I
changed the tag line to my blog recently. Now I’ve changed it back
again.
I
had changed it to the a leading quote from a famous doom-laden
apocalyptic treatise from the 1970’s called “The Doomsday Book”
(Its still here on these links Amazon UK & Amazon USA)
The
quote was:
“If
you believe that you will survive the next 30 years think again!”
I
tagged it with the author and the date of publication
“Gordon
Rattray-Taylor (1972)”
I
had hoped that the “1972” would be an amusing give-a-way and that
people would realise that since publication 47 years have elapsed.
But
sadly no.
It
seems at least one of my readers thought Billothewisp had himself turned into
a doomster.
Of
course I hadn’t. It was just my joke had fallen flat.
But
then I wondered why people cling to unmodified theories that
are delineated with failed prophesies and yet still find them compelling.
Take
a look at the reviews for the Doomsday Book on Amazon. The book is
very old and vastly pre-dates the internet so there’s only 1
electronic review in the USA and 4 in the UK.
Surprisingly
you will find all but one of these reviews (all written more than 30
years after publication) are supportive. Even though the base
prophesy of the book was plainly wrong and expired well before the
reviews were written, the reviews for this dark tome show the
reviewer still clinging to the core armageddon-esque beliefs of the
book.
So
why, in a world that is clearly and measurably getting better on
almost every metric available, do people (in essence) hold to Mr
Rattray-Taylors prophesies of doom?
Mr
Rattray-Taylor departed this earth in 1981. No doubt he firmly
expected that the rest of us would be following him down the dark
tunnel in short order.
But
of course, that has not happened.
In
fact, by just about every metric that matters, the world has become a
much, much better place.
But
many are in denial about this improvement in the world.
In
addition to this denial we have various new/reworked Armageddon predictions which
declare that “something must be done”.
The timescale for
that “something” ranges from one year (Prince Charles), eighteen
Months (Extinction Rebellion), to more plausible but still tenuous
timescales of ten years and thirty years.
To
give that “something” a name is somewhat difficult as it keeps
changing. It was Global Warming, then it turned to Climate Change.
But now “Climate Change” no longer appears to be urgent enough.
So it has been modified to a “Climate Emergency”.
My
posts are not against the concept of the “something” known as
Global Warming. Nor are they against any other section of science
that gets exploited with dubious reasoning.
The
purpose is to explore the exploitative dubious reasoning itself and
see how it stacks up.
So
lets look more closely at these predictions and monitor their
progress. I also want to look at earlier predictions associated with
this “something”.
But
most importantly I want to see what happens when a prophesy
concerning this “something” fails. Then I want to examine how
that failure changes (or not) the attitudes to the core beliefs on
which that prophesy is based. As well as that I want to see how (or
not) the theory gets modified to accommodate reality.
From
what I’ve seen so far, the social
results are
clearly identifiable
using the work
of legendary Social
Scientist Leon Festinger. They
are also somewhat disconcerting.
So
my next post will concern Al Gore and his 2006 statement that the
Arctic would be Ice free in Summer by 2016. I will also expand out
Festingers key analysis and see how this fits with Mr Gore.
Later
on (next week?) I intend looking more closely at Extinction
Rebellion. Extinction Rebellion is an organisation which really
worries me. It has all the hallmarks of a cult and I would be very
worried if any of my family got tied in with it. It needs closer
examination.
Then
sometime in the dim and distant future I’ll finish off with more
mainstream and respectable organisations like the BBC.
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