Its Evolutionary Dear Watson. Gravity, Evolution and Climate!

The Simplest of Concepts Stumps Way too Many – but Why?

Many stupidparty disciples and virtually all stupidparty leaders find it difficult to understand the facts behind climate change (warming). – This is not the same as saying that climate Change (warming) is a fact.

Let me clarify this.

First let me address the disparity between the leaders and the disciples. Most Stupidparty party leaders are not stupid, the the mathematical odds of them all (at least those on the energy commission) being genuinely stupid would be infinitesimally small.

No these leaders are not stupid, they are just corrupt–it is as simple as that.

That now leads to my comments about the logic behind climate change. So here is the simple equation:

1. To figure out what is happening you need to talk to climatologists
2. Opinions of nonesuch experts are irrelevant
3. 98% if Climatologists accept Global warming  – from carbons…
4. You do not need a 98% probability to take action

Point 4 above is the clinching argument. Imagine you were holding a glass of water and you were told that there was a 1% chance that it was poisonous–not even deadly–just enough to give you a bad bout of diarrhea. Would you drink it? Now lets up the ante and ask ourselves, would we experiment with earths atmosphere even if there was 1% chance of catastrophe (would an intelligent person take that risk)?

Pumping massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere is simply a massively stupid experiment. We are playing Russian roulette with our fate and putting more bullets into the barrel each year that we remain morons. We are doing it because we gaily elect politicians who are paid servants of fossil fuel interests. 

Therefore this is hardly a difficult equation, an equation that demands action to protect our climate. So why do so many brains malfunction?

1. I have discussed the conservative brain here.
2. Now we need to need to look at the Religious brain. We can discuss this in the “parable” of evolution:

While the theory of evolution is considered both a fact and a theory, similar to the theory of gravity, it is a plain fact that there has been life on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. Dinosaurs did exist, for their fossils have been found and are on display in numerous places, and they did exist a very, very long time ago, because their bones have been carbon dated.

Before drilling down on numbers, I often like to take international statistics, in order to create a benchmark to analyse how various U.S. states hold up against both international and domestic comparisons. In this particular subject, I could not find a breakdown by U.S. state. But we do know that only about 22% of Mississipians and 26% of Alabama “folk” believe in evolution, and those numbers would no doubt shrink even further if one stripped out the lonely Democratic voters in those states.

One quite well known quote on evolution comes from the author of the biology-focused book (for this is a biological question) The Selfish Gene, Professor Richard Dawkins:

In the chapter “Why are people?” he writes:

“Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: ‘Have they discovered evolution yet?’”

“Have they discovered evolution yet?”

In the USA only 40% accept evolution, half of what one would expect.

   

2005 Pew Research Center poll

In lieu of a U.S. state breakdown, we can do a breakdown by religious affiliation, which  perhaps in this instance is more revealing.

Evangelicals appear to be in good company, and as a block they vote for Stupidparty more reliably than any other significant grouping. Taking the above charts, along with stats on Mississippi and Alabama, one can now start connecting the dots to figure out where creationists are going to be most concentrated. Probably less than 20% of Disciples who live in Red states believe in evolution—one quarter of what one would expect, all things being equal.

Less than 20% believe in evolution . . . truly awe-inspiring levels of . . . um . . . eccentricity.

Now a puzzle: