AGW is dead. Long live environmentalism.

I have long lamented the reverse takeover of the environmental movement by AGW ideologues. The anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis is as much an argument about delegated power as it is an argument about the environment. Some argue it is primarily about delegated power. And certainly that explanation fits the pattern.

"There is an existential threat (AGW). Delegate all power to central planners with authority to remake policy and the economy according to their views in order to avert that threat." That is the substance of the argument being made by most global warming zealots. The fact is that history is replete with charlatans proclaiming doom unless others give them power is a long one, a well traveled one, and an almost uniformly tragic one.

For Classical Liberals committed to universal human rights, rule of law, equality of the law and consent of the governed, such unaccountable centralization of unaccountable power matched with the absence of any mechanisms of accountability or consent is alarming. It is also alarming to most empirical rationalists, focused as they are on data, logic, evidence, etc. And most of all (given its unpopularity), the general public appear to not be buying the alarmism being sold.

Whether the general public is ignorant of their own interests (the explanation of AGW alarmists), or ignorant of the science (the mainstream media), or is actually pretty sophisticated about trade-offs between long-term, high uncertainty, high impact events (my explanation) and/or is deeply familiar with the pattern of advocacy by alarmist charlatans (also my explanation), is not yet determinable but they clearly are rejecting AGW.

Losing the advocacy battle, the zealots have been debasing the language from AGW to global warming to climate change over the past ten years or so. It is much easier to argue climate change because everyone agrees the climate changes. Not everyone agrees that that change is due solely to manmade CO2 causing global warming.

On Friday, I am driving between meetings and listening to Science Friday on NPR with Ira Plato. He is interviewing author Andrea Wulf and illustrator Lillian Melcher about their graphic novel/illustrated book/comic book, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt. The segment is The Explorations Of An Early Climate Change Detective.

I started listening a bit aggravated because Plato kept referring to Humboldt as an obscure scientist of the nineteenth century whom no one has heard of. Given he is right up there with Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, I found it incredible that Plato would make that claim. However, on mentally checking my network of friends and acquaintances who might or might not know of Humboldt, I ended up having to acknowledge that Plato was likely correct that few people know of Humboldt though virtually everyone in the fields of biology would know him.

I also was put off by the segment title: The Explorations Of An Early Climate Change Detective. This is just obnoxiously ignorant. Humboldt was not a climate change detective. He was an explorer and discoverer in the same mold as Darwin and Huxley. He went out, he collected, he observed, he deduced. The title is a pure anachronism. Humboldt was not a climate change detective because we did not yet have a mental model of climate change as we do now and Humboldt was definitively not an AGW zealot because the facts were simply not yet known or even knowable.

But that's headlines writers for you. Can't sweat the small stuff. Keep listening, there might be some good information coming.

Fairly innocuous for the the first twenty minutes or so, there was then this exchange. (My rough transcription)

Ira Plato: He was the first person to describe human induced climate change. Give us the story. How did he figure it out?

Wow. This is not a headline writing error, this is a pretty foundational issue. IP is claiming that Humboldt described human induced climate change?

Well, that is not quite what Plato is doing. There is no discussion of AGW or CO2 or even much on global warming. And there couldn't be. Those mental models and modelling and data did not exist. Humboldt was a scientific explorer. He did not believe in AGW. I am not sure that he even advanced any theory about human induced climate change. Those are today's ideological claims being shoe-horned into the past when they did not yet exist.

Instead of correcting him, Wulf accepts Plato's framing.

He [Humboldt] basically traveled through South America and he saw, as he travelled, he saw again and again how humans destroyed nature and he became very aware of things like the destruction of the forest, the consequences of irrigation, of mining and as he travelled he kind of put these things together and there are some really extraordinary moments in his diary, for example in 1801 he writes that there might a future when we travel to distant planets and then he said we will do is we will bring our lethal mixture of vice, ignorance and violence with us and turn these planets into as ravaged and barren as what we have done with earth.

But what Wulf is discussing (and what Humboldt was observing), is not AGW, global warming, or even climate change. It is traditional, old-fashioned environmental damage. A topic we know well and have many successful scientific and political mechanisms for addressing.

Either Plato and Wulf are incredibly stupid (which I do not accept) or they are deliberately debasing definitions and language (perhaps) or they have become hostage to a narrative and honestly do not see the incoherence of their framing and wording (possible). I do not know.

But it is pretty outrageous that these representatives of the Mandarin Class should be such bulls in the cognitive china shop.

If we are to take the substance of their framing at face value, we need to get rid of humanity. Ironically, that also appears to be the agenda for the more extreme of today's global warming alarmists. All human activity inherently affects the environment and often in materially destructive ways. As is also true of any species of life. All life is change and all change necessitates destruction.

I am all on board if Wulf and Plato hail Humboldt as one of the first to systematize how human action can harm the natural environment. That fits the facts. But Humboldt was not a herald of anthropogenic global warming or climate change. They are committing a category error by confusing environmental damage with AGW. Environmentalism and AGW are distinct categories from one another with separate bases in science and substantially different origins and motivations. Environmentalism seeks to mitigate human impact on the environment. AGW seeks to centralize political power.

It is like considering physics and cold fusion as synonyms for one another. They are related by topic but they are different in origins and motivation. Phyiscs seeks to understand the workings of the universe. Cold fusion seeks to generate cheap power. They are separate categories and the attributes of the one do not transfer in totality to the other.

If Science Friday is now New Speak Friday, it is a turn for the worse.

On the other hand, there is an optimistic view. Perhaps we are approaching the end of the road for AGW. And what a long strange trip its been.

We start with AGW and they cannot convincingly argue that to the public.

Then we transition to global warming and they cannot convincingly argue that to the public.

Then we transition to climate change and they cannot convincingly argue that to the public.

Now they are transitioning back to environmentalism. Environmental damage is a problem which we need to reverse, prevent, or mitigate, depending on the circumstances. I would love to see us to return to environmentalism.

The devolution of the AGW hypothesis might now look like:

We start with AGW and they cannot convincingly argue that to the public.

Then we transition to global warming and they cannot convincingly argue that to the public.

Then we transition to climate change and they cannot convincingly argue that to the public.

Then we transition to environmentalism and we can convincingly argue that to the public.

You can have environmentalism completely consistent with universal human rights, rule of law, equality of the law and consent of the governed. You cannot address AGW with those principles in place.

Ironically, their manipulation of language and idea framing is also bringing them closer to another point I have long argued. There is real and consequential climate change happening and much of it is human originated. It is micro-climate change. Build cities and you end up with an urban heat sink. Build lakes, you make the environment humid. Chop down trees, you make the environment more arid. Etc. Micro-climate change is real. Micro-climate change is consequential. Micro-climate change is directly and temporally proximately addressable. We can make choices that have a real outcome in a near time frame.

The only draw-back to focusing on micro-climate change is that it removes the necessity for a centralized totalitarian system of governance. Which is its primary point of attraction for many people.

AGW is dead. Long live environmentalism.