Quote:
Originally Posted by Miss Tick
To me the real news here is not in the actual story content, but in the fact that it is a news story at all. The real news is that we are still in a place where we have to deal with global climate warming denial. It’s like refusing to accept evolution or insisting the earth revolves around the sun. But it has much more dire consequence. If you insist the earth is 6000 years old and a white haired dude in the sky created it in 6 days and made woman from man’s rib well it’s just weird and mildly offensive in a misogynistic sort of way, but has no real impact on the rest of us unless you try to get it taught in schools not as bible study but as literal and scientific fact.
Keeping everyone stuck in a place of consistently trying to prove that the earth is one hurting planet as a direct result of our actions instead of putting all of our collective effort into coming up with ways to alleviate some of the pressure on the environment may ultimately lead to the demise of the human race as we know it. That seems serious to me, but it doesn’t get the kind of attention that one would assume impending doom would.
I know I said that believing in literal interpretations of the bible and in a 6000 year old earth and the refusal to accept evolution doesn’t impact the rest of us the way consistent denial of environmental issues does but it is subtly dangerous in that it is part of the mindset that allows relatively intelligent people to sit on the fence about serious issues that have real concrete scientific proof.
It is the reason why I am so upset when I see people rejecting science in favor of spirituality as though they were mutually exclusive.
Anyway reading about this study this morning prompted me to find an old article I had read about why anti-science ideology is bad for America and I thought I would post it here.
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Thank you. I hope that people will begin to wake up. Those of us who care about things like climate change, the biological roots of homosexuality, women's health, or any of a number of other issues *need* science. We need it when it's convenient (when we're arguing that humans *are* impacting the climate) and we need it when it's inconvenient (when biologists try to get people to understand that humans are just a large-brained, relatively hairless, African primate). Either climate change is happening or it isn't. If it isn't happening then there's nothing to worry about it. If it *is* happening (and it is) then the discussion should move from 'well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't' to 'since it is happening, what do we do about it?' The climate change deniers, particularly those of a conservative ideological bent, have been stalling. Whether they are stalling knowingly or unknowingly is beyond my ability to discern and doesn't really matter. They're stalling and have been for 20 years now. All the while the clock has been ticking.
If you are, like me, a person on and of the Left, please consider that if you aren't willing to deal with the rules of science when it's inconvenient then you have no leg upon which to stand when you criticize George Bush or the Republican party for being deliberately scientifically ignorant. One thing I would like to impress upon people is that the phrase 'it's only a theory' drives scientists up a wall. Theory doesn't mean guess. A theory is a model. That model is based upon hypothesis which make predictions can be tested or observed or both. So when someone talks about the 'theory of evolution' or the 'theory of gravity' they are not talking about 'the guess that evolution happens' or 'the guess that objects in a gravitational field behave a certain way'. They are talking about 'the model by which we explain why there are rabbits and humans and fruit flies and redwood trees' or 'the model by which we explain *how* objects behave in a gravitational field (Newton's) *and* why objects behave in certain ways in the presence of such a field (Einstein)'. These are not guesses, they are explanatory frameworks.
To me, time is getting short. There's enough simultaneous crisis facing our country any one of which would be a major headache for prior generations of Americans. We have to deal with pretty much all of them in parallel. It is long past time we stopped ceding so much ground to those who would like to hide their heads in the sands, hand wave the dangers away or blame the victims instead of the perpetrators. Long. Past. Time.
Either those of us interested in building a sustainable, more just, more literate society get our act together or our adversaries will get their act together ahead of us. I think that they have made clear what their plans are for the country. I don't want to live in the kind of America envisioned by Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann or Herman Cain. Do you?
Cheers
Aj