Climate Change

I have a confession to make. I do not know if our climate really is warming because of excessive carbon emissions from our civilization. I don't even know if it's warming at all. I have heard a lot of very suggestive evidence, but I don't really understand enough climate science to make an informed decision. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is well documented, but are we putting enough into the atmosphere to make a difference? What else is going on? Is solar output variable enough? How consistent a trend do we expect? Etc.

As a general rule, people to whom I have previously attached credibility because of other things they have said, are arguing that climate change is real. And many of the people who argue that it's not, are people who I have other reasons not to trust. But these two statements are neither comprehensive, nor 100% reliable.

If I had to bet, I would have no hesitation betting that it's real. I'm almost at the point of hoping the Greenland icecap collapses sometime soon; that would probably settle the argument (or at least substantially reduce the number of skeptics). But to be perfectly honest, I don't actually care.

I don't care, because the things we need to do to mitigate climate change are mostly things that we will have to do anyway. And when I say "have to", I mean "be required by the the laws of physics to". The simple fix to climate change is to stop using fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are limited, and will run out eventually. We will then stop using them, whether we want to or not.

Climate change is like having the council come around and tell you that you have to stop dumping rubbish on your lawn, because it will attract termites. You might think that the rubbish won't really attract termites, or that termites will come around anyway. But the fact is, your lawn has a finite size, and eventually there will be no more room to dump rubbish. You need a more elegant solution.

In the long run (...we are all dead, but our descendants are not...) we will need to adjust to a planetary energy budget that is basically solar; or else we will need a new energy source like fusion. The time to develop these technologies is when we have the luxury of cheap energy and large agricultural surpluses, so that we can spare a lot of people to research it (directly as engineers and scientists, and indirectly building all the necessary tools and equipment). When we are almost out of oil and food and everyone is fighting for enough to live on, no-one will have time to develop a really high-efficiency solar cell, or a gadget that turns matter into energy. These things are high-tech, and expensive.

Climate change is just another reason to sort out our energy needs sooner, rather than later. Yeah, call me a tree-hugging hippy, but I want to have a comfortable retirement, not get booted out into the waterless wastes because I can't work the plough any more.

It's a conspiracy

There are a lot of people out there who think the Apollo missions never made it to the moon. The story goes that the US government had promised a landing by the end of the decade; realized they couldn't do it; and decided to fake it instead of facing the embarassment. Ask them for evidence, and they will point to all sorts of signs that the footage of astronauts on the moon was faked on a sound stage. This may or may not be true (I've never heard anything to make me think it is), but at least it makes sense.

Then there are "truthers". They think the US government wanted a large-scale, scary terrorist attack so they could justify all sorts of repressive security measures and military action. So they faked an attack on the Twin Towers. So far, so good. Ask them for evidence, though, and many (not all, but many) will point to anomalies in the way the towers collapsed.

Here's a tip: the simplest way to make it look like somebody flew a plane into a skyscraper is... to fly a plane into a skyscraper. If you've got the money and the resources of the US government behind you, getting a plane full of jetfuel and piloting it into a building will be easy. After all, they went to the trouble of making a few hundred passengers vanish, didn't they? Or else they faked their existence, who cares.

Once you've done that, and you've got two large buildings on fire, the rest is easy. There will be plenty of casualties, and the public will be good and scared. Think - would 9/11 have been different if the buildings had burned for hours and ended up hollow shells? If you want to demolish them with explosives, you just announce that they're unsafe, and send in your team of military demolition specialists to publically plant the charges.

If "truthers" had stories about missing planes, and faked victims, or perhaps that the government knew the attack was coming and deliberately ignored it (as for Pearl Harbor, no doubt), that would at least make sense. It'd take a lot to convince me, but it wouldn't be ridiculous on its face.

And that brings me to "birthers". Obama's not eligible for President, they say. He was born in Kenya, and he's not a "natural born citizen". The birth certificates are faked. Again, this makes sense initially. Obama realizes in the 90's that he wants to be president, has an eligibility problem, and cooks up some scheme to fix the records. They're electronic now, apparently, and they could say anything.

But then we go looking at old newspapers, and find that his birth was announced in Honolulu newspapers way back in 1961, as having happened in Honolulu. So the birthers have to say that this was faked, too. But suddenly, it's not an ambitious man running for President who's faking records; it's a teenaged mother, and the only reason she could possibly have for doing it is so that her new-born son (who has a black parent) can one day run for president. This, too, does not pass the laugh test.

And yet a considerable percentage of Americans swallow this rubbish. When your ideas make the moon-landing hoaxers look sane and reasonable, it's time to quit drinking.

Brainwashed!

A local chain of churches in my area (and maybe a lot more widespread, who knows) share the effort of creating the obligatory thought-provoking roadside billboard message. These are usually at least interesting, although they sometimes make me feel like scribbling a response.

The current one asks "Are you too brainwashed to read the bible?" over a picture of somebody with three things being stuffed into his head - a television, a newspaper, and a couple of books. The rear book is a penguin edition of something; but the front one is "The God Delusion". I'm sure Richard Dawkins would be chuffed.

It's amusing to me, because reading the Bible was an absolutely pivotal point in my religious attitudes. Read it, in its entirety, and you will see why many people regard it as a repulsive book. I would cheerfully recommend it to anybody in the hopes that they would be more inclined to agree with me; possibly even more than any of the New Atheist books. After all, no-one can complain that the author of the Bible is biased against religion.

If I were advising the church on PR campaigns, "Read the Bible" is probably the last thing I would go for, unless I could figure out a way to make sure no-one actually did it. Making them all feel guilty about not doing it, but not guilty enough to actually do it, is probably optimal.

Maybe that's what they're trying to do.