By Brian McKay
Recently, I was told that science was nothing more than a religion to me. I believe very strongly in the merits of science and eschew any of the Flat Earther bullshit that seems to be enveloping my country as of late. First of all, science can never be a religion because of the very fact that scientific method is self-correcting. Religion and politics can never be self-correcting because admitting you fucked up doesn’t go over very well in either one. How can you correct something that derives supremacy from being right?
Sure science has the misgivings of human interaction and the ego but it also has this wonderful self-correcting mechanism called peer review. Yeah, you can potentially come out with a crazy new idea, but if it doesn’t make sense, your peers are going to call you out on it.
The U.S. has entered this incredible period of mass science denial as of late. It exists with both conservatives and liberals. Logic has ceased to exist with the new cries of scientists being corrupted by either by industry or government.
Conservatives will say that scientists have been corrupted by the need for grants by the government that will make them rich and further a communist agenda. They will willingly deny their own logic by using scientists paid well by big oil as pinnacles of those decrying the horrific scientific corruption in the climate sciences.
On the flip side, the new trend among more liberal activists is to announce that GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) are killing people while scientists are complicit with the gigantic and corrupt food industry, most notably Monsanto. Vaccinations have also become an evil scourge that causes autism and are promoted by evil pharmaceutical companies that only care about profit and have also bought off the scientific community.
While I am seriously jeopardizing any chance I might ever have of sleeping with various attractive women that believe this stuff, I call bullshit. Here is why.
Regardless of the science denier position you accept, you then have to assume that all science has been corrupted, the process has lost all integrity and is merely beholden to money. You must also then believe that all scientific integrity among all of the tens of thousands of well-educated individuals in the field is completely gone. Furthermore, you have to assume that movements and industries are proliferating beliefs and inaccuracies that would actually threaten their own existence.
Most industries, as short sighted as they might often be, usually have the forethought enough to realize that killing off their consumers is not necessarily a good move, especially if others truly figure it out. Also, the communist conspiracy is really hard to justify considering that communism is completely dead and not a single economic elite would prefer to trade off their private jets and $100 million houses in the Hamptons for economic equality and state owned entities. It has even been said that they want to deprive us of our cars so the elites may experience the riches of the Soviet Russia hierarchy with their dachas near the Baltic Sea.
First of all, cars are an economic necessity whether you are communist or capitalist. Secondly, the leaders of the Soviet Union look like total paupers compared to today’s global elites. Party members in the Soviet Union got perks like a 3-bedroom apartment, whereas non-party members only got a 1-bedroom apartment. Whoa. That is fucking crazy disparity. Surely we don’t compete at all in terms of $50 million dollar townhomes in London with 5 story basements or $80 million 70th floor apartments in Manhattan. Yachts and supercars? Sure, they want to give all that up and pour the rest of their Cristal down the drain so they can commute in a Lada.
Just stupid. Science is not the enemy. Your need to feel special and that you know more is the enemy. And those homeschoolers teaching their kids that climate change is an evil conspiracy of the devil? Shame on you and your ignorance.
So here are a few facts for all you Flat Earthers to absorb:
Yes, climate change is real. Let’s just call it what it is, “global warming”. The term climate change was initially popularized by Republican pollster Frank Lutz as a way to minimize global warming. You don’t have 10 of the hottest years on record out of the last 15 and call it statistical deviation. That is impossible in statistics. Global warming is a statistical trend. Erizon has published a great page on the top environmental concerns we are facing that goes into detail about the threat of climate change.
The claims of a 15 year cooling period are complete bullshit. They were first shouted out by a Lord Monckton in England. The problem was that Lord Monckton is not a member of the House of Lords and also claims to have cured cancer. The 350 people that signed that document that proclaimed the NOAA was faking data, mostly worked for the Heartland Institute and big oil.
Take any two NASA photos of Greenland, one from 10 years and one from now, they will show a massive change in ice coverage. Have you not looked at any of these? You might or you had better learn to feel good for destroying the world our kids inherit.
They all often say that the climate is always changing. Yes, it is, but there is a reason behind the change every time. If not human caused, what is the reason you attach to this current change? You deniers debate everything that shows human caused global warming, often with horrible ad hominem attacks. To this I simply ask; do you really believe the entire scientific community is corrupt and driving Ferrari’s because they are being paid off by nefarious government sources?
Moving on.
Vaccinations do not cause autism. In fact, they don’t really cause anything but resilience to some pretty horrible viruses. They are a miracle of modern science and Jonas Saulk was a 20th century hero for creating the vaccine that stopped Polio. No true scientific study has ever shown a link from any vaccination to autism. If you don’t vaccinate you kids, you are not only an ignorant asshole for their sake but for the sake of other kids as well. Get over yourself.
GMO’s surely sound pretty shitty and I would certainly agree that Big Food is interested in making some serious profits. Their lobbying for school lunch standards that include pizza as a vegatable have been nothing short of reprehensible. At the same time, science has never shown any link between GMO’s and a food apocalypse. Maybe the main question is this; in a world of 7 billion people (and growing fast), GMO’s are the only way we have found to deliver food to all of them. Should we just let more of them starve so you can justify your pipe dream of scientific corruptibility? There is certainly no other way to produce the food needed on a planet that is being impacted by the global warming the other guys deny.
It goes on with other issues as well. Evolution is constantly under attack by school boards in this country. Bumper stickers on cars erroneously decry that we are being killed by fluoride in the water. This is all junk that conforms to the five characteristics of science denial; 1) the use of fake experts 2) logical fallacies 3) impossible expectations 4) cherry picking and 5) conspiracy theories.
The Internet has become the main bad actor in furthering this junk. Hundreds of thousands of websites exist that claim to know the truth. Guess what? The respected scientific journal Nature, is a much better source than some delusional guy with a domain name.
In fact, isn’t it ironic that science created the Internet and then the Internet gets used to attack good science? Here a few other things that science has given you: water treatment facilities, modern medicine, space travel, video games, refrigeration, computers, video cameras, microwaves, robots, safer buildings, weather forecasting, cosmology, the understanding that comets aren’t sent by angry gods, ecology, Velcro, water repelling workout clothes, sticky notes, birth control, x-rays, MRI’s, radio, jet airplanes, satellites, high speed Internet, assistance devices for the disabled, cellular phones, digital cameras, aerodynamics, light bulbs, A/C electricity, fertilizers and even those Dr. Scholl’s gel things you put in your shoes.
Hmm… maybe modern science is the best thing man has ever developed. I seem to think so and am willing to put my full trust in the process as opposed to some shitty website written by some guy who figured out that scaring people with conspiracies pays very well.
Stop denying, get with reality and let’s get moving on the issues that really matter in this world. I wish to protect my child’s future and the denial of science really fucks with that. It is without any hesitation that I will say that science denial is just pure assholishness and complete ego generated selfishness.
Brian McKay is a co-founder of zenruption and has some degrees and shit. He despises science denial and conspiracy theories as the realms of true willful ignorance. We are certain he probably knows the science that went into developing the whiskey sours he loves so much.
Feature photo courtesy of Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license