Are we “slipping back into a dark era”?
The Washington Post reports:
… Earlier this month, Nina Fedoroff, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, declared at the annual meeting that she was “scared to death” the world was “slipping back into a dark era” when it came to understanding climate change and other scientific matters.
When asked how [Deniergate] would affect the public’s understanding of climate science, Fedoroff replied with just three words: “It doesn’t help.”
I have seen the ebb and flow of superstition in my lifetime. We are now close to hitting a peak in “dark era” thought. I am getting emails and facebook posts daily about the threats of microwaves, vaccines, BPA, planet X, 2012, chemtrails, mind control, etc… The green movement has almost entirely become a “none of the above” movement, that seems to think sitting around protesting is the point and have no ideas beyond a campfire and tent. When I was young in the 70’s and into the 80’s, there was a real feeling of momentum into the future and almost every aspect of our lives (in Canada) has improved. The same optimisim as the post WW2 period, but it was followed by the 60’s and their anti-culture.
The people who send all their superstition rant junkmail have never spent 30 seconds checking a single fact in their garbage before forwarding it, and this at a time when fact checking is available and easy to everyone. In the climate arena, people make statements of 100% belief in a point and refuse to back down when you show them the actual data that they thought their point was backed by. Post a graph disproving them, and you get back an accusation of falling for propoganda…..without the slightest indication that they see the irony in their statements. I hope this phase passes fast, but they will likely do alot more harm before their defeatism gives way to new wave of optimism. In reality, the anti carbon fetish will likely die the second these self-important people actually start to suffer themselves.
When the power goes out and they cant charge their Iphone and when they can no longer afford trendy food at hip cafes, they will all the sudden realize that they didn’t mean for people to do exactly what they preached, but expected the government to protect them despite their stupidity.
The world is “slipping back into a dark era”? So when was this Golden Age when everyone knew all the current science and everyone agreed on it? Roughly, back when shamans were rattling bones and such. Except that it was the shamans who knew everything (they’d be out of business if everyone else knew their stuff) and those who didn’t agree wouldn’t get their share of mammoth meat.