I'm from Newfoundland, known not only as the place where the events portrayed in the hit musical Come From Away take place, but also one of the best places on earth to view an annual parade of icebergs.
Newfoundland's icebergs "calve" off the glaciers on the west coast of Greenland. They break off in late winter/early spring, and make their way via the Labrador current out into the north Atlantic ocean. Then, they hug the coastline of the island of Newfoundland, gradually losing mass as they enter warmer waters below the 49th parallel until they melt entirely away - usually at some point just south of the Grand Banks.
Historically, the number of ice bergs that can be found in the northwestern Atlantic varies from year to year. In an average year, the peak of iceberg season (usually late May) would see a few hundred ice bergs drifting in the transatlantic shipping lanes. As of the first week of April, 2017, more than 400 ice bergs had already been counted in the area. The average for early April is about 80 bergs.
A warning by USCG ice patrol Commander Gabrielle McGrath notes that, early this month, three icebergs were found outside the boundaries of the area the Coast Guard had advised mariners to avoid and she is predicting a fourth consecutive “extreme ice season” with over 600 icebergs in the shipping lanes during the peak of the 2017 season.
People who deny the reality of global climate change can spew their pseudo-science but Newfoundlanders know this is not normal. The effects of all that sea ice and the hugely increased number of ice bergs are numerous and not limited to just the ice. The increased ice keeps the ocean temperature offshore colder later into the year, too. Apart from a longer colder spring (and in Newfoundland, spring is an often miserable, foggy, wet, cold season), the colder ocean temperature means that the annual capelin spawning season has been pushed later and later into the summer. The capelin roll that used to happen in early June every year, is now occurring in mid July and even as late as early August. Whales travel to Newfoundland in summer to feed on the capelin and it is not yet known how this altered capelin season may effect the whales migratory habits and wellbeing.
Global warming is the cause of many similar cascading effects around the planet. The effects of global climate change on ice, capelin and whales are just the tip of the iceberg regarding how planetary ecosystems may be disrupted by the changes. Some we already can predict and it is possible that there will be many more effects that we cannot yet foresee.
Some people, like William Happer, you'd think would be able to grasp science - being a physicist and all -but no. Maybe, since his discipline is physics and not climate science, the professor simply cannot comprehend the overwhelming conclusions of the vast majority of climate scientists that global climate change is real and it is being accelerated by human activity.
Then again, his penchant for comparing the work of climatologists to Nazis(WTF!) throws up a vaguely familiar flag. Happer has been vying for a position in the Trump administration. So, there's that to consider.
The world is a complex ecosystem and sometimes we just need someone to explain things in plain language to help make sense of things. Enter Bill Nye, the science guy! Nye is well-known for making science fun and interesting to kids, so he is probably the best possible person to explain the danger of ignoring climate change to the ignorant - and the willfully ignorant - in the Republican party.
"Sir, with some respect, I encourage you to cut this out..."
Bill Nye to William Clapper
A mechanical engineer, Bill seems to be about as qualified to speak about climate science as Happer the physicist. More trustworthy, too, since Nye is not vying for a job in a corrupt, science-denying administration and has little to gain by it. Of course, a couple of minutes of air time and even less for each member of the panel, didn't give Bill much time to get a message across about the science of global warming, so he used his time in an even better way: to school Happer on his willful ignorance and misleading of the public, and to draw attention to the false equivalency that various media perpetuate in their eagerness to appear to be "even-handed".
Religious people in the USA will be pushing the National Day of Prayer into your face all day today. Yes, there has actually been a day mandated by Congress for the establishment of (Christian) prayer in nearly every government legislature, offices, schools and businesses throughout the land because, you know, the prioritizing of religious privilege had not been quite blatant enough before. There is another designation for today - the Day of Reason - but unlike the National Day of Prayer, it hasn't been widely publicized on national media or trumpeted proudly by our elected representatives.
There have been a few notable exceptions to the general bowing and scraping before the intimidation of religious power and a couple of mayors even proclaimed a Day of Reason to balance the national day of prayer. Most elected officials, however, refused to risk their careers by daring to champion the foundational principle upon which this country was built - the recognition that the establishment of authoritarian religion as a basis for any society leads to discrimination, injustice and eventually violence and brutal oppression. Instead, nearly all tugged their virtual forelocks, bowed their heads and murmured spells and incantations to one of the skygods in a show of obsequious respect for the dominant, hypervigilant, easily-offended, dangerously powerful Christian evangelical movement.
Those politicians - like non-Christians and non-believers everywhere - recognise the terrible truth. Religious privilege is so total, so oppressive and so vicious that to even suggest that forcing it on the population in the form of faith-based laws and "social services" might cause real harm to some citizens while reducing every citizen's liberty results in hysterical blowback. Fox "news" wasted no time this morning drawing an imaginary line spuriously connecting the Day of Reason to the Holocaust.
Oh, those silly, angry atheists!
Even the mildest criticism of religion unleashes the vitriolic pushback from religionists - usually in the form of mockery (he's an "atheist" angry at God he claims doesn't exist! harhar), followed by the inevitable comparisons between non-believers and monsters of history*. Hyperbolic language like that is not harmless. That kind of demonization of people who do not share the dominant faith in any society has paved the way for progroms, Inquisitions, burnings, genocides and brutal persecution for all of human history. Unbelievers know it and believers know it, too. They deploy this type of language as both a threat and a promise: Shut up and submit to our god-given authority or you will be targeted for the punishment that we believe your kind of evil deserves.
