Comments jjwfmme has made

Looks like you got a cameo in Carney's video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46Zcpqw4pK0

That's you, right, about 1:15 in? It's pretty amusing...

I hope you caught Jay Rosen's take on Carney's statement that "It's our responsibility not to be labeled left or right,"

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2007 ...

...which plays right into many of the arguments professor Rosen's been making on his site for a few years now... On YearlyKos: I'm ugly and boring posted 2 years, 3 months ago 6 Responses

Yglesias and Alterman too...

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070430&s=altermanygle ...On Chait on the netroots posted 2 years, 7 months ago 3 Responses

The Onion on renegade scientists

But there are rogue scientists operating as individuals, bravely innovating against all those scientific conformists, assuming "physical laws" and using "methods" and whatnot. The Onion has the details:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/49180

(As Steven Colbert might say, when you've got giant clankers, there's no need to stand on the shoulders of giants.)On The innerworkings of it all posted 2 years, 7 months ago 69 Responses

The Poor Man Institute

These guys can be really pithy (unlike me):

http://www.thepoorman.net/2007/03/01/pretty-much-2/On There's a coalition waiting posted 2 years, 9 months ago 60 Responses

Sometimes...

Well sometimes we need a jackass who can kick down a barn or two...

As for Al Gore he did have a rationale for putting the stress on the problem as opposed to proposing solutions:

"The time will soon come when enough people have absorbed the warning and accepted the truth of the challenge we face, so that the mix between danger and opportunity can be dialed up toward the 'opportunity' part of the spectrum," he says. "But right now the United States of America is still mostly in a bubble of unreality, where the climate crisis is concerned. So to punch through the Category Five denial, there has to be emphasis on what the danger is."

It's the right wing spin machine

"There's no need to come to Gore's defense all the time."

This is one of the roles that the blogosphere has begun to play. The mainstream media does a terrible job at fact checking, and it's almost always the progressive candidates who are smeared.

Media Matters has set up a whole website to deal with the issue of media smear campaigns. Other parts of the blogophere has taken up the role as well. Check out the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson-and-james-boyc ...

The point is to get the truth out there...On Share with friends and family posted 2 years, 9 months ago 42 Responses

More...

More Krugman on propagandizing think tanks on the right:

Back in 1978 [Irving] Kristol urged corporations to make "philanthropic contributions to scholars and institutions who are likely to advocate preservation of a strong private sector." That was delicately worded, but the clear implication was that corporations that didn't like the results of academic research, however valid, should support people willing to say something more to their liking.

Mr. Kristol led by example, using The Public Interest to promote supply-side economics, a doctrine whose central claim - that tax cuts have such miraculous positive effects on the economy that they pay for themselves - has never been backed by evidence. He would later concede, or perhaps boast, that he had a "cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit."

"Political effectiveness was the priority," he wrote in 1995, "not the accounting deficiencies of government."

Corporations followed his lead, pouring a steady stream of money into think tanks that created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of "scholars" whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers.

http://www.pkarchive.org/column/080505.html

(OK, now I'll stop...)On There's a coalition waiting posted 2 years, 9 months ago 60 Responses

More on libertarianism

I think that libertarianism, as it exists now, is a pretty recent addition to our cultural DNA. No doubt there is an aspect of it that has always been there, but I think that what we've been getting out of the rightie think tanks and movement conservatism is an oversimplification. See Paul Krugman back in 2000:

Heritage describes itself as a think tank, a term originally applied to nonpolitical institutions like the RAND Corporation. Whether it is really appropriate for organizations like Heritage depends on what you mean by the word "think." Most of Washington's so-called think tanks don't have to ponder the issues -- they already know the answers. The Heritage mission statement makes no bones about it: the institution's purpose is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies." Can you imagine any circumstances under which Heritage researchers might recommend a tax increase, or a new environmental regulation? I didn't think so.

Since the policy recommendations that come out of Heritage, or the Cato Institute, or even the American Enterprise Institute are so predictable, what purpose do these organizations serve? Good question.

