Site project: Countering alarmism. Much of the material here probes “the true state of things” (see for example “World Resource Updates” just below). Why insist with Julian Simon (Ultimate Resource) on searching for the true state of something? Because too many in science today, and mainstream media, are advocating alarmism that exaggerates the actual state of problems, even out to apocalyptic-scale (the ‘end of days’ always just up ahead). That is highly distorting, irresponsible, and dangerous. Unnecessary fear incites our worst impulses. Fear incites, for example, the tribal impulse to view some other person or group as an enemy, as a threat to oneself, a threat that must be fought and stopped.
Exaggerated fear agitates the natural survival impulse. It orients people to the harmful salvationist schemes/solutions offered by alarmists that have repeatedly unleashed the totalitarianism impulse and its destructive outcomes. How so? Alarmists propose some threat, like “catastrophic climate change”, and then claim that the only way to “save the world” is to coercively purge what they claim to be the threat to life- e.g. “greedy” people in industrial civilization enjoying the good life too much. The destructive alarmist solutions- “degrowth… decarbonization… and a return to primitive pre-industrial standards of living”.
As Stephen Hayward illustrated in ‘The Green God That Failed — Almost’, “Ultimately, Planet of the Humans represents a throwback to the gloomy Malthusianism that informed the birth of the modern environmental movement—the view that humans are a plague on the planet and that the planet can be saved only by having fewer humans on it, living subsistence lives.”
The totalitarian spirit of alarmists is exhibited today in the efforts to silence, discredit, ban, criminalize, and even imprison skeptics to the apocalyptic narratives of alarmists. Exaggerated fear too often leads to endeavors to control others, “for their own good”, of course. We are watching this play out today in the all-too-common abandonment of democratic processes. Remember, President Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, tried to criminalize skeptical science in 2016.
Other examples: See “German authorities are cracking down on ‘climate change dissent’” at
Also: “The Coming Dark Age & The Death Of The Scientific Method” by
Gideon Rozner, The Australian, 30 May 2020, posted on Global Warming Policy Forum’s site/newsletter.
See also Clarice Feldman’s article on censorship of skeptical science at https://the-pipeline.org/david-v-goliath-in-cyberspace/?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dcb491a612-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_06_03_12_43_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-dcb491a612-20139177&mc_cid=dcb491a612&mc_eid=bbd9cad85f
Campbell’s sage advice on responding to injustice: Maintain your humanity
Joseph Campbell argued that in our “righteous battles against evil” we maintain our humanity by remembering to treat our opponents/enemies with restorative justice not retaliatory punishment. Harm returned for harm originally done, hurt for hurt, humiliation for humiliation, or punishment for punishment only renders us all petty and does nothing to take us forward to something better.
Campbell said that we must remember our fundamental oneness with all others in the human family, our “brotherhood” with even our enemies. We maintain our humanity by remembering to “love our enemy”. That is not a call to pacifism in the face of injustice or evil but a call to always respond/act humanely in our struggles against wrong and against offenders. Love obligates us to always treat others, even offenders, with restorative justice, not retaliatory or punitive justice. It takes special courage to respond and act humanely after suffering inhumanity (violence, torture, death). Note the examples of this supreme courage in “The Forgiven”, “To End All Wars”, and “The Railway Man”.
We all naturally feel intense rage at injustice and brutality. It is not against love to affirm such rage. But then what? What does it mean to respond and act as maturely human? We know that retaliatory violence diminishes and dehumanizes us and renders us no different from the original offenders that sparked our rage. That was Simon Wiesenthal’s argument with the Jewish Father who wanted to kill the SS soldier that had shot his son. “Don’t be like the Nazis”, Wiesenthal said (Justice, Not Vengeance). How do we respond to inhumanity in a manner that maintains our own humanity?
As Campbell has urged, we mature as human and maintain our humanity by embracing and exhibiting unconditional, universal love. We then tower in stature and become heroes of our stories. We conquer our monster. Think Nelson Mandela as a recent striking example. His signature phrase: “Let us surprise them (our opponents/enemies) with our generosity (our forgiveness, inclusion, kindness)”. Mandela urged his colleagues to not retaliate against former oppressors (Richard Stengel, Mandela’s Way). So also Alveda King reminds us of her uncle’s response to violence long ago https://www.foxnews.com/media/mlk-alveda-king-george-floyd-riots-protests. Retaliation in kind (eye for eye) solves nothing.
The mother in The Forgiven, a character based on real people that took part in Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, exhibited the way to maintain our humanity and offer a better way forward. She screamed her pain and then told the police officer that had participated in her daughter’s murder, “I want to kill you but I will forgive you, because that is what my daughter would want. She would not want to continue these hate for hate cycles”. The actual mother had wailed her torment at her child’s death and looked into the camera, crying, “We know God wants us to forgive, but its so hard” (Bill Moyer documentary).
This is about an inner battle that is the most important battle in life. It is the battle against the inherited animal in us- the real enemy and monster in life. As Solzhenitsyn said, the real battle of good against evil runs down the center of every human heart. The real enemy is the animal in us- those inherited impulses to tribally exclude others as enemies, to dominate others, to embrace retaliatory punishment and destroy the differing other. Jordan Peterson suggests that we should first win this inner battle before going forth to change others or change our societies.
Unconditional, universal love as a life goal, as the centering ideal or core-orientation of a life narrative, is the weapon to destroy this real enemy/monster. Unconditional love encourages us to include all as family, to respectfully honor the freedom of others as equals, and to generously forgive and treat all human failure with restorative justice.
Many counter that such love is weak, mushy, impractical in the face of evil. It is too pacifist.
Not at all. The intentional choice to treat everyone, including offenders, with an unconditional attitude does not contradict the robust affirmation that we must hold everyone responsible for their actions (i.e. restrain violent people, maintain a victim-centered focus, and hold offenders accountable to make restitution). An unconditional approach can do this while holding an intentionally non-retaliatory spirit or attitude. There is no conflict between love and the responsibility to be human in an imperfect world. As some say, there is no conflict between love and justice, that is, justice as restorative not punitive.
