Where’s Santa going to hide now?
5 year old Elanore was confused; wasn’t Santa real? I’m afraid not Elle, I explained gently. Santa is the first of many ticks we adults play on you kids. But you weren’t ’sposed to find that out until you were 7. Let’s not tell Anna said Elle and I agreed.
A man swam at the north pole, and he didn’t see Santa, or Santa’s cave, or even Superman’s fortress of solitude.
“No sign of Santa,” says pole swimmer.
Maybe he just moved because his home is melting? NASA are pretty sure that all of the Arctic ice will be gone by about 2040.
Or maybe he simply never existed. Santaism is the first religion many kids develop, and, luckily, they mostly shake it off by the time they are old enough to work out their faith has many obvious loopholes. It’s an important stage for kids though as it sets them up for a series of discoveries about what is and isn’t real. From the gods to the truth in media, soon enough they discover that even Wikipedia has untruths in it. Kids become adults by gaining scepticism.
Scepticism, focussed correctly, affords the wielder clarity, but unfocussed, faith-backed or ideologically driven scepticism seeks to obscure. Looking back I think people will record 2007 as the end of the road for the climate change sceptics. The last IPCC meeting that finished in muted triumph a week ago was the final nail in the coffin for the deniers and their shadowy backers. Roll on 2008, the year of getting things done. — DS
Technorati Tags: Arctic, Bali, climate change, COP13, global warming, ice, ice caps, IPCC, Kyoto Protocol, meltdown, NASA, sceptic, skeptic, UNFCCC
