When Galileo claimed on behalf of Copernicus that the Earth went around the Sun rather than the other way around, it is perhaps understandable that people greeted that claim with more than a little incredulity. After all, if the Earth goes around the Sun why exactly were things not bouncing about and why were people not feeling any movement? Indeed, why were people not feeling so much as even a breeze? These questions made sense because neither a theory of kinematics nor a theory of gravity was yet in place. After all, Isaac Newton had not yet been born
By now, most people have heard that there is a very good chance that assertion that global warming is taken place may very well tied to evidence that was rigged. A brief Google search under the rubric “climategate” will turn up numerous articles regarding the matter.
What is so very sad, of course, is that the claim of global warning should be tied to rigged evidence in science. Few things can be more disconcerting than the politicizing of science. This is why I have drawn attention to why Galileo’s claim heliocentric claim was understandably greeted with more than a little skepticism. It is not simply that the heliocentric view debunked the Earth from being at the center of the solar system. The more fundamental problem is that making sense of how that actually worked was, at the time, easier said than done. To be sure, none of this justified the treatment that he received. Yet, making sense of his claim was, as I have just mentioned, far easier said than done.
But why rig the evidence to in order to yield the conclusion that the Earth soon to be in the grip of global warming? What could possibly have been the motivation for doing that? And why was the claim so unreflectively and uncritically embraced by so very many? I cannot remember when so many have been so persuaded of the truth of a view on the basis of so very little evidence.
I mean why global warming in the linear fashion that people intended it rather than a cycle in the temperatures of the globe?
Now, we can all agree that waste is a bad thing. It is for that very reason that I have always regarded the Hummer as a most ridiculous vehicle to own. Leaving aside violence, few things have struck me as more incongruous than someone driving a Hummer in a major metropolitan area. Even the point of all is to be ostentatious with regard to one’s wealth, it has always seemed to me that there are much better ways to do so. Frankly, having a chauffeur is much more impressive than driving a Hummer.
However, Al Gore came out with his book to illustrate that global warming was occurring, namely his book An Inconvenient Truth, and it was rather like the scene in the movie The Blues Brothers, where a light from heaven shines: people would talk about climate change with something akin to a religious fervor. That, indeed, is just the right way of putting the point. Why? Because evidence has seemed to be entirely irrelevant to individuals fervently embracing the view of global warming. Not only that, it was completely irrelevant that the lifestyle of global warming’s most distinguished advocate, namely Al Gore himself, was quite out of step with taking global warming seriously.
There is, of course, a sense in which that is the way things should be if indeed we are talking about an actual truth. If a person fails to heed or abide by the very truth that she or he announces, then so much the worse for that individual.
The National Center for Policy Analysis has made a very good case against global warming—certainly one that is not obviously addressed by the considerations advanced in favor of global warning. However, this incongruity seems not to have mattered to the advocates of global warning.
Again, one asks: Why? What intrigues me is just how much the commitment to global warming has had all the feel of a religious conviction minus the belief in God. People believed in the idea, talked about the idea, and sanctified the idea. On the one hand, there are the facts of science; on the other, there is nature—this higher power, if you will—giving human beings an opportunity to make a difference. Might I say “to redeem themselves”? For if I ask myself who seems to believe in global warming most fervently, I am inclined to say that the answer is those who reject the idea of God.
Notice the transcendent character of the idea of global warning. If the idea holds, then idea holds regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion. The idea unifies across every conceivable difference accept, of course, in the case of those who reject the idea. And unlike evolutionary theory, global warming has a “moral imperative” that individuals are truly free to follow—and to do so by exercising faith. Although heat was countenanced as proof par excellence of the occurrence of global warming, the advocates of global warming are not deterred by the absence of heat or even the presence of extreme cold. For the reality of these things are said merely to speak to the complexity of global warming.
In the words of one person “Global warming means that there will be extremes”. But if that is the case, I asked: “What is all the fuss about, since won’t the extremes pretty much cancel one another out?” I was told that I did not understand. And, alas, the person got that exactly right: I do not understand.
And if the charge of rigging the evidence holds, then there will be a very good reason I have not understood, namely that in the first place the idea was lacking in credibility.