The religious right has been working tirelessly for several decades to seize the kind of absolute political, economic and social power which they have been imperfectly prevented from grasping since the United States of America was formed, largely thanks to the wisdom of the founding fathers who inserted the Establishment clause into the Constitution. But, theocrats are patient. After the social revolutions in the 1960's they experienced a resurgence in energy and an implacable determination to take over the country once and for all, rolling back the clock on civil rights (especially women's rights). The first and most important step in their strategy was to promote the false idea that "secularism" is a religion like Christianity - although naturally secularism is a godless (and therefore evil) religious cult. By drawing a false parallel between "faith" and "godless secularism", they laid the groundwork to polarize society into "good" and "bad" camps, where the price of accepting anything outside of religion as possibly good for society was to be put in the "bad" camp. And those in the "bad" camp, being compared to Hitler and all, might just be righteously punished at some point, amirite?
Just for the record...
Seriously, if you truly believe that a group in your community is really just like the Nazis, then isn't it your duty to neutralize them to prevent them from subjecting innocent people to atrocities? Isn't that the reasoning behind the notion of "just war"? In fact, this is the very rationale behind the murders of health workers who provide abortion services. The far right has moved on to demonizing atheists, humanists and non-Christians of every religious stripe, including people who may think they are Christians but who fail to pass the litmus test of the religious right (many are just not true Christians, don't you know). Religious fundamentalists try to attack all of these people under the umbrella of hated secularism but they fail to realize that secularism is favored by many moderate religionists since secularism is, you know, NOT a religion but a philosophy of how best to ensure a just and free society. Hence, the 'not a true Christian' label is applied followed by increasingly pointed attacks on moderate Christians who are just not Christian enough.
In the past decade, as the destructive power of the Christian theocratic movement finally began to be so obvious that even religious moderates could not fail to notice it, a group of atheists began to push back against religious hegemony. Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have all written famous (and infamous) books on the dangers of handing unfettered power over to religious believers. Their work started a movement which has grown slowly but surely - containing both non-theists and theists who share a grave concern for the future of this country if theocrats continue to ride the wave of unquestioned religious privilege to the highest seats of political power.
Last year, Richard Dawkins teamed up with another outspoken atheist - physicist Lawrence Krauss - to make a movie about this movement and the vitally important work it is trying to do. The movie's premiere this week in Toronto quickly brought out the usual attacks and insinuations that without religion, human beings are reduced to hopeless nihilism:
Here is the official trailer for The Unbelievers. You need to see this movie!
One final word. It's been true for all of history and is still true today. It doesn't matter what flavor of religion they practice, when they carry their religious beliefs to their logical conclusion, true believers are literally capable of anything:
*I refuse to link to any of the sites which demonize rational, reasonable human beings in this manner, but a simple google search for "evil, atheists" should reveal as much as you need to see to understand that this is a real problem.
For your Tuesday Tonic, Comedian Dusty Smith gives a hilarious (but NSFW) recap of the History Channel's The Bible series. In under 10 minutes, Dusty strips away the religious mind-twisting (no, really! evil is good, brutality is love, insanity is a "plan"! Check it out in the Good Book™) and gets down to what the Bible actually says.
Seriously, I need to hire Dusty to revive my Barmy Bible Study series!
This week, the northeastern United States and Eastern Canada are bracing for a snowstorm projected by some news sources to be "historic" in snowfall and disruption. While nor'easterners are battening down the hatches and preparing for the coming excitement, The Weather Channel and its affiliates NBC and Weather Underground have gleefully "named" the storm Nemo, and have wallpapered the internet and TWC with hysterical "reports" about the possible magnitude of the storm. This naming of winter storms is an effort to equate (in the public psyche) regular winter events with massive, life-threatening but far less regular occurrences such as tropical cyclones. So, let's talk about that.
The northeast has endured wicked winter storms for centuries.
The people really do know what to do and how to handle themselves.
Winter storms are a pain. They also have the potential to cause life-threatening conditions, but nearly always of the sort that can be avoided by sensible people preparing for normal winter events. Slippery roadways and cold, while potentially deadly, are nearly always avoidable or manageable - unlike 120mph hurricane winds taking the roof off your only shelter or massive flooding caused by a cyclone which inundates every shelter for miles. Except in rare circumstances, winter storms are just a costly nuisance. That is the reason why very little is being made of the possible aftermath of "Nemo" - because the truth is that it will cause a lot of headaches for a couple of days and then nearly everyone will get back to normal life.
In this age of easily roused rabbles and the 24-hour panic-of-the-week news cycle, it is a refreshing change to come across an elected official who behaves like an adult, calmly assessing the situation and then sensibly describing the reality instead of throwing out hyperbolic statements to score political points. Upon learning that a similar storm was bearing down on his city a few weeks ago, Mayor Dennis O'Keefe of St. John's advised the citizens to be prepared for a lot of snow and possible power outages, stay off the roads and try to enjoy the unexpected day at home.
Mayor O'Keefe: leading by example
“Enjoy the day and get ready for the clean up. Don’t panic, don’t sweat it. The power will come back.”
Mayor Dennis O'Keefe
Solid advice. Most valuable, however, was the Mayor's calm demeanor. You've been through this a hundred times, he seemed to say. You know how it goes. There is nothing to be gained from scurrying around in a panic. There will be plenty to do later. Get ready, then relax and rest up for the work to come. That night, the storm came and the storm raged and there was, indeed, a "heavy snowfall". Nearly two feet fell over most of Mayor O'Keefe's city. The wind howled - blowing heavy wet snow in front of it. The power did go out in a lot of places, but people were mostly prepared.
People hunkered down, lit candles, fired up the grill and made hot beverages. They joked with their neighbors, embraced the unexpected long weekend, griped about losing power or rejoiced about power restored. Facebook friends offered to deliver hot food and drinks to friends without power, and everyone kept tabs on everyone else in case help was needed. People settled down for a long winter's night. As they have done for years.
