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Posted By: Enright, Daniel

As an ozzie boy who has lived abroad in countries other than the US of A, and travelled reasonably extensively in life, you yanks just mystify me.
It's strange that in pretty much the rest of the entire world, where learnedness and faith are AT LEAST as evolved as the best America has to offer, science is treated with equal reverence as faith. So why not here?
Gil muddles on about pine trees - how much of the USA is now forrested compared to 150 years ago? Has each pine tree grown correspondingly taller to reach some mile and a half in height to make up for shortfall?
As drinking water becomes a commodity to be bought in supermarkets, and oceans rise, isn't there something strangely absurd about arguing if it was worse or as bad in previous history.....Ummm, we didn't have billions of people living in jiiinormous cities at ocean level in centuries past, waiting to be swept away by the next big storm!! As ozone fails to replenish itself and people die in extraordinary numbers from melanoma cancer each year, should we debate the effects of aerosols, methane, and industry induced fossil fuel burning that have changed the way we, and our kids have to live? Where I come from in Australia we have the highest rates of melonoma in the world - because of a giant hole in the ozone that stretches above our continent.

It's insane. Even the pope, and the vatican, warn not to mix belief/faith/religion with science. But here, in the US, it's some sort of strange game to argue with the truth as though each individual - regardless of intelect and knowledge in the area of expertise - can claim equal 'rightness' on the issue.
Here's a story that's personal to illustrate.
I married into a wonderful family who have lived in parts of Kansas - Greensburg and Manhattan primarily - for a hundred years.
My father-in-law worked as an Ag. lobbyist for 30 years, is both bright and educated and intensely devoted to his Christian beliefs. His wife is also a beautiful woman spiritually and generous of soul.
So one christmas the larger family is united and a boyfriend of my wife's sister starts talking about the age of the earth, that it can't be what science says because.............He READ, from Christian scientists, that when Armstrong and co. landed on the moon, the moon dust was only 1 foot deep (or some such number), and that "regular" scientists had predicted an entirely different estimate to correspond with the age of the universe, and were thus proved wrong.
And he said it in a way that suggested atheist scientists were involved in a plot, thrust onto the american people, and how great was it that christian scientists could show us the truth........that the moon also was only some 5 thousand years old.
And the whole room nodded in agreement. And my mouth dropped open, and my face almost shot off the top of my shoulders, and I started raving about what idiocy they were spreading, and they were all just standing there looking at me, and, well.............
That's when I knew that this country was different.
That somehow the America of the 40's and 50's, where people from all parts of the continent looked aspirationally for smart - not smarts, for people of intellect and sophistication to role model (see cary grant, katherine hepburn, audrey hepburn, ec..) - not scorn and denegrate society's icon's and somehow make them out to be agents of evil. Now it seems that ruralizing american society, and knowledge base, is the fastest way to moral certification. Science and knowledge be damned!

Well, the country terrifies me.
School standards mortify me.
Spelling, grammar, just to be passingly adjusted for, has me wondering if America knows where it's next great authors, and scientists, and leaders with real greatness are going to appear from?

So, debate global warming? Go ahead. You are the last generation who will be able to do so intelligibly and are rapidly abandoning your futures to work-ethic-only inspired development. Definitely not the clever country.

And this is very clearly a political position in this country.
And very very quickly, becoming a cultural one.


Sincerely
Daniel


edited for purposes of clarifying it was my wifes' sisters' boyfriend, and I was not allowing my wife a boyfriend on the side!!