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Imagining the Future History of Climate Change
HughPickens.com writes "The NYT reports that Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University, is attracting wide notice these days for a work of science fiction called "The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future," that takes the point of view of a historian in 2393 explaining how "the Great Collapse of 2093" occurred. "Without spoiling the story," Oreskes said in an interview, "I can tell you that a lot of what happens — floods, droughts, mass migrations, the end of humanity in Africa and Australia — is the result of inaction to very clear warnings" about climate change caused by humans." Dramatizing the science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, the book reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do and reveals the self-serving interests of the so called "carbon combustion complex" that have turned the practice of science into political fodder.
Oreskes argues that scientists failed us, and in a very particular way: They failed us by being too conservative. Scientists today know full well that the "95 percent confidence limit" is merely a convention, not a law of the universe. Nonetheless, this convention, the historian suggests, leads scientists to be far too cautious, far too easily disrupted by the doubt-mongering of denialists, and far too unwilling to shout from the rooftops what they all knew was happening. "Western scientists built an intellectual culture based on the premise that it was worse to fool oneself into believing in something that did not exist than not to believe in something that did."
Why target scientists in particular in this book? Simply because a distant future historian would target scientists too, says Oreskes. "If you think about historians who write about the collapse of the Roman Empire, or the collapse of the Mayans or the Incans, it's always about trying to understand all of the factors that contributed," Oreskes says. "So we felt that we had to say something about scientists.""
Oreskes argues that scientists failed us, and in a very particular way: They failed us by being too conservative. Scientists today know full well that the "95 percent confidence limit" is merely a convention, not a law of the universe. Nonetheless, this convention, the historian suggests, leads scientists to be far too cautious, far too easily disrupted by the doubt-mongering of denialists, and far too unwilling to shout from the rooftops what they all knew was happening. "Western scientists built an intellectual culture based on the premise that it was worse to fool oneself into believing in something that did not exist than not to believe in something that did."
Why target scientists in particular in this book? Simply because a distant future historian would target scientists too, says Oreskes. "If you think about historians who write about the collapse of the Roman Empire, or the collapse of the Mayans or the Incans, it's always about trying to understand all of the factors that contributed," Oreskes says. "So we felt that we had to say something about scientists.""
It is interesting to me that scientists who regularly bump shoulders with economists, business professors, engineers, and the like are yet unable to come up with a solution to climate change that satisfies the political, economic, and technological realities of today. It seems to me they are more interested in whining about the problem than doing the hard work of finding a solution.
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I don't think it's a blue/red issue. I mean shit, look at Al Gore, if there was a list of everybody on the planet sorted by personal carbon consumption, he'd probably be in the top 1%. I don't care how energy efficient his 20 bedroom house or his private jet are; both inevitably consume a LOT more energy than your typical person's luxuries. What annoys the fuck out of me about this whole thing is how everybody talks up and down about how everybody else needs to conserve, but they conveniently think they themselves are the exception. So people like dipshit come up with carbon credits; aka indulgences.
The fact is nobody, including Mr. Alarmist himself, is willing to give up their conveniences. Although my own carbon consumption is probably pretty damn low (I ride my bike...everywhere, mainly because I just want the exercise though) I don't make any kind of effort to keep it that way. I don't really see any convincing reason why anybody else should either. Here's why:
In a small contained lab environment we can sit there and measure how much of a greenhouse effect different gases have, but historical data doesn't even so much as show a correlation between greenhouse gases and climate change. One of the coldest periods in Earth's history for example also had the highest known levels of atmospheric CO2 (which was about 30 times what we have now.) It doesn't appear to harm ocean life, plant life, or land animals either as during one of Earth's "greenest" periods in history we had 20 times the present atmospheric CO2, really fucking massively sized insects, dinosaurs, and more. The arguments therefore about acidifying the ocean are therefore crap. Other data suggests that rises in atmospheric CO2 follow rises in climate, not the other way around (ironically Al Gore used one such chart to argue that CO2 followed rises in temperature, but just looking at the chart you could easily see it was the opposite.)
As for global warming itself, it could be fully or partially man caused. I don't know, but again, I don't think it's a problem either way, so I don't really give a crap. Japan suffered a drought in the 30s before we had any notion of global warming. Today if all of the climate models were correct, water should be like gold there, yet they have plenty of it. Likewise, this whole story is a load of crap.
It's entirely possible that the higher CO2 we're seeing is yet another rise following a climate change that we had no part in. This already reminds me of how not more than five years ago, the "scientific consensus" was that eating food that contained cholesterol causes your blood cholesterol levels to go up. Now we've found out that you can eat all of the cholesterol containing food you want and it doesn't do diddly to your blood cholesterol levels. Instead that's something decided by your liver which we can now control completely using statin drugs. Simple solution. Whoda thunker?
And by the way, the arguments for stopping climate change so that we can save the economy are also incredibly stupid and self defeating. We have not, even one time, seen a case where climate change has caused long term economic damage. At the very worst bad weather has caused localized destruction that is, in every single case, completely recovered within a decade. Meanwhile we have seen on well more than one occasion where stupid economic decisions cause global long term collapse. Hurting the economy for what is probably much ado about nothing is therefore pointless.
Who ARE you believing? So far there has been uninterrupted warming for a half-century with a linear trend. You are parroting lies that others are paid hundred millions dollars in occult funds to tell you. Please tell us your motivations.
Can't we just shoot these doubt-mongering denialists and move on to the great new world of next Tuesday? What is it, that keeps the rest of us so cautious in dealing with these contemptible human beings? They are traitors to humanity and should be executed — instead of being allowed to affect the good scientists' work, while secretly scheming to escape to a private Elysium of their own, when the Earth is no longer habitable.
We — historians of science, politicians, music professors, and actors alike — know better!
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