This was in response to another thread, but it veered off the topic. Not
sure if Science is the appropriate forum, sort of more ideological, but in
my own mind it's certainly related to how science and pseudoscience
are used and misused, and the blurry lines between politics and
science.
I'm always hoping my sense of environmental situations, (not to
mention political situations, or how they all interact), are overblown,
that I'm exaggerating things in my own mind or that I'm reading
sources that exaggerate. Then I see the numbers yet again, in yet
another source, and feel overwhelmed. I think most people do. They
don't want to believe them.
Sometimes I suspect that we perversely hope for some earth/space
based natural cataclysmic event because the problems humanity itself
causes are so overwhelming and we don't want to feel responsible. Or
we want government institutions to be more responsible than they are
(certainly business and government hold a huge share of the
responsibility, but not as much as some want to assume). Blame
HAARP, Bush, Obama, Putin, Icke's Reptilians, but so often the people
seeking to lay the blame elsewhere (some legit, some not) fail to look in
the mirror because they think something so insignificant as one
human or even a a few billion collectively are too small to cause the
changes they see.
And it's not to say I dismiss what are generally considered conspiracy
theories in their entirety (though most of it I'd attribute to the failure of
beaurocracy to either keep track of what each layer/group is doing, or
the simple failure to see cause and effect, especially with multiple
complex systems interacting with each other--in other words human
oversight and sometimes outright stupidity. Which is then usually
exploited for profit by a few).
Admittedly I don't always have the scientific background to be able to
differentiate between science fact and pseudoscience speculation.
A lot of the theories (and yes, I'm aware that I'm misusing the word,
perhaps "speculations" would be better, but "theory" communicates the
strength of belief of the person making the claims...) have a plausible
premise, but the way people push them to extremes that don't match
what I do know of the science...strikes me as so much grasping at
straws. Chemtrails for example. Other theories...plausible that they're
under development for any number of reasons, but I honestly don't
think we're to the point yet where the people supposedly behind it have
the sophistication needed in the application of the technology. A lot of
the things attributed to HAARP for example.
To use chemtrails as one example among many possibilities that I've
been turning over and over in my own mind, as a friend of mine keeps
bringing them up as the cause of every ill:
Folks see contrails and some state that they feel sick while the trails are
visible....given the height the time it would take for such particles to
precipitate downward and given how the wind blows in different
directions at different altitudes....just the amounts of time and the
physics of air movement, temperature, condensation involved suggest
that these people are experiencing symptoms psychosomatically. Now
those that experience symptoms hours or days later...THAT might be a
different story if there's anything to the chemtrail theory, but the ones
that state they feel symptoms while the trails are visible....nope, sorry.
Nothing they spray at that height would get to you that quickly. I find
it fascinating how many folks spray their lawns, then blame their
illnesses on chemtrails.
(I bite my tongue when dealing with a specific person in real life, the
"you" refers to how I wish I could say this to them). Nice that your
phobia of dandilions and your need to stick to the status quo has you
blaming anything but yourself, when the chemicals you spray have
been repeatedly connected to the illnesses you have, but you believe
THAT to be the conspiracy theory while you choose to believe that the
contrail you see is causing all your symptoms.
I don't dismiss the chemtrail theory/hypothesis/speculation (the
extreme manifestations of it, I do, but not the entire premise), but
there are a lot of more probable causes. If you choose to believe the
less likely theory instead of experimenting with making your own
lifestyle changes on other factors that have more evidence in their favor
of causing said issues, then you're part of the problem.
Human-caused global warming (or as I prefer, climate change, since
the differing pressures can cause cooling in some places and warming
in others as air currents are pushed into areas they aren't normally)
would be another instance where both extremes (both complete
disbelief, and the idea that every single weather event in the history of
humans since the discovery of fire is triggered by human cause) are
equally frustrating to me, and don't help anyone. In this case I find it
fascinating how many people want to attribute to HAARP (or chemtrails)
weather or climate events which I would firmly attribute to
industrialization based climate change OR perhaps a spike caused by
an increase in volcanic eruptions, or most likely the combination of
factors.
I could go on with other examples, but you get the point. People don't
want personal responsibility, they want to blame another entity in the
most distancing way they can. As far as climate change is concerned,
those who want to believe that government and industry are the magic
cure-alls often choose to be complete denialists, claiming it doesn't
exist or that it's part of the natural cycle of the earth (at least those
who claim the latter are trying to think things through, I have more
respect for them than the denialists). Then there are those who want
someone else to blame--HAARP, chemtrails. Anything but the
common people just trying to get through from day to day. Of those
who want to place the blame anywhere but themselves, the ones that
assign it to industry and profit motives are probably the most accurate,
but the main driving force behind that is still the common
people....ourselves.
It's not to say that there isn't withholding of information and inventions
by those industries for profit, I personally know someone who invented
a water/steam based engine that ran soelely on water, and I've seen it
work. He sold the patent to a company that promised to promote it,
never a word, and then legal threats and physical threats when he tried
to follow up on it and make it more publically known himself. I know it
happens.
But the irony is, this is because we want more and more conveniences.
Instead of making sacrifices, we expect the inventions to allow us to
keep our lifestyle, new inventions to reduce pollution but allow us to
keep all the conveniences, and we sit and wait for it while continuing
with our habits (I'm guilty, yes). And so, we sit, complacent, an blame
everything on conspiracies or things beyond our control. Anything but
ourselves. Humanity as a mass is pretty overwhelming. I have my
doubts in the face of that. But it's the mass of humanity, the choices it
makes as a mass, that generates the ill health, the pollution, the
environmental issues as much as the institutions profiting from it, and
it's human habits, lawn chemicals, etc, that hit a lot closer to home and
cause a lot more problems than chemtrails could even if they are
themselves a valid cause of problems.
You can scream all you want at others, and you might be screaming at
valid concerns and problems. But if you do so without changing
yourself, you continue to spray your lawn, pollute with your car, use
packaging heavy products or pesticide heavy products, you actually ARE
your own problem and a significant factor that allows the greater bulk
of those outward problems to continue.
I go through phases where I do my damnedness to change myself, and
other phases where I give up (and sometimes rant at others) simply
becauuse I'm overwhelmed. I'm not saying any of this without a certain
sense of self-irony and blame.
It's not just about the individual, it's not just about the collective, but
when people grasp and shape half-truths and speculations without due
criticism and consideration in order to deny their own
responsibility...Sometimes it's infuriating, other times, saddening, other
times...I don't know. We could do so much good if we could quit being
distracted and blaming things beyond our control. It's such wasted
energy (and sometimes perhaps wasted in not going far enough,
posting videos without commentary, or supporting evidence...none of
the videos here convince me of anything, if anything they fascinate me
with the very religious certainty they use, the vocabulary I remember in
church, or in the spiritual groups I experimented with and then left
after leaving the church....simply reformatted in a new context made to
sound scientific but not quite managing it, and with too many internal
contradictions to be worthwhile). This goes for the ones that promote
speculations I agree with as much as the ones I disagree with, and that
perhaps is even more frustrating. To see a hypothesis you firmly stand
behind get butchered so badly is maddening.
The ironic thing right now is that I'm not sure this entire post isn't just
more of the very thing I'm complaining about.
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