But today the New York Times has an article on the subject: “Climate Fight is Heating Up in Deep Freeze“. While justifiable, I suppose, as “news” to report on, the arguments it presents are inane.

The idea that a large snow storm disproves global warming is argument from example at its best. It’s comparable to stating that because one large company failed capitalism has been proven wrong. All hail Marx and the socialist revolution!

Beyond this shameless argument from example, there are several things to note about this “debate”:

• Virtually everyone the Times quotes on the anti-global warming side is a politician (usually with an ideological opposition to the idea).* Nearly everyone quoted on the pro-global warming side is a scientist (who has actually studied the subject). There might not be any bias here, but I’ll leave that up to you.
• If you must look at one month in time as evidence for global warming, at least look at the whole world. While temperatures in North America and Europe may have been cooler than normal, the rest of the world is warmer. Not that it means too much, as what we really should be looking at are long term trends. It’s just a shame that the cold weather happens to occur where the highest percentage of skeptics exist.
• And most ironically, the specific examples cited—snow storms—are in line with global warming predictions. Not these, or any particular, snow storms, of course. But the general trend of increasingly powerful weather activity. The Times helpfully mentions this at the very end of the article:

“However,” he continued, “one can ‘load the dice’ in favor of events that used to be rare — or unheard of — if the climate is changing to a new state.”

A federal government report issued last year, intended to be the authoritative statement of known climate trends in the United States, pointed to the likelihood of more frequent snowstorms in the Northeast and less frequent snow in the South and Southeast as a result of long-term temperature and precipitation patterns.

Protestants are convinced that the Catholic church is in error.  Americans are convinced that Muslims are violent.  Republicans are convinced that Democrats know nothing.  Democrats are convinced that Republicans know nothing.  Atheists are convinced that there is no God.  Christians are convinced that evolution is ridiculous.

The problem, as I see it, seems to lie in the fact that

1. We can’t all be right.
2. There are very smart people advocating most major positions.

It’s hard for me to get past the difficulty that this presents.  In fact, I think it’s hard for most people to get past this difficulty, which leads to a set of rationalizing behaviors which tend to only make the situation worse.  There are several possible forms these take:

First is denying the first statement of the dilemma .  This is a particularly weak solution, as the fact remains that in many situations there are only two possible options.  There was evolution, or there wasn’t.  God is or isn’t.  Both cannot be true at the same time.  (At least, not that I know of.  Philosophers feel free to correct me.)

The second solution is to admit that we may be wrong.  Humans do not like to do this.  In fact, humans will go so far as to do damage to their material wealth before admitting they are wrong.  Such stubbornness renders this option particularly unappealing.

The third, and by far the most common, option is to deny the second statement of the dilemma.  Obviously other people are not “very smart” if they do not hold the same positions we do.  It is far easier to deny the intelligence of other people than to admit that we may be wrong ourselves (and even unintelligent sometimes).

This has led to a disturbing rise of ideologues in our society, especially within pop culture.  Take politics, for example.  The Conservatives seem to dominate in the traditional media, with such inspired models as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Ann Coulter.  The Liberals, on the other hand, are to be found on the internet, with the likes of the Huffington Post, Digg, and Reddit.  While the medium may be different, the style is the same: dismissing opponents as unintellegent or uneducated, refusal to acknowledge alternative viewpoints, and a desire for attention.

Sadly our culture seems to buy into this.  People love to watch ideologues, to glory in their self-righteous destruction of all that is so evidently false.  They repeat the talking points they learn from the TV shows or the internet, with little research or thought of their own.  Ask most ardent creationists why evolution is wrong and the response won’t have anything to do with science.  Or ask most Liberals why we should hate big business, and you won’t hear any nuanced response acknowledging the usefulness of market oriented corporations.

I fall into this pattern of thinking more often than I care to admit.  Too frequently I dismiss someone else as hopeless because they don’t agree with me.  “But it’s so obvious,” I think to myself, “why can’t they just understand?”  At this point I am saved from either offending someone or making a fool of myself only by a resolution I came to a number of years ago.

