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The global climate change debate has fascinated me for some time now, not because of the science -- that I part understand, a bit -- but because of the deliberate lack of science found in the arguments of rebuttalists. Like Holocaust Deniars and Rabid Creationsists, the anti-warming crowd gloms hard upon any contrary argument while pointedly and emotionally denying the validity or relevance of supporting evidence.
Why?
The partial answer came years ago, having a debate on the whole creation/evolution distraction. Two questions and the answsers to them sumarized my position. First, my debate opponent asked pointedly, "How old is the Earth?"
"28," I immediately resonded. "Prove me wrong."
My point with that response is that, simply, none of us can confirm anything outside of our personal experience. How did this earth and the life thereon become? Your guess, your belief, is just as good as mine. The only factor separating the validity of the various guesses: physical evidence supporting a well-posited theory. Can you present rock, leaf, collection of strata, or whatever to validate your conjecture? None? Ah, well then, have a nice day and, while you're at it, shut the hell up. Without evidence that anyone can confirm or challenge, all you have is the word of some annonymous.
The next question was more basic, and one I had never heard before at any of these debates. (This was over twenty years ago, but the debates have changed not much at all -- the question is still avoided.) I prefaced this question with an observation. I have never seen a scientist complain about a church goer. In fact, many scientists are men and women of faith. They are not threatened by religion. "Why," I asked, "is your religion threatened by their science?"
The answer was not forthcoming from that particular debate partner. I stumped him, stopped him cold. Others have been more obliging, and twenty plus years after I first posed the question, I have an answer. Darwinism is not in itself the problem, just as astronomy, electronic enineering, organic chemistry, or any of the myriad sciences that use the same basic premises of observation and theorization. Darwinism provides to the uninitiated, however, an alternate version of the myth of Creation, and therefore allows the individual to question that myth and, by extension, the word of god itself.
Not just any word, however. Specific to that myth is the element, the key element, that raises man to a creation separate from -- and above -- the animals. And that, people, is what gets to this crowd. Allowing any challenge of the creation myth to stand obviates the preeminence humanity has always enjoyed.
Think about it. Everything done by whole civilizations can be distilled to a command from God. What gives a neighbor the right to cut down a tree? God. To keep cattle and eat the meat from the slaughtered animals? God. To drill into the earth and extract old swamps and forrests for the burning? Again, God. Deny Man the pinnacle of creation, and you force man to concede that the consequences of man's actions -- or are they mens' actions, now that we've knocked him off the high horse? -- may indict man, now just men, and without God's rescue and absolution forthcoming.
I got a taste of that defensive attitude with the carbon emission talking. If the global climate change theory is valid, people can be blamed for the act of emitting carbons, and can be held responsible for the changes to the climate wrought by such actions.
Deflecting the validity of global warming deflects blame.
Me? I don't care, not about the blame. I don't fear some wrathful vengence from beings terrestrial or otherwise for the unintended consequences of my actions. Maybe that makes me unique. In a like vein, I feel no personal responsibility for slavery in the States, even though I am white. No guilt either. I worry not one iota about being responsible for the Holocaust, even with a bevy of German ancestors. I wasn't there. Why should I bother?
I have also driven large vehicles, and for no particular good at all. Therefore I have wasted, and have spewed the carbons from that waste into the air. In my defense, for the job being done, there was/is no other alternative. Not many livery stables nowadays stand ready and waiting for the rental of drayage oxen or horses, even if I could get such a rig on the road anywhere in the city without jamming the traffic to a standstill. So, yeah, I burn carbon, just like everyone else.
However, once the consequences are known, don't we have a legitimate reason to reduce output? Not to blame, not to seek "justice," but pure and simple survival seems a good reason to ammend our historical ways. Not for us, today, even though there will probably be many lost, but for tomorrow. For the future of the human race. That does, to me at least, seem legitimate.
So, folks, cast aside all talk of blame. Sure, we emptied a few billion years worth of goo and chunks and spat it out billions of tailpipes and smokestacks in, what, three hundred years? We've only been able to theorize about the consequences of that atmosperic relocation for just over 40 years; give us a few years to come to terms and a few more to shift hardware and technology in the non-spew direction.
In the meantime, there is no reason to convene at Nuremburg. No one person, not Henry Ford, James Watt of steam engine fame, not Herren Diesel or Daimler, bears all the blame for the condition/predicament we all joined willingly.
