The Missing Link, Creationism and Climate Change
By Graham Wayne
The glorious advantage of the ‘missing link’ argument is, as creationists already know, it presents a perfect, self-reinforcing paradigm of scientific failure, built on the straw foundations of mathematical proofs applied to linear systems; predictable—if not inviolable, processes. The inferential science of observation and rationalisation is demeaned and denied, even though a control Earth to play with is a patently absurd idea.
The essence of the Missing Link fallacy is to demand intermediate phases to explain different forms, and then to mindlessly and endlessly demand intermediates between the intermediates. In fact, every fossil is an intermediate between all of its predecessors and all of its successors.
In AGW denial we see a variation in which deniers say, "But you didn't take account of this variable." But there are a few political, economic, and technological variables that the AGW/Creationist alliance has failed to take account of.
The connection between Creationism and Global Warming denial has been widely noted and deplored. Just today on Daily Kos, ignatzmouse made the connection in Death Wish 2010: Climate Change Deniers Seal the Greenhouse
In fact, all of the climate models are wrong: It's actually much worse than predicted, in large part because CO2 emissions are growing faster than the models allowed for, as China and India industrialize. Even more worrying, continued warming could set off even larger greenhouse gas emissions through wildfires and release of trapped methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, though with a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere.
This is not even new news. Similar reports have been coming out for years, each worse than the one before, even as we take account of previous underestimates.
Yes, all of the various lines of evidence confirm AGW, and point to catastrophe, as variously defined by anti-poverty agencies and NGOs, and the US DoD. I'll say that again: not only does the evidence for AGW converge, so does the evidence for catastrophe, under any reasonable definition: loss of ice and permafrost, resulting in inundation of whole countries or large fractions thereof; widespread extreme weather events including increased snow, rain, hail, and drought; storm-caused wind damage (more and bigger hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes), flooding, and other problems; widespread species extinctions; invasive species; pandemic disease; and war.
It has occurred to me that Creationists who believe in the End Times should welcome news of AGW, because it fits so well with the run-up to the Apocalypse and Armageddon. Well, the seas aren't turning to blood, just to soda, but still, isn't the litany of catastrophe above sufficient? Oh, wait, that would mean that George Bush, or more likely Dick Cheney, is the Antichrist, just like that wacko Lyndon LaRouche said, and they have been following him. Them. Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek teaching that social democracy is Soviet style Communism. Ronald Wilson Reagan (666)following their lead on Medicare. Skip it. Forget I said anything.
The problem is that we have firm evidence, from research on Cognitive Dissonance and Authoritarian Personalities, that presenting True Believers with contrary evidence, even obvious facts, just strengthens most of them in their beliefs. (They deny this, of course.) This is particularly true when those presenting facts are already believed to be agents of the Devil or the Antichrist, as is apparently the case for most Creationist AGW deniers. (You might have seen Barack Obama called the Antichrist, or seen denunciations of Darwinist conspiracies against religion, truth, and goodness. This is part of what that is about.)
So in fact it doesn't matter much what arguments the deniers trot out, nor does it matter much to them what counterarguments we trot out. The True Believers are just like the Red Queen in Alice, believing six impossible things before breakfast. Still, they try to provide merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
Every other fallacy gets dragged in as well. But the killer argument, from their point of view, is that they have absolute knowledge through religion, and science is only conditional at best and evil at worst, possibly a conspiracy to drive the world into the arms of the Antichrist.
Specifically, Bibliolators who claim to believe every word of the Bible literally (which is not possible) will cite Genesis 1:26–31.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
So we are the pinnacle of Creation, and we can do whatever the Hell we like to the Earth, and even God won't say, "Boo" to us. So we certainly don't have to listen to Liberal, secular humanist, atheist, Devil-worshipping scientists and politicians. And besides, it doesn't matter even if we wreck everything, because the Rapture is coming any day now. A Black President is all the proof you need for that.
The only reliably established method for dealing with such people is to wait for the deniers to die in sufficient numbers to dilute their political clout, as large numbers of the young who are exposed to a wider range of opinion and culture stop buying into the denial. Assuming that those younger people can be exposed to ever more facts and more complete theories.
We have evidence that this is happening on a wide range of issues, including racism, other forms of bigotry, and denial of science, at about 2% of the US population annually. More detailed statistical data and models allow us to predict when each US state will tip, which in turn lets us estimate when the Senate might tip. This tipping point in the US Senate could come as early as 2016, according to my analysis of the results of a model by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com.
We are also approaching a tipping point where renewable energy will be cheaper than gas, oil, and even coal, not only at the point of production, but all the way to factories and consumers. President Obama alludes to this frequently, but never makes the case strongly. At that point there will be a rush to build renewable capacity in great quantities, and neither political nor religious opposition will be able to overcome the power of simple economics. This is going to happen much sooner than the nay-sayers would have us believe (which is, of course, never).
A carbon tax would make it happen sooner, but more Federal law to smooth design and construction of interstate smart electric grids is even more effective. As soon as we can rationalize the grid, a process now authorized and funded, but hotly contested, many billions of dollars have been promised to flow to wind and solar power. If the Administration were more willing to frame this publicly as a national security issue (since it has stated that it is), it should be possible to overcome more of the current political resistance.
Go find a link missing in that.