The largest problem confronting the United States today is its seduction by rhetoric to such a degree that huge swaths of the population are willing to turn their eyes away from and shun facts because they “not feel right” or don't accord with their “intuitions,” be they political, religious, or otherwise. The consequence is strife that becomes strictly ideological not in terms of the predictive powers of the ideology but rather in the appeal of its rhetoric—it in fact ceases to be ideological at all but something closer to imaginary. The facts no longer matter—it is just the feelings or what the facts are imagined to be, not what they actually are. It is what those feelings reflect that causes me to say that this is the “largest problem confronting the United States today.”
To illustrate the difference between predictive and rhetorical consequences, global warming provides an excellent example. Scientific theories provide models that explain something, and global warming is such a theory. Scientific theories' power and appeal is captured in several criteria. To elaborate a few, coherence, maximal coverage, ontological spareness, and predictive powers. First, are they coherent (do not involve holding a contradiction). This is the logical constraint. Second, that offer maximal coverage—meaning, the best theory is that the explains the maximal cases it is meant to apply to with the fewest outliers. This is the explanatory constraint. Third, they are as ontologically sparse as possible. This is the metaphysical constraint and what has come to be known as Occam's Razor—don't have unnecessary entities. Finally, they offer predictive powers. That is, they not only explain the information we have before us, but are helpful in explaining what that information tells us is going to happen. Almost all “theories” share this last constraint—the constraint of testing.
I am no climatologist. Therefore, I am not familiar with the detailed data that the community of climatologists use to justify theories about climate and climate change.1 However, there are several elements of the theory that are quite easy for the layperson to grasp. The theory of human-caused climate change, the theory of the climatologist I'll consider, says this:
- Human activity releases greenhouse gases (climatologist depend on others—notably petroleum chemists and environmental scientists, as well as other sources of information like the financial and sales data that helps us know just how much greenhouse producing activities are taking place. These pieces of information, not necessarily in the purview of climatologists, is a necessary part of the theory).
- Greenhouse gases retard the release of solar heat. Again, this knowledge comes not merely from climatologists. It is again chemists and physicists that tell us about the behavior of chemical compounds.
- Finally, the theory suggests that the human caused greenhouses are significant enough to increase the Earth's temperature.
It is this last claim of the human-caused climate change theory that is in debate. The theory is attractive. It explains something—global warming—in predictable, testable ways (the warming of the world's ocean considered among many climatologists are the key predictable change). It doesn't posit any new entities, but rather works within undebated facts about the elements we know to exist. And finally, it gives maximal coverage to the data it is meant to explain: why is the Earth getting warmer. It is important to recognize that it isn't this fact—that the Earth is getting warmer—that is debated by the scientific community. There is no doubt to that. The debate is whether this is “natural” or “human caused.”
Just what “natural” is or means, and what something natural entails, is not a simple answer. Jan Sapp (1999) in his What Is Natural: Coral Reef Crisis2 treats this question considerably in his examination of the crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks that were cast by some in then still fledgling field of marine biology as a “crisis” that, unless resolved, could destroy the Great Barrier Reef itself. As Sapp rightly points out,
Ecological processes may be operating on temporal and spatial scales that far exceed the scope of most ecological studies. And all this makes studying the causes and effects of large-scale environmental changes, distinguishing between what is natural and what is anthropogenic, and deciding upon what action to take, all the more difficult. (vx, italics added)
It is this last thought, of what action to take, that it itself what should be the critical item in the political conversation about our national response to the fact that the Earth is getting warmer. In the case of the star-of-thorns outbreak, natural or not, many communities still thought it was important to take action to protect the their coral reefs from destruction by the crown-of-thorns starfish even if such population explosions were part of a natural cycle. Likewise, even if it is natural that the Earth will warm, and is not caused by human activity, does not mean that human activity could retard such natural warming process and the benefits of activity aimed at slowing or reversing climate change are not worth pursuing. Just because humans are not causing global warming alone doesn't mean they could not potentially counteract it, or that they should. These is the critical question, but because it does not suit the rhetorical prefiguring of debate in America it is hardly even considered worthy of addressing.
