C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

Is there signifigant climate change? If so, are humans causing it? If so, is it catastrophic? If so, can it be averted? If so, why will a given plan work?

It bothers me very much that my current knowledge of the facts about human-caused climate change is no better than my knowledge about evolution was in the days when I accepted Creationism as actual science. I want to attack my area of ignorance, since the ramifications are important enough that a strong opinion is going to be morally required of me, and since I don't have the right to strongly hold an uninformed opinion. (Did you ever consider that? You don't have "the right to your opinion" on a topic on which you aren't going to do the work to get informed.)

My current reading is not making the picture any clearer. What bothers me even more than my state of ignorance is that I don't see a way to resolve this through any amount of diligent research if I don't know who to trust. I trust the scientific community, but I don't trust the political process. (In a moment I'll go into part of why this is.)

Years ago, I was a Creationist, quite well-versed in the arguments across the breadth of Creationist literature, only to have it devastated when I engaged in a massive Manhattan-Project-style reading binge of TalkOrigins.org. I hope that a thorough reading across the breadth of environmental literature will yeild conclusions that firmly. But in the case of climate change, the signs of junk science are everywhere, supporting every conclusion. Every scientist quoted in the debate appears to be cowed and censored with funding at risk, a mis-quoted and edited sock puppet on the hand of industries seeking exploitative profit, or of regulatory government seeking election to pass the rest of their platform. Scientific testimony appears to proliferate to discredit opposing scientific testimony on this topic, accusing it of being fatally compromised by a political faction that desires to use it to justify an economic system. That discrediting evidence is then, itself, discredited in what may turn out to be an endless cycle.

The experience of watching An Inconvenient Truth -- a feature-length political advertisement which was just as much about the irrelevant details of the biography of Al Gore as it was about global warming -- was marked by the constant awareness that everything I was being told could be true and vitally important, and the knowledge that everything I was being told might turn out to be a deliberate deception.

Gore said, "Out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero." It turns out those 925 articles were not about the climate at all. (Or were they? The claim they were not could be a lie.) Footage is shown of collapsing glaciers, and this turns out to have been what glaciers have always done. (Or is it? How can I believe that either?) On and on it goes.

I would like to always be cautious before casting accusations of lying. It's a serious charge, and it's immoral to make it to soon or too lightly as I did against the scientific community when I was a Creationist. But have you noticed that in politics, the statements of fact are so opposed that the only recourse is to accuse the other faction of deception? One side or the other obviously has to be lying. It could be both. The consistent Lysenkoism of the current Republican administration does not mean that the Democrats are not also turning science into Lysenkoism.

What motivates scientists? Science is supposed to be the business of finding things out. It makes no sense to go into that profession if you only do so to lie and cover up the truth for an ideological agenda. The pay and job security are rotten. Only one percent of the top one percent is likely to become famous. There is virtually no prospect for putting together a massive conspiracy to conceal climate change, or a conspiracy to reveal it where it doesn't exist, since other scientists have so much to gain in their careers by exposing your mistakes. There is no such conspiracy in the international scientific community.

This is where politics comes in, which is the source of science funding. Politics is not about truth, it's about getting things to be the way you want them to be. It's like a corrosive acid on the good and decent people who choose it for a career. When a seasoned and successful politician results from that starry-eyed youngster, it is no longer that idealistic person; it has become an image marketed by careful handlers behind the throne like Karl Rove or James Carville, sweet-talked by corrupt lobbyists who protect all that wealth and power at stake. The ones who stay idealistic and don't compromise are the ones whose brief and failed careers you never hear about. It seems to require playing fast and loose with the truth in order to accomplish something that one hopes will be, on balance, good. One is swept into a machine of compromise in the hope that the ends justify the means.

You know that the issue I think about the most is this: how to tell what is true. An individual can't possibly study everything in the world, and has to trust the credibility of experts. When we can't trust our institutions, it's a disaster. Where can a lay person turn for scientific answers that are free of activism? Why are there no Science Courts or Idea Futures Markets?

I'm going to diligently pay attention to climate change until a picture of the scientific fact emerges from the political activism, even if it takes so long that the economy collapses from the burden of un-necessary and misdirected regulations, or I die in a flood from a melted ice cap, or both.

TIME Magazine's January 2005 cover story is on The Twixters, a new life-phase that's emerging between teenager and adult. Modern educations have ceased to be worth much in the job market, so they can't afford a home, a marriage, or kids. They're renowned as Secret Masters Of Friendship, the "New Tribes."( Read more... )
Has this resulted in an influx into Fandom, which seems tailor-made for the tribalizing Twixters?( Read more... )