Ignorance Disguised as Skepticism (Brought to You by Greed)

California is receiving no rain, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains had only 30 percent snow cover. The results: exceptional drought and a coming water emergency.

 
First I'll declare these two as facts and will support them later: there's nothing scientific about Global Warming denial, and broadly speaking, there's also nothing scientific or even intellectual about skepticism.

I find myself stressed out about Global Warming, and it does keep me up at night. Environmental catastrophe is upon us and the consequences will continue to get worse as long as the people we've put in charge of our country and corporations are either paralyzed or are in bribed ignorance.

(Read more below the crack.) 



I refuse to use the term climate change. That was always dumbed-down term to make the consequences more understandable if idiots were going to deny the cause. The "rebranding" failed, the fools continued to deny it, because the denial never had anything to do with facts. Global warming describes the problem closer to its root. Plain and simple: our atmosphere is retaining more heat. Record highs have been outpacing record lows by 3-1. That's been accelerating every decade. What's changing the climate is Global Warming. This is due to higher CO2 in the atmosphere, and the greenhouse effect of CO2 and other gases have been a scientifically demonstrated for more than a century. 

Now things are about to get real, moving from academic speculation to physical hardship. The nation's remaining middle class, still reeling from the 2008 financial collapse and heist (the better word for "the bailout"),  is about to be hit by a shock. One that they can't avoid, ignore or move away from, and one that will affect every class and person in this country.

And this shock wave will come from California. The state is now having an epic drought where ninety-five percent of it is suffering "Severe" drought, and a third of it is in Exceptional Drought, the last being the worst category.

Here's a map depicting it:

Dark Brown is exceptional drought; red is extreme drought, gold is severe drought. It really never rains in Southern California now. Sorry, couldn't resist.

California also produces half the fruits, vegetables and nuts for this nation. In theory we could trade something to other countries for those commodities, but in fact, most other regions that produce them are stressed, too. That's because the rain belts are shifting everywhere due to the problem being global. If an area has fruit farms on it, the rain patterns are likely undergoing change.

So, Global Warming is going to take food off people's tables in a way that it can't be ignored. The first year of this might not be that bad, the Miami Herald cites food prices rising between 2.5 and 3.5 percent, which is made worse considering the economy in the first quarter of 2014 slowed by one percent, something the the experts are attributing to: the extreme winter. The higher food prices will restrain people's spending other things, meaning a slow-down in the rest of the economy.

For now we could just transfer the consequences to other nations, since the US is the world's leading exporter of food. If the drought doesn't end, though, with enough rain for California to recover, we're talking very bad times.     

This means malnutrition. This means food riots. This means starvation. And it's impossible to tell if the rain pattern in California is permanent or not. Models predict that Southwest will be in permanent drought by 2020. And it's too late to do anything about this now.

Meanwhile, some California communities have been informed that they have less than 45 days of water left. Since I'm late writing this, I presume it's more like 30 days now. Of course, those communities are not supportable without water. Oh, they could truck water in at expense, but for the most part, the people living there are going to become environmental refugees, before any are created here due to sea level rising.

All of this because of global warming denial. At the time we should have been acting, we elected Ronald Reagan instead. We could have at least mitigated much of the harm before now, or at least have the infrastructure to withstand it. 

I'll repeat what I said: there's nothing scientific or even intellectual about skepticism. I used to hang out with a friend who swore by it. He'd read the Skeptical Inquirer. To him, that was smart; he had me thinking that way. But then I looked who else was skeptical: creationists, holocaust deniers, global warming deniers, Obama birthers, 9/11 truthers, The Flat Earth Society. Those are all very skeptical people. But they were also dead wrong, and skepticism kept them that way.

So many people, theists and atheists, glorify mere skepticism as scientific.  Something should be clarified: skepticism is not a scientific virtue; applying it without scientific discipline as Creationists and global warming deniers do has nothing to do with the scientific process, or even with intellect. Denial has everything to do with ignorance and greed.

The real virtue of science--its driving force--is curiosity. Skepticism should flow from that: scientists want to know if a hypothesis is right, so there they apply skepticism. The purpose of peer review is to counteract the human flaws of falling in love with ones own ideas, or to commit fraud.

Scientific skepticism has to be disciplined, it has to be informed, its motive has to be curiosity. If it's not, skepticism is just a euphemism for ignorance. 

We somehow have a perverted idea in this country that just being skeptical makes you an intellectual. We're told to read critically, as though one doing this on a scientific article written by a journalist is going to put you on the same footing as a scientist who's had twenty years in his field. (It explains why our culture despises intellectuals so much. People think it's that easy.)

The entire "science" behind global warming denial was always how much money certain fossil fuel and auto industry companies couldn't make if we took substantial action against it. (I won't call money corporations haven't grabbed yet "losses"). Listen to any conservative commentator like Rush Limbaugh, and they would point to global warming as a socialist conspiracy to redistribute the wealth. A wedge issue.

In other words, the only question they asked was whether the rich could continue to get richer. If stopping global warming meant the wealthy couldn't maximize their wealth with impunity, then must be a socialist conspiracy, a fraud. Therefore, without even considering the huge preponderance of scientific evidence, they only need a few select details to bolster their confidence in what's really a guess that its a hoax.Then they had to profess it to other people, not only being sick, but contagious. 

This intellectual corruption is aided by conservative Christianity, a strand of beliefs which is found in most Christian sects, which sees the claim that humans could (by virtue of being greedy mind you) permanently change the climate worldwide as arrogance. The Sin of Pride. The ability to destroy the Earth is far too conceited to be credible, never mind the facts. Limbaugh has also made that argument. That's an ethical argument used to counter scientific fact.

Any morality that requires people to reject demonstrated facts is a very poor one, broken, intellectually corrupt. It's something that's destined to fail people when they really need it.

Global Warming denial is similar to Creationism. Intelligent Design isn't scientific, as the Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate showed. In that debate Ham used moral arguments to counter scientific facts. For the show Cosmos, Christian websites quote the Bible against it.

If you want to believe the Bible is wholly true, however, intelligent design lets you do that without feeling like you're a complete idiot. It even makes you feel like an intellectual upstart, even if you haven't read a book in three years. In fact, that's not enough. They have to feel wiser and morally superior to the experts. To grab that brass ring, a denier needs an industry, that is, paid professional deniers to roll out the newest point of contention against science. This is where people like Ham, Limbaugh and Glen Beck come in.    


If this isn't enough, they'll also pay pathological liars for conspiracies with hazy Mcguffins. The conspiracy doesn't have to be convincing. The worldwide conspiracy of scientists isn't, or a Satanic one among scientists in league with evil. Why? Because who can know everything about a worldwide conspiracy? If the conspiracy itself casts doubt about the physical laws of the universe, of course small details could be wrong without losing believers.

This elevates mere ignorant opinion to being a moral cause. Also, once the fear a of the conspiracy comes in, elevated self-importance follows. It burns the bridges on ever changing one's opinion about the subject. Mentally, fear the unknown evil surrounds the belief like a fortress.

Conspiracy theories go beyond the scope of this rant, but I can tell you there are real conspiracies, and you are able to separate legitimate ones from false ones by applying a simple test. Read Leonard Mlodonow's The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.

I rambled. Believe me, I tried to rewrite this. I'm out of time now. How have to update this with references if this busy weekend allows.