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Published on Saturday, June 11, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
The Perils of Ignoring Science
I heard a remarkable thing on the radio the other day and it had nothing to do with a congressman’s nether regions.
How do you like them apples? (Photo: J. Queally)
How do you like them apples? (Photo: J. Queally)A local NPR reporter was talking with Joseph Nicholson, CEO of Red Jacket Orchards in Geneva, New York, up in the neck of the upstate woods where I was born and raised. There’s been a lot more rain than usual, he said. Produce hasn’t been exposed to sufficient "heat units" -- in other words, the sun.
"We're going to be at least two weeks behind in harvest or ripening," he said, and if the skies don’t brighten up soon, yields could be down 30 to 35 percent. That’s a lot of lost apples -- and cherries, peaches and plums (although the rhubarb is doing just fine, thanks for asking).
As upstate kids we were told -- apocryphally -- that the only part of the world more overcast than us was Poland, so the idea that all these years later it’s cloudier than ever is startling. Is this part of manmade climate change?
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum sure doesn’t think so. The other day he told Rush Limbaugh "the idea that man... is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd." He went on to call it a left-wing conspiracy, "just an excuse for more government control of your life… I’ve never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative."
Better you should listen to Ram Khatri Yadav, a rice farmer in northeastern India, who recently complained toThe New York Times, "It will not rain in the rainy season, but it will rain in the nonrainy season. The cold season is also shrinking." He’s experiencing climate change as a life or death reality. In a June 4 article headlined "A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself," the Times reported, "The great agricultural system that feeds the human race is in trouble... Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global warming."
For years, scientists believed that the carbon dioxide produced by greenhouse emissions were at least in part beneficial for crops, acting as a fertilizer that helped counterbalance the deleterious effects of climate change. But according to the Times, new research indicates "extra carbon dioxide does act as plant fertilizer, but that the benefits are less than previously believed -- and probably less than needed to avert food shortages."
The World Bank estimates that there may be as many 940 million hungry people this year. The international relief agency Oxfam projects already high food prices more than doubling by 2030 with perhaps half of that spike due to climate change. With those increases could come hoarding, gouging, panic buying and food riots like those that led to the overthrow of the Haitian government in 2008.
Nor is it just our food supply that has climate change breathing hot and heavy down our collective necks. City and state planners also are examining its impact on urban centers and preparing for the worst. A May 22Times article notes, "Climate scientists have told city planners that based on current trends, Chicago will feel more like Baton Rouge than a Northern metropolis before the end of this century... New York City, which is doing its own adaptation planning, is worried about flooding from the rising ocean."
In Chicago’s case, scientists project that if global carbon emissions continue at their current pace, the Second City would have summers "like the Deep South, with as many as 72 days over 90 degrees before the end of the century. For most of the 20th century, the city averaged fewer than 15...
"The city could see heat-related deaths reaching 1,200 a year. The increasing occurrences of freezes and thaws (the root of potholes) would cause billions of dollars’ worth of deterioration to building facades, bridges and roads. Termites, never previously able to withstand Chicago’s winters, would start gorging on wooden frames."
Conservatives like Santorum may scoff but the insurance industry -- no knee-jerk advocate of liberal dogma -- is telling cities and states they had better adapt to reality or face ever higher premiums: "The reinsurance giant Swiss Re, for example, has said that if the shore communities of four Gulf Coast states choose not to implement adaptation strategies, they could see annual climate-change related damages jump 65 percent a year to $23 billion by 2030."
Of course, it’s the science that right-wingers dismiss as "junk" that could help save us, not that they want to hear that. Researchers are developing strains of rice and wheat more resistant to heat, drought, flood and rising levels of carbon dioxide.
That takes cash, another notion to which conservatives are especially adverse. Over the last five years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $1.7 billion to feed the world but private philanthropy isn’t enough.
A year ago, the State Department and the US Agency for International Development began Feed the Future, a global hunger and food security initiative to boost agriculture in 20 desperately poor countries. President Obama has pledged $3.5 billion; so far, Congress has come up with a little more than half of it.