Again, look carefully at the stunningly courageous expression of this love in The Railway Man, The Forgiven, and To End All Wars and then see if you can still argue this is weakness in the face of evil. Unconditional/universal love requires a maturity and strength of character that most of us never achieve. Was Nelson Mandela weak and impractical? His approach in South Africa spared that country civil war when he was released from prison? See ‘Mandela’s Way’ by Richard Stengel. Millions of young African men wanted their vengeance and Mandela had to argue them out of that. His vision was for a forgiving, inclusive South Africa.
And again, there is no contradiction between hating evil and yet treating offenders with restorative justice. Remember that mother in The Forgiven… “I want to kill you (the police officer that was part of a group that shot her child) but I will forgive you because that is what my daughter would want”. Love is not about feeling mushy, warm, or fuzzy toward offenders and their horrific offenses. It is about a choice to treat everyone humanely, including “enemies/offenders”.
When you strip away all else in human experience and life in this imperfect world- all our great successes in all that humanity has achieved in all areas (and all of that achievement is critically important)- you get to this stunning awareness that human story at its most vital and meaningful is about these inner battles to conquer the inherited animal and the struggle to live as authentically human.
In those breakthrough moments of awareness, we all intuitively get it that this inner struggle has something to do with the core meaning of life as it relates to our highest ideal- love. Human life story is about learning what love really is, how to love, how to reach and grow beyond the shallow pettiness of tribal forms of love (i.e. love for only family, friends, tribal groupings- racial, ethnic, national) to love universally, unconditionally like those heroic figures in the stories above.
Unconditional, universal love is our true inner self, the “real us” at our very core. It is the true nature of the human spirit or self. Campbell was right that the discovery of this love, the orientation of life to this universal love, is to discover our true mature self and the central meaning of human life.
Note: In his above argument on maintaining our humanity, Campbell refers to the central Q Wisdom Sayings gospel message- “Don’t retaliate with eye for eye, but instead love your enemy because God does. How so? God generously gives the good gifts of life- sun and rain for crops- to both good and bad people”. That is the single most profound statement on the nature of authentic love and what it means to be fully human.
Note on Love: Humanity’s highest ideal and the one thing that most identifies us as human. It encompasses many related ideals such as forgiveness, inclusion, the treatment of all others as equals (i.e. respect for the freedom of others, non-controlling), kindness, gentleness, and much more. It has been the discovery of ordinary people- i.e. parents, spouses, friends- that love in its highest form is no-conditions, universal or non-tribal, and unlimited.
Countering alarmism eruptions…
“The whole aim of practical politics”, wrote H.L. Mencken, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”.
A response to the myth of Declinism– “The most dominant and influential theme in our societies in the Twentieth Century (and still today)”, Arthur Herman in The Idea of Decline in Western History.
British historian and statesman Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote in 1830: “In every age everybody knows that up to his own time, progressive improvement has been taking place; nobody seems to reckon on any improvement in the next generation. We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who say society has reached a turning point – that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason. … On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?”
The wonder of being human (title of one of John Eccles’ books)
We- the human family- have an established record of improving our world over the long-term history of life. Such evidence reveals our fundamental goodness. We are the best thing that has happened to life (Greg Easterbrook in A Moment On the Earth).
Also notable, we have become more humane in human civilization as evident, for example, in the ever-declining rates of violence across history (see James Payne’s History of Force, and Stephen Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature).
The above evidence potently counters the new fundamentalism of extremist elements in Green religion (more broadly- the ‘environmental alarmism’ movement). These people promote an anti-human apocalyptic movement that has been metastasizing across the world and trying to slow, halt, and even reverse human progress. The apocalyptic prophets in Green religion exhibit a disturbing totalitarian spirit in their efforts to silence, discredit, and ban skeptics to their narrative that corrupt humanity in industrial society is destroying the planet and is responsible for causing the imagined imminent collapse and ending of life.
See comment below on “Getting to the true state of life” (known as “The Simon Project” on Humanprogress.org), and “Reflexive skepticism, not denial”.
Also, more below on the great ‘bogeyman’ behind alarmism eruptions- the bad theology of punitive, destroying deity and the related threat of apocalypse. This mythology, now beaten into humanity’s consciousness over multiple millennia, has attuned us to expect the worst, making us susceptible to the endless alarmist eruptions and prophecies of the end of days coming. Central to this pathology is the myth that we are bad to the bone and we deserve punishment (i.e. we are a virus or cancer on the Earth).
Note: While world religions maintain the primitive versions of mythology like punitive, destroying deity and apocalyptic, many moderns (materialist, atheist) now embrace the secular/ideological versions of the same mythical themes, notably in Declinism.
Repeating history
(Note this pattern in alarmism eruptions: Good follow-up research consistently shows that the worst-case scenarios never come to pass but media ignore that research and move right on from the last failed alarm to begin pushing the next new alarm. We have suffered an endless series of these apocalyptic-scale prophesies that have alarmed and agitated public consciousness for decades. Is it any wonder that many children now suffer the malady of “eco-anxiety” and young couples are afraid to birth and raise children today?)
“Over the past 70 years public consciousness has been repeatedly assaulted by apocalyptic-scale hysteria, via alarmism-oriented news media. There was the global cooling alarm of the 1970s. Then, prophesies of the end of minerals, oil, and resources in general. Also, population bomb explosion and mass famine. Apocalyptic plagues such as SARS, bird and swine flu, Ebola, AIDs, and mad cow disease. Environmental apocalypses in the form of the “disappearing lungs of the planet” (deforestation), species holocaust, soil erosion and the collapse of agriculture, ocean fisheries collapsing by 2048, ozone depletion, acid rain, chemical apocalypses (i.e. DDT and CFCs), and killer bees. Then technology-induced apocalypse via nuclear war, Artificial Intelligence, or Y2K. Then climate catastrophes and end-of-life scenarios via warming, rising oceans, extreme storms, mass climate migration and wars, and the myriad other apocalyptic-scale outcomes attributed to climate change.”
Public consciousness has been endlessly traumatized by such hysterical exaggeration of world problems. It is no wonder that the idea of decline (i.e. life is declining toward something worse) has become the dominant theme in our societies and depression is the world’s number one illness. See Arthur Herman’s ‘The Idea of Decline in Western History’.
