Climate change as ‘leftist malware’

An excellent new meme has entered the climate change debate thanks to David Harsanyi, writing in The Federalist. In his article he articulates why wide acceptance of catastrophic climate change is failing to manifest: because it comes along with an enormous amount of left wing baggage. He summarises it as ‘leftist malware’.

For those not familiar, ‘malware’ is a term used to describe software that is often harmful or intrusive and usually installs itself on your computer without your consent or knowledge. I can’t think of a better metaphor that captures the essential noxiousness of the climate change movement so neatly.

As Harsanyi points out, an entire ideological framework is implicit in left wing talk of “climate change”. And it is implicit in two ways. One, in the acceptance (and sole recognition of) the catastrophic scenarios considered by the IPCC. And a necessary corollary to this first aspect is ignoring how unlikely the IPCC actually considers these catastrophic scenarios to be.

The second aspect is acceptance of the policy prescriptions. The cost/benefit of which Harsayni considers in his piece. Scientist and academics who are not climate sceptics themselves have fallen foul of this. People such as climate scientist Roger Pielke or economist Bjørn Lomborg have received incredibly harsh treatment for departing from the orthodoxy in this way. Pielke is even being explicitly politically targeted.

Even if you have a genuine interest in the topic, accessing the primary portals for information and opinion on this such as the Guardian or BBC necessitates exposure to the whole gamut of carefully cherrypicked IPCC science and insane political, economic or energy directives. Because the media is still almost completely dominated by hysterical catastrophist voices, sceptical opinions will be the very last to be encountered.

Thus in a very real sense, the popularised concept of “climate change” has indeed come bundled together like a malware package with lots of very unwelcome nasties indeed. Just try googling the phrase under the ‘news’ tab to see what comes to the surface first. What you are seeing is ‘leftist malware’. Unfortunately Google itself has recently been considering becoming a literal embodiment of malware in this respect. Hopefully we can use memes like ‘leftist malware’ to dissuade them from such colossal idiocy.