This article by Mark Stobbe (“CDC Says Life Expectancy in US Up, Deaths Not”) discusses the slight increase in life expectancy in the United States observed by the Centers for Disease Control for the year 2008. This is excellent news, especially considering that the death rate from heart disease decreased by 5%, the death rate from cancer decreased by 2%, and the death rate from HIV/AIDS decreased by 10%. Praise is due to the scientists and doctors who have caused these perils to retreat – as well as perhaps healthier living habits in the population as a whole when it comes to the heart disease declines.

We can beat back misery, decay, disease, and death – and the slight growth of U. S. life expectancy at birth to nearly 78 years testifies to this. Moreover, the death rate in 2008 was half of what it was in 1948 – truly a monumental development.

Sincerely,

G. Stolyarov II

The Rational Argumentator

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Evolution: Biological, Technological, and Societal

G. Stolyarov II

Issue CXCI - April 2, 2009

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The concept of evolution is all too frequently given insufficient attention by self-proclaimed proponents of liberty. However, an understanding of biological, technological, and societal evolution – including the similarities and differences among these processes – is extremely helpful and perhaps indispensable for a full appreciation of the nature and benefits of individual liberty, free markets, and limited government.

Biological Evolution

Biological evolution is the change in the physical structure, processes, and functionality of organisms over the span of generations. Biological evolution does not occur on an individual level, but rather on the level of populations and often entire species; the accumulated changes constituting biological evolution can result in the formation of entirely new species over hundreds of thousands and millions of years. Indeed, contemporary understandings of evolution hold that all living organisms are related and share a common ancestor. Evolution can explain the greater genetic similarity of certain species to certain others by pointing out that those species shared common ancestors in the more proximate past. The driving force of biological evolution is natural selection. Certain traits allow individuals to survive to reproductive age more reliably and therefore to pass those traits on to their genetic offspring. Biological evolution does not itself create the traits that are more suited to a given environment; those traits arise randomly as a result of genetic mutations. The overwhelming majority of these mutations are deleterious to an organism’s survival, but on occasion a mutation arises that facilitates superior adaptation. The organisms exhibiting this mutation then become more prominent and widespread within their population or species.

Technological Evolution

Technological evolution is the change in the machines, infrastructure, and methods of communication used by human beings. The generating force of technological evolution is invention by individual humans or by intentional collaborative human efforts where a division of labor exists. Subsequently, technologies are adopted or fall into disuse based on commercial selection – the process determining acceptance within a market of buyers or users. Consumers judge technologies based on their ability to fulfill the consumers’ goals as individuals or to adequately perform in the production of still other goods. As new technologies are developed, they frequently displace older technologies that were intended to accomplish a similar role but did so less efficiently – that is, they did not accomplish the goal in question as quickly or with the same level of quality. Although the human biological makeup has remained approximately the same throughout recorded history, technological developments have been able to dramatically alter, improve, and lengthen human lives and well-being during the past ten millennia. Unlike biological evolution, technological evolution occurs on a scale that is perceptible by individual human beings. Moreover, the rate of technological evolution has dramatically accelerated since about 1750.

Societal Evolution

Societal evolution is the change in human institutions – including political systems, cultural practices, worldviews, languages, ethical norms, forms of art, and economic interactions. Societal evolution, at its most fundamental level, is driven by individual choices made during day-to-day life. However, those choices are often influenced and conditioned in substantial ways by institutions which were the result of prior societal evolution. Most individuals in most societies choose to simply mimic existing macroscopic institutionally suggested societal arrangements rather than developing their own or even incrementally improving upon the status quo. Thus, the majority of large-scale societal evolution occurs due to the efforts of a relative handful of individuals in any field of endeavor. These can include authors, major artists, politicians, successful entrepreneurs, and philosophical or religious figures. However, advanced societies also exhibit subcultures or niches in which any given individual’s barriers to influencing behavior within the group are much lower. In smaller niches, each individual can be a considerable influence on societal evolution, and the resulting state of the niche can also exert some degree of influence upon the larger society.

The scale of societal evolution, like that of technological evolution, can be perceived by individual humans in most cases. However, while technological innovations feed on one another to generate an accelerating rate of evolution, the pace of societal evolution is more variable and differs when we consider various aspects of society. Some social norms and behaviors can change dramatically in a matter of days or weeks; consider, for instance, the popularity of certain songs, movies, and “bestseller” books. On the other hand, much slower evolution – on a scale of centuries to millennia – can occur in such institutions as languages, the layout of roads, the set of esthetic works generally thought to be “high culture,” and ethical norms. The rate of societal evolution may have been accelerated by recent improvements in communication technology – although any impression of this may be due more to the greater ability to be aware of evolutionary changes among various societies and social subgroups as well as to record those changes, which might have gone unnoticed in the past.

Figure 1. Summary Table of the Attributes of Biological, Technological, and Societal Evolution

Figure 1 presents a table where some of the aspects of the three kinds of evolution are compared and contrasted. We shall now delve into these attributes in greater depth.

Evolution, Spontaneous Order, and Uncertainty of Outcomes

All three kinds of evolution are spontaneous orders; the process and the entire results of evolution cannot be controlled, arranged, or even predicted by a single entity. Entities from atoms to human beings participate in evolutionary processes by following certain rules – be they the rules of molecular biology, the laws of physics and the principles of engineering design, or the laws of economics and the inclinations of self-interest. In following these rules, the participant entities generate a macroscopic outcome that is much larger than any of them – indeed, an outcome that may be beyond the ability of a participant entity to perceive and be aware of. No biological organism seeks to bring about new species formation in its attempts to obtain nourishment, escape predators, and reproduce. Likewise, the inventor of a new technology most often does not grasp the full range of economic and societal consequences his invention will have. Moreover, the originators of new social paradigms rarely, if ever, can grasp how their paradigms will interact with already existing paradigms and with paradigms that are yet to come. Neither with technological evolution nor with societal evolution is it possible to exhaustively and comprehensively predict who will use an innovation and how. With biological evolution, the long-term distribution of particular traits within populations and species are likewise difficult to predict, because natural selection is capricious; it does not favor the same traits in the same conditions. Radical and sudden environmental changes may come to favor a previously ill-adapted set of traits.