The important think tanks are all very much institutions of the right. Jon Corzine notwithstanding, left- wing multimillionaires are not exactly the norm. So liberal think tanks don't have anything like the resources or the influence of their right-wing counterparts. Some might cite the Brookings Institution as an exception -- but Brookings isn't liberal the way the conservative think tanks are conservative. Put it this way: Even A.E.I., the most moderate of the big right-wing think tanks, lists Newt Gingrich among its "scholars."

...The think tanks were places where neoconservative intellectuals could think the unthinkable and say the unsayable. They provided a new element in the national dialogue, to such an extent that Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously declared that "the Republicans have become the party of ideas." And of course the think tanks provided the intellectual shock troops for the Reagan revolution.

But that was a long time ago. Neoconservative ideas are no longer radical; they have become trite.

That was Kruman writing back in 2000. To bring this up to date, check this recent post out at Crooked Timber:

http://crookedtimber.org/2007/01/19/connecting-the-dots-2 ...

It seems like we should be able to reach for something earlier than the one-dimensional Reagan/neoconservative thinking... I think we've been culture-warred and media'ed into thinking that this is all there is. But there should be a concerted effort to get out of its more spurious aspects...

Of course, part of that would be understanding the status quo, which would mean understanding libertarian economics and libertarian ways of thinking. Not because we should adopt them wholesale, but because they have formed the dominant part of the national economic conversation. And although they've been oversold, they've had some success. Hayek gets credit where it's due, but we should address his blind spots, which have been glaring recently...

I think this Bill Clinton speech is on the right track:

Now, this sort of politics -- striving for the common good -- for me, stands in stark contrast to both the political and governing philosophy of the leadership in Washington today and for the last six years. The more ideological, right-wing element of the Republican party has been building strength partly in reaction to things that happened 40 years ago, Barry Goldwater's defeat to what they saw as the excesses of the '60s. It got a lot of legs when President Reagan was elected. But this is the first time when on a consistent basis the most conservative, most ideological wing of the Republican party has had both the executive and the legislative branch with a very distinct governing philosophy and a very distinct political philosophy, where us common good folks favor equal opportunity and empowerment, they believe the country is best served by the maximum concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the right people -- "right" in both senses. (Laughter.)

We believe in mutual responsibility. They believe that in large measure people make or break their own lives, and you're on your own.

I think Clinton is right that this way of thinking is noxious and needs to be confronted, which is where the rest of us can come in.

(Sorry, this comment is a bit too long. Jason is the blogger, I'm just along for the ride...)On There's a coalition waiting posted 2 years, 9 months ago 60 Responses

Re: Swiftboating

"As far as I can tell, these accusations are completely true."

The point is, no one does the due dilligence to find out to what extent the story really is true. Maybe Gore has a production company running out of his house. Maybe he has lots of guests at his house helping the cause. We don't know. So you and others out there have to rely on "as far as [you] can tell."

That's how Democrats lose elections.

The right wing media machine just doesn't care. It just wants to pump the rumors out, no matter whether they are substantial or not.

See Nancy Pelosi's "private jet":

The story was a simple and rather transparent smear effort. The conservative Washington Times, relying on leaks from the administration and the Pentagon, first floated the story that Pelosi was asking for carte blanche access to military planes. The background on the story was that following the attacks of 9-11, the White House decided the speaker should travel in a military plane, which is what Rep. J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL.) did while speaker. Hastert flew in a relatively small plane, since he only had to travel to Illinois. In order to travel to California without having to stop and refuel, Pelosi would have to fly in a larger plane.

Republicans then took the vaguely embarrassing Washington Times story and juiced it by inserting hollow allegations that the press, instead of vetting, simply echoed as fact.

See Obama's madrassa hoax:

"I said [to the article's unnamed writer], `That is a sexy story, if you can confirm it,' " Mr. Kuhner recalled. After Insight posted the article on Jan. 17, Mr. Kuhner said, he was disappointed to see that the Drudge Report did not link to it on its Web site as it has done with other Insight articles. So, as usual, he e-mailed the article to producers at Fox News and MSNBC.

Nice due dilligence, people. Nice, professional reporting. Would this ever happen to a Republican? No way.

