Alarmism eruptions, ‘Two best things’, and ‘Slapping down a straw god’ (ultimate threat and primal fear)

This site presents the evidence that life on our planet is not declining toward an apocalypse but over the long-term life has gradually been improving toward a better future, due to human compassion, creativity, and hard work. Reasoning from that good evidence, this site is anti-fear (anti-apocalyptic) and pro-hope. Evidence sources: Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource, Greg Easterbrook’s A Moment On The Earth, Bjorn Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist, Indur Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, Ronald Bailey’s The End of Doom, Desrocher and Szurmak’s Population Bombed, James Payne’s The History of Force, among others.

Arthur Herman’s said regarding Declinism (i.e. life becoming worse, declining toward some disastrous collapse and ending): “The theme of decline is the most dominant and influential theme in the modern world”.

“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?”

See “Two best things happening on Earth today (more atmospheric CO2, warmer average temperatures)” just below, regarding the two main claims of climate alarmism. And, “Slapping down a straw god”- comment on punitive deity myths (threat theology) that add an unnecessary psychic burden to already unbearable physical suffering.

Alarmism: The exaggeration of problems to apocalyptic-scale that distorts the true nature of problems, incites the survival impulse in populations, and renders people susceptible to the totalitarian salvation schemes of alarmists, schemes that often cause more harm than the original problem.

“The whole aim of practical politics”, wrote HL 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.” And John Adams, one of the founding fathers of America, echoed this sentiment, writing “Fear is the foundation of most governments”.

Dangerous patterns

An endless series of alarmist scenarios have assaulted public consciousness over just the past 70 years (see list below). These alarms have been accompanied by the troubling features of exaggerated outcomes (worst-case scenarios of apocalyptic-scale disaster) and over-reaction responses or salvation plans that have resulted in more harmful outcomes than any potential harm caused by the original problem. Unquestionably, most alarms arise out of authentic problems/threats that have to be confronted and resolved in order to protect populations.

This site probes the larger narratives that are embraced by populations and the persistence of pathological ideas that lead many people to view life’s problems with excessive fear and to then embrace the exaggeration and thereby distortion of problems that comes with viewing life through the lens of an apocalyptic viewpoint. We have experienced this repeatedly over the past 70 years.

This site explores the apocalyptic complex of myths that are still the dominant ideas in major world belief systems, in both religious and secular/ideological versions (i.e. Declinism). Thorough problem-solving must include all contributing factors. The ongoing influence of apocalyptic mythology has attuned populations around the world to believe the worst is coming, despite overwhelming evidence that life does not decline toward disaster but improves toward a better future.

A notable example from the past 70 years of exaggerated alarmism that resulted in harming many others: Rachel Carson’s apocalyptic narrative in Silent Spring influenced the ban on DDT and that resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths in subsequent decades due to people denied the protective benefit of DDT (see The Excellent Powder for the science and history of DDT, by Chen and Roberts).

Alarmist exaggeration continues to dominate public consciousness today. Note the endless stream of ‘end-of-world’ predictions offered by alarmist prophets. For example, Senator AOC’s prophesy that the world would end in 12 years (2030), or James Hansen’s 2008 prophesy that “Its all over in five years”. These climate alarmists have frightened populations into embracing decarbonization responses that will cause immense harm to entire societies. The current coronavirus shutdown is just a taste of the devastation that could be unleashed if the decarbonization schemes are widely implemented (i.e. the Green New Deal).

Our responsibility in the face of any problem must be to understand “the true state of that problem”. We do that by rationally engaging all the best evidence related to that problem and not ignoring, dismissing, or discrediting contrary evidence that does not affirm our confirmation biases (see “Good Science” below). In this regard, the climate issue is not a crisis that demands decarbonization (see “The Two Best Things” below).

Where does the apocalyptic viewpoint come from? Apocalyptic originated in ancient mythology. It was already notable in the earliest human writing (i.e. the Sumerian Flood myth). Apocalyptic was then embraced by world religions over subsequent history, in both Western and Eastern traditions. That eventually led to apocalyptic becoming embedded in modern ideology- i.e. Declinism, the most dominant and influential theme in the modern world (see Arthur Herman’s The Idea of Decline in Western History). Apocalyptic continues to dominate modern grand narratives, both religious and secular.

One historian of apocalyptic millennial ideas, Arthur Mendel, has rightly concluded that “apocalyptic is the most violent and destructive idea in history”. How so? Because it incites a well-traced pattern of response in human society. Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, and David Redles all note this pattern of destructive over-reaction response that arises out of apocalyptic scenarios.

The dangerous response pattern:

First, there is the exaggeration of real-world problems out to world-ending scale, with the claim that some potential problem in life foretells the end of life, or the end of the world (truth-distorting exaggeration also occurs at varied levels before world-ending). This often involves the denial, dismissal, or ignoring of contrary data in relation to some problem, and the effort to discredit the skeptics of the apocalyptic alarm, to even criminalize them. We saw this with Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch, trying to criminalize skeptical climate science in 2016.

The exaggeration of the problem to world-ending scale then incites the natural survival fear in populations. That fear-mongering results in the undermining and abandoning of rational thought in relation to some problem. Populations are then sensitized by exaggerated fear and rendered more susceptible to embrace the extremist salvation schemes of alarmists. Those schemes demand the desperate responses of ‘coercive purging’, and ‘instantaneous transformation’ of societies, in order “to save life… to save the world” that is believed to be under imminent dire threat. The salvation schemes also promise utopian resolutions and futures (e.g. a millennial Reich).

The consequences/outcomes of these alarmist scenarios and salvation responses have been mass-death movements traced by the above historians (cures far worse than imagined diseases). Apocalyptic-scale alarmism unleashes the totalitarian impulse under the guise of doing good- i.e. saving something believed to be under great threat.

Marxists claimed the threat was from capitalist society. Nazis believed the threat was from Jewish Bolshevism. Environmentalists claim the threat is from industrialized civilization.

Related: I have repeatedly gone after the Jesus/Paul contradiction because Paul’s Christ myth is most responsible for bringing the destructive apocalyptic myth into Western consciousness and society and maintaining its prominence in contemporary human consciousness. That myth embodies the single worst idea of all history- i.e. that there is some ultimate punitive, destroying Threat that will harm us via a natural world disaster. Today, that ultimate Threat has been given varied new expressions in “vengeful Gaia”, “angry Planet”, “retributive Universe”, “pissed Mother Earth”, and “payback karma”.

And that is the ultimate root idea behind apocalyptic mythology- i.e. the sense of some larger threat behind real world natural threats- that must be confronted and changed, and radically so, if we are to properly counter and fully solve the ongoing problem of alarmism and its devastating outcomes in human societies. There is arguably no more pathological myth than this myth that we are being punished, along with the related ideas that we are bad to the bone and deserve punishment.

Life’s problems are hard enough to understand and resolve without the added burden of some great threat of an end-of-world disaster looming on the horizon.

Summarizing note on the root issue probed on this site: Fully engage all the evidence related to any problem in life. But also go after one of the central themes behind alarmism movements across history- i.e. the idea of some great retaliatory Force or Spirit, working through natural world threats to punish ‘bad’ people. This pathology is still widely believed in religious and secular/ideological versions (Declinism). It has again erupted in this virus pandemic (e.g. the comments of some that we are being punished by Mother Earth or deity). The belief in some greater punitive, destroying Reality has led, to emphasize again, to the exaggeration of threats, consequent widespread fear, and the embrace of harmful salvation responses (save people, save the world), responses that end up causing more harm than the initial manufactured threat.

Quote from below… “Over the past 70 years public consciousness has been repeatedly assaulted by apocalyptic-scale hysteria, via alarmism-oriented news media. There were global cooling and global famine alarms in the 1970s. Prophesies of the end of minerals, oil, and resources in general. 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 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, wars, and the myriad other apocalyptic outcomes attributed to climate change.”

Post from discussion group:

Slapping down a straw god (i.e. a reality that has never existed except in the imaginations of people across history). The threat of punitive justice usually through nature- i.e. flood/drought/earthquake, disease, or human cruelty- has been a prominent feature of deity from the beginning of human myth-making.

First, a note on my intention behind the comments below (i.e. “Thanks Fergie for the opportunity to make a point” in regard to the article included just below- “Sarah Ferguson Tweets That Coronavirus Is Mother Nature’s Punishment of Feckless Mankind”). My comments relate to my life-long struggle with a personal monster from my previous religious tradition.