Evolution and Progress

Not all kinds of evolution are progressive, where progress can be defined as an improvement in the well-being, safety, and opportunities available to individual organisms – particularly intelligent ones such as humans. Biological evolution is notoriously non-progressive; it does not have any mechanisms for ensuring individual survival. Indeed, once an individual has reached reproductive age, reproduced, and reared offspring to near-maturity, biological evolution has no more regard for him, her, or it. As far as that individual’s survival is concerned, it is irrelevant to biological evolution. For this reason, many individual organisms have evolved decent self-preservation mechanisms prior to reproductive age; humans and other mammals do not senesce prior to reproductive age and generally have strong immune systems to protect themselves from disease until they reach the age when they can be expected to have near-mature offspring. Once the genes are passed on, however, the individual who passed them on is no longer necessary to the perpetuation his, her, or its genome. Thus, few mechanisms of natural selection operate to select for traits that preserve that individual after successful reproduction and upbringing have taken place.

Moreover, biological evolution does not even have built-in protections for the survival and advancement of entire species and lines of descent. There have been numerous observed evolutionary “dead ends,” where natural selection’s results were the destruction of an entire gene pool because of its lack of adaptations to certain environmental conditions – including bizarre and sudden environmental changes. Numerous times during the Earth’s history, more complex species with more advanced functionality have been wiped out and supplanted by more primitive species with less intelligence and fewer abilities.

Nor is societal evolution necessarily progressive. History is replete with examples of societies that have lost rights and freedoms hitherto enjoyed by their members. Moreover, commonly held esthetic tastes have decayed over time in many historical and contemporary societies. The English language is currently far more rigid and less receptive to innovation than it was during the era of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Other deleterious changes – such as the decrease in prevailing attention spans and increasing audience passivity – have characterized certain periods of 20^th-century Western history. In academic disciplines, including economics, philosophy, and political theory, it is not infrequent that more truthful and accurate theories and ideas are abandoned it favor of fanciful, flawed, and even dangerous mental constructs.  The 20^th century, in general, exhibited numerous instances of both social progress and massive social decay. On the one hand, decreasing racism and religious intolerance in the West were clear signs of progress; on the other hand, the horrors of the two World Wars, the massive growth in government power, and rampant inflation epidemics were just some of the counter-progressive tendencies of the 20^th century. Societal evolution can be progressive – especially over longer-term intervals, as the immense general moral improvement and increases in cultural variety, political freedom, and individual choice during the past millennium have shown. However, there is no guarantee of societal progress during any term within the lifetime of an individual. While a person born in 1940 has certainly witnessed tremendous societal progress during his life, a person living from 1870 to 1940 would beg to differ.

Of the three kinds of evolution, technological evolution is the only consistently progressive one. Even as the world engaged in brutal carnage, punctuated by unprecedented economic crises, during the first half of the 20^th century, technological progress continued to occur and to accelerate. Technological evolution is progressive because technological improvements build on one another. Existing innovations make it easier to develop new ones, because they economize on the labor, information gathering, communication costs, and other transaction costs required to do so. Existing computers, vehicles, and factory automata can considerably speed up the production of other technologies of their kind. While institutional and cultural factors can certainly affect the rate of technological progress, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. The knowledge of how to materialize a particular technological design is relatively easy to spread once it is originated; even if a widespread, coordinated effort to suppress technological innovation arises, somebody, somewhere will be able to learn how to create the needed technologies and will be able to actualize this knowledge.

Individuals – particularly individual humans – can benefit from their own technological and societal evolution, but not from their own biological evolution. Biological evolution occurs at an intergenerational level, and the individual’s only role in it is that of passing on a genetic code. 

Human Planning of Evolution

At present, human beings have only limited control over planning the course of biological evolutionary processes. With selective breeding and genetic engineering, as well as the alteration of the environments in which non-human organisms exist, it is possible to exercise some manner of indirect guidance of biological evolutionary processes. But there are still many traits that humans can neither engineer nor eliminate in themselves or in other organisms. Technology may, however, soon develop to a point where a greater degree of human oversight over biological evolution can become possible. By far the majority of instances of biological evolution are not man-generated or planned by humans; they occur due to the impersonal processes of mutation and natural selection that have existed for billions of years.

Virtually all technological evolution is planned, in the sense that inventors and entrepreneurs deliberately introduce particular technologies into particular markets. However, while the elements of the evolution can be consciously designed and introduced, the consequences and interactions of these elements are virtually impossible to predict by any human being.

Societal evolution, like technological evolution, is man-generated, in the sense that humans and their actions are responsible for every component of societal evolution. However, societal evolution is much harder to plan than technological evolution; no one person, for instance, designed the first monetary systems, or any language, or even the majority of the groundwork for political and economic systems throughout history. Moreover, no individual, committee, or government can be said to have originated ethical, cultural, or esthetic norms – although many philosophers, politicians, and artists have influenced these norms in a gradual, incremental fashion. There are virtual no inventors for societal institutions, but there are piecewise tinkerers; there are also revolutionaries who tear down existing institutions without replacing them with viable alternatives – but these are most often the drivers of societal devolution. 

Nonetheless, there can be a modicum of planning involved in societal evolution – as, for instance, with the influence of major philosophers, constitutional drafters, and paradigm creators in esthetic and academic disciplines. The effectiveness of this level of planning, however, is much rarer for cultural and political institutions than it is for technologies.

Status of the Loser in Evolution

In biological evolution, the losing individuals and species – the ones that do not withstand natural selection pressures – are eliminated. From this fact arises the notorious “law of the jungle” – the characterization of destructive competition in uncivilized nature.

In technological evolution, however, the losing organisms are not eliminated; the proponents of earlier, now obsolete technologies will most often simply adopt the newer, more efficient technologies. Earlier technologies, however, are most often displaced and assume the status of museum relics and curiosities. This was the fate of the horse-and-buggy, the biplane, and the 486 computer processor. Sometimes less advanced earlier technologies coexist with more advanced later ones over time – as has happened with the communications media, for instance – but this is not generally the case and may be due in part to imperfect substitution among the various communication technologies and in part to ingrained habits within certain segments of the population, which will no longer predominate as demographics shift.

In societal evolution, losing organisms are also not eliminated – unless severe instances of societal devolution, including wars, government crackdowns, and waves of crime, occur. Losing ideas and institutions are also seldom eliminated when they are displaced from prominence. In societies, there is always a market for niche ideas, habits, and organizational structures that can coexist with their different, more dominant counterparts. This is particularly true of more advanced societies which tolerate different philosophical, religious, esthetic, and political modes of expression. One’s candidate for office might be defeated, but one’s political ideology might not be affected by this. And if the majority of museum-goers begin to favor the paintings of Picasso, one is still free to enjoy the work of Vermeer and to have it within relatively easy access. It is possible for an institution to die out if it falls into sufficient disuse; there are numerous dead languages, political systems, and social customs. But, as a general rule, a societal institution that loses a contest against a rival will generally retain some sway in at least the intermediate-term future. When societal institutions die, it is due more to atrophy than to any revolutionary change.

