Gee, it appears that scientists have been discussing the dangers of global warming, and man's responsibility for it, since before I was even born.
Yet we have failed to take it seriously until today, when we have witnessed for ourselves the melting of the polar ice caps, the rise of the oceans, and some of the most dangerous weather ever witnessed by man.
And all the while that scientists were ringing the alarm, there were energy companies fighting them tooth and nail with scientists of their own bought and paid for to refute anything climatologists might say that would demand that they find alternative energy sources or reduce the chemical emissions from their manufacturing plants.
Some in the Evangelical community have even gone so far as to teach their children that climate change is false. From the movie Jesus Camp:
The movie observes a lesson where the mother is teaching her child out right lies about evolution and global warming. There are also clips of movies and presentations presented while they are shown to children making ridiculously inaccurate statements about Abortion, Global Warming, and Evolution. Their fundamental argument seems to be, the people who disagree with them just have wrong, “Beliefs”. They fail to acknowledge or address that their own ideals are nothing more then Faith/Beliefs which are not verifiable in anyway.
Worse, their logic behind denying global warming and a lot of other problems in the world is just that the Earth is temporary and so it doesn’t really matter. What a horrible legacy to leave to your children. Well we thought the world was going to end, so we really didn’t think destroying the climate and starting World War Three would really matter in the long term.
With that kind of aggressive blowback is it any wonder that it took so long for people to start taking climate change seriously? And honestly, have we even started yet?
O/T- Ex-panty sniffer, John (the douchebag) Ziegler is rippin on Failin Palin on Huffpo...hehe
ReplyDeleteWith that kind of aggressive blowback is it any wonder that it took so long for people to start taking climate change seriously? And honestly, have we even started yet? you ask.
ReplyDeleteNo. It is yet another in a long list of reasons why religious nonsense must end. It is pretty much the cause of man's inhumanity to man. Think about it.
Well, telling lies to enrich their bank accounts is standard operating procedure for the right. Since they await the Second Coming, they don't give a rat's ass about the poor or all the people Jesus said to help. They don't care what lies are passed onto their children, because God is gonna save them. And if He doesn't, they managed to screw everyone while they were here, and what is more fun than screwing your neighbor (or your campaign worker, or your future wives?) It's just too bad that they cannot sue their wealth and their brains for the good of all without calling it socialism or class warfare.
ReplyDeleteSemi-O/T: even if this report is innaccurate, the headline alone - "Low IQ and Conservative Beliefs Linked to Racism" - is priceless.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html
For all of the stated reasons, I am proud to be a Liberal!!!
ReplyDeleteI’ve been fighting fundies (first it was my mother, but now some of the relatives) since I was quite small. I figure if they lie about other people and their own morality, they can’t be trusted in a scientific discussion.
ReplyDeleteSome years ago, a Jewish friend persisted in supporting the Republican right wing evangelicals, cynically proud that the Jews were “using” them. I leaned on him as hard as I could, but I don’t know that it did much good.
We must do everything we can think of to deny the evangelicals a place at the table.
Global warming was probably in your textbooks. They used to call it "the greenhouse effect". I remember this from high school and college.
ReplyDeleteThere is some blowback happening within the Christian community. A good summary can be found here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/01/21/creationism-chases-people-out-of-church/
Gore didn't invent Climate change. He is an opportunist selfish meglomaniac who jumped on the bandwagon even when there's little to none hard evidence either way.
ReplyDeleteWe haven't seen this interview yet, her hands were out of control, she says she is raising kids and running business's up in alaska, WTF?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.motivationtruth.com/2012/01/governor-palin-on-tom-sullivan-show.html
Gryph, I think the problem of regarding science as something to believe or not believe has clear religious roots, but religion's modern anti-science agenda has a lot to do with the conflation of religion and Republican politics for mutual power. Fundie preachers are known to treat elements of the Republican/corporate agenda as religious ideals (free-market capitalism=God, Socialism=Fascism=Communism=Liberals=Satan, Obama=anti-Christ, etc). Throw some Koch Bros-funded junk science into the mix (see Palin's polar bear study), which the Republicans carry back into their churches like ants carrying bait back to their colonies, and you've got an alternate reality in which these sheep live. Bill Nye (The Science Guy) was loudly heckled by a woman who walked out of one of his lectures in TX b/c he said the moon doesn't make it's own light, and God says He put two lights in the sky. Even w/out corporate conflation, religion has itself been civilization's eqivalent of a stuck parking brake.
ReplyDelete"But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must needs invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down." -- Martin Luther re Copernicus. And, of course, the Catholic church's imprisonment of Galileo for the crime of confirming/endorsing Copernicus' work is well known.
