Playing With Our Heads

I’m sure some of you have noticed by now that AGW proponents are playing with our heads.

I decided to run a little experiment to show this; it actually started three years ago, when I first heard the claim “People around the world have noticed that something is very wrong with the weather…” going on to say that ordinary people see “spring arriving weeks earlier”, “winters shorter and warmer” and so on.

So I began to note down rough basics; first day of 75°F+ weather, last frost, first frost, storm frequency, and so forth. Apparently, according to AGW people, spring is now up to three weeks earlier than “just a few years ago” (a vague term). Let me share with you my relatively unscientific findings, based on local observations of the climate here in Missouri.

The first “warm stretch” of spring (3 consecutive days of 75°F or more) occurred within 5 days of each other in both 2006 and 2007.  In 2008, it occurred 10 days late.

The first “cold snap” of fall/winter fell within 3 days in 2005-6, 2006-7 and 2007/8.

The last frost occurred within 3 days of each other in all years. This past winter was the 3rd snowiest on record. We hit record lows on no less than 3 occasions.

In March-April of 2006 and 2007 there were 10-12 stormy days (by “stormy”, I mean “severe storms”, i.e. hail, heavy rain, thunder and lightning, etc) In 2008 there were (so far) 3.

The dogwoods (the first things to bloom here) came out in late march in both 2006 and 2007.  this year, they arrived in mid-April.  The trees came into leaf in 2006 and 2007 by early april.  they’re just starting to today (April 25th, 2008 )

OK, I know; small samples, highly unscientific and so forth, but remember the claim: Everyone has noticed winter becoming shorter and warmer, and summers are hotter and drier.  Spring is getting earlier and earlier… etc etc. Since this is a statment about persnal experience, I decided to test it.  And my “experiential” findings? No “later winters, earlier spirings”.  If anything, things are pretty static. And spring was technically really late this year.

So what’s going on?

Surely in your life you’ve come across people who say things like “we never really had a summer last year, did we?”, when you can plainly remember lying on the sofa, fans and A/C on high with a cold cloth on your head, sweating in misery as the mercury hit 100 for the third straight day (not a terribly unusual occurrence here in the midwest).  It’s basically that everyone constructs their own reality based on faulty recollection, and our minds fill in the gaps with invention that is utterly identical to real experience.  We lie to ourselves.  Every day.

The AGW crowd has gotten hold of this phenomenon and is using it against us now, playing with our own memories and implanting the idea that we have all experienced global warming in our everyday lives.  The figures to back this up, however, are missing.  In the reports where they cite our “personal experienec”, they never quote any real observations about how much warmer year X was over year Y, or how much later spring was (except vague terms like “weeks” or “days”.  How many weeks and days? No response.)

I’m not suggesting that you need to perform this little experiment, although it might be interesting if you did. Nor am I saying that the AGW people are explicitly, deliberately doing this, although I am sure some are.  Instead, I think it’s that a lot of well-intentioned AGW people have convinced themselves that the seasons are going haywire, and misremember the experiences of previous years to justify it, almost entirely unconsciously.

The only real result of my experiment, as far as I can tell, is that the world might be warming, or might not.  It just isn’t doing much of anything here; so it’s hardly a Global phenomenon, is it?

 

Not with a bang…

It’s been over a month since my last post, and what a month it’s been! Tornadoes! Earthquakes! Yard work! Yes, I have seen all this and more. So very much more…

Anyway…

Well, that little Expelled! movie is getting a little bit of attention, it seems. I saw ads for it on CNN (surprising), Fox News (very, depressingly, absolutely unsurprising), and Discovery Channel (horrifying). Of course, Ben Stein began to tarnish in my eyes when he became a regular Fox contributor, redeemed himself with very funny performances in Fairly Oddparents, then dropped off the radar of my respect with this movie. Not, I’m sure, that he will wake up sobbing at the prospect at having lost my respect. His bank balance will take care of any lingering qualms he might have in that regard. I understand Fox News Channel pays a fair bit to its contributors, too… why else would Dick Morris be there? (Except that Fox hates the Clintons more than he does?)

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised about the ad appearing on Discovery Channel, though… after all, they continue to shove AGW down our throats on a regular basis, joined now by NGC and History Channel. They have large numbers of worthy talking heads all real scientists, saying “There is no debate”, which, considering several hundred scientists are doing just that, is pretty ludicrous now.

