We are accustomed by now to politicians speaking confidently about subjects they barely understand. That particular habit is hardly new. Political life has always attracted individuals who possess an extraordinary ability to deliver strong opinions while maintaining only the most decorative acquaintance with the underlying facts.
So when politicians talk nonsense about climate science, energy systems, or atmospheric chemistry, it barely raises an eyebrow anymore.
That ship sailed long ago.
What is far more revealing, however, is when the activists themselves turn out to be equally clueless.
I remember a local election debate in Vienna many years ago. The topic of the evening was climate change, and the discussion—predictably—revolved around carbon dioxide and its alleged role in heating the planet. Representatives of the Greens were present, as were various activists eager to explain to the audience how urgent and existential the problem supposedly was.
Listening to them, one would have assumed we were in the presence of people who had at least a basic familiarity with the topic they claimed to care about so deeply.
So I asked a simple question.
What is the current concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere?
Not the exact number. I was not expecting laboratory precision. A rough order of magnitude would have sufficed. Fifty percent? Ten percent? One percent? One hundredth of a percent? Something along those lines.
Surely anyone campaigning passionately about the dangers of carbon dioxide should at least know whether the substance constitutes half the air we breathe or merely a microscopic fraction of it.
The answer was astonishing.
They had no idea.
Not even a rough approximation. Not even the faintest clue. They could not tell whether CO₂ made up a significant portion of the atmosphere or whether it existed only in trace quantities.
Absolute silence.
Yet they were completely certain that this mysterious substance—whose abundance they could not estimate—was responsible for heating the Earth to catastrophic levels.
Confidence was abundant.
Knowledge was not.
Curiosity got the better of me, so I continued.
Could they explain the physical mechanism by which carbon dioxide is supposed to warm the planet? Not the slogans, but the basic process. Radiation absorption. Infrared wavelengths. Energy transfer in the atmosphere.
Again, nothing.
They could not describe it.
Water vapor—by far the most important greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere—did not enter their explanations at all. The role of atmospheric mass, pressure, and convection in determining planetary temperature was equally absent from the conversation.
In short, the people who most passionately demanded sweeping political changes based on climate science had almost no understanding of the science itself.
And that was the moment when the real nature of the phenomenon became unmistakably clear.
This is not a scientific movement.
It is a belief system.
In a belief system, facts are not the foundation of conviction. They are, at best, optional decorations. At worst, they are a nuisance. Competence and technical understanding become secondary to the purity of the narrative.
The structure begins to resemble something rather medieval.
Think of the priests of the Spanish Inquisition interrogating a suspected witch. Evidence was rarely the point. The outcome was predetermined. The ritual served primarily to reinforce the orthodoxy and to identify those who dared question it.
The modern climate debate often feels remarkably similar.
Certain conclusions are treated as sacred. Doubt is interpreted as heresy. And those who ask inconvenient questions are accused of endangering the moral order rather than contributing to a discussion.
Under such conditions, expertise becomes irrelevant.
A person who actually understands atmospheric physics might complicate the narrative with nuance and uncertainty. That sort of thing is deeply unwelcome in movements built on moral clarity and urgent messaging.
Narratives require simplicity.
Belief requires certainty.
Facts introduce doubt, and doubt weakens faith.
Which explains why the loudest voices in these movements are so often the least informed. They do not see ignorance as a handicap. On the contrary, ignorance protects the story from contamination by inconvenient details.
The tragedy is that societies often end up listening to these voices precisely because they sound so certain.
Certainty is persuasive.
Understanding is messy.
So how does one deal with belief systems masquerading as scientific debates?
Arguing endlessly rarely works. Faith has an extraordinary ability to absorb counterarguments and emerge unscathed. Every failed prediction becomes proof that the threat is even more serious than expected.
Every criticism becomes evidence of persecution.
There is only one remedy that has consistently proven effective against such dynamics.
Transparency.
Radical transparency.
Lay the facts out where everyone can see them. Show the numbers. Explain the mechanisms. Compare predictions with actual outcomes. Make the underlying data accessible rather than hiding it behind political slogans.
Belief systems thrive in darkness.
When the lights are switched on, some of the magic begins to fade.
Not all of it, of course. True believers rarely change their minds.
But enough people might begin to ask questions.
And in a debate dominated by narrative and faith, questions are often the most powerful disinfectant available.