Ever hear of the Methuselah Star? Just a few years ago it was thought to be at least 2 billion years older than the Universe. Yup. A genuine paradox that gave rise to numerous mind-bending TOEs (Theories of Everything). Then extensive research revised all the measurements that had dated the star, and good ol’ Cartesian logic was saved. Just an example of the kind of thing science runs into all the time as it leaps to generalizations.  

Take real temperature measurements made almost a century ago. Does NOAA cook the books by revising actual historical records? NOAA doesn’t deny that they adjust raw data with programmed algorithms, which dissenting scientists claim is done to exaggerate the warming trend – which it does. In other words, they revise the past so that it will fit what they predict will happen in the future. There. Now they fit the theoretical, so say the dissenters. In at least one case (1936 data), NOAA had to backtrack in the uproar. And the why – that’s very important too. Especially if it fits political agendas. It may certainly be that the human fraction of the already small 0.04% CO2 in our atmosphere is the stick that breaks the camel’s back, and a reason to upend the $100 trillion global economy, but should that have been the eager premise even before more likely causes got attention?

Oceans cover 70% of our planet and have 1100 times more heat capacity than our atmosphere but we’ve only explored 5% of them. You might think that should make oceans and currents the major focus of climate study. Or maybe we should have put the emphasis on the sun itself. But naw. It’s hard to blame ocean currents and complex solar cycles on cow farts and cars. Easier to stay focused on the air and politicize it. How can you give evil white men and the world’s leading superpower their come-uppance unless you tear down their technological advantages in the name of globalization? And pollution coming overwhelmingly out of Asia? Careful, careful…blame, you know. Hot potato.  

Which is tragic, because the “never-waste-a-good-crisis” manipulators who cry “wolf!” while seizing on the politics of world order in every calamity discredit real science. Our dynamic planet has seen things like the sun’s maunder minimum and a Little Ice Age as recently as a few hundred years ago, before the industrial revolution. Cultures like the Vikings and the Mayans have disappeared owing to natural climate cycles. Blurring the current climate trends with political agendas effectively undermines confidence in any actions that might mitigate a climate crisis, no matter the causes.

Do I love science? You betcha. Science is cause and effect, empirical confirmations of rational explanations. And the beautiful thing about it is that it constantly questions itself and revises accordingly. That’s how we escaped the Dark Ages. That’s how we stopped crippling babies with thalidomide. There really is no such thing as settled dogma. And if that offends your faith in one man-made religion or another, just think of science as uncovering God’s methods, as I do. Time, space, quantum et al, sooner or later all discovery becomes paradoxical. How can time and space begin? Begin where? When? In what space-time frame is where and when inserted? Ultimately you are forced into faith in something from nothing. Utterly irrational. So, you get to have your cake and eat it too.

I was about halfway through writing this Sullygram when a West Coast friend of mine sent me a rather more intellectual article on the politicalization of science she thought might interest me. Though that excellent piece in the Skeptical Inquirer deals with six different areas than what I’ve written about here, it echoes thoughts I’ve long had and touched on elsewhere. I recommend it. You can find it by googling the title “The Ideological Subversion of Biology” in the July/August issue. In particular, I love its term “radical egalitarianism” used to describe the insanity of our times. 

Let me close out this Sullygram with a little fun I had on FB. Here’s something I posted, followed by some photos that connect with it:

While you snuggled in the Land of Nod last night with your sheep all counted, sheered, and woven into dreams, us night owls traded stories about the strangest places we’ve slept. Mine included: a jumbled causeway of stone blocks over Lake Erie with waves occasionally exploding between the seams, three nights in a Presidential suite in San Diego, a week on the streets of NY at the Olympic Trials where I participated in two sports (and qualified in nothin’), a year in an old man’s hotel in Detroit when I was a teenager, Greta Garbo’s cozy casita for Glenn Frey’s 3-day 50^th birthday bash at La Quinta, sleeping in the open woods at night here in Minnesota, one night in a woman’s dormitory in Ann Arbor, a week alone (except for mosquitoes and tarantulas) in a sweltering bunkhouse outside Villa Esfuerza in the Dominican Republic, the deck of a swimming pool at the Nationals in Chicago, another night begun in a park in San Juan until a sailor was killed with a machete and thenceforth to the catwalk of the Caribe-Hilton Hotel where I found out years later a friend proposed to his fiancée…

Photos below: #1 switching from ski poles to hiking poles; #2 staying in Greta Garbo’s casita at Glenn Frey’s b’day party; #3 CJ, Sean and Sully in San Diego. The remaining photos are from a mission trip a decade ago to help build a girls’ school in one of the poorest districts in the Western hemisphere: #4-5 typical shanty dwellings in Villa Esfuerza; #6 the school work-site; #7-14 in and around the construction area; #15 Sully shaving his head in the rain; #16 little Manuel, always there waiting to be hugged when we arrived to start work in the mornings…

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan