George Will and the geological fallacy
The geological fallacy is that Earth always recovers—our own existence proves it—and thus environmental insults should be discounted. Will's example was the American "Dust Bowl" catastrophe of the 1930s, a combination of drought and market-driven excesses in farm practices. But Earth helps those who help themselves and eventually, he says, "rain fell on the convulsed land and on the tenacious people who never left it, and the government devised soil conservation measures. The Earth turned out to be more durable, and the people who wrested their livings from the earth more resilient, than had been thought." Will's weasel-word "eventually" glosses over all the the Dust Bowl's harm—three generations of misery, soil erosion, displacement and precarious recovery in the dry Midwest—that was avoidable. And in fact America's breadbasket is still at risk due to groundwater depletion and monoculture- and chemical-dependent agriculture. We have no guarantee that nature will help us out.
The geological fallacy is something that even geologists fall into; I get e-mail from them telling me that global warming is nothing to worry about because over millions of years the whole thing doesn't matter. The geological truth is that all situations can be undone. The rains will return to the Sahara Desert one day, but humans can't count on it. The geological truth is that civilization can endure and be sustainable only within the capacities of the land.
Comments
Yes, indeed. As I tell my science students, of course the world will continue. It existed for 4.5 billion years before us, and can easily last for another 4.5 billion years after we’ve become extinct.
While I agree with your comments concerning man’s capability to negatively impact the planet I don’t take every dire climate change prediction to heart. The climatologist are using models (like all models of nature) which are incapable of truly tracking the complexities of the climatic characteristics of the planet. These same scientist plug in and unplug whatever variables they wish into the models often with little supporting evidence. Too often I read articles from these “scientists” predicting dire consequences from any and every aspect of nature should the temperature rise worldwide. One has to question whether true science is being done when working with models that can vary so significantly when such minor changes are made with the variables or are the investigators just looking for kudos in their head-long rush to secure more funding? There does not seem to be a true scientific discourse between scientists concerning the validity of the data or the models. I have to wonder if there is not a censoring of thought from opposing points of view as this topic becomes more and more politicized. Climate change is a serious issue but I have seen but one side of the story and can not after all my 30 years as a geologist believe that someone else does not have another point of view.
Thanks, Gregg. I don’t take the modeling predictions to heart either. I want a hundred more of them before I would take them seriously, even though the future is scary on its face. I’m just tired of people saying “Oh, Earth will survive, look at the Carboniferous.” Somehow the consequence never seems to sink in: Earth will survive, but will we? George Will says, count on human gumption. I say, survival means more than just gutting things out. We have to foresee, plan and prepare. And the entirely hypothetical greed of climatologists, becoming millionaires on NSF money, is a false issue here.