My intention? Yes, intention matters… Across human history, this most fundamental theme of world religions- i.e. that God is a judging, condemning, punitive, and destroying reality- has added an entirely unnecessary psychic burden to already horrific human suffering. That pathological mythology adds the elements of fear/anxiety, shame/guilt, and more that unnecessarily distress and torment people who are already suffering enough from some natural disaster, disease, or human cruelty. Shame on all those across history for pushing such mythically-based mental/emotional torture on fellow human beings.

To advocate any form of “Threat theology” is to add an unnecessary burden to already intolerable human suffering. My intention: Liberate people from such unnecessary added suffering by offering “a stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory deity” (James Robinson).

This has always been my point in going after this mythology of punitive, destroying deity. It misrepresents entirely the Ultimate Reality behind all else (Ultimate Mind, Consciousness, Spirit, Mystery) that humanity has long called deity or God. That Reality has always and only been Love, Love of a kind that is inexpressibly and scandalously universal, unlimited, unconditional.

How do I know Ultimate Reality or deity is non-retaliatory? I reason from the best in humanity- i.e. the common experience of parents, spouses, friends, that no conditions love is the best way to treat imperfect others. No conditions (unconditional) love is simply the best form of love that we have discovered. I then project that insight out to define Ultimate Goodness or Love. If we imperfect humans can get this right, then Ultimate Consciousness or deity can also get it right, even more so than our imperfect understanding and practice. Just sayin, eh.

No religion has ever communicated this wondrous reality to humanity. All religion by its very nature is conditional and cannot communicate an unconditional reality. Religion as a social institution exists to communicate conditions- i.e. right beliefs, correct religious rituals (offerings, sacrifices), and necessary lifestyle to appease and please the religious deities. You have to discover the wonder of an unconditional Ultimate Reality aside from religion.

Example of a natural disaster viewed as divine punishment: A Japanese lady standing amidst the devastation after the 2011 tsunami and facing a TV camera, asked rhetorically, “Are we being punished for enjoying life too much?” She summarized and vocalized the ancient and historically persistent mythical theme of some core punitive, destroying reality.

Insert note: We do better to understand the suffering that arises from the imperfections of this world in terms of “natural consequences”. We all suffer the natural consequences from living in a world of natural disasters, disease, and human cruelty. We all suffer the consequences of our choices, notably our bad choices. Such consequences are not punishment from greater Forces or Spirits.

Qualifier re unconditional: I affirm with Tolstoy that there are no circumstances in which we can treat others without love (he was speaking to the criminal justice system). All failing humans deserve our unlimited forgiveness, our universal inclusion and love. This does not contradict the need to restrain violent people and hold all responsible for their behavior, within the approach of restorative justice.

(See also Bob Brinsmead’s comments to a discussion group on this issue, included below)

OK, now the recent post to a discussion group: “Run kiddies, we are being punished”.

“Fergie is sounding like Jerry Falwell after hurricane Katrina (i.e. blaming that on human “sin”). Thanks Fergie for the opportunity to once again make a point regarding the stunning and profound difference between the theology of Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christianity- his Christ myth. This is about a worldview that defines Ultimate Reality (Ultimate Ideal and Authority) in terms of non-retaliation, non-punitive Love, versus a worldview that defines its Ultimate Ideal/Authority in terms of retaliation, punishment. This is about the core orientation that we embrace, whether in religious or secular versions, and its outcomes in our lives.

“The author of the article below suggests that Fergie is a nut-case extremist: “Sarah Ferguson Tweets That Coronavirus Is Mother Nature’s Punishment of Feckless Mankind”. No, this primitive outlook that there is some punitive, destroying Reality behind natural disaster, disease, or other forms of suffering, is as old as humanity. It is still one of the most widespread and dominant myths that have been deeply embedded in the great narratives of humanity. Christianity has long advocated this myth (i.e. Paul’s lecture to the Corinthians that their sickness and death was divine punishment for their sins). So also the other world religions embrace this pathological mythology along with many “secular” ideologies like environmental alarmism.

“The myth of punitive, destroying deity is the core of the apocalyptic complex of themes- that at the heart of reality there is a great punitive, destroying reality, some Force like karma, retributive Universe, vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth, or Paul’s apocalyptic Christ (see, for example, his Thessalonian letters, and John’s Revelation). And such a Force, Entity, or Spirit will give us what we deserve, by destroying this world via an apocalypse or in some final destruction up ahead (i.e. hell).

“The primitive myth of punitive, destroying deity is still the core belief of most religions and hence the power of those religions to engender fear and thereby control people, subjecting them to the salvation plans of the religion.

“A notable historical rejection of punitive, destroying deity mythology is found in the Jesus tradition…

“The Matthew 5:38-48 statement of Jesus, and the better version in Luke 6:27-36, is the main statement of his core theme. That teaching of Jesus is the central message in the Q Wisdom Sayings gospel in its earliest version- i.e. Q1, the closest that we get to what the man actually taught somewhere around 27-36 CE. When the gospel writers wrote 40-50 plus years later, they shaped their biographies according to Paul’s later Christology and basically overturned that earlier core teaching of Jesus- i.e. they distorted and buried the Jesus teaching in their larger biographical contexts with many contradictory additions.

(Insert: A brief listing of the chronology of the New Testament books, who taught first and influenced those who followed. As noted above, Jesus taught sometime between 27-36 CE. Paul was next, writing his Thessalonian letters around 50 CE. The gospel writers embraced Paul’s version of Jesus, his Christ myth, and wrote their gospels in this order- Mark around 70 CE, Matthew and Luke around 80 CE, and John later.)

“My argument with the Christian embrace of retributive theology is that Historical Jesus had clearly rejected the myth of punitive, destroying deity entirely and offered a “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson among others). He had overturned entirely all previous human thinking on Ultimate Reality or deity. While most the gods of the ancient world were also given more humane features like mercy, forgiveness, and compassion, they all retained varied elements of punishing destruction.

“Historical Jesus stated his central theme like this: “You should not engage eye for eye justice (retaliation in kind, punishment) but instead you should love your offender/enemy because God does. How so? God does not engage eye for eye punishment or destruction but loves all the same- as evident in God giving the basic good gifts of life, sun and rain for crops, to both good and bad people”. Jesus was pointing to universal, unlimited, unconditional love. Nothing of judgment, punishment, or destruction. He reasoned from the best of human behavior (non-retaliatory, unconditional) and related that to define the true nature of deity/God.

“But Paul, a dominating, intolerant man, successfully demonized the other branches of the early Jesus movement as heretical (i.e. Jewish Christianity, Ebionites/Nazarenes). Paul presented his Christ myth as the one true understanding of the Jesus phenomenon. He was the creator of the version of Christianity that eventually dominated all the others and descended into our Western world, helped along the way by the coercive intervention of people like Emperor Constantine (see Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll. Re “dominant, intolerant”, see Charles Freeman’s chapter on Paul in ‘The Closing of the Western Mind’).

“In his Christ religion, Paul rejected what was at that time the new non-retaliatory theology of Jesus and retreated to the same old primitive theology of a retaliating, punishing, destroying God. He stated his re-affirmation of retaliatory theology in Romans 12: 17-20 in such statements as, “Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord”. He had already said in his first letter to the Thessalonians (circa 50 CE) that his “Lord Jesus would return in flaming fire to punish/destroy all those who did not obey his gospel”. That sort of threat is scattered throughout his letters. Note, for example, his curse on the Jewish Christianity of Peter and James in Galatians 1:8,9. And yes, Paul also made other good points in that Galatians letter about freedom from law.

“Paul overwhelmingly shaped the thinking of the other later gospel authors (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John) whose works were included in the New Testament. Other gospels that did not affirm the themes of Paul were excluded as heretical- i.e. gospels of Mary, Philip, James, Thomas, and others.

“Some scholars believe that Jesus may have actually belonged to the Jewish Christian movement and he would never have embraced the Christology of Paul. He did not view himself as a reigning messiah figure. Note, for example, Jesus’ teaching that the essence of true greatness was not about lording over others but serving. Yet Paul ignored that teaching and presented Jesus as a supreme dominating Lord and Master. Such points of disagreement have been noted all through the Jesus material in the New Testament.