And in the morning, the clean up began. The power did come back - not as quickly as some people would have liked, understandably - but it did come back thanks to the efforts of linemen and power crews who braved the elements to repair lines thrown down by the gale force winds. Neighbours and friends worked together again to shovel driveways and dig out cars and clear a pathway to the front door.
"Nemo" may dump up to two feet of snow on parts of New England before it finally pushes off to the north Atlantic. But, like Newfoundlanders, northeasterners are used to winter storms. They know what to do!
Whipping people into a frenzy with hyperbolic projections of "historic" storms is really not helpful for anyone but those who stand to benefit from increased viewer ratings (ahem, NBC). The northeast has endured wicked winter storms for centuries. The people really do know what to do and how to handle themselves. The damage and the scope of the coming storm may indeed be greater than most storms in the past, but not so much greater that it should be used to pad TV ratings, stoke the panic machinery and drive storm-related purchases. The stuff you did to prepare for the regular old snowstorms before the naming nonsense began in 2012 is still the stuff you will always need.
It's probably going to be a blizzard. Judge yourselves accordingly. Stay informed and stay prepared, but don't let the panic-mongering of modern commerce rattle you. You know what to do. Do it.
Preparedness tips from Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency here.
When Zack Kopplin was in his sophomore year at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, in 2008, he started his fight against a new law called the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), which has earned him fame and notoriety for being a notable advocate for science in defiance of this law's disguised attempt at introducing creationism into the classroom in Louisiana.*
For your Saturday Inspiration, may I present a modern day David vs Goliath story: When Christian fundamentalists in the Louisiana legislature passed the Louisiana Science Education Act, it was a signal that the religious right had finally declared open war against reality-based public education. This law virtually guarantees that growing numbers of children will be deprived of education as the modern knowledge available through comprehensive educational curricula is replaced by medieval constraints on learning where all access to knowledge must be restricted to whatever can be Biblically referenced.
Alarmed and angered by these developments, LA teenager Zack Kopplin pushed past his shyness and fear of retaliation to protest the law. Zack began by writing a research paper on the subject while still in high school. Since then, he has sought and gained the support of 78 nobel laureates in his effort to persuade the Louisiana legislature that the LSEA was not just a mistake, but potentially disastrous for Louisiana children and the future economic growth of the state. He was disappointed in that effort: the Louisiana legislature refused to repeal the law. To Zack's (and many others') horror, Tennessee soon followed Louisiana's example and passed a similar creationist bill of their own. Zack's concerns are founded in chilling reality. Not only has the LSEA opened the door for creationism to be taught to unsuspecting children by dishonestly calling it "science", but the Louisiana legislature - with the blessing of Governor Bobby Jindal - has also passed bills for school voucher programs which funnel public tax dollars into religious schools which teach this overtly religious material. This blatant violation of the Constitutional prohibition against government endorsement of religion was made possible through a cleverly packaged bill purporting to support "academic freedom".
While science has been in the crosshairs of religious fundamentalists for decades, it is not the only school subject in danger. History is being rewritten in Texas (the source of the vast majority of textbooks used by all American schoolchildren), while Bible-based Mathematics (yes, Math!), Economics and Literature, currently being taught inside the Christian homeschooling movement, are poised to be launched into the public school curricula as soon as Christian fundamentalists succeed in getting their agenda passed in state legislatures around the country. Louisiana is far from the only Republican-controlled state to be pushing through these anti-education measures, either. In addition to Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas (unofficially), four more states are considering legislation which will allow religious fundamentalists to do an end run around both the Constitution and reality-based educational standards. Fresh legislation has been put forward in Colorado, Missouri and Montana. In Oklahoma, there are two bills before the state legislature that include potentially creationist language. A watchdog group, the National Center for Science Education, said that the proposed laws were framed around the concept of "academic freedom". It argues that religious motives are disguised by the language of encouraging more open debate in school classrooms. However, the areas of the curriculum highlighted in the bills tend to focus on the teaching of evolution or other areas of science that clash with traditionally religious interpretations of the world. Four US states considering laws that challenge the teaching of evolution, Paul Harris, The Guardian, January 31, 2013. Why are religious fundamentalists so determined to inject religion into science curricula (and into public education, generally) anyway? What possible benefit can there be in denying reality and refusing to accept the scientific theories which enabled humankind to develop technologies and medical treatments which these same people presumably do not refuse to use? The answer is sadly banal. Christian fundamentalists are attempting to destroy secular public education for the same reason that religion has always opposed allowing the people access to real education: for the preservation of the religious elite's power and wealth. American Christianism - like all religions - is a symbiotic relationship: religious elites derive their power and wealth from legions of followers who look to pastors and preachers for leadership and who believe that the religion they promote is true. Church is big business. From the enormous, multi-million dollar mega-church corporations to the one-man storefront church business, there is a huge incentive for preachers and their organizations to do whatever they need to do to maintain their "moral authority" over their flocks and thus hold on to their power and wealth.
The allure of religion
For their part, Christian believers provide a steady flow of income and huge political power to their church leadership (in the form of the "Christian" vote) in exchange for a sense of order and purpose in life, moral guidance and perhaps most important of all (though seldom acknowledged as a separate reason) the sense that they are valued members of a powerful majority. For many born-again believers, that sense of belonging to a powerful majority is one of the few comforts they have in an often bewildering, disempowering and depressing life. The foundation for this mutually beneficial relationship is the Christian belief system. The moral authority of the religious leadership depends upon general acceptance of - and willingness to profess belief in - the doctrines of the faith. It is this belief system which is the weak link in the power structure of the business of religion. When the supremacy of the belief system is challenged, the power of the leadership is threatened. The problem for both the fundamentalist leaders and their willing followers is this: Christian beliefs - like most religious belief systems - are founded in mythology and the supernatural so evidence-based reality is obviously a threat to that foundation. Reality-based education, the goal of good, secular schools, is a direct threat to religion because by teaching children empirically supported facts about the natural world and giving them the critical thinking skills to continue to seek the truth about the world and our place in it, it teaches them the skills they need to understand how religion manipulates and controls the culture and to see how that manipulation is often motivated by very worldly, selfish goals.