They still harp on about the polar bears being endangered, and how terrible it is that the US Government wants to take them off the protected list as part of their horrific scheme to claim that AGW is a myth, despite the fact that the figures show that the Polar Bear population has increased 90% since 1980. Yes. 90 percent!

We’re told Greenland is melting, although the interior isn’t, that Antarctica is melting, the Arctic is melting, and we’re all gonna die. But the Arctic sea ice in the 2007-8 season contained about 1.8 million square kilometers more ice than last year, and the 2007 Antarctic season substantially more than that.

In NGC’s “Last Days on Earth” special, Global Warming was the “NUMBER 1 THREAT TO ALL LIFE ON EARTH!!!!”, ahead of asteroid impact. This despite the fact that even the most dire projections raise the temperature far less than the Triassic Global Desert event, which only managed to wipe out 60% of life, and Asteroid impacts are a lot more common than we imagined only 10 years ago, and Toutatis is going to pass within a few hundred miles of the surface of the Earth on Friday, 13th April 2029. Toutatis is not an extinction-level event, but it’s pretty nasty all the same.

In the meantime, the world is stubbornly refusing to get hotter, cooling by almost a degree over the last ten years, and even the IPCC says this year, globally, will be “cooler than average”. Whatever “average” is.

So, the World is apparently going to hell in a handbasket, and we’re all going to die of heatstroke and dehydration. Or cold and flooding. Or something nasty, anyway.

The only problem is, someone forgot to tell the World.

The God Particle

I was browsing a few articles, catching up on one of my other interests – physics – when I found something about a story I’ve been following for several years; the search for the Higgs Boson. Wikipedia describes it thus: “…[T]he Higgs boson is the quantum of one of the components of a Higgs field. In empty space, the Higgs field acquires a non-zero value (or non-zero vacuum expectation value), which permeates every place in the universe at all times.”

Very Nice. Come Again?

OK, for those of you with a physics-tuned mind can switch off; this is going to be layman’s only, and any errors are mine, either through poor translation or a lack of deep understanding of quantum theory.

In Physics, there exists a concept called the “Standard Model” – basically a conceptual outline of how quantum-level effects give rise to all structures in the Universe. Of particular note in the Standard Model are two main concepts; Particles and Fields.

Particles are the stuff that makes up the universe.. simple, really; your electrons, your protons, your quarks… basic stuff, except where it gets exotic, like muons, W and Z bosons and so on… I won’t go into them here, but they get complicated.

Fields are effects in the universe; your electromagnetic field,for example, is the effect of electromagnetism on objects, space-time and, indeed, other fields. Now it gets juicy when you see that in the Standard Model, fields are transmitted via other particles. So, for example, the electromagnetic field is carried and effected by the photon.

Field-carrying particles are called baryons; they are a small family, consisting of the aforementioned photon, the gluon, and the W and Z bosons. As far as the Standard Model is concerned, all fields in the universe utilize these particles.

How Fields “Work”

A basic conceptual overview of fields can be provided by this incredibly simplified example. Two electrons are approaching each other. They both carry an equal negative charge, so, in keeping with your high-school physics, they repel each other. At a highly-granular level, we see that they are surrounded by an electromagnetic field, which is expressed as a “cloud” of photons. These photons don’t actually exist in the physical sense, at least not yet, but their effect exists as a field.

As the electrons approach one another, the energy concentration around them increases, as a result of the increased density of the electromagnetic field. It’s rather like having two “blobs” of mist approach one another; the density of the mist increases as they approach and finally combine.

This extra energy has to go somewhere; the easiest way that the universe deals with energy excess is to pipe it into the creation of new particles; eventually, the energy reaches a critical point where the field is dense enough to actually express itself as a particle.

This may seem “weird”, but remember that Einstein demonstrated that matter and energy are the same thing; indeed, particle “mass” is expressed as an energy quotient (the electron Volt, or eV - but more on that later). It’s not surprising, therefore, that with increased energy, particles that correspond to that energy can be “created”. (This is not true “creation” in any sense; merely a transfer of energy into matter.)

Anyway, back to our electrons. When the density of the field reaches this critical point, a photon is emitted; this strikes the other electron, imparting its energy to that particle. This has the effect of jostling the electron out of it’s initial course, and onto a new one, so that the two electrons move away from each other. From a macroscopic viewpoint, the electrons have just repelled one another.

So What Does The Higgs Particle Do?

