Chris Worfolk's Blog

I love the environment. I love the planet. I think we need to take action in order to prevent human caused climate change.

But like so many of the causes I support, I hate the people who also support it.

Of course, I don’t actually hate them. I just said that for dramatic effect. I suspect they hate me and I’ll come on to that later. It’s more that they irritate me. Much in the same way as religion they arrogant self righteous actually cause more harm than good and I feel a need to stand up against this.

So, I guess we should start at the beginning.

Global warming, human caused climate change is happening. I should say it’s almost certainly happening to be more accurate, there is always that .1% chance it isn’t, but to the best of our knowledge it is happening, it is having an adverse affect on the planet we’re living on and as we are planning to continue to live her for quite a while we should really do something about it.

But the current climate change movement isn’t helping matters. Indeed they’ve become so dug in to their beliefs that it has almost become a religion. Indeed, it has become a religion – earlier this year a belief in climate change was held up to be in need of the same protection as those afforded to religious beliefs. Of course the fact that these beliefs need such protection is the giveaway.

Much like religious stories, the ideas of the climate change movement are just so crazy and far out there it’s almost “too unbelievable to make up.” Take a minute to consider them. The planet, the whole planet, and the very future of the entire human race is at stake. It’a future rests on you. You can save it – if only you would switch off that light bulb that draws only a 1/200th of the power your kettle draws in that room you are not using.

But it’s gets far, far worse. From this very dubious idea we have an entire world view building up around it which mirrors religion – and in particular Catholicism far closer than anything ever should to the point where you would expect a scandal a decade down the line involving small children and sexual acts which should never have taken place.

It’s the concept of original sin. The idea that you’re born into the bonds of inequity as St Paul put it. That you have some kind of penance to pay to a greater body which you will always be trapped in.

Think about it. You’re a new born baby brought into the world. Into a hospital surrounded by bright lights, of intensive electrical equipment in a city so full of light pollution you can’t even see the stars. You’re already a sinner – using up energy! Do you need that incubuator? Won’t a blanket do?

We live our lives every day using up power, turning lights on, running our computers and it’s all just climate change sin. You can’t escape it – you can’t not use electricity. Or gass. Or paper which is still bad even though it’s a renewal energy source. You’re sinning every minute of every day of your life.

You might think you lead a good life. You’re trying your best – you turn lights off in rooms you’re not using, you turn your TV off rather than putting it on stand by. But honestly, have you recycled everything? Have you scraped the cheese off that pizza box so you could recycle the cardboard? Have you turned the computer off the minute you finished using it? Left a charger plugged even after your phone was fully charged? Have you even just thought about it in your head?

Of course you have. So I have I. Right now I’m running my laptop and my desktop and only using my desktop because I’m going to use my laptop again soon. I also have a light on in my kitchen so I can see where I am going when I go in there to take my dinner out of the oven. And where, where is the global warming jesus character to take this climate sin away from us?

We need to pay penance for our sin, sin which we generate every day by just trying to live our lives because quite frankly the modern world just isn’t stressful enough.

For the love of the god I do not believe in, it’s 2009, the UK is a 1st world country, we shouldn’t be in this situation.

I was at a York Brights meeting last month and there was a discussion going about the real way in which people could control their footprint – by not having another child.

And they’re right. Having a child has a huge environmental impact. Every new human does. It’s probably the number one thing we could do to stem climate change, just stop having kids.

Of course, this is just stupid. I don’t even need to make a reductio ad absurdum argument, because we’re already here. We shouldn’t have to prevent ourselves from having children if we want them, we should be able to leave our computers on all day if we want to, we should be able to light our homes without feeling guilty about it.

What we need of course, is a serious approach to climate change.

Stemming climate change isn’t going to come from stumbling around in the dark or using paper bags even though the productuion methods use almost as much natural resources as just making plastic ones.

It’s going to come from technology and innovation. From human creatively, from pushing back the boundaries of science and engineering, from creating new ways to generate the energy our society needs which don’t damage the world around us. Remember all that stuff? Or are we so dead inside that we have forgotten we are the same people that put man on the moon, split the atom or transformed Planet Earth with civilizations and cultures more advanced than anything we know of?

But it’s blasphemy to say this. It probably offends people’s beliefs for me to express these opinions. Like the religious fundamentalist the idea that I might take a position based on reason and evidence rather than their carefully constructed dogma threatens their fragile world view which can so easily be blown away by the winds of logic.

Well it’s about time people stood up and called them on it. There are ways we can solve these problems – amazing ways. Look at nuclear fusion (not to be confused of course with nuclear technology at the moment which operates on nuclear fission). Here we have the potential to unlock virtually limitless supplies of energy without harming the environment. Why, why are we not literally pouring money into such research?

We should be, we need to be – for our own sake, as well as the planet’s.

Myself and Ian Abbott from Lancashire Secular Humanists at the Ummah Channel studios where we were filming a debate.

