| Yesterday, I wrote a diary about global warming a national security threat ("Global Warming As National Security Threat--Is This What Will Finally Get Through To Them?") drawing on a 2007 report from the Center for Naval Analysis, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, 2007. Though not the first to come from military authorities (in this case, 11 three- and four-star admirals and generals), it goes without saying that this report has gone virtually unnoticed in Versailles. But that's not the half of it.
In recent weeks--starting with Washington, DC kick-off just prior to 9/11--a coalition of progressive Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and others known as Operation Free has been holding public events to spread the word about protecting America from the security threat of global warming. Participants include VoteVets, VetPac, Veterans for Common Sense, The Truman National Security Project, The American Values Network, Veterans & Military Families for Progress, and Veterans for Green Jobs. An August story at Grist.org reported:
"As a former U.S. Army captain and a veteran of Iraq, I understand firsthand how our dependence on foreign oil is a threat to national security," said Jon Powers, chief operating officer at the Truman National Security Project, a sponsor of Operation Free. "We're looking to Washington to take this threat seriously and come up with policy that reduces the threat to national security."
This week, as noted by Think Progress, the vets with Operation Free were attacked as traitors (what else?) by a Pennsylvania legislator:
Upon hearing about the group's visit to Pennsylvania, State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R) blasted the veterans as "traitors" and compared them to Benedict Arnold:"As a veteran, I believe that any veteran lending their name, to promote the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change, in an effort to control more of the wealth created in our economy, through cap and tax type policies, all in the name of national security, is a traitor to the oath he or she took to defend the Constitution of our great nation!" Mr. Metcalfe's email reads. "Remember Benedict Arnold before giving credibility to a veteran who uses their service as a means to promote a leftist agenda. Drill Baby Drill!!!"
Rep. Metcalfe, who served in the U.S. Army from 1980-84, today defended the remarks, saying that "if the type of policies that an individual promotes undermines the Constitution and the law of the land in our country, then they are not patriots."
So global warming is "leftist propaganda," not only despite the complete consensus of the peer reviewed literature, but despite several years of recognition as a national security threat by high-ranking defense analysts. This is a classic example of Conservative Bullshit Epistemology, which I wrote about last weekend ("Bullshit Epistemology And Conservative Narcissism Run Wild"). In fact, it combines several different bullshit arguments all in one, which is what makes it such a perfect exemplar of how Conservative Bullshit Epistemology works. |
Let's start by recalling the paragraph from On Bullshit that I picked up from Mark Matson's comment in an earlier diary:
The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "anti-realist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.
Conservatism is particularly prone to bullshit because it cultivates a sense of privilege--which it has for thousands of years--and because it cannot cope with modernity, with its science, progress and democracy, which has become increasing problematic for it since the Italian Renaissance. In short, over the past 700 years, reality has become increasingly threatening to conservatism, and conservatism has responded by becoming increasingly anti-realist.
The corporate anti-science stance is largely instrumentalist, rather than ideological. Corporations will exploit science they can use, they will even exploit the image of science to brand themselves as forces of progress, but they will do everything possible to deny any science that reveals any damage they do. The tobacco industry is a prime example.
The evidence of the deadly harm it does first emerged in the scientific literature in the late 1930s and 40s, and George Seldes began writing about the tobacco-cancer link in 1941 in his newsletter, In Fact. In 10 years of publication, Seldes wrote more than 50 articles on tobacco and cancer. The power of tobacco's advertising dollars were such that the story was effectively suppressed from the corporate media for over a decade--after which it merely downplayed and/or controversialized. The result has been nothing less than decades of legalized mass murder for profit, and big tobacco's success in getting away with murder has become the blueprint for all other corporate malefactors--including the fossil fuel industry, which is bidding to make the mass-murdering tobacco industry look like a bunch of Boy Scouts.
Due to a number of different factors, including timing (the emergence of global warming as an issue shortly after the Cold War ended) and the long-time connections between oil and military power, the fossil fuel industry's war on science took on a much broader, much more distinctly ideological flavor, with a much more organized support structure in the broader conservative movement. In part this paralleled the growth of the "creation science" fraud, whose premier status as an example of bullshit epistemology was highlighted by the Wedge Strategy, which sees evolution--and science, more generally--as a cultural/philosophical threat, and aims to fight back primarily through well-organized propaganda outside the field of science. Although the Wedge Strategy ostensibly had a scientific facet as well, it has never produced any actual science. The best it can point to is the fraudulent "science" of "Intelligent Design", which I wrote about DKos in 2004 in The ID Fraud: "Intelligent Design" For Non-Dummies.