The Standard Model has a little problem; as far as our understanding of it goes, there is nothing that “tells” a particle exactly what it is; why is a photon a photon, a neutron a neutron, and so forth? If mass and energy are equivalent, why do certain particles always get produced, even if the energy available is sufficient for them to produce some combination of other particles? If, for example, the field densities were enormous, why do interacting electromagnetic fields always express themselves as photons? The answer is the Higgs Field.

Essentially, the Higgs Boson, and by extension, the Higgs Field, operates to “mop up” the energies of interactions and collisions, reducing the number of overall configurations that particles can achieve in their interaction with one another. This acts as a brake on the process, streamlining particle-particle (and particle-field and field-field) interactions so that they do not “cascade” in sufficiently energetic situations. Basically, any “freak” particles that might be expressed in any given interaction, are subjected to the Higgs Field, their energy is sapped and they drop down to produce the “normal” particles. Of course it’s a lot more complex than that in the real world, but I’m trying to give a layman’s view here.

So Why Haven’t We Found It Yet?

Well, there are two problems; firstly, the Higgs Boson is pretty big. As mentioned earlier, mass and energy are the same thing; in order to “spot” a particle, physicists have to give a reaction sufficient energy to separate it from the background. The electron Volt can be defined as the amount of energy given to an electron by passing through an electromagnetic field of one Volt; the Higgs Boson has to be of a mass greater than 114.4 GeV (Giga-electron-Volts – or 1,000,000,000 eV!) since that is about as high a field as we can produce right now.

Secondly, the Higgs Boson is inherently unstable; hardly surprising when you consider its role is to appear and then break down almost instantly when it’s job of giving other particles their “identity” is done. This gives us a tiny window in which to spot it.

There are some tantalizing glances; this article suggests that it may have been spotted, but it’s not quite clearly defined enough to say for certain. Other experiments give us a top value of about 144 GeV for its mass – basically, if it was any “heavier”, it would not be able to operate as it is thought to.

Why Should We Care?

Well, it’s not going to change your life if the Higgs Boson is found. Life will not suddenly become perfect, the world will not become unified with angelic choruses singing “hallelujahs” to the skies… but it will vindicate the Standard Model. Yes, there are alternatives to the Higgs Boson, but they tend to be, in computer parlance, a little “kludgy”, and the one thing we’ve learned from physics is that it’s pretty elegant.

Besides, I like knowing things like this; they’re unimportant in one sense, but they demonstrate very clearly just how far we’ve come as a species. Just a few thousand years ago, we were standing on the plains at night, fearing the stars, and now we are peeling the lid off and rooting around inside the very universe itself, finding answers that frankly boggle the mind.

Where’s the Hole?

In all the Global Warming talk of recent years, I’m sure you’ve all noticed something missing in the “humans are evil” chatter; the hole in the ozone layer.  Where is it?

Well, the good news is, it’s shrinking; has been for years, actually, but no-one thought to splash it across the front pages, or lead their evening news with this ringing endorsement of Man’s ability to accept wrongdoing and change for the better. How could the media have made such an egregious error? Well, actually, there are a couple of reasons.

1. The shrinking hole doesn’t quite fit in with the current GW catastrophe scenarios. If it was reported, the Powers That Be might find people realizing that their doom scenarios, splashed so prominently around a decade ago regarding the Hole and now rendered meaningless, bore an uncanny resemblance to the ones currently being touted regarding Global Warming.
2. Some people might question exactly what is going on here, and rightly so.

See, CFCs are still around. Science informed us in dire terms that CFCs lasted for thirty years or more in the upper atmosphere, triggering millions of cascading free-radical interactions that will slowly kill the ozone layer. Even if we stopped producing CFCs back in 1995, they warned, the hole would grow for decades, until the chemicals were finally neutralized. And it’s not just the CFCs that are still there from our overuse dating back to the 50s… China, India, Africa and a host of other developing nations still use CFCs… in some cases, with even greater abandon than the West did, so they’re still being added to the atmosphere.

And yet the hole is closing…

Nobody seemed to notice a few points. Firstly, we didn’t even know that the hole (really a thinning, not a hole) was even present until we looked for it; there were no baselines for ozone concentrations over Antarctica before the 80s, when the hole was “found”.

