Obscura

sitting back in the blackness, pupils wide as pennies, the spring breeze blows the trees. and the classroom shudders.

Turbine

Informed by Informing Information

Listen, I really don't get any joy when I come across indications that to be "American" is to be blatantly uninformed and reactionary, but I come across them all too often of late. No, I get it, all media has its slant and a line of people somewhere in the US is not, in and of itself, suggesting a plague of ignorance. But, there's something else at work here; that those people interviewed in the line who claimed they couldn't think of anything off hand (but might be able to research it) really wouldn't be able to create valid arguments because they simply don't have the resources.

Take, for instance, the new breast cancer screening regulations. And consider an example of the outrage that followed. Despite the fact that Sarah Palin's death panels were non-existence, this was seen by many as an act of rationing care; that the social/commun/lenin/mao/ists are corrupting America with big government legislation which is out to kill women to save money in order to provide healthcare to the illegals. Now, I spent about 20 minutes looking through not stories on the guidelines but the published report itself. I'm not doctor, and parts of it are hard to simply skim, but its not too difficult to see that the changes aren't earth-shattering, and (if you look at the previous reports) not unprecedented. Basically, this panel concluded, in tandem with the World Health Organization and other groups, that the risks of regular mammography in women in their 40s could not be overtly justified by the committee and should be left to the individuals and doctors.

The language is hardly absolute and inflammatory, yet the reaction is visceral. I see two reasons for this, first that breast cancer is a widespread, personal and highly emotional condition/issue for people who suffer and families that lose those people. A great deal of the reporting is clouded with testimonies of those who's lives were saved by a mammogram at age 40, or a mother who could have been saved had she been to regular screenings. Surely the human interest aspects of news are important, they make us care about issues that might otherwise seem foreign, but we cannot let emotional reaction prevent us from reading reports critically. I mean, if you read a news story that says doctors are suggesting that you do the opposite of what you know saved a friends life, wouldn't you attempt to figure out exactly what it was the doctors said? I tend to investigate those things that seem illogical to me.

Compounding this is the healthcare debate. The conservative zealots and politicians in the pockets of the insurance industry would do anything and everything to prevent passing any reform. Anything that even hints at some sort of change is painted as being forced upon us and destroying the America we love. Of course this has nothing to do with the actual science, the understanding of the science, or the value of human life but of campaign donations and political ideology. The result, I think, was a discourse fed by emotion and outrage in which people didn't have time to read the actual language; most were too busy writing witty and biting remarks to those that did not find the guidelines distasteful.

More recently, science was thrust into media debate again. Apparently, emails from an institution devoted to studying climate change were stolen. And, apparently these emails suggest that we are witness to the largest scientific conspiracy in the history of the age of enlightenment. ClimateGate. Scientists are corrupt, hiding data, spinning results and "tricking" the world into believe that humans are having an impact on global ecology. As to the details of what would drive scientists to do this, I am at a loss. I have not reviewed these thousands of emails myself yet, but the snippets I have read show some geeky scientist humor and discussion of problems facing climate scientists. Either this is just science being science, or this is evidence that the existence of global warming is still up for debate. Time to freak out.

To me this shows me what I already knew about science from reading Bruno Latour's Science in Action and studying an archaeological field school. Science is not pretty, its done by people who have their own motives and friends and enemies. Quote Gavin Schmitd in the NYT,

“Science doesn’t work because we’re all nice,” said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA whose e-mail exchanges with colleagues over a variety of climate studies were in the cache. “Newton may have been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works.”

Now what he may have failed to mention is that Newtown's hypothetical jackassery likely made theoretical gravity what it is. There might be a lot of evidence to support climate change, but correlations alone do not a scientific movement make. We need to find the correlations and test them and believe them and tell others in order to make them true. I have said before that I think science is misunderstood by many who simply accept its authority. If you send a bunch of white men to college for a really long time and then they write long papers with big words, you're likely to believe what they have to say, especially because their really smart friends also believe them.

But science and medicine are human constructs and human practices. As such they are imperfect, and this goes beyond the whole test, retest and suggest tests for the future thing. The idea of pure fact, of the truth about climate change, is always going to be seen through a fallible, human lens. We cannot simply observe. We can only observe through our baggage, like the scientists who discuss, within their work-related emails, skeptics and journalists that complicate their lives.

