As a scientist I have been very much aware of the underestimation of the effects of global warming on climate. That is because I am so aware of how I was trained and what the dominant mind set in science is. Let me try to be as clear as one my ilk can be which is very limited because of how we think. I am a "mathematical biologist" and a pioneer in complex systems theory in my later years. My love was and is making models to try to predict and anticipate. That is what is going on like crazy out there now as this catastrophe materializes. I say that deliberately because what we will be confronted with has not yet even begun to develop relative to what it will become. What I am writing about here has no bearing on what my more expert colleagues are trying to anticipate for us. They will do the best they can. This is a political diary, not a scientific one. Read on below and find out why.
Human social evolution is a very complex thing. Our understanding of it is so inadequate and naive that it would take a book to begin to look into it. It just so happens that Jim Coffman and I have written such a book and its corrected proofs were returned to the publisher today so we should see it soon. But for the sake of this diary let me try to explain a main thread that is central to the issue of why we are where we are with respect to global warming and climate change and how that relates to the difficulty in predicting what this storm will be like.
The issue is our history and our minds reflection of that history. Our beliefs as they are being contested in this election reflect that history as well. How do we "know"anything? How does this knowing differ from what we believe? It does. Even for the most "objective" scientist the difference is very great. Why is that so? I'll simply state this and we can discuss the meaning further if you are interested. Our beliefs are independent of our knowledge and they in fact often stand in the way of our knowing. Knowing depends on our senses. Yet sensory information can only be given meaning in a context. That context comes from our memories and our memories do not separate beliefs from the world view that constitutes our memory. Now how does this reflect on our ability to discern what is real? Clearly if almost half the people in the USA are creationists it does so very profoundly.
Let's play this out in terms of human psychology. If we on some level, confronted with the accusation that the way we have been living our lives has contributed to irreversible changes in the earth system that sustains us, are able to see that we have soiled our nest, how do we deal with it?
Our fundamentalist citizens try to find a reason why God is doing this to us and may feel like they actually deserve to be punished for what their life style has contributed yet would rather shift the blame elsewhere. We can predict that response. How about the good liberals and progressives? We have recycled and fought and ...and...and! Yet how different is our life style from those we scorn? Think about it.
Now let's get back to why we have had so little success in accepting the reality of global warming as a species on this planet. Can we begin to unravel the strands? The genocide of peoples who lived closer to earth as their sustainer. The Acceptance of world domination and empire in exchange for a standard of living that has been rather greed driven.
Then our science. It has served us well has it not? Well that remains to be seen for the real meaning of science in Western consumer driven economies is to give power to military, ideas to technology that profits the capitalist system, and to pervert health care into a medical establishment that serves the capitalist profit driven system.
Even the purest among us can not escape the taint and here I return to why we are so far off in our forecasts about global warming and climate change. The models and the scientific tools have been selected by the benefactors of science to feed their greedy profit oriented needs.
At this moment we witness the same huge forces that did this to science pumping quantities of money into the election. This dance of death is all one thing. They are fat and sick from their greed but can not let go. They will take us all down with them if we let them.
As we endure this storm remember it is a beginning of what is to come. As we endure this election remember the same. I am old but still a survivor and I will fight to my death. It will not be over after the storm. it will not be over after the election. This is survival folks. We do not need a weatherman to tell us which way the wind is blowing!