The right media machine lowers its standards when it comes to attacking the left. That's because their "professional" standards come from being "ideologically correct." Being actually correct (providing a full, accurate account) doesn't matter. Their sugar daddies will keep paying their salaries even after their journalistic credibility gets blown to smithereens (which should have happened long ago. But somehow, the mainstream media keeps swallowing their McNews and spitting out their memes, giving them a credibility they don't deserve). On Same as it ever was posted 2 years, 9 months ago 37 Responses

It's not really an equivalent

It's ridiculous to say that Robert Kennedy went into environmental advocacy for pecuniary reasons. On the other hand, the Nick Naylors of the world...

You get the idea.On Money: not everything posted 2 years, 9 months ago 5 Responses

How about Freidrich Hayek on Knowledge?

Gore is doing us all a big favor by feeding knowledge into the system--Ludwig von Mises' student, Friedrich Hayek, would approve.

To do that, you need to speak to receptive audiences and hence, travel. Gore views this as a necessary evil and buys carbon offsets as a counterbalance. So what's the big deal?

If John McCain flew all over the country telling people about climate change and buying offsets, I wouldn't hold him to any different standard than I do about Gore. If McCain was doing the necessary work of informing people, I wouldn't expect him to go Amish...

This is obviously a very silly argument that some people are making for purely propagandistic purposes.  On Same as it ever was posted 2 years, 9 months ago 37 Responses

Cognitive Miserliness

I didn't know he was even much of a reader of these comments...

In the past, I've posted some firmly worded complaints about some rhetorical tricks that I've seen Pielke employ that surprised me, coming as they did from a Phd. The problems seemed pretty basic, although written in complicated prose.

Then there are his consistently contrarian postions. So like David, I rolled my eyes when the Republicans called him to testify at the congressional hearings.

But I don't want to be a cognitive miser... I suppose I see myself as more of a sane layman. I can't learn everything there is to learn about philosophy of science, social science, and political science overnight. Unlike in the physical sciences (which are difficult enough in themselves to understand), I know in these social science fields you make certain non-empirical assumptions. And that's fine that things are done that way, but I'll bet anything that my assumptions would be very different than Dr. Pielke's. But again, I don't have all the time in the world to examine what all those differences would be...

At some point, David may want to do a post where he discusses what in Dr. Pielke's work may be valid (trivially and non-trivially so--I'm sure there is some) and what specifically is chronically problemmatic. But that's up to David. He may not want to approach things differently.

By the way, I've never edited a Wikipedia entry in my life. And most of the comments posters on here don't seem like the Wikipedia-editing types either...On The wages of vanity posted 2 years, 9 months ago 7 Responses

Er, umm, David. Sorry.

On NYT energy/environment coverage is top notch posted 2 years, 9 months ago 6 Responses

From the comments on Realclimate:

I thought Roger Pielke's main point was

"On climate change, even as scientists have come to a robust consensus that human activities have significant effects on the climate, legitimate debate continues on the costs and benefits of proposed alternative policy actions. And evaluation of costs and benefits involves considerations of values and politics. It would be hopelessly naive to think that an advisory committee on climate change could be empanelled without consideration of how the views of its members map onto the existing political debate."

Seems about right to me.

[Response: The statement is fair enough in itself, but this was not a hearing about the administration putting its stamp on preferred policy responses to global warming. It was about systematic suppression of scientific evidence regarding the magnitude of the harm. I don't really expect RPJr to be able to tell the difference, but I'd hope the rest of us could. --raypierre]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/01/hou...

Republicans [heart] Pielke's sidetracking disquisitions... On Other people's coverage posted 2 years, 10 months ago 4 Responses

Pielke Jr.

It's telling that Pielke's post did not say, "It's a relief that we had some congressional oversight that does not obsess over hockey stick minutia, or insist that climate change was 'the biggest hoax in human history.'" It sounds like he really doesn't care much about that.

No, Pielke's post sounded to me like "#$%^& Waxman, #$%^& Welch, and %^&$ McCollum." Pielke is in no way sounds relieved that adults are in charge, and that he wants to engage them constructively, even if he may have some notable differences with them. It sounds to me like he wants to bash him some overly earnest liberals.