Without going into a mini-version of my thesis, my point is that the coverage of events, and misunderstanding of what science is, lead to in this case, an inability for many to figure out what the hell was going on. If I might make make the elitist assumption that not all my fellow Americans are as unoccupied, investigative, cynical and academic as I am, I think I can safely say that John and Jane Doe, watching ABCs nightly news, would not go to such lengths as I have gone here to understand the debates. We find trusted sources, take them at their words, and are provided with convenient buzz words to utilize in discussions with our friends and family.

Unfortunately, that most of the country is simply fed info by their moving picture boxes is supported by the general sitgma of intellectuals, those rich elitists stuck in their books and out of touch with people. Though I experienced it in college, I find more and more in the "real" world that independent review and learning is scoffed at and ignored in the face of more palatable perspectives (those which incite the emotions). Thinking is generally unprofitable and a waste of money-making time and a lot of people won't make time for it. Thus, we find ourselves in a time when the Palin line counts as informed decision making.

Global Warming and Grains of Sand

As may be emerging as a trend in these few blog entries here, I have rather different and critical views on life and the situation of the world today. Seeing as I just tonight attended a lecture on Climate Change and Religious Perspectives, I've decided to devote some time to my ideas on climate change.

In the early days of global warming I argued that it was a natural trend, that our planet moves in and out of climatic stages and trends. This argument is not to deny that global warming happens, but mostly that it should come as no surprise. I have been convinced, of late, that indeed human actions have had a great effect on natural trends and have increased them in an "unnatural" way. I criticize the term unnatural because if humans are not a natural organic being of this planet and earthly ecosystem than I do not know what is. Therefore, even the largest cities could be considered natural landscapes. Perhaps its a stretch and most won't agree, but nevertheless I see similar amounts of beauty in the setting sunlight reflecting off a glass facade of a building as I see in the same sun reflecting off a body of water.

While I accept humans role in global warming I still consider it a natural process. My problem with environmentalists is that they inevitably represent humans as the kings of the earth and the ultimate bringers of change. It seems that many should find conflict in the simple act of living, seeing the destructive and rapist role that humans play towards the world that has been protrayed. I think that the current global warming and climate change dialog greatly overestimates and egocentrically places a great influence and power that we simply do not have. Humans have existed on this planet, currently exist on this planet and will remain in existence on this planet for a minuscule amount of time. We need only consider the life of earth, some 4.5 billion years, in order to humble our futile presence. Our entire 400,000 year existence is but a blink of the eye in the history of our planet, that's own history is but a blink of the eye in the history of the galaxy and so on and so on down the road until we come to times that no human can logically or illogically conceive. That said, environmentalists seem to be under the impression that the world we see today was a once static place; that Pandas and White Tigers and Andean Condors have always and would have always beautified the planet were it not for humans. However, the world that we know and see today is also but a single grain of sand on the great beach of time.

Is it not egocentric and somewhat ridiculous to attempt to save Polar Bears and Iranian Cheetahs from the natural evolution or extinction that has and will always occur? I think it is. Despite how much I love seeing the far reaches of our environment populated by exotic and beautiful animal and plant life, I keep in mind the lack of permanence that my eye represents. Global warming is not a good thing, it is making change happen occur much faster (faster than we as a species have heretofore been able to cope with it), but it is silly to expect to turn off evolution and change and save the whales. Whatever our impact on the globe, it will come to an end one day, either because we mar it beyond recognition and move on to other planets, or because we too will simply become extinct.

This planet still has 4 billion good years left before that damned star our there decides to go supernova. Our impact on the globe will be permanent, but instead of viewing it as negative, indeed as a rape and plundering of the natural world, it is but one of many impacts that have changed the earth. One need only consider the great extinction events that have to date eliminated 99% of the life on the planet; including the most-well known event, the extinction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago that changed the face of life on the planet.

Life will go on on this great blue planet until the sun explodes or the core stops spinning ("The Core" anyone?). Life in the future will be different, and perhaps humans will be part of a great extinction event that will change life drastically. This is not a bad thing, indeed it is as natural and as bad as an antelope being hunted, killed and devoured by a pride of Lion. Current discussion on climate change is selfish, short sided and homo-centric (?). Instead of thinking we have great control or great influence over the natural (however accelerated) processes, we should consider how to adapt the human condition to coping with such changes as raised sea levels and drought.