The Christian right has long suspected that colleges are their enemies.
Well-educated people may not lose their belief in gods, but they often move away from organized religion. As more and more educated people moved away from organized religion during the last century - and gained independence from religiously-mandated tithing, rules for living and political activism - the wealth, power and influence of the church began to decline. The religious elites realized that public education was their mortal enemy. In the 1970's, a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders joined forces and formulated a plan to "take back America" - and a major focus of that plan was to undermine the public education system which they saw as the most dangerously effective dispeller of religious mysticism. It wasn't only religious leaders who wanted to maintain the illusion of religious Truth™, however. If that were the case, they would have failed miserably since they are a relatively small elite with nowhere near the number of votes they would need to control elections or influence legislatures. They needed an army of loyal followers willing to act against their own material interests to provide the financial backing and votes needed to support the fundamentalist Christian agenda. Incredibly, they were able to marshall just such an army of dedicated, ideologically-driven followers within a couple of decades. Why? Why would millions of people vote against their own interests and support a leadership which is working to deprive them of rights and their children of education? On some level they know the Bible-based worldview is flawed and that the anti-science movement is wrong. They know it - even if they refuse to acknowledge it - because they use science-based technology, medicine and reproductive technology every day. Yet they deny the truth and vote to deny the truth to their own children and their neighbors' children, too.
It is tempting to chalk this up to stupidity or irrationality, but that is a mistake. Christians are no more stupid than any other Americans. They can understand the truth but they choose to ignore it. Religionists see that the power lies in going along with the fiction, and they see what happens to people who refuse to bow to religious power. People gravitate to power and they can see that in a democracy the power is with the majority, so many make a choice to join the majority. That is not stupidity, it is calculation. In a purely objective calculation - looking at the negative social consequences experienced by outspoken non-Christians, for example - it may actually be more stupid not to go along with the Christian majority. The charge that Christianists are "irrational" is probably without merit, too. We cannot know what people really believe in the privacy of their own thoughts, only what they profess to believe. We can, however, see that perfectly sensible people say and do objectively irrational things for very rational reasons. For example, when people endure hazing rituals in order to be accepted into a highly desired group, it is clear that they do not "believe in" the irrational things they must say or do to win a place in the group, but it is equally clear that they are willing to do whatever it takes to be members because they do believe in the value of belonging to the group. Self-professed Bible-believing Christians may or may not believe that the Bible is literally the source of all truth and knowledge, but they definitely believe that belonging to the Christian religion is worth saying that they do. When you consider the harm that they know they would experience in their social, personal and professional lives should they refuse to submit to the pressure to profess the Christian faith, it is undeniable that in a very real sense it is more rational to go along with Christian fundamentalism than it is to fight against it.
So, while it is true that supporting the Christian Right's agenda is harmful to their own material interests, for many Christians the psychological benefits - they might call it their spiritual interests - of belonging to the church are more important. Church followers were, and still are, anxious to preserve the fictional foundation upon which their own position in a powerful majority is built. They support lies in order to preserve their religious privilege. Feeling safe in a modern world full of cures and conveniences made possible by science, they cannot imagine losing those gains so very few followers of fundamentalist Christianity can see any downside to denying reality in this manner. They don't see that, having grown up with a decent education themselves, their religious "belief" is a choice, but for children who know nothing else but indoctrination (backed up by the fear of hellfire), there may be no psychologically safe "choice" possible. They only see the upside: the consolidation of their group's position of supremacy in American society: the continued normalization and forced public acceptance of false beliefs which supports their own psychological comfort and social position. Public apathy about the creep of religious fundamentalism into the public sphere will have a profound impact upon the future of this country. This is not a fringe movement which poses no threat to our reasonable, sensible little corner of the world. This is a powerful, well-organized and - until very recently - stealthy campaign to concentrate power into a few hands, using religion as the weapon to subdue and incapacitate the people. Nearly 50% of the population already professes to believe that the creation myth explains our existence and the Bible is literally the source of all knowledge. That number could jump to an overwhelming majority of future voters if an entire generation of schoolchildren is deprived of the ability to think critically or to understand the basic principles of math and science which underpin nearly all of modern technology and medicine.
A child devastated by the "good news" of Christian indoctrination. (Jesus Camp)
The school voucher concept was the brainchild of religious extremists who were determined to completely dismantle the secular public school system and reduce all education in this country to a training ground of future foot soldiers for the conservative Christian elites. They have been working on this elsewhere in the world (in places where the public education systems are far less robust than in the USA) through their "mission" programs, too. The United States was a tougher arena for the Christian war for supremacy, but little by little, the religionists have succeeded in chipping away at the Constitutional protections which once guaranteed that American children would have access to an education free of ulterior agendas. Laws like the ones that Zack Kopplin is fighting in Louisiana deprive children of a real education while indoctrinating them mercilessly with the mythology, eschatology and psychological terrorism of fundamentalist Christian theology. The Christian right intends to return Christendom - within a generation or two - to an appalling condition where a majority of the population will not understand the nature of reality and will be too cowed by theological terrorizing to ask any questions about it.
"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."
Coming soon to a school near you: Belief instead of knowledge. Feeling instead of thinking. Obedience instead of understanding. Acceptance instead of justice. Conformity instead of liberty. Fearful self-loathing instead of hopeful confidence.
