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I’ve recently run into my ol’ chemistry prof whilst having coffee  with my brother.  We three got to talking and an email I’d later sent him I post here now in lieu of a purpose-composed follow on to my last post re: climate change:

Hey Paul,

 First: grade change reminder!

 Next: Global Warming.

 I should thank you [Thanks!] for stopping to talk with us as I’d been struggling with how to formulate my thoughts on this subject into a piece of writing (I’ve recently started an online journal) for some time now and getting back to you with these links has supplied the missing piece of wherewithal needed to take a stab.  I should, at the same time, apologize for the resulting length, but hope the prose are sufficient to sustain your interest.

 Having just burned through God Is Not Great (C. Hitchens), The God Delusion (R. Dawkins) and nearing the middle of The End of Faith (S. Harris) I can’t help but be aware of my tendency to see nails ready to be hit with an Epicurean hammer everywhere I look. The pattern-seeking tendency duly acknowledged, I think there’s a case to be made that the great majority of laypersons (and many scientists) who opine on the nature and urgency of Global Warming (more accurately, if redundantly, referred to as ‘Climate Change‘ [CC] these days) do so having swallowed a rather large faith pill. There is guilt, repentance (C-offsets), ritual, iconography, wish think, spirituality, gurus, lots of cognitive dissonance, unquestioning deference to authority and a burgeoning culture with deep roots in tradition; there’s even original sin. I won’t waste much of your time elaborating on these points and the parallels between more commonly recognized religions and the green movement, but I would like to draw attention to the fact that we in the west do all suffer, to various degrees, a level of environmentalism-friendly inculcation….

…which generally promotes legitimately beneficial conservation efforts, but non-the-less biases us when we read or hear what we do (especially as it is so one-sided these days) on the issue of the human contribution to Climate Change.

 I’d also like to reiterate my point earlier made that, in light of the above, when the anti-CC movement started to blow up the argument was decidedly lopsided and those looking for data to present were decontextualizing and cherry picking like a president intent on going to war. It didn’t help that, as you pointed out, the big voices in opposition came initially from big business interests and the further-right about whom defenders of the environment are possessed of (some justified) fairly colorful preconceptions. This is unhelpful bias and, though I could resort to the truism that even a stopped watch is right twice a day, it should be as intuitive that we (civilized people) tend to agree on much more than we disagree and even though we tend to proceed with the (innately preferred) assumption that we’re doing and believing the right things…we can be wrong…and people we don’t like be right…or ‘more right’ anyway. Also, everything ever said by anyone…every message created by human beings has had (however benign or simple) an ‘agenda’: self-interest does not equal intent to deceive. My education to date also requires that I mention the media which: A.) Hates ambiguity, B.) Likes to be ‘on the right side’ C.) Is entirely in love with simplistic, narrative presentation. D.) Has a complicated bio-feedback-like relationship with the zeitgeist which (with consideration to A, B and C) has a net ‘filtering’ effect which none of us can avoid being effected by.  Invoking history without examples: misleading a majority of a large population isn’t much different from misleading an individual and this can be done both unintentionally and with the best intentions [not mutually exclusive] – the same kind which pave the way to ‘hell’, in fact; this trend is less the exception than the rule.

 All of this preamble is given with due respect for and recognition of your training in the rigorous application of reason, logic and scientific method, I assure you. ‘;) I bring it up for several reasons, but chiefly because the sociological and psychological aspects of this unfolding phenomenon are of greatest interest to me; nor does it hurt to be reminded of our human foibles when being presented with ideas that run contrary to things we presently (prefer to) believe. Also, I should point out that while I might lean slightly towards thinking this is some sort of a partially-engineered scare with consequences far less dire than advertised, I find myself more comfortable with the devil’s advocate position – more of a skeptic and not a “denier” at all. I think I recognize my limits in interpreting the data and am responding more to contrarian impulse and strong sense that, if these concerns were as pressing as some would have us believe, things would ‘fit’ better.  Further, I’m very sensitive to the language [in the semiotic sense: describing the totality of ways meaning is conveyed] of messages – and the general tone of those selling the threat are far too heavily laced with the kinds of rhetorical devices so distinctive of propaganda. The market place for ideas is like any other in that extra caution is warranted whenever you are told you must accept something at face value and ‘ACT NOW!’ There should be questions I’ve thought up quite independently being addressed, such as: In what ways would a warmer planet be good? Why isn’t more money going into basic climate research rather than research with the goal of proving or addressing anthropogenic emissions’ role in the “problem?” If we need 100-Kyotos to curb the warming, and that (clearly) isn’t going to happen, why isn’t there more talk of dealing with a warmer planet? Why are the doom-prophecy computer models (especially those used in the first IPCC report) so inconsistent with so many other projections and with reality?  That these and their like are quarries which persist in being un- or in- sufficiently addressed ought to raise the hackles of any self-respecting, rational, critical thinker.