(Insert: Bob Brinsmead says this about the striking difference between the Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ: “The historical Jesus vehemently resisted any notion that he was the Messiah. The whole bent of his message was to teach his listeners not to give him any titles, not even to call him “Good Teacher/Master”, and to tell his listeners not to look for any hero figure (“Call no man father, master”… “I am not your teacher”- Gospel of Thomas). To him, the whole expectation and hope of a Messiah being given dominion over nations or over anybody was a Gentile or pagan notion of dominion. Having dominion over and controlling others is contrary to Jesus’ teaching about love- for love is all about servanthood, about not expecting much less demanding something in return, about not requiring much less demanding that the humble service of love is something to be recognized, about not letting the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing, etc. So the historical Jesus could never be the Christ and took every opportunity to deny it.” End of quote)

“Paul replaced Jesus-ianity (the original non-retaliatory teaching of Jesus) with his Christ-ianity (his retaliatory Christ myth). That is why scholars like James Tabor say the Historical Jesus has been buried and lost to us.

“Note: Sources for my conclusions regarding the stunning contradiction between Jesus and Paul? Three centuries of “Search for the Historical Jesus” (latest stage- the Jesus Seminar). Notably- Q Wisdom Sayings Gospel research. However, while drawing on Historical Jesus research, my conclusions above are my own.

“The Sixties duo of Peter and Gordon sang that classic “A world without love”, harmonizing that they would not want to live in a world without love. I would affirm that sentiment and I would not want to live or exist in any reality that was not ultimate Love as in universal, unlimited, or unconditional love in the most transcendent sense… something only a deity that is authentic love could be (gooder than good, infinitely beyond good or love as we imagine it from our limited perspectives). A stunning no conditions love that is something offensive to retributive/retaliatory justice and apocalyptic-oriented minds (i.e. the bad guys eventually getting their just deserts somewhere, somehow). A generous love that is something scandalous just as Jesus tried to portray in some of his parables and actions (e.g. the Prodigal Father, the vineyard owner, or inviting hookers, local scoundrels, and what not to neighbourhood parties and meals). Letting the lady caught with her panties down go without punishment as demanded by Jewish law (but a caution to treat herself better). And on and on… giving sun and rain to all alike, to both good and bad.

“And yes, in the New Testament you have to pick out the good stuff from a larger context of a lot of subhuman material that contradicts the better stuff. Just as Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy argued- we must pick “the diamonds out of the dung.” I embrace their perspective on how to view religious holy books like the Christian bible. Pick and choose the good stuff from what Jefferson said was a larger context of material created by “lesser minds”. Ouch, eh.

“You see, the “reform of religion” that I propose is much more than peripheral tinkering around the edges. I go directly to the core of the problem- the monstrous deity that threatens to punish and destroy. Is my project just whimsical, Don Quixotish adventurism? Yes, in the sense that a punitive, destroying God has always been just a straw God, a mythical reality, just like those windmill monsters that Quixote went after with his lance. But that monster God has always been very real to true believers.”

Now the article on Fergie’s comments…

From The Daily Beast: “Sarah Ferguson Tweets That Coronavirus Is Mother Nature’s Punishment of Feckless Mankind”, Tom Sykes

“In this uncertain world, one thing we can always trust to be a constant is unerring ability of Sarah Ferguson, the ex-wife of Prince Andrew, to say utterly bizarre things.
“On Tuesday (March 24, 2020) she was at it again, tweeting a pair of extraordinary messages suggesting that “Mother Nature” had unleashed the coronavirus on humankind to punish us for not looking after the planet.

“Little did she know at the time of her social media fusillade, her former brother-in-law Prince Charles was already suffering from the virus. Charles had seen the Queen two weeks earlier prompting fears that the virus could spread within the royal household.

“One of Fergie’s tweets was accompanied by a charming picture of a cherry tree in full blossom that looks like it was taken at the massive private estate, Royal Lodge, where she lives rent free with her ex-husband.

“We have embedded the tweets below, but, just in case the Duchess (as she still insists on calling herself) wakes up this morning with a furry tongue, and a crashing case of tweeter’s regret once she sees that her host family is among the victims, and hastens to hit the delete button, fear not, we have the screenshots for posterity.

“Mother Nature has sent us to our rooms, like the spoilt children we are. She gave us time and she gave us warnings. She was so patient with us. She gave us fire and floods, she tried to warn us but in the end she took back control.

“She has sent us to our rooms and when she is finished clearing up our mess. She will let us out to play again. How will we use this time?

“Of course, these kind of rambling theories about how the coronavirus is actually good for the world have become something of a fad on social media in the past few days.

“But there is a pretty clear line between remarking on silver linings (We can hear the birdsong in cities! Pollution is down! I don’t need to charge my phone every night!) and feeling out the path for a Gaia death cult which believes that a killer virus is a good thing that’s going to “clean up” the planet.

‘These remarks, Sarah, are best saved for your creepy, ultra-right wing crystal therapist.”

Bob Brinsmead comment to discussion group re this topic of divine punishment through the natural world: “OK ____, show us how to do it. What is your theodicy? What do you make, for instance, of this Covid-19 pandemic? What might it teach us about man’s relationship to Mother Nature? Where is the real remedy going to be found? If you can address that question correctly, you will be on your way toward a good theodicy.

“Stroke was so named because it was thought to be a finger of God’s illness. (But) the main causes of dying prematurely seem to be Mother Nature at work, that ‘wicked old witch’ causing nature’s horrors that are inflicted on humanity, as well as human causes (bad habits, accidents, inhumanity). How much is the “finger of God”? In the Old Testament journey of the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan you have God directly executing at least 30,000 Israelites. That puts God in the category of a celestial Pol Pot, eh? But in my reckoning, suffering is brought about either by what nature does or what humans do.

“In the case of natural deaths (epidemics, pandemics, diseases, abnormalities, germs, and natural disasters) the statistics show that as mankind progresses, we progressively gain the mastery over nature. World population has greatly expanded not because humans breed like rabbits but because we no longer die like flies. For example, we have medical knowledge to protect ourselves from many diseases caused by micro-organisms, and we protect ourselves from destructive weather events more effectively now as we can afford to protect ourselves.

“God did not send us some special revelation to tell us about germs and viruses but made us responsible for finding these things out.

“As for punishment, it is like Dustin Hoffman said in a movie, ‘Blame if for god and small children’.

“The Old Testament prophets sometimes give us the same reading of natural calamity as Falwell and Robertson. Example: Israel did not observe the Law to God’s satisfaction, so he sent in alien armies to burn their cities, rape their women and carry off their children. Later in history, it was claimed that the Jews were punished as much by Antiochus Epiphanes because they would not disobey the Law of Moses…. So I would simply say that on this reading of history, the Prophets got it wrong just as Falwell and Robertson got it wrong. God did not bring about the burning of the villages of Israel by the Assyrians any more than he punished the Jews by the Holocaust. These tragic events were just part of the messiness of human history and human actions”.

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.

Insert post from a discussion group: Most profound words ever spoken

“Here is a summary of the most profound set of statements/aphorisms ever uttered by any human person. Most profound? Yes, because nothing else so potently counters the inherited animal in us and points us to the heights of being human, to being god-like. These best-of-all human insights/ideals enable us to tower in stature as maturely or heroically human. They enable us to maintain our humanity in our “righteous battles against evil”.

“There are much earlier versions of these in, for example, the “Akkadian Father’s advice to his son” (circa 2000 BCE), and in Hindu versions circa 600 BCE.

“Do not retaliate with eye for eye justice but instead love your enemies because God does, generously giving sun and rain to both good and bad people. Do good to them that hate you, expecting nothing in return, because God does this… Treat others as you would like them to treat you… Be merciful just as God is merciful.”

“Nelson Mandela’s version of the above was expressed in his signature statement, “Let us surprise them (i.e. our opponents/enemies) with our generosity… (with our inclusion, forgiveness, kindness)”.

Solving life’s problems (previous comment from sections below, related to the climate alarmism movement)

How do we get to the true state of something (i.e. a problem in life)? We include all the evidence related to that thing, even evidence that is contrary to a growing public “consensus” on the problem that we are focused on. Too often, full understanding of problems is hindered by the tendency of some to shut down contrary opinions, to silence the challenges of skeptics, and to settle around a final and closed consensus that is no longer open to challenge or change. That short-circuits the learning process. Add here ‘confirmation bias’ that only includes evidence that affirm one’s beliefs and ignores or dismisses contrary evidence.

Any problem-solving project must always remain open to questioning and contrary evidence that might give us the fuller picture regarding the problem or issue that we are looking at.

We must also beware the ever-present tendency to present problems in terms of apocalyptic scenarios (worst case catastrophe outcomes) and thereby unnecessarily alarm populations. That has led to policy responses that do more harm than good in the long run. Real problems in life are frightening enough without the added apocalyptic-scale exaggeration.

Further, all problems in life should be set in longer-term historical trends that give us the proper comparative context.

