Prove It
Krayton Kerns
7.16.08
To be certain graduate school applicants are miserably well-rounded, some veterinary colleges require thirty hours of “humanities and social science” credits. These are classes which virtually no one would take voluntarily, but since tenured faculty of such subjects are already drawing a salary you may as well force someone to sit and listen. In my third year at the University of Wyoming I reluctantly signed up for a philosophy class, reluctantly showed up early the first day and reluctantly grabbed a seat by the door.
Most of my previous physics, calculus and chemistry classes were held in the hard science end of the campus. Trekking to the humanities side of the university was new to me, so it wasn’t surprising I didn’t recognize any of the tie-dyed students in my new philosophy class.
Within a few moments the professor zipped into the classroom wearing a dazzling psychedelic fluorescent orange neck tie. I was expecting the usual class introductory remarks about semester objectives, but it never happened. “What are the issues,” the flamboyant professor boomed? The class went insane. (That might not be the correct word because that would imply that they were sane in the first place.)
“World peace,” screamed one student.
“No, it’s about evil capitalism creating another ice age,” offered another…this was 1978 and global warming hadn’t been invented yet.
Student after student offered a new issue and the professor would praise them for their perceptiveness and then dive off into all the philosophical questions their observation provoked. The other students sat passionately mesmerized; I sat bewildered. Within fifteen minutes the professor proposed the theory that we could not prove that either he or the concrete in the building actually existed. That was enough philosophy for me, so I grabbed my backpack, headed for the registrar’s office and dropped the class.
Apparently there were other students who dropped the philosophical debate about concrete because this June 31,620 scientists signed a petition dismissing the entire carbon-emission-climate-change folly. Compared to the 600 or so still nursing the cash nipple of the leftist UN IPCC man-caused global warming position, you would think the hoax would be dead. It’s not and here is why. Socialists masterfully designed the climate change argument in a fashion requiring that to disprove their position you must prove a negative…prove something is not happening.
It would be just as logical to blame global warming on the overuse of the word “awesome”. Since the mid 1980’s the word “awesome” has punctuated conversational English more often than a comma. Coincidentally, global temperatures began rising in the 1980’s so prove to me the rise of “awesome” did not cause the rise of the temperature. Do you see the point? It can’t be done.
There is good reason the Al Gore alarmists chose the colorless, odorless, tasteless gas carbon dioxide as their whipping boy; you must accept their word that it even exists, is increasing, or has any effect on global temperatures. Your every day observation of the world would give you no clue as to the daily level of environmental carbon dioxide. Let that point soak in, but hang on to the sofa while I make a tiny leap to wolverines.
Wolverines have joined sage grouse as the new Bambi of the anti-development left. Because as many people have seen a wolverine in the wild as have seen a molecule of carbon dioxide, you must rely on data from wolverine advocates to tell you if their population is going up, down or sideways. This is another ideal prove-a-negative situation for leftists hoping to obstruct domestic oil development. (They had toyed with spinning the idea that antelope and deer were threatened species but the accumulating pile of road-kills in the Department of Transportation’s compost pile proved that was too much of a stretch…even for them.)
Do you think I am joking? The July 9th, 2008 edition of the Billings Gazette reports that the Defenders of Wildlife and others are threatening a lawsuit if our government doesn’t implement policies to reduce the “climate change compounds” they claim are leading to the extinction of the wolverine.
In a nutshell (that’s an appropriate term) the alarmists claim the wolverine (something few have seen) is becoming extinct because of carbon dioxide accumulation (something no one has seen). So now it is up to you to prove that they are wrong, which is impossible, but if you can…that would be just “awesome.”
