Whenever scoundrels want to justify something, once they’ve wrapped themselves in the flag, the bibles come out. Whether it’s slavery, war, child/spousal abuse, or environmental crime, you’ll hear the perps tell you it’s all ok, cuz it’s “in the BAH-bull.”
All across the country—most recently, in the state of Texas—local battles over the teaching of evolution are taking on a new complexion. More and more, it isn’t just evolution under attack, it’s also the teaching of climate science. The National Center for Science Education, the leading group defending the teaching of evolution across the country, has even broadened its portfolio: Now, it protects climate education too.
How did these issues get wrapped up together? On its face, there isn’t a clear reason—other than a marriage of convenience—why attacks on evolution and attacks on climate change ought to travel side by side. After all, we know why people deny evolution: Religion, especially the fundamentalist kind. And we know why people deny global warming: Free market ideology and libertarianism. These are not, last I checked, the same thing. (If anything, libertarians may be the most religiously skeptical group on the political right.)
And yet clearly there’s a relationship between the two issue stances. If you’re in doubt, watch this Climate Desk video of a number of members of Congress citing religion in the context of questioning global warming. (above)
Indeed, recent research suggests that Christian “end times” believers are less likely to see a need for action on global warming.
And now new research by Yale’s Dan Kahan further reaffirms that there’s something going on here. More specifically, Kahan showed that there is a correlation (.25, which is weak to modest, but significant) between a person’s religiosity and his or her tendency to think that global warming isn’t much of a risk. Perhaps even more tellingly, Kahan also found that among highly religious individuals, as their ability to comprehend science increases, so does their denial of the risk posed by global warming. Here’s some data he presented:
Among the highly religious, more science comprehension translates into less concern about global warming. Dan Kahan
“I have to say, those effects are bigger than I would have expected,” wrote Kahan of his findings. The researcher went on to say that he isn’t sure why greater religiosity predicts greater denial of climate change. But in his data—with a representative sample of over 2,000 Americans—it clearly does.
There are two major possibilities. And there is probably some truth to both of them.
There is the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” theory. In other words, anti-evolutionists and climate deniers were both getting dumped on so much by the scientific community that they sort of naturally joined forces. And that makes sense: We know that in general, people gather their issue stances in bunches, because those stances travel together in a group (often under the aegis of a political party).
But there’s also the “declining trust in science” theory, according to which political conservatives have, in general, become distrustful of the scientific community (we have data showing this is the case), and this has infected how they think about several different politicized scientific issues. And who knows: Perhaps the distrust started with the evolution issue. It is easy to imagine how a Christian conservative who thinks liberal scientists are full of it on evolution would naturally distrust said scientists on other issues as well.
Further research will no doubt unravel what’s going on here. In the meantime, we can simply observe: In the political science wars that have wracked America for well over a decade, both sides are consolidating their forces.
When we talk about the environment, about creation, my thoughts turn to the first pages of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, which states that God placed man and woman on earth to cultivate and care for it (cf. 2:15). And the question comes to my mind: What does cultivating and caring for the earth mean? Are we truly cultivating and caring for creation? Or are we exploiting and neglecting it? The verb “to cultivate” reminds me of the care that the farmer has for his land so that it bear fruit, and it is shared: how much attention, passion and dedication! Cultivating and caring for creation is God’s indication given to each one of us not only at the beginning of history; it is part of His project; it means nurturing the world with responsibility and transforming it into a garden, a habitable place for everyone. Benedict XVI recalled several times that this task entrusted to us by God the Creator requires us to grasp the rhythm and logic of creation. But we are often driven by pride of domination, of possessions, manipulation, of exploitation; we do not “care” for it, we do not respect it, we do not consider it as a free gift that we must care for. We are losing the attitude of wonder, contemplation, listening to creation; thus we are no longer able to read what Benedict XVI calls “the rhythm of the love story of God and man.” Why does this happen? Why do we think and live in a horizontal manner, we have moved away from God, we no longer read His signs.
Below, my interview with Evangelical scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who calls climate denial a “sad phenomena” in the religious community.
63 thoughts on “That Old Time Phony Religion of Anti-Science”
I have always been very confused by the fact that a lot of the bible-thumping people clearly have no idea what the message inside the book is.
It’s good then to see there are decent Christians like John Cook at SkepticalScience who can have two thoughts in their head at the same time.
Not a very religious person myself, I still believe in compassion, empathy and to love ones neighbor – and the way we treat the planet at the moment sort of breaks all of these.
There is clearly something very hypocritical about these right-wing conservative bible-thumpers as they are really speaking with two tongues and acting more like two-faced messengers from the devil than anything else. I hope in time they will be judged, but it doesn’t have to involved any god, a good healthy non-corrupt court should be enough to see through their lies and deceit.
I have always been very confused by the fact that a lot of the bible-thumping people clearly have no idea what the message inside the book is.
Every Christian sect has more or less the same book, but they disagree on lots of matters. What they do is follow what their tribal leaders (they call them theologians and clergy, but that’s what they are) say about what and who are good and bad. In this, they’re no different from those who follow “community organizers”. Most people have a need to be part of a group, and will not violate the norms of that group if it means losing membership. Many groups can be downright brutal to ex-members, which increases the tendency towards blind obedience.
These arguments sound trite because they are trite. Nobody remembers William Jennings Bryan and the reason why evolution has been distrusted by many in the USA for more than a century (hint: it’s political, not religious, and definitely not scientific).
While it’s certainly true that faiths can be twisted for political gain (see all of history), it’s a mistake to blame only politics for belief patterns in much of the United States. The arguments against evolution and climate change do actually have religious roots as well. Explaining why requires careful writing, but I have some work to do right now, so I’ll aim to get to that later.
…I’ll be eagerly awaiting your explanation jimbills.
I believe myself in an Iron Law of Religion and Society: “when policies focused on religious purity confront policies focused on power gain by the elites, it is power gain that will win out every time, to the point that religious teaching will be modified in order to justify power politics”
It’s really a pillar of culture in the West that man is separate from nature, and the roots of this belief trace back to Genesis. God (generally viewed as a separate and almighty entity) creates heaven and Earth, building a great garden, and man is created in God’s image (implying therefore a separate creation from Earth itself, even though man is created from clay). Man is given dominion over Earth and told to be fruitful and multiply.
