Is it getting warm in here?

Today I just happened to have the ABC TV Sunday news show on, hosted by Twerpanopolis, and lo and behold George Will actually had something worthy to say. He quoted articles from 1975 in the NY Times and elsewhere about the certainty of a resurgence of much colder weather in the future, with the possibility of, gasp, large scale glaciation occurring again in the northern hemisphere after a several thousand year rest. With the same certainty that COLD was touted to be in our future 30 years ago, HOT is now being trumpeted as our certain and obvious future.

How can ANYONE know this be a fact? The answer is: they can't. A lot of times when giving a science lecture people will ask me "how do we know what we know?" (basic epistemology) and I'll say "someone got grant money and they had to come up with something----if they ever intended to get any more grant money." People laugh at this reply but I sincerely think the search for objective truth in the postmodern age is often subverted by this need to please those putting the money on the table looking for a pre-determined answer.

A good example is "ecosystem management" which permeates the federal land bureaucracies and is just plain old bad and flawed science. It purports that ecosystems are specialized non-changing static environments that must be preserved from the "invasion" of non-Aryan, er I mean, "non-native" plant and animal species. Currently all federal agencies are instructed to wage a ceaseless war on these "exotics" regardless of their actual effect good or bad upon the landscapes they exist on, while zealously guarding the "rights" of insects, rodents and minnows to live undisturbed as nature intended before the onslaught of human "encroachment" and the introduction of "aliens" in their midst. The last time this type of science was widely believed was around the 5th century B.C. when Aristotle taught a young Alexander the Great that the universe was a fixed and static entity that would remain unchanged in perpetuity.

How can modern universities continue to get away with cranking out graduates imbued with such sloppy reasoning and the belief in out right lies? The colleges know where their bread is buttered and are simply following the funding formula which produces an agenda driven form of science that any sane and truly educated person can only laugh at. It then legitimizes the control and seizure of private property by the state to protect the "integrity" of a given ecosystem. Remember that power is always seized and liberties taken away for a "wider good", in this case for the maintenance of "pre-Columbian" plant and animal inventories whenever possible. Nothing is more ridiculous or brutally enforced than a government orthodoxy.

We all know that Hitler and Himmler were both vegetarian environmentalists who were only trying to rid Germany of those "polluting" non-native er, I mean "non-Aryan" elements that compromised the "pristine" ecosystem of the Fatherland, and then tried, sincerely, to clean up the untidy mess that is greater Slavdom so they could bolster the "integrity" of the Eurasian landmass. U.S. bureaucrats call it a general management plan (GMP).

I believe global warming is another sham designed to give the state even more far reaching control over our lives by "protecting" us from the consequences of a warming planet. They don't know any better than you or I, or the man in the moon, what will actually happen, but when has that ever stopped them from taking an opportunity to seize power from their subjects? Like everything else you need to ask yourself who produced a particular idea and why?

What the New York Times will be writing about in 30 years time is anyone's guess but I betcha' it'll be about a prolonged cold spell over the earth and what we can do to keep warm on this frigid and icy blue planet we call home. Again it's anyone's guess.