When I first arrived at college I was somewhat taken aback by the number of arguments I witnessed in which neither party seemed to have a full grasp of the issue at hand.  Too often people stuck to their own position without listening to the other person’s arguments.  It reminded me of something my brother told me when I was a freshman in high school: “If you’ll just shut up and listen, you’ll learn a lot more.”  Thus I subconsciously resolved not to become involved in an argument until I felt that I could make an excellent case for my opinions.

Of course, I have been less than perfect in staying out of arguments.  It’s far too easy to fall into them, as you probably know.  Yet perhaps we should all stop and think a while before becoming too convinced of our own position on an issue.  Are there otherwise intelligent people who take an opposite view from us?  Have we actually read and researched enough to consider ourselves knowledgeable?  Are we prepared to be wrong?  Unless we can answer yes to all three, and especially to the last, maybe we’re a little more convinced of our position than is good for us.

It is a well known phenomenon of human life—a phenomenon which, I think, appears even more conspicuously among the educated than among the uneducated—that in a discussion with those who have a different point of view, different modes of thinking or different aims, we are much more concerned with saying something ourselves and with using the concessions of our opponents or their manifest errors in support of what we have said than we are with listening seriously to what they have to say. And this attitude persists even when the subject of a conference happens to be man’s duty to his neighbour or the like.

In other words, we are much more anxious to assume and maintain for ourselves the position of the examiner, questioning others–the position commonly described since the time of Socrates as that of the expert midwife of knowledge. We prefer, that is, to take a position recognized as superior rather than to allow ourselves to be questioned and cross-questioned by the other side and so to stand in the less honourable position of pupil.

What is the real purpose of listening to a lecture? Of entering a discussion? Of reading specific books? Of writing specific reviews? Why will a man debate with another man? In almost every case the chief effect is the reinforcement of his own consciousness of being a little Socrates. He has now become more fully conscious of his superiority; and it is a question whether the real, though hidden, purpose of our activity was not to achieve this result. This attitude seems related to the great law of the struggle for existence, to which obviously we as the higher or the highest form of life are subject, along with lower forms.

But a relative rightness in this attitude even at higher levels cannot be denied for that reason. Wherever two men meet each other, with no exceptions, each of them is both the questioner and the questioned, both the expert and the ignorant. No human ‘Thou’ can legitimately claim that we ought to let him with his questions devour us with our questions. Actually we cannot let ourselves be questioned and cross-questioned without also putting questions ourselves.

Furthermore, who knows in a concrete case whether I am not fully justified in taking the position of expert and midwife in relation to the other man? Just who does know? Who has the authority to decide in such a situation? If that position is really ours, then it becomes so in the impact of the event itself, so that we ourselves can only be astonished at it, and can claim for ourselves no more than this relative right to it. And precisely when for the moment the possibility of our superiority does appear justified, even with this relative right on our side, we must in every case move cautiously. We must put our questions without misinterpreting the incidental and momentary nature of our superiority (which does not lie within our own power), and therefore not without conceding a similar possibility to the other man; not without recognizing that we also are questioned by him; not without ‘fear and trembling’; finally, not without granting precedence to the questions of the other.

For to us has been said, ‘But it shall not be so among you’ (Matt. 20.26). ‘So‘, as it obviously is in the struggle for existence, where one’s own question inevitably takes precedence over the question of the other. Needless to say, this happens continually; but we can neither desire nor deem it good. For to us has been said, ‘Be ye not called Rabbi . . . nor father . . . nor master’ (Matt. 23.8-10). It might well happen that the moment of superiority would clothe us in that dignity to our astonishment and embarrassment.

But if we assume such dignity of ourselves, the consequence is certain to be an experience of the opposite. Therefore, ‘When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee’ (Luke 14.8-10). He who is assured of the absolute justification of his position in relation to another, at once allows himself to be questioned and cross-questioned without being less certain of his own stand.

While Barth spoke of the Protestant-Catholic divide, the concept expressed is not limited to that issue alone. What can we learn from those we argue against today? What questions do Democratic ideals pose to Republicans, or vice versa? What question does Islam pose to Christianity? What question do fundamentals pose to activists? In approaching all such issues, we should heed Barth’s reminder to come humbly and with a willingness to learn from the other side.