Most of how we in the West relate to the world traces back to this simple story. We think we can own the Earth and that we can do whatever we want in it, and so that’s how we act. Most of our cultural creations since Judaism and Christianity are simply offshoots of this basic belief – capitalism being a notable example (the ‘Invisible Hand’). But I see a number of other ways in which any Westerner (liberal or conservative) views nature not as a brother or even a co-worker but as a slave. I really don’t think the Industrial Revolution happens without Genesis.
However, many cultures that have existed outside of the Judeo-Christian creation story have tended to view man as part of nature. Scientific evidence tends to support this view. We are simply actors in ecosystems, just like any other animal. Both climate change and evolutionary theory directly compete with the Judeo-Christian worldview, because at their heart they are about man’s ties to nature. Hence, Kingdube’s jokes about Mother Gaia. The concept of man being a part of nature as opposed to the master of nature is so foreign that anyone who could think such a thing must be a Wiccan.
….have an especially hard time with the theory. William Jennings Bryan knew it. Darwin knew it. It directly competes with the Genesis story (taken literally as opposed to figuratively). The fact that we have Creation museums 150 years after ‘On the Origin of Species’ attests to it. The two concepts can’t really exist in the same room, so one has to choose between them.
On climate change, too, there are issues. God caused the Great Flood, and then promised never to drown the world again (an image of CAGW). Revelations promises that no matter how bad things get, God has it under control. A loving God wouldn’t give man dominion over the Earth and let him destroy it. Tied in with these beliefs is the concept of the United States fulfilling a Godly destiny. The American Way is, in effect, God’s Way. In this view, our capitalist democracy was formed by Christians for God’s glory. It wouldn’t make sense that climate change could be a problem in such a worldview.
I can tell you, this isn’t something that can be removed by rational argument. It simply is. Many believers would rather die than have their faith stripped from them. This is hard for an atheist to understand, and perhaps it is hard for someone outside of the States (or someone in the States who lives outside of a highly religious region) to understand. Any conscious decision made by most Americans is influenced in some way by religious faith.
Enter, politics. A good politician in a representative democracy understands his/her constituency. What the more callous politicians in a highly religious region will do is subvert religious belief into tacit support (for war, for economic policies, and a multitude of other ways). But what they are in effect doing is working with something that is already there.
You’ll see here in politics in the States an overwhelming obsession with sexual orientation, birth control, and abortion, because politicians know it will get the blood pumping in at least half (and I’d say 90%) their constituency by harping on these issues. They can both gain instant political support with them while at the same time distracting from the other (and mostly far more important) issues. Evolution is often employed in such a way, too. Opinion about climate change can be used to distinguish between the ‘faithful’ and the ‘corrupt’.
There is a flip side, too, of course. A constituency with low religious faith will see politicians who use the exact same tactics in the opposite way.
Politics guides policy certainly, but religion guides politics at the same time. That’s it for here. A book could be written about the subject. It definitely is a fascinating subject, anyway.
We are simply actors in ecosystems, just like any other animal
There is a contradiction there. If we are like any other animal, and no other animal takes care of the whole ecosystem-Gaia, and every other animal simply and invariably tries to occupy and take advantage of as much as possible, shouldn’t we consider the “nature-as-slave” meme as the standard, natural, animalistic stance for humans?
What the more callous politicians in a highly religious region will do is subvert religious belief into tacit support (for war, for economic policies, and a multitude of other ways). But what they are in effect doing is working with something that is already there.
I see that our points are not too dissimilar. Of course all political manifestations will be based around what is “already there”. I almost understood Britain 100% the day I realized why William Blake’s “Jerusalem” is the actual national anthem around here.
Bryan’s objection was framed in religious terms, but his rejection of evolution had a great deal to do with the period of explicit Social Darwinism (late 1800s – early 1900s) through which he had been a prominent populist politician. Bryan’s concern for the common people, the designated losers in this cutthroat political and social agenda justified through distorted Darwinism, led him to reject evolution; what auxilliary role religion played, I don’t know, although it was probably significant, since even Bryan’s enemies admitted to his sincerity (emotional if not intellectual).
So saying “it’s political, not religious” is to some degree correct; although I think that Bryan was too complex a person (despite what Mencken had to say about him) for any one cause to serve as the basis of his program. With him, it was probably both religious and political.
That’s a good description Lars. It was the time when serious thinkers were suggesting in Europe to solve poverty by gassing poor people out of existence. Bryan was representing American democracy at its best, and to this day I can still see how Darwinism is interpreted by many in the US as imported, elitarian, evil Social Darwinism.
The folks at Mother Jones see the world through very strangely shaded glasses.
In my experience, the “artsy” crowd tends to be liberal, and most of them are convinced of Climate Catastrophism. They lack the analytical habits & skills that would equip them to spot the inconsistencies and biases in the Climate Movement’s propaganda, and their feelings-over-logic orientation makes them more forgiving of lies, so they aren’t much bothered by things like the Gleick scandal, Climategate, the 97% consensus scam, the IPCC’s Himalayan Glaciers goof, etc.
Engineers and hard scientists, such as chemists and physicists, are more analytical, and they tend to be conservative (except in academia). Most of them are skeptical of the Climate Movement’s propaganda.
The Church has both types, but the Christian religion’s heavy emphasis on Truth as good, and falsehood as evil, makes them less forgiving of lies. That tends to push them toward climate skepticism. In John 8:44 Jesus calls lies the language of Satan, and in Luke 16:10 He is recorded saying, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”
Yes, Roger. “At least one falsehood in every sentence” indeed!
My very favorite here is “Engineers and hard scientists, such as chemists and physicists, are more analytical, and they tend to be conservative (except in academia). Most of them are skeptical of the Climate Movement’s propaganda”.