This tendency to promote apocalyptic-scale alarms has been repeated many times over just the past few decades (see comment just below). Exaggeration of problems only distorts the true state of things and that does not help promote rational problem-solving approaches. It tends to result in outcomes that may harm more than help over the long run.

Over past decades alarmists have advocated policy responses that have caused more harm than good. Note the bio-fuels fiasco that resulted in rising food prices for the poorest people and further deforestation for palm oil plantations. Anti-GM foods activists (e.g. Greenpeace) have contributed to millions of deaths of children denied Golden Rice (https://nationalpost.com/opinion/bjorn-lomborg-trashing-rice-killing-children). Also notable was Rachel Carson’s apocalyptic narrative in Silent Spring that influenced the ban on DDT and resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths in following decades (see ‘The Excellent Powder’ for the science and history of DDT).

Add also the fallacy of “presentism” noted by James Payne in ‘The History of Force’. This is the tendency to view some problem as unique and worse than all others before in history because it is happening right now and we are experiencing it firsthand.

Alarmism (previous comment from sections below on varied modern era alarms)

(Note: This comment relates to the larger historical background from which humanity has been taught to view arising problems in life- i.e. the long-term historical influence of apocalyptic mythology on human consciousness.)

Definition: Alarmism exaggerates real problems out to apocalyptic-scale thereby distorting the true state of things. Alarmism incites unwarranted fear in populations to embrace/support salvation schemes that have repeatedly caused more destruction than the imagined and exaggerated apocalypses in the original alarm.

Most critical, alarmism is fed by a desperate urgency to survive against some exaggerated threat of chaos, destruction, or death. That survival urgency then unleashes the totalitarian impulse to demand coercive purging of the threat in order to save oneself, one’s family, or to “save the world”. Alarmism incites the demand for “instantaneous transformation” as in the contemporary push for rapid decarbonization of our societies. Alarmism promotes insistent fear-driven demands that overrule freedom and undermine democratic processes (i.e. the banning of open debate, disagreement, skepticism). Alarmism tries to shut down, even criminalize, normal and healthy scientific challenge to unsettled dogmas.

Alarmism is an ideologically and mythically-driven view of life that is too often anti-science, anti-industrial society, anti-technology/chemicals/GM foods, and fundamentally anti-human (i.e. humanity as the virus/cancer on Earth that must be purged).

Over the past 70 years public consciousness has been repeatedly assaulted by apocalyptic-scale hysteria, via alarmism-oriented news media. There were global cooling and global famine alarms in the 1970s. Prophesies of the end of minerals, oil, and resources in general. 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 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, wars, and the myriad other apocalyptic outcomes attributed to climate change.

As someone said, we have become “apocaholics”. Public story telling media- i.e. movies, TV, literature- all affirm the apocalyptic narrative. The number one dominant ideology of our modern world- Declinism- embraces the core theme of apocalyptic mythology, that life is declining toward some disastrous collapse or ending (see Arthur Herman’s The Idea of Decline in Western History). Just as across all past history, apocalyptic mythology continues to shape human consciousness toward excessive alarmism over the varied problems in life.

News media have become the major promoters of alarmism today. See “Creating Fear: News and the manufacture of crisis” by Sociologist David Altheide. Altheide rightly says that news media are not truth-tellers but are entertainers competing with the rest of the entertainment industry. What dominates entertainment? Apocalypse. Over recent decades more than 100 Hollywood movies had apocalypse as a central theme. So also TV, literature (notably, the “post-apocalyptic” genre).

Media promote fear by the manner in which they present real life problems- e.g. by using extremist language (e.g. catastrophe, crisis, disaster are common media favorites), by focusing on worst case scenarios, and by not providing larger contexts related to problems (i.e. alternative evidence).

World surveys also show the high levels of pessimism regarding the future that rule public consciousness. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/you’re-probably-too-pessimistic/ And we wonder why depression (i.e. fatalism, resignation, anxiety) is the world’s number one illness?

And all this in the face of overwhelming evidence that life is getting better on all fronts. See Humanprogress.org for detailed summaries, also Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource, Greg Easterbrook’s A Moment On The Earth, Bjorn Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist, Indur Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist, Ronald Bailey’s The End of Doom, Desrochers and Szurmak’s Population Bombed, and Hans Rosling’s Factfulness.

This site probes the apocalyptic myths behind alarmism that still dominate human consciousness and worldviews both religious and secular/ideological. See “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives” below.

A critical pattern to note in modern life

Watch how this pattern has played out over recent history in mass-destruction movements such as Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism.

First, there is the promotion of some public alarm, some problem in life that is exaggerated out to apocalyptic-scale. It is claimed to be the end of civilization or life, the end of days. Dates are set for the final collapse of things. Dates that have to be constantly revised forward because the end of days never arrives.

Next, the alarm- the threat of chaos, destruction, death- incites the survival impulse in populations. That leads populations to support salvation schemes that demand the coercive purging of the threat to life, and the demand for the instantaneous transformation of society. We see this today in the demand for rapid decarbonization of our societies. It is claimed that coercive purging and instantaneous transformation will restore some imagined lost paradise world.

The outcomes of these movements have repeatedly resulted in mass-death movements such as Marxism, Nazism, and environmentalism. Environmentalism? Yes, just one example: Rachel Carson’s apocalyptic narrative in Silent Spring influenced the ban on DDT that resulted in tens of millions of deaths in subsequent decades.

The demand for coercive purging and instantaneous transformation undermines freedom and democracy with calls to silence and ban dissenters/skeptics, to shut down or even criminalize opponents to the alarmist/apocalyptic movement.

We improve life over the long-term by “gradualism”, by solving problems in life gradually through normal democratic processes that maintain the priority of individual freedom and rights against collectivist tendencies that have a history of harmful outcomes.

Project: The subhuman themes still prominent in the mix of human belief systems

Why go after the theological element in the mix, the God factor, the touchiest of touchy subjects? Well, because deity features are the most fundamental features that shape and influence all else in our belief systems. Deity is the ultimate Ideal and Authority that all else bends to in the end. Reform of religion that only deals with more peripheral elements will fail to promote fully humane outcomes over the long term if that reform endeavor does not also transform or purge the subhuman features at the core of religion. The central themes that define our gods are the themes that most potently shape our attitudes, emotions, and behaviors, more so than anything else.

Take a good close look at your own version of deity- whether you hold a religious or “secular” version (e.g. God, Gaia, Mother Earth, Planet, Universe, karma, Natural Law, Self-Organizing Principle, Natural Selection, etc.). Our deities are those things that we hold as Ultimate Ideals and Authorities. What themes define your god and how do those themes influence your thinking, feeling, and behavior? For example, the Mennonite theologians were right to note that Christian theology, with the feature of punitive deity, shaped Western justice toward a punitive orientation.

And yes, even Richard Dawkins has a god. He capitalized a reference to his deity in his book ‘The God Delusion’: “Natural Selection is the Source of All Enlightenment”. It is his ultimate explanatory entity, giving ultimate meaning to his worldview.

Quote from below: “This (the comment on the Jesus/Paul contradiction) is about a worldview that defines Ultimate Reality (Ultimate Ideal and Authority) in terms of non-retaliation, non-punitive Love, versus a worldview that defines its Ultimate Ideal/Authority in terms of retaliation, punishment. This is about the core orientation that we embrace, whether religious or secular, and its outcomes in our lives.” (From “Post from discussion group” just below)

The project here? Fully humanize your god, or Ultimate Ideal/Authority, according to what we understand today in common human rights codes and constitutions. This will involve the embrace of features such as the full inclusion of all, equal rights and freedoms of all, restorative justice approaches, and so on. Any ultimate Ideal or Authority must embrace such features of authentic humanity if it is going to help promote a more humane future.

Good science

Good basic science will include all the data available in order to fill out a complete big picture of whatever issue, problem, or thing is being looked at. Good science will take special care to include contrary data, skeptical insights, and encourage open-ended debate. It will encourage replication and falsification. It will not deny, discredit, or dismiss contrary data that does not affirm its beliefs/positions. It will not seek a final consensus, or claim “settled science”, or engage ad hominem attack against critics.

Good science will also place any issue/problem within the longest-term context possible, noting the longest possible trends regarding the issue being researched. This will help to counter the tendency to “presentism”, to view some issue only within shorter-term contexts that may distort things. That can result in wrongly concluding that our experience of some problem must be the worst ever, because we are not seeing much larger numbers over the longer-term which may reveal that our experience is normal or even milder than other states of the problem in the past.

