samedi, novembre 28, 2009

Hack Into Me

What follows is an unconfirmed, possibly fictional statement from a scientist who may or may not have asked that his name be removed.

So they hacked into my private e-mails. Wherein I had spent a small amount of time, a few words here and there, wondering why the data wasn't matching my agenda. I might have also mocked those who disagree with me, referring to them as "twat" and "ignoramus" and other choice terms that mature adults use routinely when they don't think they will have to actually show their cards.

It has been really embarrassing. But not in the way you might think. I'm embarrassed for all of you.

How sad it is to see how deeply people's ideology clouds their judgement. There are actually people who believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming on a religious level. They have never looked up the facts. They accept the party line of their spiritual leaders. They derisively dismiss anyone who dares disagree with them. They assume that anyone who wants to actually look at the idea of climate change scientifically is their moral, social, and political enemy. To that end, they LOVE my smarmy name calling. The myriad UNtruths in their Gospel of Inconvenient Truth are unthinkable to them. They ignore, utterly and profoundly, the particular e-mail where I mentioned that the famous "hockey stick" graph mentioned by their Goracle is not supported by the data, and recoil, utterly and profoundly, from the possibility that I might have any questions about their dogmatic faith that man is at the root of climate change. I'm sure that if I ever find evidence to the contrary, they will throw pies in my face as I leave the symposium. They are, in short, utterly and profoundly, UNscientific.

They have counterparts. Doppelgangers if you will. People who have ignored the data with equal exuberance. Their opposition is equally devout. They sift through 3,000 e-mails to find the one or two where I dared question. They take them as evidence that makes their case. They somehow interpret my infantile jibes to their ilk as evidence that my arguments are flawed. Most of their minds exist proudly within the bounds of the AM radio waves that carry the vitriol of their prophets. If they end up being right--I should say, correct--their arguments will dismiss themselves with the self same tools they used to dismiss the tenets of their "enemies."

But these are the people who dwell on the surface. It would be wrong of me to expect better from them. From Time Immemorial humans have desperately sought after facts to fit their agenda, rather than the more sensible opposite modus operandi. That is what they will do with my leaked e-mails: they will hear what they want to hear, and this will render the whole debate fairly moot. Happily, you can count on religious types from both camps to at least be well intentioned. So I'll handle my embarrassment. I'll take my medicine like any mature adult who is caught with questionable half truths and insults in his mouth: I'll obfuscate the questionable and augment the insults even as I pretend to apologise. Watch me; it'll be beautiful. However, as you watch, you might begin to feel a bowling ball in your stomach, as the fingers of your brain grapple in the mist for the real revelation slinking around between the lines of my hacked private communications.

There are people who are much worse than those I have mentioned. People whose agenda is not well intentioned. Big talking individuals who profit in unthinkable ways by manipulating the data and the perception of the data. One group requires that GW [global warming] sink into the dank basement of myth so that their cronies and partners can increase margins and avoid regulation. They might even want to be free to pollute soil and atmosphere. The other group NEEDS desperately for AGW [anthropogenic, or man caused, global warming] to be a fact. They require the subsequent fear and panic and activism to implicate a political agenda that has little to do with the actual climate. Their financial well-being literally depends on their premise being true. I might even be one of them. Or I might work for them. Or I may depend on them remaining and gaining in power so they can dispense money in my direction. Or I am an important third party to their friends, who are captains of industry, who need to sell products that say "green" on the label. For all I know, these apparent poles of contraction are working together. Tricking everyone into choosing sides because that is how they get paid.

As it turns out, most of us have chosen sides on flimsy grounds, such as liking one side or the other, or how one side makes us feel, or whether they agree with our views on how socially progressive society should be, or whether their comedians are funny to us or not, or whether their religion is traditional or couched in pretending to be non religious.

I don't remember when I chose a side, but I did. I absolutely did. Being a scientist doesn't, and shouldn't preclude that. Keep that in mind when you judge our data. Keep that in mind when you judge our humanity. We are people. Cut us--do we not bleed? Make our private lives public, do we not appear as childish as everyone else? Try to untie the Gordian knot of where our politics end and where our objectivity begins, and are you not face to face with your own agenda driven ignorance?

If you aren't, perhaps you should be.

In the end, these are just 3,000 e-mails that will have no lasting effect on whatever passes for "debate" in this world. That said, if we squint long enough into the temporarily large shadow of this feckless electronic edifice, we might find a handwritten line by a long dead prince of Denmark: There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy.

2 commentaires:

Stephanie Lee a dit...

There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy.


hah.

but is there??
is there.

really people never agree, never relinquish. never are fallible.

what is the point after all.


is there a point in general....


sigh.

im so unsure. of the overall feeling.

Carolyne Swift a dit...

All I can say is: Ain't It A Shame