WHAT YOU KNOW FOR SURE
Saturday, November 20, 2021
There are no guarantees of anything – no sure thing, no absolute, no ability to rely on anything.
That’s a harsh cynical view.
We start life as innocent children who believe in all things authoritative figures tell us.
And then, one by one, many things we are taught to accept fall by the wayside – from Santa Claus to Easter Bunny, to tooth fairy, infallibility of our parents and sports heroes, etc.
Also harsh is the view that the only things certain in life are death and taxes. Along the way, in life, we find things we learned in school weren’t true or get falsely distorted by government views that ‘corrected history’ with as much truth in them as the latest conspiracy theories or vax-argue-it-folk.
What do I know for sure?
What I believe might be best described as confidently believed, and prefer not to trade in absolutes or inflexible positions …
For example, is the climate changing?
I’m confident of that. Science has proven it always has without regard to which species roam the earth.
Different from that, but woven into this discussion, is whether the planet is warming – and the further question of who/what has caused it? The answer is yes, as science has proven it always has, through periods of warming and cooling.
We agree that humans have made a mess of many things, and consensus on ‘we aren’t moving fast enough to change/clean it up as we ought to be doing’ …
I’m confident we are doing a lot and share in the consensus that many countries and industries aren’t doing enough or doing it fast enough for our liking, but whether we are on a disastrously irreversible course is harder to wrap our arms around.
Consider the eclipse last night; first of its kind in 581 years. Experts plot these things on very sophisticated computers; it won’t happen again for more than another 500 years. (Feb. 8, 2669 to be precise, so mark your calendar!)
Science is more right on things than wrong – until science disproves what it previously thought to be true, and this continues. How many drugs were supposed to be wonder drugs until they were proven to be disastrous? How many innovations that ‘could never be done’ became commonplace once the next innovation replaces it?
To counter the disparity between eliminating fossil fuels before enough sustainable replacement forms of energy can be developed and implemented, the current buzz has us talking helium and hydrogen. So far, serious science is proving its case. We’ll see …
Or, is it hot air to distract while other innovations catch up?
I live in the fossil fuels capital of Canada, and like most of my fellow citizens – I’ve not rushed off to live in a tenant in my electric car, to eat only organic and never use another plastic bag, plastic container, or only buy recyclable bio-degradable products. I live in a building run on electricity generated from burning fossil fuels – made of concrete, steel, lumber, gypsum drywall, paint, carpet, wires and pipes. I prefer it to a tent.
But science deals with nature and technology on earth and beyond.
What science cannot measure or predict very well is that billions of people can do or fail to do.
Death might be inevitable – and some people tell me it’s certain for everyone.
I’m not yet convinced …
I am convinced; people surprise us all the time – the actions of many individuals are not the same, but when many individuals do similar things in a similar time frame, it seems we are witnessing a movement that we are witnessing change. Oddly, science can predict to the day and minute when an eclipse will happen more than 500 years into the future but cannot predict what will happen next week or next year on earth with certainty.
No sure thing, no absolute, no ability to rely on anything.
There are no guarantees of anything.
So, what do you know for sure?
P.S.: I love this old Mark Twain quote:
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
– this quote is also widely to attributed to Josh Billings, Artemus Ward, Kin Hubbard and Will Rogers. It seems they all agree with these words and have repeated them often …
P.P.S.: to my vax-skeptic readers, this P.S. is not written with you in mind particularly, but if the shoe or the mask of denial fits …