Passing on of Acquired Traits

In biological evolution, it is impossible for organisms to pass on traits they acquired during their lifetimes. Rather, all the traits they will ever pass on are encoded in their genomes. By contrast, technological and societal evolution both allow individuals to learn new skills and habits during their lifetimes and teach it to their biological offspring as well as their friends, acquaintances, and associates. This capability makes technological and societal evolution far more adaptable and resilient than biological evolution. The individual does not need to perish if he has insufficient technological and societal skills and knowledge; rather, he can learn and improve himself in a way in which he cannot yet improve his own genome.

Evolution in Uncivilized Nature and in Civilization

Evolution in uncivilized nature – nature unaffected by humans – is almost exclusively of the biological kind. Non-human organisms do not engage in technological evolution; when they use rudimentary technologies – for instance, for the construction of dams and nests – they do not improve on their methods over time. It is possible to occasionally see traces of societal evolution in the societies of more advanced animals – but this, too, is quite rare, and it seldom survives past a generation. If a group of chimpanzees establish a pattern for more effective societal cooperation and organization, their grandchildren are unlikely to remember or replicate it. 

Biological evolution, due to its lack of sufficient flexibility and intelligent guidance, has built-in upper limits. Because the status of organisms’ past reproduction and offspring development is irrelevant to biological evolution, the chances of mutation and natural selection alone favoring extremely long-lived or functionally immortal creatures are extremely small – even though one such immortal species, the jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula, is known to exist.  Moreover, random mutation is an extremely slow and unreliable way of generating superior environmental adaptations. Inventing new technologies has given humans the ability to survive in flight, in undersea travel, and in outer space – as well as to travel and communicate orders of magnitude faster than any unaided biological organism. Societal evolution has given humans institutions that enable peaceful cooperation and exchange of ideas unlike any that exists in uncivilized nature. With technological and societal evolution, humans have – at least partially – taken their future into their own hands and made themselves far more adaptable and resilient than any other living creature.

Flaws, Change, Interrelations, and Evolution

Both biological and societal evolution are marred by persistent flaws. Aside from the deleterious nature of most mutations, it is instructive to note that over 99.9% of all species that ever existed are now extinct – and the overwhelming majority of these extinctions were not caused by humans. Biological evolution is brutal in the collateral damage it inflicts, and it is utterly wasteful with resources and lives; truly, the delay in time and the method of “producing” better organisms that biological evolution employs are among the least efficient processes conceivable. The case for “intelligent design” of biological organisms falls flat on its face when we consider that it would be a supreme insult to any allegedly omnipotent, omniscient deity to suggest that he/she/it designed biological organisms and their interactions to be the way they are. Moreover, biological evolution frequently has strong component forces that resist beneficial changes. Many organisms in uncivilized nature seek actively to eliminate their more capable and otherwise better-adapted counterparts. Consider, for instance, what would happen if a pack of fire ants attacked any large, advanced mammal. To show the defects of both biological and societal evolution, consider also what would have happened in most Paleolithic hunter-gatherer tribes to an intellectual, inventive member who relished the pleasures of tinkering with sticks and stones rather than the macho excitement of the hunt. 

Societal evolution’s flaws are evidenced by the tremendous waste of human lives and resources that many institutions – including most wars, governments, and religions, as well as many customs, superstitions, and expectations – bring about.  Moreover, less efficient and beneficial human institutions often put forth fierce, even violent, resistance to attempts at progress and improvement. The fates of Socrates, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and most dissenters in totalitarian states testify to this tendency.

Technological evolution, on the other hand, is a process whose efficiency and rapidity are constantly on the rise and where, every step of the way, humans endeavor to minimize waste. Unlike biological and societal evolution, technological evolution does not resist change. New technologies are typically rapidly adopted and refined to bring about higher quality and lower cost. Technological innovation is much easier to implement and distribute than innovations in social, cultural, and political norms – in part because most people are not as closely wedded to particular technological methods as they are to their favored societal institutions. 

In every kind of evolution, change generates further change. The emergence of new biological structures often serves to enable others still – as, for instance, with the evolution of the eye. Likewise, societal innovations inspire still others – as occurs regularly in art, philosophy, and politics. Technological improvements can often serve as components in still others – and the improvements in efficiency due to an earlier stage of progress are often necessary to make a later stage possible.

It is also important to remember that all three kinds of evolution are interrelated and affect one another. Technologies often enable particular societal institutions and change the incentives to adopt some and reject others. Societal evolution conditions the preferences of consumers for particular technologies over others. Biological evolution can often interfere with technological progress – as exemplified by the emergence of certain strains of bacteria immune to early antibiotics. Likewise, technological evolution can condition biological evolution through selective breeding, genetic engineering, and alterations to the environments of humans and non-humans alike. Societal evolution includes the development of attitudes toward technologies and ways of interacting with other biological organisms and thus often conditions the ways in which people approach scientific endeavors and even evolution itself.

Evolution and Liberty

Understanding biological, technological, and societal evolution can be crucial to a full appreciation of liberty – itself an emergent evolutionary phenomenon. Environments in which freedom can be effectively enforced and maintained require certain evolved societal and technological underpinnings, which bring about power symmetries among as many individuals and parties as possible, preventing any of them from oppressing the others. A fixed, static, unchanging, and unchangeable natural order dictated by a deity is not easy to reconcile with liberty, because if the structure of that order is already determined and knowable, then there is little room for innovation, experimentation, and progress. In that case, the liberty to act according to one’s choice is easy to jettison and replace by the specious “liberty” of only doing what is “right” by the definition of some political or religious authority. If there is nothing new under the sun, then why not force everyone to conform to the “best” ways of old? This view, of course, is a recipe for carnage, persecution, and mass poverty. Liberty is needed for individuals to discover the truth and to progress to something better than a nasty, brutish, and short primitive subsistence.

Liberty can be seen as the ability to participate in a multitude of evolutionary processes where the rules of selection are as non-punitive and non-destructive as possible. Instead of the brutal elimination-based approach of biological competition, selection of what happens in the future can be done by the far more gentle market competition, where the loser is, to paraphrase Ludwig von Mises, merely relegated to a more humble position in the division of labor. Likewise, instead of resigning themselves to the individually non-beneficial and wasteful forces of biological evolution, humans can rely more on the extraordinary abilities that technological evolution gives them to transform the world around them for the improvement of their lives.

