Climate: American Psycho

Why are Americans so distrustful of science? A recent survey of Americans concluded that the majority of those interviewed have little or no regard for science and are especially wary of those doing the science.  Climate change is the perfect exemplar. The robust science indicting anthropomorphic emissions of carbon dioxide as the most important factor in rising global temperatures is irrefutable. There is no controversy about climate change; it is a fact. And the consensus among climate scientists, those doing the research and publishing in prestigious peer reviewed journals is nearly universal. Yet, slightly more than half of Americans believe global warming is an issue contrived by environmentalists, lefties, and profiteering, grant seeking scientists. Politicians have helped to shape the growing and very troubling bias against empirically driven reason. Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum rolls his eyes and contorts his mouth into a condescending sneer whenever he refers to the climate conspiracy. President Obama has had four years to articulate an energy policy that addresses an issue that the military views as a bigger threat to American national security than terrorism; an issue I describe as the moral issue of this generation.  Even during a recent speech on energy, the president could not bring himself to say climate change once when talking about the need for green technologies as a significant component of our energy portfolio. His reluctance to do so may have been good politics, but an emphatic failure to use a much needed teachable moment.  Americans must understand the science of climate change as well as the dire consequences of failing to cap and ultimately reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Yet with leaders in Congress and the Oval office lacking the moral courage as well as the requisite scientific literacy to engage the public in a most serious dialog about the impacts of climate change , a dark future threatens the very existence of tens of thousands of species and promises an irreversibly altered planet that nobody alive today would recognize.

Policymakers, unregulated capitalism, greed, as well as the paralyzing apathy of many Americans make the worst case scenarios depicted by climate scientists a certainty.  The virulent appeal of climate denialism to many originates from our lethal embrace of a sham theology of American make believe marketed by plutocrats and their media who profit from oil and deceit .

 The very same kind of aggressive marketing by the energy lobby and ultra-conservatives   made every American complicit in the illegal invasion of Iraq. The mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians is little more than a fading memory for most of us. Lies were sold like toothpaste to the credulous public by the Bush Administration and respected media sources like The New York Times and The Washington Post. The lingering hatred of America will be a potential source of blowback and terrorist recruitment for decades to come.

Americans are taught not to question. Our children are not taught to think deeply about ideas and issues in school, but merely to memorize facts. Controversy is to be avoided always. Seeking information and exchanging ideas that might challenge the actions of our leaders is unpatriotic. We’re either with them or against them. And the only acceptable role for public education is to validate what we have been told to believe. Questions challenging the status quo are taboo.  Adults are as incapable of integrating knowledge into a larger context as their children. They have never learned the most important lesson schools should teach our children and that is how to apply knowledge to solve the many problems humanity faces. Instead, schools are teaching our children to believe rather than think. Thinking necessitates the ability to recognize that not all information is created equal. Science is based on testable hypotheses and empirical evidence that solidifies into a factual foundation that cannot be assailed credibly with faith and greed based mendacity.

In a growing number of states nuanced theories like climate change and natural selection are not being taught because of the American anti-science anti-education zeitgeist so prevalent in contemporary America. This marriage of cherished ignorance and fundamentalist religious dogma has made America the most egregious rogue nation in the world. Teachers are urged to teach the controversy.  Exactly how one would do this is unclear given that scientific theories like evolution and climate change have a vast body of evidence and peer reviewed science supporting them. This is why evolution meets the rigorous scientific criteria to be designated as a theory. There is no controversy. Evolution is a fact. Creationism does not rely on facts because there are none. Yet religious zealots continue their silly crusade to require public schools to teach intelligent design in science classrooms. The same is true with climate science. Teachers who had the audacity to show “An Inconvenient Truth” to their students were sometimes required to provide equal time to climate denialism.  What is next? Will the study of nutrition also require that students read “Leviticus”?

   It will take courage to tell the public the truth. What is the truth? Very simply, the planet is warming due to man’s addiction to fossil fuels. As carbon dioxide levels rise, more heat will be trapped in our lower atmosphere and temperatures will continue to rise. As temperatures continue to inexorably rise numerous positive feedback loops such as the massive release of methane form melting tundra and clathrates will accelerate, perhaps irreversibly, the amount of heat trapped in our atmosphere. Fossil fuels are the most expensive form of energy man could ever have imagined. How could this be? The apparent cost effectiveness of fossil fuels is due to the externalization of the real costs of our carbon addiction. What are the external costs of the fraudulent carbon economy?   Our addiction to carbon based fuels has resulted in air, water, and ground pollution, geo-political conflicts, increased medical costs due to increasing prevalence of respiratory ailments like asthma, displacement of indigenous peoples, destruction of ecosystems, the mass extinction of dozens of species each day, and damage to local economies like the hundreds of communities impacted by the corporate irresponsibility and arrogance that resulted in the British Petroleum Gulf spill. None of these costs are added to the price we pay at the pump. If they were, a gallon of gasoline would cost thousands of dollars.

Americans have been conditioned to distrust complexity. If an idea cannot be expressed in simple and concise terms it will never gain traction. The land of paradox, America, confronts us with this conundrum: if Americans do not understand climate science, they will not demand that our policymakers confront the issue. Even if our policymakers understand the science and its dire implications, they will typically not act because of political consequences and craven expediency.  And   every knowledge void will be quickly filled by those who would exploit our ignorance to propagate distortions, lies, and fear. The climate denialism industry is heavily financed by fossil fuel multinationals and billionaire ideologues like the Koch brothers through numerous right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the  Discovery Institute, and the Cato Foundation to name just a few.  The positions taken by these propaganda organizations can be easily predicted by obtaining a list of major donors. Their employees are described as scholars implying an expertise that is not reflected in their writing or interpretation of factual evidence.