Unless America wakes up to put a stop to this madness, the result of these laws will be the perversion of every cherished American ideal. Christian fundamentalists have been working on this particular strategy to control American society for more than 30 years (before that, they tried other strategies which were not as successful). If this sounds alarmist to you, consider that these religious extremists are counting on that. They are counting on the moderate middle of America to dismiss those who are raising the alarm, while they continue their stealth campaign to destroy the foundation of religious liberty and establish a Christian theocracy in the USA. If we continue to ignore this situation and allow religious extremists to write, lobby for and pass laws which enshrine a particular religious ideology as the government-endorsed national ideology, the consequences for religious, political and intellectual freedom - not to mention technological and economic development - in this country will be disastrous. Please read more on this topic and spread the word. Below, you'll find some links worth checking out (even if you have no time to read, please take 5 minutes to watch the video linked at the bottom of this post): *Meet Zack Kopplin: The Millenial Fighting Creationism in Louisiana (Q&A), Dillon Zhou, policymic, January 28, 2013.
If you doubt that the school voucher idea is for anything other than to undermine secular, public education for American citizens, please take five minutes to view this video excerpt from the documentary, School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry and Bias.
Reprising this outstanding song from rapper Tombstone da Deadman. Purpose has been a consistent favorite on my blog since I first posted it on April 10, 2012. In fact, it is the eighth all-time most viewed post on my blog!
More excellent work from the Rational Warrior can be found here.
Purpose is the perfect tonic for winter musing about the meaning of life and our place in it. Sit back and take in some inspiration on a Tuesday morning.
"Immediately after the distress of those days " 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.' 30 "At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. Matthew 24:29-31:29
This month in Scientific American magazine, there is a fascinating in-depth account of the history of the Christian conservative anti-science movement which has ebbed and flowed in this country for nearly 200 years. The concluding paragraph sums up this critical issue very well:
In an age when science influences every aspect of life—from the most private intimacies of sex and reproduction to the most public collective challenges of climate change and the economy—and in a time when democracy has become the dominant form of government on the planet, it is important that the voters push elected officials and candidates of all parties to explicitly state their views on the major science questions facing the nation. By elevating these issues in the public dialogue, U.S. citizens gain a fighting chance of learning whether those who would lead them have the education, wisdom and courage necessary to govern in a science-driven century and to preserve democracy for the next generation. (Shawn Lawrence Otto, America's Science Problem).
"President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet." What a good joke!
NPR has a related story today about conservative climate change denial and how it is affecting the 2012 election. At the RNC convention in Tampa, the guffaws from the Republican faithful at Mitt Romney's thinly veiled coded "joke" pointed to not only global climate change denial, but to an even more sinister truth about conservative Christian theology. They laugh about denial, because it is a political tool to further their religious agenda. It is possible that many conservatives understand very well that global warming is happening, but that fact is actually a source of gleeful satisfaction to the true believer, not a cause for concern. So why do they publicly deny it? The policy of denial is necessary in order to block any efforts by sane people to slow down or stop human activity that contributes to global warming. Evangelicals see this climate crisis as part of the end times, the most highly anticipated and welcome event in the conservative Christian mind.
There is something I think people must understand every time they read examples of the often incoherent dishonesty of Christian apologists as they deny the reality of global climate change: Christians want the world to end. In their religious delusion, they really do believe that it is necessary for the world to be destroyed in order to bring about the return of their Messiah, and they welcome the end of the world.
This truth cannot be overstated: conservative Christians despise the World™. They deny the importance of this mortal life. It is a religion of self-loathing where the only relief for the wretched sinner is not in this life - on this earth - but in another "life" after death. The entire point of Christianity is to deny that this life is all we may have, to disparage the efforts of human beings to improve this life for themselves and others, and to work toward bringing about the end of this world, so that their bronze-age mythical "prophesies" can be brought to fruition. This is not hyperbolic fear-mongering. Christians are open about this. They consider it to be "good news".
Standing up to the propaganda of religious madness, the President is the adult on the national stage.
In the larger conservative movement, there was a concerted effort to undermine efforts to slow global warming combined with propaganda "education" designed to mislead people into thinking that there is a scientific "controversy" over whether global warming was an actual phenomenon. There is no controversy about global climate change: the scientific community is unanimous that it is happening and that it has been greatly accelerated by human activity. As with their successful effort to convince more than half the population of the lie that Evolutionary theory is scientifically "controversial", conservative groups managed to undermine the trust that people once had in scientific research, leaving the population adrift in a sea of religious lunacy and doubt.
From time to time, a thinking Christian speaks up, trying to sound the alarm, but even knowing how much is at stake, he is careful not to offend the powerful religious majority. Even the rational Christians who claim not to agree with the extremists will not break away from the power and privilege that belonging to that group gives them. They know on what side their bread is buttered and they hope to continue to perform a balancing act between what they know is morally right and their desire to remain aligned with power. The agenda of Christian fundamentalism has become a juggernaut and it has swept all other voices to the fringes.
Global warming denial propaganda funded by
conservative groups with Christian ties like the Heartland Institute helped to sway public opinion
against the scientific reality.
Every effort that science makes to warn about or mitigate global warming is met with fierce resistance by powerful lobbyists backed by radical fundamentalist Christian groups. One fact canot be stressed enough: These groups want the world to come to an end. With the irrational zeal of true believers, they welcome mass death, destruction and horror because they imagine themselves to be the "elect" - the tiny group of their god's favored people who will not be destroyed in the cataclysm that they are doing their utmost to bring about.
There won't be any satisfaction for the rest of us if and when these fools discover that they and their descendants will perish along with all those they hate if they succeed in setting the world on a final path to global catastrophe. It won't matter that they were dangerously, madly wrong and we were right. The only thing that matters is that we find the courage to speak up now and take action now to slow down the disaster.
