Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/12/free-xelina-rocafuerte.html
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I used to get the “PEGG” (Professional Engineer, Geologist and Geophysicist) newspaper when it was actual paper and had a letters-to-the-editor column like other papers. It was the newsletter of APEGGA, the Alberta association of same. In Alberta, Geologists and Geophysicists are so integral to the professional staffs of any oil firm that the Engineer’s professional association was modified to bring them in.
I can assure you that those same PhDs in science were the very best at climate denial, bringing all the intellectual tools of the trade to attacking data, methodology, and of course conclusions of those climatologists of the 90s and early 2000s who were starting to make progress at convincing the general public. (Mercifully, only we who got the PEGG had to read them. The letters column raged back and forth for years, but the deniers had a 5:1 numerical advantage.)
It’s a fallacy to think that somebody is either “scientific”, knowledgeable and respectful of its procedures, and therefore totally down with all climatology, or “unscientific”, and think that “Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church”.
Heck, it’s not just that these geophysicists engaged in directed reasoning that supports their job and decided they were smarter than climatologists…when they would have been HUGELY offended if climatologists put in a few hours of thought before trashing their peer-reviewed, years-of-work geophysics papers. It’s that within a given science, any science, there are controversies where the Old Guard staunchly defend their old thesis against the brutal attacks of new facts that debunk them.
And again, all their intellectual tools of science, all their knowledge of the field, are brought to bear denying incoming data about dark matter or gender and biology. Such assaults are much tougher than anything that can be mounted by an outsider.
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I don’t like giving payouts to rich folk. But I’d do this: give each them a free $2 million McMansion in AZ with the stipulation that they have to live there for 20 years.
Heh.
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I see your scheme. You present like you are challenging them to live in an area where the effects of climate change might be immediately and directly felt. Of course, we hope to get a lot of “challenge accepted!” replies, 'cause that will surely own the libs.
In reality, you end up concentrating a certain voting bloc into one specific area, thus minimizing the effectiveness of their vote. Sort of a reverse gerrymander, if you will.
Clever.
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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
This truism doesn’t change with education, scientific or otherwise
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Tried to read Tropic of Kansas and couldn’t get through it. Too many “oh so convenient” last-minute escapes and magical action story tropes working to the advantage of flat, one-dimensional characters.
If you can find a copy, try Bruce Stirling’s book Heavy Weather, written in 1991, it’s a lot more prescient regarding the effects of runaway climate change, and it’s effects on society than this book appears to be, with nearly thirty years of foresight.
I’m re-reading it at the moment after not reading it for probably at least fifteen years, and I’m finding it quite startling how accurate much of it is.
Sadly there’s no ebook version, so I’m having to lug around a paperback that’s the size of a regular hardcover, rather than use my phone.
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Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll have to check it out.
The main character was supposed to be a kind of mythical America hero. A John Henry of what have you. That was my reading anyway. I mean, he did literally fight a machine at the end. It was kind of a parable. The female lead had less convenient escapes if you reread.
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