We live on a planet where, New York Times reporter Justin Gillis wrote, "Little new land is available for farming, where water supplies are tightening, where the temperature is rising, where the weather has become erratic and where the food system is already showing serious signs of instability." But last month, the House appropriations subcommittee on agriculture, headed by Georgia Republican Jack "I Came from God, Not from a Monkey" Kingston, cut Feed the Future’s budget by thirty percent. How do you like them apples?
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59 Comments so far
Show AllThe anti-science fanatics hold the high ground for the moment. They hold it because for them its anathema to their entire idealogical world-view. They only want control over certain human behaviors like sexuality and drug use ( any pleasure producing impulse.) Freedom for them is the freedom to exploit people and resources. In the unfolding "Tragedy of the Commons writ large out here they intend to end up top dogs, kings on the mt.
I agree with Winship here, but let us not forget that the science of the 9/11 building collapses has been ignored to perhaps equal peril to climate change. All those explosions of depleted uranium and other unnamed new weapons in the wars brought on by the 9/11 false-flag attack are even worse for the environment than the carbon poured out by our vehicles and industry. At least we have, in theory, the power change our ways and reduce our own pollution. The poisons of the Pentagon's wars will remain on the earth for many thousands of years.
I think the obsessive focus on climate change, to the detriment of larger issues of global pollution, is quite unfortunate. I think the science supporting anthropogenic climate change is pretty convincing, and we ignore it indeed at our peril. But by putting so much energy into this one issue (especially in terms of press coverage), we are letting the right-wing yahoos set the terms of the debate (as usual). And thus does a major bone of contention begin to look a lot like a red herring.
Short term, the republican reality deniers are going to drive America’s economy into a 21st Century Depression with their denial of Keynesian macroeconomic theory and their calls for Federal austerity at a time when Federal deficit spending is required to stimulate economic activity.
Whether its their rejection physics, evolution, climate change or sane economic policy the rejection of rational thought as a basis for public policy is profound, willful, premeditated ignorance of the world that surrounds us.
Hopefully the massive economic catastrophe they cause will drive them from power before they cause even more damage.
but Rush tells us that CO2 is a trace gas. Only 3 in a thousand molecules in the air are Carbon Dioxide. How could three in a thousand molecules do such harm? It just doesn't make sense to him with his third grade science education and sadly, no tragically, most of America nods its ditto-head in agreement. Rush still gets a big applause line by dissing those pointy headed nitwit scientists with their fancy degrees.
Nature only deals with its laws and their consequences. Nature doesn't enter into political debates. Nature just says, more energy in the atmosphere has to go somewhere. Let me manifest that energy--
Scientists are really picky technologists, they think it's part of their job, and if they thought about their manners they would be kinder and more apologetic for stepping on other scientists' toes, but nobody's perfect.
It was about 3 in ten thousand molecules a few years ago, and now it's approaching 4 in ten thousand molecules. 390 out of 1 million molecules, to be a bit more precise. Sorry to be picky.
The amount is important, but so is the rate at which it is changing. The concentration has increased by about 40% In (I believe) the last century, and half of that increase has occurred since 1970.
The climate deniers don't address this question: If the concentration of a greenhouse gas has increased by that much, and is not contributing to warming, what is the gas doing?
Isn't it 3 molecules out of ten thousand (300 ppm)?
I take your point about percentages. My chewing gum budget has recently doubled, from fifty cents per month to one dollar - hence I am now in financial trouble. If it were to double again, to two bucks per month, I would really be sunk.
beggars can't be chewers.
Ah, that stroke was well put by, vdb!
"put by" being the correct phrase.
I've been waiting 40+ years to use this one.
thanks for the appreciation.
Three in ten thousand, yes?
100 years ago the problem was Darwinian evolution. Biblical literalists complained that scientific evidence contradicted their absolute faith in the Bible, so the evidence had to go. These days there isn't any faith involved in evidence-bashing, it's pure cash-worshiping greedheads denouncing the part of science that interferes with their profits.
"New York City, which is doing its own adaptation planning, is worried about flooding from the rising ocean."
This one's a real Katrina-like threat. New York City's entire electric infrastructure and its subway system is all below sea level. If a Category 4 hurricane hits in maybe a year or two and raises the level of the Hudson River just barely enough, the salt water will flood out all of this infrastructure and corrode everything.