A few items to read and ponder:
Fact: June 2012 was the 4th hottest month since record-keeping began in 1880. It was the 328th consecutive month that global temperatures have remained above the 20th century average.
Here is the sort of story which will warm the cockles of the fundamentalist's heart, while it chills the blood of people who care about humanity.
President Barack Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act while VP Joseph Biden looks on.
February 17, 2009, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Denver, Colorado.
Foreign Policy magazine has published this detailed and very interesting article by Michael Grunwald:
For starters, there is voluminous evidence that the stimulus did provide real stimulus, helping to stop a terrifying free-fall, avert a second Depression, and end a brutal recession. America's top economic forecasters -- Macroeconomic Advisers, Moody's Economy.com, IHS Global Insight, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and the Congressional Budget Office -- agree that it increased GDP at least 2 percentage points, the difference between contraction and growth, and saved or created about 2.5 million jobs. The concept of "saved or created" has inspired a lot of sarcasm -- Obama joked after his 2009 Thanksgiving pardon that he had just saved or created four turkeys -- but it simply means 2.5 million more people would have been jobless without the Recovery Act. The unemployment rate might still be in the double digits. (Michael Grunwald)
Another interesting bit of economic news last week was the report that a survey of economists shows that most economists think the stimulus approach to solving the economic problems caused by the Great Recession is the correct approach:
The National Association for Business Economics has put out its new policy survey, and there are some interesting tidbits in there: most economists, for example, are happy with current Federal Reserve policy. And they'd rather the government focus on stimulus for the time being, and save the real deficit cutting for a year or two down the road. Survey: Economists happy with Fed action, NPR Marketplace, September 24, 2012.
Also, here is an older but equally interesting analysis of non-partisan studies of the effect of the ARRA on the economy:
Tim Minchin's musical and philosophical genius via stormmovie.
"Science adjusts it’s views based on what’s observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
Tim Minchin, Storm.
It is actually a beautiful, calm, sunny Sunday morning here in the midwest. I was hoping for a nice dark and stormy night to post this, but this video and the Sunday inspiration contained within is impossible to pass up in spite of the inconveniently pleasant weather.
This is an account of the kind of thing experienced by many scientifically-literate humanists. Tim Minchin describes the unexpected confrontation, the attempt to simply keep one's head down and not make waves, and the ultimate inability to stay quiet in the face of egregious and even harmful lies.
Many of us have had this uncomfortable experience, and few of us can manage to stay quiet right to the end of the evening. Tim couldn't either, but his magnificent rant is worth the outburst.
And he does it all with that pitch perfect, amazingly talented Tim Minchin humour!
Sit back, read, listen and enjoy.
Storm
Inner North London, top floor flat
All white walls, white carpet, white cat,
Rice Paper partitions, modern art and ambition
The host’s a physician,
Bright bloke, has his own practice
His girlfriend’s an actress, an old mate of ours from home
And they’re always great fun, so to dinner we’ve come.
The 5th guest is an unknown,
The hosts have just thrown us together for a favour 'cause this girl’s just arrived from Australia
And she's moved to North London and she’s the sister of someone or has some connection.
As we make introductions I’m struck by her beauty
She’s irrefutably fair with dark eyes and dark hair
But as she sits, I admit I’m a little bit wary 'cause I notice the tip of the wing of a fairy tattooed on that popular area just above the derrière
And when she says “I’m Sagittarian”, I confess a pigeonhole starts to form
And is immediately filled with pigeon when she says her name is Storm.
Conversation is initially bright and light hearted but it’s not long before Storm gets started:
“You can’t know anything, knowledge is merely opinion!”
She opines, over her Cabernet Sauvignon, vis-Ã -vis some unhippily empirical comment by me.
“Not a good start” I think
We’re only on pre-dinner drinks
And across the room, my wife widens her eyes, silently begs me: “Be Nice”
A matrimonial warning not worth ignoring
So I resist the urge to ask Storm whether knowledge is so loose-weave of a morning when deciding whether to leave her apartment by the front door
Or the window on her second floor.
The food is delicious and Storm, whilst avoiding all meat happily sits and eats
As the good doctor, slightly pissedly holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history
When Storm suddenly insists:
“But the human body is a mystery! Science just falls in a hole when it tries to explain the the nature of the soul.”
My hostess throws me a glance
She, like my wife, knows there’s a chance I’ll be off on one of my rare but fun rants but I shan't
My lips are sealed, I just wanna enjoy the meal
And although Storm is starting to get my goat I have no intention of rocking the boat
Although it’s becoming a bit of a wrestle because - like her meteorological namesake - Storm has no such concerns for our vessel:
“Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy
They promote drug dependency at the cost of the natural remedies that are all our bodies need
They are immoral and driven by greed.
Why take drugs when herbs can solve it?
Why use chemicals when homeopathic solvents can resolve it?
I think it’s time we all return-to-live with natural medical alternatives.”
And try as I like, a small crack appears in my diplomacy-dike.
“By definition”, I begin,
“Alternative Medicine”, I continue,
“Has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work.
Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that’s been proved to work?
Medicine.”
“So you don’t believe in any natural remedies?”
“On the contrary Storm, actually
Before I came to tea, I took a remedy derived from the bark of a willow tree
A painkiller that’s virtually side-effect free
It’s got a weird name, Darling, what was it again?
M-masprin? Basprin? Oh yeah! Asprin!
Which I paid about a buck for down at the local drugstore.
The debate briefly abates as our hosts collects plates
But as they return with desserts Storm pertly asserts:
“Shakespeare said it first:
There are more things in heaven and earth than exist in your philosophy…
Science is just how we’re trained to look at reality,
It doesn't explain love or spirituality.
