GonzoDon’s Recent Comments

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  You forgot one small inconvenient truth.

  All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth.On Saul Griffith calculates what we need to do to keep the world we evolved in posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 7 Responses

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  Thanks Ted

  Fair enough.  We may be saying (kind of?) the same thing.  In truth, some of my favorite people are traditionally 'religious' people ... and I'm not accusing them of "standing in the way of desired solutions".  (Well, in a few cases, actually, they are ... but not as a rule).

  I tell ya, though -- I could do with a lot less of the fundamentalist dogma that drives politics and public policy in the United States to a frankly embarassing extent.  Irrational religious thinking inserted into serious public discourse (e.g., teaching unscientific "Intelligent Design" in biology classes) is simply not tolerated in, say, France, or Denmark, or Finland, or Spain, or Canada, or even that very homeland of the Catholic Empire, Italy.  They think we are loco.

  So why is such superstitious public behavior so tolerated in the United States?

  'Nuff said.On A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 23 Responses

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  Wow, I really hit a sensitive nerve!

  But since when, exactly, did I become anti-First Amendment?

  I 100% support people's First Amendment right to express their faith in whatever they want -- be it Jesus, Buddha, Zeus, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

  I just don't want any particular religion trying to compel teachers to incorporate their religious beliefs into the science classroom, is all.  First, because religion ain't science, and mixing the two just confuses young impressionable minds. Second, as you note, there's this little thing called the First Amendment.  (The founders demanded separation between religion and instrusive government as much to protect religion as to protect government).

  If we teach science correctly, we are also teaching youngsters how to think critically, evaluate the validity of information, and rationally weigh evidence -- whether they are buying life insurance, investing their 401K money, choosing a political candidate, supporting particular public policies, or choosing a career.

  Of course not all life is 'rational weighing of evidence'.  Art and love and mysticism don't lend themselves very well to that straightjacket.  Thank, er, god.

  But when it comes to developing enlightened public policy, that's the best tool we have, however imperfect it may be.  

  If you doubt me, you might brush up on your history of medieval witch-burning, the Spanish Inquisition, several centuries of using religion to justify slavery and racial segregation, and -- oh yeah -- flying jet airliners into the World Trade Towers to kill innocent civilians.  Humans may have done those evil things anyway, but it took religious superstition to 'justify' those repellant behaviors.

  We didn't move beyond those dark chapters in human history BECAUSE of religion, but rather IN SPITE of it.  

  Yeah, I know, atheists and agnostics can be just as obnoxious and as unlikeable as anybody else.  But at least they don't commit random acts of mass terrorism for the sake of trying to convert people to their areligious point of view.  That's a start.On A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 23 Responses

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  It ain't censorship if it ain't science

  Let the Heartland Institute 'dissent' all it wants.

  The real question is whether the Heartland Institute understands and respects what 'science' is?  And how 'science' works?

  Given that fundamentalist religious forces in the United States have managed to completely confuse several generations of Americans about the difference between a well-established framework of scientific theory (i.e., the evolution of species via the process of natural selection) versus non-scientific wishful thinking (intelligent design), it's no wonder so many Americans can't grasp the difference between the two.On A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 23 Responses

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  I wish I had the luxury of being a denier

  Man, I wish I had the luxury that so many posters on these boards seem to have of sitting back in an easy chair with a cold beer, speculating on whether 'global warming' is a figment of our imaginations.

  As a scientist, I always remain open to the possibility that our interpretation of data is mistaken, and that long-term global warming is not happening.  Unfortunately, from my experience, it's very much happening, at least in our hemisphere.  Glaciers are melting.  Ice caps are shrinking.  Northern Alaska is visibly warming.  Species migrations are occurring earlier, and they are shifting substantially northward.  Snowpacks are melting a little earlier every year, peak runoff is coming sooner.  Extreme storm events, when they do occur, seem to be more extreme.  Invasive species are thriving.

  As a scientist involved in water management in the dry interior west, I don't have the luxury of kibbitzing with a cold beer while all this happens around me.  Almost all the water managers I work with -- many of whom, I'm certain, have never voted for a Democrat in their lives -- are in a mild panic over adapting to the changes we're all seeing in the West.  Not because they are becoming tree-huggers, but because they are responsible for keeping farmers and cities supplied with water, and for generating hydropower, and for protecting real people from real floods.  If they screw up, they get their asses handed to them on a platter.  Unlike George Will, who just gets to write another editorial.

  When it comes down to actually managing real resources in the real world, global warming is not an abstract hypothetical concept.  Those of us on the ground can see it happening.  Or at least that appears to be the case, until someone more informed than the Heartland Institute can present convincing evidence to the contrary.  I'm hoping that person comes along, I really do.  But it hasn't happened yet.  

  Maybe the Heartland Institute CEO can take my job, figure out how to adapt to the climate changes I'm seeing, while I can sit in his cushy office chair congratulating myself on bravely challenging the prevailing wisdom.  I'd probably get paid better in his shoes by the oil & gas & auto industries, and I've got little to risk if I'm wrong.

  This is becoming a ridiculous argument.On A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 23 Responses