The Dangers of Climate Dogma – and what we can do about it

“We are already in a manmade climate emergency and it is probably not primarily due to CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s because the pace of change in our climate is what makes this an emergency, and that is largely due to a decline in the Earth’s reflectivity, primarily from a loss of cloud cover, which is due to a fall in cloud seeding, with strong evidence that is mainly from a degrading of forest cover and ocean health. Downplaying this ecological dimension to global heating due to a dogmatic allegiance to carbon-only explanations and targets, has become as bad a response as that from people who dismiss it all as a climate scam.”

How do you feel when you read these lines? Who would say such a thing? Could it be true? Please read on to explore why we can update our understanding of climate chaos and what to do about it…

Being curious despite our fear  

If you have been noticing the temperatures around the world over the last 2 years, then you will have felt some degree of shock and trepidation. Both on land and in the oceans, the thermometers have been going up faster than we were told to expect – and faster than the top scientists have been able to explain. We’re talking about present day measurements – so the facts of observation – not the latest theories about what might, or might not, occur. Living in a world that’s reached 1.5C degrees above pre-industrial averages, years before past predictions of worst case scenarios, is both scary and a challenge to the claimed expertise of mainstream climatology. Or so it should be. That does not need to be something to be feared and avoided. Instead, science is, by definition and methodology, an ongoing dialogue with nature, which requires an openness to unanticipated or anomalous data, which might lead to the ditching of old ideas, the testing of new hypotheses and even the transition into new paradigms. Unfortunately, that is not how all climate science is being practiced and communicated today. Instead, it has become a field plagued by dogma and tribalism, which results from multiple commercial and institutional interests. 

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Science has not proven there is no free will – almost the contrary

This essay is the first in a series on aspects of free will and consciousness, and the implications for how we live in a metacrisis that, understandably, challenges our assumptions, beliefs and emotions. In this essay, I show how the increasingly popularised view that science has disproved relative free will is actually neither true nor scientific. I then explore other forms of knowledge on the matter. Thanks, Jem (PS: this is not written by AI ;-).

Science has not proven there is no free will – almost the contrary. 

In the last few years, you might have casually seen a few science magazines, or heard the commentary of a YouTuber or Tiktoker, and assumed that many people now think that science has proven there is no free will. If you have more than a passing interest, you might have noticed new books, from major publishers, which claim the matter is concluded – there is no free will and we can be grateful for it. A widely-quoted author on the topic, Robert Sapolsky states, “we are nothing more or less than cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control.”[1] Possible reasons and implications of an increase in the volume of arguments against free will is something I’ll explore in the second essay in this series on free will, consciousness and philosophy in an era of ‘metacrisis’ and societal collapse. In my book Breaking Together, I advance a freedom-based response to the predicament of humanity as an alternative to the various strands of either panicked authoritarianism or numbed disengagement. Therefore, the matter of whether freedom exists at all is rather important. In the book I included a brief discussion of the nature and existence of free will [2]. That was before the uptick in content claiming that our thoughts, feelings and actions were predetermined since the moment of the big bang (which is not a flippant summary of ‘determinism’). In response, with a series of essays, I will go deeper into the sciences, philosophy and social sciences on the matter. That is because this is not a mere intellectual and unending discussion; rather, it has very real ramifications for whether powerful people will accelerate the damage to humanity and the environment – and how we might organise ourselves for better outcomes.

Continue reading “Science has not proven there is no free will – almost the contrary”