Living up to the principle of open-mindedness

When it comes to open-minded, evidence-based and tolerant debate, many of us are far better at calling for it than at living up to what we preach.

It is slightly unfair to call out Chris Deerin on this point because he is far from the worst offender, but his article in yesterday's Scottish Herald,

"The world is drowning in a wave of ignorance and self-interest."

particularly struck me as exemplifying those who call for tolerance and yet in the next breath or sentence speak or write of those who disagree with them in language which makes you think that there is an unconscious coda, "except for those morons who disagree with me."

It is a classic example moving beyond criticising ideas to criticising the people who hold them.

The other reason I'm choosing Chris Deerin to call out is that I agree with everything in his article except the sweeping insults towards everyone who takes an opposite view of the issues. In particular I agree with his call for being open and tolerant, but unfortunately this sits most uneasily in his article with the language he uses about those who disagree with him.

As I do not hold any of the collection of views he particularly criticises people for holdingm I can be confident that there is no hint of "How dare you talk about me like that?" in my reaction to the way he spoils an article which otherwise has a lot of merit with his abuse of those who do.

After a lot of agonising I voted "Remain" and if transported back to June 2016 knowing everything I know now I would do so again, but that doesn't mean I regard everyone who takes a different view as an idiot.

I think Donald Trump is proving to be an unsuccessful President, (although I don't think Hillary Clinton would have been a great one either.)

I believe that the strong balance of evidence is that human activity is having a more than trivial impact on the environment, more than enough evidence that on the precautionary principle we should seek to limit carbon emissions and otherwise reduce the negative footprint of human activities.

But our models of the Earth's fantastically complex systems are inevitably imperfect and it is really important that we allow a genuine debate about what is happening to the environment. Such a debate  is completely incompatible with labelling anyone who deviates from any aspect of the current scientific consensus as a "climate change denier" whose views should be ignored.

The range of positions on climate change is not a binary subdivision between wise people who wholly accept one monolithic consensus which blames all climate change on human activity and on the other hand,

"aristocrats of error, the barons of bull, gammon-faced ragers against reason"

who

"assert to this day that climate change is a fiction dreamt up by the elites to ensure ongoing subjugation of the common man."

There is a continuous spectrum from those who take the most pessimistic and cautious view of what we are doing to the planet to those who think that all man-made climate change is a myth.

Although I completely agree that the strong balance of evidence suggests that humans are indeed having an impact on climate, I cannot see any safe or rational way to identify some precise point along the spectrum and say that anyone beyond that point is a climate change denier and a dangerous nutcase who is not entitled to host shows on Radio 4 or have their opinions taken seriously.

Any such attempt is bound to include some people on the "legitimate" side of the line who are pushing mistaken views and exclude some people as bad guys who are actually making legitimate points - as happened to the Danish "sceptical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg who was wrongly labelled a "climate change denier," which he isn't, for challenging what he regarded as misreported or alarmist claims and suggesting, for example, that a focus on warming may sometimes be "the wrong reason to fight climate change."

(To avoid any charge of misrepresenting Chris Deerin, he applies his fullest invective, including the insulting phrase quoted above - and lots more - not to all disbelievers in man-made climate change but particularly to those who combine this position with supporting Brexit and approving of the Trump presidency.)

The true test of our willingness to listen to evidence and to be open-minded is our willingness to be respectful - and even to listen if there is the merest scintilla of a possibility that there might be something of merit buried in what they have to say - to those we are convinced are dangerously wrong.

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