A quote from… “We Disagree with You, So Shut Up” by David Kreutzer. See https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/we-disagree-with-you-so-shut-up/
“For climate alarmists, it is not enough simply to argue a case against their opponents. The purveyors of a climate apocalypse do not tolerate dissent. For them, the too-frequent response is to deny their opponents any voice at all”. Example: Note the recent removal of Michael Moore’s documentary, Plant of the Humans, from Youtube.
World resource updates: The main indicators of the true state of life on Earth
Despite endless claims of the imminent ‘end of the world’ creative humanity has been solving problems and doing well in improving life over the long term. Our management of Earth’s main resources reveals the basic goodness of humanity and is a sound basis of evidence for hope that our efforts to improve life will continue and the future will be ever better.
Below are brief summary updates on the true state of the main world resources- i.e. forests, fisheries, land species (yet to come), atmosphere, and soils. The evidence on these is from the most credible data sources (e.g. the FAO for fisheries, forests, and soil research).
The state of the world’s main resources provides a big picture background to compare with, for example, the information from Michael Moore’s latest documentary- Planet of the Humans. While that is a helpful exposure of the unworkable nature and damaging consequences of renewables, it presented misinformation and outright distortion regarding world resources (i.e. anecdotal pictures of small acreages of burning forest, or cleared land, that do not show the complete big picture status of agriculture and forest resources).
Moore has presented the conventional alarmist narrative that too many people are consuming too much of Earth’s resources and life is therefore going to hell in a handbasket. At fault? Greedy humanity wanting too much of the good life. And the claim that our industrial civilization and economic growth is destroying the planet. That is just not true. Better sources of data on the true state of our world and life is presented, for example, at sites like Humanprogress.org.
World forests
First, some quotes from “THE PLANET NOW HAS MORE TREES THAN IT DID 35 YEARS AGO: Tree cover loss in the tropics was outweighed by tree cover gain in subtropical, temperate, boreal, and polar regions” by RHETT A. BUTLER, AUG 17, 2018 https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-than-it-did-35-years-ago
“Despite ongoing deforestation, fires, drought-induced die-offs, and insect outbreaks, the world’s tree cover actually increased by 2.24 million square kilometers—an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined—over the past 35 years, finds a paper published in the journal Nature. But the research also confirms large-scale loss of the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems, especially tropical forests.
“The study, led by Xiao-Peng Song and Matthew Hansen of the University of Maryland, is based on analysis of satellite data from 1982 to 2016…
“Overall, the study found that tree cover loss in the tropics was outweighed by tree cover gain in subtropical, temperate, boreal, and polar regions. Tree cover gain is being driven by agricultural abandonment in parts of Europe, Asia, and North America; warming temperatures that are enabling forests to move poleward; and China’s massive tree planting program. Tree cover is also increasing globally in montane areas…
“The biggest gains in tree cover occurred in temperate continental forest (+726,000 square kilometers), boreal coniferous forest (+463,000 square kilometers), subtropical humid forest (+280,000 square kilometers). Russia (+790,000 square kilometers), China (+324,000 square kilometers), and the United States (+301,000 square kilometers) experienced the largest increase in tree cover among countries during the period…
“The study estimates gross tree canopy loss globally at 1.33 million square kilometers, or 4.2 percent of 1982 tree cover. But adding in gains, the planet’s total area of tree cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers, or 7.1 percent, from 31 million to 33 million square kilometers. The authors note these numbers “contradict” data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which collects national forest data from countries’ forestry departments and has historically been seen as the most consistent source of information on forest cover…” (end of quotes).
Add here that a general greening of the planet has occurred over this same time period (1982- present) due to increased plant food (CO2) in the atmosphere. There has been an increase of green vegetation across the world equal to twice the size of the continental US mainland. Earth is 14% greener today than just a few decades ago.
Also, the fact that Latin American forests are still being cut due to expanding agriculture makes it more important that farmers there can access GM crops, and related inputs, which enable farmers to produce more on the same or less land. That enables the agricultural transition, the move to ‘peak agriculture’ and beyond, where agricultural land is then returned to nature as is happening in N. America and Europe.
Added notes: In 1953 world forest cover was 3.8 billion hectares with world population at about 2.5 billion people. Today, with population over 7 billion, world forest cover, instead of declining with more people, has increased to over 4 billion hectares or 31% of the world’s land area. There is more forest today with almost three times more people.
Another note: Human agricultural land uses about 5 billion hectares of the Earth’s land area. About 77% of this is grazing land (4 billion hectares), and the other 1 billion-plus hectares are used to grow all the crops that we eat.
More crop and grazing land will be returned to nature as ongoing increases in crop productivity are spread to farmers across the world.
Added note: Pre-industrial forest cover has been estimated at about 5.9 billion hectares compared to today’s 4.1 billion hectares. That loss is not to be regretted as humanity deserves to exist and has the right to use some land for food crops. We are not the “virus/cancer” of anti-human Green religion. We are as natural as any other species on the planet. The more important point is that we have learned from past experience and improved our engagement and use of nature and this is evident in our increasing the area of forest cover from 3.8 billion hectares in the early 1950s to the 4.1 billion hectares today. We have done that while the human population has increased threefold (2.4 billion people in 1953 to almost 8 billion today). We have learned to use wood more efficiently and can meet much of our wood needs from tree plantations that now cover 264 million hectares (7% of forest cover).
A further note affirming the point that the increasing forest cover over the past 70 years exhibits an improving situation: Alarmists focus on the fact that pre-industrial forest cover was estimated at 5.9 billion hectares compared to only 4.1 billion hectares today. That ignores the growth in human population and that humanity has learned to better care for nature as evident in the fact that while forest cover in 1953 was 3.8 billion hectares it has grown to 4.1 billion hectares today. The change/improvement over the past 70 years is what matters. Alarmist narratives that focus on the pre-industrial number ignore this recent and more important long-term trend of improvement.
Facts that’s surprise:
Of the total 14,890,000,000 hectares of land area on our planet, only 1% is built-up by humanity. That includes urban areas, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure (https://ourworldindata.org/land-use). Just 1%. Think about that. We are not “paving over paradise”.
