Do You Believe in Global Warming?

On September 16, 2012, “Arctic ice covered just 1.32 million square miles—the lowest extent ever recorded. ‘The loss of summer sea ice has led to unusual warming of the Arctic atmosphere, that in turn impacts weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, that can result in persistent extreme weather such as droughts, heat waves and flooding,’ NSIDC scientist Dr. Julienne Stroeve noted in a press release. ‘There's a huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the public,’ NASA scientist James Hansen said, adding that he believed, ‘unfortunately, that gap is not being closed.’ What the scientific community understands is that Arctic ice is melting at an accelerated rate -- and that humans play a role in these changes. According to the panel, humans are ‘really running out of time’ to prevent atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from reaching levels that would precipitate runaway climate change. Hansen warned that even maintaining current concentrations of approximately 390 parts per million for several centuries ‘guarantees disaster.’”[1] Nevertheless, record amounts of carbon dioxide were emitted into the atmosphere in 2016 to at least 2018, and 2016 was the hottest year on the planet as of 2019.[2] What makes an intelligent species, homo sapiens, go in the wrong direction even from the outset of an announced, guaranteed disaster? Timing and mentality have a lot to do with it. 
I suspect the non-scientist public, including the people with vested economic interests in continued pollution, dismissed the warning of disaster in 2012 in part by erroneously considering the scientific knowledge to be belief. Had news of an astroid due to hit the planet in seven years been announced in 2012, I suspect the astronomical knowledge would have been considered as such, rather than mere belief. It is interesting that the timeliness of a disaster, specifically whether it will hit the people living or those yet unborn, bears on whether knowledge is viewed as knowledge or just belief. 

 Ice melting in Greenland.   NYT

The mentality that sustains the gulf between what the scientists know and what the public believes includes the odd belief (held nonetheless as knowledge!) that scentistics only have beliefs regarding the climate might say, “I don’t believe in God,” or “I don’t believe it is going to rain today,” but people don’t usually say, “I don’t believe in math,” or "I don't believe in chemistry." That is to say, belief is not typically applied to replace the appelation of knowledge in fields of knowledge! In effect, the mentality contains a refusal to respect the enterprise of science. This is not only ignorance that can’t be wrong. How can ignorance make such a claim? Anti-foundationalism knows no better example than the arrogance of ignorance that cannot be wrong. The mentality assumes that recognizing knowledge in science would undercut a cherished political ideology. This assumption is an over-reach, as is the application of belief itself.
So the ice has kept melting as our scientific community has been relegated epistemologically into mere opinion or politics by too many people. The astounding implication is that this has occurred even though we as a species do not have the luxury of such a mentality. Even the possibility of “guaranteeing disaster” suggests that we as a society or species cannot afford to ignore the scientific consensus even though science is not perfect. That is to say, science does not prove a hypothesis; rather, successive null hypotheses are rejected, giving us added confidence but not certainty that the remaining hypothesis is valid.

Generally speaking, when even the survival of our species is flagged, or at the very least continued human habitation on Earth is to come with disasters, the rational self-preservation motivated recourse is to err on the side of what the scientific data is telling scientists.  To presume an overarching hegemony of political ideology may in retrospect look reckless. The choice of such a priority may even look pathological. Perhaps this is an element in human nature that could bring the species itself down. It should come as no surprise that the human mind can be a double-edged instrument capable of achievement and self-destruction even of the species itself. Even ideology may be viewed as a double-edged instument capable of giving people something to believe in yet also capable of embellishing arrogance and beligerance. Both the ignorance and ideological tartuffery seem to enjoy presumption when the disater is guaranteed for far-off generations. The basic instinct for self-preservation is more easily subdued or drugged. It would only be just, therefore, for the currently-living to suffer at least some of the effects of the guaranteed disaster themselves. Greed, selfishness, arrogance, and ignorance, which may all be hardwired into human nature, are to blame. Flying so high to the sun on the supposition that man is divine, a human being is bound to fall to the ground in a fiery mass of self-conceit that takes itself to be a falling star but is actually just a confused mess. 

1. Joanna Zelman and James Gerken, “Arctic Sea IceLevels Hit Record Low, Scientists Say We’re ‘Running Out Of Time,” The Huffington Post, September 19, 2012. 
2. Kelly Levin, "New Global CO2 Emissions Numbers Are In. They're Not Good," World Resources Institute, December 5, 2018 (accessed October 21, 2019).

