The role of Geography

Geography in the widest sense of the concept remains the queen of sciences. It holds the key that unlocks the coherence of the physical world as its sister, history, unlocks that of mankind's occupation of it. Without geography's mapping of planet Earth, the work of chemists, biologists and physicists is disjointed, mere technique.
It is geography that applies common sense to the statistical hysteria of the climatologists. It is geography that brings global warming into context and applies the test of feasibility to whatever political priorities are deemed necessary. It is geography that explains why each of us is located where we are, in neighbourhood, nation, continent and planet, and how fragile might be that location. Without geography's instruction, we are in every sense lost - random robots who can only read and count. The internet has plainly liberated millions from the confines of conventional sources of knowledge. But it remains limited to the dimensions of a lighted screen. The user can surf the world but not experience it: the world is squeezed into the experience of the screen. By eradicating distance, the internet eradicates an understanding of what distance means, of the diversity of peoples, nations, climates and environments. It reduces the world to a trillion pixels. Read the rest of this article here.