I readily admit that as a sane layperson I don't know much about Pielke's field. But there's a definite overall tack that he's taking, with his talk about ironies, "what the hell do I know," etc. Correct me if I'm wrong ...On Other people's coverage posted 2 years, 10 months ago 4 Responses

Pielke and nuance

Nuance is fine. But how about clarity? Why make the provocative statement "cherry picking is not science abuse" if he doesn't mean it? His approach starts to seem gratuitously socratic...On Our old friend posted 2 years, 10 months ago 22 Responses

Dave sounds like...

...he's been watching South Park.

That's cool. I'll take their humor-- it can be pretty good. Although, my cynicism meter isn't up quite as far as theirs...On Everything is lame posted 2 years, 10 months ago 68 Responses

Opinion Journalists and Think Tank Networks...

How could a journalist with Bailey's experience get it so wrong?

There was an interesting column in the Financial Times a few days ago about the run-up to the Iraq War:

An editor of The Economist in the 1950s once advised his journalists to "simplify, then exaggerate". This formula is almost second nature for newspaper columnists and can make for excellent reading. But it is a lousy guide to the making of foreign policy.
...
journalists are a vital part of a neo-con network that formulated and sold the ideas that took the US to war in Iraq and that is now pressing for confrontation with Iran. The links between journalists, think-tanks and decision-makers in the neo-con world are tight and there is plenty of movement from one area to the other.
...
Neo-conservative columnists have tended to follow the trial lawyers' approach to expertise. First, decide what you want to argue then find an expert who agrees with you. ... The current debacle in Iraq is what you get when you turn op-ed columns into foreign policy.

How it works:

Ayn Rand + Netvocates = Steady stream of beer money for the recent college graduate!On Rising tortilla prices in Mexico point to a usual suspect posted 2 years, 10 months ago 23 Responses

Smart use of the free market

The free market is working to overcome them

I'm all for the free market, but not a brainless one. It seems like many of the advocates for a free market are arguing for these days. Talk about a fetish.

If we mindlessly relied on the free market, the solution to our problems would be all about the people with the deepest pockets-- namely, Big Coal and Big Oil.On Best movie of the year, hands down posted 2 years, 10 months ago 81 Responses

Faith-based libertarianism

Shorter d41295: Stop worrying and take your Soma. On Best movie of the year, hands down posted 2 years, 10 months ago 81 Responses

George Mitchell...

...spoke at my brother's high school graduation. One thing I remember him saying is that for each generation, freedom is not an automatic thing, but something that has to be maintained. It requires effort by each generation.

Human institutions are not indestructable, and they don't spring to life automatically (although the neoconservatives thought they would after the Iraq invasion). In fact, they can be fragile when things aren't maintained carefully. Just look at how government did at all levels in the wake of Katrina. Not that Katrina is a normal occurence, but it showed a little something about what can happen when cynics are at the controls...On Best movie of the year, hands down posted 2 years, 10 months ago 81 Responses

Broad change

I doubt it's an indicator of any broad change on the right.

I think there's evidence of something changing on the right. Maybe they're not ready to embrace the dirty hippies, but some are starting to have respect for the "reality based community" anyway:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-rosen/situation-grave-a...On A lifelong conservative questions his hatred of hippies posted 2 years, 10 months ago 5 Responses

Dr. Pielke

So what does Roger do? Pielke is just trying to insulate himself against charges that he's little more than a contrarian whose blog functions as a chum line to lure in journalists.

That's actually kind of an interesting question. If you Google him, he comes up as a social scientist, a political scientist, and an atmospheric scientist. To me, these three disciplines are very different. There's a big, big difference between say, Max Weber and Max Planck. It's sometimes not clear in what capacity Dr. Pielke is speaking. Is he prescribing to us a scientific view, a political view, or what?On Says smart stuff posted 2 years, 10 months ago 11 Responses

Iran

Let's just hope he doesn't try a "plot twist" by going after Iran:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/011107.html

On NAS smacks Bush admin. posted 2 years, 10 months ago 4 Responses

Spandex jackets, one for everyone, ooooh !!

