Love your monsters | Climate Etc.

While Sagoff’s contribution is likely to upset market fundamentalist conservatives, contemporary progressivism is challenged by other essays in the anthology. In “Liberalism’s Modest Proposals, or, The Tyranny of Scientific Rationality,” Daniel Sarewitz points out how the conventional green movement combines excessive faith that science can define the problem of harmful climate change with arguably excessive skepticism about the usefulness of technology in mitigating it or adapting to its effects. In “The New India Versus the Global Green Brahmins,” Siddhartha Shome points out that it was the affluent Gandhi who was drawn to idealized images of village life, while the leader of the low-caste Untouchables, Babasaheb Ambedkar, saw the salvation of the Indian poor in technological modernization.

PRUDEN: A little humility at the 'climate research' crossroads - Washington Times

Science, which has replaced religion as the source of faith in certain circles, has otherwise always been skeptical of certitude. Science has always held that nothing is so settled as to be beyond questioning. This held until the propagation of the gospel of global warming. Skeptics are called “deniers,” their arguments mocked, and held up to public ridicule.

It’s a particular conceit of man to imagine that he is both the author and the center of the universe, that whatever happens to the stars is the work of his hand. “We are changing the large-scale properties of the atmosphere,” declares Benjamin D. Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. “You can’t engage in this vast planetary experiment — warming the surface, warming the atmosphere, moistening the atmosphere — and have no impact on the frequency and duration of extreme events.”