Skepticism

Charlie Rose had Freeman Dyson on his show this week. Mr. Dyson is an elderly physicist, a scientist, a scholar and hell of a nice guy. Mr. Dyson was on to remind us all to be skeptical. As a Missouri immigrant it didn't take much to cultivate my 'show me' nature.

The controversy surrounding the interview was an article published in the New York Times naming Dyson as a global warming skeptic. Mr. Tyson agreed that global temperatures have been rising, as is the level of the sea and these two things have been happening for the last 12,000 years. What he disagreed with were the plethora of conclusive statements being bandied about as if they were the absolute truth. No scientist worth his salt would ever sell a theoretical statement as absolute truth. Most of the radical pronouncements come from environmentalists, former politicians (Al Gore) and pundits passing as pseudo-scientists. While some of the factual data may be right, whose to say excess carbon isn't a good thing. Plants Love carbon dioxide, can't have a green world or oxygen without it. Greenlanders love global warming and the ensuing ice melt. They feel they have lived on an ice flow long enough. The safest and most scientific thing to say is 'I don't know.'

All in all we've done a pretty good job of cleaning up the earth these last 50 years. If you lived in London, LA, Pittsburgh or on the Hudson River you would know what I'm talking about. We still burn a lot of stuff to produce energy. Take coal, we use lots of it to make electrical energy. We know how to scrub the emissions clean but nobody does it. Cars are a lot cleaner than they were 30 years ago but most of them still burn an exhausting and exhaustible fuel. Clean energy is going to cost a few more dollars every month and that's the rub. Yes, we have paid for all the good stuff the EPA and a growing social awareness of environmental concerns has accomplished. Look at how fast recycling took hold. Most everyone now looks to conserve at little and it everyone does a bit then that is a lot being done. It follows that if every single person made a significant contribution then the world would change immeasurably.

Truth is elusive and sometimes tricky. Is it O.K. to say Barak Obama is not a citizen of the U.S.A. Barak Obama Senior was a citizen of Kenya, Africa. He lived in the U.S. for a while but was never naturalized as a citizen of this country. His son, Barak Obama, Junior was born in the state of Hawaii, since Hawaii had been a state for over two years he is a citizen by right of birth. Since Barak Obama senior is deceased it is most proper and truthful to say 'Barak Obama was not a U.S. citizen.' Because truth is elusory and the prismatic fragmentations of perception elude the object we must doggedly seek veracity and like a disciplined scientist, we must demand factual statement, precise theory and thorough proof. Even then we must live with the knowledge that future revelations, revisions and refinements might show our present day truths to be faulty or false. In medical school the wisest teachers tell the young students, "Everything you learn in these next few years will be obsolete 10 years from now, if not proven false and down right injurious to your patients."

This is what makes truth so evasive, it evolves. So let us look back on the adage 'Myth is History.' All aboriginals have creation stories and many ongoing admonitions about care for the circle of life. The relationship between man and his environment is fragile. Much care must be taken. We modern men have developed no story of perpetuation. We are still lost and working our way out of a mirage of greed and consumption.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all you need to know. -Keats-