More analytical than what? And why the “except in academia” distinction? And do you know that many of those “engineers and hard scientists” (who have little or no expertise in climate science) were among those “tens of thousands of scientists” that signed that “petition” that dave thinks means something. Does their ignorance feed their skepticism?
Physicists use line by line spectral analysis to calculate radiative forcing and verify those calculations, both from space and the surface, as a function of GHG concentrations. Chemists calculate and measure the pH of oceans as a function of absorbed CO2 due to the increase partial pressure of the gas in the atmosphere. Those are certainties in both disciplines. Less certain is where the accumulating heat flows in the short run due to the unwieldy nature of chaotic fluid mechanics. Physicists are also certain that beyond heating oceans and melting ice, the laws of physics will eventually balance the energy flow imbalance by continuing to warm the surface temperature.
Engineer Poet – am not sure what you define as ‘forcings’. AFAIK there is no way to get out there and say measure ‘aerosol forcing’ or ‘co2 forcing’. That’s why the ipcc is in the business of finding the best estimates, and then figuring out what the best way of adding all forcings together to get a single ‘radiative forcing’ estimate.
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Arnold Beckman launched Beckman Instruments with an pH meter in 1936. Like most instrumentation, they’re more accurate and less expensive 77 years later. Until now thanks to your comments and a web search, I didn’t know ocean acidification skepticism existed. The pH does vary with time and place, but the trend is statistically solid. The chemistry is even simpler than radiative forcing physics.
Charles – the IPCC report is fresh. Read it. For ocean acidification it relies on the 2011 IPCC workshop. Read that too. First recommendation (page 42) is to íncrease spatiotemporal coverage’.
GIven the definition of ocean acidification (find that one too), we can surely admit that the whole thing is still very very young.
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Omno, Good comment. You’re right that the study of the impact and spatiotemporal distribution (variability by time and place for those of us who occasionally wear cowboy boots) is very young. 2/3 of the research has been done since 2004. At your urging I read the IPCC’s assessment Chapter 3, “Observations: Ocean” as well as wattsupwiththat’s dismissive take on ocean acidification.
“Gosh, just look at all that scary, red, burning, “acid”. What they fail to note is that the oceans still haven’t turned acidic at the end of their model projections. The pH has to be below 7.0, and a drop to 7.75 by 2100 still doesn’t qualify by the way the pH scale works. So, are the IPCC models based on uncertain measurements and an assumed trend? …. It sure seems so. It’s like a bad acid trip.”
A WUWT report about the X-Prize is informative. It’s good to know that congress wants to fund more research:
“It is only in the last decade where scientists have begun to study ocean acidification, so our knowledge is really limited still,” Paul Bunje, a senior director with the X Prize Foundation. A $2M X-Prize is being offered for an inexpensive accurate pH meter that operates at a variety of ocean depths. “While ocean acidification is well documented in a few temperate ocean waters, little is known in high latitudes, coastal areas and the deep sea, and most current pH sensor technologies are too costly, imprecise, or unstable to allow for sufficient knowledge on the state of ocean acidification.”
There are indeed uncertainties about the severity of the consequences, but not about the increasing concentration of Hydrogen ions. There are concerns about how the ocean’s food chain (pteropods, many other shelled creatures and coral) are adapting to an increase in acidity (or reduction in alkalinity if you prefer that terminology) 100x faster than the Earth System (or Gaia if you prefer that metaphor) has experienced in 20 million years.
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“Engineers and hard scientists, such as chemists and physicists, are more analytical, and they tend to be conservative (except in academia). Most of them are skeptical of the Climate Movement’s propaganda.”
LOL, sure. Maybe engineers are “conservatives” as a bunch. Then again, maybe they just think they’re smarter than everyone else aka have closed minds. In fact, there was a research study done on that recently. Not saying sociology is a hard science, but practical experience tells me there’s truth in the stereotype (even IF it lumps people together unfairly, as there are always a spectrum of people in all fields). Are you by any chance an engineer?
Chemists, you say? Physicists? Maybe the 60 and over crowd. You seriously expect anyone to believe chemists and physicists don’t believe humans are causing the climate to change? All I can do is laugh at that.
The Kahan chart is interesting in that it confirms something I’ve noticed: the better people understand science, the more dismissive they are of climate alarmism. It’s not that they “distrust science,” it’s that they distrust political activism cloaked as science.
Great job keeping your one misrepresentation/falsehood per sentence record intact, Dave. Actually the chart show that the more religious a person is, the the more they have to deny science to avoid cognitive dissonance. The non religious don’t have that problem as the chart clearly shows.
For the serious fundamentalists, the end of the world is something to be welcomed. They’ve all studied the Book of Revelation and see climate disaster as one component of signs portending the return of Jesus. They will then get to rejoice in the deaths of all of us heathens in the great battle with the AntiChrist, who will obviously be a climate alarmist. I don’t expect much help from this fringe group of lunatics, but I do wish that they’d quit running for Congress.
Just one catch – why would God let those that trashed his Creation into Heaven?
I don’t think Satan would accept them either!
They’d get a pretty dim reception wherever they end up.
Perhaps it was a different species that was the one God had intended as stewards of the planet? Homo Sapiens doesn’t seem to be very sapient about it at least, and certainly does not deserve to end up in the hall of heavenly fame.
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Non whatsover.
As Heaven and Hell are only constructs of the human mind, logic would dictate that once Humans become extinct, then so would Heaven and Hell.
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Did religion exist before man?
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What you are implying is that there is a pre-ordained conclusion driven by “politics” which drives the “science”.
dumb statement. It’s the science which drives the political insight and motivation.
Is that really (1) “science comprehension”? Or is it just (2) “knowing some sciency buzzwords” (but not really comperhending science)?
If (1) then we have some evidence that “highly religious” correlates with “highly paranoid and/or psychopathic”. (Well, that’s indeed how ‘Merrican evangelical fundamentalism tastes like to me Barvarian anticatholic antitheist [which includes antiatheist]).
I suspect it’s more of (2). I doubt that in a representative sample of 2,000 Americans there’s any significant fraction with some significant understanding of science and the scientific method. Folks and media usually confuse epistemology with a debate club.