The U.S. Enabled Turkey to Invade Syria: Absent the U.N.

Turkey invaded Syria on October 9, 2019 “to flush Kurds allied with the US out of northeastern Syria.”[1] Strategically, Turkey wanted to distance the Kurds from Turkey so they could not aid Kurdish separatists in Turkey should the latter rise up in attempting to establish Kurdistan. U.S. President Don Trump, who had just cleared American troops from northeastern Syria, had advanced knowledge from Turkish President Recep Erdogan that he planned to invade the area once the American troops were out. A rare bipartisan unity in Congress criticized the removal of American troops and the president’s acquiescence on Turkey’s plan to attach the Kurds, an American ally—a plan that could possibly give ISIS a toehold in the region. Both the Congress and the president had their respective rationales, yet neither side looked past the apparent dichotomy to arrive at a solution consistent with the points made by both sides.

Backing up the arguments made by the bipartisan critics in Congress, “Pentagon and State Department officials had advised Trump against making the move, arguing a US presence is needed to counter ISIS and keep Iran and Russia, both influential inside Syria, in check.”[2] Rep. Ro Khanna asked why the president would not at least have asked for a concession from Turkey. That the U.S. was turning its back on “allies who [had] died fighting for a US cause” was also objectionable.[3] Certainly some erosion of trust could be expected. Help the Americans on one of their causes and the next administration may turn on you anyway. To put friends in harm’s way and disavow any responsibility that goes with having received help points to a deep character flaw. While less obvious than is the mentality in preemptively invading another state, the U.S. President’s treatment of the Kurds was also culpable (and the U.S. Government had also preemptively invaded another state—Iraq).

President Trump’s rationale stemmed from his opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the long, senseless war that ensued. He pointed, moreover, to the eight trillion dollars spent by the U.S. and all the dead and wounded American soldiers “fighting and policing in the Middle East.”[4] He had campaigned on getting out of such long, senseless wars whose benefits to the U.S. do not justify the costs in lives and money. His solution in gradually pulling out American forces involved leaving a power-void that could be exploited or filled by adversaries. For example, ISIS could establish more of a presence in northeastern Syria under Turkish occupation. The Syrian Democratic Forces wrote that they were suspending military operations against ISIS in northern Syria following the “Turkish aggression.”[5]

I submit that both the concerns of the Congressional critics and President Trump could have been obviated had the U.S., a major financial contributor to the United Nations, sponsored a resolution in the Security Council for U.N. peacekeeping troops to replace the American forces in northeastern Syria. A contingent coalition could have been put together should Turkey have invaded anyway. American geopolitical interests would have favored a peace-keeping force over a force that could enable the spread of ISIS (like Turkey).

In general terms, the more the world organization of countries can step into troubled areas in peace-keeping roles, the less the world will have to rely on self-interested large countries, such as the U.S., to act as a global policeman. A conflict of interest exists in having one of the state-actors to be such a policeman because the temptation will be to put the state-actor’s own strategic interests above peace-keeping. I contend elsewhere that even if the state does not indulge such a temptation, the conflict-of-interest arrangement, which includes such temptation, is inherently unethical because of the existence of the temptation, given human nature.[6] In northeastern Syria, the U.S. was oriented to rooting out (and preventing) ISIS more than keeping the peace. Even if the official American objective had been peace-keeping, the U.S. would have been tempted to attack new ISIS outposts. Especially in political realism (but also in neorealism), to assume that a state would not act in its own strategic interests is naive. 

Had the U.S. pursued the U.N. option, the tension between the Congressional critics and the administration could have been avoided. This type of problem-resolution—a third way—is particularly beneficial in cases in which both sides to a dispute have good points. I suspect the human mind, whether from nature or nurture, goes to either-or dichotomies too readily. The back-and-forth in a debate is supposed to come to the better answer, but what if a third is even better?

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[1] Nicole Gaouette, “Republican Anger at Trump Grows as Turkey Launches ‘Sickening’ Attack on US Allies,” CNN.com, October 9, 2019 (accessed same day).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Skip Worden, Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available at Amazon.