Similarly, the global warming deniers have been unable to produce any actual science, either, as was revealed by historian of science Naomi Oreskes in an analysis of the scientific literature published in Science magazine in 2004, "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change". Oreskes examined the hypothesis that consensus documents on global warming might downplay dissenting scientific viewpoints:
That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).
The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.
Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.
This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.
In short, the claim that there's a scientific controversy over global warming is itself just more bullshit. The "leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change," is in fact the "leftist propaganda" of science.
Beyond the anti-science bullshit in Metcalfe's diatribe, there's also the corporate entitlement bullshit--"in an effort to control more of the wealth created in our economy, through cap and tax type policies, all in the name of national security". In fact, government power to tax and regulate businesses has been a fact of life for thousands of years. The right to even forbid business activity that threatens the state is equally well established. It is hardly "conservative" in the customary meaning of the word, to suddenly raise objections now. But American conservatives have never been terribly bothered by consistency. American corporate conservatism has always maintained a sacred right to use government as its personal valet, supplying whatever it might need. Any government action at odds with this role as manservant it deems "unconstiutional." Metcalfe takes it a step further by calling it "treason". It's all bullshit. The Constitution clearly establishes that it exists to promote the general welfare--not the personal wealth of any individual in particular. Promoting the wealth of a small minority at the expense of the general population is not the purpose of the Constitution. If anything, it is directly counter counter to the original intent of the Constitution. And conservative claims to the contrary are just another line of conservative bullshit.
Finally, what about the immediate crux of the matter? Responding to Metcalfe's attack, Jon Powers wrote a blog post at VetVoice, which read, in part:
While I respect Metcalfe's service at Fort Riley Kansas and in Germany as an Air Defense Radar specialist and I.F.F. (identification friend or foe) systems repair specialist during the early 1980's, I think veterans who have fought in the Middle East and Afghanistan have unique perspective on the way our energy posture and climate change affect our national security.
That is what Operation FREE is about, American security. That is why hundreds are joining the fight.
I would like to ask Rep. Metcalfe if he thinks Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn or Republican Senator John Warner are traitors.
When I testified with these two leaders to the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works about the threat that climate change poses to our national security were they disavowing their oath to the Constitution?
Several agencies of the United States government and non-partisan think tanks have issued reports or launched investigations on the national security effects of climate change...are they traitors to the Constitution? - The Pentagon will include a climate section in the Quadrennial Defense Review due in February and the State Department will include climate change in its new Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. New York Times, August 8, 2009
- In 2008, a National Intelligence Assessment from the National Intelligence Council said "global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years." Senate Testimony of Dr. Thomas Fingar, June 28, 2008
- In fall 2009, the CIA announced plans to launch a center on climate change to examine the security risks of environmental issues. CIA Website, September 25, 2009
- In 2007, 11 retired flag officers released a report that argued that "Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America's national security" and "climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world." CNA, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, 2007
- According to the American Security Project, "Addressing the consequences of changes in the Earth's climate is not simply about saving polar bears or preserving the beauty of mountain glaciers. Climate change is a threat to our national security. Taking it head on is about preserving our way of life." Climate Security Index, 2009
- According to former Senator John Warner (R-VA), a veteran and former Secretary of the Navy, "Leading military, intelligence, and security experts have publicly spoken out that if left unchecked, global warming could increase instability and lead to conflict in already fragile regions of the world. If we ignore these facts, we do so at the peril of our national security and increase the risk to those in uniform who serve our nation." Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
When confronted with the above list, Metcalfe's wild accusations are revealed as childish hysterics at best. Indeed, when confronted with any of the evidence I've referred to above, the result is similar. As is always the case with conservative ranting in today's America, the entire argument is fantastical, and fundamentally depends upon the suppression and denial of reality. It is anti-realist to the very core.
As the passage from "On Bullshit" quoted above concluded:
Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.
Unfortunately, as Metcalfe so ably demonstrates, the self that today's conservative strives to be true to is itself utterly bogus. It's "virtue" lies in scurrilous lying about others, in order to portray itself as uniquely noble and virtuous.
And that's the biggest bullshit line of all. |
