The Mind Behind the Climate Hoax

Not so long ago, a friend of mine posted a sampling of Congressional quotes regarding climate change on Facebook. I found it a little disturbing, at first, to think that so many of the people who run our country could remain what could only be called willfully ignorant. For example, Jim Inhofe, Sen. Oklahoma, called climate change, "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." To call climate change a “hoax” would involve taking on the findings of scientists from around the globe – and what would be the purpose of such a hoax? Who could possibly profit from the joke? But that’s the subject for another blog – today I wanted to look at the mind that would think that science would perpetrate such a hoax.

Oddly, during the ascendance of the moral majority (and before the crash and burn inability of most of the purveyors to live up to their own touted standards), the catch-phrase “moral relativism” was applied to liberals, journalists and Hollywood. Hollywood and the liberal media, it was espoused, do not adhere to a system of standards (such as the bible) but simply do what “feels good.” It was better to have a system of standards, even if one failed to live up to them, than to simply do what seemed best in a given moment.
So what are the standards behind denying climate change? That is a question which stuck with me as I rode the Seven train back into Queens the other day. The quotes I’d read bothered me. There was something so ingenuine about such statements – how could anyone possible hold them as true? The first impulse is to attack the speaker rather than the thought spoken, to call them stooges for the fossil fuel corporations or ignorant f*^ks, but that is a simple way to solve one’s personal mental dilemma and a surefire way defuse any possibility of dialogue. Then I saw an ad for ambulance chasers on the subway wall. Ah, these men were lawyers and therein lies the rub.

As the train ascended into the afternoon sky, it occurred to me that one of the strengths of the justice system perhaps was also the link to a different kind of moral relativism. A lawyer is bound to defend his client, right or wrong, guilty or innocent. A good lawyer will discard every shred of doubt as to the credibility of her client and pursue, not justice, but an end – acquittal, a settlement, a verdict, whatever the case demands. While the law is held as the standard, lawyers quickly learn that the law can be bent, interpreted, refuted, overturned, repealed, reversed and called unconstitutional. There is no such thing, truly, as “justice.” There is only the verdict. And the fee one is paid by a client for a favorable verdict.

Lawyers comprise a large percentage of the people who then go on to Congress, ostensibly to “create” the law. What will become law is simply what is ultimately decided by a collection of lawyers who are operating, at this point, without a judge. There is no one to hold them accountable, no one to strike down arguments as “specious” or “lacking merit.” It is an odd position. One has spent their life advocating for one client or another, defending rapists or corporations, prosecuting drug addicts and accountants, sifting through piles of paperwork to find the one precedent that will find the key, not to justice, but to victory. And taking fees that are linked both to the time spent on the case and, in many cases, an actual percentage of the payout.

So what is the mind that thinks climate change is a hoax? It is the mind that has no standard except the verdict. What is science but one side of a case? What is the other side? The scientists are out to get us. In every case, there are plaintiffs and defendants. If one side argues the climate is changing, there’s got to be another side. I won’t even go as far as to say there’s money to be made in defending the other side – though it too is surely a truth. So what is the rationale for attacking science? Can we attack science with science? The numbers are not in our favor. So we must attack the motives of those who are speaking – which Aristotle pointed out so long ago was a logical fallacy. Ah, but that was a different kind of democracy. No, I can’t say they are evil men, they are simply doing what they’ve spent a lifetime learning to do. The problem with Congress is this: we have trained our lawyers too well