If you’ve ever had questions about what motivates scientists to work as hard as they do, often in obscurity, to understand subjects that most of the world gives very little thought to, listen to this short piece by Richard Alley.
I’ve only been to the Grand Canyon once, and then only for a few hours. It took me a few hours afterward to recover enough to form speech. Listening to Alley, you hear that sense of awe, wonder and gratitude for being able to see, and understand, a tiny part of such a magnificent story.
There are three more segments below the fold.
Check out Richard Alley Someone posted this on our facebook page. Good stuff.
Richard Alley is the host of the PBS series Earth: The Operators’ Manual, a TV+online+on-site initiative using Earth science to explain our climate history and describe sustainable energy options.
Please join us on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/EarthTheOperatorsManual.Page for more video and updates as we shoot episodes. We’re currently filming in Copenhagen “Bicyclist’s Heaven” Denmark. Thanks!
Alley on ‘deep time’ shows, for me, what real science is about and why I went down that route. It’s about being inquisitive and simply fascinated by the natural world – it’s about the “wow” factor.
That is why I think I push hard on different deniers of reason – I just don’t get how they just refuse to accept some of the more, possibly uncomfortable realisations. Sure, it’s not always a pretty picture, but it is rewarding to know you’re slightly less ignorant than you were previously and is wonderfully humbling to truly appreciate that there is a wealth of things yet to be understood or even thought of by our species.
I bet the windbaggers don’t get it!
Video lecture about the science of Carbon storage: caught between a rock and climate change
http://climateforce.net/2011/07/09/carbon-storage-caught-between-a-rock-and-climate-change/
As a mainline protestant Pastor, I have no trouble harmonizing science and religion, especially Christianity. But in the same way Dr. Alley invites us to contemplate deep time, try for a moment to contemplate a 6,000 year old Earth. If you are truly, deeply committed to that belief – and it is a matter of faith for those who do – then you must base your worldview from that place and everything else must align with that central premise.
If the Earth is only 6K old, then what scientists show to be millions of years old must in fact be only created to look that way, or the scientist’s determination is incorrect and the method flawed. It’s not so hard to see oil as a product of an abiogenic process coming from the ‘creamy nougat center’ of the Earth (as Kunstler puts it) when the earth hasn’t been around long enough for dinosaurs to have turned into petroleum. The whole idea of a ‘fossil fuel’ is nonsense in this worldview.
So if the Earth made oil and we burn it, surely the planet’s systems – God created systems – must be able to handle the emissions. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, CO2 is plant food, and Methane comes from cows. It’s all natural, so nature can handle it.
Like I said, I don’t believe this but I know folks who seriously do and they’re not all crackpots, just misguided and deeply entrenched (pun intended) in their beliefs. Changing their minds is going to be difficult and most likely painful.
All due respect, if they are not crackpots,
I don’t know what else you call someone who is so disoriented to reality.
What would we call them if they refused medical care for a sick child?
Trying to convince these people is a waste of resources. We need to work on the vast middle who, polls tell us, if they are made aware of what the major scientific groups actually overwhelmingly believe, are very likely to become more concerned themselves.
Geomorphology – Erosion & Weathering during the PETM http://climateforce.net/2011/07/09/geomorphology-erosion-weathering-during-the-petm/
Slightly O/T,
H/T from Horatio Algeranon
The anthem of climate denialists? Good soundtrack to a future video. Unless it’s already on one I’ve either missed or forgotten.
nice song. scary message.