Tao and the Art of Climate Repair

"A sage governs this way:

He empties the people's minds and fills their bellies.
He weakens their wills and strengthens their bones.
Keep the people always without knowledge and without desires,
For then the clever will not dare act.
Engage in no action and order will prevail."

~Laozi

The religious right's never ending War on Science seems to be an effort to follow this 2300 year old nugget of Chinese philosophy. Laozi's idea was that if the people are ignorant and plain, they will be good little worker bees with no thoughts of advancement, either social or technological. In his mind, this would lead to an introverted, simple, peaceful society.

Perhaps more accurately, I believe it would lead to a society of minds that are more easy to mold to the whims of the leader. At the time, Laozi was also advocating inaction on the part of the king or governor. However, with today's religious and political leaders taking a more active (and destructive) path, the simple-minded population they are bent on creating will only be more likely to follow them blindly down the destructive path they are creating.

From Burnt Orange Report, via C&L:

Evolution is a religious conspiracy

"It's enough to set the world a-spinning that the chairman of the [Texas] House Appropriations Committee, the most powerful committee in the House, distributed to legislators a memo pitching crazed wingers who believe the earth stands still -- doesn't spin on its axis or revolve around the Sun -- that Copernicus was part of a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the Old Testament.

Why fund public schools or keep colleges available to the middle class if they are filling our children's heads with damaging Kabbalistic fantasies? (Yes, Copernicus, Darwin et al are part of a Kabbalistic Conspiracy according to the fixed-earth crowd)."

This was brought on by a letter written in the name of a member of the Georgia state House by the proprietor of www.fixedearth.com, a purely batshit crazy place where they ignore and/or manufacture science in the interest of getting evolution out of schools and replacing it with creationism. They just want to use a Jewish conspiracy to do it. A lot of people were all upset over the Jewish thing, including the ADL, but that was just the means to an end, as far as I can see. The end they want to accomplish is the same as the B of E in the Dover case, and the same as the Kansas B of E. They want their particular religion implanted in the school system, at any cost.

It really does require a particularly stunning ignorance of physics and astronomy to arrive at some of the conclusions this guy reaches. I tried to sift through some of it, but i couldn't find (1) any purported scientific evidence to support his claim of a fixed earth or (2) any correct information about the currently accepted cosmology he was supposedly trying to refute. He missed some really basic things about modern cosmology, like the age of the universe. When you claim that an ancient Kabbalah text set the age of the universe at 15 billion years, and that proves that modern cosmology is a Jewish conspiracy, it might be interesting to point out that the currently accepted age of the universe is more like 13 billion years. That might not be important to him, but it's pretty important to astrophysicists. And when you talk about Newton's "invented math" (i.e. calculus) that he used to solve the planetary motion problems, you should probably mention that he invented calculus because the systems were a little too complex for simple algebra. I mean, you could do it with algebra, but it would take so much more paper. What if Newton's hand had cramped halfway through doing all that algebra, and he just said, "Ahhh, fuck it! Who cares why the planets go around in circles. I'm going to go sit back under that nice apple tree." I suppose as a corollary to his designs on ending evolution, he should also advocate stopping math education at algebra. And I guess he would want Pythagoras' "occult" geometry taken out as well. I suppose he wants school to cover reading skills to the point where a student can read the Bible, and then send them home to work in the factory.

Anyway, the fact that the chair of the National Council of State Legislators committee on Agriculture, Environment, and Energy seems to give this crackpot enough credence to pass his tripe around to the entire Texas state legislature is scary enough. Is there no one in government with enough scientific background to refute these claims outright? Apparently not. It seems everyone wants to jump on the Anti-Semite bandwagon first, rather than the Anti-Science this guy was trying to push onto people.

Maybe this has something to do with it:

Knowledge of core subjects increasing, but so is belief in pseudoscience

"In 1988 only about 10 percent knew enough about science to understand reports in major newspapers, a figure that grew to 28 percent by 2005.

People are giving increasing credence to pseudoscience such as the visits of space aliens, lucky numbers and horoscopes.

In addition, these researchers noted an increase in college students who report they are “unsure” about creationism as compared with evolution.

There also has been a drop in the number of people who believe evolution correctly explains the development of life on Earth and an increase in those who believe mankind was created about 10,000 years ago.

Miller said a second major negative factor to scientific literacy was religious fundamentalism and aging."

So here we have a direct correlation between religious fundamentalism, belief in creationism, and belief in aliens and horoscopes. Well, to be fair, the article did suggest that the belief in astrology may be tempered by people's confusing astrology and astronomy. I would argue that people who confuse the two don't actually know that much about astronomy.

Anyway, while religion serves a social function, providing a place for communities to grow, a place for social structure and trust to form, etc, when religion gets in the way of human advancement, it presents a larger negative social impact than the positive influences it brings. If you have a very strong sense of community, but your city is going to be underwater in 30 years when the glaciers melt, it doesn't really matter how many people brought you a casserole when you were sick or how everyone coo-ed over your niece at her baptism. Your city is underwater.

Which brings us to this:

Poll Finds High School Students Don’t Understand Climate Change Issues

"[T]he average high school student believes climate change has no consequences for them in their lifetime, according to the survey. The average high school student fails a quiz on the causes and consequences of climate change...

Students who are not affiliated with any religious denomination know more about climate change, and are 13 percent more likely to believe the U.S. should reduce greenhouse gases."

This particular type of scientific ignorance is, perhaps, the most dangerous, simply because of the potential level of disaster involved. The International Panel on Climate Change released a major report earlier this month. It didn't seem to make much of a splash in the major media outlets here, at least compared to the relative significance of the report to other "news" stories at the time (i.e. diaper on an astronaut, some lady died, etc) that got played out over a painfully long time. Why didn't a major report of several hundred scientists from around the world get more attention and respect payed to it? I have an idea. This was the Working Group 1 report on the Physical Science Basis for climate change. That's going to have a bunch of big words and science-y terms in it, like "paleoclimate" and "radiative forcing" and "biogeochemistry". No one understands words like that, so no one would "get" a news report about the report.

Maybe when WG 2 report comes out in April on "Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability", it will get more attention. I sure hope so, because that one will probably have more direct application to our lives, like the projected outcomes of our inaction that we will have to adapt to, the potential cultural and socio-economic impact of climate change, etc. And then WG 3 in May will tell us how we can maybe stop some of this from happening at all. Please America, learn a little when these reports come out. I'm sure other people around the world would like you to. It's OK, really. You don't have to be science dumb. It's not hard and it doesn't hurt. The reports explain everything for you. Just give it a try.