 My concluding thoughts for this preamble to a few links related to issues brought up in our recent chat is also my terminal and utterly unasked (so far as I’ve found) question: If we ARE having an effect on the climate, can we directly manipulate it – can we ‘terraform’ Earth? Why isn’t this being asked constantly – at every debate and in every forum? We know the earth has been vastly more lush…can we manipulate the climate and, in the process, potentially end things like world hunger with a massive increase in arable land on continents plagued by famines? Could we end droughts as we know them? Why not spend all we would on cap-and-trade in pursuit of answers to such questions? Why is inadvertent anthropogenic climate change perceived as science fact and deliberate anthropogenic climate change as science fiction? Are we to believe that our capacity for unwitting destruction exceeds our conscious power to create?

 The above brings up innumerable moral and ethical issues, of course, but I am very much in the Herman Melville camp: nature isn’t a very good mother. Indeed, if one insists on animism, the Earth (to say nothing of the universe!) is best cast as a vengeful bitch doing everything she can to kill us! I don’t think I can make this point better than Neil deGrasse Tyson:

I think it all-too-easy to forget how hostile the world a mere 10-miles from the fair-trade coffee house can be and thus to lose perspective. I submit that there would be a general reduction in environmental hysteria if there were significantly more cannibalistic baristas with cougar-like speed and power. Ethical questions about climate should also be framed in their proper context…that being with the understanding that the earth was not made for us, but we for it, and very recently at that!  Consider how egocentric and narrow our view of the issue is in this light, and remember that the climate is going to change with or without us…one wonders how popular opposition to the idea of anthropogenic climate change might be when the next ice age rolls around. If I were a moral absolutist (a la Kantian deontology) I would come to the conclusion that we have not only the right to deliberately alter the climate, but a moral imperative so to do.  Luckily, I ascribe to a more materialist, utilitarian philosophy, merely thinking it a very good idea.  By focusing exclusively on the futile effort to not change what is always changing, we betray our self-important hypocrisy, short-sightedness and depreciate the value of the mental faculties we (somewhat paradoxically) think of as setting us apart from our fellow animals.

 That long semi-digression aside, below are some links that directly speak to the big issues brought up the other day. The sites here also cover numerous other, related issues and seem well cited.

 Acidic Oceans

 The “Hockey Stick” Graph made famous by Al Goreand…

 Man’s contribution to CO2, Ice Ages and the relation of CO2 to temperature

 Some of my commentary: The CO2 question is a lot like the hokey stick one in that its increase is scary as hell outside its context. But, when you consider that our contribution to the total CO2 entering the atmosphere is small, and CO2’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is TINY (relative to H2O vapor), and there’s been up to 20x as much of it in periods of yore…it’s less terrifying. Indeed, the atmosphere is positively starved for CO2 relative to even the Cretaceous (a scant 65-million years ago) when it was in and around five times its current ppm.

 And at last, I want to share that TED talk by David Deutsche I’d mentioned.  It’s 19-minutes long, but worth finding the time to sit through as he shares my perspective vis a vis the importance of context, pragmatism and asking the right questions while wielding a good deal more acumen and wit!  Check it out…

I hope you find the materials interesting and look forward to getting together with my brother and yourself in the not-too-distant future for another chat.  I’m quite interested in your thoughts on them, as a both a Chem PhD and fellow fan of our natural world.

