John Stuart pointed it out.  Ignoring all the crude jokes and spiffy graphics, he talked about four ex-EPA leaders serving four different Republican presidents (all the way back to Reagan) stating before Congress that global warming is a problem we MUST solve.  Those weren’t the exact words, but that’s the idea.  It was amusing to hear this, of course, coming from Republican mouths that usually “speak with a forked tongue” (maybe all the good old white boys that stole land from Native Americans were Republican?).  More amusing perhaps was the global warming denial espoused by the GOP idiots, aka honorable congress people, who were questioning these ex-EPA officials.  What’s with this denial of global warming?

Some of it, of course, is due to this frightening current running through America, a prehistoric, Neanderthal anti-science current, if not an all-out hatred of science.  This covers the gamut of people distrusting science (didn’t it cause all the world’s problems?) to religious fanatics who find science far too secular.  Our nation now has millennials to old geezers covering that whole spectrum who are technical savages, addicted to their technology and enjoying the internet’s social media, iTunes, NetFlix, iPhones, and other technological marvels, but know less about where this all comes from than an aborigine in Australia (who, in fact, probably understands practical weather-related science more than these millenials—or those GOP idiots).  Our nation also has religious fanatics, again from all ages, who love that museum in Kentucky that shows modern human beings coexisting with dinosaurs (all those fossils are just consequences of Noah’s flood, don’t you know?).  And, above all, our nation has unscrupulous business people, mostly wealthy old farts, who deny global warming simply because they want to continue their polluting, toxic chemical leaching, and natural-gas-fracking ways.  The latter are those represented by those GOP congressional lackeys, of course.

I can’t do anything about the anti-science sentiment—well, maybe be amused.  To all those using technology today, including people reading this blog, I’d ask: where the hell do you think this technology comes from?  Those humans in that Kentucky panorama didn’t pull it out of the dinosaurs’ asses, that’s for sure.  Science has done more to improve the lot of human beings than any small-minded politico or political action group (ignoring Greenpeace, which has a mixed track record).  In fact, it’s the small-minded politicos who use science and technology in bad ways, from bombs to biowarfare.  The hypocrisy is overwhelming and touches all sectors of our society.  People have an infinite capacity to live with contradictions percolating in their minds.  In fact, do an MRI of a fanatic and you’ll see the cranial combat of competing dogmas.  Just listen to a Wall Street banker riding in his comfy Metro-North train into Manhattan ranting against the dangers of big government and socialism.  If you don’t see the irony in that, you don’t have a sense of humor.  Same with global warming.  OK, you’re excused if you cry instead about their pathetic stupidity.

I can’t do anything about people who think life is too complex to have evolved, ranting that it needed intelligent design.  That’s amusing, too, because it shows a complete ignorance about time and statistical phenomena.  Of course, statistics for these people is just part of science, ergo it must be bad.  Only the Bible is truth; everything else is a lie.  I guess their beliefs are consistent with the idea that the Earth is only four-thousand-years-old so that complexity really didn’t have that much time to evolve, right?  They might as well shake a rattle at a night sky and wonder why the gods are attacking them with lightning bolts.  Maybe it’s all a conspiracy.  Maybe those people in the Bible Belt really believe in global warming and hope their property in the Midwest will be worth more when it becomes beachfront property?  Just shrewd business people.  Dunno.  At least that would make some sense.

I would like to do something about the commercial interests who see any concerted program against global warming as an attack on their livelihoods (because that’s measured in the multiple millions or billions, you have to wonder why they’re worried).  It won’t be easy to combat global warming.  In fact, we might be past the tipping point, and Earth will soon, geologically speaking, become like Venus.  To all the religious nuts out there, or any other people in the legions of deniers, let me say that this is the ultimate sin.  We have a moral obligation to help Gaia out, no matter what your religion or religious dogmas dictate.  To do nothing is unconscionable.  In fact, this is a moral obligation that goes beyond any religion or religious belief.  On the cosmic timeline, we’re johnnies-come-lately on this planet, so we don’t have any right to ruin it for the rest of the flora and fauna here.  We need to protect the planet for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, and for all life on Earth.  No sordid business interests should trump that.  Anyone who votes for a congress person who denies global warming in the coming elections is voting against Gaia.  Vote these people out instead.  Even though it might not be too late.

And so it goes….

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2014 at 4:00 am and is filed under Capitalism Without Control, Science, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.