Example: We are regularly warned that the climate change we are experiencing over past decades is the worst ever and the outcomes will be catastrophic to life, perhaps even foretelling the collapse and ending of life. But we have experienced a climate warming of only one degree over the past century. That has brought us to world surface temperatures that average about 14.5 degrees Centigrade today. We are told that a further few degrees of warming will be catastrophic.

But the long-term history of Earth shows that world surface temperatures over the past 500 million years averaged 19.5 degrees and life flourished during such times. That is fully 5 degrees Centigrade warmer than today. The link below refers to a recent discovery that affirms a similar discovery years earlier in the Arctic- i.e. evidence of an ancient tropical forest (i.e. stumps of tropical trees). That affirms the much warmer world of most of the past 500 million years, versus the colder average world surface temperatures of today- i.e. around 14.5 degrees Centigrade. A much warmer world means vastly extended habitats for life, not a “frying” world that destroys life. Keep in mind those great upwellings of heat at the tropics that carry warm air north and south to the colder areas, evening out temperature differences across the Earth. That is why for over 90 percent of the past 500 million years there has been no ice at the poles. That is a more normal, healthy world. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/02/traces-of-ancient-rainforest-in-antarctica-point-to-a-warmer-prehistoric-world/

So also, average levels of atmospheric CO2 were much higher over the past 500 million years (multiple thousands of ppm) and again there was no climate crisis or catastrophe. Instead, life flourished during such times. Detail below.

Site project

The ongoing project of this site: To deal thoroughly and fundamentally with the problem of alarmism and its harmful outcomes on societies (e.g. climate alarmism and its policies). In this regard this site probes a fundamental issue behind alarmist movements- i.e. those deeply embedded themes that have always been central to the human search for meaning. Consequently, this site focuses regularly on the apocalyptic complex of themes in both their religious and secular versions.

Those inherited mythical themes still dominate human belief systems in both religious and secular versions. The contemporary widespread embrace of apocalyptic mythology continues to render populations susceptible to endless public narratives of the ‘end of days’- i.e. the apocalyptic scenarios, so common, for example, from the environmental alarmism movement.

Science helps to alleviate alarmism with factual evidence but often science by itself still does not change many minds due to the deeply embedded nature of the beliefs that most fundamentally incite alarmism. Apocalyptic mythology is notable here for its persistence across history. That complex of ideas embraces, at its core, the theme of some great retaliatory, punitive, and destroying reality- whether God, Gaia, Planet/Mother Earth, Universe, or karma.

Apocalyptic distorts the nature of ultimate reality and life entirely. Embracing the apocalyptic myth influences people to exaggerate problems out to apocalyptic-scale (endless prophecies of the end of days) thereby distorting the true state of problems and pushing populations toward salvation schemes that often cause more harm (i.e. cures worse than the diseases).
Most critical, apocalyptic incites excessive fear in populations and the desperation for totalitarian responses. We see this in the demand for “coercive purging” of some imagined threat to life, the desperation for “instantaneous transformation” of society in order to “save life or the world” from threats that are always presented as imminent, with dates repeatedly set for the end of the world.

Despite the natural consequences of living in an imperfect world (i.e. natural disaster, disease, human cruelty) there has never been and never will be a punishing apocalypse in the sense of a final collapse and end of all things brought on by some greater destroying Force or Spirit. The evidence of our long-term history affirms that we will continue to succeed in improving the long-term trajectory of life by “gradualism” in cooperative democracy that respects the freedom of individuals. (Sources of evidence listed in material below- e.g. Julian Simon’s ‘Ultimate Resource’.)

Covid updates:

In the initial phases of any emerging serious problem, rational caution must be fully defended and maintained, along with concern over the nature of the emerging threat. We have too many recent historical examples of unconstrained hysteria breaking forth that then led to the embrace of salvation schemes that resulted in worse outcomes than would have come from the initial problem.

The early struggle is to discover as quickly as possible the true state of the problem (sound evidence) versus speculation on that problem. This is vital in order to prevent panic-driven responses that have too often made cures worse than diseases.

See examples list below: Notably, Rachel Carson’s apocalyptic narrative that influenced the ban on DDT and the resultant millions of unnecessary deaths (many children) of those denied protection. See ‘The Excellent Powder: DDT’s political and science history’ by Chen and Roberts. Also, the GM crops hysteria and bans in Europe that contributed to the deaths of 8 million children over a recent 12-year period, children denied Vit. A in Golden Rice. See the Lomborg article sourced below.

I still question the varied worst-case scenarios that have been, and are still being, thrown into the public realm based on questionable models subsequently exposed as faulty/wrong. Why overly frighten and stampede populations until you have sound evidence? We have repeated this alarmist pattern, and suffered horrific consequences, too often in recent decades.

See notes below on general alarmism episodes and the related unleashing of the totalitarian impulse- i.e. the exaggeration of problems to apocalyptic-scale that distorts the true nature of problems, incites the survival impulse in populations, and renders people susceptible to the totalitarian salvation schemes of alarmists, schemes that often cause more harm than the original problem, and more. A quote from below: “The whole aim of practical politics”, wrote HL 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.” And John Adams, one of the founding fathers of America, echoed this sentiment writing “Fear is the foundation of most governments”. https://academyofideas.com/2015/11/fear-and-social-control/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_fear, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearmongering

This is not a denial of the seriousness of the varied problems that we encounter but it is a caution regarding the tendency of alarmists to exaggerate without a supporting basis of good evidence. We need to remember our experience of the harmful consequences of the varied alarms that swept the world over the past 70 years (again, see the lists of alarms just below).

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/steve-hilton-how-to-reopen-america-safely-but-soon

Finding the balance

Balancing the need to reduce harm to vulnerable people from flu epidemics, with the need to minimize the harm to larger populations from excessive lockdown measures. It is not a case of either saving vulnerable life or the economy, but a best practices balance that considers both.

Every year we need to roll out common sense protective measures such as some physical distancing in public, more disinfecting and handwashing especially during flu season (usually December to February), isolating vulnerable people (elderly, compromised), banning large gatherings, and testing for those infected with any given year’s emerging strain or potential strains, and testing for those with anti-bodies (i.e. able to continue normal life). We should engage such practices every year because every year the common flu is far more destructive than this coronavirus. Add here to these preventative measures the funding of researchers who were on to coronavirus years ago but had their funding cut.

The larger context: Annual death totals from regular flu strains average 389,000 dead worldwide (up to 100,000 children). The range of total deaths is from 291,000 to 646,000. That is out of 5 million severe cases, and that number is out of many tens of millions of total infections, sometimes 50 million cases annually in just the US alone. Note that we hear hardly a word from media during those devastating flu seasons, and we see little government response.

Why the total lockdowns that now appear to be severely harming larger populations? The cure may now becoming worse than the disease. Other countries have taken “targeted measures” approaches that allow most people to maintain normal daily activities.

With others I take seriously every threat to public safety and health. But we have been through so many of these alarms over just the past 70 years. And with others, I am now a reflexive skeptic of the exaggerated elements that inevitably accompany most new threats/problems. There is also the troubling tendency of many to ignore counter data on the true state of any threat, and to present hysterical worst-case scenarios that unnecessarily frighten populations (i.e. news media obsession with the worst of the worst), and we then get panicked herd-like responses that continue to ignore contrary data. Qualified experts have questioned a variety of factual issues right from the start of this coronavirus outbreak. Let their voices be heard more so we can get to the true state of things.

Start with the report below from Alex Berenson. Note that he humbly concedes that he could be wrong but hard data suggests otherwise.

A sampling of past alarms (the current coronavirus is SARS 2), “Over the past 70 years public consciousness has been repeatedly assaulted by proclamations of looming apocalyptic-scale catastrophe from a variety of real problems. News media have played a central role in exaggerating the outcomes of these threats. Varied “experts” prophesied the ‘end of days’ in relation to these issues. There were the global cooling and global famine alarms in the 1970s. And prophesies of the end of minerals, oil, and resources in general. And population bomb explosion (still proclaimed today) and mass famine. Then apocalyptic plagues such as SARS, bird and swine flu, Ebola, AIDs, and mad cow disease. Also, environmental apocalypses in the form of 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 soon coming via warming that will “fry” the planet, rising oceans, historically unprecedented extreme storms, wars, and the myriad other apocalyptic outcomes attributed to climate change.”

Further note, we are being told this coronavirus is uniquely different from past common flus. While apparently true in some respects, I also suspect an element of “presentism” in such claims- i.e. that what we are experiencing firsthand may seem worse than previous threats.

Then note the more general comments below on the dangerous features of all alarm movements, notably the emergence of the totalitarian impulse from the “salvation” plans pushed by alarmists.