Given that every person on earth will probably be a millionaire by 2100... I doubt they'll be terribly upset:If they want sea ice in the summer, they'll make enough during the winter so the ice won't all melt in the summer.  They'll certainly have enough money to do such silly things.

As long as we're all smart enough to elect the Libertarians, right Mark?
On Some thoughts posted 2 years, 10 months ago 72 Responses

Smokin Squares

Just means smoking cigarettes...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=smoke+a+sq...On The Coup laments posted 2 years, 10 months ago 2 Responses

Googling the Holy See

Looks like the Pope is a Pagan Hippie Greenie too:

As one called to till and look after the garden of the world (cf. Gen 2:15), man has a specific responsibility towards the environment in which he lives, towards the creation which God has put at the service of his personal dignity, of his life, not only for the present but also for future generations. It is the ecological question-ranging from the preservation of the natural habitats of the different species of animals and of other forms of life to "human ecology" properly speaking - which finds in the Bible clear and strong ethical direction, leading to a solution which respects the great good of life, of every life. In fact, "the do- minion granted to man by the Creator is not an absolute power, nor can one speak of a freedom to ?use and misuse', or to dispose of things as one pleases. The limitation imposed from the beginning by the Creator himself and expressed symbolically by the prohibition not to ?eat of the fruit of the tree' (cf. Gen 2:16-17) shows clearly enough that, when it comes to the natural world, we are subject not only to biological laws but also to moral ones, which cannot be violated with impunity".

Juan Williams

If a bit hysterically made.

Us and Juan Williams on Fox News:

Sometimes I just want to scream. You guys have been going on since this thing began. I mean, you don't give credit to people, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Barbara Lee, people who said from the start this is a mistake...

 On Wherein I finally get it all out posted 2 years, 10 months ago 22 Responses

Too True.

I completely agree. A lot of this is about having some spine and standing up to these blustering idiots... It seems like something has happened with movement conservatism and cable news. Somehow they've been able to dictate whole cloth what is and is not respectable. And they still do, just look at the yakkers on TV. This is a problem.

And as you say it's ongoing. If you look at recent history, they should be the ones who aren't respectable. The recent war has been a prime example. The whole war effort was practically an empty shell as far as planning goes. If you read any of the books about it-- George Packer's Assassin's Gate, or Ricks' Fiasco. The whole thing was, as you said, a complete clusterfuck. It's really quite shocking when your read the books. And the media went along for the ride. (I know the MSM thinks us bloggers are so rude for swearing blah blah blah, but whatever.)

So there was no sane planning, but of course there was a phalanx of PR and media. I think this mirrors what we're seeing on other issues, including our own.  

My feeling is that people have had enough and that's what the recent elections were about. I think Sidney Blumenthal in this Salon essay got it right. (I've also been spreading around this Jay Rosen post, which I think says a lot about the way the media has been sleepwalking through all this...)On Wherein I finally get it all out posted 2 years, 10 months ago 22 Responses

Categorical Thinking

Dr. Pielke, your first statement was categorical: "'cherrypicking' of science is not a misuse." This statement invites controversy, because it is clearly wrong.

You could say that this statement has the virtue of simplicity, but it is a false simplicity. (What's the H. L. Mencken quote? "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.")

Now, if you were less categorical--and frankly, more transparent--you could say, "What's perceived as cherrypicking is not necessarily an abuse of science." But that would be uncontroversial (and if I were being cynical, I'd point out that it wouldn't gain you as much attention).

I think what I'm getting at, Dr. Pielke, is that I hope you're not merely seeking controversy for its own sake. Because these are important issues. And these little public, socratic sidetracks can throw off a lot more heat than they do light.

One more thing: Obviously, the social sciences and political sciences both use the word "science." And I'm sure there are rigorously empirical aspects to them. But we're now a full 150 years past Auguste Compte, and we know that study of human institutions and behavior is not always as tidy as the study of physical things. When it comes to solid, tangible things it's comparably easy to make neat categories, and state things categorically. But neat, Aristotelian categories are often harder to apply to human institutions, habits, etc. And it can be unwise to try to force them to fit.

