The Civil War Between Science and Its Enemies
The meme to the left here suggests an interesting and important conversation. Yes, we live in a bizarre point in time in which American society has become so radically anti-science, yet even our complete idiots accept the legitimacy of things like modern medicine and weather-forecasting.
There may be a few people who think hurricanes are an over-hyped liberal conspiracy, or that they’re God’s punishment for the existence of the LGBT community, but certainly, there can’t be too many such folks. (Of course, that was what I was saying right before the November 2016 elections: How many of them could there possibly be?)
So why is it that the same people who evacuate Florida and accept doctors’ advice when they’re sick or injured doubt the validity of climate science?
It’s a one-two punch, combining politics and public relations. One, the left jab: conservatives, whether by nature or nurture, who happen to have little understanding of science, are told that the theory of anthropogenic climate change is an anti-capitalist hoax. The many millions of professional physicists, chemists, and biologists, the engineers in this world who build everything from airplanes to cell phones are by and large honest, but climate scientists are corrupt, and accept money in exchange for lying about the results of their experiments. This has a deeply satisfying appeal.
Two, the right cross: plausible deniability. Like the tobacco companies did half a century ago, the unimaginably enormous interests that stand to profit from a business-as-usual approach to energy and the other emissions-producing industries sew doubt into the public at large, knowing that it will immediately take root in the target audience named above. As a result, we hear things like “The science isn’t really settled.” “There is good science, and then there is bad science.” “What we’re observing could be due to changes in solar activity, or some other cause (that science ruled out 40 years ago).”
You can brand these forces that suppress the truth about climate change as “evil,” but you certainly can’t call them incompetent. We live in a world whose weather-related events are consistently growing more extreme, and tens of thousands of our top scientific minds are begging us to get on board before it’s too late, yet we’re a million miles from getting any level of consensus that climate change mitigation is an important thing for our civilization.
What will it take to achieve such a consensus? I honestly don’t know. It’s obviously not the weather events themselves. One-quarter of our nation is on fire, and huge chunks of it are either under water or soon to be ripped apart by winds and rains the intensity of which no one has ever seen.
Here’s a top-priority solution: Let’s deport 800,000 innocent kids.
Craig,
Perhaps Craig, (and I mean no disrespect), did you ever pause for a minute and just consider how your hysterical diatribe sounds to the average person ?
Your mixture of conjecture, conspiracy theory and wild distortions only attracts support from extremist and fellow travelers.
You can only stampede people so long, after a while the become inured to panic and over hyped predictions. Sooner or later, you alienate your audience, and they start carefully examining the veracity of your claims, and discover it’s weakness.
It becomes obvious behind your sermons is just an old fashioned, trite political agenda.
Once a hole is punched in your credibility, the majority lose interest and turn away form the entire message.
The closest thing your tirade resembles is either an old fashioned political harangue, or an tent meeting, evangelist preacher.
No one is going to deport 800,000 kids !
The President has simply (and very sensibly) anticipated what the US Supreme is about to order, and asked Congress to act before the Supreme Court strikes down the Obama era Executive order (then 800,00 might be deported ). The President asked Congress to legislate DACA into law. He even guaranteed he will sign the bill.
Those are the facts. There is no other way to keep DACA in existence. The Executive can’t usurp the constitution.
Why would anyone believe you about the rest, when you so obviously display a willingness to use emotive distortion for political advantage ?
Why lose credibility on important issues you care about, by including all sort of irrelevant and inaccurate ranting.
Please don’t take me the wrong way, I’m not attacking you, my motive is sincere, I want you to be more, not less, effective about things that matter.
(Just hating the guy, even when he’s doing the right thing, isn’t helpful)