Fisheries
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainability/ray-hilborn-says-world-fish-stocks-stable
“There is a very broad perception that fish stocks around the world are declining. Many news coverages in the media will always begin with ‘fish stocks in the world are declining.’ And this simply isn’t true. They are increasing in many places and in fact, globally, the best assessments are that fish stocks are actually stable and probably increasing on average now,” Hilborn said.
https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/01/13/fisheries-management-is-actually-working-global-analysis-shows/
“World fish stocks stable”
“There is a narrative that fish stocks are declining around the world, that fisheries management is failing and we need new solutions — and it’s totally wrong,” said lead author Ray Hilborn, a professor in the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “Fish stocks are not all declining around the world. They are increasing in many places, and we already know how to solve problems through effective fisheries management.”
World “capture” fishery production has been stable over the past three decades and “aquaculture has been responsible for the continuing impressive growth in the supply of fish for human consumption” http://www.fao.org/3/i9540en/i9549EN.pdf
See the data graphs in the above links that show, even with population growth and increasing consumption of fish, aquaculture is growing to make up the increasing human demand for fish while ocean capture has been stable across the last three decades. Ocean fisheries will not collapse by 2048 as some alarmists have predicted in past years.
As Julian Simon said, we (humanity) are doing a good job solving problems and improving life. He said that we ought to hold a party to outdo all parties to celebrate how well we have done.
Status of world soils
For detail on soil degradation categories, general soil categories, and basic arguments on soil degradation see “World Agricultural Land” under the ‘Unlimited Resources’ button at the top of this page.
Estimates of soil degradation have been exaggerated. The Glasod study of 1992 (Global Assessment of Soil Degradation) has been discredited with soil experts acknowledging that early estimates based on Glasod were wrong. Alarmists have tended to confuse soil degradation categories with the different agricultural land categories (i.e. cropland, grazing land). One notable mistake soil alarmists make is to take the figure for all soil degradation that applies to all land on Earth and to infer that number applies to the much smaller area of cropland.
The important thing to note is that crop productivity has increased significantly over past decades with more yet to come. GM crops have contributed to the increasing productivity of cropland. This fact of increasing productivity counters the arguments of alarmists that agricultural soils are degrading and that degradation would show in declining productivity. It ain’t happening.
Notably, alarmists often fail to account for new soil formation rates that exceed degradation rates and result in net soil gains. Further, scientists are suggesting that humanity has now passed ‘’peak agricultural land use” and we are now returning agricultural land back to nature just as the US returned 100 million plus acres of farm land back to nature in the last century (see Greg Easterbrook’s A Moment On The Earth).
One more world resource: Atmosphere
Countering the concern over rising CO2 and warmer temperatures (i.e. “climate crisis… catastrophe”).
The roughly 1 degree Centigrade warming over the past century was part of multi-century warming trend. Earth had descended into the bitter cold of the Little Ice Age somewhere around 1645. Around 1715 climate started to warm and rise out of that abnormal cold period. This rise has continued for the past three centuries due to natural factors and that natural influence on climate warming did not stop during the mid-Twentieth century and then become solely human-driven due to human emissions of CO2.
CO2 emissions do contribute to warming periods but that CO2 influence on climate is consistently overwhelmed by other natural factors.
Current average world temperatures of about 14.5 degrees Centigrade are still far below the normal, healthy averages over the past 500 million years that were about 19.5 degrees Centigrade. See detail below in “The Two Best Things”. CO2 levels and average world temperatures have been abnormally and sub-optimally low for the past millions of years and life on Earth has suffered. We are still well below the more optimal levels of CO2 and the warmer temperatures of the past. Life flourishes with much higher CO2 levels and much warmer temperatures, just as it did over the past hundreds of millions of years.
This evidence overturns entirely the alarmist narrative that rising CO2 levels and warming temperatures are a threat to life. To the contrary, they are the two best things happening to life today.
See also the first article at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/04/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-420/. There is no alarming climate change occurring.
Conclusion? There is no need to panic over human use of fossil fuels. The activism to “decarbonize” our societies is based on an unscientific apocalyptic narrative and that will have devastating outcomes for humanity.
There is an excellent summary of the basic issues in the climate debate at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/22/there-is-no-climate-emergency-2/
The two best things happening today– rising CO2 levels and the warming of Earth’s average surface temperatures.
Basic plant food
CO2 levels have been dangerously low over the past few million years of our ice-age era and this has stressed plant life. Over the past several hundred thousand years, CO2 levels have even dipped below 200 ppm, once down to 180 ppm. Plant life dies at 150 ppm. Normal and optimal levels of CO2 over the last 500 million years were in the multiple thousands of ppm. https://www.thegwpf.com/video-of-patrick-moores-gwpf-lecture-should-we-celebrate-co2/
During the Cambrian era life exploded with CO2 levels over 5000 ppm. There was no harm to life, or catastrophic collapse, with CO2 in multiple-thousands of ppm. Instead, life flourished.
“During the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods when our most useful plants evolved, CO2 levels were about five times higher than today… Our crop plants evolved about 400 million years ago, when CO2 in the atmosphere was about 5000 parts per million! Our evergreen trees and shrubs evolved about 360 million years ago, with CO2 levels at about 4,000 ppm. When our deciduous trees evolved about 160 million years ago, the CO2 level was about 2,200 ppm – still five times the current level”, (http://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Rising_CO2__Food-Security-2-21-19-1.pdf).
Contemporary plant response to more food
With the slight rise in CO2 levels from pre-industrial 285 ppm to the 400-plus ppm of today there has been a 14% increase in green vegetation across the Earth over the past 30 years. This is the equivalent to adding green vegetation twice the size of the mainland US. https://www.thegwpf.com/matt-ridley-rejoice-in-the-lush-global-greening/. Where are the celebrating Greens, the self-proclaimed advocates for a greener world?
A warming planet is a more optimal planet
There has been only a mild 1 degree Centigrade warming over the past century. This is part of the longer warming trend that began 300 years ago when Earth began to emerge out of the bitter cold of the Little Ice Age of 1645-1715. This longer warming trend is due to natural influences on climate, and that did not change with this past century (i.e. the same natural factors continue to overwhelmingly influence the present phase of this 300-year-long period of warming).
Our current world average surface temperature of 14.5 degrees Centigrade is still far below the normal and optimum 19.5 degrees C. average of the past hundreds of millions of years. For over 90% of the past 500 million years there has been no ice at the poles. That is a more normal and healthy Earth. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/03/earths-ice-ages/
With much higher average temperatures in the past there was no “climate catastrophe” or threat to life. To the contrary, life flourished.