And I think a perfect example of such a force-fit is saying categorically "Cherrypicking is not science abuse. So all you denialist think tanks go have a field day."On The former says nothing about the latter posted 2 years, 10 months ago 21 Responses

Hurricane Damage

Strangely, I haven't come across anything that talks about how much more lethality you get out of warming-enhanced hurricanes. It seems like just talking about the wind speed increase is not a direct way to describe things.

If you look at this table the difference between sustained winds for categories 2 and 4 can be as small as 21 mph. But the difference between the damage caused is quite significant.

Let's say that hurricane wind speed only goes up by 4 mph. That doesn't sound like much, but it would mean you'd get about 20% more category 4 hurricanes that would have been category 3 before. Probably not a huge difference, but not a small one either... On The former says nothing about the latter posted 2 years, 10 months ago 21 Responses

Well...

I said, Perhaps I got off track because the post itself is about journalism.

Well, at least the previous posts that mentioned Revkin's article were about journalism. Sorry, carry on...On Some thoughts posted 2 years, 10 months ago 72 Responses

The fog...

Coby Beck covers the null hypothesis here.

jfleck said: picking outliers that support one's value positions - is an inevitable state of affairs. Your willingness to do it, and endorse it, despite the obvious sophistication of your understanding of the issues, is one more bit of empirical evidence in support of what Sarewitz is saying.

But why not cover emerging science as emerging science? Complete with the caveats. There are many ways to report this story.

To me, a good question is: Are we going to let our new paranoid style of American news whip us until we're no longer reporting what's important and true, but what's easiest to report? What are we going to do when NewsCorp buys the Wall Street Journal? Will there be even more pressure to find journalistic paths of least resistance?On Some thoughts posted 2 years, 10 months ago 72 Responses

Silliness

But the scientific fact is that the IPCC does NOT say that warming is "likely" to "lie between 1.4 and 5.8 deg C."

Use Google.On It muddles the science and policy debates together posted 2 years, 10 months ago 47 Responses

Storm Intensity and Hurricane Damage

I'm a regular reader, Mr. Revkin. Good to see you commenting on Gristmill.

You said: more warming will likely intensify storms a few percent

Yes, but a few percent could be significant. If you look at the bands of hurricane damage, they're not really that far apart. At one point the difference between minimal and extensive damage is only about 16 mph.

There are many ways to cover the way this government has handled climate policy. I agree with Professor Jay Rosen at NYU, that "the media thinks that it's covered this government pretty darn well... Which is one devastating illusion. It's been a rout, and it remains one." Professor Rosen's post was mostly about the Iraq War, but he makes the point that better coverage of this administration policy making in general would have been helpful.

Signed,

A worried citizen and media consumer.

PS: What are we going to do when Fox News buys the Wall Street Journal?  On The supposed 'middle way' is debunked posted 2 years, 11 months ago 39 Responses

Ross Gelbspan has a good page...

...on this topic:

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/...On There is no proof in science, but there are mountains of evidence posted 2 years, 11 months ago 78 Responses

But I bet vegans know the difference...

..between .002 dollars and .002 cents:

http://www.thepoorman.net/2006/12/14/the-free-market/On Turns out vegetarians are smart posted 2 years, 11 months ago 25 Responses

Marilynne Robinson on Richard Dawkins

Marilynne Robinson, the national book award winner for her recent novel, has an essay on Dawkins that is relevant to this thread:

"Hysterical Scientism: The Ecstasy of Richard Dawkins" (Appeared in this month's Harper's)

Marilynne Robinson

http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20

Alternet ...
On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 2 years, 11 months ago 93 Responses

Well,

I'm just saying we shouldn't make an absolute fetish out of rationality to the point where we're tone deaf, where all we're willing to hear is the "cautious, balanced, and rational approach." That's the approach people were asking Martin Luther King to take up in the Birmingham Prison. And needless to say, it was valid that MLK decided not to be "cautious and balanced," and chose to really push things during the civil rights movement. I'm not saying that this sort of thing is for everyone, at all. But it can be a valid approach, and should not be discounted just because it doesn't look "cautious, balanced, and rational." --And needless to say you can do this and still be part of the "reality based community." (OK, now I'm taking a break for the weekend, as Patrick suggested...)On What kind of rhetoric creates social change? posted 2 years, 12 months ago 29 Responses

Cool stuff.

