Posted on 03/02/2009 7:24:19 AM PST by andrew roman
After my article last week, FUNNY GLOBAL WARMING TIDBIT - PESKY DATA - which I invite you to read if you haven't already - I received a reply from a reader called Cassandra, who took me to task for what she obviously felt was a typical flat-earth, knee-jerk, right-wing reaction to a story related to global warming.
As I have done on many occasions with other readers, I would like to address Cassandra's post, point by point.
Even if you haven't read my piece, or the original article I'm referencing, you'll still get the gist of it all, I assure you.
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Cassandra wrote:
Why is science "leftist hysteria"? Isn't the scientific method intended to remove bias rather than foster it?
I respond:
It isn't science. That's the point. It is instead "leftist hysteria," quite rightly classified as such because of what has been a long history of unfounded and universally incorrect doomsday scenarios created by agenda-driven, research-money hungry "experts" with leftist worldviews.
For instance ...
(Excerpt) Read more at romanaround.net ...
Good read...thank you!
Blogpimping sucks.
We've gone at it hammer-and-tong over AGW over the years. He was always a true believer, and I have always been a skeptic, since the 1980s, when I was sitting around the Math Department at Berkeley talking about environmental models and how they could be massively powerful tools for manipulating public policy.
Anyway, my brother was going on about how he wants to buy a Chevy Volt when they come out, and how he thinks the plug-in hybrid will be a revolutionary product. I decided to needle him gently about how the Volt will actually have a larger carbon footprint than a conventional car of similar size if the electricity used to charge it comes from a coal-fired power plant.
He blithely replied that all that carbon stuff was nonsense, and he was really concerned about reducing our nation's dependence on foreign oil. So if he could run his car off of domestic coal, he was all for that, because this would mean that we would not longer have to support military adventures around the World to secure oil supplies.
Well, I about dropped my beer. A averred that kicking terrorist butt was a good thing in itself, and let it go at that.
So, my big prediction is that the Left is going to give up on this AGW business by the end of the year. We are about to experience a “Two Legs Better” moment, where the narrative will suddenly change.
Some may back off Al Gore’s catastrophic warnings..but I see many inside the beltway in D.C. using the green movement to start re-designing life as we know it here in America.
Different act...but basically the same ol’ song and dance.
Hell...even Newt Gingrich started singin’ that “Climate Change” tune....
Please forgive my ignorance, and I mean this most sincerely ... I am sorry that “self excerpts” are so annoying to you - or “blogpimping” as another poster called it. I’m not sure, however, why posting snipets from my own blog under the Free Republic category “Bloggers and Personal” is a problem. Isn’t that what that section is for? I do not post under “News/Activism” or any other section. I specifically choose the “Bloggers and Personal” section to do so. I have been doing so for quite a while as have many others.
Again, I certainly didn’t mean to trigger anyone’s “pet peeve” meter, but isn’t that what the “Bloggers and Personal” section of Free Republic is for?
If I am incorrect, I am more than willing to accept that and not do so again ... but it’s odd that after doing this for so long I would receive two complaints about it.
Sincerely inquiring,
Andrew Roman
Brooklyn, NY
Thanks for sharing this.
I have a tendency to agree with you. I do believe that well within our lifetimes, the entire “global warming” discussion will appear as “one of those things” from the “past” that we all laugh about. It is steadily becoming more and more of a discredited notion with each passing day.
It would not surprise me in the least if the Left begins its gradual withdrawal from this battle as soon as you predict.
Andrew Roman
Brooklyn, NY
Not only that, but over half of the visitors to FreeRepublic come from search engines, and by excerpting, you're preventing more random traffic to your blog by cutting off a lot of search terms.
Now, all that junk aside, really enjoyed reading the article (now that I'm not on my phone, and am at a computer that can handle all those ads), and you've got a reader waiting for the next article. :)
Thank you VERY much for your clarification. I sincerely appreciate it.
I thoroughly understand and respect your explaination. It makes perfect sense. I didn’t realize that the objection was in the fact that I excerpted my own piece with the goal of driving readers to my blog. I mistakenly concluded that the objection was that it was a “vanity” piece. I admit completely to naivety on that score.
I certainly do not mean to show any disrespect to Free Republic or to those who read the articles posted here. Indeed, I contribue monthly because I absolutely love this website. Using it as a mechanism to drive readers away would, quite correctly, upset a few - although that was not my intention.
Perhaps posting the article in its entirety is best here.
Your input is most appreciated.
Be well.
Andrew Roman
Brooklyn, NY
One point I think you missed in defining it as hysteria rather than science is that in all the doomsday scenarios, the solution almost always comes back to the same thing: Government regulation to change our way of life.
Remember the hysteria over not having any place to put our trash, the garbage barge wandering around, looking for a place to go into port, and city after city refusing it?
The solution was us ceasing to consume so much.
The forest was being wiped out at an incredible rate, to the point that by right about now we wouldn’t have any forests at all. They almost got that one right - by cutting off logging in the local mountains, a bark beetle infestation was able to kill large swaths of trees, turning it into the rich tinder for the firestorms that soon came after.
This, of course, ignored historical record that showed that you could ride a horse through that same forest, whereas before it was burned through a forest fire, you were lucky if you could walk through it, it was so overgrown.
We’re going to run out of water in California - that’s the newest hysteria in my area. Some are even linking it to global climate change, whereas others are avoiding that, as so many have come to the same conclusion, that the climate change argument is bogus. Why are we low on water? Due to court orders preventing us from making more dams, court orders to release water from existing dams, and further court orders preventing the use of aquifers contaminated with, gosh, the fuel additives that environmentalists required us to use to reduce pollution.
Truly, a man made shortage, or rather, court ordered. So you’d best stop watering your lawn (while the ivory towers of university campuses continue to turn their lawns into mud pits from constant never ending over watering), and take only one shower a week, because we’re going to be out of water...
Everything done, no matter what the hysteria, has a singular goal, that of turning us into a third world economy. They just might make it, though, this time around, as they’ve driven out a tremendous amount of manufacturing (due to environmental concerns that disappear as soon as the factory moves to China...), and the near collapse of our markets.
I wonder how much carbon tax I’ll have to pay in the future to make a post like this...
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