Bonfire of the Profanities

You know when someone writes something outrageously horrid, and you start to fire off a stern riposte. Or maybe you’ve never done that – you’ve probably got a life – so you’ll just have to take my word for it. 

Where was I? Oh, yes, you’ve read something outrageously, stupidly horrid, and are typing away like fury when, suddenly, you think that what you’ve just read is too outrageously, stupidly, can’t-believe-anyone-would-think-like-that horrid, and they must be joking. You delete what you’ve just written, stand up to go make a cuppa but immediately sit back down and read it all again, just to be sure they weren’t being serious, because, well they couldn’t be, could they?

That happened to me a few days ago when I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feed with my second pre-toast-and-Marmite coffee, and this guy had posted the following (précised):

“Normally I'd take old books to a charity shop. Not this one. I've ripped it just to be sure! The Skeptical Environmentalist was the oh-so reasonable-looking face of climate change denial. It uses cherry picked data to argue that global warming was mainly just down to extra solar activity. It was very clever, believable and therefore harmful.”

Someone else had commented, “In this specific case, burning of the book was justified too.”

Both the original post and the comment had been ‘liked’ a number of times.

This is outrageously, stupidly, can’t-believe-anyone-would-think-like-that horrid. Nazis burned books. Isis burned books. The Spanish Inquisition burned books. The Roman authorities were prolific at it. Plato’s writings were burned. Lutheran works too. Everyone burned something during Cromwell’s ‘reign’. I could go on. Surely every decent person shudders at (pick one) Nazi book-burning and wouldn’t for a second advocate anything similar, even on a smaller scale. Burning / Destroying books is cultural genocide. End of. Banning books is the same; it’s just semantics.

Like it or not, climate-change denial is part of our culture, although hopefully getting less so. Denying deniers the right to deny is denial of free speech. But it’s more than that. We (i.e. intelligent environmental campaigners, not the nutter zealot XRs) are winning the argument (but haven’t yet won outright) that climate change is real and we need to do something about it urgently. To win, we need to understand what’s convincing / motivating the deniers so that we can take the science, logic and morals to them. The Skeptical Environmentalist is necessary as a window into sceptics’ minds so that we can rebut their arguments fuelled by false or manipulated data. It’s also an historical record along with Das Kapital and Mein Kampf of things people think / once thought before they see / saw the light.

If we go around burning or banning works we believe to be misleading and brainwashing, it’s only going to convince those who want to be convinced that we have something to hide, that we are running scared and we don’t want ‘the truth’ (I mean, their truth) to get out.

Here’s a thought: the philosopher Karl Popper espoused the scientific methodology of ‘falsificationism’ whereby, instead of trying to prove a theory, we should try to disprove it. If we can’t, then the theory is ‘verified’ (not proved) for a wee while longer at least. The rationale for this is that many scientific theories eventually are replaced or require modification or embellishment or tweaking, which equates to the advancement of knowledge. By actively (and honestly i.e. not deceitfully) trying to disprove a theory, the chances are it will be replaced / improved to some degree sooner than if we chase just proofs or endorsements, and our knowledge advances at a faster pace.

This resonates with what I said in my earlier blog about climate change, e.g:

“In order to find the best solutions – corrective as well as management – for climate change, 

we must get all the causal relationships spot on, with no room for complacency or oversights

… Sometimes scientists need to turn their backs on groupthink and take a collective deep 

breath …”

We don’t know everything about climate change. We need to keep researching, asking awkward questions, thinking outside the box, playing Devil’s advocate. Falsificaitonism is a good way to do that. Also, we need to find better ways of communicating and convincing the sceptics. The Skeptical Environmentalist and other such publications give us clues as to how to do this. It therefore follows that destroying such books is actually dangerous. 

Does the same cool, rationale apply to even more sinister works about, say, Holocaust denial or supporting pedophilia? Yes, unfortunately, to the first but no to the second. Regarding Holocaust denial, in addition to the ‘window into their minds’ argument and the weaker free-speech one, there’s one about red lines. What about a book that questions the extent of the Holocaust rather than whether there was any systematic extermination at all of Jews. What about books that are a tiny bit less controversial than that? Or a tiny bit less controversial again? And so on. Where is that blessed red line and do you think we could ever agree where it is?

Works supporting pedophilia are different; I put them in the same category as inciting violence, à la Abu Hamza. A work or a speech that supports or incites violence, hurt or trauma has a tangible chance of resulting in violence, hurt, or trauma. Said result is illegal so the incitement should be illegal too, so should be prevented or destroyed.

Oh dear. Having blogged thus far, I took a break had another scroll through LinkedIn and read a post by someone saying we should eat less meat as a way to protect the environment and he went on to complain that, “Despite broad scientific consensus [on meat-eating] … The media is failing the public by trying to present industry-funded greenwash as the other side of an open debate … many newspaper journalists are presenting ‘both sides’ and, therefore, covering the issue as an open debate.”

Firstly, Matey, eating meat / dairy is not as bad for the planet as you and many other commentators make out. For example, eating locally sourced, lovingly reared British beef and lamb is a different climate-ballgame to eating meat imported from Argentina and New Zealand. And dairy milk scores highly against almond milk when you consider how much water almond trees need – in drought-stricken California of all places. I’ve read too many scientific studies that have looked at the impact of globally reared produce that distorts the impact from British livestock.

Secondly, read my lips re free-speech and falsificationism.

Thirdly, I’ve just returned from a conference in Edinburgh on social and political psychology (who says I don’t have a life) where the discussions centred around achieving cordial and non-acrimonious political discourse (apparently there can be such a thing). The presenters stressed that the aim was not for everyone to agree about everything every time, because disagreement and different points of view – even those of climate change deniers – are vital for a functioning, civilised democracy. What they were trying to achieve was people continuing to engage, cordially, on contentious issues, i.e. “sustaining dialogue”.

Stop Press! Eco-idiots have poured tomato soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery. I really am collecting a rogues’ gallery of reprobates.

So, to the book burners, anti-open-debaters and artwork-desecrators amongst you, put down the matches, soup, blindfolds and ear plugs, and wake up and smell the coffee.

Or go live in North Korea.