A much warmer Earth will not “fry” because the planet has an efficient energy distribution system where heat rises at the tropics and is carried north and south toward the poles. In a warming world the Equator does not become excessively hotter but rather the colder regions warm more and that benefits all life with extended habitats and less severe storminess because of less severe gradients between warm and cold regions. https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-weather-works/global-air-atmospheric-circulation.
Note also that researchers have discovered tropical tree stumps in the Arctic from past warmer eras. The more recent discovery of tropical tree stumps in Antarctica further corroborates the evidence of tropical forests in the pole regions. That evidence affirms the much warmer world of most of the past 500 million years with average 19.5 degrees Centigrade world surface temperatures versus the average 14.5 degrees Centigrade of today’s much colder world. Again, a much warmer world means vastly extended habitats for life, not a “frying” world that destroys life.
Physicist Freeman Dyson summarizes this uneven distribution of warming in the following: “…’Global warming’. This phrase is misleading because the warming caused by the greenhouse effect of increased carbon dioxide is not evenly distributed. In humid air, the effect of carbon dioxide on the transport of heat by radiation is less important, because it is outweighed by the much larger greenhouse effect of water vapor. The effect of carbon dioxide is more important where the air is dry and air is usually dry only where it is cold. The warming mainly occurs where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading because the global average is only a fraction of a degree while the local warming at high latitudes is much larger” (The Scientist as Rebel).
Remember too that cold weather kills 10-20 times more people every year than heat does. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/20/moderate-cold-kills/, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm.
Plants, animals, and humans are benefiting immensely from this massive greening of our planet and the return to more normal and optimal conditions for all life. “Average increase of 46% of crop biomass owing to increased CO2 fertilization”, Gregory Whitestone on Craig Idso research. See http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php
Further, the actual influence of CO2 on climate warming is still not settled because many other natural factors have shown a stronger influence on climate and stronger correlations to the climate change that we have seen over the past few centuries (i.e. cosmic ray/sun/cloud interaction, ocean/atmosphere relationship).
Fact: There is no good evidence to support fear of looming catastrophe (i.e. “climate crisis”) in a much warmer planet with much higher levels of CO2. The benefits of more plant food and more warmth outweigh any potential negatives.
Consequent to this evidence, there is no good scientific reason for people to decrease their use of fossil fuels or to ban them. It is unscientific and irrational to “decarbonize” our societies or to embrace policies such as carbon taxes. CO2 is not a pollutant or poison that must be restrained. It is the most basic food of life and it has been in desperately short supply for millions of years. We should celebrate with all plant and animal life at the greening of our planet.
The above evidence affirms that there is no climate apocalypse on the horizon.
Insert: Craig Idso, scientist with the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, regarding the EPA Endangerment Finding for Greenhouse Gases (2009) and his petition to repeal the Finding:
“Multiple observations made over the past decade confirm the projected risks and adverse consequences of rising greenhouse gases are failing to materialize. The truth is, in stark contrast to the Endangerment Finding, CO2 emissions and fossil fuel use during the Modern Era have actually enhanced life and improved humanity’s standard of living. And they will likely continue to do so as more fossil fuels are utilized”.
“Multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies show (1) there is nothing unusual about Earth’s current warmth or rate of warming, (2) historic and modern records of atmospheric CO2 and temperature violate principles of causation, (3) model-based temperature projections since 1979 artificially inflate warming (compared to observations) by a factor of 3, invalidating the models and all their ancillary claims associated with greenhouse gas-induced warming, and that (4) key adverse effects of greenhouse gas-induced warming, including extreme weather events, temperature-induced mortality and sea level rise, are not occurring despite EPA predictions they would be worsening”.
“The petition also presents compelling evidence that CO2 emissions and fossil energy use provide critical benefits that act to enhance health and welfare for humanity and the natural world… ‘Without adequate supplies of low-cost centralized energy derived from fossil fuels, few, in any, of the major technological and innovative advancements of the past two centuries that have enhanced and prolonged human life could have occurred. Additionally, without the increased CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use over the past two centuries, Earth’s terrestrial biosphere would be nowhere near as vigorous or productive as it is today. Rather, it would be devoid of the growth-enhancing, water-saving, and stress-alleviating benefits it has reaped in managed and unmanaged ecosystems from rising levels of atmospheric CO2 since the Industrial Revolution began’”.
See also the hundreds of studies on CO2 at Idso’s site- co2science.org.
Note: “What is impossible to quantify is the actual percentage of warming that is attributable to increased anthropogenic (human-caused) CO2. There is no scientific evidence or method that can determine how much of the warming we’ve had since 1900 was directly caused by us and how much can be assigned to the continuing natural drivers of climate”, Gregory Whitestone.
“Let us dispel any notion that projected higher levels of CO2 will have a direct deleterious impact on humans… According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), ‘CO2 levels may reach 900 ppm’ by 2100, which is well below the minimum threshold for negative impact to humans. The United States Department of Agriculture has set a maximum exposure limit for workers at 5,000 ppm and states that even at levels of 10,000 ppm there are typically no ill effects”, Gregory Whitestone.
The 130 ppm increase since the early stages of the Industrial Revolution is not an “alarming increase”. There is no “climate crisis”.
Note: Almost 32,000 scientists, many of the best scientific minds on the planet, signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Protest Petition which states, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”.
Environmental alarmism/climate alarmism has become the latest historical eruption of apocalyptic alarmism. These apocalyptic alarms are present in the earliest human writing- i.e. the Sumerian Flood myth, also in the Egyptian ‘Return to Chaos’ and ‘Destruction of Mankind’ myths. Little has changed across history. The same primitive themes have been repeated all across history and across all the cultures of the world. Today, environmental alarmism has taken up the apocalyptic themes to traumatize public consciousness with the same old, same old as ever before. Alarmist media thoughtlessly and obsessively push the endless “end of days” prophecies of environmentalism.
The great disconnects in CO2 alarmism: Over the past hundreds of millions of years CO2 levels have often been very high, in the multiple thousands of ppm, while at the same time Earth’s temperature has been low. And when CO2 levels have been low over that time, Earth’s temperature has often been high. This undermines the hypothesis that CO2 drives temperature in climate change.
