“He also cited a California case (19) in which the judge said ‘The family is the basic unit of our society, the center of personal affections that ennoble and enrich human life. It channels biological drives that might otherwise become socially destructive; it ensures the care and education of children in a stable environment; it establishes continuity from one generation to another; it nurtures and develops the individual initiative that distinguishes a free people.’ I think that statement shows the importance of the family, at least in California.”
“Ray, what the judge said is what we all want to believe. However he was ruling on a divorce, which under California law at that time was difficult to grant because severe wrongdoing had to be proven. The idea at that time was to preserve the marriage, no matter
what. A few years later California law was changed to the “no fault” principle. So while the judge’s words are well taken, they have nothing to do with California law today. As you well know, laws can be changed and judicial interpretations of laws can change. Even the Supreme Court reverses itself or qualifies earlier decisions.
“There is no legal right or obligation to have children in the United States. Legally a state might require licensing parents but it would probably have to show a ‘compelling state interest’ to overcome guaranteed freedoms, such as religion. Since the Declaration of Independence is not a law you couldn’t use “the pursuit of happiness” as a legal reason for having children. And the Constitutional guaranty in the Fifth Amendment of protecting “life, liberty and property” wouldn’t cover parenthood today. In older times when children, and wives, were ‘property’ it might have applied. Probably states could enact parent licensing laws under the Constitutional requirement ‘to promote the general welfare’ of the country. That would seem to be the best legal reason.”
“That’s informative Lee. But Wreck, I have been wondering how are you going to confront those who are skeptical to your ideas. It seems to me that you have to go back beyond the overpopulation problems to other issues such as global warming and the lack of water and land. It’s not as simple as just saying there too many people. The question is ‘why are there too many people?’ I think you’re going to have to confront the skeptics on global warming, on the space available for living, on how many people the planet could really handle, and such other issues or the uninformed people are just going to doubt you. Unless you can prove that the world is overpopulated and that is a threat to the survival of the race you’re not going to get very far. In fact I think you’re going to have to bring it down to the individual today and his or her interests. So I think you better look at the skeptics and what they will say and how you will counter them.
“Commander, if you are going to use reason and intelligence to get people to understand the problem, you must first tear down the faulty arguments. In general, skeptics seem to attempt to cast doubt on every issue. Some may want war more than peace, others want peace more than war. Some issues seem to develop more skeptics. It seems that the more an idea challenges the status quo or one’s self-centered desires or hopes, the more skeptics enter the fray and the louder their voices. But as Herbert Spencer warned us ‘There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance
-- that principle is contempt prior to investigation.’”
“I think that there are many people with a lot of knowledge who don’t know how to use it. They may have a great deal of knowledge but they haven’t put it together in a way that makes sense. I think that being wise is the combination of knowledge plus experience. A truly wise person knows how to use his or her knowledge for both
enjoyment and for the good of humanity. But you are right Chet, I’m going to have to bring more knowledge to bear and hope that I can make people wiser and more thoughtful of the issues.”
” So many times I have heard that wisdom begins only when we ask ‘why.’ We really need to question everything. For many millennia didn’t everyone believe that the earth was flat? With better knowledge intellectuals realized that it was round. And with better measurements scientists found there was a little bit flat on the top and bottom, so it’s not round, it’s an oblate spheroid. Then with education, knowledge was spread to nearly everybody. Then that knowledge was used by the airline industry to fly shorter routes by heading north and flying a circular path, rather than a straight line between cities. So knowledge first had to occur and be verified, then it had to be generally disseminated, then it became useful to commerce.”
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”So what you’re saying Ray, is that opinions and faulty knowledge can be changed.
So maybe what we need are the Internet, computers and ways to teach reading and writing more effectively and more universally. It’s clear that people can’t make intelligent decisions if they don’t have effective knowledge.
“It’s not only true of the general population but our legislators also need to know more about physics and biology, laws should be based on facts not uninformed opinions. If we can't agree on the best facts, how can we make intelligent policies. So we need to get the best facts to the people. There will always be people with loud and colorful
language and voices of authority, either their own or of a more authoritative but equally
uninformed person—like a priest, bishop, legislator, radio commentator, or journalist.
CONFRONTING SKEPTICS ON GLOBAL WARMING
“There has been so much talk about warming that maybe this is the first place I should start to attack the skeptics. A recent survey of a number of countries showed that 40% of the people were willing to increase their taxes by 1% or more to help to reduce warming. On the other hand a third of the people were not willing to do anything. Russia was actually the worst with only 14% willing and 62% unwilling. The US was pretty
much average with nearly 50% willing to pay 1% or more in taxes. That was pretty close to France, Japan, Mexico, Iran, Senegal, Kenya and Indonesia. The countries most willing to pay that extra 1% were China with nearly 70% and Vietnam at 60%. You would think that with as much as we know about climate change and the devastating effects it will undoubtedly have on our world that well over 95% would be willing to give far more than the 1% asked in this study.
“Climate science has for many years recognized the increase in the temperatures of the world even though we were supposed to be in a period of reducing temperatures. Actually we were in what was called a mini ice age, which ended with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century. In more recent years it had been hypothesized that greenhouse gases would reflect the Earth’s heat back toward the land and that warming would result. Naturally people do not want to accept any facts that would upset them.