Other cities that will have to do without electricity and transit for a few years include Boston, Philly, Baltimore and parts of downtown D.C.
Miami would just get totaled.
I put this in as an example of the perils of ignoring science. 200 to 400 years ago, the disaster problem facing cities was a city-destroying fire such as the Great Fire of London, the Baltimore Fire or the Chicago Fire. Most mayors ignored the danger, to their discredit. In contrast, some cities such as Philadelphia were deliberately planned to be more fire-resistant, and it worked.
People need to end illiteracy in attention to and deciphering of the radar maps provided by NOAA, Intellicast, google earth and others.
The technology [as emphatically distinct from the science] is being used daily, massively and with profound effect. Witness the month of May.
Become familiar with the signatures in radar mapping and the companies profiting from (virtually without regulation) such as posted below:
http://www.weathermodification.com/
I looked at the web site you posted. It looks like a scam to me. I doubt that there is a need to regulate cloud seeders, In principle cloud seeding can work, but there are so many variable affecting rainfall that the company whose web site you cited is probably no more successful than Indian Rain Dancers.
And their efforts are not likely to have any more than a local effect.
There is not a doubt that the climate is changing just as it has done for aeons or millions if not billions of years, well at least a billion and some, which is all due to the Ice Age cycles. No stopping that. But this:
****************************************
""Better you should listen to Ram Khatri Yadav, a rice farmer in northeastern India, who recently complained toThe New York Times, "It will not rain in the rainy season, but it will rain in the nonrainy season. The cold season is also shrinking." He’s experiencing climate change as a life or death reality. In a June 4 article headlined "A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself," the Times reported, "The great agricultural system that feeds the human race is in trouble... Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global warming.""
**************************
I am willing to bet it is more the usual el nino la nina weather events. Mike Davis wrote about and described the events quite succinctly in his 'Late Victorian Holocausts' which he describes what this Indian farmer, Ram Khatri Yadav states above. Same type of scenario that is in Davis' book where the rainy season is dry and the dry season is wet. Hot here, cold there. All of it compounded by the almighty human lifestyle footprint where land is more easily and readily used for golf courses and other ridiculous ventures. Couple all this with the unprecedented human population of 7,000,000,000 and you have disasters at the ready.
And that is another thing, for an intelligent species, because of religious and commercial factors, too much money is to be made by not figuring just how many people are too much and how to keep a stable population that isn't chewing up everything in ridiculous endeavors or greedy plots and that is not about to stop. Don't suppose anyone has the balls or moxie to MAKE rick sanitarium explain how clear cutting forests, rain forests or any forests, which are the carbon sinks where CO2 is or was stored is really 'helping' this planet in his highly unstable mind.
And as for Jack 'the monkey' Kingston, well the fewer of his kind there are the quicker the rest of us might just get to that stable number of humans that won't decimate the eco-system that we humans have lived off of for millions of years. What a rumpled piece of fecal matter his is and just the fertilizer land needs to come back to life.
The overall impression I get from your post puzzles me. It is true that climates have changed markedly in the past. But the difference now is that we are helping it along. As I pointed out in a reply to an earlier post, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased by about 20% in the last 40 years. That change is not due to "natural" causes, such as volcanic eruptions. It is due to burning fossil fuels
Because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the increase in the last 40 years has to be contributing to warming. Forget about La Nina. Even if the observed warming started out as a natural fluctuation, we are exacerbating the process.
If you're replying to my post, I was only reflecting what the Indian farmer observed which is what el nino and la nina cycles produce in the way of weather affects. And that Mike Davis wrote a whole, depressing reading, book about what happen in the late 'victorian period' Now everybody seems to think I am touting that the Natural Ice Age cycles are the ONLY cause. And I state emphatically that human activity was indeed involved. But no, everyone once again can see nothing but the shit they want to see before them. I say, and NOAA's web site will be where the proof is, that just because the globe is getting warmer doesn't all of a sudden mean the shut down two of the more immediate reoccurring events affecting weather el nino and la nina.
I was also pointing out that because as far back as the 19th century the british empire was taking economic advantage of the those 2 events which killed in India AND China 10s of millions of people by starvation. If anyone is skeptical READ MIKE DAVIS' BOOK, 'Late Victorian Holocausts'. I think all should experience the revolting horrors that some people create for their benefit. READ THE DAMN BOOK!!!
