogenic global warming? In truth this is one of the triumphs of leftist propaganda. They are not, and the figure was as concocted as the data that gave rise to the cholesterol scare of the 1960s. Selective sampling, ignoring countries that did not conform to the preconceived idea: you get the idea. If you have the time and patience, you can read through this article from Wattsupwiththat. But you won’t, will you?
Because none of us has the time. We all float in an ocean of manufactured opinion. My opinion is from a boutique, a single person enterprise. I make my own. Your opinion was manufactured for you, and people like the convenience of mass-produced opinion, even if it leads to authoritarian compulsion. And in your case, Cardinal Ethereos, especially if it leads to authoritarian compulsion.