“In the latter part of the last century the concern about global warming became recognized. Businesses, particularly the coal and oil industries, felt that they had to do what they could to quiet the clamor. After all, if the energy industries were responsible for much of the warming, they might be heavily taxed or be required to clean up their production of energy sources. Think tanks, funded by business interests, quickly looked
for evidence that could be used to counter the strong scientific evidence being disseminated. As you can imagine, when you are predicting things with a global perspective, there will be exceptions and questionable evidence that will pop up from time to time.
“Since overpopulation, and the advanced technology that the people of the planet are using, are the causes of climate change—and eliminating climate change is a nearly universal concern among informed people—perhaps we should first inform the skeptics of the imminent dangers of the reality. While we understand that the selfish interests of some oil producers are funding propaganda to question the unquestionable scientific facts—I guess we must start here if people are to understand the dangers of overpopulation to themselves and to their progeny
COMMON ARGUMENTS OF CLIMATE SKEPTI
CS
“Skeptics may say that yesterday was a cold day so global warming is not a fact. But the world is a big place and the overall temperature of the world is increasing. If you were to go into any room in your house and measure the temperature next to an external wall or on the floor or on the ceiling you would find differences in temperature. And your house is a small enclosed area. You can expect that a whole planet is going to show many divergences in temperature on a given day or in a given year. What needs to be done is to look at the overall temperature increase in the water and on land, at the equator and at the poles, on the mountain tops and in the deserts.
“Another survey showed relatively fewer scientists and engineers agreeing on global warming. As you might expect there was a difference in the opinions of the people in the different geological disciplines. The climatologists who were active in climate research showed that 97% agreed that humans play a role in global warming. But with petroleum geologists only 47% agreed. We might wonder if their connection with the petroleum industry might have influenced their opinions. On the other hand since it is the climatologists who research and publish in the area and should know more about long-term climate change, there was almost no disagreement about humans' contributions to global warming. It isn't surprising that those who know most about an area may have the most informed opinions.
HEMISPHERIC DIFFERENCES
“One such bit of evidence is related to comparing the Southern Hemisphere with the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere there is far more water than land so any rise in temperature would be minimized by its absorption into the water. Some skeptics have used this variation as proof that the world is not warming. Of course it’s not proof because we have to take the world as a whole. Naturally the climate scientists knew this, in fact it was their research that the skeptics were using. Every area of the world,
every climate and sub-climate is going to react somewhat differently. One area may have
an average temperature increase of 1° in the decade while another might actually cool.
But it is the world, taken as a whole, that is being measured.
“As an example, Antarctica is colder than the polar regions in the north. In fact there are some areas of Antarctica that are actually gaining ice. But then there are other areas that are losing ice. So some people criticized the idea that the whole globe is warming because it was not warming as fast in the south. Then critics emphasized cold spells whenever they occurred, not telling their listeners that there was a big difference
between weather and climate. Weather is the day-to-day and even year-to-year
temperatures, while climate is the long-term accumulation of weather patterns.”
“ So here is a good example of propaganda being used by businesses and business related politicians. I often laugh at the special interest ‘think tanks’ that put out their propaganda. The Cato Institute is one that comes to mind. It calls itself a libertarian think tank, but it is funded by business, like the Koch brothers, and pro-marijuana groups. So their supposedly libertarian slant is more than a bit biased because of its financial backers. I have also seen a number of pro-Catholic web sites that push their agenda. Many of these sites will not allow dissenters to disagree. Some refuse to allow comment, others allow comment then screen them so that those who disagree are not allowed to have their comments printed.
WEATHER STATIONS
“Whenever skeptics try to prove their points they will look for any bits of
evidence that exist that may counter the facts they are fighting. As an example, there areat various times between 3,000 and 14,000 weather and temperature reporting stations across the world. It would be unlikely they would all report identical temperatures. One American weatherman researched some of the American stations and found abnormal
environments, such as: them being placed near heat sources. For example, if a
thermometer is placed near an air conditioning outlet the air would be warmer at that point. Similarly if the thermometers are placed in cities we would expect them to record higher temperatures than those placed in nearby rural areas because the tarred roads of
the cities, being black, will absorb more heat than would a green pasture. Similarly,
concrete buildings will release more stored heat during the nighttime hours than would a
farmhouse.
“To expect that the entire Earth would show uniform warming during every hour of the day would be far less likely than expecting all of the children in a school yard to be performing identical physical actions at the same time during their recess. But with the overwhelming evidence for warming, the occasional bouts of skepticism are soon overcome by the sea of evidence for those whose minds are open. So while public opinion may occasionally become skeptical, their ignorance of hope may soon be replaced by the reality of fear. Daily news reports of accelerated warming in different parts of the world hammer into our brains the information that the threat is real. But in our country people don’t seem to get as much information as they do in a country like the UK. Media sources, like Fox News television, give a great deal of misinformation. Even the New York Times doesn’t report on warming and environmental issues as much as the British papers. If you check most of our newspapers you will see that the major topics are world and local news along with sports and entertainment. In fact it seems that sports are our
major concern. If you check the European newspapers you will often get ‘environment’
as a major topic. And you will usually have more comments by various journalists. The European papers are much more comprehensive and appeal to a more educated readership then do our American papers.”
GREENHOUISE CAUSES AND EFFECTS