It's not the heat, it's the Stupidity

It was hot when I got up this morning. That is probably not completely unusual since it is normally hot in Florida in July, always compounded by the insufferable humidity, but it started me thinking about how hot it has been everywhere for the past few years and why America is no longer capable of exercising productive leadership in the world. “What!?” you say. “Huh?” you reply. Well, I’m having a little internal dialog about global warming and how our treatment of the issue reflects a larger problem with American society.

Climate science, like much of our knowledge of the natural world, is complex. The earth’s climate is affected by a diverse set of variables which range from various cycles of the sun to behavior of ocean currents to the chemical composition of the atmosphere. There is debate about the future of the earth’s climate precisely because it is a complex scientific issue, and complex scientific issues are not generally the province of the untrained layman. Some of you may recall the chewing gum commercial where four out of five dentists recommended a particular brand of gum. This was judged to be effective advertising because the chewing gum company figured dentist ought to know what you should be putting in your mouth and if a significant majority of them thought a particular product was preferred, the buying public would consider this good enough for them. They never said what the fifth dentist preferred, or what his reasoning was, but it was accepted that when experts disagree, you are better off going with the majority opinion. One might term it a sort of intellectual democracy, with the key difference that only people who have legitimate qualifications get a vote.

The current debate on global warming tosses this accepted concept in the dumpster. Fully 95 percent of qualified climate scientists, qualified being having reasonable education and experience in the in the subject area, agree that the Earth’s average temperature is increasing. Perhaps three-quarters of them are in agreement that at least some of this increase is attributable to human action. Almost all of them agree that global warming, if occurring, will have a dramatic impact on human civilization. As with everything from evolution to the theory of relativity, there is dispute among intelligent, qualified experts acting in good faith, and sometimes the lone voice crying in the wilderness is absolutely correct, but there is a reason they have that ask the audience life-line on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.  I am not a qualified expert on the Earth’s climate and I will not attempt to debate the science, I just know that if I have a lump on my neck and I consult ten doctors and nine of them say have it removed, I’m having it removed.

Unfortunately, in America we have now largely abandoned respect for education and appreciation for the scientific process and have subordinated our policy decisions to the financial interests of the corporations that fund election campaigns and the strident voices of the extreme. Corporations have no children and therefore cannot reflect upon the moral responsibility we have for how we impact future generations and extremists tend to be either ignorant or emotionally defective, or both, and do not make good leaders. As a society, whether we are progressive, conservative or don’t give a shit, we have abdicated our civic responsibility to educate ourselves on the basics of how the world functions and to select leadership which is capable of understanding complex issues and which has the courage to be honest and make difficult decisions. We no longer trust any opinion except the ones that support what we already thought and we have convinced ourselves that legitimate scientific debate is just a proxy for promoting philosophical objectives. We are so fucked. It’s really sad.

America has probably never been the moral paradise that many nostalgically long for and we have entertained some pretty fucking stupid ideas over the centuries. I’m not saying that our current idiocy represents a dramatic turn for the worse, but we seem to have lost the spirit of inquiry that used to drive our progress. It appears we think we have it all figured out and there is no need to seriously reflect on issues anymore. Few people are curious about anything but the Kardashian’s sex lives. The tragedy of this is that we are approaching a juncture in mankind’s history where thoughtful consideration of our situation will be the only thing that stands between us and unimaginable suffering. My opinion is that if you can’t understand the cause of the heat, then stay the fuck out of the kitchen.