I’m new here but it’s obvious that kingdube has completely missed the point of climate science.
Science is evidence based. There are measurable absolutes that all can agree on such as the speed of light in a vacuum or the freezing point of water.
Relgions are like opinions. Everyone has one, there being no atheists in a foxhole and all. Each religion is different and cannot be verified with evidence. Such is the nature of faith.
Kingdube seems to not understand that climate scientists rely on evidence not faith in some diety that he calls “Mother Gaia.” I suppose it’s hard for him to understand people who choose to believe evidence over faith.
Recognizing that science gets things right far more often than wrong, and far more right than religion, isn’t a religion. It’s a heuristic, and a damned good one.
I do believe redacted perfectly stated the difference between religion and science. Where science isn’t really something you choose to believe in like a faith, religion very much is asking you to just believe. With science you use your brain’s best skills to observe and use your logical thinking to establish something as truth or not. And it encourages you to seek out as much information as possible in all fields of the natural world to accurately measure to some degree whether the hypothesis is true or not.
With faith what you “observe” is a magical being you conjure up out of nothing in your head that is supposedly the creator of all around you. While theories that come through lateral logical thinking can be disproved by asking the right questions and showing opposing truths, religion generally ditch all that and just ask you to “believe”. There is nothing religious about science, its using a completely different part of the brain – the one that deals with logic and reason.
Similarly you have people like Anthony Watts is basically preaching some sort of anti-AGW religion as he does not have to back up his claims with proof or science, but just asks you to believe the same way you are supposed to believe in god. Its only people like Watts who are desperately trying to make it into a religion, where the actual scientists (climate, geology, biology) are devils and oil is their god.
These comparisons are scientifically meaningless and that’s what makes absurd a lot that’s being said by alleged sciency types.
Epistemology hasn’t been invented yesterday. Religious studies neither.
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Why is it scientifically meaningless? Clearly science has a set of methods used to quantify and measure things based on known constraints in the physical world. The confirmation of AGW is just a result of using these methods.
While its quite clear that Watts and a lot of deniers have no real explanation for their “beliefs” that fossil fuels has no external costs to the biosphere, and have to come up with one fantastic explanation after another. Many who are on the brink of pure religion as they don’t need physical explanations for some N-year “cycle” or whatnot. It’s a perfect example of a non-rational mind, one who caves into fears and anger instead of applying reason and logic – and to actually understand what the science is telling us.
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First of all it’s like comparing German and Xhosa grammar using German grammar as guidance, only to declare that German grammar is obviously much better than Xhosa grammar. Totally meaningless.
Secondly science knows its limits and so should you. Elevating it to the start-and-end-all area to deal with the world is exactly replacing with it the old Alpha and Omega of religion.
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So your argument is that religion and science has equal truth in evaluating the state of a system and where its heading? I wonder why we have airbags in cars then, if there is supposedly equal chance that a deity will save you from certain death? The automobile industry should really be working towards having more believe that god will intervene so they can shave off some cost on cars. More money, who can deny the power of that religion?
The only think I can say for sure is that the worse it gets, the more people look for deities to answer their why?’s. In the end the face of the physical realities will dawn and claim what its set in motion to do.
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my argument is that by using science to judge religion the conclusion is implicit in the starting point.
Science is good for what science is good for. And the last thing it is good for is as the key to interpret everything in the universe.
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Do you have an alternative approach to describing everything in the universe perhaps?
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Thats right. Earth is a goddess. Sandy and Haiyan are just a few of her powers. Man, by comparison, is puny, arrogant, stupid, and weak. Stupid enough to foul our own sustenance with the excrement of our enhanced powers, and dull enough not to notice. The more man aggrandizes himself, the less he notices how Mother Earth remonstrates him.
Back to the article and the question of how these two ideologies got connected.
If you really hold to a strict, literal creation account per Genesis, then you’re likely in the camp that believes the Earth is only 6000 yrs old – you can figure that out by counting years in the Bible. If the Earth (and universe) is only 6000 yrs old then all that carbon dating stuff is just nonsense. How can something be older that the Earth? So any ‘scientist’ who bases any conclusion on ‘data’ from any source that purports to use a long time scale, is wrong.
Thanks, Peter, for highlighting good scientists who are also believers. The two worldviews are NOT incompatible. Keep up the good work.
“Thanks, Peter, for highlighting good scientists who are also believers. The two worldviews are NOT incompatible.”
That some believers are good scientists does not even address whether the two worldviews are actually compatible, it merely shows that some believers do not use the rigor of the scientific method to analyze their religious views.
It is impossible for me to see how a worldview which relies on the primacy of revelation and the veneration of faith despite a lack of evidence can be compatible with the scientific method which rejects revelation and hypotheses which have no evidence to support them.
Since most dictionary definitions of acidification are “converting into an acid”, you have a point. On the other hand, there are definitions of declining pH as increasing acidity regardless of where the current pH is on the scale. Ocean neutralization is sort of ambiguous in common vernacular, but in context is more accurate. Ocean neuterization sounds like something a veterinarian does.
What a vocabu-gasm! Thanks to Omno, the master of esoteric thought, for initiating the “Name the First Derivative of pH” project.
If [pH(t+1) .GT. pH(t)] & [pH .LT. 7]
“deacidification”
If [pH(t+1) .GT. pH(t)] & [pH .GE. 7]
“alkalinification”
If [pH(t+1) .LT. pH(t)] & [pH .LE. 7]
“acidification”
If [pH(t+1) .LT. pH(t)] & [pH .GT. 7]
“dealkalinification”
A computer could understand that, if not many people. We should send a “dealkalinification isn’t as ominous as acidification” memo to Frank Luntz. And as an added bonus, it’d give people a chance to learn to pronounce “de-al-ka-line-i-za-shun”
As I said I did not want to start discussing this 😉
To avoid accusations of sensationalism or orgasmatronophobia, my vote goes for ‘pH reduction’.
