Climate Change Deniers Should Be Mocked, Ridiculed, Shamed, and Marginalized

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Earlier this month President Obama delivered the commencement address at the University of California at Irvine.  The president took the opportunity to call out climate change deniers and referred to them as posing "a serious threat" to our future.  I applaud the president for taking such a strong stance on an issue which is backed by broad scientific consensus.

As a good skeptic I try (and often fail) to critique and attack people's ideas, not the people themselves. Attacking someone personally and not their idea is a logical fallacy known as an ad hominem attack.  Most of the time I believe it is incumbent on skeptics, rationalists, and the scientifically minded to take the high road and avoid ad hominems.  Ad hominems are great for preaching to the choir and riling up your base, but they don't further rational discourse and rarely win people over to your cause.

However, like many things in life, there is room for exceptions.  Dealing with climate change deniers is one such instance.  This post is not about refuting the arguments of climate change deniers point by point.  That has already be done ad nauseum and it has been to no avail (see here for a great point by point refutation of all climate change denial arguments).  The deniers are as strident and deluded as ever, and no amount of science, data, and reality are going to stop them.  Unfortunately those in the popular media still give equal time and air to climate change deniers.  For those of you have not yet seen it John Oliver did a great job of addressing the ridiculous nature of this 'balance' on his show.

The science is overwhelming at this point.  Average global temperatures are rising, and the rise in temperatures is anthropogenic.  The scientific consensus behind these two facts is as solid as the consensus over gravity and the heliocentric nature of the solar system.

Given the overwhelming fact of climate change the deniers should be given the same kind of time and attention that we give to flat earthers and creationists.  The opinions of climate change deniers are based on a blatant denial of reality and are therefore wrong.  Arguing with them over the scientific merits of their arguments is useless because there is no scientific merit to their arguments.  Climate changes deniers will likely always exist, just like Holocaust deniers will always exist.  The difference though is that Holocaust deniers are mocked, ridiculed, and marginalized in the popular media, whereas climate change deniers are not.

The beliefs of climate change deniers are dangerous and threaten our chances of effectively mitigating the worst effects of climate change.  Their beliefs are more dangerous and threatening than those of Holocaust deniers or anti-vaccers because unlike the latter two groups the opinions of the former are treated as being just as valid as those of us who live in reality.  This is not acceptable especially when considering that these deniers actually have a great influence over public policy in this country.  News networks, newspapers, and websites that give these people a platform to spread their delusions and pseudo-science should be shamed and boycotted.  If you read an op-ed from a climate change denier in a popular newspaper write a letter to the editor letting them know that this is not acceptable.  If the same happens on television e-mail that station and shame them for allowing these moronic, science denying scumbags to pollute our airwaves.

So let's begin.  Let's make it a point to mock, ridicule, shame, and marginalize all of the climate change deniers and their enablers.  We need to make it so that those who are still on the fence regarding whether or not they believe climate change is real are afraid for their own dignity and self respect to be associated with climate change denial  Let's call out people such as Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, David Bellamy, James Inhofe, Ted Nuggent, Michale Chrichton, Ann Coulter, Donald Trump, and all of their enablers for being the superstitious, reality averse, anti-science, planet raping, science hating, Bible thumping, dumbshit, motherfucking troglodytes that they are.

The Millers, Conspiracy Theories, and Domestic Terrorism

On June 8 a young married couple in Nevada decided that they wanted to launch an revolution.  Jerad and Amanda Miller walked into a Las Vegas pizzeria, drew their weapons, and shot at point blank two police officers who were enjoying their lunch break.  Afterwards the couple draped the officers in Gadsden flags, and were reported by witnesses as shouting "This is the start of a revolution!"  They then retreated to a nearby Wal Mart where they were involved in a short gun battle with police which soon ended in a murder/suicide after Amanda Miller shot Jerad and then herself. 

There is a lot about this case that is very disturbing, but what disturbs me the most is how few people in the mainstream media (major cable and network outlets, national news papers) are calling this an act of domestic terrorism.  Secondly very few outlets are paying attention to the fact that the Millers were obsessed with conspiracy theories, which likely helped them to rationalize their plans.  

According to the FBI "'Domestic terrorism' means activities with the following three characteristics:

• Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
• Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
• Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S."