Interesting guy. (Hey Jason Scorse, did you hear his comment about the religious environmentalists?)On Damn he's smart posted 2 years, 12 months ago 12 Responses

And don't forget...

...We still haven't started on Cheney's plans in Iran:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061127fa_f...

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Pentagon_confirms_Irani...

Hopefully the Saudis talked some sense into him on this front...  On And they want us to stay in Iraq posted 2 years, 12 months ago 5 Responses

Did you guys see this one?

You probably have, but just in case:

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=789On Some juicy questions at issue posted 3 years ago 2 Responses

Nope.

Duke: [By definition, the] scientific method... is limited to hypotheses which can be proved or disproved by empirical experiment. Climate change does not fit within that class of hypotheses.

Nope. No hypothesis is ever definitively proven in science. Read this:

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/there-is-no-pro...

For more, read Professor Naomi Oreskes in this article that appeared in the LA Times (especially where she discusses Newton): http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/072406EA.shtml

This is a pretty basic mistake on your part.

And with this, I will bow out of this discussion.On An excerpt from a new book by George Monbiot posted 3 years ago 36 Responses

Like playing Whack-a-Mole...

You know the game where you have to keep whacking the mole every time he pokes his head up in different holes?

This discussion has been a bit like that. I'm not going to go through every part of the above comment and list every single fallacy and match it up with a Coby article.

But suffice it to say that all of the above talking points are addressed in Coby's Skeptic's Guide:

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

Sinning has nothing to do with the fact that certain processes produce CO2. And CO2 traps heat. And that study after study has shown CO2 to be an agent of warming.

Certain lawyerly arguers like to trot out as many arguments as possible, no matter how specious they all are. In a court of law, no doubt a judge would warn the jury that this is merely a rhetorical tactic and has nothing to do with the merits of the case.

And all reputable climate scientists have been agreeing with the White House-commissioned National Academy of Sciences:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.

OK, that ends my game of Wack-a-Mole this holiday weekend...On An excerpt from a new book by George Monbiot posted 3 years ago 36 Responses

Reply:

It is very clear that the advocates of the global warming theory have abandoned all objectivity, and they sometimes publish studies which are fabricated our of whole cloth.

This sounds a bit shrill, doesn't it? If you are charging people with fraud and conspiracy, you should at least give some substantial examples. You know, it's not only markets that thrive on competition. Science does as well, maybe even more so, because scientists are very exacting consumers. If someone can publish a paper that refutes and accepted body of evidence and theory, it makes a scientist's whole career. Do you think all scientists are foregoing their careers to be members of a world socialist Illuminati? A bit paranoid, no?

There is no reason to doubt the original satellite calculations.

Even if the revised satellite calculations were dead wrong, this is far from the only line of evidence for anthropogenic warming:

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/...

Every statement is footnoted to research which was peer-reviewed and published.

But the paper itself was not. I could write Alice in Wonderland with footnotes to peer reviewed journal articles. Read the Sourcewatch article:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institu...

It does not really matter which it is. The important thing is that we need a strong international government to enact strict socialistic regulations.

What evidence do you have of all these scientists' "socialistic" intentions? Again, don't you think this comes off as a bit conspiracy-minded? Politics is a separate issue from the empirical facts, except for people who can't see anything but politics everywhere.

As far as I'm concerned, what to do about the problem is completely up for discussion. If the solution is 100% market based, then so be it, if that works. My thinking is that the solution will be mostly market based, because that's in accord with human nature. But we can't solve problems if policymakers won't even admit they exist.

40 years ago the alleged crisis was global cooling.

Coby Beck covers that one:

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/they-predicted-...

The uncertainties are so great

Coby covers that:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/26/232046/03...

