Eleftheros

The trouble with that idea is that climate zealots always work on the principle of policy-based evidence, not the other way around. That is, if a piece of scientific work disagrees with the government narrative, then it must by definition be wrong or "speculative". Which is notable, since it would be hard to find anything more speculative than the apocalyptic doomsday scenarios touted by the climate "experts" and "scientists" regularly quoted in the mainstream media.

Indeed there isn't. The government response to Covid suggested by the "consensus" of experts was the biggest public health policy disaster in recorded history. But amazingly there are still people who believe everything the government tells them, whether about Covid or climate. I guess it's more comfortable that way.

That sentence requires that your reading on the subject is extraordinarily restricted and selective.

Pretty much the same as I think about the consensus of Covid experts that we faced a virus so deadly that we had to lock everyone up for several months to avoid catastrophe, and wait until absolute salvation arrived in the form of a hastily developed vaccine. The whole idea of 'consensus' gives tacit endorsement to the idea of science being fixed. We hear this all the time in the climate field ("The science is settled, the debate is over"). If it's science, it isn't settled. If it's settled, it isn't science, which is an ongoing process. The science around climate change (and Covid) changed considerably over time, but the consensus remained the same. In both cases, the "consensus" can only be a political creation, not a scientific one.

People who have been led to the conclusion that everything in the world is simply an expression of power dynamics and that therefore facts, reality, truth and common sense are an annoying irrelevance, and that the concept of "values" is meaningless.

I wasn't characterizing science. I was characterizing politicians, as is obvious from even a cursory read of what I wrote.

I didn't say that or anything like it. Stop making up silly stuff and trying to attribute it to other people.

That pretty much sums up the entire world we live in these days. The mentality is always the same: "We are the noble and wise elites, we know everything, we can never be wrong, and it is our duty to control the behavior of the stupid atavistic masses for their own good." So there is control of your activities to 'beat' climate change, and to 'beat' Covid, and to 'beat' money laundering and to .....

I have already explained that I am not here to defend organized religion. My stance is simply that 'religious values', those values that are stressed by major religions seem to me to have proved their practical value over time. That we are all flawed and imperfect people, which is fundamental to Christianity, seems to me to be an important basis for action in the world. Certainly, I could have hoped that our political leaders could have had some sense that they might have been fallible, because without their blind arrogance we could have been spared much of the dreadful train wreck of the past 3 years. If you choose to derive the notion that we are all flawed beings from a purely secular standpoint, fine. It just seems to me, as I have said before, that this is nicely described as a 'religious value.'

Substitute the word "ideology" for religion and I think the quote has something to say. I'm thinking, in particular, of Mao's Red Guards .... The moment you have a mass of people who are 100% convinced that they are right and that anyone who opposes them is not just wrong but evil, then very bad things are almost guaranteed to happen, whether in a religious or secular context.

That is undoubtedly so true as to not be in dispute. Because we are all human, flawed and very imperfect. But that in turn is an explicitly religious belief, that we are all "fallen" creatures and that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The moment you think you are beyond reproach, beyond error, certain to be correct, then that leads directly to the kind of arrogance and venal dishonesty that has been the hallmark of political action in the last 3 years. Of course, you could make the same argument without invoking religion, but religion makes accepting our "fallen" nature into the starting point of building morality. Which is why I would call it a 'religious value'.

Well, that of course is the key question which has been debated for centuries by people who, I expect, are smarter than me or you. It's a very deep question, and the answer is not self-evident. In fact, the answer may be unknowable. Religious types would say there is some mechanism behind turning observed facts into values, atheist types would put this ability down to human reason alone, and radical socialists would say there are no values anyway, since everything is a mere expression of power dynamics.

That's not what I said. I said that those are "religious values", that is they are most frequently mentioned in religious texts and stressed as being the foundation of a moral life. Religious values are not the same as organized religion. If your assessment of the Australian PM's actions are fair and accurate, then he was not acting in accord with religious values, no matter what he says is his religion. For that matter, Joe Biden says he is a practising Catholic, and apparently attends Mass every Sunday, yet last year he signed an executive order safeguarding abortion rights in the US. So when I spoke of "secular governments", that describes governments which have abandoned religious values - or any moral or ethical values, if you prefer it - to bring about the appalling and soulless attacks on their own societies. All we saw over the last 3 years was arrogance, contempt, vanity, dishonesty, greed and hypocrisy, which are the opposite of religious values, though may well be engaged in by people who claim to adhere to a religion.

You have an absurdly uninformed concept of faith. Faith does not mean abandoning all responsibility for your own life and handing it over to some unseen deity. In fact, faith is the exact opposite. Faith means believing that if you do the very best on your own account, it will ultimately be to your benefit as a person, no matter what challenges and suffering you face.

That says pretty much all that needs to be said about modern society, especially in the West.

Is the government of Iran worse than the government of China? That would be a very difficult case to make.

What has been happening over the past 3 years is almost the perfect example of the central importance of religious values such as humility, compassion, kindness, honesty. and the importance of truth. In the hands of secular governments we got arrogance, dishonesty, vanity, greed, resentment, revenge and soulless brutality.

The whole social media enterprise is artificial, so this is nothing very special. All they've done with this is crank the level of fakery up a notch. Teenagers don't care, they've been living artificial lives since they got addicted to their first phone so they can't tell the difference, and don't care anyway.

That is indeed the accepted slogan of the climate zealots, but they try not to say it out loud so much these days.

These two statements indicate that your ability to "interpret" what climate scientists say is not very advanced. The IPCC's latest AR6 Synthesis Report (SYR), which you have doubtless read, includes several more causes of man-made warming, such as net CO2 increase produced from land use change and forestry, emissions of nitrous oxide from fertilizer use, and what are called F-gases, fluorinated gases used in refrigeration and air conditioning.

In all eras, there are taboos on certain forms of speech, depending on cultural norms and authorities. Back then, you could not criticize religious authorities or the king, emperor, mogul. Thailand is still partly at that stage. In the West, the taboo against religious heterodoxy has largely gone, to be replaced with others, such as saying that you dislike people of a particular race, saying you believe homosexuality to be a sin, criticizing people who say they can turn themselves into the opposite sex, or into cats, or wolves. We haven't got rid of our taboos, we have simply substituted new taboos in place of the old ones.

Here's another word you, and the OP, might care to learn. The Thai word for menu is 'menu', pronounced as 'men-oo'.

Exactly my point. Religion can be used as the driving ideology of, or excuse for, a war, just as a secular ideology such as ethnic hatred or class hatred. Both are capable of unspeakable evils. That is the power of ideology.

As opposed of course to the organized secular regimes of people such as Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot, with the evils they have visited, and continue to visit on the world in the hands of their ideological heirs. In an era where religion is a core belief, most widespread evils will have a religious tinge, Just as in a secular era, evils will be largely driven by secular beliefs and ideologies.. Just as when most people were religious, most scientists were religious. Now that most people are atheistic or agnostic, most scientists are atheistic or agnostic.

I suppose it was inevitable that after Covid petered out, and monkeypox fell at the first, the serial hysterics would have to find something else to wail "The End Is Nigh!" and "Beware the Apocalypse!" about. They may have to replace Greta, though - she's getting a bit long in the tooth now to play the role of the child saint in this story. Still, climate change is the perfect scare story, as it can claim responsibility for every piece of weather , wet, dry, hot, cold, and so can be kept going indefinitely.