On Why I Am A Climate Skeptic Despite Being A Pseudo-Intellectual.

On Why I Am A Climate Skeptic Despite Being A Pseudo-Intellectual.

The burden of being a public intellectual, or at least an aspiring one, is that one is expected to have an opinion on everything under the sun. At times this is easy. For example if asked about my opinion on popular Indian writers or at least  the over rated ones I would have no hesitation in picking up on the grand-dame of self-delusion and the harridan of uncertain prose-Ms. Arundathi Roy whose only claim to fame is the shrill vehemence in which she complains against everything so much so that I fear that she has internalized the title of her own work “In which Annie gives it to those ones” by turning into “In which Arundathi gives it to everyone almost gleefully”.

I could also show off my sly nature with a tribute to the granddaddy of self-publishing – Mr. David Davidar whose book was self-published by his own firm Penguin where he was the chief editor. This was a fortunate occurrence for David Davidar for that book- the house of blue mangoes, reminded uncannily everyone (else) who read it of a previous and well accepted novel with a similar title leading to loud whispers of plagiarism and would have damaged irretrievably the reputation of anyone else who had done the same except that David Davidar was not only promoted, he was given the prestigious on-site offer of Penguin Canada editor-in-head. Of such strange quirks are the publishing world made.

Now to stretch the analogy a bit further and prove my snobbish intellectual side I would have to be suitably dismissive of minor Indian writers of uncertain provenance who sell a few thousand soft copies to their Facebook and Instagram followers based on their networking skills on social media (and their attractive dp’s)- people like preeti shenoy, amish etc. but I would rather not waste time trashing their books as fluff when everyone else on Quora seem to be doing the same. I would rather tread a different path to burnish my credentials as an intellectual by taking on bigger issues- something like climate change for instance.

Now for the entire week gone past there was a lot of breast beating over the American president trump pulling out of the Paris climate accords. Everyone but everyone including me had an opinion on his act and its aftermath. Although I put up an instant Facebook post, I found it difficult to encapsulate my ideas on such a small platform as Facebook and hence this more explanative blog post. The main fallacy of people with knee jerk reactions and opinions on everything – and here I am talking about the entire Facebook generation- is that they don’t have the intellectual capacity or even the rigor of hard work to read up and analyze anything in depth before positing an opinion. Ask anyone whether the Paris accord was good or bad, they will invariably reply as good. But just ask them what was in the nitty-gritty, the fine details of the Paris accord which made it so good and watch them despair and log out of the internet.

Anyway, I consider the Paris accord as one more con job perpetrated by Trans-national companies on an unsuspecting world population. Their idea of reducing harmful carbon emissions which were increasing the earth’s temperature was to offer carbon credits and offsets to be bought by less polluting countries aka less developed countries and to be traded to more polluting well-developed countries which could use those credits to keep their current levels of emission at status-quo. Now tell me what’s so advantageous about this? To the poor countries which don’t have any emissions? To the rich countries who have to pay through their noses for these trade offsets? And to the earth’s climate in general with the maintainability of current emission levels? I can’t see anyone else benefiting except the middle men who will trade on these carbon credits. So President Trump might have ended up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons- at least let’s give him credit for that.

Now if you ask me about climate change, as an intellectual with a public profile to protect, I would have to say that I am extremely climate-skeptic. I will not dispute the current methodology of working out the heat increase of the planet plotted against the emission levels. But I would argue that the entire science behind the methodology is wrong as is so often seen with respect to long held scientific dogmas based on an initial questionable data collection. The climate change lobby and the earth is in peril give me more money lobby might not agree with me but I consider that our current models of predicting or even studying climate change is flawed because we have so little idea of what sustains our current climate at its level and what the future will hold if emissions continue to rise and the planets core temperature arises by a few more degrees.

Will the earth be able to auto-correct by ushering in another ice age in response to increased temperatures? Will the weather become capricious and unpredictable based on current weather prediction models? Will we be in another era of widespread flooding caused by rising sea levels? Will plants thrive on more heat and better cloud cover- a hot house temperature effect? Will they be releasing more and more oxygen after flourishing in the abundant carbon dioxide levels and in effect changing our planet’s atmosphere into a super oxygenated world? No one has any answers to these and other critical questions on climate change. What we have are beliefs in dogmas and a rigidity in those belief’s which preclude any other point of view contrary.

If at all we are serious about reducing the impact of emissions on our planet the way to go forward is pretty much blindingly obvious to everyone of even average intelligence- to end our dependence on fossil fuels. To stop digging for coal -coal mining/strip mining is one of the biggest eyesores on the earth’s surface. To stop drilling for oil and automatically avoid and undermine all the current religious wars based on abundant oil money financing. To get over the entire damage caused by two hundred years of internal combustion engines which burn parts of the planets dead past aka fossil fuels and just jump into using clean and green fuels- a hydrogen engine’s emission is water vapor for instance, yes pure H2O. Solar, wind, ocean current- there are a whole lot of alternate energy sources available to produce the electric fuel cells necessary for clean energy with zero emissions. And finally to get over our irrational fears of anything nuclear and move on into using nuclear fusion- the cleanest form of energy and used by our sun for instance, to produce everything we use including solar energy. A dyson construct which directly taps into the solar energy near the sun and feeds it to the planet via mirrors might be the stuff of science fiction right now, but so were mobile phones and airplanes at one time. So the future of emission control should be less of control and more of eliminating the necessity of emissions.

And finally to point out the planet Venus as the end effort of climate change and increased emission levels is intellectual dishonesty- for the Venus effect was not caused by Venusian's or their factories emitting greenhouse gases. What caused it was a giant planet sized object- an asteroid smashing into Venus- boiling off its oceans instantaneously, stopping its rotation, making it lose its magnetosphere and the ability to have and retain an atmosphere which will protect against sun flares and cosmic particles. Now when was the last time you heard one of these green warriors talk about extra-planet sources of danger to the earth and its atmosphere, including climate? When will they learn to stop blaming humanity for all the ills of the planet and take a more broad based view on the dangers affecting humanity as a whole?

I have, as a responsible intellectual ( and to burnish my credentials as one) taken a more broad based view on the dangers affecting humanity which no one else seems to care about, consumed as they are in the nitty gritty of working out carbon offsets and who gets to profit out of which greenhouse gas. If the whole of humanity decides to take a similar broad based view on the fate of the planet then I would say good riddance to the Paris accord and you are welcome Mr. Trump. 

And if after reading this entire blog post you are still not convinced of my intellectual heft, well, wait till you read my book on this. And, oh yeah, I too can/will put up sexy DP’s to sell my book, so there, you are warned.