The Earth Is Melting!!!
I read Discover magazine’s The Year in Science: Top 100 Stories with great interest. Unfortunately, it was one of the last magazines I chose to read of theirs, because of its obvious bias.
Every story was accompanied with qualifiers indicating assumptions, viewpoints and limits to perception. “From what we can tell …” “Our data indicates …”
Every story except one – Global Warming.
How many times do I have to hear the words “Global Warming is real and caused by humans” before I point out what to me is intuitively obvious?
Strangely, this topic is frequently devoid of any such qualifiers. It was presented in a manner that left absolutely no question as to its conclusions – no consideration to conflicting data; no mention of the significant number of scientists who are in disagreement with this theory. It reminded me of a journalist interested only in facts that support their preconceived notions.
Science rewrote itself upon the invention of the microscope and the ‘discovery’ of germs and microbes – creatures that existed long before we were ever able to sense them.
Acceptance that the earth is not the center of our solar system, nor the universe, was an equal epiphany. Do you recall what happened to the men who presented these concepts to the general public – or the politically correct church of the time? These ‘heretics’ were either locked in towers or – quite literally – the messenger was killed.
This certainly isn’t the first time science was hijacked by religion or politics.
To assume that through our limited observations of the last couple of centuries – a pittance when compared to the lifespan of the planet – we have obtained a clear understanding of the earth’s cycles with any certainty is pretty arrogant, in my opinion.
Our perception, although technologically advanced, is still limited to sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. Are we so vain as to believe that is all there is?
We have mapped parts of the sun’s cycle through research, but have we factored in the effects of Sedna? Its orbit is eerily close to one of the sun’s cycles – is this merely coincidence? Are there similar objects that we are not aware of? Most certainly!!
Four volcanoes – Washington State, Indonesia, Italy and Iceland – were active in 2004. These four events alone have done more to destroy the ozone layer than humans have in written history.
We as humans are also limited by time, and the failure over millennia to adequately preserve scientific discoveries and data for future generations to expound upon. Again, our presence on this planet is but a nanosecond in a day of this planet.
I would prefer to see the same qualifiers applied to this topic that exist in other topics, conceding that what we know to be true may merely be a phase of our progressive understanding of the world we inhabit.
At least some concession to the fact that we have only been collecting data for a small amount of time, and that previous data could be wrought with erroneous reading, not to mention the infusion of biased scientists who discard conflicting data as an anomaly, or enhance data to glorify their contributions.
I predict that future generations will be wiping proverbial egg from the face of our most prominent environmentalists.
Certainly it is nice to err on the side of safety. But acknowledging that running with knives is unsafe should not be accompanied by the abolition of knives, nor running.
It is quite possible that ‘global warming’ as we ‘understand’ it is a myth destined to join such beliefs as the earth being flat, or the sun being a god riding a fiery chariot across the sky every day.
