I haven’t done any skylarking about global warming in a while, so let me have a bit of fun in my opening paragraph. Then, after that, I will sober up a bit, and move on to my more serious point, which I do, in fact, have. In 2007, serious scientists were predicting that the Arctic icecap would be GONE by the year 2013, which, you may have noticed, is almost in our rear view mirror. What is the actual state of the icecap in this, the year of our Lord, 2013? I am glad you asked, because since last August, the icecap has grown by 920,000 square miles. That’s a lot of global warming recoil.
The great idol of modernity is the state. When people engage in political debates, therefore, a lot less time should be spent in looking at what people are offering up, and much more time spent on recognizing what they are offering it to.
Whenever we are talking about climate change, they want me to look at the offering they have brought in their hands. What ever could be wrong with funny looking light bulbs? But the whole point of everything was to grow the power of the state, and the state is an idol. If it weren’t offered up on that altar, I wouldn’t care how your light bulbs looked. When the state is the idol, absolutely every course of action winds up being placed on that altar. Global warming means we must “pull together.” Global cooling means we must “coordinate our efforts,” and either way we go, it will always mean statist coercion.
A persistent aluminum siding salesman uses absolutely anything as an argument for you buying his product now. If it is Wednesday, that’s a good reason. If it is not Wednesday, even better. It turns out that issues related to Wednesday may not be his chief interest.
This is why I have little interest in pursuing the deep thoughts of philosophers, theologians, and other smart guys, who cannot see this glaringly obvious fact. I have often called Heidegger a Nazi, and that’s because he was one. That’s what you might call getting thrown at the rodeo, in the disqualification round, by one of those walk-the-children-around-a-pole-ponies. But the socialist Karl Barth also raises my suspicions — quite apart from the alarming fact of his towering genius — by refusing to condemn the Soviet invasion of Hungary in the fifties. If you can’t see the idolatry in the 90-foot statue of Nebuchadnezzar, I am not going to trust you when you find it in the fact that I am quoting Bible verses, like a crazed fundamentalist bibliolater . . . or like Jesus in the wilderness. Whatever.
When the music goes, the guys who bow down to that statue might be able to produce a lot of scintillating repartee at the cafe afterwards, explaining how the infinite meets the finite on the tip of the statue’s nose, most of which sails right over my head — but they still bowed down. But I want to be with the guys who didn’t. I want to hear what they have to say.
A friend pointed out that if you zoom out on the Arctic ice level graph, there is a definite downward trend, despite the annual ups and downs. For those who think this answers the question, zoom out some more – about a thousand years – and see Vikings sailing an Arctic Sea free of ice. The graph is a fractal. And Vikings are always right.
Gervase, think of it this way. The boy who cried wolf does not leave us with a problem in deductive logic, but rather an opportunity for inductive reasoning, which is strong or weak, not valid or invalid. They have filled up my adult lifetime with false alarms, and I just don’t believe them anymore.
Thanks, Mr. Wilson, for your posts, always chew-worthy!
But Mr. Wilson… in the story, the wolf DOES come…
Doug, I have this nagging suspicion that even if you believed that global warming is true and that the funny looking lightbulbs were the only things standing between us and global destruction, you’d still be against them just because it’s the government that’s asking you to do it. Am I right?
Eric, asking me to do it?
Uh . . . the coming of the wolf was not actually induced by the false alarms of the little boy; he was still a liar and the wolf’s arrival was a mere coincidence.
The answer is Regression toward the Mean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean
Doug, nice way to dodge the question. Whether or not “ask” was the right choice of verb, would you still oppose them, even if you thought they were necessary to save the planet, just because it’s coming from the secular state?
Eric the Red Herring continues to dodge the issue. Is the secular State growing its powers by asking, or by taking? The difference between freedom and oppression is just a choice of verb.
If Eric the Red thought that belief in the Triune God was necessary to save the planet, would he then adopt belief? Or would he still oppose belief just because the Gospel invitation is coming from Christ and His Church? Would Eric finally take one for the planet, and bow the knee? Or would he retreat to his principles? /gasp/
For those that may be interested in another perspective on the arctic ice measurements, this article might be helpful. http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/arctic-ice-increasing/#more-5904 I have never commented here before. I am an evangelical Christian and a retired physical therapist.
Gervase, it’s the warmists who came to us, and told us that “we have to do something!” – said something being to give their idol more power – because the arctic ice was disappearing.
Given that history, to say “um, your own data shows the ice is *not* disappearing” is in fact a very valid thing to do.
Katecho just laid a smack down! Dang.
There’s a difference between distrusting a government for the government and distrusting the government because it’s untrustworthy. This is what Pastor Wilson intimated (and by that I mean outright stated) in his first comment above.
Doug: any chance of asking your tech team to enable the <p> tag, so we can make points which take more than one paragraph to elaborate?