Good Morning,
We are in the hottest part of our year now: what we call "summer". Well, the great majority are in summer, including those of us in this country. So, while we enjoy and/or suffer the heat, I'm reminded of the rather alarming trend whereby the average temperature on the surface of the earth is creeping up, year by year. We call this global warming. Along with nuclear weapons, the dwindling supply of oil, and the competition for natural resources by emergent nations (e.g. China), it's one of the most pressing threats to our way of life. Yet, we don't worry much about it. Come to think about it, we don't worry much about any of these four threats, although the government still tries to keep us all afraid of nuclear war (all governments know that fear is one of their most potent tactics to justify their existence).
It's possible that this period of global warming is simply part of a purely natural cycle. We know from ice cores, tree rings and many other sources of evidence that surface temperatures on earth have fluctuated significantly during the 4.6 billion years since our planet first was formed. However, most if not all of the scientific evidence points to the current warming trend as being caused by the things we're doing such as burning fossil fuels (which I started to talk about last week).
Incidentally, there's a strange phenomenon that operates here in the reporting of news. Let's say just for an example that at a conference on global warming, 1000 scientists are asked the question: is global warming caused principally by man's activities? And let's further postulate that 999 of these scientists answer Yes [this is actually a very realistic scenario]. The newspapers, here in the United States at least, will report on this with a headline such as the following: World Scientific Opinion Divided on Global Warming Cause. In other words, they will tend to give equal weight to the one dissenter as to the 999 who give their assent! That's because the perceived news value of a 500-500 split would be close to zero and barely worth a mention in a back page. The news value of unanimity would be considerably higher but, perversely, not as high as the news value of the 999-1 split.
Aside from this strange application of information theory, there is also a more prosaic and indirect reason for the newspapers thus reporting. By and large, the media outlets are owned by people who enjoy the status quo. That means big profits from selling (and burning) oil. It is very much in their short-term interests (and what other interests could possibly be as interesting?) to persuade the population that it's OK (even good for them) to keep burning lots of oil.
In the same vein, there is another parallel oddity of information flow here in this country. Let's line up another 1000 scientists, this time, experts in the field of biology and ask them the following question: did the existing complexity of life here on planet earth evolve over billions of years as a result of natural selection, as opposed to being created less than 10,000 years ago by an omnipotent agent, for example a god? This time all 1000 scientists will say yes. But the newspapers will report it as something like Scientists think that maybe life has evolved here on earth but cannot prove that it was not created by God.
Partly as a result of the news media treatment of this subject, if you stopped 1000 people in the street you would get something like 450 yes answers and astonishingly 550 nos. Actually, if you were conducting this poll, you'd realistically expect that the vast majority would respond "don't know" since most ordinary people are not experts in the biological sciences. If you don't believe me on this (and I wouldn't blame you), check out Poll: Creationism Trumps Evolution (2004).
And yet, we believe that we live in an enlightened democracy where information rules!
More detail on these curious aspects of life on Earth to come.
From a crazy world,
Phasmid
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