Given the motives behind this horrific act, which the Millers were clear about in their post on various social networks, including noted 9/11 conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' website, it becomes quite clear that this act, besides occurring within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., and involving acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law, was intended to violently influence government policies by intimidating and coercing civilian populations.  This was an act of domestic terrorism.  Many in the mainstream media have only mentioned this offhandedly, although Tom Ashbrook in his radio show On Point did a great job of analyzing this story within the context of domestic terrorism.  

Regarding the Millers' belief in conspiracy theories this has been mentioned, but not discussed.  Among others the Millers' believed the following conspiracy theories:

• 9/11 was an inside job
• Chemtrails
• New World Order conspiracies
• Obama socialist agenda conspiracies

This is a very important piece of this story.  I spend a lot of time debunking conspiracy theories with my friends and family and I'm often asked about what the harm is in having some crazy ideas.  Well, the Millers are the harm.  The Millers lived in a world awash in conspiracy theories that see all governments as evil, authoritarian, illegitimate, and murderous.  I highly doubt that the Millers would have been willing to go so far in their 'activism' if they didn't believe that local, state, and federal governments are malevolent entities bent on exterminating the sheeple.  

This is a story of domestic terrorism fueled by belief in many popular conspiracy theories.  Conspiracy theories are not harmless, they are dangerous.  Considering that this nation is armed to the hilt, paranoid, and polarized politically those spreading conspiracy theories are throwing gas on the fire.  All of those purveyors of government conspiracy theories have blood on their hands. 

The Top 5 Pseudo-Scientific Beliefs of Portlanders

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in southeast or downtown Portland will quickly learn that Portlanders love their pseudo-science.  Does the scientific consensus over GMOs contradict what you believe about the evils of technology?  We've got pseudo-science for that!  Are you tired of all of the 'chemicals' that 'they' put in the water in order to poison/brainwash/control/enhance the dental health of the sheeple?   Well, no worries!  We've got pseudo-science to back up that bunk as well! Let's take a look at the five most popular pseudo scientific beliefs of Portlanders.

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1) Flouride in the water causes brain damage/cancer/genocide-  In 2013 Clean Water Portland successfully defeated a ballot initiative to fluoridate Portland's water supply.  Despite the fact that water fluoridation is lauded by public health experts as one of the most successful, beneficial, and cheap public health policies every,  that over sixty years of community fluoridation across the country has yielded no negative health or environmental effects, that fluoridated water is the only defense that those living in poverty have against tooth decay, Clean Water Porltand managed to convince Portlanders that water fluoridation is a scheme by 'Big Fluoride' to profit from poisoning every resident of Portland.  Because, y'know, chemicals!

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2) GMOs causes brain damage/cancer/genocide- GMOs are scary.  People don't want to eat 'genes.' Fortunately, we don't need to worry too much about GMOs according to more than two decades of GMOs existing in abundance in our food supply, and an overwhelming scientific consensus that GMOs have not been shown to harm personal health or the environment.  Luckily, if that pesky scientific consensus doesn't fit with your all natural worldview you can find your own 'science' to back up your beliefs, because that's how science works, you develop a belief, you try to prove it, and if you can't you keep trying until you make the data prove it.   This is exactly what we've done here in Portland.  There is a campaign going on here to put a proposal on November's ballot to require food manufactures to label GMOs in their food.  This campaign has glommed on to pseudo-science to push through their agenda!  Take for example the often cited is a study conducted by Gilles-Eric Séralini in which he found that GMOs fed to rats caused them to grow massive tumors.  The results were not so surprising when one considers that Séralini used a species of rat that is very prone to tumors, and that he covered the food in quantities of pesticides far in excess of what people would actually be exposed to when they eat GMO food.
and 'chemicals.'  Can't we just keep genes and chemicals out of our food, please? 

3- You can cure cancer/AIDS/autism/arthritis/obesity/ADHD/ and everything else with 'energy,'

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'forces,' and 'fields'- Portlanders love their alternative medicine.  Absolutely love it.  Why fill your body with poisonous 'chemicals' to cure your lung cancer when all you need to do is have your chakras realigned?  This city is awash in snake oil doctors that claim to be able to cure anything by harnessing your bodies own natural 'energy fields,' or aura, or whatever the hell forces reiki manipulates.  All of these services are couched in terms that sound sciency, but make absolutely no sense in context.  The next time someone tells you that you can cure your gout by harnessing your body's 'energy field' replace the words energy and field with their actual scientific definitions.  Energy is defined as the capacity for vigorous activity.  Field is defined as a region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure, having a determinable value at every point in the region. Now, you can cure your gout by harnessing your body's capacity for vigorous activity space characterized by a physical property.  Does that still make sense?