You have heard of el nino? Fine, but you can bet that climate scientists know all about it, and take that and other natural changes and cycles into account in their studies and predictions. All this stuff that the politicians talk about are thnigs scientists have long been familiar with -- and that's where such terms as 'carbon dioxide', 'ice age', and 'rain forest' came from: scientists.
This involves more than just science, but the scientific method, based on data and peer review, and rational thought about reality -- the very things that politicians stink at. Putting a politician up to debate a qualified scientist about this is like putting him against a professional boxer in a ring -- there's no comparison.
"There is as much science refuting this premise as is supporting it."
During last year's elections, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Washington State was reluctuant to comment on global warming because, he said, that the subject is stil being debated by the scientists and pseudo-scientists.
The few deniers who are trained in climate science (and the number is no more than a handful) are not doing research on the subject. At least one works at the American Heritage Institute, a think tank consisting mostly of economists and political scientists. He is little more than a lobbyist for the energy industry.
The thousands of climate scientists who are doing research on some aspect of the subject support the U.N. committee's report which said that warming is occurring and is due to anthropogenic effects.
Regarding whether there can be any legitimate doubt about the scientific findings, and that the deniers may be correct, I will respond with a quote from a sportswriter, the late Grantland Rice, who adapted some lines from Ecclesiastes, to say:
The race does not always go to the swift
Nor the fignt to the strong.
But that's the way to bet.
In other words, people who bet on long shots usuallly lose their money.
You will never stop spreading your bullshit. You're convinced AGW is true and yet you reserve the right to deny it. Climate change caused by human activity is as "settled" as it can ever get, if you consult about 99.9% of world climate scientists. If you consult Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, it's all a hoax, so in that sense it isn't settled. It's also unsettled as to whether the earth is round or flat, since a number of people still insist on the latter formulation. They're called science deniers, much like you. Until Sean Hannity and Rush declare AGW is true and demands immediate attention, you won't accept claims that it is real as anything but "sheer fantasy and patently untrue."
As to your second point, you are referring to some emails that went out over a year ago apparently inflating AGW claims, which were subsequently shown to have been falsified themselves. That is very old news which has been long since debunked. You are obsessed with "honesty," as you repeatedly try to shoot down CD posts as being less than "honest" in accordance with your peculiar standards, meaning they fail to reflect your own biases and fantasies. Having read countless comments from you over several years, it is abundantly clear that you think no one truly honest but yourself. This is a species of grandiosity you really should be old enough to have grown beyond.
"There is as much science refuting this premise as is supporting it."
It's not even close. If you think that science is so unsettled then next time someone dear to you needs an operation try doing it yourself and see how it works out -- as if your knowedge of surgery could ever compare to an ordinary professional surgeon. Go try to join a professional football team and see how you compare with the players there. Have a match with a chess grandmaster and see how you do. Bring a violin to a major symphony orchestra and see how well you do.
Anybody can say 'I understand as much as a professional with years of study, advanced degrees, and work in the field', but it is utter nonsense. No one's knoweldge is perfect but there IS real knowledge, and are real experts -- and you ignore them at your peril. Yes, experts can disagree, but at a level a person can't understand without very extensive study, and likely not even then unless they have enough natural smarts to grasp the subject -- like a guy who thinks if just did some training he could beat a professional boxer. Forget about it! That guy couldn't even go up against a mediocre amateur boxer.
I used to be a computer programmer, and taught some very basic things to a few people. Often they would share some of the very little knowedge I had given them to some others, and they would tell me that the people who knew virtually nothing would look on them as experts, and after a little while some of those people who were helped would tell others 'they knew about computers'. And yet, the source of that information was me -- and I was very far from a qualified computer scientist -- just a half decent programmer, who was well aware of all the things I didn't know.
The politicians and pundits not only don't have the answers, they don't know how to ask the questions, and can't understand the answers -- they couldn't even begin to do the math or use the terminology correctly. Don't underestimate the vast gulf between the average or even above average person and someone who is both talented and devoted their lives to something.
The great majority of climate scientists have very doubt about what the peer reviewed science says, but, as the old saying goes, 'fools rush in where angels fear to tread'.