 Your student,

 -William

I’ve been struggling for some time now with how to approach a treatment of my thoughts and ideas related to what has become the major background issue over the past decade. In large part it’s because the issue is so much more complex than the typical one-liner summary most people accept as gospel going something like: CO2 from human emissions are heating up the planet and it must be stopped or life as we know it will end.’ A critical analysis of this hyper-simplification’s pervasiveness is worthy of a book all by itself, to say nothing of the nature or history of the debate…all this even before sticking a toe into the debate itself. That last, actually, is of less interest to me and I remain carefully agnostic, but I do find myself concerned by the growing lack of tolerance for skeptics and the very narrow range of questions asked and fewer answered definitively. This narrowing of the dialog is not going unanswered, however, and there are an increasing number of sites and organizations out there (helmed by people with qualifications well in excess of my own) presenting a case sufficiently compelling that I’m convinced it at least deserves a fair and open discussion where it does not provide ample reason to change the very nature of the debate and the questions we ask. And, that’s mostly where my thoughts on the issue make their home.

To wit: relatively recently (months?) the major western media decided it was acceptable to adopt (by anchors, and seemingly non-opinion-centric journalists) the epitaph of “Climate Change Denier” to describe those who remain unconvinced regarding the desperate need for cap and trade and a frantic transition to renewable energy. This term is disgustingly offensive for several reasons, but principally because those who coined it are consciously exploiting the stain and neigh inconceivable horrors of the Nazi Holocaust to smear skeptics with fair and reasonable doubts by grouping them with those who willfully ignore the empirical evidence of the mass extermination of millions of human beings. The sheer ignorance displayed by this insensitivity tempts me towards tirade. I won’t succumb, but I will say this: Until you have, at a minimum, sat through all nine-and-a-half gut-wrenching hours of Shoah, cried through Night and Fog and had the honor of speaking with a survivor…you can just shut right the fuck up because you have little to no idea what the hell you’re invoking — the memories of those slain in genocide are not your rhetorical play things, fuck you very much. That this exploitation is committed in pursuit of quashing dissent is a sick irony, compounding the offense.  [Note:  if you noticed the bias and hypocrisy on display in the empassioned rhetorical tantrum prior to this note...mission partially accomplished.]

The above PC-enabled trope (much like the frivolous labeling as racist or sexist those who disagree with you in order to discredit them) should not be allowed to stand. The level of fear-mongering and inflammatory rhetoric surrounding this movement renders laughably puny the railroading of the American congress and people with the Iraq War. While there may be times end’s will justify means, the purity of a just cause (even the cause itself) can be utterly ruined by such tactics. If one has empirical and unequivocal truth on their side, lies and manipulation ought have no place. The truth that parts of the anti-Climate Change movement (indeed, many of its biggest advocates) are guilty of blatant falsifications, manipulations, conflicts of interest and gross hypocrisy suggests that perhaps their truth isn’t quite so unequivocal — just as it’s far from empirically a closed case.

I’m less overtly hostile to the data presented in the likes of An Inconvenient Truth, than against the way such puff pieces distort and distract — how they willfully misshape and disfigure the public dialog. One of the many lessons that should have been taught by 9/11 and its aftermath is that true believers with closed minds (on any ’side’) are dangerous. Human beings without doubt have proven time and again that they will do what they believe their god, country, etc. call them to do. When it comes to the most ardent greens with whom the reader might nominally agree, it is prudent to conduct a thought experiment in which you view the world through the eyes of the impassioned and utterly certain: what transgression is unforgivable if you’re trying to save the world? It’s easy to miss one’s own hypocrisy without such uncomfortable reflections.

Take this for example.  Note the smugness of the tone. The form of the ‘cards’ so like those made famous in the early years of the Iraq occupation. This might be intended ironically, but pretending to be clever and tongue-in-cheek does not blunt the point. The reduction to caricature [that some of those pictured having already done this to themselves being beside the point...] is accomplished. The message is clear: these people are the enemy and what they say is not to be taken seriously. Yes…lampooning is all fun and games until we close our minds to the possibility we err because people we don’t like disagree with us.

