This Toles
cartoon appeared in this morning’s Washington Post.
I write this commentary at the beginning of April 2012, at
the end of one of the warmest winters I can recall.
It is
technically spring, early spring if one goes by the astronomical markers that govern
the solar year that determines the life cycles of plants and animals on this 3rd
planet outward from our sun. The plants
seem greatly confused. We reside at the
altitude of 1804 feet, 550 meters. Our latitude is North 36.12. This location has normally recorded snowfall
and hard freezes as late as 17 April. We
would expect the floral indications of spring’s arrival about 2 weeks later
than residents at similar latitude but 0 meters of altitude. During our first spring residing here, we
did, indeed, have a hard freeze and snow on17 April that severely damaged crops
in the fields. This year, many trees
have already bloomed and are leafing out.
Local strawberry crops may actually be ready a month ahead of
normal. The potential for a cold snap
destroying berry harvests is all too real.
But the short-term forecasts don’t include over-the-Canadian-border
assaults by the northern jet stream. Instead,
the earlier than normal warm-up predisposes toward severe thunderstorms with
wind and hail damage.
The
polar icecaps are melting at rates previously unheard of until now. The long-sought Northwest Passage actually
existed last summer and will most likely exist again this coming summer. This is not to claim that many or most
merchant ships could or should attempt to force that passage. Those vessels trying it should have an
unlimited fuel supply, immense reserves of food with respect to the crew’s
size, at least one icebreaker on call, long range logistic, medical, and other
resources not commonly carried by cargo ships.
But the passage has been forced and a changed route will likely be
forced again this summer. In truth, both the U.S. ballistic missile
submarine fleet and that of the former USSR ran numerous patrols under the
Arctic ice cap once the navigational difficulties were worked out. The same icepack conditions that made
under-ice submarine patrols feasible with respect to vessel and crew safety and
recovery in the event of fire, collision, or other accidental damage; make the
trip feasible for surface vessels too. Thinned
icepack with numerous polynyas would allow a submarine to force through thin
ice or perhaps blow a hole using a torpedo in order to allow emergency
surfacing in the icepack. The same conditions make forcing the route with
icebreakers feasible if not yet cost effective.
Still, with
decades of polar icecap photos, hundreds of temperature graphs from above,
upon, and below the icepack, the GOP propagandists continue to deny any change
in the icecap. With the increased rates
of ice shelf calving in the Antarctic, the GOP house organs still find some
reason to deny change despite the increased presence of ice sheets the size of
Florida.
The GOP/teavangelist
alliance plays to the inability of its base to understand basic science. Candidates like Rick Santorum claim that
mythology intended to explain physical occurrences such as lightning, thunder,
volcanism, and floods is somehow more to be believed than the actual
science-based causation that can be demonstrated, quantified, and repeated on
demand. Other religious fanatics such as
Sarah Palin routinely encourage the teavangelist voter base to ignore reality
and to focus on placating an imaginary deity hiding unseen in the stratosphere
in order to assure rain, a harvest, and escape from an endless dance with minor
imaginary enemies in an as-yet-undetected chamber in the core of the
planet.
I no longer
have any hope of convincing any GOP/teavangelist that climate changes are real,
or that climate change has a human component.
I find it frightening that the same people who have no belief in science
are being asked by the GOP/teavangelist party bosses to push their religious
fanaticism into the school systems, into health care, into private matters
concerning reproduction, and into the politically-driven revision of history
textbooks so that minorities and non-Christians are being removed from history
by such groups as the Texas school board.
Science is
based upon repeatable demonstrability, upon quantifiable observations and
results. Measuring the rise in sea level
over a century is science. Counting the
number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is idiocy. Praying for rain in a long-standing drought
is not a workable state policy to prevent crop loss. Developing drought-resistant species of
plants used for food is a scientific approach to conservation, to modern
agriculture, and to evolution.
Prayer in
school does not prevent crime, and never has, despite the huge number of chain
letters currently being forwarded around the internet. There will never be a shortage of historical
fossils to examine as long as the United States is unable to realize that religion
is irretrievably linked to magical thinking, and that neither religion nor
magical thinking will ever provide answers to the questions that scientists
answer every day.
Ask any woman
who has ever suffered from a UTI, been successfully treated, and then developed
another that required a different medication to treat if evolution is
real. She may not understand the mechanism
for bacterial resistance; but she has just demonstrated proof that evolution
takes place in biological organisms. All the prayer and religious intercession imaginable
will not change the course of the infection although man-made antibiotics
will.
If we can
identify and quantify the effects of human interaction with microbes, if we can
demonstrate the effects of Freon on the ozone layer, we can also demonstrate
and quantify the impact that 7 billion of us have on the greenhouse effect and
on the icecaps. Now we just need to
breed a population of voters able to discern and discard the lies spread by the
GOP/teavangelists.
No comments:
Post a Comment