Nice post bluepilgrim.
As soneone with a bechelors degree in geology (masters in civil engineering), I can assure you that as geologist is entirely unqualified to made any predictions in climatology. However, the geologic record does provide an example of catastrophic climate change triggered by one-in-billion year natural catastrophes (the P-Tr mass extinciton event) that humans are doing a great job replicating.
From the article..> (" the Second City would have summers "like the Deep South, with as many as 72 days over 90 degrees before the end of the century").
"Before the end of the century"? __ No, more like one more year max before everyone on this here little world of ours will know what climate change really means.
There is the major problem with scientists... The vast majority of the scientists don't tell it EXACTLY like it is. They never want to be critacized for over estimating and be seen as Chicken Littles. Of course who would.
The vast majority of scientists have warned us about global warming and the ensuing climate change that would result, but very few if any have been correct with the time factor. The scientists speak in terms of, "by 2100, or within a 100 years, or by the end of the century."... A few scientists have told it like it is, but have been scoffed at, ignored, or even threathened with death.
The truth is, global warming has taken off like a homesick angel and climate change hit last year with a ka-boom! What transpired last summer in mamy large areas of the world were the opening round of what is going to continue to happen from now on. It's global,,, not isolated to Russia, Siberia, Pakastan, Australia or the Arctic. Dramatic climate changes will occur anyplace on the planet.
The key words are ("record setting")... High or low (record setting) temperatures, high temps that exceed 30 degrees F above the average for near 90 straight days. The weather records have been maintaind for the past 132 years and in one year records have been shattered all around the world.
Record settting rain or snowfall in some large areas and recors setting lack of rain or snowfall in other large areas. Record setting numbers of cat 4 and 5 Atlantic hurricanes and record setting numbers of severe tornandoes, record setting floods... Those record setting events (will be the norm) from now on.
The scientists have been ignored by most and that may be because they were not loud enough or firm enough with their beliefs, opinions and their scientific findings.
It may be more likely they have been ignored because (human nature) dictates that we do not want to hear bad news, or believe bad news. That is especially true for big business people and politicians wo are in the pockets of big business, because it's not good for business and money, business, the ecomomy, is the key issue,,, not global warming.
But they are stupid, because global warming is for (everybody) and that is not good for business in the long run,,, and the long run is not going to be very long.
Great post, Ephraim.
Thank you, Wayne. There has INDEED been a dramatic uptick, but the forum's paid deceivers want to make it seem that these types of things represent nature's NORMS! Lies at a time like this are a form of treason against humanity and all living beings.
I specified (a year ago in this forum) that a very powerful astrological event, which began its formation last year in spring, would climax in August 2010. These types of things are NOT one-time deals, as they represent alignments of invisible energetic templates, and these become repeatedly reactivated by current, ongoing planetary transits.
In fact, the very day Uranus (it's known as the maverick and planet of upsets to the status quo) crossed one of those 4 arms of the grand cross axis, was the day the quake & tsunami impacted Japan. (Uranus has an 84 year orbit, by the way.)
I've also quoted a number of master teachers on the relationship between human aggression (war, constituting its most obscene performance) and disruptions to the harmonic forces that maintain nature's balance. Yogananda referred to this relationship as "The Great Dissolution."
In addition, the numerology on 9-11-2001 = 23 which happens to be the I ching hexagram known as "Splitting Apart." The same number (23) repeated on 9-11-2010, again reinforcing what the astrological portrait made clear. It is: that we are now in a time of things coming apart. ONLY love, and harmony, beginning with a restoration of love, respect, and caring acts directed at the natural world, will hold things together.
To witness Obama surge faster into the dual destructive fronts of (investing in) nuclear energy and war, is to see Amerika's death sentence signed. It is NOT an accident, that there are tornadoes in the heartland, a flood stage Mississippi, a tainted Gulf, and fires everywhere burning. If this is "normal," I'd hate to inquire of the frauds in this forum (I do NOT believe they are skeptics, that is merely the cover they deploy, as a form of plausible deniability in action) what not normal is?
