It’s Natural!
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(The Climate is Always Changing!)
Over the past decade, “It’s Natural” has become the preferred approach of most Denialists as the evidence of a changing climate has grown impossible to ignore. The “It’s Natural” argument can work in conjunction with the paranoia-based “Hoax!” promoters since the latter can claim that, while there is a little warming, it’s been deliberately overexaggerated for some nefarious/self-serving purpose (like one-world government, or the overthrow of capitalism, or so scientists will continue to receive their 84.7 trillion dollars of taxpayer money year after year for lying to the American people, or so China will “win” the war of the economy). Even better, “It’s Natural” can be rapidly converted into “It’s Inevitable” in case anyone suspects human influence.
Our usual Denialist suspects all reappear here: foremost among them the shills, funded by The Heartland Institute (a Denialist ‘think’ tank), who work to sow doubt about climate science in order to forestall regulation on polluters. This serves to preserve the profits of fossil fuel corporations and protect the sustained wealth and power of ‘free-market’ elites (who depend on government protection — and subsidies — to keep their markets ‘free’ from regulation). Along with groups such as the American Chemistry Council and the American Petroleum Institute, the Heartland Institute tries to sway public opinion in favor of fossil fuel consumption and use in plastics manufacture and the energy-intensive production of fertilizers and herbicides. It appears as if these PR firms have a hatred for all non-human species other than the specie known as coin.
Denialist rhetoric of this stripe (“It’s Natural”) tends to be used by mouthpieces for economic interests who cherry-pick data bits to generate public confusion. They regularly employ fatalist and naturalist fallacies in logic: “species have been going extinct since species came into existence; there’s no difference today — don’t blame climate change!” or “welp, the earth is getting warmer and there’s nothing you can do about it — but don’t have government regulate polluters! That would be economic suicide!” They ignore that, short of a natural phenomenon like a meteorite hitting the earth, species have NOT gone extinct at the rates they are now. They ignore that it’s human pollution that is causing the increase in global temperatures. They ignore that, consequently, we can do something about the current crisis of mass extinctions.
There is a well-researched set of causes for the mass extinctions of the past. The two primary culprits are volcanism and meteor strikes, along with oceanic oxygen depletion (Devonian extinction, 360+ million years ago) and an extreme ice age (Ordovician extinction, 445 million years ago). Currently we are in the 6th great extinction, driven by human activity — global climate destabilization only being one factor in it (along with overhunting/fishing, land abuse such as forest destruction, chemical toxification, plastic pollution, etc.).
Aside from events causing catastrophic mass extinctions, there are three primary (non-human) reasons why climate undergoes fluctuations in temperature:
Volcanic Activity (Irregular) — creating ash (cooling) and greenhouse gasses (warming)
Solar Radiation Cycles (Short Term Semi-Regular) — emanating from the sun
Milankovitch Cycles (Long Term Regular) — based on planetary motion, axial tilt, and distance from the sun
The combination of these three primary climate drivers (past and present) have been studied intensively over the past half-century. Climate scientists show that we are currently not significantly experiencing the temperature forcing effects of these three factors. The very same climate scientists who study these past “natural” changes are the ones saying that now human activity is altering the climate dramatically. Obtusely, the primary proponents of the “It’s Natural” position (like hoaxmonger John Nolte) frequently reference the general findings of these climate scientists to show climate has changed in the past, then about-face and ignore the very same scientists’ work when it comes to their scientific observations about the present and their attribution of the current rapid heating to anthropogenic causes.
The few “dissenting ‘scientists’” (who only selectively use climate science) are regularly criticized by the vast majority of the scientific community for their failure to use rigorous scientific study in their own publications. These “dissenters” have also all been documented to receive significant money from the fossil-fuel industry (sometimes washed through the Heartland Institute, handsomely funded by the libertarian Koch brothers and the tobacco industry). As a result of their shoddy research and corrupt funding, these same scientists regularly claim they are being persecuted. These self-serving cries are amplified by the same vested media denialists who promote all the above climate denialism strategies (Forbes and The Wall Street Journal being notorious for this). Typical of this perverse sense of persecution is Richard Lindzen’s “The Political Assault on Climate Skeptics” in The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2015. [1] His opening paragraphs present a perfect specimen of Denialist language and “logic” in which the weak, innocent, and impoverished fossil fuel corporations are the victims of the cruel and powerful environmentalists:
Research in recent years has encouraged those of us who question the popular alarm over allegedly man-made global warming. Actually, the move from “global warming” to “climate change” indicated the silliness of this issue. The climate has been changing since the Earth was formed. This normal course is now taken to be evidence of doom.
Individuals and organizations highly vested in disaster scenarios have relentlessly attacked scientists and others who do not share their beliefs. These attacks have taken a threatening turn.
Note the dismissal of the actual science through terms such as “popular alarm”, “allegedly man-made global warming” and “silliness”. Note the parroted logic of (falsely) claiming that the change in language from “global warming” to “climate change” is a scientific and not a carefully crafted political one. (Thanks, Frank Luntz!) Notice the baldly misleading statement, again copied verbatim from Heartland Institute talking points memos, “The climate has been changing since the Earth was formed.” Notice the failure to address causes, differences, nuances, or even science itself. And note the inclusion of the paranoiac persecution complex over the “threatening turn”, melding the “Hoax” and “Natural” arguments in with the “Insignificant” claim. [2]
The “It’s Natural” argument has been thoroughly discredited scientifically as a driver of the current global climate destabilization (although natural events can certainly amplify or reduce the process of rapid anthropogenic global heating). Nonetheless, the mission of the PR men in promoting the “Natural” argument has been primarily to create doubt about climate science. In this, they have been incredibly effective, aided by infotainment media and political establishments who seek to preserve the fossil-fuel reliant status quo.
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[1] Richard Lindzen. “The Political Assault on Climate Skeptics” in The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2015 (accessed, November 18, 2019 in the Opinion Section) https://www.wsj.com/articles/richard-s-lindzen-the-political-assault-on-climate-skeptics-1425513033
[2] While Lindzen bemoans imaginary “threatening turns”, for a good look at actual threats, look no further than the threats sent to Katharine Hayhoe, a evangelical Christian and a climate scientist who tries to bridge the gulf between these two camps. “One email I got said something like, ‘I hope your child sees your head in a basket after you’ve been guillotined for all the fraud you climate scientists have been committing,’” Hayhoe said. Similar threats against actual climate scientists can be found in the following article: Katherine Bagley and Naveena Sadasivam. “Climate Denial’s Ugly Side: Hate Mail to Scientists” December 11, 2015 Inside Climate News. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11122015/climate-change-global-warming-denial-ugly-side-scientists-hate-mail-hayhoe-mann