In a polite society, entrenched in denial of its dependency on shared delusions, it seems to me the most effective (if not the only) way you can address a 500lb. gorilla in the room is with wit. It breaks the tension. It allows a thing to be talked about; a laugh requires you to stop holding your breath. This is what The Daily Show has been doing for us ever since Jon Stewart et al hit their stride in the early years of the Bush administration. In the run-up to and during the first couple years of the Iraq war, it astonished me that some of the best, most probing questions to be had on air came from a tiny man in a tiny studio on a basic cable show geared toward mocking the news.  The waves were big, and this is why:

Much has been written about this curious phenomenon and I don’t presently feel compelled to relive that past, but I will point out that TDS had sort of been on a downward slide for the past couple years. It lost its relevance, in my eyes:  reporting and commenting ever more directly on the material the networks were passing off as ‘news’ rather than on the networks’ obsession with simplistic narrative and general failure to perform their social function in a manor approaching basic competence. It became a parody of a news show again, with Jon’s social commentary amounting to little more than his faux-Jersey accent and uncomfortable facial expression tropes. Maybe TDS had forgotten that they mattered? Maybe Jon got too close to major network personalities? Maybe they thought that time where the news networks were getting para-introspective in ‘04 and ‘05 – and Jon was being listened to had been a blip.

Que the financial meltdown and president that (so far) hasn’t earned their ire and TDS seems to have refocused a bit. This may be putting it mildly. I humbly submit that the clip below provides a workable model for interviews where honest, open discussion is the goal and meaningful answers sought. 

I do not share all of Jon’s ideals, but harbor considerable respect for the manor in which he persues them.   What Jim Cramer lets slip is telling and he deserves credit for allowing himself to be honest. One need not be familiar with Noam Chomsky to recognize a man trying to justify his behavior as a mere cog in the machine.  Investigating and speaking truth are hard?  No shit?  Why are those sleves rolled up, Jim?  Jim Cramer may have deserved this scholding for shirking his journalistic responsibilities but he is far, FAR from the worst of the lot — the likes of Rachel Maddow and Glen Beck are in dire need of a similar verbal spanking. Or, rather, their networks are.  The televised news does not appear to have taken itself seriously in this country for decades:  this would matter less if their viewers hadn’t either.

 It turns out that the fitness club I attend for strength training and pool time has socializing enrichment potential beyond being a good place to practice avoiding eye contact with desperate housewives and free swingin’ man-junk attached to dudes physically powerful enough to shower rape even me. I suspected as much already, but today it was proven when I struck up a conversation with a guy I’d engaged in idle chat several times before. More specifically, he’s a car salesman presently assigned to a Toyota lot: part of one of those multi-block-dominating, cross-brand mega-dealerships that sell virtually every make and model.

This was revealed to me in the course of his asking me questions about other things [always an ego booster that – being considered a font of trivia and opinion] including my opinion on cars, specifically Toyotas. I replied with a number of views, qualified by the necessary preamble defining this as an area I’ve done some reading on, but in which I lack expertise. These included: “over-rated. Still riding high on reputation, but probably no better than anything designed today in Germany or America and tend to be the most bland, soulless things on the road devoid of style, character and performance. Toyotas are for people who don’t care about and don’t think about cars. People who think driving should be fun don’t drive them.” After some further discussion and thought I further opined something quite like: “I strongly suspect this is why they’re both so popular and have such a good reputation; their market is the ambivalent, moderate driver who is innately better to his car than, say, I would and is, in any case, less likely to complain to J.D. Power pollsters because they want to continue to believe what they believed when they uncritically bought the car.” He nodded, declared that I was absolutely right on every point and further elaborated on the perception driven nature of the market and internal Toyota issues that were resulting in a drop in overall quality in the company’s products.  Then, he offered to sell me a Nissan 370z.

OK…he didn’t really offer that, but lets pretend that he did as otherwise this is just a post which shamelessly adds to the pile of evidence for my de facto infallibility.  Still…worth rubbing my sister’s nose in: EAT IT, SHEILA! 

A better title might have more accurately conveyed the flavor of this post thusly:  there exists no natural right to be free from offense.  That is, no human adult is owed special protection from the views, opinions and ideas of others and woe unto any democratic nation that starts passing laws to protect those with delicate sensibilities from the rigors of free idea exchange.

