Amidst the cacophony of literature and entertainment we provide for our children in this modern age, we hopefully have not abandoned the pearls of wisdom found in the traditional tales that we ourselves were schooled in. In filling their little minds of mush with anti-bullying diatribes, Sponge-Bob, and “Heather Has Two Mommies”, we ought not neglect the timeless life teachings of stories like “The King’s New Clothes”, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, or “Henny Penny”.
You will recall in the story of Henny Penny, that this chicken felt something fall on her head (later versions identify it as an acorn), and went off to tell the King that the sky was falling. Each animal she met fell in line behind her on her journey to warn the King, until they met up with the shrewd and cunning fox who directs the parade of animals into his lair, claiming it to be a shortcut to the King’s palace. There he killed each of the animals as they entered the dark hole. Only Henny Penny herself was saved as she heard one of the other animals cry out. She ran away home never to tell the King of the falling sky, presumably waiting for the next world ending hysteria, to again sound the alarm.
This week we saw the promise of what was billed as “Snowmageddon”, a blizzard of historic proportions, fizzle here in New York to what could only be termed as a typical Northeast snow storm. The sky was supposed to fall, but instead, only a few inches of relatively harmless fluffy white snowflakes. Conditions to the East were more in keeping with the forecast, but even the meteorologists (at least the honest ones!) admit that they missed this one. Clearly, this is one of the more difficult regions to forecast, but recently we have seen what seems to be the nexus of science and economics as media competition drives news outlets to hype catastrophic forecasts to drive their ratings. I don’t know how much these ratings affected the bottom line for the newscasters, but I do know that the erroneous forecast cost New York City an estimated $200,000,000. Among the casualties of the storm was comedian Louis CK’s show at Madison Square Garden. In his cancelation e-mail to ticket holders he quipped, “…They are calling this storm ‘historic’ which… Well I didn’t know you could call a thing historic if it hasn’t happened yet. But I’m not one to defy future historic events.” I guess that’s the thing about the future, it’s not etched in stone like the past is because it hasn’t happened yet, and true prophets are hard to find.
Lest you think I’m giving the weather reporters rough treatment for trying to do their job, I apologize, I’m only using this story to make a larger point. Reporters do need to report on impending disasters, sometimes the proverbial sky truly is falling! The more interesting characters in the Henny Penny story are the supporting actors. There will always be those who over-react and jump to conclusions. After all, who can fault a chicken, who’s intelligence level is only slightly above the corn it feeds on, for jumping to the conclusion that the sky is falling when an unidentified piece of something falls on her head from the general direction of the sky? Her response to go and tell the King seems prudent enough. No, it’s the reaction of the other animals who simply assume that she is correct in her forecast of doom that is instructive as to how easily we all fall in line, gullibility being a far more prevalent trait than skepticism. Then we have the fox, who shows us that there will always be the greedy and the wicked who will capitalize on our gullibility.
In a nation seemingly preoccupied with safety over all else, our motto whenever the prophets of doom fail to produce the promised apocalypse is the oft repeated “Better safe than sorry!” I’ve seen this used on the notorious FaceBook posts that spread like wildfire before they are proven to be hoaxes, and then when identified as such to their promulgators who failed to adequately vet their gossip, invariably comes the glib self-exoneration of their indolence, “Oh well, better safe than sorry!”. Of course we’ve heard the same platitudes in response to the over-reaction to the weather forecast. “You can’t put a price tag on safety” I heard said. In New York you can; it’s two hundred million dollars.
The lesson to be learned from the failed forecast is that meteorology, like any other branch of science functions best in the present. Meteorologists are really quite accurate when it comes to telling us what the current temperature is, whether it’s snowing out, or if a tornado has been spotted in our area. Since the past is yesterday’s record of the present as it happened, they are also pretty good at informing us as to what last year’s total snowfall was, or the average high temperature from 1963, as long as they have the records. Where things get a little more complicated is once they get outside recent history to times for which no scientific records exist. At this point scientists need to rely on their understanding of how the natural world functions, anecdotal accounts from history, and geological evidence from pre-history. Clearly that becomes a little more complicated.