Secondly, nobody had a mechanism for how the CFCs would actually get into the ozone layer in the first place; the tropopause, a boundary layer in the middle atmosphere, helps prevent atmospheric mixing from ground to top-level. This is why ozone does not drop to ground level, and why our ground level atmosphere has not slowly evaporated into space (well, not the only reason, but one of the top ones…) Neither could they explain how, once miraculously in the upper atmosphere, they were able to travel from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere across the coriolis winds that circle the equator, and prevent a lot of atmospheric mixing between the hemispheres from occurring.

And finally, all the experiments that demonstrated CFC-driven ozone depletion failed to mention that the free-radical reaction was closed; O3 certainly broke down with CFCs, which themselves were dissociated free radicals at that point, but the resultant molecules were themselves very unstable at the best of times. Under the high radiation, high-UV environment of the ozone layer, that collapse would be even faster, resulting in more oxygen free radicals to mop up outstanding O2 molecules to create yet more O3… And that this was just a variant of the reaction that occurred to create ozone in the first place. Nothing was “permanently bound”, since all the molecules formed and involved in the reaction were unstable.. And the ozone layer operates by the dissociation from O3 to O2 and back again to block UV light.

The hole is closing now.. and its closing coincides with an increase in Antarctic sea-ice formation.  The same story is true in the northern hemisphere.

So what do we learn from this? Firstly, it is an example of leaping to a conclusion when there was little science to support it, massaging what science there was to fit the story, and generally going public before the research was complete.

Secondly, it is an example of the politicization of science; in itself, the studies suggesting a thinning of the ozone layer over the Antarctic would have been interesting, but simply a point for further study.  The same is true of early studies indicating a warming trend globally. However, these results were seized on by an environmental lobby desperate for a “win”; decades of environmental campaigning had resulted in little overall change in man’s attitude to the environment, and the lobby was getting desperate for some “proof” of large-scale damage being created by man.  Here was an opportunity to get a message – any message – out into the public eye.

Thirdly, today you would be hard pressed to find any scientist who stands proudly proclaiming “I found the ozone hole, and I fixed it”. In fact, the community had gone very quiet as yet more evidence comes in suggesting that the ozone layer fluctuates regionally every bit as much as the climate. And, it should be noted, that when the AGW argument is finally laid to rest, the same silence will ring through the scientific community then.

Don’t think it’ll happen? Do you remember the hysteria about the ozone hole? The daily reports, the full-color splashes in the newspapers?  The loving executed graphics on TV? And yet here were are, just a few years later and we’ve all forgotten about it.  Global Warming will fade away too, because the scientists, politicians and interest groups who have fanned the flames know that the general public will forget as thoroughly as they did about the ozone hole.

Creationists’ Real Fear

In “discussing” evolution with creationist advocates, it has become apparent to me what their true agenda really is. Honestly I don’t believe for a second that it is “old-Earth” vs. “young-Earth” ideology, since often, in the face of the evidence, they will abandon that distinction. Nor can it truly be evolution as a process, since they seem to concede the point about what they term “micro-evolution” all the time (a pose, of course, to seem reasonable and scientific while actually being neither).

Most creationists are not truly disturbed by the idea that viruses and bacteria evolve before our eyes, or that, for example, the mice that were brought to the Faroe Islands are undergoing a speciation event in the last 500 years or so; their issue is one that, they believe, cuts to the heart of their beliefs; Original Sin.

If humans are just another evolved animal, then the most important aspect of the Genesis story, to their eyes, becomes meaningless, namely the Fall. If the Fall is meaningless, then Christ’s sacrifice is meaningless, and by extension, their whole religion is meaningless. This is their true fear about evolution, and all the peripheral issues they have with it are a smokescreen, whether conscious or not, to try and discredit the theory that seems to undermine their whole belief system.

But is it really the case?

In the debate I had with the Jehovah’s Witnesses I mentioned yesterday, this issue was finally revealed explicitly to me, and that is when I realized what the crux of their long-standing objection has always been. And a counterargument immediately came to mind.

The whole problem seems to me to be an artificial distinction between what I would term Conceptual Original Sin and The Original Sin. Fundamentalist literalist thought emphasizes The Original Sin, because it is a visceral example that appeals to a simplistic worldview, in which all answers can be found simply by referencing chapter and verse. But it also makes God out to be just a tad unreasonable, since He condemns Mankind to the burden of original sin simply because of the actions of the first humans. Considering the alleged philosophy of love and forgiveness, a “divine attribute”, according to all Christian faiths, it’s incredibly harsh punishment for a relatively minor transgression. Even Cain was not punished as badly for the crime of murder, which was explicitly forbidden in the 10 Commandments.