So when you hear of "global warming," don't scoff. No thinking person is blaming your SUV for all the world's woes. At least I'm not. Just remember that there will be a few years ahead of instability and perhaps disaster. It's natural, not a reckoning; a natural disaster we just happened to bring upon ourselves.
Why?
The partial answer came years ago, having a debate on the whole creation/evolution distraction. Two questions and the answsers to them sumarized my position. First, my debate opponent asked pointedly, "How old is the Earth?"
"28," I immediately resonded. "Prove me wrong."
My point with that response is that, simply, none of us can confirm anything outside of our personal experience. How did this earth and the life thereon become? Your guess, your belief, is just as good as mine. The only factor separating the validity of the various guesses: physical evidence supporting a well-posited theory. Can you present rock, leaf, collection of strata, or whatever to validate your conjecture? None? Ah, well then, have a nice day and, while you're at it, shut the hell up. Without evidence that anyone can confirm or challenge, all you have is the word of some annonymous.
The next question was more basic, and one I had never heard before at any of these debates. (This was over twenty years ago, but the debates have changed not much at all -- the question is still avoided.) I prefaced this question with an observation. I have never seen a scientist complain about a church goer. In fact, many scientists are men and women of faith. They are not threatened by religion. "Why," I asked, "is your religion threatened by their science?"
The answer was not forthcoming from that particular debate partner. I stumped him, stopped him cold. Others have been more obliging, and twenty plus years after I first posed the question, I have an answer. Darwinism is not in itself the problem, just as astronomy, electronic enineering, organic chemistry, or any of the myriad sciences that use the same basic premises of observation and theorization. Darwinism provides to the uninitiated, however, an alternate version of the myth of Creation, and therefore allows the individual to question that myth and, by extension, the word of god itself.
Not just any word, however. Specific to that myth is the element, the key element, that raises man to a creation separate from -- and above -- the animals. And that, people, is what gets to this crowd. Allowing any challenge of the creation myth to stand obviates the preeminence humanity has always enjoyed.
Think about it. Everything done by whole civilizations can be distilled to a command from God. What gives a neighbor the right to cut down a tree? God. To keep cattle and eat the meat from the slaughtered animals? God. To drill into the earth and extract old swamps and forrests for the burning? Again, God. Deny Man the pinnacle of creation, and you force man to concede that the consequences of man's actions -- or are they mens' actions, now that we've knocked him off the high horse? -- may indict man, now just men, and without God's rescue and absolution forthcoming.
I got a taste of that defensive attitude with the carbon emission talking. If the global climate change theory is valid, people can be blamed for the act of emitting carbons, and can be held responsible for the changes to the climate wrought by such actions.
Deflecting the validity of global warming deflects blame.
Me? I don't care, not about the blame. I don't fear some wrathful vengence from beings terrestrial or otherwise for the unintended consequences of my actions. Maybe that makes me unique. In a like vein, I feel no personal responsibility for slavery in the States, even though I am white. No guilt either. I worry not one iota about being responsible for the Holocaust, even with a bevy of German ancestors. I wasn't there. Why should I bother?
I have also driven large vehicles, and for no particular good at all. Therefore I have wasted, and have spewed the carbons from that waste into the air. In my defense, for the job being done, there was/is no other alternative. Not many livery stables nowadays stand ready and waiting for the rental of drayage oxen or horses, even if I could get such a rig on the road anywhere in the city without jamming the traffic to a standstill. So, yeah, I burn carbon, just like everyone else.
However, once the consequences are known, don't we have a legitimate reason to reduce output? Not to blame, not to seek "justice," but pure and simple survival seems a good reason to ammend our historical ways. Not for us, today, even though there will probably be many lost, but for tomorrow. For the future of the human race. That does, to me at least, seem legitimate.
So, folks, cast aside all talk of blame. Sure, we emptied a few billion years worth of goo and chunks and spat it out billions of tailpipes and smokestacks in, what, three hundred years? We've only been able to theorize about the consequences of that atmosperic relocation for just over 40 years; give us a few years to come to terms and a few more to shift hardware and technology in the non-spew direction.
In the meantime, there is no reason to convene at Nuremburg. No one person, not Henry Ford, James Watt of steam engine fame, not Herren Diesel or Daimler, bears all the blame for the condition/predicament we all joined willingly.
So when you hear of "global warming," don't scoff. No thinking person is blaming your SUV for all the world's woes. At least I'm not. Just remember that there will be a few years ahead of instability and perhaps disaster. It's natural, not a reckoning; a natural disaster we just happened to bring upon ourselves.