How does science explain psychics? Auras? The afterlife? The power of prayer?”
I’m becoming aware that I’m staring, I’m like a rabbit suddenly trapped in the blinding headlights of vacuous crap.
Maybe it’s the Hamlet she just misquothed or the 5th glass of wine I just quaffed
But my diplomacy dike groans and the arsehole held back by its stones can be held back no more:
“Look , Storm, sorry I don’t mean to bore you but there’s no such thing as an aura!
Reading Auras is like reading minds or tea-leaves or star-signs or meridian lines
These people aren’t applying a skill, they're either lying or mentally ill.
Same goes for people who claim they hear God’s demands or Spiritual healers who think they've magic hands.
By the way, why do we think it is it OK for people to pretend they can talk to the dead?
Isn't that totally fucked in the head?
Lying to some crying woman whose child has died and telling her you’re in touch with the other side?
I think that’s fundamentally sick
Do we need to clarify here that there’s no such thing as a psychic?
What are we, fucking 2?
Do we actually think that Horton Heard a Who?
Do we still believe that Santa brings us gifts?
That Michael Jackson didn’t had facelifts?
Are we still so stunned by circus tricks that we think that the dead would wanna talk to pricks like John Edwards?
“You’re so sure of your position but you’re just closed-minded
I think you’ll find that your faith in Science and Tests is just as blind as the faith of any fundamentalist”
“Wow that’s a good point, let me think for a bit.
Oh wait, my mistake, that's absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts it’s views based on what’s observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.
If you show me that, say, homeopathy works, then I will change my mind
I’ll spin on a fucking dime
I’ll be embarrassed as hell, but I will run through the streets yelling
'It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory! And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice seems Infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!'
You show me that it works and how it works
And when I’ve recovered from the shock
I will take a compass and carve 'Fancy That' on the side of my cock.”
Everyone's just staring now,
But I’m pretty pissed and I’ve dug this far down,
So I figure, in for penny, in for a pound:
“Life is full of mysteries, yeah
But there are answers out there
And they won’t be found by people sitting around looking serious and saying 'Isn’t life mysterious?'
'Let’s sit here and hope.
Let’s call up the fucking Pope.
Let’s go watch Oprah interview Deepak Chopra.'
If you wanna watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo.
That show was so cool because every time there was a church with a ghoul or a ghost in a school
They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The fucking janitor or the dude who ran the waterslide.
Because throughout history every mystery ever solved has turned out to be
Not Magic.
Does the idea that there might be knowledge frighten you?
Does the idea that one afternoon on Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you frighten you?
Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural so blow your hippy noodle that you'd rather just stand in the fog of your inability to Google?
Isn’t this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable, natural world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap, man-made myths and monsters?
If you’re so into your Shakespeare, lend me your ear:
“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?!
“I see trees of Green,
Red roses too,”
And fine, if you wish to glorify Krishna and Vishnu in a post-colonial, condescending bottled-up and labeled kind of way then whatever, that’s ok.
But here’s what gives me a hard-on:
I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short and unimportant…
But thanks to recent scientific advances I get to live twice as long as my great great great great uncleses and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine
Of sharing curries and getting shitty at good-looking hippies with fairies on their spines and butterflies on their titties.
And if perchance I have offended
Think but this and all is mended:
We’d as well be 10 minutes back in time, for all the chance you’ll change your mind.
Confused, perplexed and coldly furious: Mitt feels entitled to win, dammit!
The infamous $50,000 a plate dinner video (47% video turning point?) has been discussed a lot this week - and I hope people will continue to discuss it. The usual tendency for the media to move on after important revelations have been discussed for a day or two must be resisted because this is a story of ongoing relevance. The video and Republican reactions to it (44% of Republicans polled by Gallup said the "47%" remarks made them more likely to vote for Romney) was a glimpse into the raw, unvarnished truth about the attitude and motivations of not only Mitt Romney but also of his supporters.
"And to think I spent 30 years building that before I got laid off four years ago." (Jeff Parker)
There really is a class war going on in the United States. It is a war being waged by the wealthiest 1% - individual citizens and "corporate citizens" - on the middle class and the poor. In this war, the most privileged and powerful class has mobilized every weapon in its impressive arsenal against the millions of Americans whose labour produced the very wealth the elite now crows they "built" the old-fashioned way. Millions of middle class and poor working Americans are beginning to wake up to the fact that the system is rigged against them: that Reaganomics ushered in thirty years of so-called "business-friendly" government which has been nothing short of catastrophic for the American working class. The awakening giant that is the American workforce is the nightmare that haunts the 1%.
A mobilized majority of working Americans who understand that they have been had, and who can still vote (hopefully) for real change which will benefit them and millions of their fellow Americans poses a real threat to the corporate elite's control over the wealth of the nation. Romney understands this and his powerful backers expect him to reverse the tide and subjugate the masses to the service of the wealthy once and for all.
But perhaps the most sickening revelation from Romney's remarks was what it revealed about who the candidate really is, and what kind of people his candidacy is meant to represent. One of the most pernicious effects of the widening gulf between rich and poor in the United States is the revival of the old European aristocratic notion that those who are poor and struggling are in that position because of their own inherent moral failings (laziness, stupidity, weak character, perhaps even genetic inferiority) - the corollary to which is that those who are rich and successful are in that position because of their inherent moral superiority (industriousness, intelligence, integrity and perhaps even genetic superiority). Those people are where they are because they are simply lesser people; they choose to be in that position (welfare queens, freeloaders, moochers). The contemporary buzzword for this self-serving attitude is "meritocracy" - and it allows no room for consideration of the fact that few people start out on a level playing field.