Note also that about 350,000 years ago CO2 levels dipped very low, below 200 ppm, going down to 180 ppm. Plant life dies when CO2 levels descend to 150 ppm. That would have been the real climate catastrophe, the apocalypse for all life.
Over the past 400,000 years another pattern undermines the claim that CO2 drives climate warming. Roughly following a pattern of 100,000 year cycles, climate on Earth first warmed, which then warmed the oceans over subsequent centuries, and those warming oceans then expelled CO2 which then rose in the atmosphere. It was not rising CO2 levels first driving the climate warming. There was a centuries-long lag with rising CO2 dependent on climate warming first. http://euanmearns.com/the-vostok-ice-core-and-the-14000-year-co2-time-lag/ and
Another disconnect: During the 1990s the sun entered a solar minimum that became extended. The climate warming trend that had began around the mid-70s then became an extended flat trend. But CO2 levels continued to rise during this time. https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/03/Whitehouse-GT_Standstill.pdf
Where then is the claimed causal link of CO2 as the main driver of climate warming or climate change?
Point- Other natural factors drive climate change more than CO2. CO2 has a warming influence and is part of the complex of factors in the climate mix, but the CO2 influence on climate is repeatedly overwhelmed by other natural factors.
Conclusion? Don’t stress over our use of fossil fuels. There is no good scientific reason to restrict or ban fossil fuels. There is no “settled science” basis to support arguments for the decarbonization of our societies.
And to the contrary, there is good evidence that we are helping to save life by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Starving plant life has responded to the rising food levels in the atmosphere with an immense increase in biomass that has greened the planet by 14% since 1982. There has been an increase of green vegetation on Earth, equal to twice the size of the continental US.
Rising CO2 levels (plant food levels) and rising temperatures (on an abnormally cold Earth) are the two best things happening on Earth today. Life is once again flourishing in response.
Alarmism is the exaggeration of real problems in life, exaggeration that stretches far beyond available evidence on the true state of problems. Alarmists exaggerate problems to apocalyptic-scale and even prophesy the end of the world. Note Senator AOC’s prophecy in 2018, regarding climate change, that we had only 12 years to the end of the world. Or the father of global warming alarmism, James Hansen, stating in 2008 that “Its all over in five years”.
That is stunningly irresponsible and dangerous fear-mongering.
Good science is critical to help us understand the true state of our world, the true state of the problems throughout life that we must responsibly and rationally solve. Unfortunately, scientific evidence by itself has not calmed or changed the minds of most alarmists.
This site probes related issues behind the repeated eruptions of alarmism- notably, the still widespread embrace of an apocalyptic perspective that has long been embedded at the core of human narratives. Apocalyptic mythology was present in the earliest human writing (i.e. the Sumerian Flood myth). Apocalyptic mythology was later embraced by the world religions and continues to dominate modern narratives, both religious and secular/ideological. Arthur Herman (The Idea of Decline In Western History) notes this in relation to the ideology of Declinism, stating that the idea of decline is the most dominant and influential theme in the world today. Decline is a central feature of apocalyptic mythology- i.e. the idea that life is declining toward something worse, toward a great collapse and ending.
The prominence of apocalyptic mythology across history has attuned populations to be receptive to the endless stream of end-of-days prophecies from alarmist prophets. The outcomes have been horrifically damaging.
Arthur Mendel in Vision and Violence states that apocalyptic has been the most destructive idea in history. How so? Apocalyptic-scale alarmism sets in motion a pattern of irrational herd response that has repeatedly led to mass-harm and even mass-death outcomes. The apocalyptic-millennial scholars Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, and David Redles detail the outcomes of Marxist apocalyptic, Nazi apocalyptic, and now environmental apocalyptic. For example, Rachel Carson’s apocalyptic narrative in Silent Spring influenced the ban on DDT that resulted in the subsequent unnecessary deaths of millions of people, many children (See The Excellent Powder: The science and history of DDT by Tren and Roberts).
Here is the critical response pattern to note in regard to apocalyptic alarmism and its salvationism solutions: First, the exaggeration of problems to apocalyptic scale incites widespread fear in populations (“we’re all gonna die”, the end is nigh). That agitated survival fear then renders people susceptible to alarmist salvation schemes that involve the ‘coercive purging’ of some threat to life (again- Landes, Mendel).
Once alarmist solutions are embraced as necessary to “save the world”, then democratic processes are more readily brushed aside because the threat that is presented by alarmists is “imminent and dire” (dates that are set are just years or decades ahead and are repeatedly reset as the end times never arrive). Alarmists argue that there is no time to waste indulging skeptics so ban, silence, discredit with personal attack, and even criminalize them, as President Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch, tried to do in 2016.
Apocalyptic scale alarmism unleashes the totalitarian impulse. We are watching this play out today in environmental alarmism (e.g. climate change), with its anti-humanism (i.e. humanity as the virus/cancer on Earth that causes environmental disaster), and endless end-of-world prophesies and agitated pressure to shut down industrial, fossil fuels society, to rapidly decarbonize the world. This irrational response to the mild 1 degree Centigrade warming of the past century will cause unimaginable suffering mainly for the poorest people. Decarbonization schemes have already harmed many with exorbitant energy and electricity prices. https://www.thegwpf.org/new-paper-decarbonisation-plans-fail-engineering-reality-check/
Recommend: Counter alarmism with good scientific evidence but do not ignore the deeper issues of meaning behind alarmism- i.e. the deeply embedded beliefs such as the apocalyptic complex of ideas/mythology.
Approach every problem in life with caution and a healthy skepticism. The history of exaggerated alarms over the past 70 years should serve as a warning that some people have a hard-wired bent to exaggerate problems. Alarming populations is highly irresponsible. And most irresponsible are news media with their obsession over creating fear and assaulting the public with worst-case scenarios (see Sociologist David Altheide’s ‘Creating Fear: News and the manufacture of crisis’).
Reflexive skepticism (not denial)
I am a reflexive skeptic of every new alarm that erupts into public consciousness- i.e. whether political/economic, disease related, or environmental alarms. There are problems all through life that are real and must be responsibly confronted and solved. But they are too often presented to the public in hysterical terms that incite unnecessary fear in populations. Fear then promotes irrationality and herd support for what have repeatedly turned out to be harmful salvationist schemes. If “we’re all gonna die” then no measure is too extreme, so shut down the world to save us from the apocalypse.