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4- Organic Food will stop global warming and make you a superhero- We love our organic food here. Decades of research has shown two things about organic food.  First, that organic food is no more or less nutritious than conventionally grown food.  Second, that it is not necessarily any less destructive of the environment than conventionally grown food.  Either way, what the hell has science ever done for us anyway?
 Because only some food is organic, despite the fact that all food contains carbon (technically anything that contains carbon, ie; all living or formerly living things, is organic).

5- Vaccines Cause Autism-  I got my child vaccinated.

Two days later my child began to show the first signs of autism.  Vaccinations cause my child's autism, in   much the same way that my breakfast cereal caused the pimple that appeared on my ass five minutes later.  Any good scientist will tell you that correlation ALWAYS means causation.  Oh wait, no they won't, only a pseudo scientist like Jenny McCarthy would tell you that (althought, my partner thinks that she doesn't even deserve that distinction).  Unfortunately for many children their parents fall for this very basic logical fallacy, and the consequences are serious.  Because parents (mostly white, liberal, college educated, and middle class) are refusing or delaying vaccinating their children serious childhood diseases such as whooping cough and measles are making a frightening comeback.  Besides putting their own children at risk these parents are putting other children at risk who really can't be vaccinated due to real medical conditions.  If too few children are vaccinated then herd immunity is diminished, and the most vulnerable among us (the elderly, infants, the immunocompromised) are put at serious risk because 'I'm a super parent and being a parent gives me magical powers that allow me to ignore science and good public health policy.'  Oh yeah, and vaccines contain chemicals.

So remember, if you want to live in Portland, chemicals are bad, nature is good, and my science is better than yours.

Why We Need to Protect Net Neutrality

From Daily Tech

Do you have family or friends living in disparate parts of the country, or world?  If you do you probably spend some time uploading or viewing photos on Facebook to keep up with them, and keep them posted on your goings on.  Do you have some sort of desk job?  Then you probably rely on ubiquitous access to e-mail so that you can communicate with clients, coworkers, managers, etc.  Do you like watching movies and television shows?  Likely you regularly stream movies and shows relatively seamlessly from Hulu, Netflix, or Youtube.  Do you vote?  Voters rely heavily on what they can find out about candidates from Google searches so they can make an informed decision.  Are you an activist?  If you are then you've probably helped to organize actions via social media.  How about business owners?  Let's say you run a small grocery store.  You probably keep your payroll costs down by enrolling your employees in a direct deposit program.
Each of these activities has two things in common.  Firstly, each of these activities constitute a broad range of actions we take every day to ensure that we can effectively participate in the economy, in political life, and in cultural life.  Each of these things are the things we do that allow us to participate in our society and share in a common culture.  Each of these activities are that allow us to be productive and active citizens.

Secondly, each of these activities, is utterly dependent on our ability to access the internet equally regardless of any racial, cultural, ethnic, cultural, political, religious, or social differences.  As long as you can afford a monthly subscription fee you have the same amount of access to the internet as any other individual, group, organization, company, or government.  There is a name for this concept of open networks.  It's known as 'net neutrality.'  The ACLU defines it thusly: "Network neutrality means applying well-established "common carrier" rules to the Internet in order to preserve its freedom and openness. Common carriage prohibits the owner of a network, that holds itself out to all-comers, from discriminating against information by halting, slowing, or otherwise tampering with the transfer of any data (except for legitimate network management purposes such as easing congestion or blocking spam)."  In other words, internet providers can't give preferential treatment to some customers over others by slowing down or speeding up access for a fee.  Rules that are currently being proposed by the Federal Communications Commission would allow for internet providers to do just that.  John Oliver recently did a hilarious job of explaining the issue here: 

For a more sober explanation of all of this check out this article from The Nation, or this article from the New York Times.  

The proposals currently under consideration by the FCC would effectively end net neutrality as we know it.  Fortunately, the FCC is allowing for an open commenting period (mentioned above by John Oliver) in which you can be heard.  You can go here to make your comment.  Their website was already crashed once after John Oliver's monologue, let's keep crashing it until they get the message that we all value and deserve and open internet.  