An appreciation of all kinds of evolution also enables us to understand the limitations of overarching central planning. An impossibly omnipotent god who “designs” all life is only a step removed from a king, dictator, or government committee with similar pretensions of “designing” societies, cultures, and even virtuous conduct.  If such amazingly complex structures as living organisms have all been designed – then, surely, the ability to design any other aspect of existence is merely a matter of degree of ability. While many advocates of intelligent design would here invoke the severe limitations of human beings as compared to their god of choice, this is not an argument for liberty that can sustain scrutiny, because many of those same flawed human beings claim to accurately know what their god of choice is and what he/she/it wants them to do. Surely, if knowing the will of a god is accessible to humans, then so is the ability to design and regulate a society from the top down – a much humbler endeavor.

Evolution provides an alternative to design theories of existence. Even technological evolution – the kind most amenable to deliberate planning and engineering – is still immensely decentralized and lacks virtually any central coordination by a governing body or person. Technological, biological, and societal evolution and their byproducts are all examples of what Friedrich Hayek would call cosmos – or an emergent order – as opposed to taxis, or a centrally planned order akin to the arrangement of pieces on a chessboard. Emergent orders do not admit full comprehension – much less control – and the recognition that we ourselves are such emergent orders is sure to deliver a firm blow to the agendas of those who wish to restrict and regulate the non-coercive actions of the sovereign individual.

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The Rational Argumentator

A Journal for Western Man

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The Myth of Global Warming

Jim Hollingsworth

Issue CXC - March 28, 2009

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INTRODUCTION

            When Al Gore screams out in Senate testimony: “The Earth Has A Fever” he is not so much developing a scientific theory as he is seeking to use fear to drive a political agenda.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued four reports and in each one they have become more convinced that man is the chief cause of global warming, and that this warming is and will be seriously destructive to life as we know it.

            We are told that “the science is settled” and that there is “a consensus” of scientists who believe we are headed for disaster if we do not stop burning fossil fuels.  Yet, there is a growing number of scientists who disagree.  Over 32,000 scientists have signed “The Petition Project,” over 9,000 of them with Ph.D.s proclaiming that man is not the chief cause of warming and that this warming will not be disastrous. 

            True science does not depend on a consensus, but on a careful analysis of evidence as found in nature. One scientist noted that once scientists have a theory about something, they work hard to prove themselves wrong.  History is replete with examples where scientists were just plain wrong about life matters, but continued research revealed the truth.

            It is our contention that the present emphasis on man-caused (anthropogenic) global warming is a myth, in fact a carefully orchestrated hoax, not to further science, but to gain more control over the peoples of the world.  It is incumbent on each of us to search out the truth in this matter and act accordingly. 

THE EARTH IS WARMING

            There seems to be little disagreement among scientists that the Earth is warming.  In fact, the earth has continued to warm since the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago.  But that warming has not been an even warming with years of warming followed by some years of cooling, but each period leaving us just a little warmer than before.

            We are told that the Earth has warmed about half a degree centigrade a century for the past 150 years.  The actual amount of warming as recorded is difficult to support, given that a half-degree is about all the closer we could record temperature until very recently.  There are just 1,221 weather stations in America, and few of these have been in the same position for the entire time.  Some have moved to new locations, and others have had cities grow up around them, which raises the average temperature.  Temperature readings can vary a couple of degrees depending on whether they are next to a building, on a slope, in a valley, or on a hilltop. 

            There appears to have been more warming in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere, but it needs to be kept in mind that there are few weather stations over the ocean, in Africa and South America, and even fewer in Antarctica.  It is very probable that the earth is warming, but by less than half a degree.

CARBON DIOXIDE IS A POLLUTANT

            The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant.  That is not a scientific statement made by a scientific body, but a deliberative statement made by a political body. We often forget that Supreme Court Justices are human just like the rest of us, and though we expect them to know more about that law than we know, we do not expect them to be experts in every field of endeavor.  The greatest evidence for this is in their own decisions (or opinions), which are often 7-2, 6-3, or 5-4.  One vote one way or the other would change the outcome of the decision.

            Our atmosphere is approximately 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, and 0.04% carbon dioxide.  From that “trace” amount of carbon dioxide are built all the plants we see on the Earth.  Far from being a pollutant, Carbon Dioxide is a natural substance required for all plant life.  All plants use Carbon Dioxide to grow, and in the process they give off Oxygen. Animals use Oxygen and give off Carbon Dioxide.  This relationship is the miracle of life that enables both plants and animals to survive on Earth.

            Growers know that increasing Carbon Dioxide increases plant growth, and for this reason Carbon Dioxide is sometimes used in greenhouses to increase plant growth.  It has also been demonstrated that an increased level of Carbon Dioxide enables a plant to survive and even thrive at warmer temperatures.

            Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant.

CARBON DIOXIDE IS A GREENHOUSE GAS

            The principle of a greenhouse is quite simple: Light enters through the glass and strikes the surface.  It is transformed into infrared rays which are longer and do not so easily pass back through the glass.  You experience the greenhouse effect when you leave your car shut up in the summer and notice how hot it is.

            The greenhouse effect we note for the Earth is a little more complicated.  The infrared rays that are re-emitted from the Earth are actually trapped by the greenhouse gases which warms the gas and heats the Earth.  It is this effect which makes our Earth habitable, otherwise it would get very hot in the day time, and very cold at night; very very hot in summer, and very very cold in winter.

            The main greenhouse gas is water vapor.  Where there is more moisture in the air, the climate is more tempered.  Thus, while daily temperatures may vary on the desert as much as fifty degrees, they vary only a little in the tropics. 

            Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, and the next is Carbon Dioxide.  However, doubling the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere will not double the temperature rise.  There is a definite limit, and that limit is determined not by the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, but by the amount of solar radiation “reflected” from the Earth.  Once all the infrared rays have been “captured” by the greenhouse gases, there can be no additional increase in temperature.

MAN IS THE CHIEF PRODUCER OF CARBON DIOXIDE

            There appears to be a definite link between temperature and Carbon Dioxide.  Early analysis of ice cores indicated that as the Carbon Dioxide increased, it caused a rise in temperature.  Subsequent analysis of the core data has revealed that the temperature rise came first, followed about 800 years later by an increase in Carbon Dioxide. 

            There is no question that man produces Carbon Dioxide.  He produces Carbon Dioxide simply by breathing. But he also produces Carbon Dioxide by burning fossil fuels.  Every fossil fuel except Hydrogen produces Carbon Dioxide when it burns.  Some products produce more Carbon Dioxide than others, depending on their chemical composition.  Methane produces less Carbon Dioxide, and wood produces more.  It is important to keep in mind that when wood burns, it produces Carbon Dioxide, but when that same tree dies and rots, it also produces Carbon Dioxide. 