However, Conceptual Original Sin is a stronger concept in every respect; “COS” refers not to a specific event, but rather to the innate sinful nature of man; it is an attribute that we are all born with. God did not need to “punish” us with it, and Christ’s sacrifice stands against it.  If you must have an event, then why is Adam and Eve eating an apple in a garden 6000 years ago so much stronger an example than the first hominid with a hazy idea of “right and wrong” actively doing something wrong, and knowing it to be wrong, on an African plain a million years ago?

So how did the JWs respond? They claimed that Adam was perfect and then he fell, and Christ, being perfect, was the only being capable of redeeming that fall from perfection, in a like for like ransom. But Genesis does not say that Adam and Eve were perfect, simply that they were made in God’s Image, which generations of scholars have determined does not mean anything as silly as physically resembling God; if God is perfection, then he must be physically perfect, too. Since “God’s Image” cannot be a reference to physical being, then the “perfection” of Adam and Eve cannot be demonstrated scripturally by interpretation, and it is certainly never referred to specifically. Indeed, the other Literalist ideas about death being introduced after the Fall and so forth stretch the words of Genesis to breaking point as well; there is simply no primary Scriptural basis for it.  New Testament writers who refer to it at all are not primary sources and are themselves involved in interpretation of Scripture.

In other words, the Literalists explicitly go beyond Scripture to explain their adherence to literalism. When I point out the contradiction inherent in that position, they getrather irate. But the fact is that the Fall itself is proof of their imperfection, and therefore Christ’s sacrifice cannot be a like-for-like transaction. In the case of Conceptual Original Sin, however, Christ’s sacrifice is actually returned to its Scriptural basis; the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, for all time, not simply those of Adam and Eve. Christ’s perfection is not, and never has been the issue. Once more, it is a smokescreen erected by Literalists to protect an inherently untenable interpretation.

So, as I see it, that’s the problem, but in reality, if these people were a little more honest and intellectually rigorous, they would see that there is no problem. Evolution only says how we got here; it says nothing of our nature, or our propensity for “sin” (wrongdoing, whatever you want to call it), nor does it render meaningless any religious viewpoint except for hollow literalism, which should be abandoned for reasons far deeper and more important (on a human level, at least) than the fact that it flies in the face of the evidence.

Finally, a question for Literalists; do you still refuse to wear cotton and wool within the same garment? It’s a sin, you know, according to Leviticus.

PS: I do not assert that this is “the Truth” in any regard; it is a logical argument that I find appealing, and to which, as far as I know, no serious objection has yet been raised. I in no way claiming any form of religious superiority, either, my claim yesterday that I belong to an “enlightened religion” notwithstanding; I continue to put these articles out because I find the arguments interesting, and believe that they can be used by believers and atheists.  As far as I’m concerned, the act of simply examining your beliefs is a vital one, and can only result in good. I don’t consider myself in any way to be a religious authority or religious writer. I am simply a writer, and that’s all there is to it!

Why not attack Quantum Physics?

 OK, another rant about creationism.

It has occurred to me several times over the past several years, harking back to my days frequenting evolution “discussion boards”, that creationists are clueless on many levels except one; their choice of targets. In that, they are pretty clever. Evolution is one of the few theories of modern science that can be encapsulated (albeit in mangled form) on the back of a postcard. Everyone has heard of it, and fancies that they understand its basic tenets (many don’t of course, but that’s another problem). That concision is one of the reasons for the vociferous attacks against it.

If creationists understood the real issue, they would abandon their attacks on a theory that solely explains biodiversity and genetic variation, and concentrate on the true “villain of the piece” in their worldview that the Earth is young, God zapped everything into being, and the Bible is His inerrant Word; Physics.

Quantum physics and its father, the Theory of Relativity, essentially marked our first real, testable model of the Universe and how it operates. Through these two masterpieces of science, we owe everything the modern world has to offer, electronics, the space age, communications, energy, even some of the materials we use.

There is a “dark side” to them, though; one Creationists are oddly mute about. They essentially laid the groundwork for a true understanding of nuclear processes, for example. From this, we were able to develop radiometric dating, which demonstrates an ancient Earth, and an even more ancient Universe. They speak of a Universe not created by act of fiat, but by physical processes that, although we do not yet understand them, appear tantalizingly close at times. They give definitive, testable answers about the forces that shape the Universe itself, thus, in the view of fundamentalists, attempting to relegate God to the role of onlooker, with no power to intercede within the laws of physics.