Another modern version of religious denial involves the Mormon church and the DNA evidence which shows Native Americans derived from Asia and are NOT a lost tribe of Israel. That blows the foundation right out from under the Book of Mormon. Of course, that's only a problem if you believe in DNA. "We would hope that church members would not simply buy into the latest DNA arguments being promulgated by those who oppose the church for some reason or other," said Michael Otterson, a Salt Lake City-based spokesman for the Mormon church. [Note that the Mormon church raises no objection to the death penalty - not even for those convicted w/ DNA evidence.]
This sort of nonsense makes christianity REALLY seem like nothing but a crazy cult. All religions can basically be defined as a cult because a certain amount of rational thought must be suspended in order to participate in one. People call it "faith" but "faith" defined is actually suspension of varying degrees of rational thought.
ReplyDeleteIt's bad enough to dumb kids down enough to accept "an old man in the sky that is running the show" but it's vilely reprehensible to teach them bad science and outright lie to them about the mechanics of planet earth.
These fundies keep to themselves, as many cults do, because if one of their children, or themselves, started spouting this kind of nonsense around normal, thinking individuals they'd be laughed out of the room. Jim Jones kept his people close for the same reason, so did the leaders of Heaven's Gate and the Solar Temple.
I know some missionaries and they always go off to do their "good works" in some third world place that has no modern conveniences and very little knowledge of the outside world. They have no knowledge of the physical sciences other than that learned by observation of their environment. These people don't know they are being lied to because they are cut off from the outside world; a "big bearded guy in the sky that made everything" might just sound as plausible to them as any other creation myth.
As a matter of fact, many original creation myths prior to christianity have divine beings living in the sky. Just take a look at the sky on a dark, starry night or a beautiful sunny day. Watch the planets move nightly against the static background of the stars. Notice that the sun comes and goes with the seasons. This is powerful stuff even if you DO understand the science behind it. Think for a moment that you are a person that has no knowledge of the mechanics of space and our place in it. You'd probably assume that there are divine beings pulling the strings up there; what else could it be?
The sky deserves great reverence and always has been a very powerful and divine inspiration to man so it's no surprise that the sky is often the home to all-powerful beings. The christian god was created as a "guy in the sky" because that's an easy sell to those whom they wish to convert; most of them already had their own sky worship or guys in the sky anyway. This same thinking applied to the dates of christmas and easter as most religions already celebrated winter solstice and eoster/eostrus near that same time.
Religion is just sales: "Come on over to our religion, you won't have to change a thing and ours is better than yours and will give you more benefits than the one that you are currently in."
Fine, convert people as you like, but just don't lie to them. Don't lie to them about science and don't withhold learning opportunities; don't cut your devotees off from the rest of society. What? You can't convert people without lying to them? Why am I not surprised.
Sorry so long, this just struck a nerve...
NASA: 130 years of global warming in 30 seconds
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/30/1059401/-NASA:-130-years-of-global-warming-in-30-seconds?via=siderec
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/01/30/us/30reuters-palin-hacking.html?_r=1&hp
ReplyDeleteAbout the hacker appeal.
As for the last sentence:
ReplyDeleteNo, we have not!
(Of course, you knew the answer).
Every living human should read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikepedia
"Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin on 27 September 1962. The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement."
Yes indeed, that is correct NINETEEN SIXTY TWO, a half a century ago, and she was far from the first to discuss the dangers of destroying the ecology of the earth.
Good news, ELMO said . . . @8:23 AM!
ReplyDeleteI was a tot the year this was released, and I remember being taught REAL science (get this- in a Catholic Parochial School). We were taught about greenhouse gasses, the probability of acid rain, phosphates chemically polluting water, Aerosol Sprays were damaging the atmosphere and allowing dangerous uvb rays, thus increasing skin cancers etc, and lastly, global warming as a real threat.
ReplyDeleteAnd here we are, stuck in neutral because of the fables written in all cults and holy books.
And now the repugs want to fast track FRACKING while ignoring the damage it will do.
Your last sentence says it all!
We're at square one, with volumes of scientific proof collecting dust.
Thanks for using my link, Gryph.
ReplyDeleteThanks Gryphen for reminding people that the science of climate change goes back a long, long way. We just haven't been listening. Maybe another year like 2011 will finally make us wake up out of the stupor...
ReplyDeletehttp://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/01/buti-thought-global-warming-is-hoax.html
I'm in New Jersey and it's t-shirt weather today. But gradual linear warming isn't what climate change means - it means violent, record-smashing extreme weather events as shown on that vide.