If we are to witness all this, then at least there should be acute learning generated from it. And unless and until the Truth is understood, that there are penalties to pay for abuse of nature and the life forces, the evolution of the soul (or our spirits) will not occur. Ultimately, life's mission statement, apart from expressing Itself, is to support, if not stimulate, that learning process.
Science has its place; but so, too, does the timeless wisdom revealed by the world's great mystics and The Mystery Schools.
numbers do have power, but considering that the assignation of numbers to dates is arbitrary...
Hey, if a deep thinker like Rick Santorum says it's just 'junk science' then that's good enough for me.
If these pointy headed climatologists spent a little more time rereading Leviticus and a little less time peering at satellite photos and fiddling with measurements & math, they'd see it was 'junk science', too.
What is fascinating -- in a horrifying way -- is the fanatic certainty of ignoramuses like Santorum. He doesn't say, "well, a lot of scientists are making a fuss about this greenhouse gas stuff so we need to at least keep an open mind...."
He's dead certain that it is just another commie conspiracy. Hell, these climatologists probably believe the earth is over 6000 years old, mankind evolved from monkeys, and the universe originated as a gigantic fart.
So one major political party in the U.S. has made anthropogenic climate change denial a litmus test for their candidates while the other party -- while offering lip service to the threat -- will not do anything serious since it might limit infusions of cold hard cash from corporations and Wall Street.
The short term interests of corporations and banks are well represented in the U.S. but the biosphere--and ultimately even the human species -- has few advocates.
The laws of geophysics, in the end, will probably not yield to the Madhatters in Washington.
The triumph of ideology over science under Stalin cost the Soviet Union their leadership in genetics. Stifling biological research so that Lysenko could institute his Lamarkian program in agriculture undoubtedly cost some lives due to crop failures. Not to mention a few geneticists were shot:
"From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including Isaak Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
When you compare the consequences of the Soviet version to current U.S. ideological fanaticism against climate science, however, you are comparing a wart to a malignant brain tumor.
As far as I know Santorum has not suggested having James Hansen shot.
Yet.
Apparently Australian scientists are now receiving death threats for their views on climate change so it is hard to imagine this not happening in the U.S. soon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/06/australia-climate-scientists-death-threats
After all, if we kill the messenger then that takes care of the message.
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
Bertrand Russell
Whew Randy G, your opening sentence scared me, thought we had a new idiot here. ... Thank you for the excellent infomation.
Here in the US, it appears that the professors and scientists at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks have been muzzled by someone. Their last Arctic methane report was in 2009 and not a peep from them since.
Their last report published in the March 5, 2010 edition of Journal Science was a very dire prediction of what was coming if we did not take firm sensible action to stop the trillions of tons of methane releasing from the East Siberian Shelf area into the atmosphere. The 400 highly educated and experienced scientists of the ISSS teams, a large number having earned Phds, did not use computer models to garner their scientific data. They conducted very difficult hands on, on site research.
Dr. Shakova, a lead ISSS scientist, an ocean bio-chemist, stated that if only a fraction of the methane there releases it will be a world wide catistrophic disaster... Well, nothinng is being done to prevent that and not another word from her or the rest of those scientists since. None I can find and I have looked for some every day.
The methane is releasing by the billions of tons every month and the Arctic atmospheric methane level is now the highest it has been for the past 40,000 years. As that very potent greenhouse gas enters the upper atmosphere it will set off a global warming feedback loop which will be catistrophic,,, no do-overs, no return,,, which is very bad news,,, and we don't want to hear bad news.
Great post, Randy, although I'd bring your attention to one thing. Because an intellectually astute person such as yourself, comes to his thought process by way of much reflection, you presume the same is true for someone like Santorum. The guy is a whore (with no disrespect meant to whores of either gender, by way of analogy), and/or a sociopath. If he genuinely believed in God, Jesus, religion, or any basis for morality, he could not back the policies he does. The guy is living for the here and now, like a pig slopping up everything in the mud around him.
His popularity with the right wing Christian ilk is due to something I've noticed; and I would term it a very real analogy between this idea of the Anti-Christ and the present function of Amerika's vast, fundamentalist church networks. While speaking a lot about Jesus, they do everything in their power to undo his teachings. Substituted in place of compassion or any remote consideration for others (especially those unfortunate modern untouchables, symbolized by all who remain unsaved, as dangerous outsiders) is a lust for the goodies of this world. It's a 21st century retake on Calvinism... meaning, if you're rewarded through a prosperity easily displayed, than surely God loves' ya; and if not, well, honey, you got to get to that meeting with Jesus tout suite!
