March 05, 2007

The environment? whooie...it's the money stupid

This was posted on the letter board at WRH
It's important to question the validity of all "mass" movements. In this instance I think that the greedy cash hungry industries are distorting what is essentially a comment sense movement. It's common sense that if you burn too much stuff whether it be in a house, a national park or on the world scale that it's harmful to your lungs and to the environment. That's the common sense part of it all...then the greed get's into it. Greed makes companies emphasize the negative points of the environmental movement. Companies creating "green" products in the same plastic containers others are packaged in. People buy them because of catchy slogans and "environmental statements". The worst example I've ever seen is the disposable toilet brush...WTF? for 5thousand years we've been cleaning and washing our hands. At no point in time has the word bacteria ever been used to stoke fear like is is being used now.
So we went from the global freeze to the global cook out and nothing much has changed. We're using more oil than ever before, we're making more products than ever before but we're calling them environmentally friendly. We've got talking heads telling us we're going to burn to a slow death due to the SUV's people are driving.
But history tells us 30 years ago we were going to freeze to death. It's like a series of Bre-x scams. From one extreme to the other with little justification aside from what a few scientists and some advertising dollars. The one with the most dollars win. Next election will be based on the environment...can't wait to see the big E-friendly companies start to chip dollars into the candidates pockets, showing their real true colours.



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Back in the 70s (before the World Wide Web) we were all being sold on the fears of a new ice age. No, I am not kidding. The same mainstream media that screams "GLOBAL WARMING" at us today was predicting that the coming of the next ice age would happen within our lifetimes. And back in the 30s, the "fashionable science" was Eugenics, or the undesirability of allowing less than perfect humans to contaminate the gene pool by breeding. All that Hitler did in the name of "Racial Hygiene" was drawn from the American scientists he chose as his inspiration.

The fact is that much of what you think is science is just pop culture, what is trendy to believe in and support, or even religion dressed up as science to make it sell better, such as the "Big Bang." again back in the 70s the cocktail party cognoscenti were obligated to be able to discuss the origin of consciousness in the triune brain, even though real psychologists had abandoned the theory years ago.

People who are not actually scientists will cling to their pet theories the way they cling to religions. They don't really understand what they are talking about; they just know that is they speak the correct words, their peers will approve of them.

A good example of this mindset is illustrated by two recent news stories, one of which confirms that the level of solar radiation has in fact been increasing and is at a 60 year peak right now, and the announcement that Mars is showing signs of warming right alongside that of Earth. Now, a real scientist will look at those facts and say, "Okay, we need a new theory here." But the "Pop-scientists", the ones who wear science as a fashion accessory, they refuse to look at the facts. I have gotten emails insisting that the warming on Mars has nothing to do with the warming on Earth because, well, just BECAUSE! Then there are emails such as yours, attempting to twist a simple disagreement of the facts into an attack on the credibility of my whole site. In both cases, no contrary facts are presented, just a resorting to various "authorities" on global warming whose continued funding depends on the continued "existence" of global warming, much as the "authorities" on the coming ice age in the 70s needed a continuing threat of that ice age to exist in the public mind to secure their added funding. Remember the witch hunts of Europe? When people were paid to find witches, they found witches. When people are paid to find global warming, they find global warming. That is the danger of agenda-driven science. One does not get scientific results, one gets political results.

The fact is that the Earth is getting warmer. We just came out of an ice age. Of COURSE it is getting warmer. Earth is currently warmer than the ice ages and cooler than the Cretaceous. It is only human arrogance that dares declare one particular temperature as "correct" or "normal", or dares suggest that the always-changing Earth can or should be locked into one particular temperature, based on that rather arbitrary decision of what is "normal."

Now, I am fully in favor of conservation and wise use of resources. I am also in favor of developing energy alternatives that are as environmentally friendly as possible. I am convinced that had we taken the money wasted on Iraq and put it into research we would not need the oil any more.

But the clamor about global warming is not leading to solutions but merely scares people into buying ill considered policies and products without the careful thought that should go into such decisions. People will buy anything if they are told it is good for the environment.

But the reality is that everything man does affects the environment, no matter how eco-friendly it is claimed to be. Windmills were hailed as the ultimate in safe energy systems, until it was discovered that the disrupted wind flow changed the micro-climates in the lee of the wind farms, and that wind farms built across migratory paths wound up chopping thousands of birds (including endangered species) into bits.

Pop-scientists and cocktail party cognoscenti like to have a single easy theory that explains everything. "The world is getting warmer and if you stop driving your SUV/vote for my politician/buy my product all will be well!" The real world, and real science, are seldom that simple and clean cut. Yes, man undoubtedly has an influence on the Earth's environment. But the reality is that man's ability to change the Earth remains minuscule compared to other naturally occurring forces.

The real purpose of the global warming scare (besides selling candidates and products) is to give people something safe to fret about. Most of the global warming crowd welcome the global warming "cause" because it is safe. They are not in danger of having the government come after them the way pro-peace activists do, or those who expose government cover-ups. The global warmers can walk around with an air of superiority, feeling like they are making a better world without actually having to confront the far more deadly reality of a government that is lying us into war after war after war. That's why the global warmers cling to their religion so tightly. Without it, they would have to deal with some pretty harsh realities.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your lack of knowledge about science is staggering and profound. You should consider a few introductory courses in biology, math, physics, and chemistry at your local community college.

Travelling Man said...

Not many people post comments on here, hopefully ignorance like yours won't be repeated too often.
I didn't make any science claims aside from making the statement that inhaling burnt anything is bad for you.
So what was the purpose of your comment? If you were commenting on the letter I posted you should pick out some examples of where you may be in possession of a higher level of intellect.
But perhaps you are just one fo the many who jumps on "the new truth" even though so many "new truths" have been shown to be pop-culture lies.



You've done it now Danger Dan!!!