I Should Have Thunk It: Creationists & Deniers

Ever have one of those moments when you either literally or metaphorically hit your forehead with the palm of your hand thinking "Of course!" When I saw this blog post (link) by Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post, I thought, "Of course, climate change deniers kissing cousins of creationists. The inbreeding is obvious."

• Creationists imagine an impossible past and demand from scientists certainty that is contrary to the scientific method;

• Deniers imagine a nearly impossible future and demand from scientists certainty that is contrary to the scientific method.

Please notice the insertion of the word "nearly" when referring to the future. Anyone who believes that s/he has the future on lockdown should be sentenced to watching endless reruns of the movie Minority Report, where "precogs" are used to arrest people for "precrimes" that haven't happened yet. Naturally, in the movie someone messes with the system to get the results he wants. The fact that I can't predict how many people will die from climate change next year--much less in 20, 50, or 100 years--is not an argument against acting now.

Reading the comments below Mr. Stromberg's post, I feel like I'm in a rerun of Inherit the Wind, a thinly veiled retelling of the Scopes Monkey Trial. In this case, the wind we will inherit will be fatal, especially to the poorest and most vulnerable. Are the deniers making these foolish and offensive comments real people, or are they the paid minions of Big Coal?

Hopeful News - Climate Change

Sunday morning, I saw this Candorville comic (link) and felt hopeful. If even the comics are recognizing the difference between weather and climate, the word is getting out. Then I looked up Darrin Bell, the author of Candorville, on the web, and found out that he's a fellow Berkeley resident. Goddess, is the word escaping the Berkeley bubble?

Well, this U.S. News and World Report article tells us:

Eight Nobel-prize winning economists and scientists have joined more than 2,000 others in signing a letter today that urges the Senate to take swift action on climate change.

Now, how do we help the Senate find the political will and courage to take that action?

Evil & Climate Change

"Evil" is not a word I normally use, especially in reference to people. Instead words such as ignorant, misinformed, deluded, and ill, more easily trip off the tongue.

Yet now I'm increasingly drawn to the word evil when I read articles such as "Attack on the Clean Air Act." We've come a long way from Profiles in Courage.

None of these politicians would strangle their own children. Yet by their actions they are threatening to strangle their children and grandchildren and ours as well.

This debate has brought to mind the Robert Lewis Stevenson's story The Bottle Imp. Like the sailor at the end of the story, have these people decided that they're already condemned to hell and have nothing to lose, or are they merely self-deluding?

This wonderful video of Dan Gilbert may explain what's going on with the climate deniers and help us step back from condemnation and return to the search for collaboration. We and they must not "remain sleeping on our burning bed."

The MFC & the Olympics

No, I'm not about to suggest that interviewing become an Olympic event, even though some schools have interviewing competitions and prizes.

Rather I was caught by the parallels between the MFC interview and an Olympic event when a speed skater said that she had had an emotional breakdown on the day of her event. Her statement was part of an NPR segment on the psychological preparation and coaching. It was good to hear of the preparation and that the skater recovered from her breakdown and earned a silver metal.

Both Olympic athletes and ministerial candidates spend years preparing for "tests" that are over in minutes. The emotional and psychological tension can be quite intense.

An MFC member once said, "We're not so scary." Another posited that successful candidates will face much greater challenges once they become ministers. Yet there is something special about the years of preparation and the few brief moments of the "test" that is different than other challenges. The parallels should led us to question how we prepare ministerial candidates and what we might learn from Olympic coaching.