The falsification of Spiritual Truth to suit the barons of Wall Street is to religion, what genetic engineering is to the authentic gene seed. These dangerous cross-overs have mutated the fabric of life, truth, decency, and what should be religion's key ideals.
We are at the crossroads between the age of deception (and illusion), and that of Truth. We are the generation living the Transition between these phases... and it seems to me that those courageous enough to face the truth, have made the crossing, while those who argue for what is dying and equally capable of killing with fierce magnitude (in its wake), are clinging to a bygone phase.
"The guy is living for the here and now"
"give us this day our daily bread"
just saying.
Sioux Rose is absolutely correct. Santorum and others of his odious political ilk do not contemplate future consequences, nor do they care. They live completely in the present.
Santorum could not care less about the harmful effects of anthropogenic global warming or any other human-related degradations upon the environment, even if he secretly accepts that manmade climate change might be true .
As a hired shill for corporatism, his overarching, single-minded concern is making absolutely certain that nothing impedes state capitalism's unfettered exploitation of the planet for profit right now; thus, any scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change must be negated as "patently absurd" to Rush Limbaugh's regressive radio listeners.
No sweat there (Chris),
We will soon see a few billion less people. That isn't going to save the planet however. If we all left the planet today, global warming would continue on until there is no life left here except bacteria and perhaps some very deep sea life. And it is not impossible that the atmosphere will become so loaded with methane that Earth may someday be a twin of Venus.
That is possible, but no humans here will ever witness it. It's far more possible the human race will be snuffed out... You have children Chris? If you do, is what we have done and are doing fair to them?
Just a minor quibble. I believe that the atmosphere on Venus is mostly carbon dioxide. But there has to be enough methane to produce rainfall which is mainly hydrochloric acid. Talk about chemical weathering!
Over time, methane reverts to Co2. ...
Methane as a greenhouse gas is 72 times as potent as Co2 for about 25 years and then slowy drops to only about 25 times as potent after 100 years. It finally all becomes Co2. .
After a few hundred thosand years of no human activity, atmospheric Co2 levels may have decreased and life may then begin to return, (if), if any of the oceans phytoplanton survived the horrible atmosphere.and acidic waters.and once again begin to produce oxygen. That is nothing we have to worry about, we won't be here.
I was alright with the global warming part, but this, "A year ago, the State Department and the US Agency for International Development began Feed the Future, a global hunger and food security initiative to boost agriculture in 20 desperately poor countries."
This sounds a lot like promoting GMOs and large-scale agribusiness at the expense of the small farmers. Those are two things that I would not support, not as solutions and not as policy. But when he mentioned the State Department and the USAID, I had to wonder. Could it be that something positive has actually come from these dank and villainous places? Maybe but I'm just a wee bit skeptical that they would be doing something to benefit humanity.
I don't think the problem is in denying "Science", it is in negating "Nature". "Science" gave us the Manhattan Project and its continuing legacy.
"Science" is academic as far as the main stream is concerned and whomever is paying the bills is getting the results they are looking for. So, it will always be a so-called controversy as far as the mindless masses are concerned. "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You". Great book.
I basically have a problem with the implications of his title. It is a major statement that i find disturbing.
Rita: I would say that while you've touched on a compelling nerve, it is science in service to corporations and/or the military that leads to this outcome. And then I would agree with your clause. Science can do great things, particularly when it's decoupled from the acquisition frenzy induced by the profit motive.
In a sense, science is the voice of MAN and Nature, the voice of woman, i.e. Mother Nature. This helps explain why so many identified with patriarchal culture have a need to tame, sell, seize, malign, and claim ownership of the great She Principle.
If Mars (the force that direct armies and sends many onto quests for individual power) acted as Partner to Venus (the force that loves, and sustains)... this world would not look the way it does, littered in the pock marks of bloody battles, its open sores like cancres upon the face of a planet that once had been a beauty, beyond all beauties.