            The ocean is a tremendous storage tank (carbon sink) for Carbon Dioxide.  But as the oceans warm, they can hold less Carbon Dioxide.  The warming ocean releases Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere.  An increase in atmospheric Carbon Dioxide will cause more Carbon Dioxide to be absorbed by the ocean.  But which comes first is difficult to know.  It is much more likely that some natural factor, such as changing solar radiation, is actually warming the Earth, warming the oceans, and thus increasing the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.

RISING TEMPERATURES ARE HARMFUL

            We are told that there will be great species extinction because of rising temperatures.  We pick up a magazine and there is a polar bear standing on a small iceberg hoping to survive.  The truth is that most populations of polar bears are expanding, and loss of sea ice is not a problem for them.  Most of the loss of sea ice area has been caused by changes in wind patterns.

            Rising temperatures are actually beneficial to most plants and animals.  While humans can adapt from the very cold to the very warm, most people prefer a warmer climate, and many migrate to the south during the winter.  Plants actually increase their habitat when temperatures warm, moving higher in latitude (farther north) and higher in elevation (up mountains) when conditions warm, but they still maintain their present habitat.  Animals, of course, can easily move to cooler climates if they prefer.  Actually, plants do well with warmer temperatures, especially when the rise in temperature is accompanied by a rising Carbon Dioxide level.  Plants are affected more by rainfall than they are by temperature.

            As far as people are concerned, it is important to note that ten times more people die each year from cold than die from the heat. 

REMEDIATION VERSUS ADAPTATION    

            Most of the measures suggested to remedy higher levels of Carbon Dioxide (Remediation) will be deadly for world populations, especially in underdeveloped countries.  Because gasohol is produced from corn, efforts to substitute alcohol for gasoline is causing world-wide food shortages, and raising the price of most grains.  This has become so critical that some places have even had riots over food prices.

            The United States was not a signer of the Kyoto Protocol (treaty).  But those countries that did sign have greatly missed the mark.  The only way to reduce Carbon Dioxide production is to reduce burning of fossil fuels: gasoline, diesel, coal, natural gas, wood, etc.  These are the main sources of energy, and though we might be able to cope by building more nuclear power plants, much of the developing world will be very dependent on these other resources over the next several decades.

            And even if we were able to reduce our carbon footprint, most of the rest of the world would not. China and India are two very large developing countries and have expressed no interest in cutting production of Carbon Dioxide.  Unless they participate in remediation, what we do will have very little total effect. 

            Rather than causing world poverty by reducing Carbon Dioxide, it will make a lot more sense to adapt to a changing temperature.

CATASTROPHE AWAITS INACTION

            Floods, drought, hurricanes, these, we are told, are all signs of coming catastrophe from global warming.  Yet, these are normal parts of any climate.  Climates change from warm to cold, from wet to dry.  Our Earth has weathered many serious changes in climate, from the Ice Ages to ages of tremendous plant growth (with high levels of Carbon Dioxide), yet the biosphere (plants and animals) has survived.  We shall continue to survive because we are very adaptable. And, as time goes on we will develop even more innovative ways for adapting to changing climate.

            Some politicians know that they can gain more control over our lives through programs designed to remedy global warming.  We need to be vigilant to see this does not happen.  We can make better use of our energy; that just makes good sense and helps each one of us.  But, most of the suggested programs from wind farms to solar energy to hybrid automobiles will cost almost as much energy to produce as they actually save.

            Common sense demonstrates that this great planet has survived many changes in climate and will do so again.  Government programs to help would be far better directed toward clean water the world over, as well as better sanitary conditions and food production.  Even control of such things as malaria would be a greater help to mankind than any effort to control global warming.  Besides, most of what you hear about global warming is a myth.

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Jim Hollingsworth is a building contractor in Kootenai Coutny, Idaho. He has run for State Representative three times and is active in causes of liberty in Idaho. He receives email at: jimhollingsworth@verizon.net. Web site: www.IdahoansForHollingsworth.com

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Saving the Earth?

Alan Caruba

Issue CLXXXIX - March 14, 2009

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Every time I hear someone say something about “saving the Earth” I want to say, “Are you out of your mind?”

The Earth is some 4.5 billion—that’s billion with a b—years old. How did it ever manage to exist without us? How did it survive ice ages, meteor impacts, and all the other stuff that went on before homo sapiens decided to climb down out of the trees and walk upright?

If human beings are responsible for “global warming” how did the Earth manage to get through various earlier stages such as the Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pleistocene, and our era, the Holocene which reaches back a mere 10,000 years; a period that matches up with the ending of the last major ice age?

One of the distinguishing features of these and other earlier periods of Earth’s history is the repeated evidence of mass extinctions. Since humans weren’t around to take the blame for them, what did cause them? There is evidence that it was the result of magnetic reversals.

For far too long I have been listening to people who are absolutely convinced that human beings are “destroying” the Earth. Three quarters of the Earth is under water. Oceans are the largest part of the Earth’s surface. Most of the land is uninhabitable or not arable. You can’t farm it, and you probably wouldn’t want to live there.

The parts, mostly cities, where human beings congregate range from being vast slums to gleaming towers of commerce or condos. If you’re wealthy, living in such places can be very enjoyable. If you live in the slum, you hope you can find a tasty tidbit at the neighborhood garbage dump.

Virtually none of these people, rich or poor, spends a lot of time thinking about “saving the Earth” unless, of course, there’s a buck to be made while allegedly doing so.

There’s lots of money to be made these days in “saving the Earth.” If you’re the owner of a solar or wind farm, the government can’t wait to lavish millions of taxpayer’s—other people’s—dollars on your enterprise. Same holds true if you make moonshine…oops, I mean ethanol.

Then, if you’re Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Oscar winner, Grammy winner, winner of the Nashville Bingo Night Jamboree, you are going to score millions by telling people that the Earth is coming to an end any day now and, to prevent this, you need to buy the lighter-than-air “carbon credits” he’s selling. The government wants to get in on this bonanza with a “cap-and-trade” program to limit greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent a global warming that is not happening.

Meanwhile, other charlatans are busy selling an interest in their carbon sequestration scams or just selling you anything that comes packaged as “eco” anything. Paying more for something “Green” just marks you as a chump.

So who are these people kidding when they talk about saving the Earth? YOU!

And who do these people dislike for despoiling Gaia or Mother Earth? YOU!

None of us, individually or all six billion, can “save the Earth”, but there are a few things we can avoid doing. At the top of the list is littering. Did you see the photo of the Capitol Mall after everyone got through celebrating the inauguration of the Anointed One? Ugh.

In fact, that is pretty much the entire list as far as I am concerned. Don’t litter. Clean up after yourself.

And for those still preaching to other people about saving the Earth, just stop.

­­___________

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.

