The Cow Who Ate Green

Once was a young girl who ate green

Who's feet she thought were so clean

She trudged through the mud

She spat out her cud

And decided that life was too mean



© 2010 Therese L. Miner

Global Warming: Blinded by Will-ful Ignorance

George Will, like so many human beings, usually has his ideological blinders on. Blinders are devices used to block vision from something that may be unpleasant, disturbing or frightening. In Will's recent column "Blinded by Science", he parrots the assertions of "climate change deniers" and demonstrates how a highly educated elitist can allow himself to be willfully ignorant of the history and process of scientific understanding toward the end of his own ideological smugness.

The scientific history of the tobacco-cancer link has been accurately used as a metaphor for the current popular debate concerning Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Will conveniently ignores this metaphor, blinding himself to the implications of his assertions about the science of AGW.

Decades of controlled, peer reviewed, studies demonstrated an overwhelming correlation with tobacco use and lung cancer. Because of the high standards of what constitutes scientific "proof", however, it coud not be stated as a known cause and effect relationship. A concensus of scientists agreed that the evidence indicates that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer. Some scientists denied this claim, many with industry ties.

Tobacco industry publicists and lawyers had a field day in the media and courts with the public's lack of understanding of the studies and science behind the theory, as well as the admission that the link was not "proven" by scientific standards. The lies and falsehoods of tobacco's safety won the popular debate battle for some time. Industry profits benefited greatly from the denial of the scientific concensus as tobacco consumers had a clear ideological stake in this belief, if not a self-preserving one.

The chances of dieing from lung cancer by age 75 after a lifetime of smoking is about 15%. Those are pretty good odds if you are gambling in Vegas with something besides your own life. Of course, there are many other ill health and monetary effects from tobacco use, but once you are addicted, it is difficult to stop. It is especially difficult if you are not motivated to stop by knowledge about the possible and actual consequences of your addiction.

Nobody knows what the chances of the many predictions of negative consequences of AGW are until the grand experiment runs its course. There are many actual, current consequences of our addiction to fossil fuels and extant pollution regardless of AGW's possible catastrophic predictions, though. Dick Cheney's "1% Doctrine" with regard to terrorist threats is a sensible strategy to invoke for AGW. If there is only a 1% chance that a threat is actually real, we must treat it as 100% because the consequences of doing nothing if it turns out to be true are not worth saving the high cost of action even if the threat is false.

Will continues with the well known, media blitzed, leaked e-mails that purport to evidence suppression of negative data and manipulation of supportive data, as well as a handful of other topics used by AGW deniers as "evidence" against the theory.

He willfully ignores the mountain of supporting evidence for AGW including thousands of ice core, sediment core and expansive biological studies. He conveniently ignores the counter arguments to the "denier" touted Medieval Warm Period and Himalayan glaciers issues. He is unabashed in endorsing an industry statement that shareholder and consumer impacts are of most concern in the debate. He doesn't mention the suppression of AGW supporting scientists' work under the Bush administration, with the threats of withholding research funds based on study reports including ideologically unacceptable language.

Will then suggests that "specious science" is behind AGW theory based on a handful of "denier" arguments that, even if demonstrated correct, do not disprove anything. Mistakes occur and egos play their role in all human endeavors, including science. But science has a self-correcting, critique and questioning process that is all too absent in endeavors such as religion and politics.

Will concludes by likening AGW to a religious faith that is not falsifiable scientific theory. Curious. In my search of the internet for evidence against AGW, one of my top-ten hits was from the Institute for Creation Research. Others were by groups backed by religion or funded by interested industry or both. The unfalsifiable prediction of all of the "deniers" is that even if global warming is happening, it will make the planet better, more like the Garden of Eden, according to the ICR. Of course, this conclusion can ultimatey be falsified, but only after the experiment has run its course.

The AGW issue has always been one of science, an issue with obvious political and sociological implications, of course. Biological evolution is an established fact of science, but that doesn't stop an absurd proportion of the population from denying its reality because of ideological beliefs. Such deniers are ironically unaware of how evolutionary knowledge is used to create modern medicines on which many of their own lives and health depend. And George Will should know better.

Drought in Hawaii

The coffee leaves hang on the trees like dry dish rags. Plumeria trees are empty skeletons in the tropical brush, enveloped by drooping palms and frowning, faded ferns. Red hibiscus are shriveled excuses of their former beauty. Utility poles stand straight and brown and bare, blending perfectly with their surroundings. Dry leaves that litter the ground are pulverized into dusty dirt. Mac nuts are dark brown marbles on the hard earth. A few trees stay green, their succulent leaves sturdy and strong while neighbors sag, pink flowers wilted.

The hedges that separate the houses are usually barriers, curtains that hide us from one another. They are now threadbare, transparent, revealing. We see each other as the water rations itself. Reminding us that we are all right there next to each other, all in this together.


©2010 Therese L. Miner

Love and Marriage

Love and marriage have not traditionally gone together as the proverbial horse and carriage. Well, maybe perhaps in the sense that the cart has sometimes come before the horse with an unintended pregnancy before any vows. And that the horse has traditionally been the woman, a beast of burden for the carriage of the man.

Traditional marriage has been more typically an agreement about property, a pre-arranged contract. The woman becomes the property of the man she marries, given away by her father as his former property. Polygamy offered the opportunity to acquire an entire herd of so much chattel.

Heterosexual? Yes! Procreative purposes? Yes! Marriage? Yes! Traditional? Yes! Why could anyone have any problem with such traditional definitions of marriage? Well, where is the LOVE? The notion of two people loving each other as the basis of a marriage is not actually new, just not traditional.

In reality, human nature is not really in agreement with the popular, modern ideas we have in our culture about marriage... monogamy, until death, having kids, etc. Most married couples do not stay together until death and are not monogamous. Children come regardless of the institution of marriage and so many married couples either choose not to have children or are otherwise incapable of it.

On this Valentine's Day 2010, I would personally like to celebrate the notion of romantic, spiritual love as the basis for my marriage and for anybody else that has defied the odds of human nature and social sanctions. Let there be love.

School Valentine Hearts

They're small and they're stretchy
Easily broken and all stuck together
To themselves and each other

They have bubbles and holes of different sizes
Some filled some still there
But both very clear

They're multi-colored and twisted
Some opaque some translucent
Tokens of our fellow share of the future