Still more complicated is forecasting the future. Predictability is very much a part of science, but the accuracy of those predictions gives you a fair understanding of just how developed the science is. In weather prediction, time introduces a level of variability that eventually overwhelms the science. Tonight’s forecast is generally well within the wheelhouse of the meteorologist; next Tuesday’s is a bit more tentative, and by the time you get ten days out, you’re talking climatology more than meteorology. Still, despite the tentative nature of the science, despite the many fizzled forecasts; at the hint of the next blizzard, torrential rains, or possible ice storm, people will still line up at their local grocery stores for a month’s supply of bottled water, or at their Home Depot for thousand dollar generators. Henny Penny says the sky is falling, better safe than sorry!
Of course prudence isn’t a bad idea, and there are plenty of folktales that teach the virtue of preparation for the future. My point here though is to show that most people are predisposed to give credence to science supported by reasoned evidence when it comes future forecasts, especially when they have historically been generally proven to be true; we trust our meteorologists. Ultimately, their livelihood depends on them being reasonably accurate, and we excuse the occasional overhyping since more times than not they get it right. The same can not be said for other scientists predicting doomsday, sky is falling, scenarios. These actually seldom get it right, and if you’ve lived long enough you’ll be nodding your head in agreement at this point. Whatever happened to the impending ice age we were warned of in the sixties? The overpopulated world where we would all be eating soylent green (IT’S PEOPLE!!)? Weren’t we supposed to be out of oil by now? Y2K? The list goes on. It’s not that any of these things were totally without basis, it’s just that they get so overhyped with hysteria that the science community is in danger of becoming “the boy who cried wolf”.
That being said, it should not come as a surprise that people ordinarily disposed to believing what science tells us have become skeptical of the alarmism over “man caused climate change.” The theory has been with us long enough now to have it’s name changed, predictions proven false, scams discovered, and data called into question. Add to that the massive money changing hands, and yes, people have a reason to be a little wary. Having just seen Turky Lurky have his neck snapped, forgive me if I hesitate before going down that dark hole! There may be merit to what you are saying, but it’s a little like the adulterous husband telling his wife she should trust him again; you may be acting faithfully now but you’ve got a little history to overcome! It doesn’t help when the primary strategy for dealing with the “unbelievers” isn’t to build a stronger case, modify the rhetoric, or clarify the presentation- no, the strategy is to call them idiots. If the genius of your argument is to insult those you’ve not yet convinced, it leads one to question just how intelligent you really are. The so-called “science” begins to more nearly resemble an exclusionary religion replete with apocalyptic visions of the future, and where the heretics are first labeled, then deemed sub-human, and finally persecuted for their lack of faith.
IMHO: We all tend to give greater credence to those ideas that support our general worldview. It is not surprising therefore that secular humanism, which sees human beings as greatly in control of destiny would embrace the concept of men holding the fate of our planet much in our own hands. Likewise those who lean more toward believing that there are forces far beyond mankind, and to whose laws we are ultimately subject, are slow to believe that we are in peril of thwarting the destiny of creation in some doomsday scenario caused entirely by man. Still, even the faithful do not entirely exclude science, anymore apparently than the proponents of science exclude some level of faith. It is unfortunate that debate can’t proceed respectfully between the two. It is my experience that personal invective is ultimately the resort of those who cannot draw from resources of information or intelligence.
It is plain to see that most proponents of the concept of man caused climate change reflect the “better safe than sorry” view. They paint pictures of cataclysmic futures, supposing, I guess, that presenting a worst case scenario gets people’s attention better than predicting the more likely but less devastating adverse effects. In so doing though, they have cast their lot with doomsday prophets, con men, and politicians who all use similar tactics of hysteria to their own ends. Interestingly, people aren’t always convinced by hysteria. In addition, if you don’t have the courage of your convictions, if you aren’t significantly altering your own existence to demonstrate that you actually believe your own rhetoric, then your credibility is tenuous. When 1700 private jets fly into Davos to discuss global warming, when Al Gore makes millions while retaining a carbon footprint the size of Sasquatch, and while these lesser minions live their own lives more or less as I live my own; one questions whether there is in fact, some mischief afoot.
Science, like the weatherman, eventually gets it right, and I’m sure we’ll sort it out before the end of the world and all life as we know it. Increasingly it seems like we are setting policy in response to doomsday forecasts, and that seldom results in good policy. You can say “better safe than sorry” all you want, but that mentality is getting terribly expensive and could soon result in an economic doomsday of our own making. That may sound a little hypocritical I guess, but sometimes we need to weigh the likelihood that the sky is truly falling against the more realistic notion that the fox wants to eat us.