Imagine my horror while reading this article.  Non-binding as it might be, I earnestly hope the U.N. retains a sufficient number of vertebrates among its number to see this absurdity laughed (under breath, of course) out of its chambers in short order.  The gross hypocrisy that a faith with extreamist elements so serially offensive to the prefrontal cortex would demand tolerance…no… respect for its message of intolerance through such an international decree should shock the conscience of any mind not already up-to-speed on just how poorly the followers of Muhammad in the nations that drafted this resolution tend to take criticism.

Yeah. I’ll BET you fail to see the connection…

Even those of us with little more than cursory knowledge of what forms are taken by the penalties for apostasy and insult to the prophet; even those with a want to ignore or downplay national policies resulting in death for having an opinion can take fresh offense at the notion of those pushing for the resolution trying to play it off as a right they are due by conflating faith with ‘race.’

I accept the offense, however, without any inclination to seek U.N. condemnation of any similar offenses in the future.

Like most forms of growth, the refinement and instinctual exercise of the rational faculty is a gradual thing with fits and starts and most polished when the product of conscious effort which this web log shall be part:  a sounding board for thought and opinion which may not yet have found optimal expression or a place in my worldview; it is a tool I expect to aid the winnowing and reshaping of ideas through the structuring process of writing and critical review.  I consider invitation of criticism [to be contrasted, here, with mere commentary] a mark of maturity, confidence and a line of demarcation between those who want to know and those who would rather not; between those content to assume and those content to relieve themselves on assumption; between those who consider dividing truth from deception essential and those who’ve chosen not to matter.

Herin I expect I shall be sharing a host of thoughts and opinions controversial in nature:  which is not without its risk.  Indeed, a good friend suggested that mine are notions best kept to a journal — preferably one with a lock.  While possibly intended to flatter my contrarian ego, I suspect the concern was genuine and not at all unwarranted in an age where convenient access to much (most, even) of what one has said or done stands ready to be used as a weapon to discredit, distract, decontextualize and distort image and message.  I dearly hope that the willingness to change one’s mind does not much longer carry with it the negative epitaph of ‘flip-flopper.’  I suspect my desire will be fulfilled in near decades as the Internet Generation begins entering government and the sheer number of prospective female cabinet appointees having to answer for a long-forgotten YouTube strip tease at a congressional review forcibly returns the once well understood premise of “I was young and still figuring shit out” to its rightful place as ’sense’ of the common variety.

I further hope that the age is not far off where flexibility of thought and unbound inquiry will enjoy the same exaltation as cherished virtues which their polar opposite, faith, today enjoys.  I am only too aware that I am presently in one of humanity’s tiniest minorities in that no idea I hold is too dear, nor belief too sacred to be altered or discarded in the face of sufficient evidence or persuasive argument.  [This said with the understanding, of course, that the ideals on which this creed rests (freedom, justice, humanity, humility, individuality) are rather well entrenched with everythign else of which I am aware reinforcing their importance.]  What a better world it would be if only I could reasonably expect this same adaptability and openness from my fellows.  The reader might anticipate that I do not consider this a fanciful dream for a rebel in search of the unattainable cause, and he can likely predict my answers to the following questions:  Can it be that rationality will govern the global zeitgeist in the latter half of this century as did fear the one before?  Could it be that the geopolitical climate is again right for an age of reason?  Will the reality television form rise far enough from its lowly origins that its critical evaluation becomes less than futile and effacing of human dignity?  Tools permitting such evolution are here and the need has never been quite so urgent.  I aspire and endeavor daily to be a better soldier in the long cultural struggle to bring this about.  Also, to be cute…which [let none deny it] I am.

Lastly, here, now, at the beginning I must admit to being…if not full of shit…full of necessarily incomplete ideas.  As any other, I am a work in progress.  If my tone does not yet match my level of acumen on matters of which I might opine, it is not due to my certainty that all I think be correct and true, but merely that I find it difficult to proceed with the opposite supposition until given reason so to do.  I say this now because I think it a vaguely clever…and I too often find myself pointing it out.  This misperception could be attributable to my frequent claim “I am never wrong!”  Though, I as frequently claim that “I am invincible!” and that I possess “…power beyond your understanding!” in tones suffused with the kind of theatrical gravitas that less-than-subtly suggests such claims ought not be taken (too) seriously.  Nor should I.  And I don’t.  Here then is recorded part of a pursuit of truth…with occasional cameos by that genuine article.  And, also, dick jokes.