Science! 'Stay Calm,' End of the World Still Coming

Stay calm. Just because Republicans took control over the Senate, doesn’t mean Global Warming is any less true than before.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) November 7, 2014

Huh; I don’t recall people wearing sandwich boards promising the end of the world* ever advising people to “stay calm” during the apocalypse until now.

But then, “Science” works in mysterious, mystical, talismanic ways, as Mollie Hemingway writes in the Federalist today.

In recent news coverage of the Ebola virus, I noticed that reporters tended to use the word “science” the way some people refer to Jesus. I myself am a fan of both Jesus and science, but I’m referring to the way some people use the terms more as jargon or verbal talisman than as anything meaningful or instructive.

Take this Frank Bruni column. (Please!) OK, let’s all go through it together. It’s headlined “Sinners, Meet Jesus,” no, wait, it’s “Republicans, Meet Science.”

It begins with his frustration that yet another passionate warning from the UN about climate weirding failed to yield a worldwide turn toward progressive policies. The phrase “science” is used 11 times in the typically painful-to-read column. What I notice about the uses is how well they could be switched out with Jesus with little or no changes to the surrounding words.

He writes, “Come January, they will take control of the Senate. However else they use it, I fervently hope that they start to show more respect for science.” Do you not have an Uncle Frank or someone else in your life who would utter that same phrase except he might say people need to start showing more respect for Jesus?

Bruni trusts the claims that global weirding will yield food shortages and climate so drastically altered that people won’t be able to work or play outside. It’s almost like a vision of Hades that you would hear from an enthusiastic Sunday School teacher.

As Cab Calloway told Jake and Elwood, “You boys could use a little churching up.” The Church of…Science!

Incidentally, NDT may need to remind his flock to “stay calm” many times over the next two years. Many times.

* Start here and just keep scrolling for some of global warming / cooling / climate change’s greatest “final countdowns.”