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“Current rates of ocean acidification have been compared with the greenhouse event at the Paleocene–Eocene boundary (about 55 million years ago) when surface ocean temperatures rose by 5–6 degrees Celsius. No catastrophe was seen in surface ecosystems, yet bottom-dwelling organisms in the deep ocean experienced a major extinction. The current acidification is on a path to reach levels higher than any seen in the last 65 million years, and the rate of increase is about ten times the rate that preceded the Paleocene–Eocene mass extinction.” (Wikipedia on Ocean Acidification).
How about we call it a “mass exctinction event pH reduction” then?
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If that’s your faith, John, go for it
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Yes, that word came into my head too!
Still but a mere stub compared to some agglutinative Hungarian words:
kiegyensulyozhatatlanságmentesítőtleníttethetetlenségtelenítőtlenkedhetnétek
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Our vocabulary workshop is totally validated. If floccinaucinihilipilification can make it into English language dictionaries, then so can alkalinification.
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I floccinaucinihilipilificate any effort to stuff these words into anything less ephemeral than urbandictionary.com.
I have always been very confused by the fact that a lot of the bible-thumping people clearly have no idea what the message inside the book is.
It’s good then to see there are decent Christians like John Cook at SkepticalScience who can have two thoughts in their head at the same time.
Not a very religious person myself, I still believe in compassion, empathy and to love ones neighbor – and the way we treat the planet at the moment sort of breaks all of these.
There is clearly something very hypocritical about these right-wing conservative bible-thumpers as they are really speaking with two tongues and acting more like two-faced messengers from the devil than anything else. I hope in time they will be judged, but it doesn’t have to involved any god, a good healthy non-corrupt court should be enough to see through their lies and deceit.
what goes around does come around, even tho it may not always be obvious.
Every Christian sect has more or less the same book, but they disagree on lots of matters. What they do is follow what their tribal leaders (they call them theologians and clergy, but that’s what they are) say about what and who are good and bad. In this, they’re no different from those who follow “community organizers”. Most people have a need to be part of a group, and will not violate the norms of that group if it means losing membership. Many groups can be downright brutal to ex-members, which increases the tendency towards blind obedience.
These arguments sound trite because they are trite. Nobody remembers William Jennings Bryan and the reason why evolution has been distrusted by many in the USA for more than a century (hint: it’s political, not religious, and definitely not scientific).
While it’s certainly true that faiths can be twisted for political gain (see all of history), it’s a mistake to blame only politics for belief patterns in much of the United States. The arguments against evolution and climate change do actually have religious roots as well. Explaining why requires careful writing, but I have some work to do right now, so I’ll aim to get to that later.
…I’ll be eagerly awaiting your explanation jimbills.
I believe myself in an Iron Law of Religion and Society: “when policies focused on religious purity confront policies focused on power gain by the elites, it is power gain that will win out every time, to the point that religious teaching will be modified in order to justify power politics”
It’s really a pillar of culture in the West that man is separate from nature, and the roots of this belief trace back to Genesis. God (generally viewed as a separate and almighty entity) creates heaven and Earth, building a great garden, and man is created in God’s image (implying therefore a separate creation from Earth itself, even though man is created from clay). Man is given dominion over Earth and told to be fruitful and multiply.
Most of how we in the West relate to the world traces back to this simple story. We think we can own the Earth and that we can do whatever we want in it, and so that’s how we act. Most of our cultural creations since Judaism and Christianity are simply offshoots of this basic belief – capitalism being a notable example (the ‘Invisible Hand’). But I see a number of other ways in which any Westerner (liberal or conservative) views nature not as a brother or even a co-worker but as a slave. I really don’t think the Industrial Revolution happens without Genesis.
However, many cultures that have existed outside of the Judeo-Christian creation story have tended to view man as part of nature. Scientific evidence tends to support this view. We are simply actors in ecosystems, just like any other animal. Both climate change and evolutionary theory directly compete with the Judeo-Christian worldview, because at their heart they are about man’s ties to nature. Hence, Kingdube’s jokes about Mother Gaia. The concept of man being a part of nature as opposed to the master of nature is so foreign that anyone who could think such a thing must be a Wiccan.
On evolution, literal translators of the Bible, which is a good one-third of Americans:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/148427/say-bible-literally.aspx
….have an especially hard time with the theory. William Jennings Bryan knew it. Darwin knew it. It directly competes with the Genesis story (taken literally as opposed to figuratively). The fact that we have Creation museums 150 years after ‘On the Origin of Species’ attests to it. The two concepts can’t really exist in the same room, so one has to choose between them.
On climate change, too, there are issues. God caused the Great Flood, and then promised never to drown the world again (an image of CAGW). Revelations promises that no matter how bad things get, God has it under control. A loving God wouldn’t give man dominion over the Earth and let him destroy it. Tied in with these beliefs is the concept of the United States fulfilling a Godly destiny. The American Way is, in effect, God’s Way. In this view, our capitalist democracy was formed by Christians for God’s glory. It wouldn’t make sense that climate change could be a problem in such a worldview.
In the States, one really can’t underestimate the power that religious faith has. It forms the core identity of most Americans:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/159548/identify-christian.aspx
I can tell you, this isn’t something that can be removed by rational argument. It simply is. Many believers would rather die than have their faith stripped from them. This is hard for an atheist to understand, and perhaps it is hard for someone outside of the States (or someone in the States who lives outside of a highly religious region) to understand. Any conscious decision made by most Americans is influenced in some way by religious faith.
Enter, politics. A good politician in a representative democracy understands his/her constituency. What the more callous politicians in a highly religious region will do is subvert religious belief into tacit support (for war, for economic policies, and a multitude of other ways). But what they are in effect doing is working with something that is already there.
You’ll see here in politics in the States an overwhelming obsession with sexual orientation, birth control, and abortion, because politicians know it will get the blood pumping in at least half (and I’d say 90%) their constituency by harping on these issues. They can both gain instant political support with them while at the same time distracting from the other (and mostly far more important) issues. Evolution is often employed in such a way, too. Opinion about climate change can be used to distinguish between the ‘faithful’ and the ‘corrupt’.
