The Climate Equation

So, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on this blog. I’ve been busy, but more than that, I’ve had nothing much to say. Today’s activity is prompted by yet another admonition from a member of the Global Warming sect, this time to reduce my travel. I’m to think, apparently, of the amount of CO₂ I’m dumping in the atmosphere anytime I step on a plane and shudder in horror at the havoc I’m wreaking on the climate.

I’m a climate realist. I used to count myself among the climate fabulists until my brother said to me one day, “Maybe you should look into that. I’m not sure it’s what you think it is.” So I did.

In any event, when I read a summary of this latest panicked plea to don yet another hair shirt to mortify my sinful, eco-collapsing flesh, something occurred to me. I’m virtually certain that the most outspoken of the climate Cassandras also worship in the Church of Charles “the science is settled” Darwin. I haven’t researched this, but in my experience these things come in packages. To popular celebrators of Science, Global Warming and Darwinian Evolution are part of a two-for-one special. To the extent they are not, the Darwinian congregation is larger than the Global Warming fellowship which suits my purposes just fine as you will see.

            

            The importance of this relationship cannot be overestimated. The Darwinian catechism you see explicitly states that life is devoid of meaning. As simply one example we have Richard Dawkins:  

“The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” ― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

As another example we have Psychology Today which revealed the meaning of life after Darwin: 

“But if we're interested in the question of whether life is ultimately meaningful, rather than whether it's potentially emotionally meaningful, well after Darwin, there is no reason at all to suppose that it is - there is no reason to assume that life has any ultimate meaning or purpose. Jan 8, 2011The Meaning of Life Revealed! | Psychology Todayhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-nature-nurture.../the-meaning-life-revealed

And this must be so because according to the Darwinians we are the product of random collocations of atoms and molecules whose existence depends on the purely chance event that our particular arrangement of elements is able to remain together better than other arrangements of elements that are not us. Sure, lots of Darwinians argue for the existence of meaning or purpose because, as I described in another post, without meaning or purpose we’d all just give up and die. But, Darwinians cannot have it both ways: they cannot ascribe life to chance and infuse it with meaning because chance by definition is without meaning-it’s happenstance, accidental, unplanned.

Darwinians are notoriously unwilling to face the necessary implications of life without meaning. Don’t worry though; I’m here to help. I’ll explore some of those implications in connection with the current hysteria surrounding Global Warming.

First let’s talk about what follows from life without meaning: nothing is better or worse than anything else. “How can that be?” you say. “Good and bad self evidently exist.” Not so fast. Labeling one thing good and another bad requires the importation of value into the discussion and value necessitates meaning, something with which to compare the different states of whatever you’ve labeled good or bad and, altogether now, life has no meaning. We can even express this symbolically: 0=no meaning; <0 meaning="">0=meaning.

Now we arrive at the Global Warming congregation. Stop the C0₂ they say or you’ll destroy the earth. To which the response of good followers of Darwin, PBUH, should be: “So?” It doesn’t matter what happens because, class? life has no meaning. Here, let’s be scientific about this, we’ll write it out using the symbols we’ve established.

Earth is destroyed=0;

Earth is saved=0;

0=0, therefore;

Earth is destroyed=Earth is saved.

See? It’s mathematic because, once more with feeling, life has no meaning. To the good Darwinians of the Global Warming denomination it must be all the same.

Now, I’m generous so if you’ll stop clinging to your religion of the haphazard universe we can have a discussion about the geologic climate, glacial and interglacial periods, the medieval warm period, the Roman Climactic Optimum, climate sensitivity to CO₂, the alterations to the surface temperature record, benefits of increased CO₂, the morality (see what wonders appear when we give up chance and embrace meaning?) of killing people by denying them what is easily within our power (notice what I did there?) to provide, the presence or absence of the equatorial tropospheric hotspot, the reliability of climate models both in their construction (not accounting for clouds for example) and their performance, the regular oscillation of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, the sea levels and so much more.

But, I’m afraid until you lot give up your worship of chance, the creator of worlds, I simply cannot take you seriously.

You refuse to do so? Well then if it’s all the same to you (and I’ve demonstrated that it is), I’ll ignore anything you have to say.