Bad Faith

Faux News again fills the airwaves with its cynical foolishness, its bombastic projection, as in the commentator who continues to compare Al Gore on the Climate Crisis to Hitler blaming Germany's problems on the Jews. By now, the turnabout metaphor pretty much applies: Climate Crisis deniers are manifesting the same combination of befuddled, deranged and cynical profiles as Holocaust deniers, with the same immoral result.

Some of the befuddled mumble to each other about how science can sometimes be wrong, as if this is a news flash. They point to deceptively framed charts and numbers that remain inaccurate no matter how many times they are erroneously repeated. They remind us that scientists once predicted a future Ice Age, as if this was an equivalent to the current scientific certainty and demonstrable fact of global heating. Based pretty much entirely on the typically sensationalist magazine oversimplifications of research, they ignore time frames and causes, as well as the major fact that such a theory of an imminent freeze was never held by practically every climatologist on the planet, as is the reality of the Climate Crisis. The fact is that the possibility of the Greenhouse Effect has been explored since the 1960s.

Nor can they apparently penetrate the message that however counter-intuitive it may be, global heating can set in motion the forces that could quickly create an Ice Age in the world's northern population centers.

But if the Climate Crisis deniers are taking their cue from the Bush administration, they need to understand how entirely corrupt, underhanded and effectively immoral the Bushites are acting on this matter. As many, many people have pointed out, the responsible position of a government charged with safeguarding its people is to accept that there is as close to a scientific consensus on the reality of the Climate Crisis as there is on anything, including on things that have already happened. And the prudent course is to keep learning more, and take action that might forestall a very grim future and mitigate the possible and probable effects in the near future.

The Bushite position has been to fight off any action, but verbally support "more research." Except that they are undercutting even that--crucial research and monitoring that is prudent regardless of opinions on the Climate Crisis--its extent, its origins, even its reality--but that is essential to the ongoing effort to plan for the future.

Here is the latest, reported in the Boston Globe:

NASA is canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment. The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture -- a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled.

And in its 2007 budget, NASA proposes significant delays in a global precipitation measuring mission to help with weather predictions, as well as the launch of a satellite designed to increase the timeliness and accuracy of severe weather forecasts and improve climate models.

How important are these satellites and programs?

``Today, when the need for information about the planet is more important than ever, this process of building understanding through increasingly powerful observations . . . is at risk of collapse," said Berrien Moore III, director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire.

The story says that scientists interviewed didn't believe the cutbacks were a deliberate political attempt to shortcircuit research on the Climate Crisis. I believe this is precisely what these cutbacks represent. They may at minimum be only as a reflection of Bushite priorities, a way of pleasing the boss. Or a failure of leadership. But they may also be part of a concerted effort by Bushites in government and the usual industries to allow them to continue their "no convincing evidence" theme on the Climate Crisis by eliminating the research itself. This is a cynical effort, an effort that practically defines bad faith, to maximize the short term monetary profits of a few at the expense of the entire planet and every living creature, present and future. How's that for immorality?