Here is the Berenson report…

“Meet the former NYT reporter who is challenging the coronavirus narrative…

As daily life across America is upended by the coronavirus crisis — with mass business closures plunging the economy into freefall — one former New York Times reporter is sounding the alarm about what he believes are flawed models dictating the aggressive strategy.

Alex Berenson has been analyzing the data on the crisis on a daily basis for weeks and has come to the conclusion that the strategy of shutting down entire sectors of the economy is based on modeling that doesn’t line up with the realities of the virus.

“The response we have taken has caused enormous societal devastation, I don’t think that’s too strong a word,” he told Fox News in an interview Thursday.

Berenson is a former reporter who worked for the Times from 1999 to 2010 primarily covering the pharmaceutical industry. He recently came to prominence again with a book, “Tell Your Children The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence,” which challenged prevailing narratives on marijuana.

“The response we have taken has caused enormous societal devastation.”- Alex Berenson

In the face of a broadening consensus on both the left and the libertarian right that sees marijuana as mostly healthy and even a positive in some circumstances, Berenson argued that the evidence instead shows a link between the drug and serious mental illness and an epidemic of violence.

Now he’s turned to challenging the narratives on the response to the coronavirus. What Berenson is promoting isn’t coronavirus denialism, or conspiracy theories about plots to curb liberties. Instead what Berenson is claiming is simple: the models guiding the response were wrong and that it is becoming clearer by the day.

“In February I was worried about the virus. By mid-March I was more scared about the economy. But now I’m starting to get genuinely nervous,” he tweeted this week. “This isn’t complicated. The models don’t work. The hospitals are empty. WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT INDEFINITE LOCKDOWNS?”

Hospitals, of course, are not empty in places like hard-hit New York City, and tales are widespread of overburdened doctors and emergency rooms. Berenson acknowledged as much in the interview Thursday.

Concerns that this virus is significantly more contagious and deadly than any ordinary flu strain are what’s driving the current government approach, in America and around the world. Perhaps due in part to more testing, America reports the highest number of cases in the world right now, with more than 430,000 cases and nearly 15,000 deaths. Symptoms vary widely, with some patients reporting only minor discomfort yet others dealing with crushing physical pain and struggling to breathe, forced to go on ventilators.

But Berenson is taking a broader look. He initially challenged the model put forward by the Imperial College in London, when one of the authors of the models appeared to significantly walk back projections that the U.K. would see 500,000 people killed by the disease to closer to 20,000 — although the author later said that the 500,000 prediction was without social distancing measures, and 20,000 was with them in place. That model is being used to advise the U.K. government on its strategy for the virus.

“That was March 22 or 23, and ever since then I’ve been paying incredibly close attention to the modeling and trying to figure out whether it lines up with what we’re seeing in reality — and the answer is it hasn’t lined up at all,” he said.

Recently he’s been focusing on discrepancies within the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model. That model has come under renewed scrutiny as it has revised its metrics multiple times. It once predicted more than 90,000 deaths by August but recently issued a new estimate that has the figure closer to 60,000. Government officials say it’s a model that’s moving with what the country is doing.

“We believe that our health care delivery system in the United States is quite extraordinary,” Dr. Deborah Birx said at a White House press briefing on Wednesday. “I know many of you are watching the Act Now model and the IHME model— and they have consistently decreased the number, the mortality from over almost 90,000 or 86,000, down to 81,000 and now down to 61,000. That is modeled on what America is doing. That’s what’s happening.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the indicators are that social distancing efforts are working: “Because remember, what you do with data will always outstrip a model. You redo your models, depending upon your data, and our data is telling us that mitigation is working.”

But Berenson argues that those models have social distancing and other measures baked into them. As for further proof, he says that outside of places like New York there has not been a national health crisis that was predicted — nor are there signs that the level of lockdown in various states has made a difference.

“Aside from New York, nationally there’s been no health system crisis. In fact, to be truly correct there has been a health system crisis, but the crisis is that the hospitals are empty,” he said. “This is true in Florida where the lockdown was late, this is true in southern California where the lockdown was early, it’s true in Oklahoma where there is no statewide lockdown. There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the lockdown and whether or not the epidemic has spread wide and fast.”

He has also argued, in lengthy Twitter threads, that the drop in cases seen in various states has come before lockdowns would have had an impact — since it takes a few weeks for social distancing measures to take effect due to the window between infection and symptoms.

Berenson blames the models for a response that has effectively shut down large sectors of the economy and is causing significant financial harm to Americans. On Thursday it was announced that the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits swelled to 6.6 million last week, surging for the third consecutive week. Congress has sought to alleviate the pain by boosting those jobless benefits.

His is a view that has seen some sympathy from President Trump, who has spoken about the “cure being worse than the problem” and has indicated that he is keen to end the strict measures as soon as is possible — saying Wednesday he wants to re-open the economy with a “big bang.”

Berenson says the correct response in the initial days of the crisis would not have been to do nothing, but instead to adopt a more measured and targeted approach.

“There was incredible pressure to do something … so these lockdowns all cascaded, every governor tried to outdo the next. And no one stopped and said ‘OK what about Japan, they don’t seem to have a terrible epidemic, they wear masks, maybe we should wear masks,” he said.

He said other measures such as protecting individuals particularly at risk, and even things such as banning large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events could have been appropriate. But now he fears it may be too late for officials to say they overreacted.

“Now we’re in a bad spot because there’s clearly a dangerous political dynamic right now — the economy is in freefall, a lot of people are hurting. If we acknowledge what is clearly happening … the people who made these decisions, I think there’s going to be a lot of anger at them, so they don’t want to acknowledge it, so they say ‘oh it’s the lockdown that saved us,’” he says.

Berenson is not a known partisan. His Twitter feed and other works contain few references to specific politicians, and there’s no indication that he’s in this to bash or defend Trump or either political party. But he noted that, like with his conclusions on marijuana, there has been a distinct lack of interest from the left.

“I went to Yale and I worked for the New York Times, the people on the left hold themselves out as being science-driven, as being smarter, they think they’re smarter but they won’t look at facts that won’t meet their narratives,” he said.

He voiced frustration that these arguments have been ignored by a lot of mainstream outlets.

“That is frustrating for me … but everyone needs to hear this counterargument, whether or not it’s right, you need to hear it because the damage we are doing to ourselves right now is so enormous.”

Have we been down this road before?

Keep in mind the larger annual disease picture. If this was an average common flu season, worldwide death totals would be already past 400,000 (up to 650,000 total, with 100,000 child deaths worldwide). These death totals result from over 5 million ‘severe flu cases’ worldwide among many more tens of millions of total infections. The US has had up to 50 million flu cases in past years and in 2017-18 had 61,000 flu deaths (up to 600 were child deaths, and many other apparently younger healthy people). With little media attention at all. And no shutdowns.

Varied commentators have suggested that those advocating for ending the total shutdown are motivated by “Wall Street greed” or they are the wealthy now selfishly and callously trying to regain lost wealth. No. The need to end the total shutdown is more about millions of ordinary citizens that have lost jobs and incomes and still have basic family needs to meet. It is about growing and widespread despair over bankrupted small businesses and what appears to be a bleak future. The poorest are impacted the most.

The balance to be sought is between (1) lessons learned re best practices that should be practiced every flu season, and (2) allowing the least vulnerable sectors of the population to return to normal life activities like work. Universal testing is the critical need now to detect those able to return to work (already infected and with anti-bodies, or not infected and less vulnerable). Also, testing will assist to isolate infected people as early as possible.

Other protective measures to be engaged every year: Funding more research on potential threats. We know the origins of these threats in wildlife like bats and rats, and wet markets. Then, governments should maintain better stocks of medical supplies like masks, gloves, virology tests, and disease alleviation medications and technologies (e.g. respirators). Common annual flu outbreaks also result in widespread respiratory distress (i.e. pneumonia). Also, engage some form of physical distancing every year, with disinfection practices. Just as many stores now place disinfectant dispensers right at the front doors. Also learn from societies like Japan and wear masks every flu season.

And most critical- during the early stages of every outbreak isolate vulnerable segments of populations such as the elderly and medically compromised people.

These measures will help to avoid repeats of these total shutdowns that are going to be more damaging over the long term than the disease outbreaks. We annually deal with far worse common flu outbreaks without the added burdens of total shutdowns.