And yet, Creationists are silent on these matters; not surprising, when you realize that they know they are even less well-prepared for that debate than the one they are currently engaged in (and, in scientific terms, losing hands down) on evolution. But another reason they steer clear of it is that they also understand that the average Joe-on-the-street, whom they seek to sway with their straw-man and ad hominem attacks against evolution, has little to no understanding of these theories, and thus it does not provide them fertile ground in which to get their ideas to take root.

But if you look at it, physics is every bit as damaging to their cause as evolution; it says we are all just accumulations of particles, in a meaningless universe that had great beauty but no “purpose” as we would understand it. That universe is destined to expand forever (as the current state of cosmology is starting to suggest) until matter itself collapses, evaporating into nothing as the energy budget for everything drops below the threshold needed to sustain it. Even the one thing in modern cosmology that might give them hope, the Anthropic Principle, can only be supported in its weakest possible form in the face of the latest research – we’re here because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here (sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne”)

Assuming the unimaginable occurs, and creationists succeed in finally turfing evolution out of the modern canon of American science (it won’t happen anywhere else, except — maybe — Australia); physics will still stand proud, telling anyone who can hear it that the world is not the way religious zealots try to claim it is. And, given their track record for going after what they consider the easy targets, they will not be able to counter it.

Let us hope that does not happen, though. The easiest way to counter their attacks is not to doggedly address each and every one of their points, knock down one creationist after another and watch in appalled exhaustion as a dozen more sprout, like the heads of Hydra, where the others fell, but to truly educate the American people, bring the level of their knowledge up to a standard where they can actually grasp the fallacy of what they’re being fed, like Ben Stein’s “Expelled!” or the latest drivel from Behe or the ICR.

Thanks for listening, and remember to support science education in schools. It’s the only hope for this, and every other country.

Thomism

Well, here’s another rant that’s been bubbling away since last week, when I caught the tail end of a program called Creatures That Defy Evolution which made me laugh, then become angry. It happens like that.

Let me start off by saying I’m Catholic. I have nothing against religion, and nothing against what anyone chooses to believe. But I do have a problem with stupidity. Ignorance is okay; a lot of people are ignorant. Amazon Indians are “ignorant” of the internet. Pacific Islanders are “ignorant” of snow. Ignorance is fine. Stupidity, especially that which is cleaved to by people who should know better, is not. Now, I’m not going to list all the evidence for evolution; I may one day, but this is a far more elegant solution than to write a long, long, long list…

As a Catholic, of course, I have the advantage of belonging to a relatively enlightened Church. I know, you’re all going to start yelling about a sexist priesthood, a backwards view on birth control and AIDS, homosexuality and so on and so forth, but they’re matters of catechism; I’m referring to the Catholic Church’s relatively recent embracing of real science, and it’s all due to a remarkable man who lived in the 13th Century.

Thomas Aquinas was really a philosopher’s philosopher; he basically understood that in your head, nothing was really off-limits, and you could think about anything you wanted, whatever anyone said about it. But he was also rigorous and thorough, checking his beliefs against reality at every step. And that’s what brought him to a realization that (eventually, after about 600 years) revolutionized the Church. By rights, it should revolutionize every faith, especially the more fundamentalist ones, but I don’t see that happening for a while. The following may irritate non-believers, but I don’t mean to force any religion down your throats; rather I wish to illustrate a fine piece of philosophy that should appeal to everyone, and give you a good talking point next time the Jehovah’s come to your door.

In the 13th Century, the Church was pretty Fundamentalist itself; the Bible was inerrant, the Earth was created in 4000BC, everything was exactly as laid out in Genesis and so forth. Then Thomas had a revelation (pardon the unintentional religious pun). He realized there were two paths to Truth; God’s Word, and God’s Work. The Word, the Bible, was predicated solely upon Man’s understanding of it, and by definition (and as explicitly stated several times within it) that understanding is limited and imperfect. The Work (i.e. the Universe) is by definition Perfect, being the work of God, and thus the evidence, whether we fully understand it or not, is Truth.