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Skeptics, Deniers, and World Class Scientists

Alan Caruba

Issue CLXXXIX - March 10, 2009

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After spending time at the largest gathering of world class climatologists, meteorologists, physicists, engineers, and economists, among other very brainy folks, I came away with the feeling that the battle remains joined by this hearty group, otherwise derided as skeptics and deniers of global warming.

The occasion was the second annual International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free market think tank. The place was New York City and the gathering involved seminars on all aspects of the bogus science put forth by the global warming alarmists. The conclusion should come as no surprise. There simply is no valid science that supports the claim that the Earth has warmed dramatically, is warming dramatically, or is likely to warm dramatically.

I find it almost amusing—if it weren’t so important—that the alarmists never make any mention of the fact, verified by weather satellites, that the Earth has been in a decade-long cooling trend and some who have examined it think it will continue for twenty or thirty more years. The increased severity of winter weather events around the world is testament to that. It is not getting warmer. It is getting colder.

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic and serving also in a rotating term as president of the European Union, received a standing ovation at the beginning and end of his presentation. “Their true plans and ambitions (are) to stop economic development and return mankind centuries back,” said Klaus of the globally united environmental organizations and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It’s worth pointing out that the IPCC is not about “science”; it is about “government” as the name implies and, despite claims of scientific authority, its computer climate models and the claims based on them are held in universal disdain by the relative handful of men who understand climate or weather.

As Klaus noted, the alarmists are “not able to explain why the global temperature increased from 1918, decreased from 1940 to 1976, increased from 1976 to 1998, and decreased from 1998 to the present, irrespective of the fact that the people have been adding increasing amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.”

“It is evident that the environmentalists don’t want to change the climate. They want to change our behavior…to control and manipulate us,” said Klaus. That’s what all totalitarian regimes want to do.

Sadly, anyone watching the behavior of leading scientific organizations knows that they have thrown their prestige behind the alarmists, giving awards and honors to the likes of Al Gore and NASA’s James Hansen when it is obvious to all that both are engaged in the worst kind of hucksterism and charlatanism. Many of these organization’s members are less than thrilled by this further evidence of the politicization of science.

Great dangers do exist for Americans and others around the world for whom the Big Lie of carbon dioxide emissions is being used by the White House and in Congress to justify legislation that would impose “cap and trade” regulations and by an Environmental Protection Agency that is poised to regulate CO₂ as a “pollutant” under auspices of the Clean Air Act. It is a massive fraud.

It will prove enormously costly to every kind of business and industry in America . It has the potential of undermining the economy to a point where we shall never be able to recover from the present financial crisis.

All this was on the minds of those attending the conference. It should be on your mind, too, and it is why you have to ask your elected representatives and senators, “Why do you want to raise my energy prices?” That’s the ultimate punishment every American will bear because regulation of CO₂ is about energy use of every description.

Why do you want to raise my energy prices? If they tell you it’s because of global warming, tell them you will not vote for them and in 2010, vote them out of office!

Compared to the thousands of environmentalists running about issuing notices of doom, a gathering of 800 men and women from around the world may not seem like much, but they have something beyond value on their side; the truth!

­­___________

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.

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An article by Alex Morales reports that an error in satellite sensors has led climate scientists to greatly underestimate the amount of Arctic sea ice by an area the size of California. This is yet another of a series of recent discoveries regarding faulty data which adds to the mountain of evidence disputing the ill-conceived and politicized theory of anthropogenic global warming. Although manmade global warming alarmists are still not giving up in trying to rescue their pet theory, empirical reality continues to elude their preconceived mental framework.  As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, “All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green!” Or, more appropriately for the situation, the glaciers of the Arctic spring ever white!

In any good natural science, when the data contradict the theory, the theory must be rejected. It is time for the dubious theory of anthropogenic global warming to be consigned to the dustbin of failed ideas.

Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II

A highly laudable new invention will likely soon be adopted by the British military. It is d30, a gel that hardens immediately when it experiences a high-energy impact, such as the one created by a moving bullet. Thomas Harding’s article, “Military to use new gel that stops bullets,” describes this innovative new way of protecting the lives of soldiers in combat. Moreover, this gel is expected to be applied to many sporting goods as well to reduce the likelihood of injury due to an accident in such diverse pursuits as horseback riding, ballet, skiing, and hockey. The d30 gel is yet another triumph of human chemistry knowledge and engineering. It promises to make our lives safer and even to soften some of the devastating impact of wars. Perhaps civilians during wartime could also be outfitted with clothes containing this gel in order to minimize “collateral damage.” Humanitarian organizations could distribute such clothes to areas that are at risk of being subject to armed conflict.

Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II

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Sick, Irresponsible CSR

Paul Driessen

Issue CLXXXVIII - March 3, 2009

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“Corporate social responsibility” doctrine says companies must act ethically and further the well-being of society – not merely seek to improve market shares and bottom lines.

Ethical behavior is an essential element of business and capitalism. Companies that violate laws and societal norms are eventually found out – and punished – by courts and consumers.

But this raises an often overlooked question that all CSR advocates should ask:

Shouldn’t society demand that every corporation chartered under its aegis (for-profit and not-for-profit alike) will promote societal well-being? Shouldn’t charities, government agencies, legislatures and activist groups be held to the same CSR standards as profit-based industries?

By any rational standard, preventing dangerous diseases promotes societal well-being – and actions that perpetuate disease contravene basic CSR principles.

A century ago, Dr. William Gorgas eradicated yellow fever and dramatically reduced malaria in Panama. He eliminated or poured kerosene on standing water, to prevent malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquitoes from laying eggs and larvae from developing; fumigated areas infested with adult mosquitoes; and used nets to isolate infected patients and prevent them from being bitten and spreading the disease.

But today malaria still infects 500 million people a year, leaving them unable to work for weeks, rendering many permanently brain-damaged, and killing over a million parents and children.

And yet, politicians, foundations, activists, and bureaucrats continue to promote false solutions. If accepted CSR standards were applied to them, many would be bankrupt, ostracized, or imprisoned.

The United Nations, Al Gore, Senator Barbara Boxer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Obama, and others claim malaria is spreading due to global warming. The UN even pays African officials to host conferences that promote this party line.

The assertion boosts their anti-hydrocarbon agendas. It also shifts the blame and limited resources away from real solutions to pricey, politically correct schemes that actually perpetuate disease and death.

Malaria was prevalent in Virginia, Ohio, California, the Netherlands and beyond, until DDT helped eradicate it. The disease killed 600,000 people in Siberia during the 1920s and 1930s. Obviously malaria’s presence and geographical distribution are not defined by temperature alone.

