My uncle likes to stir the pot. Specifically, my environmentalist pot.

Today he wrote this to me:

This is the best articulation yet that I have seen that describes my biggest problem with many "climate change scientists."

http://blogs.plos.org/models/climate-scientists-must-not-advocate-particular-policies/

Well, all right. It's a very interesting blog post, a provocative one, a thoughtful one. You should read it.

This is what I wrote back:

That's a tough row to hoe. Anti-intellectualism didn't appear in America (or anywhere else) because climate scientists started worrying about what changes would do to civilization and saying so, and speculating about what might help avoid the harm; it's existed for decades, maybe centuries. If climate scientists ceased to politicize climate science, it would not win the trust of those who don't trust them now, and it wouldn't guarantee that those with the motive to do so would cease to politicize it. Wishing that they never had politicized the issue is unhelpful. Scientists are human. They feel anxiety, they have the urge to express themselves, they jump to conclusions and imply expertise where they have none. 

If solving anti-intellectualism is your goal, that's a great and worthy one, and good luck - but it will take too long, if ever it's done, to make much difference for the climate effects we seem likely to witness this century. But if you are in despair about what you know, what you yourself have seen from the sum of human knowledge, and the only goal you can think of making yours is protecting the welfare of those least responsible for climate change from its consequences, then . . . you're playing a different game. Regardless of whether that despair is scientific, proportionate, or healthily skeptical, it is an emotion I feel and that I believe these terrible, manipulative, stupid climate scientists feel too. And in the game we're playing, that's just fine. We're strange enough people to be moved to feel this way by cold facts, by temporally, spatially, socially distant consequences, but it's good that people like us are out there. If we weren't, then where would we be?

This is how irrationally emotional I get about climate change. I dedicated my senior thesis like this:

"Dedicated, with love,

to future generations;

though it must seem strange,

I would not be here,

were it not for you."

Your speaking skepticism - healthy, unhealthy, whatever - to people who feel this way is useless. We know what we know and we are in despair. We know we owe something to billions of souls with whom we will never walk the Earth and we live and die by our knowledge and our strain to do something we feel matters to the fate of those billions, because we are not immune to those other human tendencies: the problem is too big, I cannot solve it. The problem threatens everything it's easy to believe, it cannot be real. There are so many other problems, I can't deal with this one.

You've claimed that "climate alarmists" are zealots, members of a religious cult, people who believe without needing proof, preach their faith, and try to strongarm others into the fold. Well, there is no proof, and there never will be except in hindsight. But instead of taking a deliberate leap of faith, we were pushed in our souls into feeling the way that we do. There is no way back for us. All we can do is trudge forward and try to believe, not in some great and terrible being that can save us, nor in some wonderful deed or technology, but in our humble selves and our ability to effect change. That is the leap each of us must make. There is no other leap for the likes of me.

Sorry for writing an overwrought book at you, Uncle. I suppose you just inspire that in me.

I never would have written that a month or two ago. It's probably the Dostoevsky I've been reading. (Not the quality of writing - as if that weren't obvious - just the, you know, faith.)