We held the first planning meeting for a new course today which will hopefully be piloted by Leeds Atheist Society next year. It will focus around issues on sex and relationships but in a way relevant for atheists, in particular students.

How much this will be abstract discussion and how much will be real issues is yet to be worked out but the idea behind the course is to actually make it useful for attendees – for example nobody really needs advice on what contraception is available and how it works because this gets taught in school and we all know it anyway. But things like breaking up with people for example aren’t really looked at.

Development will continue for the next few months though if you have any ideas or feedback regarding the project do get in touch (or even just comment on this blog post).

Yesterday we re-launched the Leeds Skeptics in the Pub group with a new venue, new format and new speakers. The event went quite well despite Ariane have cancelled us on due to illness earlier the week – we got a better than average turn out and it was thumbs up all round for the new venue. We also took a lot of feedback about how we can improve in the future so we will continue to improve from here.

On Tuesday we had our second Movie Goer’s Guide to Life & Death at A-Soc. It was basically a load of clips from American Beauty and while I found some of the analysis dubious I certainly enjoyed seeing the clips again very much enjoyable. Smile – you’re at Mr Smiley’s!

Last weekend the AHS ran it’s first region social. It was somewhat less than a success with only Leeds actually turning up to it but it still remains the most success regional social the AHS has ever run. Good times.

Richard Wisemen tweeted about this Amazon product listing recently, it’s a little travel desk which hucks onto your steering wheel so you can use your laptop while driving.

Richard was most impressed by the customer images that users have taken the time to upload but I personally think it’s the quality reviews that people have written to really let us know how effective the product is that is the real gem of the page.

Wow is this thing great! I use it as a “mini-bar” when the friends and I go out to the bars. I can quickly fix multiple shots of tequila for myself and the friends as we drive from one bar to the next. We also discovered that if you place a pillow on top of it and turn on the cruise control you can catch quick naps on the interstate. If you swerve to the left or right the rumble strips on the road wake you up in plenty of time before you get into trouble. I can now take longer trips without being tired!

Also, i am now dating a midget and she fits nicely on the steering wheel desk which allows us to experiment sexually while driving. This thing is like WD-40 or duct tape, it is a million and one uses!

This has been a total lifesaver. It allows me to prop my sheet music against the wheel, allowing me to play the guitar with both hands while driving.

It is also great for holding your food if you decide you want a full meal (but you can’t check facebook on your steak), rolling illegal products in clear view of officers, and it makes a GREAT holder for your 6 pack of beer so you don’t even have to reach in the backseat to get another (reaching behind you while driving is dangerous)

This desk leaves just enough room to control the wheel with my knee so my shoulder is free for my phone and I can type with one hand and eat my lunch with the other. Best invention EVER.

I had hoped to find a low-cost/safer alternative to a car seat for my 21-month old. I was certain this would work well–even allowing me to see her clearly while driving (I am a freak about child safety!). Imagine my utter shock when she careened into my head while backing out of the driveway. And the darn “child seat” turned over too–seemingly it moves with the streering wheel—WTF? Luckily, I slammed on the brakes, and we have sustained only mild-to-severe concussions

Do you have any idea how hard it is to read Braille books while driving? Every time I’d hit something my book would slide off my lap onto the floor and I’d lose my place. Problem solved…Thanks Laptop Steering Wheel Desk.

Definitely one for the Christmas list.

Having won tickets to the rugby league Four Nations final, I headed down on Saturday to watch the game. Luckily England had pulled a surprise victory over New Zealand beforehand so had made it through to face Australia in what would hopefully not be a repeat of their first encounter in the competition.

We started off quite well scoring the first try to take an early league and were only trailing by 4 points at halftime. However shortly after the second half had kicked off Australia realised that rather than trying to break our line, if they just kicked the ball past us and ran after it we wouldn’t really know what to do eventually leading them to win 46-16.

Still, no matter how many times you witness it, it’s still funny to watch someone shout advice about the rules to 26 national-level professional players whose job it is to play the sport and several officials whose job it is to marshall the sport even though they are at the other side of a 40,000 seater stadium.

All in all I have to say I really enjoyed it, I thought I would get bored at some point during the match but I never did. Although I did lose the £1 I had wagered on the match even with Australia having a 12 point handicap. Gutted.

When we launched the Perspective course in 2009, we had no idea it would be such a huge success. Of course you hope that it will be a popular event but the interest we received in the course was far better than we thought we could hope for.

It proved to be popular with both members of the society and with the religious speakers who came to give the talks. Not only that but it even proved popular with your rank and file religious followers who wanted to learn about what religions other than their own believed and it wasn’t long before our events were packed out to capacity.

Given the course had worked so well we set about, as we have with all our courses, developing a leader’s guide so that the course could be run by other societies around the country and even the world. This suffered some delays over the summer but finally we have it in a state ready to ship out – as such we are now officially launching the guide!

So if anyone is interested in running a Perspective course at their local community do not hesitate to get in touch with us for a copy.

Yesterday Gijsbert returned to Leeds Atheist Society to deliver a One Life session on human needs.