  An example of disingenuous use of putative factual information is the oft repeated denialist claim that the planet has been cooling since 1998. I was not certain what they were talking about until I realized that 1998 was the warmest year on record for North America. Using the logic of denialist rhetoric which is intended to deceive rather than elucidate, if every year has been marginally cooler than the record setting year of 1998 ( 2005 now holds the distinction as the warmest year on record, soon to be replace by 2012), then the planet must be cooling. The denialist propagandists assure us we should be more worried about global cooling and the next ice age then the alarmist warming scenarios predicted by trained and increasingly alarmed climatologists . As denialists receive more money from the fossil fuel industries, and the message becomes more strident and pervasive, gullible Americans will continue to choose ignorance over rational policy changes. Our continued embrace of denialist fabrications is an irreversible suicidal trajectory.  

 To paraphrase Aldous Huxley, distorting and trivializing the facts does not make them conveniently disappear.  The mean global temperature has been above average every year since 1998 and each of those subsequent years ranked among the 20 warmest on record. That data cluster is never mentioned in the cooling scenario because the dishonesty of its advocates would be betrayed. Nor was 2005 identified as the warmest year on record.   Additionally, the acknowledgement of inconvenient evidence would contradict an effective deception that has been repeated endlessly by people whose job is to know better.   

The failure of either major presidential candidate to even mention the word climate during their three debates is a dispiriting example that facts no longer matter. The media complicity in keeping a veil of ignorance over the moral issue of this generation has been lucidly explicit for several decades. For example, former presidential candidate Rick Santorum middle school discourse on global warming, I would have asked him to explain, in tiny bites of fifty words or less, why all those naïve, self-serving, profiteering scientists at NOAA and the EPA, and the IPCC are so concerned about rising levels of greenhouse gases.  I’d also ask him how those harmless gases are supposed to increase atmospheric temperatures as claimed by the ignoramus climatologists he loathes so much, even though the Republican mantra is that their concerns are pure fantasy. In other words, does Rick have a basic middle school understanding of the issue? Does he have a basic understanding of fundamental middle school science? Does he know the chemical symbol for gold (just curious)?  Since I have already conceded that Rick knows shit, I expect that his responses would not disappoint and echo my contention.

For example, had I been present during Rick’s middle school discourse on global warming, I would have asked him to explain, in tiny bites and in fifty words or less, why all those naïve, self-serving, profiteering scientists at NOAA and the EPA,  and the IPCC are so concerned about rising levels of greenhouse gases.  I’d also ask him how those harmless gases are supposed to increase atmospheric temperatures as claimed by the ignoramus climatologists he loathes so much, even though their concerns are pure fantasy in Rick Perry’s science illiterate parallel universe. In other words, does Rick have a basic middle school understanding of the issue? Does he have a basic understanding of fundamental middle school science? Does he know the chemical symbol for gold (just curious)?  Since I have already conceded that Rick knows shit, I expect that his responses would not disappoint and echo my contention.

 To be clear there is no doubt that that our rapidly warming planet is the biggest threat we face as a species. If you are unacquainted with the science, like “Slick Rick”, then get a quick tutorial by Googling a recent pentagon study that concluded that greenhouse warming poses a bigger threat to America than terrorism. Former Republican presidential candidate and Texas governor  Rick Perry believes otherwise. “I think we’re seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists that (sic) are coming forward and questioning the original idea that manmade global warming is what is causing the climate to change.” The wise man has spoken, but who are these scientists who are “daily” coming forward to renounce the “theory “of global warming? Not even Rick knows the answer to that simple question because his assertions are not true. There is an overwhelming consensus among CLIMATE scientists that the window of opportunity to reduce carbon emissions is rapidly closing. As emissions continue to rise unabated, catastrophic changes to our planet’s ecology (our life support system) are inevitable. Perry eloquently summed up his simian views by stating that, “I don’t think from my perspective that I don’t want to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven and from my perspective is more and more being put into question.” Grammatically garbled gibberish from yet another Texas idiot and megalomaniac. Apparently, Rick is not aware that a theory is a powerful word in science. To designate something as a scientific theory like evolution, the existence of atoms, disease caused by pathogenic microbes, and, yes, climate altered by man’s activities, is to affirm it as being as close to an absolute truth as science permits.

   So Rick Perry is not being truthful. If Rick says things that are not true then Rick is a liar. Sadly, Rick is not reluctant to put his abysmal ignorance on display. Like a male peacock’s colorful mating plumage, Perry struts his cognitively challenged intellect to attract voters who frankly don’t know shit. But fear not, Rick Perry knows shit. Like Elmer Gantry, Rick could talk a Hoosier virgin out of her hot pink panties. Of course, as a Christian soldier Rick would never do such a thing. Perry’s professed faith will be used to bludgeon Biblical truths into the noggins of unbelievers like me. Christian politicians are inoculated from self-doubt by the unyielding dogma of their faith. Unfortunately saving the planet is not a Christian priority because of that Rapture thing. That imposing task will be left to heathens who just can’t buy into the god delusion. Religion is a haven for psychotics and why it has any sway in rational discourse is beyond rational contemplation.

 What I would like to know is why the press simply allows these shameless charlatans posing as public servants to spew whatever nonsense drifts into their vacuous reptilian brains without putting their cloven feet into the molten flames of a truth check. Shouldn’t every citizen be an empiricist and demand evidence from the buffoons who proclaim themselves as saviors of our dysfunctional political process? Do we simply put the fate of our imperiled planet into the hands of “Slick Rick”, Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and a Cecille B. DeMille cast of buffoons simply because they can say whatever crazy bullshit they want on Fox or the lunatic asylum of right wing talk radio with impunity  ?