There is a flip side, too, of course. A constituency with low religious faith will see politicians who use the exact same tactics in the opposite way.
Politics guides policy certainly, but religion guides politics at the same time. That’s it for here. A book could be written about the subject. It definitely is a fascinating subject, anyway.
jimbills
We are simply actors in ecosystems, just like any other animal
There is a contradiction there. If we are like any other animal, and no other animal takes care of the whole ecosystem-Gaia, and every other animal simply and invariably tries to occupy and take advantage of as much as possible, shouldn’t we consider the “nature-as-slave” meme as the standard, natural, animalistic stance for humans?
What the more callous politicians in a highly religious region will do is subvert religious belief into tacit support (for war, for economic policies, and a multitude of other ways). But what they are in effect doing is working with something that is already there.
I see that our points are not too dissimilar. Of course all political manifestations will be based around what is “already there”. I almost understood Britain 100% the day I realized why William Blake’s “Jerusalem” is the actual national anthem around here.
“(hint: it’s political, not religious… “]
Bryan’s objection was not religiously based? What are you smoking?
More historical revisionism from the man who portrays himself as a stickler for truth in all its details. 🙁
Bryan’s objection was framed in religious terms, but his rejection of evolution had a great deal to do with the period of explicit Social Darwinism (late 1800s – early 1900s) through which he had been a prominent populist politician. Bryan’s concern for the common people, the designated losers in this cutthroat political and social agenda justified through distorted Darwinism, led him to reject evolution; what auxilliary role religion played, I don’t know, although it was probably significant, since even Bryan’s enemies admitted to his sincerity (emotional if not intellectual).
So saying “it’s political, not religious” is to some degree correct; although I think that Bryan was too complex a person (despite what Mencken had to say about him) for any one cause to serve as the basis of his program. With him, it was probably both religious and political.
That’s a good description Lars. It was the time when serious thinkers were suggesting in Europe to solve poverty by gassing poor people out of existence. Bryan was representing American democracy at its best, and to this day I can still see how Darwinism is interpreted by many in the US as imported, elitarian, evil Social Darwinism.
The folks at Mother Jones see the world through very strangely shaded glasses.
In my experience, the “artsy” crowd tends to be liberal, and most of them are convinced of Climate Catastrophism. They lack the analytical habits & skills that would equip them to spot the inconsistencies and biases in the Climate Movement’s propaganda, and their feelings-over-logic orientation makes them more forgiving of lies, so they aren’t much bothered by things like the Gleick scandal, Climategate, the 97% consensus scam, the IPCC’s Himalayan Glaciers goof, etc.
Engineers and hard scientists, such as chemists and physicists, are more analytical, and they tend to be conservative (except in academia). Most of them are skeptical of the Climate Movement’s propaganda.
The Church has both types, but the Christian religion’s heavy emphasis on Truth as good, and falsehood as evil, makes them less forgiving of lies. That tends to push them toward climate skepticism. In John 8:44 Jesus calls lies the language of Satan, and in Luke 16:10 He is recorded saying, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”
An amazingly consistent and insightful analysis, Dave, thank you so much!
Consistent, because every single sentence contains at least one falsehood.
And insightful, because it is like a fractally-perfect x-ray crystallograph of the paranoid mind.
Stupidity so pure one can only hold it in awe.
Yes, Roger. “At least one falsehood in every sentence” indeed!
My very favorite here is “Engineers and hard scientists, such as chemists and physicists, are more analytical, and they tend to be conservative (except in academia). Most of them are skeptical of the Climate Movement’s propaganda”.
More analytical than what? And why the “except in academia” distinction? And do you know that many of those “engineers and hard scientists” (who have little or no expertise in climate science) were among those “tens of thousands of scientists” that signed that “petition” that dave thinks means something. Does their ignorance feed their skepticism?
Physicists use line by line spectral analysis to calculate radiative forcing and verify those calculations, both from space and the surface, as a function of GHG concentrations. Chemists calculate and measure the pH of oceans as a function of absorbed CO2 due to the increase partial pressure of the gas in the atmosphere. Those are certainties in both disciplines. Less certain is where the accumulating heat flows in the short run due to the unwieldy nature of chaotic fluid mechanics. Physicists are also certain that beyond heating oceans and melting ice, the laws of physics will eventually balance the energy flow imbalance by continuing to warm the surface temperature.
almost but not quite Charles…forcings cannot be measured nor verified, and ocean ph measuring is a very young science…
Forcings can be and are measured directly by bolometry. The spectrum of the IR forcings has been measured many times, both upwelling and downwelling.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Engineer Poet – am not sure what you define as ‘forcings’. AFAIK there is no way to get out there and say measure ‘aerosol forcing’ or ‘co2 forcing’. That’s why the ipcc is in the business of finding the best estimates, and then figuring out what the best way of adding all forcings together to get a single ‘radiative forcing’ estimate.
Arnold Beckman launched Beckman Instruments with an pH meter in 1936. Like most instrumentation, they’re more accurate and less expensive 77 years later. Until now thanks to your comments and a web search, I didn’t know ocean acidification skepticism existed. The pH does vary with time and place, but the trend is statistically solid. The chemistry is even simpler than radiative forcing physics.
http://theotherco2problem.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ocean-chemistry.gif
Charles – the IPCC report is fresh. Read it. For ocean acidification it relies on the 2011 IPCC workshop. Read that too. First recommendation (page 42) is to íncrease spatiotemporal coverage’.
GIven the definition of ocean acidification (find that one too), we can surely admit that the whole thing is still very very young.
Omno, Good comment. You’re right that the study of the impact and spatiotemporal distribution (variability by time and place for those of us who occasionally wear cowboy boots) is very young. 2/3 of the research has been done since 2004. At your urging I read the IPCC’s assessment Chapter 3, “Observations: Ocean” as well as wattsupwiththat’s dismissive take on ocean acidification.
“Gosh, just look at all that scary, red, burning, “acid”. What they fail to note is that the oceans still haven’t turned acidic at the end of their model projections. The pH has to be below 7.0, and a drop to 7.75 by 2100 still doesn’t qualify by the way the pH scale works. So, are the IPCC models based on uncertain measurements and an assumed trend? …. It sure seems so. It’s like a bad acid trip.”