Terry Corcoran rightly points to the cause of this pandemic as bungled national government policies. Governments ignored warnings of such outbreaks because they were obsessing over things like the false alarm over the “climate crisis”. See https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-covid-19-pandemic-the-product-of-bungled-national-government-policies-on-massive-scale-world-wide?video_autoplay=true

New material

Green activists have been trying to exploit the coronavirus outbreak to affirm their alarmist narratives on climate change- i.e. that the “climate crisis” demands a similar shutdown of world economies. But the two issues are not the same at all. Climate alarmism has long been based on speculative scenarios from climate models, now discredited for their exaggerated projections of looming climate catastrophe due to a “fried planet” (see “Two best things happening today” below). It appears more likely that we are heading into a global cooling period what with the current extended solar minimum not showing signs of ending soon. See Global Warming Policy Forum reports. https://www.thegwpf.com/who-will-win-the-worlds-biggest-scientific-experiment-in-history/

To shut down entire economies as advocated by Green activists- i.e. the push for rapid “decarbonization”- would be foolishly destructive as current unemployment stats are showing, along with the general retreat to overall primitivism that rapid decarbonization entails. Renewables, while perhaps desirable for the future, will not replace fossil fuels any time soon. They still do not meet energy needs by any significant amount (i.e. still only a few percent of the World energy mix at exorbitant cost). Wind and solar have yet to overcome issues of intermittent supply and still need conventional backup. And the speculation that Green jobs would replace conventional workforces has not proven realistic at all.

We must not let green extremists exploit the Coronacrisis

Setting aside the coronavirus issue, the comment here on general alarmism still applies…

The current coronavirus outbreak has become a serious problem and most countries are responding to it with the seriousness that it deserves. But as with past disease outbreaks there are elements of alarmist exaggeration in the mix (i.e. worst-case projections from faulty data sets and models, with alarm-oriented media focus on the same). Many voices have cautioned against the elements of hysteria in the mix. Overall, government directives and public response have been helpful (see best practices) to prevent more severe outcomes. But now the total shutdown response has to be challenged as the damage from that is more evident and there is the danger of the cure becoming worse than the disease. See following links… Hilton’s “Slow the spread but speed the end of the shutdown” https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=hzN9bOLCXRA&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0tjwdHLGYctTiuMLKAuGJTXQ5wrO34pdHCvHyRX-T0Hbdc57KUWyl9saM
And… https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/07/wildly-exaggerated-chicom-19-models-are-driving-policy-decisions/ and https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/08/coronavirus-death-predictions-bring-new-meaning-to-hysteria/

Why I maintain a wary skepticism of all public alarms. There is always the danger of excessive alarmism unleashing the totalitarian impulse…

Again, have we been down this road before?

Quote from further below: “Over the past 70 years public consciousness has been repeatedly assaulted by apocalyptic-scale hysteria, via alarmism-oriented news media. There were the global cooling and global famine alarms in the 1970s. And prophesies of the end of minerals, oil, and resources in general. And population bomb explosion and mass famine. Then apocalyptic plagues such as SARS, bird and swine flu, Ebola, AIDs, and mad cow disease. Also, environmental apocalypses in the form of 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, wars, and the myriad other apocalyptic outcomes attributed to climate change.”

Beware the alarmist take on problems in life. The outcomes of alarmist incitement in past history have been devastating. The promotion of fear has always been central to the arousal and infringement of the totalitarian impulse into life under the guise of saving something under dire threat. Who said the most dangerous people are those who believe they know what is best for all others, especially when they claim to know how to save others or the world if everyone will just embrace their salvation plan.

The alarmist pattern operating in history: totalitarian salvationism.

We have inherited a cumulative body of knowledge through the modern science movement and we continue to build on that to solve some of the most threatening features of the natural world. We know better today how to protect ourselves from many of the great threats from natural disasters, disease, and human cruelty. Our modern science has been critical to this project of improving the human condition.

But the natural and social worlds continue to present some frightening threats that must be confronted and solved. And too often alarmists among us present those threats in a manner that confuses more than clarifies. Alarmists have a record of inciting irrational responses that often do more harm than the actual threat (cures worse than diseases). Unfortunately, alarmist narratives tend to dominate public consciousness and that has some correlation to the ongoing embrace of the apocalyptic myth in contemporary world culture. An orientation to apocalyptic has long been hardwired in human consciousness and narratives, both religious and secular. The apocalyptic myth still very much shapes contemporary worldviews and responses.

Note that 85% of humanity still identifies with one of the major world religions and those religions all hold some version of apocalyptic decline, both Western and Eastern traditions. While the Western religions- Jewish, Christian, Muslim- are self-admittedly apocalyptic, the Eastern religions also embrace varied forms of declinism that is a central theme of apocalyptic mythology. Hinduism has its great cycles of rise and decline to catastrophic ending. Buddhism has its declinist belief in the decreasing length of the human life-span (see Mircea Eliade on History of Religious Ideas).

Alarmism is the exaggeration of problems out to apocalyptic-scale, with the argument that varied problems in the world portend the decline of life toward some great collapse or ending, even the end of the world (endless setting of ‘end-of-days’ dates). That exaggeration does not help rational evaluation of problems and the search for solutions suited to the actual nature of the problem.

Here is one of the most dangerous outcomes of apocalyptic alarmism.

Apocalyptic-scale alarmism works its worst harm via this pattern in life: First, exaggerated alarm scenarios agitate and incite the survival impulse in populations, the primal desperation to just live. That fear-incited desperation then intensely heightens the sensitivity of populations to the salvation schemes of the alarmists. Frightened populations are more willing to unquestioningly embrace the salvation schemes offered by alarmists. And this is how the totalitarian impulse can quickly become welcomed in wider societies as necessary to salvation or survival. With apocalyptic-scale scenarios widely embraced by populations (e.g. climate catastrophe), apocalyptic logic then seems just common sense.

Insert quotes on fear: “The whole aim of practical politics”, wrote HL 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.” And John Adams, one of the founding fathers of America, echoed this sentiment writing “Fear is the foundation of most governments”. https://academyofideas.com/2015/11/fear-and-social-control/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_fear, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearmongering

Alarmist salvation schemes then demand the “coercive purging” of some identified threat. They demand the “instantaneous transformation” of society in order to save life from some imagined collapse and ending, and they demand the restoration of some declining or lost good (i.e. the feature of millennial promise in apocalyptic mythology). Today, for example, alarmists have identified industrial society based on fossil fuels as the great threat to life. Salvation is to be found in diminishing/shutting down this industrial civilization and replacing it with a civilization based more on renewables (i.e. the push for rapid ‘decarbonization’ of our societies). That will return us to the imagined lost paradise world of pre-industrial civilization.

The alarmist’s demands are embraced with urgency because the threat they present is always “imminent”, always just a few years or decades up ahead. Remember US Senator AOC told us that the end of the world would be 2030. Similarly, James Hansen declared 2013 would be the end (In 2008 he had said, “Its all over in five years”).

Because of the imminence of the threat, alarmists claim that there is no more time for normal democratic processes, for free debate, for skeptical challenge to their alarmist scenarios. Unbelievers are not just “deniers/skeptics” but actual apologetics for death, even criminals. Remember that Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch, tried to criminalize skeptical science in 2016. Alarmists claim there is an established and final consensus around their narrative, scenarios, and salvation scheme, a dogma of “settled science” that should no longer be challenged. How is this any different from the Medieval church silencing Galileo and Copernicus?

The historical outcomes of alarmist salvation movements have repeatedly been mass-death movements on unprecedented scale.

We saw this alarmist pattern as it emerged and came to full expression in Marxism (100 million deaths), in Nazism (50-60 million deaths), and we are now watching its expression in environmental alarmism. Richard Landes (Heaven on Earth), Arthur Herman (The Idea of Decline in Western History), Arthur Mendel (Vision and Violence), and David Redles (Hitler’s Millennial Reich), among others, have all traced the pattern and its basic features in the history of the past century. The alarmist pattern was also expressed in the ISIS apocalyptic movement in Syria over past few years. ISIS terrorists claimed the apocalypse was near (the return of the Mahdi) and it was time to coercively purge “evil” and immediately establish the caliphate across the world (see David Cook’s material on Islamic apocalyptic).

Note that the above researchers have included environmentalism as the latest alarmist apocalyptic movement. Yes, Rachel Carson’s apocalyptic narrative in Silent Spring influenced the ban on DDT and that resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths in following decades. There was good science at the time that showed DDT was not a threat to birds or other animal species, and there was no evidence that it was linked to cancer in humans (see The Excellent Powder by Roberts and Tren).

Further, GM foods alarmism has resulted in the deaths of millions of children denied Vitamin A in Golden Rice. Again, good science has shown that GM foods have never harmed any human or other life.

