Is the great global warming conspiracy a sign of worse to come from American conservatives?

Question

It seems to me that back before Regan, in the Goldwater era and earlier, that American conservatives were hard-headed realists, who got their facts straight and proposed solutions for problems in a realistic way, even if those solutions required unpopular sacrifices. Since that time, various crazy ideas have made their way into the conservative mindset, but it seems to me that the looniest of all is the worldwide global warming conspiracy. It seems to me that this conspiracy is so improbable that belief in it is a new level of craziness in the American conservative movement. If a majority of conservatives can become so detached from reality, how can the movement sustain itself, and make progress on things that are really important?

Answer 1

For a while now I've thought that unless we somehow manage to avoid the worst effects of global warming, it may mean the end of the Republican Party. It appears that we're headed toward catastrophic climate change even faster than models have predicted, and the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of those preventing greenhouse gas reductions. The worst of these offenders are American conservatives.

Fortunately for them, there are 2 options:

1) Global warming acknowledgers who outnumber them by a vast margin will manage the greenhouse gas reductions required to avoid catastrophic climate change. In this case no doubt global warming deniers will claim "see, I told you global warming was nothing to worry about".

2) It will still be several decades before the effects of global climate change are tangible to Americans, so the Republican Party has time to slowly change its stance.

As Bob has noted, many conservatives do indeed acknowledge the reality of global warming - more and more each day.

However, I must agree that the mindset of conservatives has been becoming increasingly peculiar. From denying anthropogenic global warming to rejecting increased child health care at the expense of a cigarette tax to refusing to give our troops longer stays at home after serving in Iraq. It seems like the right-wing media (Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.) may be pushing the logic out of the Republican Party, which will eventually push voters away as well.

Answer 2

My first point would be 'which conspiracy' there are now so many and deniers seem to add new ones almost on a weekly basis. The position of science is 'by and large' to ignore the rants of the denier movement, over time they will implode under the weight of their own conflicting nonsense. "And with so many millions of people in on the act, how come none of them have broken ranks and gone public?" That's a bit like asking where are even 10% of the 30,000 scientists from the OISM petition, who are all strongly against AGW but have not shown up at any scientific meeting in the last several years. where are even 1% that would be 300 scientists, a protest at the annual AGU of 3 or 4 hundred scientists would make people think, make the media take notice. Deniers have tried to explain this by saying "oh they don't want their careers ruined" by the nasty AGW's who get people fired" but hang on, these people 'supposedly' have already put their names on a petition. 30,000 scientists protesting at an AGU meeting would prove beyond doubt the petition is not fake, but this has not happened (and will never happen) because the petition is fake and I think even many deniers are starting to realise it is. Even if I didn't work in a scientific group and had no knowledge of science I would still find it hard to believe the groups you name who's aims are mostly for the good of us all (NASA, NOAA, EPA) and especially (Oxfam, Red Cross and WHO) are part of such a silly pointless conspiracy, especially given the source of the theories, coming from political agenda sites like Heartland or Cato or any of the others who's only roll seems to be advertising front men for industry and right wing politics.

Answer 3

First, many (maybe most?) conservatives do accept global warming as caused by us. Keeping this short, two illustrative examples, of many:

"Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich challenged fellow conservatives to stop resisting scientific evidence of global warming"

"Pat Robertson (very conservative Christian leader) 'It is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to do something on fossil fuels.”

Second, the US is undergoing an overdue swing back to the middle. The Congressional elections in 2006 were a sign of a very real national process.

Basically the radical conservatives will be out of political power after 2008. Issues like Iraq, healthcare, gross budget deficits, and global warming have all turned moderates and unaffiliated voters away from voting for the radical conservatives. Also many religious groups. They can't succeed without those voters.

It has been said that the strength of America is how well it can recover from a period of truly awful leadership. I'm optimistic we'll do it again.

