On the front page of my Sunday paper ran the following headline:
“Climate Change Already Changing How Americans Live”
In an editorial from USA Today, the author wrote a solid, lengthy piece on the global, economic impact already visible via global warming. In addition to heat waves, downpours, droughts, and wildfires, the author attributed each of the following to the climate cause: asthma, allergies, heat stroke, rising food and utility prices, rising sea levels, unemployment due to drought-related factory closings, cataclysmic storms, wiped out neighborhoods, sinking towns, longer seasons, and flooded bridges, subways, and airport runways. Note that none of these conclusions were presented subjectively. Each was asserted as fact.
As long has been stated by the Intramuralist, I come nowhere close to comprehending all in regard to global warming, climate change, or insert-your-currently-politically-more-convenient-term-here. I don’t comprehend it all. I can’t.
What I do know for certain, however, is that this is not — I repeat, “not” — a political issue. One of our seemingly greatest challenges is that we routinely accept or reject potential truth based on who is the stater of the subject. Fact is fact regardless of who states it; opinion is opinion via the same conditions. Transitively true then is that opinion cannot be equated with fact simply due to the stater of the opinion. As a culture, we are not collectively good with the discernment necessary in said process. We are thus not always good at distinguishing truth.
While the USA Today article very briefly acknowledged that there exist skeptics, it concerns this current events observer that the reason for the skepticism was quickly dismissed with a singular sentence in a 1200 word essay. Therefore, the reader is confronted with an opinion piece that is presented as fact.
Honestly, even though such practice is a primary reason why mainstream media continues to lose credibility — as they continue to subtly (and not so subtly) insert opinion and bias — such is not what concerns me most. Each of us is entitled to our own opinion, while also true, is that we are not entitled to our own facts.
What concerns me most regarding the concept of climate change is the complete — and in my opinion, arrogant — total omission of God.
Now before the blood boils, allow me to assert that I believe many of us can be arrogant people. I sometimes label myself with that same description (… typically, especially, on the first day of March Madness, where boasting about my bracket is the common, annual practice… that is, well, at least until day 2 of the madness).
But I find us to be an arrogant people in how we believe and assert how powerful we are — that so much is under our control — that we, the people, make such a huge, dynamic difference.
While it would be wise to study how our grocery store bags and excessive use of plastic contribute to eroding the Earth’s atmosphere — wise, too, to acknowledge the carbon dioxide in the air (as pointed out by the USA editorial) — it would be equally wise to comprehensively study why such a situation may exist. After all, multiple historical scriptures speak of the future destruction of this planet. Note that the point of this post is not the validation nor refuting of said scriptures; however, if I were a scientist, and I knew that somewhere, anywhere, there existed multiple foretellings of the Earth’s end, I would be studying the authenticity of those scriptures with zeal. My sense is that plastic bags would then be omitted from the discussion.
As previously stated, I don’t comprehend it all when it comes to global warming or climate change. I don’t claim to. But the reality is that opinion-driven journalists, those of us who’ve accepted opinion as truth, and even the scientists don’t comprehend it all either. They don’t comprehend it all. They can’t…
… especially when they omit significant aspects from their study.
Respectfully,
AR