The panic-driven push to decarbonize our societies (purge the “evil of industrial society”) will destroy human life further as well as cause environmental harm (i.e. vast areas needed for sufficient windmills and solar panels to provide the electrical needs of societies, and the harm to wildlife from those massive interventions).

In his chapter on the Nazi mass-death movement, Landes was right to conclude that if we just dismiss alarmist leaders like Hitler as fringe nut cases then we do not learn the critical lesson from their mass-death movements. That lesson? How apocalyptic millennial ideas can influence a society toward mass-death, with people believing that they are actually doing good by embracing alarmist’s coercive salvation schemes to “save life… or save the world”.

The constraints of good science are more critical than ever to get to the true state of any issue of concern, any problem in life. Science must encourage open challenge to alarmist scenarios that have so repeatedly exaggerated and distorted problems. The alarmist cures have often caused more damage than the original problem (e.g. the bio-fuels fiasco, DDT alarmism). Science must continue to challenge the worst-case scenarios that alarmist media love to obsess over. And in proper problem-solving also go to the root bad ideas behind all history’s eruptions of alarmism- i.e. the apocalyptic complex of myths. Those ideas are still dominant in world religions as well as in common secular ideologies like Declinism.

Note: Also watch how confirmation bias erupts during outbreaks of alarmist hysteria. Such bias embraces only evidence that affirms its beliefs, and discredits/dismisses evidence that contradicts its beliefs.

Moving on… A post to a discussion group:

A note on Chapter 4 (“The future needs us”) in Freeman Dyson’s ‘The Scientist as Rebel’. Material presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2001.

First, my own comment re the use of the “precautionary principle” that came to wider public attention out of the environmental alarmism movement of past decades. In its extremist application the precautionary principle would seek to prohibit all kinds of new technologies based on speculated potential risks. A notable example has been GM foods, where Europe took the extremist position of banning/prohibiting. That also fed activism against Golden Rice. Follow-up research has shown absolutely no harm to people or nature from GM foods, but the costs from the precautionary prohibition have been horrific to real people- i.e. 8 million children died over a recent 12-year period, being denied Vit. A in Golden Rice. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/bjorn-lomborg-trashing-rice-killing-children

On the other hand, GM crops have proven immensely beneficial by increasing crop productivity and now we are told that we have already reached “peak agricultural land” and are now in a declining trend (humanity using less land to meet its food needs). Farmers across the world, able to produce more on the same land or less land, do not need to cut more forests for crops, even with population growth continuing for another half century before the great decline begins. Greg Easterbrook in A Moment On The Earth also noted that the US had returned some 100 million acres of cropland to nature in the last century as farmers could produce more crop on less land (others estimated up to 200 million acres returned to nature). See for example https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/issue-5/the-return-of-nature

We have enough farmland to feed all humanity and worldwide per capita caloric consumption levels, along with the stunning decline in malnutrition and starvation except in cases of political disruption, show the current sufficient levels of food production with much more room for further growth. Again, there has never been any proven harm to people or nature from GM foods. As agronomist/humanitarian Norman Borlaug said, GM is just doing what nature does but speeding the process up.

Further, there is no risk-free technology and the argument for new technologies is better framed in cost/benefit terms (good outcomes weighed against potential risks).

There is good and bad potential in most things and Freeman Dyson is right that outright prohibitions (extreme use of precautionary principle) are not the way to go- also because of human freedom vs totalitarianism concerns. Prohibition should be avoided also because of a proven record of responsible human use of new technologies (biotechnology). We must, argues Dyson, retain freedom to experiment and explore technologies that will improve the future even more. The future needs us. Dyson concludes we must continue to struggle “to deal with the enduring problems of reconciling individual freedom with public safety”.

Point here (related to Dyson’s general theme)? We must be careful with the current disease problem (coronavirus) as some are noting the hesitancy to remove current precautionary restrictions (extending them, based on speculative scenarios) and the cost burden may shift if the restrictions continue too long and then more harm than good results (e.g. excessive unemployment, social unrest, economic damage that may be hard to reverse). And especially, the issues of human freedom versus the ever-present totalitarian impulse willing to erupt (Green extremists wanting to make the current massive social changes permanent).

Keep an eye on the robust debate about data related to this coronavirus. Many, including the CDC, are rejecting worst-case scenarios so popular with news media. Decline trends are now evident in many countries. And for comparison, just in 2017-18 season in the US, some 61,000 died from common flu and media said not much at all about that far worse situation. Why not?

Earlier material re apocalyptic

Over the past 70 years public consciousness has been repeatedly assaulted by apocalyptic-scale hysteria, via alarmism-oriented news media. There was global cooling and global famine in the 1970s. Prophesies of the end of minerals, oil, and resources in general. 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 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, wars, and the myriad other apocalyptic outcomes attributed to climate change.

As someone said, we have become “apocaholics”. Public story telling media- i.e. movies, TV, literature- all affirm the apocalyptic narrative. The number one dominant ideology of our modern world- Declinism- embraces the core theme of apocalyptic mythology, that life is declining toward some disastrous collapse or ending (see Arthur Herman’s The Idea of Decline in Western History). Just as across all past history, apocalyptic mythology continues to shape human consciousness toward excessive alarmism over the varied problems in life.

News media have become the major promoters of alarmism today. See “Creating Fear: News and the manufacture of crisis” by Sociologist David Altheide. Altheide rightly says that news media are not truth-tellers but are entertainers competing with the rest of the entertainment industry. What dominates entertainment? Apocalypse. Over recent decades more than 100 Hollywood movies had apocalypse as a central theme. So also TV, literature (notably, the “post-apocalyptic” genre).

Media promote fear by the manner in which they present real life problems- e.g. by using extremist language (e.g. catastrophe, crisis, disaster are common media favorites), by focusing on worst case scenarios, and by not providing larger contexts related to problems (i.e. alternative evidence).

World surveys also show the high levels of pessimism regarding the future that rule public consciousness. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/you’re-probably-too-pessimistic/ And we wonder why depression (i.e. fatalism, resignation, anxiety) is the world’s number one illness?

And all this in the face of overwhelming evidence that life is getting better on all fronts. See Humanprogress.org for detailed summaries, also Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource, Greg Easterbrook’s A Moment On The Earth, Bjorn Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist, Indur Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist, Ronald Bailey’s The End of Doom, Desrochers and Szurmak’s Population Bombed, and Hans Rosling’s Factfulness.

This site probes the apocalyptic myths behind alarmism that still dominate human consciousness and worldviews both religious and secular/ideological. See “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives” below.

Updates re Coronavirus… https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/07/wildly-exaggerated-chicom-19-models-are-driving-policy-decisions/ and https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/08/coronavirus-death-predictions-bring-new-meaning-to-hysteria/

And Hilton’s “Slow the spread but speed the end of the shutdown” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzN9bOLCXRA&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0tjwdHLGYctTiuMLKAuGJTXQ5wrO34pdHCvHyRX-T0Hbdc57KUWyl9saM

Then Willis Eschenbach’s analysis from https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/08/flattening-the-curve/. “Key points from Eschenbach’s look at the data in “Flattening the curve”…the interventions do not reduce the total number of cases or deaths, “flattening the curve” only delays those numbers. The three interventions: Stay at home, schools closed, non-essential services closed. Only one shows any significant effect (actual measurable)- i.e. closing schools. The other measures are not saving lives. But the costs of those measures are becoming horrific, including deaths from such costs. His conclusion- you are not preventing deaths with the other measures but actually causing other deaths and immense suffering to delay deaths from the disease (emphasis- “not prevent, only delay”). Final recommendation- “Do not shut down the economy, stupid. The costs are far, far too great”.”

And the latest on climate: https://www.thegwpf.com/who-will-win-the-worlds-biggest-scientific-experiment-in-history/?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a6dde2384a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_08_10_34_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-a6dde2384a-20139177&mc_cid=a6dde2384a&mc_eid=bbd9cad85f

Some startling data points from a Fox News report by Tucker Carlson…the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has reduced its projections of deaths from coronavirus in the US down from 245,000 to 60,000. Yet that higher number was the basis for the lockdown. The reduction is not due to social distancing measures as those were included in the evaluations. Comparatively in 2018, deaths from common annual flu in the US were 61,000. Also, 67,000 died from drug overdoses, 88,000 died from alcohol abuse, 83,000 died from diabetes, 50,000 died from suicide, and 606,000 died from cancer. And no lockdowns or media focus over any of the above. And so far 17,000,000 Americans have lost their jobs from this lockdown with more to come. Some want the lockdown to continue for a year and a half. Further, media are ignoring or dismissing promising treatments for more social control. What is going on?

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