A WUWT report about the X-Prize is informative. It’s good to know that congress wants to fund more research:
“It is only in the last decade where scientists have begun to study ocean acidification, so our knowledge is really limited still,” Paul Bunje, a senior director with the X Prize Foundation. A $2M X-Prize is being offered for an inexpensive accurate pH meter that operates at a variety of ocean depths. “While ocean acidification is well documented in a few temperate ocean waters, little is known in high latitudes, coastal areas and the deep sea, and most current pH sensor technologies are too costly, imprecise, or unstable to allow for sufficient knowledge on the state of ocean acidification.”
There are indeed uncertainties about the severity of the consequences, but not about the increasing concentration of Hydrogen ions. There are concerns about how the ocean’s food chain (pteropods, many other shelled creatures and coral) are adapting to an increase in acidity (or reduction in alkalinity if you prefer that terminology) 100x faster than the Earth System (or Gaia if you prefer that metaphor) has experienced in 20 million years.
“Engineers and hard scientists, such as chemists and physicists, are more analytical, and they tend to be conservative (except in academia). Most of them are skeptical of the Climate Movement’s propaganda.”
LOL, sure. Maybe engineers are “conservatives” as a bunch. Then again, maybe they just think they’re smarter than everyone else aka have closed minds. In fact, there was a research study done on that recently. Not saying sociology is a hard science, but practical experience tells me there’s truth in the stereotype (even IF it lumps people together unfairly, as there are always a spectrum of people in all fields). Are you by any chance an engineer?
Chemists, you say? Physicists? Maybe the 60 and over crowd. You seriously expect anyone to believe chemists and physicists don’t believe humans are causing the climate to change? All I can do is laugh at that.
The Kahan chart is interesting in that it confirms something I’ve noticed: the better people understand science, the more dismissive they are of climate alarmism. It’s not that they “distrust science,” it’s that they distrust political activism cloaked as science.
Great job keeping your one misrepresentation/falsehood per sentence record intact, Dave. Actually the chart show that the more religious a person is, the the more they have to deny science to avoid cognitive dissonance. The non religious don’t have that problem as the chart clearly shows.
For the serious fundamentalists, the end of the world is something to be welcomed. They’ve all studied the Book of Revelation and see climate disaster as one component of signs portending the return of Jesus. They will then get to rejoice in the deaths of all of us heathens in the great battle with the AntiChrist, who will obviously be a climate alarmist. I don’t expect much help from this fringe group of lunatics, but I do wish that they’d quit running for Congress.
Just one catch – why would God let those that trashed his Creation into Heaven?
I don’t think Satan would accept them either!
They’d get a pretty dim reception wherever they end up.
Interesting theo-logical question lurking here: What sense would Heaven or Hell make if Homo S “Sapiens” goes extinct?
Perhaps it was a different species that was the one God had intended as stewards of the planet? Homo Sapiens doesn’t seem to be very sapient about it at least, and certainly does not deserve to end up in the hall of heavenly fame.
Non whatsover.
As Heaven and Hell are only constructs of the human mind, logic would dictate that once Humans become extinct, then so would Heaven and Hell.
Did religion exist before man?
What you are implying is that there is a pre-ordained conclusion driven by “politics” which drives the “science”.
dumb statement. It’s the science which drives the political insight and motivation.
the former is what YOU are engaging in!
I’ve got a bridge to sell. Interested?
Is that really (1) “science comprehension”? Or is it just (2) “knowing some sciency buzzwords” (but not really comperhending science)?
If (1) then we have some evidence that “highly religious” correlates with “highly paranoid and/or psychopathic”. (Well, that’s indeed how ‘Merrican evangelical fundamentalism tastes like to me Barvarian anticatholic antitheist [which includes antiatheist]).
I suspect it’s more of (2). I doubt that in a representative sample of 2,000 Americans there’s any significant fraction with some significant understanding of science and the scientific method. Folks and media usually confuse epistemology with a debate club.
I wonder if Mr Shimkus has asked himself at what point during the last 6000 years those dinosaurs inhabited the Earth?
You warmists might get the message if you just choose to hear “Mother Gaia” each time a deity is invoked.
I’m new here but it’s obvious that kingdube has completely missed the point of climate science.
Science is evidence based. There are measurable absolutes that all can agree on such as the speed of light in a vacuum or the freezing point of water.
Relgions are like opinions. Everyone has one, there being no atheists in a foxhole and all. Each religion is different and cannot be verified with evidence. Such is the nature of faith.
Kingdube seems to not understand that climate scientists rely on evidence not faith in some diety that he calls “Mother Gaia.” I suppose it’s hard for him to understand people who choose to believe evidence over faith.
What is surprising is how many people reject religion on the basis of science and in the process make science a religion.
Recognizing that science gets things right far more often than wrong, and far more right than religion, isn’t a religion. It’s a heuristic, and a damned good one.
I do believe redacted perfectly stated the difference between religion and science. Where science isn’t really something you choose to believe in like a faith, religion very much is asking you to just believe. With science you use your brain’s best skills to observe and use your logical thinking to establish something as truth or not. And it encourages you to seek out as much information as possible in all fields of the natural world to accurately measure to some degree whether the hypothesis is true or not.
With faith what you “observe” is a magical being you conjure up out of nothing in your head that is supposedly the creator of all around you. While theories that come through lateral logical thinking can be disproved by asking the right questions and showing opposing truths, religion generally ditch all that and just ask you to “believe”. There is nothing religious about science, its using a completely different part of the brain – the one that deals with logic and reason.
Similarly you have people like Anthony Watts is basically preaching some sort of anti-AGW religion as he does not have to back up his claims with proof or science, but just asks you to believe the same way you are supposed to believe in god. Its only people like Watts who are desperately trying to make it into a religion, where the actual scientists (climate, geology, biology) are devils and oil is their god.
