Walt Bagley
wrote:
I have always given my opinion on the burning of fossil fuels as it relates to Climate Change, and I'm sure my view is shared by many in the scientific community, although the push for renewable sources of power is so powerful that entire nations have climbed on board. I tend to look at the whole situation from a scientific perspective, which is that Earth's climate has always changed.
There has never been, nor will there ever be, a time when the Earth's climates remain static, or at least as long as the Earth is still revolving around the Sun and remains an inhabitable planet. The changes are slow, however, so generations will fail to notice them for the most part. Knowing where we are today as compared to how things were during the infamous Ice Age requires our ability to understand the past by viewing things we can see now, mostly while digging into the earth and examining fossil remains and geological formations, etc. Even though we have developed greater and greater technology in this area, new things are always discovered that totally replace previous knowledge, but far more accuracy in defining past events is obvious.
But predicting the future is another thing altogether. To discover what happened on this planet during past eras requires finding things that are already here, and reading them with some precision. The future has no tracks to follow, so the past is used to help define its direction. This is all we have with which to work our technological wonders. And if the past proved rather difficult to figure out, imagine how much more difficult it would be trying to announce to the world those things that will eventually be.
Because anything regarding the future would be nothing more than guesses, or theories, it would seem rather ridiculous to get people running in panic because of someone's imaginary contrivances. But politics can play in this game very well, and play it will. This depends upon gross ignorance, and all of us are ignorant in most areas when it comes to science, and even more of us are ignorant as to anything regarding the future as far as scientific evidence is concerned. Leaders of nations are no better than the rest of us, each waiting to learn of the newest discoveries that are announced by the scientific community. This ignorance is such that anything that is announced might not be criticized enough, accepted more because we need to trust the scientific community, like we do doctors and lawyers and Indian Chiefs, because they are the only ones who might know the answers to our questions.
We can imagine a doctor in a remote village, alone in his craft, telling the citizens that if they do not hurry to his office and get this one shot, they will all die. He could become rather wealthy in a relatively short period of time because the people had no choice. They would be ignorant in medical science, so this doctor would have that much power over them.
This is about how it is when we deal with information coming from climatologists, or all those politicians who grab bits of data and run with it. Politics comes into play because politicians are far more clever than all the scientists whose gazes are focused onto minute pieces of our planetary formation. However, scientists are still guided as much by their particular ideologies as they are the absolute facts as they might be defined, so this can bring them into the realm of politics as well. The scientists who are more interested in satisfying their causes than relating their true beliefs in many areas will readily follow those who cannot wait to misinform the public, all because the end justifies the means. But those clever politicians, unlike most of those scientists who are actually hoping for a new version of the Garden of Eden, are not all that interested in saving small butterflies and preserving expanses of old-growth forests. Their goals reach into the realm of power, of that same control the doctor of a remote village had. They love to use gross ignorance, and then scientific support, for the best means by which they can rise above the masses and wield the mighty scepter, tossing coins to the peasants whenever they feel the need to prove their love for humanity. Power is their goal, and our ignorance can let them have it before we know what happened to us.
There has never been, nor will there ever be, a time when the Earth's climates remain static, or at least as long as the Earth is still revolving around the Sun and remains an inhabitable planet. The changes are slow, however, so generations will fail to notice them for the most part. Knowing where we are today as compared to how things were during the infamous Ice Age requires our ability to understand the past by viewing things we can see now, mostly while digging into the earth and examining fossil remains and geological formations, etc. Even though we have developed greater and greater technology in this area, new things are always discovered that totally replace previous knowledge, but far more accuracy in defining past events is obvious.
But predicting the future is another thing altogether. To discover what happened on this planet during past eras requires finding things that are already here, and reading them with some precision. The future has no tracks to follow, so the past is used to help define its direction. This is all we have with which to work our technological wonders. And if the past proved rather difficult to figure out, imagine how much more difficult it would be trying to announce to the world those things that will eventually be.
Because anything regarding the future would be nothing more than guesses, or theories, it would seem rather ridiculous to get people running in panic because of someone's imaginary contrivances. But politics can play in this game very well, and play it will. This depends upon gross ignorance, and all of us are ignorant in most areas when it comes to science, and even more of us are ignorant as to anything regarding the future as far as scientific evidence is concerned. Leaders of nations are no better than the rest of us, each waiting to learn of the newest discoveries that are announced by the scientific community. This ignorance is such that anything that is announced might not be criticized enough, accepted more because we need to trust the scientific community, like we do doctors and lawyers and Indian Chiefs, because they are the only ones who might know the answers to our questions.
We can imagine a doctor in a remote village, alone in his craft, telling the citizens that if they do not hurry to his office and get this one shot, they will all die. He could become rather wealthy in a relatively short period of time because the people had no choice. They would be ignorant in medical science, so this doctor would have that much power over them.
This is about how it is when we deal with information coming from climatologists, or all those politicians who grab bits of data and run with it. Politics comes into play because politicians are far more clever than all the scientists whose gazes are focused onto minute pieces of our planetary formation. However, scientists are still guided as much by their particular ideologies as they are the absolute facts as they might be defined, so this can bring them into the realm of politics as well. The scientists who are more interested in satisfying their causes than relating their true beliefs in many areas will readily follow those who cannot wait to misinform the public, all because the end justifies the means. But those clever politicians, unlike most of those scientists who are actually hoping for a new version of the Garden of Eden, are not all that interested in saving small butterflies and preserving expanses of old-growth forests. Their goals reach into the realm of power, of that same control the doctor of a remote village had. They love to use gross ignorance, and then scientific support, for the best means by which they can rise above the masses and wield the mighty scepter, tossing coins to the peasants whenever they feel the need to prove their love for humanity. Power is their goal, and our ignorance can let them have it before we know what happened to us.
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