Truth with doth

Doth is a funny word. Although we have a number of words ending in 'th' (and truth is one of them) the word doth is far from the most common, though it is a key part of the memorable phrase: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Methinks then I am indebted to Shakespeare for coming up with that one and giving it to Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, because it encapsulates not just what a lady might do, but the whole of humankind. In particular, I am thinking here of our old friend, AGW.

Recently a ship of excitable people set sail in a vessel named "An Inconvenient Truth" to follow in the footsteps of an Antarctic explorer. These people weren't however historians, but people convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that that their theories that there would be no ice in Antarctica in summer were beyond reproach. As the science of Anthropological Global Warming was so emphatically settled several years ago, what could go wrong?

What went wrong was a lot more ice than they anticipated. But what was wrong before they set off was being trapped in their AGW mindset. Having been seduced by an idea that increasingly looks ridiculous. A bit like a ship hemmed in by ice, if you like.

I do think there will come a day when people will look back at this AGW farce and wonder how such a delusion gripped so many people when all the signs pointed to a reality that didn't match the wild posturing. A modern, frantic South Sea Bubble that engulfed some if not all of us.

Now before you start screaming I am a terrible example of the monstrosity known as a climate change denier, I'd like to point out that I do believe in climate change. Happens all the time. Has happened throughout history, will happen for aeons to come too. I expect it will continue until the sun goes supernova and the planet gets fried into a whole new climate change.

I just don't believe it is all the fault of human beings. Nature is vast and complex and there are factors at play we can't really comprehend from such a limited viewpoint. Humans don't always have a huge breadth of vision, but while we do have some breadth we ought to resist thinking the experiences of a limited time span while we are keeping records (which may or may not be accurate) somehow constitute all of life.

Oh, sure, as a species we humans are wasteful. No question about that. Of course we exploit resources and haven't always considered the impact of mining and drilling and reshaping river flows. To some degree we spoil and are slow to repair. On the other hand we are not as powerful as we may think. Good old mother Nature can concoct forces a thousand times more powerful and earth-changing than anything we can manufacture.

Our wonderful planet can throw us off in the cosmic blink of an eye, and the sun can do whatever it likes whenever the mood takes it because we have absolutely no influence on this small star on the outer fringe of our galaxy.

But it is a vanity that we humans are such an important element in this planet's life. Our little globe of rock and iron and water has been around for a whole lot longer than us and may well outlive us all, but the belief we are responsible for everything that happens from now on is just silly. More than that, the idea we know everything there is to know about everything is beyond ridicule. Frankly, we have just scratched the surface.

Yet our capacity for self-delusion never abates: we think if we believe something it must be true. Further, we think if we shout louder and louder then wisdom and agreement will follow, and better still follow with generous gratitude. Protesting loudly doth do the job.

Six or seven years ago the largely self-appointed 'experts' screamed that the "science was settled" as regards AGW. There was no point in discussing it or examining it because we only had four more years to save the world (even if the world will blissfully go on spinning round a moody sun whether we are here or not) and we were doomed by the fact we made lightbulbs without clear glass, or something.

But the lady was protesting too much. She was howling, and she was purple in the face with rage about how bad we were, how we were killing the planet. There was no time to think, no time to examine. Hurry up and hurry up along the only road we can see. The science was supposedly settled and there was no time left to look and certainly no reason to apply brain.

Worst of all, the main stream media rushed to join in with all this screaming, but then as bad news is far more interesting than good news I suppose it was inevitable. The MSM loved AGW and we who asked "Is this really true?" could all just STFU.

One thing we can be sure about though is it's not over until the fat lady sings, however much she doth protest beforehand. Ain't that the truth?