Managing Leadership^®

That’s global warming, isn’t it – or, perhaps, the putative cause of that: us?

I’ve been waiting for someone to blame the current meltdown of the financial markets on global warming. It shouldn’t be long. A short while ago someone traced the present emergency to financial conditions unleashed by the loosening of credit by American regulators to calm fears after 9/11. It can’t be too big a step from there to Mideast oil exploitation and man-made global warming.

Quite apart from whatever truths there may be in the argument, doesn’t it seem a little peculiar, and even self-defeating, to become so devoted to a position as to elevate it to an ideology? Once possessed of that status, argument is at an end. There is no logic in demanding that its logic to be demonstrated; no defence for having the temerity to insist that its high priests defend the claims they make for it.

When summers seem peculiarly warm or long, we are fully prepared to see that ascribed to global warming. But on the other hand, when we experience weather patterns that do not readily conform with the new liturgy, such as massive snow storms or record-breaking cold snaps, we find them suddenly defined as “extreme” or “irregular” phenomena, the increasing prevalence of which, of course, is itself the result of global warming.

Everything from earthquakes to hurricanes have also been blamed on this – and that means, of course, on us. As a result, we become either inured to all the overwhelming “evidence” or we become suspicious of it – even when it would otherwise appear to be obviously true. Inevitably, we learn to doubt the experts who present it to us with such indignant condescension, and it is just as well that we do.

For example, several months ago some spectacular melting of a certain part of the Antarctic polar ice shelf was observed. Massive sheets were breaking away. It caused great alarm. Some scientists said it proved that global warming was advancing even faster than they had thought – time is running out to change all our policies to combat the root of the evil giving rise to it – us and our inexpert, uncontrolled direction of our own lives.

Eventually, it was noted that it was summer in the Antarctic at the time of these observations, and the ice shelf generally shrinks in the summer. But that was dismissed as insufficient to explain the scale of this particular collapse.

Then, someone realized that it was only happening in a peculiarly limited region of the overall ice cap. If global warming was at fault, why wasn’t the collapse “global” across the cap – why was it just local? Well, that required a little thought. Someone came up with an elaborate explanation involving global warming being imported via ocean currents which brushed along the region of the cap that was breaking up.

That seemed to satisfy those eager to believe. But heretics persisted. And now, it turns out, there is a region of volcanic activity beneath the affected ice sheets that may actually be the cause of all of this.

The problem here isn’t so much that we stumbled from one hypothesis to another until we found one that resolved all the unanswered questions in the problem. That would be normal, healthy, scientific inquiry.

The real problem is that we were so ready – even encouraged – to just drop the whole matter once an explanation consistent with orthodoxy was offered. That – again, quite apart from whatever the facts of the matter turn out to truly be – is the real root of many of the evils we face in various ways in society today.

But then, there’s nothing new in that. We take turns fighting the repressive orthodoxy of the priests only to find ourselves suffering under that of the victors – the experts. So, why shouldn’t we doubt them all, force them to make their case, and, what’s more, to do so with humility and respect for our skepticism, and an eagerness to earn our regard and concurrence?

Let them do so with recourse to the evidence and its thoughtful presentation – not by taking immediate refuge in demagogic comparisons of those who deny their unproven theses with those who persist in rejecting proven science or history. Build your argument incrementally forward from the logical organization of the data – not intimidatingly backwards from an orthodox conclusion; that will help you find those volcanoes a lot sooner and with less embarrassment.

We’ll be attempting to pick this approach up again in the context of our current discussion of leadership on Monday. In the meanwhile, have a great weekend!

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Today’s tips: Speaking of the financial meltdown and the resulting breakup of customary thinking, please be sure to see this assessment of the fundamental meaning of this sea change by the author of The Word on Employment Law by John Phillips, together with this report on early fallout, by Peter Galuszka of BNET.

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Technorati Tags: global warming, ideology, expert, Antarctic, leadership, John Phillips, Peter Galuszka, BNET