UPDATE: Embarassingly enough, it turns out that I got clowned by a right-wing bumper sticker. The thing above can be purchased from none other than WorldNetDaily.com. Get it? Seasons are the only real climate change. In fairness, the sticker above was observed in the context of a bunch of actually green bumper stickers, so maybe the driver didn't get it either. Anyhow, the general point still holds.Living in the bumper-sticker showroom of western Colorado, I observe the above sticker so often that it's worth commenting on. Because it's very, very wrong. It's wrong enough that it's barely a step up from a bumper sticker saying "global warming is a lie" paired with a sticker saying "NO EXPERIENCE ASS CLOWN FOR PRESIDENT" (which is a sticker I saw this morning in real life), and please stop putting them on your Subarus.Of course, we could use all of the global warming dire warnings you can fit on your hatchback, but the language here only plays into the opposition's hands. It's the word "believe." You could take "believe" to be its most literal definition of "to accept something as true," which seems OK enough. But the word has bigger implications that aren't within that definition. People believe in god, not gravity. Belief implies an absence before the fact, some gulf of disbelief to be crossed, an act of faith."Belief" is legitimizing deniers, even more than it negates them. If global warming is something to "believe" in, global warming doesn't live within reality. Belief relegates things to the abstract. You don't need to believe in things that are real because they don't need acceptance any more than the seasons need acceptance. We have evidence of them. That's the whole thing: evidence.Doesn't "believe" also imply doubt? Like, when you say "Yes, I believe so," aren't you hedging? It's not a very good hedge, but it's a softener of statements. Believe it to be true vs. It is true. The first statement might as well have but I'm just some jerkoff tacked onto the end of it.If one really believes in the truth of something, they should probably just say it's true, no? Using "believe" is kind of like that weird speech thing where people inflect statements like questions. Which, if I remember the psychology correctly, is a way of communicating submission.Let's use an example. Today the NOAA released its Arctic Nautical Charting Plan, outlining the need for the agency to create 14 new nautical charts for ships traveling through the Arctic. The reason is that shipping traffic--with real ships, real crews, real cargos--has increased dramatically over the past several years as the Arctic icepack has diminished."As multi-year sea ice continues to disappear, vessel traffic in the Arctic is on the rise,” says the very real Rear Admiral Gerd Glang, NOAA Coast Survey director. “This is leading to new maritime concerns about adequate charts, especially in areas increasingly transited by the offshore oil and gas industry and cruise liners.” If new charts aren't made, the situation in the Arctic could grow even more dangerous, particularly given the remoteness of the area and the absence of rescue crews and equipment.Captain Doug Baird, chief of Coast Survey’s marine chart division, adds this: “We don’t have decades to get it done. Ice diminishment is here now.” That's not a very belief-y thing, is it? The agency is responding to not a theorized future problem, but an immediate threat. It is here. Given the opportunity, would you tell god you believed in them? No, because there they are looking back at you.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
Advertisement
Advertisement