Informed, comprehensive control measures reduce or eliminate malaria, note infectious disease experts Paul Reiter and Donald Roberts, even in tropical areas. When we let nature take its course, or apply partial or politically correct solutions, malaria spreads and people die.

With funding from San Francisco’s Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) helps nature take its course, by battling insecticide and DDT use. Their tunnel-visioned actions might protect the world’s most impoverished, disease-ridden people from minor speculative risks associated with insecticides – but they do so by imposing massive, immediate, life-threatening risks from diseases the insecticides could prevent.

The Gates Foundation supports fascinating research on anti-malaria vaccines and mosquitoes genetically engineered to be unable to carry malaria parasites. The work may pay off big time in a decade or two – assuming we can vaccinate 2 billion people who are at risk from getting malaria, or replace trillions of Anopheles mosquitoes with biotech varieties. But meanwhile, every year, a half billion people will become too sick to work, and a million will die, from a readily preventable disease.

“Nothing but nets” is a catchy basketball slogan, but a lousy disease prevention strategy. Bed net campaigns promise a few dollars will save a life, but actual malaria reductions are closer to 20-30% when recipients use their nets every night, no matter how sweltering it gets in their non-air-conditioned homes.

Truly comprehensive programs can slash malaria disease and death rates by 90% or even eradicate it completely. How is it ethical to promote anything less?

Yet, far too many companies, even ExxonMobil, are reluctant to use or promote DDT, for fear of being attacked by PAN and its ilk. And some well-meaning innovators promote even more far-fetched “solutions,” like giant mosquito vacuums – for villages that don’t even have electricity.

These inadequate prevention strategies put the onus on often primitive clinics, overworked doctors, and scarce, overused drugs to stop malaria. New Artemisia-based combination therapies (ACTs) have been a godsend, especially in Africa, where chloroquine is no longer effective.

But the more heavily they are used – because prevention efforts are constricted and misdirected – the sooner it is likely that malaria parasites will become resistant to ACT drugs. That likelihood is increased by companies like Erica in India that still distribute oral artemisinin mono-therapy tablets, which are more likely to result in resistant strains of malaria. Worse, increasing numbers of malaria medications distributed in Africa and elsewhere are substandard or even counterfeit knockoffs.

And too many governments of malaria-ridden countries do a horrendous job of safeguarding their people against these unscrupulous practices.

Malaria victims can ill afford such sick, fraudulent, irresponsible “social responsibility.” Human rights, and human lives, are at stake.

The world has limited money, especially amid this global recession. African nations are particularly destitute. Funds and resources need to be applied wisely, effectively, and ethically.

First, we must do no harm – by focusing attention on bogus causes like global warming, for instance, or restricting malaria prevention to partial solutions like bed nets and drugs. Second, we must do actual good, by slashing malaria rates NOW.

It doesn’t take rocket science – just a modern version of what Gorgas used 100 years ago. Vastly improved tools are readily available. We need to use them.

Truly comprehensive programs include DDT on walls to keep mosquitoes out of houses, bed nets to further protect children and adults, and insecticides to control mosquito populations. These steps alone can prevent 80% or more of malaria cases. But other interventions must also be employed, if infections and deaths are to be eliminated.

Health ministries and aid agencies must help ensure that doctors have modern clinics closer to more villages, can quickly determine if a patient really has malaria, and have the proper ACT drugs to treat cases. They and field personnel must maintain systems to monitor mosquito populations and disease outbreaks on a continuing basis, and feed data into computerized command centers.

Communities must become better educated about the causes and symptoms of malaria, and how to eliminate brush and mosquito breeding areas from around homes. Larvacides can be used to kill mosquito larvae. Incentives and oversight must ensure that programs are working properly.

The number of nets distributed is irrelevant. The only valid test is malaria cases and deaths prevented.
A comprehensive program is a socially responsible program. Anything less is insufficient and immoral.

­­___________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), both of which sponsor villages in Uganda and Latin America.

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What If There is No Man-Made Global Warming?

What Then?

Tom DeWeese

Issue CLXXXVIII - February 27, 2009

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           Here are some questions all Americans should ask their elected officials – especially those supporting “climate change” legislation: If it is proven that climate change is not man-made, but natural, will you be relieved and excited to know that man is off the hook? Will you now help to remove all of the draconian regulations passed during the global warming hysteria, since it was all wrong-headed and harmful to the economy and our way of life?        

            Their answers to these questions should be very illuminating as to the true agenda they seek to impose. Is their agenda really about helping to protect the environment, or is it about creating a new social and economic order, using the environment as the excuse?

            If they are supporting climate change legislation because of a genuine concern for the environment, then they should now be greatly relieved to know that true science is showing more and more evidence that there is no man-made global warming, and in fact, a natural cooling period has begun.

            Last year, 52 scientists authored a much hyped report issued by the UN’s IPCC which said global warming was man-made and getting worse. But in the past year, more than 650 scientists from around the world have now expressed their doubts about the reports findings – 12 times the number of IPCC global warming alarmists now agree it’s bunk.

            “I am a skeptic…Global Warming has become a new religion,” says Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever. “Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly…as a scientist I remain skeptical,” says Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, formerlly with NASA and called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.” Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in history… When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists,” said UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh. “It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming,” said U.S. Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Glodenberg.  Top these very few quotes with the fact that 34,000 scientists have now signed a petition saying global warming is probably natural and is not man-made.         

 Instead, they say the science shows warming actually stopped in 1999. That the brief warming period we experienced in the past decade was completely natural, caused, in part, by storms on the sun, not CO2 emissions from SUVs. The Sun storms have ended and now, a cooling period has begun. That’s it. Done. Crisis over. Man is not to blame.  

            Hurray! The nation should be rejoicing. No need for expensive green cars, mercury-filled light bulbs, special house building materials, alternative energy, no bird-killing windmills, no special energy taxes, no extra government oversight committees, no more global climate change conferences – and no need for a Climate Czar. Carol Browner can go back into mothballs. We can finally clean out the ten feet of fuel on the bottom of the forests and prevent the massive forest fires. And that will help us reestablish the timber industry and all the jobs that were killed. We can drill American oil and end our dependency on foreigners who hate us. In fact, that stable source of energy and its prices will help restore the Detroit auto industry and all of those jobs. Why, we don’t need a stimulus package – the economy will rebound on its own. We are free. The environment is not in crisis. Rejoice! Rejoice!