White Chrysanthemum

Growing serene from smoldering death wound                  

              of Child, white chrysanthemum peaks beauty.            Reaches up, feels blazing sun life surround,                                       screams its story to any willing ear.                      

White chrysanthemum speaks tranquility                                  

              to the whole of all, blunts forever fear.                        

In wild throes of spring soiled eyes are bled clean                        

              of old terror, filled with warm ancient light.               

They look upon wisdom, see the unseen,                                   

              penetrate deep to the love of all being.                        

Soiled eyes bled clean reveal partial insight                                   

              to any free mind, rarely fulfilling.                                   

Not divine, just elegant and simple,                                   

              selfless beauty and the bleak troublesome,                        

Aloft in big universe push and pull,                                              

              No wishes, just staggering potential,                        

Each moment discreet yet part of a sum,

              In freedom one lives awestruck and humble.

New EPA Rules Will Not Destroy the Economy

Global warming image from www.shutterstock.com

This week the Obama administration announced new EPA rules that will cut carbon emissions from power production plants U.S. by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030.  This is a rational, sound, and necessary policy based on the scientific consensus that human activity is causing the global climate to become warmer.  It is necessary and right.  Unfortunately the political right and pro busniess groups are launching predictable attacks on the new policy claiming that it will cost the U.S. economy countless jobs and billions of dollars.   Fortunately, as history has shown, these pronouncements of doom and glom are quite likely wrong.  Very wrong.

There is a long history in the U.S. of vocal and vehement opposition from the political right and pro business groups of any sort of environmental regulation.  Peter Gleick at Huffington Post documents that history very well here.  Of particular note in Gleick's article is the following chart depicting annual GDP growth from 1929 to the present.

Note how Gleik added to this chart the dates at which different pieces of environmental regulation were implemented.  Lo and behold, the economy didn't collapse, or even backslide, when each of these pieces of legislation were introduced.  In fact, as Gleik also notes, a peer reviewed 2011 study by the EPA on the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act:

Avoided more than 160,000 premature deaths, 130,000 heart attacks (acute myocardial infarction), millions of cases of respiratory problems such as acute bronchitis and asthma attacks, and 86,000 hospital admissions.

Prevented 13 million lost workdays, improving worker productivity which contributes to a stronger economy.

Kept kids healthy and in school, avoiding 3.2 million lost school days due to respiratory illness and other diseases caused or exacerbated by air pollution.                                                                                

The benefits listed above far outweigh any cost to industry in implementing the regulations instituted in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act.  

Even if this newest set of regulations causes a temporary setback for the economy the cost is more than worth it.  In the long term this is an investment in a cleaner environment, less acidification of oceans, less agricultural disruption, a better respect for our only home, fewer costal cities being wiped out by sea level rise, and a stabilized climate.  That strikes me as a damn good investment.  

Why Spirituality Offends Me

I don't know who to credit this image to,
 but here is an explanation of this phenomena.

I find notions of spirituality to be offensive.  That statement in and of itself offends a lot of people.  I recognize and understand that such a statement cuts right to the core many people's most deeply held beliefs and world views.  I understand and appreciate the way people feel when confronted with such a statement, however I feel no need to apologize for the offense felt.  This piece is a critique of a set of beliefs, ideas, and world views, not an attack on those who hold these ideas.  Most people I know and love hold some or all of these beliefs; and most people I know are good, kind, and decent.  That one holds on to any vaguely spiritual belief in no way diminishes my respect for them on a personal or intellectual level, but in my view it does expose an intellectual blind spot.

Before we dive into why spirituality offends me let's first define what I mean by use of the term.  I'll derive my definition from common use of the term 'spiritual.'  As per dating website cliches many people describe themselves as 'spiritual but not religious.'  In other words, they don't necessarily believe in or follow an organized religion but believe that there exists some sort of supernatural entity, 'force,' or 'energy' that may or may not actively or passively take an interest in human affairs. Some people say they actually believe in some sort  of individual god or gods, others in more vague forces that imbue the universe with meaning.  As I'm sure the reader may note at this point the definition is quite vague and broad.  The vagueness and breadth of this definition relates directly with the first reason why spirituality offends me.

Intellectually the nebulousness of the definition of spirituality renders it almost meaningless.  It's very formlessness allows any believer the room to define spirituality in any way that suits their particular worldview, again rendering the term meaningless.