These comparisons are scientifically meaningless and that’s what makes absurd a lot that’s being said by alleged sciency types.
Epistemology hasn’t been invented yesterday. Religious studies neither.
Why is it scientifically meaningless? Clearly science has a set of methods used to quantify and measure things based on known constraints in the physical world. The confirmation of AGW is just a result of using these methods.
While its quite clear that Watts and a lot of deniers have no real explanation for their “beliefs” that fossil fuels has no external costs to the biosphere, and have to come up with one fantastic explanation after another. Many who are on the brink of pure religion as they don’t need physical explanations for some N-year “cycle” or whatnot. It’s a perfect example of a non-rational mind, one who caves into fears and anger instead of applying reason and logic – and to actually understand what the science is telling us.
First of all it’s like comparing German and Xhosa grammar using German grammar as guidance, only to declare that German grammar is obviously much better than Xhosa grammar. Totally meaningless.
Secondly science knows its limits and so should you. Elevating it to the start-and-end-all area to deal with the world is exactly replacing with it the old Alpha and Omega of religion.
So your argument is that religion and science has equal truth in evaluating the state of a system and where its heading? I wonder why we have airbags in cars then, if there is supposedly equal chance that a deity will save you from certain death? The automobile industry should really be working towards having more believe that god will intervene so they can shave off some cost on cars. More money, who can deny the power of that religion?
The only think I can say for sure is that the worse it gets, the more people look for deities to answer their why?’s. In the end the face of the physical realities will dawn and claim what its set in motion to do.
my argument is that by using science to judge religion the conclusion is implicit in the starting point.
Science is good for what science is good for. And the last thing it is good for is as the key to interpret everything in the universe.
Do you have an alternative approach to describing everything in the universe perhaps?
Thats right. Earth is a goddess. Sandy and Haiyan are just a few of her powers. Man, by comparison, is puny, arrogant, stupid, and weak. Stupid enough to foul our own sustenance with the excrement of our enhanced powers, and dull enough not to notice. The more man aggrandizes himself, the less he notices how Mother Earth remonstrates him.
Back to the article and the question of how these two ideologies got connected.
If you really hold to a strict, literal creation account per Genesis, then you’re likely in the camp that believes the Earth is only 6000 yrs old – you can figure that out by counting years in the Bible. If the Earth (and universe) is only 6000 yrs old then all that carbon dating stuff is just nonsense. How can something be older that the Earth? So any ‘scientist’ who bases any conclusion on ‘data’ from any source that purports to use a long time scale, is wrong.
Thanks, Peter, for highlighting good scientists who are also believers. The two worldviews are NOT incompatible. Keep up the good work.
People who use biblical principles to disrespect “warmists” should spend some time listening to Katherine Hayhoe lectures. Here’s a sample.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1881274265/
“Thanks, Peter, for highlighting good scientists who are also believers. The two worldviews are NOT incompatible.”
That some believers are good scientists does not even address whether the two worldviews are actually compatible, it merely shows that some believers do not use the rigor of the scientific method to analyze their religious views.
It is impossible for me to see how a worldview which relies on the primacy of revelation and the veneration of faith despite a lack of evidence can be compatible with the scientific method which rejects revelation and hypotheses which have no evidence to support them.
Very good Charles. It seems my original comment wasn’t so outrageous after all.
I also would like to point out that I very much dislike the word ‘acidification’ in this context but there is a time and place to fight each battle.
Is there a better single word that defines a process that decreases pH? How about ‘alkalinicide’? 🙂
pH reduction? Neuterization? Dealkalynization? The oceans can’t become acidic so “acidification” is a total misnomer.
If I owe a million dollars and repay $10,000 I cannot claim it’s a step towards becoming a creditor to the bank, can I?
Since most dictionary definitions of acidification are “converting into an acid”, you have a point. On the other hand, there are definitions of declining pH as increasing acidity regardless of where the current pH is on the scale. Ocean neutralization is sort of ambiguous in common vernacular, but in context is more accurate. Ocean neuterization sounds like something a veterinarian does.
“dealkalinification” would the correct term for decreasing pH where pH > 7.
What a vocabu-gasm! Thanks to Omno, the master of esoteric thought, for initiating the “Name the First Derivative of pH” project.
If [pH(t+1) .GT. pH(t)] & [pH .LT. 7]
“deacidification”
If [pH(t+1) .GT. pH(t)] & [pH .GE. 7]
“alkalinification”
If [pH(t+1) .LT. pH(t)] & [pH .LE. 7]
“acidification”
If [pH(t+1) .LT. pH(t)] & [pH .GT. 7]
“dealkalinification”
A computer could understand that, if not many people. We should send a “dealkalinification isn’t as ominous as acidification” memo to Frank Luntz. And as an added bonus, it’d give people a chance to learn to pronounce “de-al-ka-line-i-za-shun”
When I see strained constructions like “dealkalinification”, my mind immediately engages in floccinaucinihilipilification.
As I said I did not want to start discussing this 😉
To avoid accusations of sensationalism or orgasmatronophobia, my vote goes for ‘pH reduction’.
“Current rates of ocean acidification have been compared with the greenhouse event at the Paleocene–Eocene boundary (about 55 million years ago) when surface ocean temperatures rose by 5–6 degrees Celsius. No catastrophe was seen in surface ecosystems, yet bottom-dwelling organisms in the deep ocean experienced a major extinction. The current acidification is on a path to reach levels higher than any seen in the last 65 million years, and the rate of increase is about ten times the rate that preceded the Paleocene–Eocene mass extinction.” (Wikipedia on Ocean Acidification).
How about we call it a “mass exctinction event pH reduction” then?
If that’s your faith, John, go for it
Yes, that word came into my head too!
Still but a mere stub compared to some agglutinative Hungarian words:
kiegyensulyozhatatlanságmentesítőtleníttethetetlenségtelenítőtlenkedhetnétek
Our vocabulary workshop is totally validated. If floccinaucinihilipilification can make it into English language dictionaries, then so can alkalinification.
I floccinaucinihilipilificate any effort to stuff these words into anything less ephemeral than urbandictionary.com.