While most Americans believe the media is rather untrustworthy, most also believe them when they claim that all but a few crackpot scientists, such as me, believe both that man has caused global warming by using fossil fuels and that this will cause a future catastrophe for man and all the animal life of the planet. They commonly believe that drastic action is needed to reduce fossil fuel energy use around the world, or human civilization is doomed.
Because few Americans are willing to actually read the scientific record and to assess it critically, they are dependent upon the word of someone for their opinion on this seemingly important issue. They turn to the media as the experts in assessing the scientific consensus. The media then err due to their lack of understanding of science, their bias for the dramatic and catastrophic, and due to the massive infusions of money into the hands of those alarmist scientists and pretenders from governments and socialists who always want problems only they can solve to increase their power.
The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine started a petition for scientists who do not believe that man has caused catastrophic global warming. More than 31,000 American scientists have signed this petition. More than 9,000 hold Ph.D. degrees and many of them are very well regarded scientists in their fields. I have signed this petition, although the website has not yet been updated to include my name, which I sent in weeks ago. If you are a scientist who has not been taken in by the sadly unscientific arguments of the global warming alarmists, please make the effort to sign this petition. Our civilization depends upon the use of fossil fuels and this nonsensical argument that man is thereby ruining the planet is being used to greatly damage the quality of human life and to justify a disregard for the rights of the individual. The socialists and governments are always looking for any excuse to attack the rights of the individual. Protecting those rights is the principal issue of our lives.
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7 comments:
Good on you.
Although I'd advise to stay away from Al Gore after this - I've recently seen An Inconvenient Truth, and I can honestly say he insinuates that every scientist who doesn't go for global warming is a crony of Big Oil or the Bush administration.
Frankly, my evaluation of the character and intelligence of Al Gore is that he is such a miserable person, that I have no regard whatsoever for his opinion of me.
Of course, there may soon be something called hate crime legislation aimed to criminalize "those who hate the earth." The socialists may then point to me and say, "Off to the Gulag with Charles Anderson." The government does scare the bejesus out of me, which is why I want it to be Constitutionally limited.
James Hansen wants to do something like that. These people are scary. Really scary. I hope they don't actually get their way.
I mean...isn't that an affront to free speech? Aren't we supposed to be able to run around on the street and yell: "President xxxx is an idiot" or "Tobacco will cure cancer" and not get in trouble for it? Isn't THAT the liberal ideal?
Okay, maybe that's the liberal ideal, but not the progressive one. Some of these people are so far left they've come all the way back right on some positions.
I've actually reviewed An Inconvenient Truth here. The review is surprisingly favourable - but then again, not so in some other areas.
The religious part of the right has been known to oppose the freedom of speech when the speaker opposed some dogma of religion. Now, the left has long had an iron grip on college campuses and they have shown that they are no champions of freedom of speech themselves, contrary to their one-time image. They oppose the freedom of speech of those who deny the tenets of altruism, the victimization of certain groups of people, those who advocate certain religious dogmas, and the opponents of extreme environmentalism. The McCain-Feingold Election Reform Act is a clear attack upon freedom of political speech and it was passed mostly with Democrat votes and the socialist Republican McCain. Now, many Congressional Democrats want to pass legislation designed to force talk radio to either allow equal time for leftists no one wants to listen to or force them to stop airing the thoughts of people such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck.
No, it is entirely wrong to associate freedom of speech with the left. Will Thomas makes this mistake in a recent post on the Left on the Atlas Society website.
miss-breeziness,
When I clicked on your link to your review of An Inconvenient Truth, I was greeted with Access Forbidden.
"Now, the left has long had an iron grip on college campuses and they have shown that they are no champions of freedom of speech themselves, contrary to their one-time image."
I know...Actually I also reviewed Indoctrinate U on that same post. It was all about such instances.
And awfully sorry about that post. It was friend locked, because I have one friend who once called me out for a mild criticism of Al Gore...so you can guess what she would say to an entire essay, and I don't like arguing with people much.
Now I have removed the lock. You should be able to access it.
Al Gore uses data and plots and this gives his presentation the patina of being scientific, but we have to be more critical in our evaluation and check the context of that data. His work is flimsy enough that a judge in the United Kingdom was able to see many of his mistakes. There are many more judicious summaries of the global warming climate issue available now. For instance, the book Climate of Extremes by Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling Jr. points out many of the problems with the computer model projections of climate and other observations purporting that there is a major man-made warming effect and that this is a catastrophe. They do not dismiss that there may be some effect of man-made global warming, but only that it is a very large and destructive effect.
I enjoyed Indoctrinate U greatly. It was funny and it should give the leftists in control of almost all American universities a bit of ribbing for their hypocrisy. They had long pretended to be the defenders of open inquiry and freedom of speech and now they have embraced the role of propaganda masters. They are the elite and they know what is best for everyone. Individualists and critical thinkers need not apply. Of course, some few private colleges of the right do exist, but most of them are associated with a religious viewpoint and those not sharing that viewpoint can easily choose another university to go to. There are very few choices if one is looking for a university or college which recognizes the value of the individual, freedom of conscience, and the importance of the Age of Enlightenment, free markets, and limited government.
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