At it's simplest spirituality can be defined as belief in the supernatural.  If we go by this more specific definition the argument is over before it even starts.  The very notion of something being supernatural means it is outside of nature, therefore unobservable in any sense.  It can neither be proved nor disproved.  You are still welcome to that belief, but there is no compelling reason for me to rethink my non-belief in anything supernatural.  If you want me to change that idea the burden is upon you to provide that evidence.  If there is evidence for what you claim  it then exists in reality, it is no longer supernatural, it is now natural.

When one defines their spirituality as a belief in some sort of universal energy or force that pervades, perhaps even animates, all things.  The problem here is that the words energy and force are being completely misused and misunderstood.  Energy simply means the "ability of a physical system to do work."  Force is "the push or pull upon an object resulting form the object's interaction with another object." The next time someone tells you that they believe in some sort of 'life energy' that pervades all living things replace the word 'energy' with its definition and see if it still makes sense.  If it doesn't make sense with the actual definition, it doesn't make sense with the word 'energy' either.  The same thing has in recent years happened to the word 'quantum,' largely due to Deepak Chopra.  Yet again, the definition of what one means by spirituality becomes meaningless.  This is the bastardization of fundamental physical concepts that go further than any supernatural explanation at describing reality.  It flies in the face of centuries of hard earned knowledge on the part of countless individuals and groups, some of whom risked their lives, to better and more objectively describe our universe.  We are ascribing agency to a universe which is perfectly well explained without need of it. That is intellectually offensive.

Emerging from the intellectual offenses noted above leads to the next; the notion that our sense of self, our minds, are supernatural entities which inhabit our body as a vessel for a short period of time. As we delve deeper into the human mind via the ever hardening sciences of neurobiology and psychology, a consensus is emerging that our minds, our Cartesian experience, our very sense of self, is rooted in physical, chemical, and biological processes which taken in aggregate produce our subjective experience.  Our minds are an emergent property of the physical substrate of our brains, bodies, and external stimuli.  On a very deep level, our sense of self emerges from within, not without.  Note how often the personalities of those who have experienced traumatic brain injury, stroke, or Alzheimer's disease will reportedly in fundamental ways.  If we were inhabited by some sort of entity from without brain injuries would hardly change our personality.  This all gets to the root of what offends the most about spirituality.  Spirituality denies our humanity.

At its core spirituality denies reality, and our experience of reality as it is described by empirical knowledge. The wonderful thing about science as a tool is that it takes into account our limited mental and physical abilities to perceive the world around us.  Science as a tool serves as a check on our subjective experience, our prejudices, and all of our other cognitive shortcomings.  It is knowledge of radio waves and their properties that has allowed us to detect the cosmic background radiation, the 'echo' of the big bang. Knowledge of the interactions between physical objects, obtained through calculus, allowed us to free ourselves of Earth's gravitational well and land people on Luna, send robots to Mars, and send a physical object beyond the boundaries of our solar system into interstellar space.  Knowledge of the nature of light allows you to read this very blog post, possibly within seconds of its posting, on the other side of the planet. And of course there are the ancient wonders of the world, all of art and aesthetic appreciation, countless ethical and moral systems (many of which have nothing to say of the supernatural), the countless lives saved by modern medicine and public health, the doubling of the human lifespan, the knowledge of how we influence and degrade our environment, and the knowledge of what we need to do to reverse that degradation. None of this came from any sort of supernatural entity.  That all came from a three pound hunk of meat and its attendant biological processes located in each of our skulls.  To attribute human creativity, morality, intellect, compassion, knowledge, and experience to anything other than ourselves is to deny our very existence.

Spirituality is fundamentally anti-human, and that offends me.

Discrete Object

Darkness.

Artowrk by Hayami05

I'm floating free in space,
An empty part.
No galaxies, no planets, no rocks, gas clouds or dust,
Not a single star,
Not a single nightmare,
just darkness.

I look out and see dark.
The last star is so far away my eyes can't pick up that last little whimper of light,
A few stray photons that crossed a billion light years,
By chance made it through the clouds and parallax,
Past the dust, rocks, and gas,
Only to strike my retina,
It's message of babble delivered in vain,
To small to be seen.

This is darkness,
It stretches forever into nothing,
And that whole nothing is before my eyes.

I feel my arms and legs,
But they're just as dark as the void,
The edges feel fuzzy,
I can't quite feel quite where my body ends and the darkness starts.