How Zealots Rise To The Top: Global Warming & Transanity Examples

The lighter the mind the higher it rises

The main reason you can be assured global warming of doom, a.k.a. climate change, is yet another slow-burn moral panic is that scientists in charge of its theory can never, in public, imagine any good coming out of slightly warmer temperatures.

The few scientists who urge a calm approach to changing weather, or wonder, in public, what's wrong with a few more pleasant summer afternoons each year, are screeched at, cursed, vilified, and even looked askance upon. Their grants are not funded, their papers cannot find homes in high "impact" journals, they can't find students.

Impact, incidentally, is what happens when a sack of theories hits Reality. But let that pass.

Public hersteria exists even though all but the zealots, of which there are only a few, will admit, in private, that maybe the weather won't be so bad. These scientists love their models, sure, for all the many reasons we've covered time and again over the years. But---and again this is true for the majority of scientists---the know their models are only models, which they, in private, do not take overly seriously.

In public, though, they do. They have to because every other scientist is seen to be taking the whole thing seriously. Few relish the idea of bucking the Consensus, and being taken to be skeptics. They've seen what happens to naysayers and they don't want it to happen to them.

Problem with all this is that the biggest pains in the asses, the zealots, are the ones who advance to top positions. Not because their theories match Reality better than the other guys'. But because they are the most devoted, and are seen as being the most devoted. Yes, they must have some skill in their field. They have to be able to solve a PDE numerically and must know what vorticity is.

Until such a time when the panic reaches manic proportions. Then ardency counts more than ability.

Overall, the more who are seen to warn that the sky is falling, and the more dramatic the calls, the more the lesser able rise to the top. Once the True Believers have most of the top slots, the movement ossifies. Nothing can break it save some significant shock to the system, or a long time passes and all the zealots die out.

This can be a very long time indeed. Global warming of doom has been with us these last three to four decades, and shows no sign of dissipating. Even before that, it morphed from global cooling of doom.

The same thing is happening with the "transexual" awokening. Nobody at the top in our society, except for a few lunatics, really believes a man is a woman because that man wakes up one morning and says he's now a woman. The will allow, in private, that the man-not-a-woman is suffering from some kind of dysphoria, and more than a few will acknowledge, off the record, that the guy has lost the thread and fallen prey to an ugly fad.

In public, though, they see the others at the top are screaming and moaning about "trans" "rights", and this compels them to do it, too. Same result: there are more and more zealots who rise to the highest positions. The whole thing has become a movement which only a few dare question.

The movement has not entirely ossified in the same way global warming of doom has. It could all be ended tomorrow, if some large and important personage, say, Uncle Joe, said "Men suffering from dysphoria shouldn't compete against women in sports. Come on, man. They're men."

That won't happen, of course.

Fear rules. This is why it does no good to show anybody any "science" which disagrees with the Consensus in either of these areas.

Global warming of doom zealots are always snorting about how hurricanes are increasing and killing everybody. What happens when you show them a plot of the observed number, which shows the opposite? Nothing.

They do not see it. They do not acknowledge it. Publicly. It is as if it the evidence doesn't exist. They know the Consensus is stronger, so they point to models---the same models that led to their first mistake---which say it is going to be bad.

The most movement you'll get out of them is words impugning the motives of the guy who showed them a picture of Reality. Or they say they didn't really mean hurricane number, but some bizarre numerical formula applied to hurricanes shows some change or another in a way that points toward doom.

You can show them a picture of a man who won a swimming context against women. The man is standing there, his pertinents showing trough his bathing costume, his manly physique clear. And they will say...nothing. They are too busy to take you call.

Or they will say the man's testosterone is lower by such-and-such number of points. They will call you a name for making them confront Reality.

What none of them will do is admit Reality. Not when it could hurt them.

The undramatic and obvious conclusion is, given the size of these movements, is that we live in a time of great cowardice.

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