The barely leashed disdain for those less fortunate than himself is at the core of all of Mitt Romney's actions. He will not discuss his various "plans" to restore America to prosperity because he does not think he ought to have to explain himself to anyone, least of all to those people. He is outraged that he has been asked to show his tax returns because he believes that he is above other people and should not be subjected to the same scrutiny that other candidates willingly undergo. How dare those people try to treat him like just any ordinary American. He is not an ordinary American, by god, he is an American aristocrat! He literally believes that he should be given the trust, the admiration and the votes of the people because in his own mind, he is entitled to these things.
The lesson we should take away from every contemptible revelation about the true character of Mitt Romney this week is this: here is a man who really believes that the Presidency of the United States is his own personal entitlement.
Here was Romney raw and unplugged—sort of unscripted. With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don't contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative. Yet Romney explained to his patrons that he could not speak such harsh words about Obama in public, lest he insult those independent voters who sided with Obama in 2008 and whom he desperately needs in this election. These were sentiments not to be shared with the voters; it was inside information, available only to the select few who had paid for the privilege of experiencing the real Romney.
(David Corn)
Here's the thing: the effects of income tax in discouraging work are far stronger at the low end of the income spectrum than at the high end. The logic behind the flat personal exemptions in the tax code, and behind the earned-income tax credit, is that you end up with huge numbers of otherwise-dependent poor people entering the labour force and working productively if you tip the scales in their benefit. That's why the Clinton administration expanded the EITC, and it's been very successful. But the genius of the "they-don't-pay-income-taxes" complaint is that it takes the tax cuts that were implemented in order to get poor people off of welfare and encourage them to work, and uses them to accuse poor people of being shiftless and dependent on government. This creates a sort of permanent resentment machine, a renewable fuel source for class warfare of the rich against the poor. And so we switch smoothly from one tax two-step to another. Do-si-do your partner and sashay down. (M.S.) Does Romney Dislike America? E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, September 19, 2012.
Oh, EJ! Romney only dislikes the America where all citizens expect a fair shot at success in life; Mitt Romney loves the America that provided the tax breaks, resources and cheap labour that made him and his elite class rich and powerful. You know, America the Republicans intend to take back.
The most incisive reaction to Mitt Romney’s disparaging comments about 47 percent of us came from a conservative friend who e-mailed: “If I were you, I’d wonder why Romney hates America so much.” A bit strong, perhaps. But the more you think about what Romney said, the more you wonder how he really feels about the country he wants to lead.
What kind of nation are we if nearly half of us are lazy, self-indulgent moochers who will never be persuaded to mend our ways? “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney said, thus writing off a huge share of our citizenry. (E.J.Dionne Jr.)
You may be wondering whatever became of Ryan, who was such a big sensation when Romney first picked him as a running mate. Since Tampa, he seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, resurfacing every now and then to put up another ad for re-election to his House seat in Wisconsin. It’s not all that unusual for a vice-presidential candidate to go low-profile. And it is totally not true that Mitt Romney strapped Paul Ryan to the top of a car and drove him to Canada. Stop spreading rumors! (Gail Collins)
Mitt earned everything he has the old-fashioned way: by being born into wealth and privilege just like princes and nobles did before the American notions of equality, liberty and the idea of a social contract changed the world.
Another illustration of radicalizing self-delusion comes when the son of a governor and corporate chief executive says that “everything that Ann and I have, we earned the old-fashioned way, and that’s by hard work.”
Romney has proved himself right: We manifestly do have a problem with people who see themselves as victims even as they benefit from loopholes in the tax code. One is running for president. (Nicholas Kristof)
“When people show you who they are believe them; the first time.”
That comes from the inimitable Maya Angelou (via the equally inimitable Oprah). And I agree.
So I’m inclined to take Mitt Romney at his word when he disparages nearly half the country to a roomful of wealthy donors on a secretly recorded tape. (Charles Blow)
What about those who came here not to found businesses, but simply to make an honest living? Not worth mentioning. (Paul Krugman)
But here’s the question: Should we imagine that Mr. Romney and his party would think better of the 47 percent on learning that the great majority of them actually are or were hard workers, who very much have taken personal responsibility for their lives? And the answer is no. For the fact is that the modern Republican Party just doesn’t have much respect for people who work for other people, no matter how faithfully and well they do their jobs. All the party’s affection is reserved for “job creators,” a k a employers and investors. Leading figures in the party find it hard even to pretend to have any regard for ordinary working families — who, it goes without saying, make up the vast majority of Americans...
...In the past, however, even Republican politicians who privately shared the elite’s contempt for the masses knew enough to keep it to themselves and managed to fake some appreciation for ordinary workers. At this point, however, the party’s contempt for the working class is apparently too complete, too pervasive to hide. (Paul Krugman)
In NBC's first battleground map since the conventions and a slew of new state polling, President Obama has expanded his electoral-vote lead over Mitt Romney -- but only slightly. There are now 243 electoral votes in Obama’s column and 191 in Romney’s, with 104 in the Toss-up category; 270 are needed to win the presidency. Obama's Convention Bounce May Not Be Receding, NYT FiveThirtyEight blog, Nate Silver, September 21, 2012.
Note: FiveThirtyEight blog is highly recommended for ongoing and thorough poll analysis.
In the 10 states that have generally been ranked the highest on our tipping-point list — Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan — there have been 21 such polls since the Democratic convention ended. Mr. Obama has led in all 21 of these surveys — and usually by clear margins. On average, he has held a six-point lead in these surveys, and he has had close to 50 percent of the vote in them. (Nate Silver)
(Excellent investigative article providing more background into the mind of Mitt Romney and the wealthy elites who are backing him)
The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who'd be honored to tell Oliver Twist there's no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race. (Matt Taibbi)