This is NOT what love in action looks like. The Course in Miracles suggests that there are only 2 motivating emotional principles, that of love and fear. The latter, and the MIC's homage to it, explains why today money better spent on green technology, birth control, nurturing economies is instead wasted not only on war, but in investments in future generations of yet more heinous weapon systems. As if the ways and means to kill have not already surpassed the population of all living beings already? And this is considered a sound basis for leadership, a "right to life" through defense ethos? One the citizenry is expected to support?
Until balance is restored, the momentum has already been set for much to come asunder. There is no man-made force that can fix what the thought process behind it broke (or laid to waste). Some of us in the forum represent the inklings of that new thought process; and woe unto us, when the savage representatives of the old way leap upon us... castigating us for the very mention of a far more sane (and balanced) and yet untried alternative world view!
The scientific / technocratic mind is why you get to post your ramblings here.
"If you don't understand the diff between unfettered freedom of Exploration in Scientific endeavors...a la Darwin and his HMS Beagle...and the pseudo-science marketing campaign that was grafted onto it by a new model of Empire, based on a Technocratic Form...that is your problem.
"
You are setting up false dichotomies. Thre is no such thing as completely unfettered freedom of exploration, not least because humans need to eat. The need to eat, to survive, drives all human actions to a certain degree. Furthermore, people, are bound by societal ethics, or at least pretend to be bound by societal ethics. IE, the type of experiments that scientist conduct on humans are limited by what is considered ethical and what is not. (now yes, some would argue that forced experiments on animals are unethical, a position I agree with). Unfettered freedom of exploration is actually undesirable.
"Why are you all so threatened by me and others???
"
Why do you assume that I'm threatened by you? I'm amused by your wild rambling posts. Nothing more.
"As it is, one of my friends is a geologist and I do understand some of the nuance, I agree with Climate Change and the idea that our Carbon Footprint is exacerbating things...but stop attacking me for maybe considering someone other than kucinich outside the duopoly, i have never voted Republican in my life.
"
No. Geologists are not specialists in climate. Asking a geologist about climate, is like asking a mechanical engineer or a computer scientist about the human body. You would not ask a mechanical engineer to perform surgery on you. Similarly you would not ask a biochemist to construct a building or a bridge. Science is vast. A specialist in one field, an expert in one field, is only an expert in that field.
Thanks for a deeply thoughtful response, Sioux.
Unfortunately, 'science' has frequently become the new patriarchal 'idol'. The left brain only. Yet, of course, the truly great scientists used deep intuitive, along with purely analytical and reductionist methods. There must be a balance.
Science is also the reason why you're typing your post. It is also probably the reason why you haven't probably died from smallpox, or cholera, or polio.
Since you find his title disturbing, would you kindly please stop using the results of science, and stop posting?
Perhaps i shall stop posting, since you asked me so politely.
I don't actually want you to stop posting, since I like most of your posts.
My point is this: it is popular among some on the left to bash science, without realising how much the results of science are important parts of their lives.
No science and scientists are not perfect. So what? That is what humanity is. Not perfect.
Well, rfloh, that is a very fair response.
Personally, i am a Brian Greene fan.
It is also popular for the left to confuse science with engineering and technology. The two have about as much to to with each other as, say, a forest ecologist has to do with a 2 by 4.
Actually, i am aware of the difference, although the lines are often blurred in recent times.
4thefuture
You were alright with global warming... Interesting.
Would you be "alright" to learn you had terminl brain cancer, or were on an airliner that was out of control and diving straight into the ocean at 500 mph too? __ Just askin.
On several occassions I was being shot at, while twenty foot long rockets with eight feet of high exposoives were hitting nearby and believe me, that wasn't "alright" with me...
The (end) result of global warming will be just as dangerous and I won't be able to hide, shoot back, or defend myself... Neither will anyone else.
I see that I failed to make my intentions clear. Well, it's late at night where I am. What I was intending was that I was alright in following the article and could accept what it was saying about global warming. Then it got to the State Department bringing good things to farmers. That's where I parted company with the author. I am not alright with global warming happening and I believe we have a duty to try to reverse and control our output of greenhouse gases. I short-circuited my position. Sorry!
I am glad you cleared that up 4thefuture, thank you.