Unparalleled ignorance

 

                                 Unparalleled ignorance

        A recent OP-ED in the local rag hit a new low for rational discussion regarding climate change. After conceding that somewhere around 97% of the scientific community agrees that human activities are responsible for most of the current, and increasingly apparent,  global warming trend. “Ignore that, even if true”, they say, because reducing carbon emissions might be expensive. I'll save the really insane comment for later. read on, it's worth the wait.

        I've concluded that there are basically three separate schools of thought, if indeed any actual thought has occurred, in the climate change denier community, which are in some ways about as grounded as Holocaust deniers and “flat earthers.” They are:

        a: Climate change can't be “real” (they really mean caused by humans) because if we admit it is, our wealthy corporations which make money on energy and utilities will have to spend more and profit less. We're here, we want cheap gas and electricity, so f**k the next generation(s). The reality is that most of this group don't really care if climate change is real or, for that matter, strenuously deny it; they just don't want to act on it. The currently indicted ex-POTUS actually said this in 2020 during a debate with then President-elect Biden: “The fumes coming up, if you’re a believer in carbon emission … for these massive windmills is more than anything we’re talking about with natural gas which is very clean”. (Blatantly insane word salad! Wind produces zero “carbon emissions”)

        b: Since many major corporate donors to far-right causes and candidates are deniers (or ignorers), the sycophant candidates they own are also rabid deniers. It's in their financial interest to be so, and those who blindly listen to and parrot the rhetoric of the Greens, Boeberts, Perrys, Pences and Trumps become, reflexively and without critical analysis, global warming deniers, even to their own potential detriment.

        c: The third group and, in many cases, the most vociferous deniers, seem to be the Far-Right Evangelical fundamentalist Christians.  I believe that this knee jerk anti-global warming bias stems from their belief that 1. God made the Earth 2. God can do anything he/she/it wants, and therefore:  3. It borders on apostasy and sacrilege to believe that insignificant, puny mankind could ever have that same impact. (note: If they truly believe that, then they are also forced to believe that all natural disasters are just God’s way of randomly “thinning the herd”, right?)

 This is convenient for the Far Right since most Evangelicals lean that way. This quote from American Family Association director Bryan Fischer is self-explanatory: “That’s (climate change denial) kind of how we’re treating God when he’s given us these gifts of abundant and inexpensive and effective fuel sources, God has buried those treasures there because he loves to see us find them.”  OK, Bryan, now I get it; your God wants us to foul the air by burning these “gifts” and it delights your God to see the side of a mountain strip-mined away and left to unchecked erosion, while the acid rain from coal burning power plants kills the trees, pollutes streams and fills fish?

        Now for the final and truly astounding wrinkle introduced by the writer:  In an act of hubris blended with equal portions of sheer gall and stupidity beyond anything I've ever even heard, the following assertion was made. I'll paraphrase to give it more flow and form. "Even if all these scientists around the world agree that Global warming is a real issue, that is relatively meaningless, since, after all Galileo and Einstein, both were going against the established beliefs of their day.”  The assertion here apparently being that Global warming deniers are analogous to Galileo and Albert Einstein!

         What the person obviously didn't think through, or more likely understand, is the fact that in Galileo's case, he wasn't arguing against science, he was using science (you know, hypothesis, observation, data accumulation, etc.) to refute Christian dogma "the earth is the center of the universe because we humans are God's creation, ergo more important than everything else." This is the diametric opposite of what he thinks he said!

        In the case of Einstein, he wasn't arguing against science, he was using higher math to explain and amplify some physics concepts that science hadn't yet explained.  Far from being opposed by the scientific community, Einstein was awarded the Nobel in theoretical Physics in 1921. Of course, the aforementioned Galileo was threatened with excommunication and forbidden to write.

        Seldom, if ever, has anyone been so drastically and diametrically incorrect and ill informed.  Hopefully, 2023 and beyond will bring serious change to US climate actions.