We have been through an endless series of alarms just over the past 70 years that more rational follow-up evaluation eventually exposed as exaggerated scenarios. Most of the alarms turned out to be lesser-scale problems than originally portrayed by alarmists. The media have justifiably discredited themselves with the public for presenting the alarms in exaggerated terms (“imminent crisis… looming catastrophe…. coming disaster” are favored media descriptions). Media unquestioningly parrot the alarmist scientists and others that incite the panics.
Media obsession with alarmism narratives and exaggeration has been analyzed well by sociologist Dave Alteide in “Creating Fear: News and the manufacture of crisis”.
What drives these alarmist eruptions that have too often become episodes of mass-hysteria?
When considering any problem in life, why do so many people instinctively lock onto worst-case scenarios and frame problems in terms of potential worst-case outcomes, often in the face of contrary evidence? With our extensive historical record of falling for exaggerated alarms, we should have learned by now to hold a healthy skepticism toward the alarmist presentations of any problem or issue.
We need to embrace Julian Simon’s good scientific approach that helps us to get to the true state of any problem/issue. Simon taught us to look at the complete big picture and the longest-term trends associated with any problem/issue. That will help, from the start, to restrain the tendency of many in science and media to exaggerate problems and incite irresponsible and destructive alarmism movements.
Alarmists have exhibited other troubling behaviors such as discrediting, dismissing, and even trying to outlaw skeptics to their alarmist scenarios. Remember Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch, tried to criminalize skeptical climate science in 2016. Challenge an alarmist and you will quickly experience and understand “outrage culture” and “cancel culture” extremism.
Alarmists also exhibit what appears to be an anti-human zeal for an apocalyptic outcome, something that will ‘cull’ humanity- the “virus or cancer” on the planet.
Inciting fear in populations unleashes the ugly tribal spirit- i.e. the mindset that we must fight some evil enemy that causes the imagined threat to life. The tribal spirit usually splits along ideological/political fault lines in our societies. Tribal fear also unleashes the totalitarian impulse to coerce and control others in order to save something that is believed to be under threat. And if you can present the threat in the most extreme terms then that justifies arguing for more severe measures to save something.
Note also the increasing desperation of alarmists to re-enforce their “end-of-world” narratives as skeptical scientists repeatedly prove their apocalyptic threats to be wildly overstated. Richard Landes details these patterns in apocalyptic-millennial movements in his excellent history- ‘Heaven On Earth’.
Most critical to watch in alarmist eruptions is the demand for “coercive purging” of the imagined threat. That argues for setting aside democratic processes and respect for freedom because some threat is claimed to be imminent and dire (i.e. “the end of the world is nigh”).
Unfortunately, follow-up scientific research does not calm or change the minds of many people who have embraced the alarmist’s narratives. Science by itself does not appear to change the minds of alarmists regarding their claims of looming apocalypse. This is because there are fundamental issues of meaning behind alarmist movements. Humanity has long embraced a set of ideas/myths to explain the meaning of life on this imperfect world. Part of thorough and long-term problem-solving must include dealing with those primitive ideas that have long embodied people’s “primal fears” and understanding of ultimate meaning issues. We are more than just rational actors oriented solely to the empirical, as valuable as that has been for understanding life.
For multiple millennia humanity has been indoctrinated with the apocalyptic complex of myths. No wonder then, that even today our initial response to problems in life is to believe that the worst is coming. Apocalyptic has become hardwired in human consciousness over the millennia. It still dominates our meta-narratives today, both religious and secular/ideological.
The deeper roots of alarmism
The great narratives of humanity across history (our main belief systems) have always embraced the same basic complex of ideas/themes and those themes are profoundly wrong-headed. Most human systems of belief across history have been oriented to one notable core idea- i.e. that of some great punitive, destroying Force or Spirit (deity).
That core idea has been supported by a larger complex of related ideas- i.e. that we humans deserve to be punished because we are bad to the bone and have ruined an original paradise. We have sent life into decline toward some great disaster and ending. Therefore, we deserve judgment or justice as payback for our sins. Our salvation/solution? We must make a sacrifice to appease the upset deity, we must purge the evil that we have created, then we will be saved, and paradise will be restored, notably for the true believers in the apocalyptic narrative.
Science has helped to overturn the old narratives entirely. We know that life on Earth began in a brutally hostile environment but has improved across the entire trajectory of this planet. So also, we humans have developed and improved immensely over the history of human civilization (i.e. declining rates of homicide as a main indicator). Our becoming something better across time counters the essential anti-humanism of the old narratives- i.e. that we fell from some better past state (noble savages) to become something worse in the present. Our history shows that we are basically good and we have improved across history. Further, the improvement of life is via ‘gradualism’ and not through the coercive purging schemes of apocalyptic alarmists. See Arthur Mendel’s Vision and Violence.
I often illustrate the new narrative themes versus the old narrative themes with the Jesus/Paul contradiction. That profound contradiction points to the basic issue- i.e. the core bad idea that serves as the orienting center of the old narratives.
Historical Jesus broke entirely with the central bad idea in the old narratives- the idea of a punitive, destroying Force or Spirit. He pointed to a new core reality that was only love and nothing but love- a scandalously and inexpressibly wondrous ‘no conditions’ love that meant there was no ultimate threat behind life. That love was all about universal inclusion, unlimited forgiveness, and endless generosity, mercy and goodness.
But Paul rejected that new discovery of Jesus and retreated to the same old core theme of all past narratives- that the core Reality was punitive and destroying. He embedded this in his apocalyptic Christ myth- e.g. “Lord Jesus will return in flaming fire to punish and destroy all that do not believe my Christ myth” (Thessalonian letters). His myth then brought the old narrative themes into our modern world. Paul’s Christ is most responsible for the continuing dominance of the apocalyptic myth in our modern world, in both religious and secular versions.
The Jesus/Christ contradiction points to the core of the human problem- the lingering influence of the old narrative themes, and the liberating, humanizing influence of a new narrative. See Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives below.
To solve the alarmism problem thoroughly and for the long-term future, it is necessary to include this core meaning stuff that science does not deal with.
