{"id":286492,"date":"2023-11-04T17:18:11","date_gmt":"2023-11-04T16:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=286492"},"modified":"2023-11-04T17:18:13","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T16:18:13","slug":"in-denial-about-the-science-part-2-arc-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=286492","title":{"rendered":"In Denial about the Science \u2013 Part 2, ARC in London"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Jennifer Marohasy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

November 4, 2023\u00a0By\u00a0jennifer<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sun did come out for the first morning \u2013 Monday morning. The inaugural conference of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship was in Greenwich just a few miles downriver from Westminster in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hadn\u2019t managed to get any sleep Sunday night after arriving late on a series of flights beginning in Rockhampton (to the immediate west of the Great Barrier Reef) via Dubai (on the edge of the desert of the eastern Arabian Peninsula) arriving Heathrow over more than 24 hours with no sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I nevertheless sat up into the early hours of that London morning after finally being allocated an hotel room, penning a first blog post, which has been republished at WattsUpwithThat<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it was time to have breakfast and meet up with John Roskam and also Bella d\u2019Abrera \u2013 another IPA colleague, in the hotel foyer. It was Bella\u2019s idea we catch the cable car rather than the tube. So, we arrived from Docklands by going over the Thames rather than under it. I thought it a most wonderful way to arrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other side of the river, and down a few streets, we found a long line of academic types, snaking their way very patiently to a very large black shed known as the Magazine London. Described as a purpose-built destination, the largest of its kind in London, this shed was able to accommodate the 1,500 plus delegates from over 70 countries, and an orchestra \u2013 all gathered for this inaugural conference. But everyone first needed to get through security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This first ARC conference was going to be more than a series of lecture. We got to hear a rabbi play from the horn of a ram\/shofar, Joshua Luke Smith recite poetry, and on and on it went, and that was just the first morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Rabbi plays the shofar, on stage, including to acknowledge the importance of music to Western civilisation, that has a Judaeo-Christian beginning and tradition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the first morning tea I got to meet some truly brave people who had travelled almost as far as me, including the founder of Rebel News, Ezra Levant from Toronto, who does not flinch but rather provokes on the toughest of issues<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recurring central theme on the first day, and throughout, was that we in the West are facing a civilisational crisis, driven by external and internal forces. Considering external forces, historian Niall Ferguson said we are in the most difficult strategic environment since World War II. Internally, at the level of culture, we heard about the \u2018radical left\u2019s\u2019 capture of our institutions, the divisions in society stoked by the grievance industry, and the collapse in traditional family structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jordan Peterson was a significant presence throughout the three days and promoted continually as the wisest man \u2013 with all the answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a key mistake, because, while Peterson has an important message, which mostly begins and ends with the biblical stories, he seems unable to publicly acknowledge this his Christian faith and that Western civilisation\u2019s greatest success is science following from regard for the rational without demeaning the important roles of religion and faith. To be clear, and in the interests of getting to a core issue that the ARC conference was purportedly about, I am going to suggest that Jordon Peterson doesn\u2019t actually understand, or have any empathy for, science beyond clinical psychology. His obsession is with biblical stories and culture and how we can best live as individuals within families. This is all so very important, but it is not central to the success of Western civilisation \u2013 it is but a part of the story. And if the West is to survive it will need to maintain its technological superiority, that I will discuss in Part 3 of this series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Western civilisation\u2019s success can be attributed to the innovations that followed men who became curious about the natural and physical world beyond their families and communities. Men, it was mostly men who were given the opportunity, to understand nature, natural systems extending even beyond our solar system and describing this universe mathematically and empirically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jordon Peterson\u2019s genius is understanding the nature of humanity, but not necessarily what was special about even our first and most important scientists in the western tradition beginning perhaps with Johannes Kepler. Kepler\u2019s First Law states that planets move in elliptical paths around the Sun. He also discovered that planets move proportionally faster in their orbits when they are closer to the Sun; this became Kepler\u2019s Second Law and is critical to understanding climate change over geological time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than name, and so acknowledge, the most important of these first scientists in the Western tradition, in the conference handbook, Jordon Peterson laments as he did on stage:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Five centuries of ascendant reductionist Enlightenment rationality have revealed that this starkly objective world lacks all intrinsic meaning. A century and a half or more of corrosive cultural criticism has undermined our understanding of and faith in the traditions necessary to unite and guide us \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We find ourselves, in consequence, inundated by a continual onslaught of ominous, demoralising messages, most particularly in the form of environmental catastrophism ..<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In Peterson\u2019s opening address, and subsequently, the nature of this catastrophism is never discussed or assessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is something that the early scientists puzzled over and described empirically and mathematically. Jordon Peterson could have explained this if he took the time to consult more widely, if he had any interest at all in the history of science that is fundamental to understanding the success of Western civilisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science and its central role in the success, particularly the military success of the West, was hardly acknowledged at this inaugural ARC conference, with Peterson and other delegates preferring the comfort of biblical stories and talk about families and communities. But these can only persist if they can keep the barbarians beyond the gates, at least in part through military superiority. Such is the nature of how individuals, communities and nation-states arrange themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no rational discussion and debate about the very issue, human-caused global warming, that is driving so much individual anxiety and causing a growing weakness in our national security across nations that have a Western tradition. In the next post in this series I will explain how concern about global warming is undermining energy security and thus national security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no opportunity for any consideration of the underlying physics nor the empirical data that would enable some assessment of whether the core theory of catastrophic climate change is supported by the evidence, or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jordon Peterson concerned himself in this opening address with the story of Job in the Bible, a man who suffered because of his faith rather than because of any natural catastrophe \u2013 manmade or otherwise. Peterson\u2019s final address included the claim we have such power over nature, we can green the deserts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a biblical tradition, that recognises deserts as places to wander, fast, and where one can find God. I\u2019m not sure if that will be as easy if they all become places for easy fishing, or at least relative safety where one can escape the heat and sand and all that can make our existence seemingly unbearable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the first morning Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in conversation with former Australian Prime Minister John Anderson and British philosopher Os Guinness said,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Western Civilisation is a cut flower, and cut flowers die\u2026 but we have the remnants, the symbols of western heritage, and their seeds. All we have to do, those of us who inherited it, is to go and see them, grow them, nurture them, water them \u2013 and when they\u2019re attacked, fight for them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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"Western Civilisation is a cut flower, and cut flowers die… but we have the remnants, the symbols of western heritage, and their seeds. All we have to do, those of us who inherited it, is to go and see them, grow them, nurture them, water them – and when they're attacked, fight\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/4BE22K5oKc<\/a><\/p>— The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (@arc_forum) October 30, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote>