The Conservative at the Science Fair

How can two teenage girls use two fishbowls and a heat lamp to undermine Western civilization and biblical authority? Read on.

I was at a regional science fair for kids in grades five through nine. My appointed task at the science fair was over, so I went milling about the exhibits. My attention was soon drawn to a large angry man who was giving two girls a hard time. Their project involved two fish bowls, each 1/4 filled with water and containing real and fake plants. They had filled one bowl with air, the other with carbon dioxide, and sealed it over. Then they had placed the bowls in the presence of heat lamps. Guess what? They found out that the bowl with more CO2 in its ambient got hotter!

The man was giving them a political lecture. He was making some kind of reference to the IPCC's findings on global climate change. What I remember him saying is: "If they had known they were signing a document that said human activity had an effect on the climate, they wouldn't have signed on." Which I believe to be an overly political and inaccurate reading of the findings.

He then said, "Do you know who pollutes the most? It is the United States, and it is only because we are producing more. Once you starting making more things, you produce more emissions." This by the way is a lie, according to data provided by United Nations Statistics Division in this Wikipedia article. The United States produces only US$2110 per metric ton of emission, whereas the northern European countries-- those whom you'd imagine have higher heating costs-- beat us by a factor of 2. Switzerland earns US$9400 of of that ton of emission. That this guy would start lecturing the girls with inaccurate political slogans got my goat. I later went up to them and said, "They laughed at Galileo."

The young ladies were not advancing any political agenda, just looking at the heat-trapping ability of CO2. Perhaps their finding also provides information on how one's lifestyle can have an effect on the well-being of others, and that is the message that upsets Carnal Man. Just as you have to tell Cub Scouts not to throw rocks over a hill on a hike in the woods, so too must we take correction from our neighbors on our lifestyle, and that upsets Carnal Man.

Now what exactly does Western Civilization and biblical authority have to do with the fish tank? Nothing! And that's the problem with the neoconservative position. You can hold that a libertarian approach to regulation and private property are a good thing, you can hold to the ideal that the bible is a reliable and authoritative Testament from the creator of the universe, without having any necessary justification for what ends up getting called "conservative". The life and witness of so many conservatives on so many basic moral issues, however, portrays freedom & Godliness as if they were bad things.

Data from wikipedia article, "List of countries by ratio of GDP to carbon dioxide emissions".

Rank	Country	GDP (in millions of US Dollars)	CO2 emissions (in thousands of metric tons)	GDP per Emissions (in thousands of US Dollars per metric ton)
1	Switzerland	384642	40854	9.415
2	Sweden	383816	51901	7.395
3	Iceland	15388	2215	6.947
4	France	2216273	378267	5.859
5	Denmark	265934	47620	5.585
6	Belgium	387840	70592	5.494
7	Norway	285604	55461	5.150
8	Austria	318343	63701	4.997
9	Hong Kong	172932	35438	4.880
10	Republic of Ireland	206467	43187	4.781
11	Cameroon	15742	3464	4.544
12	Italy	1836407	433018	4.241
13	United Kingdom	2295039	543633	4.222
14	Japan	4799061	1203535	3.987
15	Netherlands	629391	162739	3.867
	European Union	13926873	3682755	3.782
16	Luxembourg	35620	9442	3.773
17	Spain	1120312	304603	3.678
18	Germany	2906658	804701	3.612
19	Tanzania	12123	3583	3.383
20	Costa Rica	19558	5834	3.352
21	Finland	204385	62659	3.262
22	Uruguay	13116	4082	3.213
23	New Zealand	107670	33995	3.167
24	Angola	23894	7712	3.0983
25	Portugal	185091	62288	2.972
26	Sudan	25379	8762	2.896
27	Peru	72888	25498	2.859
28	El Salvador	16602	6231	2.664
29	Guatemala	26978	10302	2.619
30	Cyprus	17144	6671	2.570
31	Greece	230684	94117	2.451
32	Latvia	15387	6306	2.440
33	Kenya	16900	7212	2.343
34	Brazil	732078	313757	2.333
35	Panama	14351	6255	2.294
36	Slovenia	35106	15310	2.293
37	Sri Lanka	22351	10361	2.157
38	Canada	1098446	517157	2.124
39	United States	12438873	5872278	2.118