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The New Inquisition

January 30, 2006
by Howard V. Hendrix

Nearly four hundred years ago, Galileo Galilei published a little book called The Starry Messenger. In that book, he (among other things) reaffirmed the claim earlier made by Copernicus that the sun, planets, and stars do not revolve around the Earth, but rather that the Earth rotates on its axis and, along with the other planets, revolves around the sun.

Copernicus had wisely seen to it that his manuscript proclaiming such a revolutionary idea would be published after his death, but Galileo was rash enough to publish such a dangerous notion while he was still very much alive. For such rashness he caught no end of flack. The Church put his books on the Index Prohibitorum, he was essentially placed under house arrest, and he was called up before the Inquisition and forced to recant his premise that "the Earth moved."

One can almost sympathize with the Inquisitors. After all, it seemed so much more common-sensical that the Earth should be standing still at the center of things, with everything else spinning around us. Doesn't our language even now say "sunrise" and "sunset"? Who would want to complicate things by pointing out that the sun does not actually rise or actually set, but that all that is simply an illusion generated by the fact that the Earth turns?

Being at the center of everything is also quite appealing to the human ego. If my species is made up of the smartest beings on the world which sits at the very center of the universe, then we must be all that much closer to God and the angels, right? Throw in the fact that the Church had long since adopted the geocentric "sunrise/sunset" Ptolemaic cosmology—in addition having linked that all up to the Great Chain of Being and the place of humanity in the universe—and hey, presto! The Ptolemaic system is the product of the divine mind itself. . . .

Only one problem: as comfortable and comforting as the old geocentric orthodoxy was, the fact remains that it was and is wrong.

Fast-forward to 2006 and we learn that another scientist, NASA's top climate guy, James Hansen, is being muzzled by the New Inquisitors—the ones from the Executive Branch.

As the 1/29/06 London Observer put it, "The American space programme's leading climate scientist has accused the White House of trying to gag him after he called last month for urgent cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. James Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is reported in today's New York Times as saying that officials at Nasa headquarters ordered staff to review his forthcoming lectures, papers and media interviews. He said he intended to ignore the restrictions."

Hansen is a sixty-three year old physicist. Employed by NASA since 1967, he is in charge of efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in Manhattan. I've been mentioning global warming in my fiction since 1988, the same length of time Hansen "has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat of emissions from burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels."

Hmm. Hansen's not so very young. Maybe, like Copernicus, he should have seen to it that his global warming results wouldn't be published until after he died—or at least until after he retired?

But no—like Galileo, he had to go and upset the order of things.

Again, one can almost sympathize with the New Inquisitors. It's so much more comfortable and comforting to deny that global warming is a problem. To bugger the science and claim rather that it's a "long baseline" problem or that "the jury's still out" on the effect of human activities on the climate. So much easier to deny any need for the US to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol. To deny that our economy or the way we live our lives might be precipitating climate effects that will be disastrous—not only for those peripheral "other species" on the planet, but also our oh-so-central selves.

Only one problem: as comfortable and as comforting as the old petrotechnic orthodoxy may be, the fact remains that human activity is in fact having severe deleterious effects on the very climate that human beings evolved within. Denying global warming doesn't make the idea of global warming wrong, and it certainly doesn't make the reality of global warming go away.

And for what sin has Hansen and his work been brought before the New Inquisition? According to the Observer, Hansen told the New York Times that "nothing in his career had equalled the pressure that has been brought on him since December. 'He's not trying to create a war over this,' said Larry Travis, Hansen's deputy, 'but [he] feels very strongly that this is an obligation we have as federal scientists - to inform the public.'"

Ah, there's the real sin. A public servant informing the public. Someone daring to speak truth to power. Hansen has had the temerity to suggest that we are making of the Earth a different planet than the one we have grown to know and love—and within whose parameters we evolved.

Then again, that would suggest we evolved, when we all know it's so much more comforting and comfortable to believe that God created us through an act of "special creation." So that we might be fruitful. Multiply. Have dominion over the Earth and subdue it.

We all know that the only way we can save the world is to destroy it —truth be damned.

Spears of God

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