The Weathervane is Blowing towards Ignorance

The Weathervane is Blowing towards Ignorance

The Great “Hoax” vs Reality

There is such a backlash against science and the educated elite. Perhaps that these highly educated professionals are simply unable to ignore the harshest realities of change, from encroaching and rapidly morphing agents of disease to the rather obvious “natural disasters” that are scientifically clearly the product of man-induced accelerating climate change. But their posited “solutions” to these horribles, proselyted with great uniformity globally, are expensive, profoundly disruptive and anything but immediate. The scientific community has thus painted itself in a corner as harbingers of doom. Quite the opposite of the easy-to-digest pledges inherent in denial, blame and conspiracy theories.

It is hardly worth noting that people with greater education, those who are well read and perhaps have experienced other cultures through travel, are the least susceptible to conspiracy theories, and those elites with lust for power, the most likely to use conspiracy theories and blame to enhance their own malignant ambitions. Except for those who will support anyone who will cut taxes and environment/financial regulation, the MAGA Republican Party is almost entirely mired in denial, conspiracy theories and blame. Antivaxxers delight. Climate change marginalizers and deniers are elated. Those who believe God promised that there would never be another global natural disaster are reassured. And blame-mongers, including White supremacists, are in joyful “I told you so” mode. The passion between that battle between fact and fiction factions is extreme.

This rise in the ignorance over science is hardly historically unique as witch burning and the Spanish Inquisition should remind us, but there has always been a blurring between fact and fiction. When fact is too painful, fiction rises in importance, both in literature and common beliefs. Take this analysis from historian Lorraine Daston, writing in the Winter Edition (1998) of Daedalus, of the 18th century struggle between fact and fiction: “It was not only novelists and philosophers who worried about ‘fictions [that] begin to operate as realities,’ about the fragility of facts in the face of overweening imagination. Practicing naturalists also fretted openly. In his monumental Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des insectes (1734–1742) the French naturalist and experimental physicist René Antoine Réaumur warned that ‘although facts were assuredly the solid and true foundations of all parts of physics,’ including natural history, not all reported facts in science could be trusted.”

We are once again consumed in our polarized America, between fact and fiction, between the educated and the uneducated or those relying on faith for their solutions and those who prefer easy explanations to reality. Nothing brings this home like the recent response to a local Iowa TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger’s telecasts in which he linked the rising number of searingly hot weather days, increasing intensity of tornadoes and catastrophic flooding in his state based upon step-by-step analysis of linkage to climate change statistics… the same facts that virtually all trained scientists all over the world have been presenting to us and to governmental agencies for years now.

Writing for the July 8th Associated Press, Hannah Fingerhut describes Gloninger’s fate for pressing those points: “The harassment started to intensify as TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger did more reporting on climate change during local newscasts — outraged emails and even a threat to show up at his house.

“Gloninger said he had been recruited, in part, to ‘shake things up’ at the Iowa station where he worked, but backlash was building. The man who sent him a series of threatening emails was charged with third-degree harassment. The Des Moines station asked him to dial back his coverage, facing what he called an understandable pressure to maintain ratings… ‘I started just connecting the dots between extreme weather and climate change, and then the volume of pushback started to increase quite dramatically,’ he said in an interview with The Associated Press… So, on June 21, he announced that he was leaving KCCI-TV — and his 18-year career in broadcast journalism altogether.

“Gloninger's experience is all too common among meteorologists across the country who are encountering reactions from viewers as they tie climate change to extreme temperatures, blizzards, tornadoes and floods in their local weather reports. For on-air meteorologists, the anti-science trend that has emerged in recent years compounds a deepening skepticism of the news media…

“Science is under attack in this country. It’s this larger trend. It’s really unacceptable from our perspective that anyone should have to fear for their lives for merely stating the facts… The gaps between Republicans' and Democrats’ confidence in both the scientific community and the news media have been the widest in nearly five decades of polling by the General Society Survey, a long-standing trends survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. But confidence in both declined across the aisle last year. ‘Science is under attack in this country,’ said Chitra Kumar, managing director of Climate and Energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. ‘It’s this larger trend. It’s really unacceptable from our perspective that anyone should have to fear for their lives for merely stating the facts.’

“Gloninger is moving back to Boston to care for aging parents, but he says he’s leaving Des Moines having realized that a small percentage of people who reject climate change make up an overwhelming percentage of the negative comments he has gotten.” Science sometimes fails. It can be wrong. But decades and decades of highly documented research has resulted in the virtual unanimity from the global scientific community, bolstered by the easily observable increase in average temperatures and soaring damage from “natural disasters,” that climate change is beyond real with serious consequences without major countermeasures. The minority of Americans who still deny climate change is, however, extremely vocal, dedicated and very, very angry at anyone who says otherwise.

I’m Peter Dekom, and when those who prefer conspiracy theories to science, might I suggest that they never visit a medical doctor for any complaint they may have… Clorox bleach anyone?