            That silence you hear is the news media, which refuses to report what any skeptic has to say. That silence you hear is the lack of effort on Capitol Hill to start to pull back from the climate change hysteria. That silence you hear is from the White House where President of Change Barack Obama now has an EPA director, a Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) director and a full-blown Climate Change Czar, all working to impose huge cutbacks in energy use, taxes, rules, and regulations that will bring an already damaged economy to its knees – all in the name of man-made Global Warming – which doesn’t exist. That silence you hear is from global corporations which have bought into Al Gore’s lie and invested heavily in the promised green economy. In fact, their dollars are the only thing green about any of it. Their commercials are promoting the lie and changing our way of life. None of them are about to change any of these policies, simply to accommodate a few scientific facts.

            In spite of all the facts to the contrary, in spite of literally thousands of real scientists joining the ranks of the skeptics, Gore just told Congress that the Global Warming crisis is even worse than predicted. Obama said “the science is settled.”

Why? Because global warming never was about protecting the environment. It was the excuse to enforce global governance on the planet, by creating a new global economy based on the environment rather than on goods and services. In short, it’s all about wealth redistribution — your wealth into a green rat-hole.  We used to call it communism. Now we call it environmentalism. It sounds so friendly, so meaningful, so urgent. The devastation is the same.

So, go ahead. Ask your elected representatives how they would react to the fact that global warming is not real. Are they happy and relieved, or do they continue to promote the same insanity called Climate Change? Their answers will tell you their true agenda. 

­­___________

Tom DeWeese is the President of the American Policy Center and the Editor of The DeWeese Report. The DeWeese Report is now available online, for more information click here.

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Darwin at 200: A Liberator

Edward Hudgins

Issue CLXXXVII - February 20, 2009

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Of the two famous men born on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln is the one commonly known as a political liberator.

But the other man, Charles Darwin, also deserves recognition on the bicentennial of his birth for his own form of Emancipation Proclamation.

Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859 and set forth the thesis that the various kinds of living organisms were not fixed and eternal but, rather, evolved from other, often less complex organisms over millions of years. In the century and a half that followed, this discovery has had a truly liberating effect on humanity.

We Want to Know

Understanding evolution has helped us satisfy that quintessential human longing expressed by Aristotle: “All men, by nature, desire to know.” As self-conscious beings, we have a thirst to know the deepest truths about the world around us, its origin and ours, and our place in it. We are pattern-seeking animals who delight in discovery. Such understanding and, indeed, our very survival require us to exercise our rational capacity, the attribute that most distinguishes us from the lower life forms from which we evolved.

Observations, conceptual thinking, and critical analysis have, over the centuries, allowed us to replace primitive superstitions with knowledge of objective reality. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein have helped us understand the physical realm: that it operates with regularity in accordance with causal laws; that it is composed of infinitesimal atoms; that it is vast and includes planets, stars and galaxies; that it is billions of years old. And, of course, knowledge gained through this rational approach allows us to create all of the technologies needed for our survival and flourishing.

Darwin helped us understand the biological realm. He showed how small variations that naturally occur in living species plus the laws of natural selection in changing environments over long periods of time have produced the diverse plethora of living creatures on this planet. His discoveries explained the fossils of extinct life forms and of the ancestors of creatures living today, including humans, that are found in the strata of rocks dating back millions of years. Darwin’s discoveries were yet another demonstration of the power of the human mind, discoveries that were subsequently confirmed by findings in many other scientific disciplines.

The knowledge of our evolutionary origins helps us to understand how we might act better for our own survival and well-being. For example, scientists in evolutionary biology and psychology today are exploring the nature of our brains: how they came about; how our form of cognition emerged in them; how they operate; how we might better treat brain-based physical and mental impairments; and how we might better exercise the self-control needed for our flourishing.

Understanding our evolutionary origins does not diminish us. Rather, it enables us to marvel at the fact that our minds emerged from nature and then to turn our minds back on nature in order to understand just how our minds emerged.

Shunning Our Higher Nature

Sadly, in the United States the facts of evolution have been politically and culturally contentious because of the disastrous religious beliefs that today go under the names “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design.” Individuals, mostly on the conservative side of the political spectrum, often twist their own minds in tortuous ways unworthy of intelligent creatures in order to reject discoveries built up through rigorous observation and critical examination in favor of a Biblical fiction they just can’t seem to give up.

Many of these “true believers” have created a cottage industry to promote the culture of ignorance necessary to support their cult beliefs. Witness their terrible waste of time, energy and, yes, human intelligence, over the past century. In the 1925 Scopes Trial these believers sought to uphold a ban on teaching evolution in schools. Today these believers try to force schools to teach Creationism and Intelligent Design as if they were approaches to understanding human origins that are just as valid as a critical, scientific approach. Observe the pointless passions in favor of the false. And consider the corrosive effects of such campaigns against modernity in a culture in desperate need of clear thinking.

Politically conservative Creationists often denounce those on the political left who reject evidence and blind themselves to the consequences of many of their statist policies. Yet such conservatives are guilty of the same willful epistemological crime in their own corner of the culture.

Darwin and a Free Society

There’s an irony here because of a growing recognition today that Darwin’s understanding of the mechanism of evolution supports many of the views of political conservatives who often reject evolution.

Darwin and his successors showed how order and complexity in biology do not require a grand designer. Genetic changes in organisms and natural selection are all that’s necessary. Similarly, free-market economists like F.A. Hayek, building on insights of conservative political thinkers like Edmund Burke, have shown how order and complexity in the economy and society do not require a grand government designer. With minimalist laws protecting life, liberty and property, individuals pursuing their own self-interest will also produce peace and unprecedented prosperity. By contrast, government direction produces conflict and hampers the creation of wealth.

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine and author of The Mind of the Market, rightly tells free-market conservatives that they should appreciate how understanding evolution boosts their case for liberty: Darwin is truly a liberator! And Shermer tells those on the political left who usually embrace discoveries of science such as evolution that they need to appreciate the implications of evolution for their own pet theories about government-run economies.

Morality from Human Nature

Some individuals still reject the facts about evolution out of an unanalyzed fear that, if they could articulate it, would amount to “How can humans have a morality if we evolved from lower animals? Doesn’t this fact mean that anything goes?”

A fear, of course, can’t negate facts. But in any case, the fear is unfounded. Just as an explanation of our biological origins does not need to rely on myths and alleged divine revelations, neither does morality. Indeed, the origins of morality are found in our nature as rational creatures with free choice who must understand the world around us and within us and develop principles to guide our conduct – morality – in order to survive and flourish.

Darwin was one of the most revolutionary and right thinkers in human history, up there with Newton and Einstein in terms of the implications of his discoveries. When we say that he has liberated us from the slavery of ignorance and freed us to see the truth, we speak by analogy but no less truthfully. So let us celebrate the birth two hundred years ago of a liberator who did so much for humanity.

­­___________

Hudgins is director of advocacy and a senior scholar at The Atlas Society.

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