The Afterlife Debate Society

Fri Apr 1 11:24:20 2005 EST (-0500 GMT)

Last Saturday I was at a bar in downtown Toronto, indulging a friend in the semi-heated smoking section of the bar – and it wasn’t just the smoke I had to indulge. It seems my friend, who works for a car dealership, is trying to get the message out that global warming is just a hoax cooked up by scientists and lefties to fund their causes.

My friend sighted the fact that the earth’s temperature always goes up and down over decades, it seems colder outside than it used to, and the other standard right-wing counter arguments. I refuted these points with the well established fact that the earth’s temperature has never changed this quickly before and global warming affects weather patterns a lot more than it affects the average temperature in your back yard.

My friend, who ironically had a lot more to drink than me because I was driving that night, said ‘How do we know that it’s never changed this much?’ and went on to point out that we haven’t always had thermometers. I gave the simple answer: Ice core samples.

This is when he brought out the big guns, to beat this scientific argument with science: If cars produce carbon, and the atmosphere has CO2 in it, wouldn’t more carbon be good for it?

I tried to keep in my laughter and point out that carbon actually molecularly breaks down the ozone by breaking down the molecules by bonding with them, stealing their oxygen atoms, and then leaving more unbalanced molecules to cannibalize other stable ozone molecule’s oxygen atoms. With the ozone letting all this new UV in the extra carbon in the air helps to trap that extra sunlight in. Raising the amount of energey the earth reatins from the sun.

Now I’ll admit, that was the best I could do at the bar, and I’ve since confirmed my comments via Wikipedia – though this is one of the topics that is constantly being reworked for political means on Wikipedia.

This is all just spurious pseudo-science. A case of using 1+1 = 2 logic when it’s really CH4 + OH –> CH3 + H2O
Here’s a good example of pseudo-science: www.co2science.org


Contrast this with a profile I saw on 60 minutes last Sunday. The segment was about the state of Kansas’ plans to no longer teach eveolution as the explanation of human origins.

Some of the pro-creationists pointed to ‘The evidence of a young earth’ – a term used to disprove any science that suggests humans or the earth existed any longer than what the Bible describes. Here’s an example: www.tim-thompson.com/young-earth.html. The best quote from the segment was “They’re arguing a theory, the theory of evolution. We’re talking about a fact. The bible is a fact”.

Now, don’t confuse these Conservative Christians with my friend – that’s certainly not his view! I bring them up to demonstrate the power of simple answers that people want to hear. The answers to questions that people don’t really ask, they tell.

René Descartes
You can see how someone like George Bush can pull out of the Kyoto treaty, or change clean air laws to remove punishments and accountability for spewing toxins into the air and instead encourage trying to not be as bad as possible. When you think the world’s only been around for a few thousand years it’s easy to dismiss the common facts used to demonstrate global warming. I can’t even begin to determine if it’s belief or denial.

I do predict some progress in the future. René Descartes published Discourse on Method in 1637. The book is what modern natural science is based on, it said to be skeptical of everything and to start your line of reasoning by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions. When Descartes died in 1667, the Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Prohibited Books. I think the afterlife debate society is about to get a lot more interesting.

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