Answer 4

Ummm,,,,cosmo,,,,,,,Al Gore wrote the work of fiction known as the inconvenient truth.Unless you have been on an extended tour of the cosmos you should know that he is a democrat.But you got one part right.Those who support the ideas layed out in the book are loonies who are detached from reality.

Answer 5

Fundamentally, believers in made global warming are alarmists. Liberals generally tend to be the ideologues and alarmists, not conservatives. Man made global warming is only part of the environmentalists ideology. The hysteria of the man made global warming ideology is based on politics more than anything else. Man made global warming is big business today. Good news does not get them large contributions and grants for more "scientific studies" an publications on the subject, however alarmism does; catastrophic predictions are an excellent propagandistic ploy to keep getting more money.

There are lots of things being done to reduce pollution, CO2 emissions, end deforestation, and preserve wildlife. However, the mainstream media mostly alarms with the negative, because they are for the most part aligned with the political ideology of man made global warming. You see, man made global warming (anthropogenic global warming) is only part of the larger environmentalist ideology.

I believe human societies should attempt to put binding constraints on human emissions of greenhouse gases only if the advocates of man-made global warming can demonstrate three things:

1) That the greenhouse gasses are certain to raise global temperatures significantly higher than they rose during previous natural climate warming cycles;

2) That the warming would severely harm human welfare and the ecology;

3) That rational human actions could actually forestall such overheating.

To date, the advocates of man-made global warming have not been able to meet any of these minimum requirements. The IPCC’s claim to have found the “human fingerprint” in the Modern Warming was bogus when Ben Santer first altered the science chapter in the IPCC’s 1996 report, and it remains bogus today.

No one has been able to distinguish natural from man-made global warming. Indeed, since the industrialized regions have seen the vast majority of warming, we may be dealing with localized surface heating driven primarily by urban heat islands and land use changes.

The environmental movement may be a bit past its peak influence but it still gets massive approval ratings in public opinion polls. It is still dedicated to making our society feel guilty about its wealth and materialism and retargeting us toward the leaner society the activists believe we should be forced to accept.

Mainstream journalists have long since committed themselves to the environmental cause. It appeals to their sense of superiority, and it gives them an unending source of scary news for front pages and TV sound bites. How else can the journalists generate front-page bylines in a world where human lives are lengthening, famine is being conquered, and the Cold War’s mutually-assured-destruction has disappeared? Even in today’s wars (including the war on terror) death totals are reckoned in the thousands, not millions.

And, last but not least, the climate research community has become massively dependent on billions of dollars per year in government research grants generated by the man-made global warming campaign. Thousands of new PH.D’s have been earned, hundreds of new research projects have been undertaken, and dozens of new scientific journals have been founded to publish their climate research results.

If the public was suddenly convinced (as it is being convinced) of the natural cycles of warming and cooling through the centuries, there would be a crushing impact on the eco-group’s donations and grants, and on the reputations of the journalists who wrote the man-made global warming scare stories, along with professional starvation for various university departments, government laboratories, and whole divisions of NASA and the EPA.

Answer 6

Conservatives didnt come up with this whole bs man made global warming lie. It was Al gore and his well paid off scientists who did. Last i checked Al gore was a commie liberal.

Answer 7

It don't matter big business, banking and governments are seeing profits and taxes in GW. Without providing you anything more for your money. Profits that most likely will not be invested in better environment effectively but will end up in private coffers and enviro scams Like snail research and fingerprinting penguins for future identification.
Everybody is getting into the act even big oil.
It's a done deal

Answer 8

The conservative understand that global warming is a lie and a dangerous myth. Liberals, OTOH, believe that "the sky is falling."

Answer 9

Algore and the UN are definitely not conservative.
They are both detached from reality though.....

Answer 10

I don't think so. Conservatives believe in objective science while liberals believe in subjective science.

It boils down to liberals believing people who look like they know what they are talking about, while Conservatives require verifiable proof.

I understand how this could be frustrating to liberals. Most believe in UFO's.