Global Warming, Fact or Fiction?
Global Warming is the rise in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century and its projected continuation. Since the early 20th century, Earth's mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), with about two-thirds of the increase occurring since 1980 (Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate , 2011). Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and scientists are more than 90% certain that it is primarily caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These findings are recognized by the national science academies of all major industrialized nations. (Joint Science Academies, 2011)
The alternative, or opposing view, to the one accepted by virtually every scientific body of national or international standing (Julie Brigham-Grette et al, 2006) is epitomised by the writings of Harry Binswanger, a philosopher who was an associate of the late Ayn Rand, and who is a member of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute, when he declares in Forbes magazine “With nothing panic-worthy–nothing even noticeable–ensuing after 33 years, one has to wonder whether external reality even matters amid the frenzy”(about Global warming) (Bingswanger, 2013), or the writings of Ivor Vegtor who writes in the Daily Maverick that “Mere empiricism, the idea that science is based on experimental observation, was not sufficient” (Vegtor, 2013) to validate the overwhelming and growing list of empirical evidence that continues to pile up.
The alternative view of global warming relies on a handful of dissenting voices within the scientific community, who have often been criticised by advocates of the global warming theory, of receiving money from the energy sector for producing reports and findings which either dispute the phenomenon of global warming or which downplays the effects or consequences of global warming.
It was reported in The Gaurdian that Dr Willlie Soon, “As one of very few scientists to publish in peer-reviewed literature denying climate change,’ and who ‘is widely regarded as one of the leading sceptical voices’ and whose ‘scientific position and the vehemence of his views has made him a central figure in a heated political debate that has informed the US right wing and helped to undermine public trust in the science of global warming and UN negotiations,... has been heavily funded by coal and oil industry interests since 2001, receiving money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world's largest coal-burning utility companies. Since 2002, it is alleged, every new grant he has received has been from either oil or coal interests.” (Vidal, 2011)
Climate change denialists on the other hand, complain vehemently about a campaign to silence global warming critics. The UK Telegraph reported in 2007 that scientists, who questioned the impact of human behaviour on climate change, had received death threats. The Telegraph reported that Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada claimed that “the debate on global warming has been "hijacked" by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.
He further claimed that Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened”, while Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - who also appeared on the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, a BBC Channel 4 documentary in which several scientists claimed the theory of man-made global warming had become a "religion", forcing alternative explanations to be ignored, recently claimed: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges”. (Harper, 2007)
The debate for and against climate change appears to be inextricably linked to and determined by it links to the economy and its mode of production, and this supposition has been underpinned by a recent article on the Links website which reports of a witness called by Canadian firm Enbridge Inc., which wants approval to build a $6.5 billion pipeline linking Alberta’s tar sands with the Pacific coast, told a recent hearing in British Columbia (BC) “that oil spills make good economic sense”
The website reported that he told the hearing that “oil spills could benefit the economy, giving business new opportunities to make money cleaning it up. He told Fishers Union representatives that an oil spill in BC might indeed kill the local fishing industry, but their lost income would be replaced by compensation payouts and new career prospects, such as working for oil cleanup crews” (Butler, 2013)
The logic used by Big business in the Canadian example is typical of the logic which drives business and capital and is described by Fredrick Engels as “the interests of the ruling class became the driving factor of production, since production was no longer restricted to providing the barest means of subsistence for the oppressed people. This has been put into effect most completely in the capitalist mode of production prevailing today in Western Europe. The individual capitalists, who dominate production and exchange, are able to concern themselves only with the most immediate useful effect of their actions. Indeed, even this useful effect – inasmuch as it is a question of the usefulness of the article that is produced or exchanged – retreats far into the background, and the sole incentive becomes the profit to be made on selling. (Engels, 1876)
The exploitative nature of Capitalism was identified very early on by Karl Marx, who through his Materialist conception of the world wrote in his 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts: “Even the need for fresh air ceases to be a need for the worker… Moreover, the worker has no more than a precarious right to live in the human cave which is now polluted. He can now be evicted should he fail to pay for this existence at any time….Dirt – this pollution and putrefaction of man, the sewage of civilization – becomes an element of life for him. Universal unnatural neglect, putrefied nature, becomes an element of life for him.” (Marx, 1844). Marx essentially identified two elements of the nature of Capitalist exploitation and Butler suggests that “In nature, there is no such thing as waste. Nature is a circular system where everything is recycled. This is the opposite of capitalism’s linear, treadmill economy, which overloads natural systems with ever-growing amounts of waste products: waste gases into the sky, waste pollutants into water, and waste chemicals and toxins into the soil. The metabolic rift refers to Marx’s theory that capitalist production for profit creates a sharp break in the crucial two-way relationship — the metabolism — between nature and human society. Marx’s concept of metabolism incorporates the material and energetic exchanges between human society and the natural world, which is mediated by the process of human labour.” (Butler, 2013)
The question then, of which argument about climate change or global warming is correct, would appear to lie, not in the objective facts of the arguments, as their already exists an overwhelming evidentiary case for global warming, but rather on which side of the debate one stands in regards to the exploitation of the earth’s resources, including land and labour. The complete obsession with profits is what drives big business and capital to continually fund a small conservative portion of academia to present alternative and counter posing arguments to the established scientific conclusions of the vast majority of the scientific community. Thus, true to its illogical nature, capital remains firmly determined to accumulate short term wealth, even at the expense of its long term survival.
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