Summary: A main project on this site is to counter the curse of alarmism and expose its historical roots in apocalyptic mythology (“The most destructive idea in history”, Arthur Mendel in Vision and Violence). Alarmists exaggerate legitimate problems in life out to apocalyptic-scale, thereby distorting the true state of any given problem. For example, alarmists view the mild climate warming over the past century (a roughly one degree Centigrade average warming during an abnormally cold period on Earth) as portending a “climate crisis/catastrophe”, even the end of life or the end of the world according to Senator AOC and other alarmists (Father of global warming alarmism, James Hansen, stated in 2008, “Its all over in five years”).
That exaggerated alarmism, promoted with endless prophesies of the collapse of nature, looming destruction and death, then incites the primal survival impulse in populations. Agitated fear of survival then makes people susceptible to the salvation schemes of alarmists, schemes that have repeatedly caused far more harm than any original problem might have caused.
Example: Rachel Carson, the mother of modern environmentalism, was undoubtedly a well-intentioned person and her concerns regarding chemicals were legitimate. It is important to properly understand chemicals, their potential impacts, how to handle them safely, and the right applications and limits of varied chemicals. But Carson ignored the available science during her time, particularly the science on the chemical DDT. That science showed that DDT did not harm wildlife and did not cause cancer in humans. But she chose to create an apocalyptic narrative in Silent Spring- using a shoddy alarmist presentation, and often arguing from anecdotal situations to make general conclusions that were not backed with good evidence. She influenced the subsequent ideological/political campaign that exaggerated the danger of DDT, and thereby discredited a highly beneficial chemical that had saved hundreds of millions of lives. Her message, and that of related environmental agencies, was a terrible misrepresentation of DDT.
Carson’s apocalyptic narrative in Silent Spring influenced the growing ban on DDT that subsequently resulted in millions of further deaths from malaria, and many of those were children (see details in ‘The Excellent Powder: the science and history of DDT’ by Tren and Roberts).
Once again: The critical danger from alarmism eruptions
Alarmist response to problems argue for the ‘coercive purging’ of some imagined threat in order to “save the world” from an always ‘imminent’ threat to all life. The outcomes of such coercive approaches have repeatedly been eruptions of totalitarianism with the banning, silencing, and even criminalizing of skeptics to the alarmist narratives and salvationist responses. Taken to extremes, the outcomes of alarmism have repeatedly been eruptions of mass-harm, and even mass-death movements.
Alarmists- often well-intentioned- frighten populations to accept an alarmist vision of life as seriously threatened. Their solution? Embrace a low-consumption lifestyle that is basically a return to pre-industrial primitivism (i.e. the ‘moral superiority’ of the simple life). They claim that a severe reduction in consumption is necessary to save the world. Julian Simon presents evidence to the contrary in Ultimate Resource.
We are watching the alarmist pattern play out today with climate change. Climate change is always a legitimate concern as climate is always changing. But alarmists are exaggerating the danger of our mild warming to apocalyptic scale against good evidence that the mild warming of the past century and the increased levels of plant food (CO2) have immensely benefited life during the current ice age era that we are in (i.e. an abnormally cold world with abnormally low levels of CO2). Note the 14 % increase in green vegetation across the world since 1982. Plant life has been starving from historical low levels of CO2.
The salvationist solution to their exaggerated scenario of apocalyptic disaster? Radically decarbonize our societies. But that would devastate our civilization and harm the poorest people the most. Decarbonization approaches have already caused costly increases in energy prices that are impacting the poorest people.
This site probes the ideas behind alarmism culture, notably the still dominant myth of apocalyptic. I have traced here the historical route of that pathology into modern alarmism. It descended from primitive mythology (e.g. Sumerian Flood myth) into the great world religions (notably Christianity) and was then embraced in the 19th Century ideology of Declinism (the most influential theme in the modern world). Apocalyptic was then embraced by modern alarmism movements like Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism (see good research of historians Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles).
The core idea in the apocalyptic complex is that of a great Force or Spirit that is punitive and destructive (threat theology). That idea anchors a complex of supporting ideas/myths. Threat theology is now expressed in contemporary gods such as vengeful Gaia, angry Planet, punishing Mother Earth, retributive Universe, or karma.
The supporting complex of ideas include- an original paradise that has been ruined and lost due to human greed and corruption, the subsequent decline of life toward a great collapse and ending, ultimate punishment, and deserved justice as vengeance and destruction (i.e. in an apocalypse and ultimately in some hell). Add tribal dualism and exclusion (good guys versus bad guys), demand for sacrifice and salvation, and the promise of restored paradise for true believers.
Science is critical for robust response to alarmism but scientific evidence convinces very few as the issue for many appears to include deeply embraced beliefs, and the human impulse for meaning that has long been shaped by ancient mythological themes, notably apocalyptic- i.e. lost paradise, human badness/guilt, and felt deserved punishment in looming apocalyptic ending.
As noted above, to counter alarmism most effectively (for thorough and long-term solution) we need to deal with primal human fears (ultimate or after-life threat and harm) and the fundamental human impulse for meaning as it relates to ultimate realities. I would argue to replace the core theme of past narratives (mythical, religious, ideological) with a potent alternative, i.e. humanity’s single greatest discovery/insight- that there is no punitive, destroying reality behind life. There is only no conditions love- unlimited, universal love. That radically changes everything, liberating consciousness to explore and embrace entirely new themes for a more humane narrative of life. No conditions love provides a new center around which to orient an entirely new complex of supporting ideas.
See Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives below.
A quote from… “We Disagree with You, So Shut Up” by David Kreutzer. See https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/we-disagree-with-you-so-shut-up/
“For climate alarmists, it is not enough simply to argue a case against their opponents. The purveyors of a climate apocalypse do not tolerate dissent. For them, the too-frequent response is to deny their opponents any voice at all”.
Site Project: Probe the core themes in human meta-narratives, notably those “bad ideas” that have influenced people to exhibit inhuman behavior (i.e. the belief/behavior relationship where ideas inspire/incite, guide, and validate human behavior). Those themes/ideas have persisted across all history and across all the cultures of the world (Joseph Campbell). A notable complex of the worst ideas has descended from primitive mythologies, to world religions, and those ideas are now embraced in the ‘secular’ ideologies of our modern world. They are religious ideas that are now embraced even by atheists/materialists. Read the rest of the opening comment here