Thomas realized that in studying the Universe, we could come to a better understanding of God; he also understood that if the evidence we gleaned from that study brought us into conflict with the Word, then it was not the evidence that was at fault, but rather our understanding of the Word. Therefore, if evidence seemed to disprove the Bible, we would have to change our understanding of the Bible, since the evidence that led to that conflict could not be in error. Our understanding of that evidence may be in error, but even in the 13th Century, it was pretty well known that evidence was empirical, and interpretation was not; Thomas was talking about empirical evidence, not the interpretation of said evidence.

Now, remember, this was 800 years ago, and this man, who knew nothing of radiometric dating, evolution or cosmology essentially laid the groundwork for what would become the Church’s reaction to these discoveries centuries later. Eventually, he was rewarded by being named the Patron Saint of Education and Learning, and that is why there are so many St Thomas Aquinas Schools around the world.

So what does all this mean? Well, it gives you a very useful tool to use against anyone who claims Biblical inerrancy. The argument is very simple.

God created the universe, according to the Bible, and thus it must, by definition, be a perfect work. Therefore all it’s evidence is equally perfect and true. And yet that evidence screams that the Universe is 12.5 billion years old, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, Evolution occurs and the world is essentially nothing like the Bible suggests. Given that Biblical inerrancy is fact, that leads to some very disturbing conclusions.

1. The Universe is NOT inerrant in its truth, and therefore cannot be the creation of a perfect being. This flatly contradicts the Biblical account, so therefore cannot be true.

2. The Devil is altering all the evidence, everywhere. This means the Devil is omnipresent, since apparently he is jostling the elbow of every geologist, every paleontologist, every anthropologist, every biologist and geneticist in the world all at once, planting evidence everywhere. This is not suggested by a literal reading of the Bible either, and certainly suggests that God’s power to counter the Devil is limited, and so therefore contradicts, once again, Biblical inerrancy, so cannot be true.

3. God made the Universe solely to deceive, planting the evidence of great age, evolution and the like, to mislead us. This does not contradict a literal reading of the Bible, oddly enough. But it does somewhat fly in the face of every major religion on the planet…

I’ve used these arguments very successfully against Jehovah’s Witnesses in the past; by “successfully”, I mean that after about five minutes of trying to counter them, and failing, they suddenly had to leave, tried to hit me up for a “donation”, and have left me alone for about two years now.
So even if that’s all you get out of this post, I think it’s worth it. Unless you are a JW, in which case, read it again and try to counter the argument. Trust me, it’s fun and entertaining, and as long as you’re actually thinking critically, I’m happy for you, even if I don’t change your mind.

Toodles for now!

A little ice in that, sir?

Wow. It never ceases to amaze me how hysterical the human race is. Recently, as you may have noticed, we’re been informed that we’re a terrible cancer on the face of the Earth, and now we’re about to destroy everything, including polar bears, with our nasty emissions.

Not exactly a break with tradition, though; Malthus called us all diseased, over-breeding pigs back in the 1700s, about the time that Defoe was writing scathing satires on the rich eating children. In the 1800s, Bentham, Cadbury and the other nouveau riche of Britain’s industrial age were trying to assist the downtrodden (a laudable effort, if not purely motivated by the humanitarian urge they are often ascribed to), and of course in the 1900s, we had a wide variety of “people are sick” events to choose from, starting with the Great War and more or less getting worse from there on in.

As usual, such assertions are couched in terms that we find a little more palatable; in this case, it’s the brutal industrial overlords of Big Oil, Big Industry and various other entities (including – gasp- Communist China!) who are forcing all of us little, honest, lovely, smiling, happy and otherwise deeply responsible people to pollute and despoil our world. Basically, it’s the same story – as individuals, we’re not really responsible for it, so we can feel good about ourselves. The real enemy are those mustache-twirling technocrats in the opera-hats over there who have planned all along to turn the world into a huge trash-heap for reasons that no-one can adequately explain.

And, of course, now they have evidence on their side. No, really.

Well, I must tell you right off; I’m a geologist, not a climatologist.  On the one hand, that might seem to disqualify me from commenting, but on the other hand, it does provide me with something that a lot of climatologists seem to lack. Context.

In science, context is everything. For example, when the first atom bomb tests were conducted on Bikini Atoll, many respected scientists averred learnedly that the very air would be set alight, destroying all life on Earth. I’m not sure if you noticed or not, but that didn’t happen. Now, of course, we know that as hot as an A-bomb explosion gets, it’s nowhere near as hot as, say, a ten-mile chunk of rock hitting the planet at 50,000 mph tends to get, and the firestorm that happened then certainly didn’t sterilize the whole planet. OK, it was 65 million years ago, but well, we’re here, so something survived.