It is a matter of debate among scientists that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity. Politicians, it seems, also think this is critical—not that global warming is clearly happening. Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Republican presidential hopeful made the news by reaffirmed his view:
. . . that global warming is an “unproven scientific theory” that has been advanced, at least in part, by scientists who have "manipulated data," and he argued that programs intended to limit climate change are costing the nation "billions if not trillions" of dollars that he believes could be better spent elsewhere.3
This, however, sidesteps the value of a theory, ignoring any of the considerations of attractive scientific theories. What constitutes “a proven theory” is also a wonderful question, but that would lead us to perilous non-man's land where all theories can shown to be “unproven.” We've already seen some of what makes a scientific theory attractive. And isn't it the climatologist who have the best access to the information, and the most resources, to test and evaluate such theories about climate change? The fact that a politician is being asked to weigh in on whether the theory is attractive or not invites rhetoric, and answers to such questions often fatally become shaped by such rhetoric rather than the facts supporting such theory. But even if the theory that humans are causing global warming is incorrect, a political solution is needed to what global warming theorist predict, including those who do think it is a human activities: the predictable outcome theories, the warming of the Earth's oceans.
Major commissioned studies largely agree that the Earth will continue to get warmer—as it has on average every month since the middle of the 1980s. In every major predictive model by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study in 1990, temperatures of the oceans were predicted to increase, and as a result the oceans will rise due to melting icecaps. This central warning of the rising of Earth's sea-level has been echoed many, many times by communities of scientists since then. These climatic changes will bring with them massive ecological, economic, and humanitarian consequences, and these changes must be dealt with on a national scale regardless of if they are caused by human activities are not.
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| See http://bit.ly/reIU7N for details and documentation from IPCC for the above graphic |
However, in America's climate of rhetoric, whether from the right or the left, the facts are often left aside. Instead, someone like Perry denying global warming is not just reflective not of his expertise on global climate change: he has none. Perry graduated in 1972 with a degree in animal science with a 2.5 GPA.4 Instead, it matters because it is illustrative of what side he is on: ostensibly Christian, pro big business, and pro carbon fuels and it is just these audiences that his message (read: rhetoric) is meant to resonate with.
It doesn't matter that global warming is a documented fact regardless of whether its cause is debatable. Every scientific model with currency predicts that millions of coastal-dwelling people, including some of the largest urban areas on Earth, will be displaced—not only the “exotic” Pacific Islanders who have, in some cases, already negotiated their resettlement once their homes are under water. Oxfam estimates 75 million Pacific Islanders alone will be displaced by rising sea levels by 2050.5 However, all coastal cities--as most megalopolis are--will be impacted. Instead of offering solutions to these known and predictable problems, it is enough for politicians in the United States with C+ college averages to simply declare the party line, ignore the facts, and avoid the central question that Sapp draws our attention to: natural or not, what are we going to do about it given it is a fact?
I find that political dialogue in the United States, more than ever, is shaped and defined by “what side” you are on. Political discourse has moved from generating solutions to problems to defending “the team” and the conviction that no matter what the “other side” says, it must be opposed. Even when solutions offered by the “other side” meet the purported ideological goals of "the team" they must ruthlessly be opposed. This is as true when it comes to discussions of foreign or fiscal policy as much as climate policy or gay rights. Obstructionism and blame becomes more valued than solving problems as discourse becomes more virulent and less dependent on reality and as "the teams" become increasingly polarized by pure rhetoric rather than on substances
When action, political or otherwise, becomes motivated primarily by rhetoric and not by reality, a very dangerous situation is created, one that history has seen and humanity has suffered from time and time again. It is just this situation I find the United States of America to be in now, and this is why I find the reliance on rhetoric to be the largest problem confronting this great nation today.
1992 Words
1 Instead, I am reliant on texts by climate experts for the layperson such as the very excellent and concise survey by Mark Maslin, Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 2005, or the reports by such panels of experts such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Core Writing Team R.K. Pachauri's A Reisinger's Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report: Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland or, interestingly enough, Chevron.Com, the oil company, which states:
"The use of fossil fuels to meet the world's energy needs is a contributor to an increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs)—mainly carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane—in the Earth's atmosphere . . . We believe that a successful climate policy will be one in which the reduction of GHGs is accomplished equitably by the top emitting countries of the world through long-term and coordinated national frameworks." (http://bit.ly/pPLoGg)
"The use of fossil fuels to meet the world's energy needs is a contributor to an increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs)—mainly carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane—in the Earth's atmosphere . . . We believe that a successful climate policy will be one in which the reduction of GHGs is accomplished equitably by the top emitting countries of the world through long-term and coordinated national frameworks." (http://bit.ly/pPLoGg)
2 Sapp, Jan. What is Natural: Coral Reef Crisis. New York, New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
3 Reston, Maeve. Presidential candidate Perry says climate change is only an unproven theory. McClatchy-Tribune News Service. August 18, 2011
4 Hooks, Chris. "Texas A&M Years Launched Perry — and a Rivalry". The Texas Tribune. August 2, 2011.
5 Bonnie Malkin. “Climate change to force 75 million Pacific Islanders from their homes.” The Telegraph. July 27, 2009
Also, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson (eds). Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. New York: Cambridge UP, 2007.
