Originally published on Facebook, 12/7/09
As the Climate Change Summit gets underway in Copenhagen, I thought I would thrill and excite everyone by bringing you your daily dose of heresy. I thought about a dose of blasphemy as well, but figured heresy can cover that territory and be sexy all by its lonesome without anyone's help... so, a dose of heresy it is. Are you ready? Are you excited? Are you prepared?
Good. Well, hold onto your butts, because here it is:
I don't believe in global warming.
Ahhh, now wasn't that fun? Aren't you all either clicking away to another page or looking at your computer screens wondering if I have finally cracked and gone completely round the bend? Some of you are, some of you aren't- but either way, my statement stands. Utter it in the right company in the United States and you will be looked at as if you are a heretic of some kind or laughed at or generally treated as some sort of social leper. You're one of 'them folks', 'those non-believers', or even worse... 'A Republican!'
Now, don't get me wrong- I'm not saying it's a librul, socialist conspiracy to destroy the United States of America and send us all packing to some socialist gulag. And I don't hate the planet either- it's just that global warming doesn't fit into my own personal environmental policy. (Yes, I have one... doesn't everyone?)
Are you ready for this? OK, here goes:
We have one planet, we should take care of it.
There. That's it-- that covers all matter of cool things like green technology and clean energy and cleaner air in general. It covers recycling and planting flowers on Facebook in 'Your Lil' Green Patch' to save a foot of rainforest- it covers everything! Everything and doesn't get bogged down in tiresome political debates about who is right and who is wrong. It seems to me that politicos and scientists get together every once in awhile and come up with something that's coming to kill us all- in the 70s, an ice age was coming... to kill us all. (Oh and a virus was going to wipe us all out because of overpopulation... and kill us all.) In the 80s, it was the Hole in the Ozone Layer... and now, it's global warming- coming to get us and murder us in our beds. Back in the day, the Commies used to fulfill that role quite nicely, but now- it's global warming.
My problem with global warming centers around the fact that the debate is becoming less and less about the science and more and more about the politics- thus casting doubt on the so-called evidence to begin with. Witness the non-covered scandal dubbed 'Climategate' by the Conservative media, in which emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Center were hacked and distributed to just about everyone-- quoth the emails:
"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
An email written by Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, discussed gaps in understanding of recent temperature variations: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't,"
Skeptics everywhere have seized upon the emails as proof that data that supposedly shows evidence of warming is being manipulated to bolster the case for global warming being made at, funnily enough, summits like Copenhagen-- I don't think that, because a glance at wikipedia of all places, reveals that both of the above statements have been taken out of context. My problem is two fold: first, as a political scientist, the truth is that politics and science don't mix well. In the field of political science itself, it's been a struggle by a lot of people to define the actual 'science' part of political science- and I've concluded that politics is a lot like shit. It tends to dirty pretty much anything that it touches- including science. What should be a purely scientific debate about the merits of global warming ceases to be scientific in any way, shape or form once politicians start sticking ideology on it.
Secondly, what I find irritating is the claim that the global warming debate has been 'settled.' That there is 'consensus.' What a pile of bullshit this is! The scientific method, which I think we can all agree is the core of science as we know it rests upon the idea of falsifiability! A theory isn't a theory unless it can be disproven and science itself is locked in an endless pursuit of trying to knock down existing theories and come up with something better. In science, there is no such thing as 'settled' and there's even less of a thing than 'consensus' the very concepts run against what I consider to be the nature of science itself. You just have to ask 100 scientists a question and guess what- you're not going to get 100 answers, you're going to get closer to 1000.
Finally, I just have to note that we're talking about trying to predict- with accuracy- and build policy around just what the entire global climate system will do anywhere from 50 to 100 years from now. The climate system is inherently chaotic and damn difficult to predict, which is why if you ask a meteorologist what the weather's going to be like a year from now, they're probably going to get it wrong. (Hell if you ask 'em about next week, there's a good chance they could be wrong.) How then can you accurate predict what the global climate system- a chaotic system if there ever was one- is going to accurately do 100 years from now?
Which brings me back to my original point. It's not that I don't believe in global warming, it's that I don't believe in the crap and piles of shit that come along with it. I believe we have one planet and we should take care of it- and that's enough for me! I believe in green energy, smart grids, fuel efficient cars, granola and all that other good stuff. (I also believe that if we build the next generation of nuclear power plants right now- which, bar the annoying question of what to do with the waste- is the cleanest source of energy we have right now- anyway, it'll buy us time to perfect real alternative energy solutions. Europe is doing it- but Al Gore didn't even mention nuclear power in an An Inconvinient Truth-- not once.)
So, global warming and it's crappy, ideologically tainted science? Meh-- you can keep it. Me, I'm going to roll up my sleeves (though I'm in short-sleeves right now, so technically they are pre-rolled), take my pop cans out to the recycling bin in the garage and keep on working to save the planet in my own, quietly efficient way.
(P.S. It's worth noting that for all the concern about the planet abounding in Copenhagen right now, it's estimated that 1200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges will produce a carbon footprint equal to the size of Morocco in 2006. If they were serious about reducing emissions, they should have downloaded Skype.)
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