See? Context.

So, what does context tell us about global warming? Well, let’s first set aside the discussion about whether it’s happening or not for another day. (Believe me, that’s a juicy one!) Let us, for sake of argument, assume that the IPCC worst-case projection is accurate, and we’ll rise by 7 degrees or so in the next century. Do we see death and destruction? Well, not quite.

See, at the end of the last major glacial period (a lot of people say “the end of the last Ice Age”, but folks, it ain’t ended yet) global temperatures rose. A lot. And, a fair body of evidence now suggests, very very fast. Some areas appear to have experiences rises of 15F in less than four decades.  We were around for that one, and we didn’t even bottleneck; as a population, we exploded, responding to the new environment with a vigor and gusto that the climate-change-doomsayers seem to forget that we possess. No, I’m not saying that it will be easy, but it won’t be calamitous.

There were extinctions; many mega-faunas went out, mammoths were restricted to extreme northern Siberia and northern Canada until our ancestors and a change in vegetation seems to have finally done for them. Polar bears, once widespread, began to find their ranges limited as the ice caps retreated to the highest latitudes.. hey, that sounds familiar! But the rate of extinction does not seem to be much lower then than it is today, despite the opinions of the environmentalists who tell us everything on the planet is dying. As a geologist, I can tell you that, uh, that’s what they do. Evolution is a long term process, and things die constantly.

Of course, before the last glaciation event, global temperatures fluctuated too. They rose, initially, for about 20-30 years, and in that time, put on anywhere from 5 to 10 F – pretty impressive rises – before the bottom dropped out and the world froze. Again, mass extinctions weren’t on the cards then, either, just the same slow die-off.

The Earth has been much hotter than it is today, and much much colder. Triassic temperatures averaged in the 80F range globally, Precambrian “snowball Earth” temps down below 20F.  The fact is there is no baseline “normal” from which to measure our temperatures; even 1000 years ago, the Vikings found a paradise in the far north, and grew crops there. They called it Greenland. It’s still there today, but scientists and alarmists now point to its horrifying rate of glacial retreat. They don’t point to the retreating glaciers revealing Viking settlements with grain stores and farms, because it doesn’t fit the story.

Something else that doesn’t fit the story is Antarctica, which is getting colder and icier by the year, so much so that over a dozen species of Antarctic lichen have gone extinct, or are threatened with extinction.

Where’s their TV ad?

Introductions… how awkward

Well, this is a turn-up for the books; my very first ever, brand-spanking-new, fresh-out-of-the-box blog.

So, I hear you ask, why the title? Simple, really. That’s what I do.

I love to write, and I love to think, and when I do either, I tend to pace, and I tend to sound things out both inside and outside my head.  My wife tells me it’s endearing, but I’m pretty sure that when she signed up for this she never expected to find a six-foot Englishman pacing our kitchen holding a conversation with himself. Or maybe she did. She’s a very understanding sort.

So who am I? Well, the name’s Callum. Scottish name, for those of you who don’t know it, and one I’m now inordinately proud of.  Yes, I was mercilessly teased about it at school, but a certain amount of psychic scar-tissue is manly, don’t you think? I hail from merry old England, but now live in deepest rural Missouri. Why, you ask? Love. (Aaahhh…) Hardly original now, of course, what with all those worldwide Internet dating sites, but it’s special to me and my wife, and we have two beautiful children to show for it.

So, what can you expect here? Anything original? Hmm.. well, there are so many blog sites and pages out there that the chances of finding something truly original out there is next to nothing, so I can’t promise originality. Humor? Probably. Controversy? Hell, I don’t know.  Perhaps. I promise to write about anything that interests me, if you promise to spit your coffee out with that entertaining “ppthththbttthththbbbthtt!” noise when I do.

 Topics? Anything I like. This is my place. For now, I’ll list (in no particular order) quantum physics, geology, history, palaeontology, literature, movies, music and art.

Well, that’s enough for now. Like all good stories, this one will get deeper the further you read. Hope you stick around and enjoy the ride.

Callum.

DISCLAIMER: This blog is a work of the diseased mind of its author, and any resemblance between it and reality will be tenuous at best, and nonexistent at all other times. No responsibility can be assumed by the author for any trauma suffered by the readers of the blog, but if your comments about said trauma are funny enough, they will be posted and commented on.