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Originally Posted by ratbastid
I think an even more interesting question is: why does the pro- and anti-global "warming" argument split precisely down the political right/left dividing line? Surely that's not a coincidence?
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I've been thinking about this myself.
I'm not sure if I really qualify to be discussed in it, as originally I was in the global warming needs to be investigated camp and I have always been a 'acid rain is bad' type. I only started to wonder about the validity of global warming in college in the early 90's.
My guess is for many it would have been a more classic personality type reaction.
Conservative would be, its been fine forever, it was cold last winter, what are you talking about?
Liberal would be, tell me about it, we could all die! Well we need to do SOMETHING to fix it!
There is something in the liberal mind set which reacts to every sky is falling prediction, and something in the conservative mind set which won't admit the sky is falling even if they are getting hit by clouds.
Neither is necessarily good. One is gullible the other intractable. With global warming, since the evidence was not clear cut, this just let both sides dig in.
Currently though I think its gone beyond that. Since I can't say 'global warming' without showing my ignorance (heh) I'll say 'climate change' has become a vehicle for the politics of some agendas. Also while its been a good number of years since I was at the 'cutting edge' of environmental science as an active participant, there is an elitism there in the scientific community toward the public there where they assume the public is made up of idiots who would be better off dead (I heard more than once it would be good if a virus killed much of the population as casual conversation, people were the enemy). This elitism means they feel you, the public just need to know what they tell you as it will shape what they want to see happen, scientific reality doesn't matter, you are too stupid to grasp the issues. Speaking against it is heresy against the new orthodoxy, so when the founder of Greenpeace says things like we need new nuclear power plants and that the environmental movement is no longer about science but fear mongering he gets called a Judas.