(Two of the above haven't been migrated to Grist's website yet, so they're still linked to here on illconsidered.)

So every argument after that builds on a foundation of quicksand.

Again, this assumes there's only one line of evidence. There are many lines, all corroborating each other, e.g., the studies I linked to above(and they're only a sample):

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/...On An excerpt from a new book by George Monbiot posted 3 years ago 36 Responses

If you bothered to read the skeptic's guide...

...You'd see that it deals with the urban heat island effect:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/26/224634/48...

As for the Petition Project, that's an old one:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institu...

The "fine scientists" who signed that petition include Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce. Yup, I always go to these guys when I want advice on climate science...On An excerpt from a new book by George Monbiot posted 3 years ago 36 Responses

Just cite your research...

David, are you suggesting that there are no papers by serious scientists that are skeptical of the anthropogenic global warming crisis claim?

Instead of asking these lawyerly rhetorical questions, just cite your research.

If I had a rhetorical question to ask you, it would be, can you do better than the White House-commissioned National Academy of Sciences, or the IPCC, who have been over this ground many, many times before?

This page shows a set of nine studies, from several different sets of data, all showing the signature of anthropogenic warming:

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/...On 'There is no consensus'--If this is not consensus, what would consensus look like? posted 3 years ago 109 Responses

Jason-- As an economist,

...you should run the numbers. How economically viable is decentralized electricity production? Then you could address things like Ron Bailey's despairing libertarian squibs. I happen to know someone who works developing photovoltaics. He's told me their price is coming down.

At a certain point the price would reach a point where you could economically put photovoltaics on peoples' rooftops. You could have an economy of scale where everyone could afford some of their own power generation. Maybe some version of this could even spread to India. Supposedly you gain considerable efficiencies by having energy production local (over in the UK even David Cameron is buying into this idea). Maybe, this would actually improve India's electricity delivery infrastructure (and from what I've heard, it badly needs it). Maybe they could modernize using a different paradigm than we did...

We would be wise to speed this kind of thing along by some sort of government intervention,  some coaxing of the market. Of course, for someone Ron Bailey, it's a matter of religious dogma that you can't do this without offending Ye Olde Free Market Gods...On Poor countries can't afford to tackle climate change posted 3 years ago 57 Responses

Ross Gelbspan has a page on this...

It sits on a firm foundation of peer-reviewed studies using a wide range of techniques.

Ross Gelbspan has a page listing the top studies attributing warming to human sources:

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/...On Here's why the scientific community thinks so posted 3 years ago 4 Responses

Fox News's Take

D'oh !!! :

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Rumsfeld%20Has%20No%20Plans%20to%20Step%20Down%2C %20Despite%20Democrat%20Gains%22%20...%20FOX%20News&btnG=Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa =N&tab=wnOn Secretary of Defense resigns in aftermath of yesterday's election posted 3 years ago 4 Responses

But I definitely agree.

But I definitely agree. Woah. There are some peeved people in Rhode Island. That's the seat Chafee's father held for decades... On Chafee goes down posted 3 years ago 4 Responses

One of those things...

I deeply regret that the Bloodhound Gang lie at the very bottom of one of the countless lacunae of my ignorance/cluelessness.

This is one of those things not to regret--you're not missing much. Although they can be fun to dance to. (If you don't know the person you're dancing with, just play dumb like you're not listening to the lyrics.)  

Anyway, one thing that's interesting about the lyrics of this song is that they reference the character La, from Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan books. One of my favorite lit crits Marianna Torgovnick dedicates a whole chapter to Tarzan and La in her book Gone Primitive: Modern Intellects, Savage Lives. The chapter's called Taking Tarzan Seriously. (Jjw, as always, ready with the literary and philosophical minutia....)On Does biology work against religious sentiment? posted 3 years ago 59 Responses

A bit Mclaughlin-eque, no?

It's like the old Mclaughlin Group:

Question: Do you think scientific advances in biology suggest that we should rethink our relationships with the non-human world? I ask you, Eleanor Clift!!!

Eleanor: Well, you know our relationship with nature needs to change, but it has nothing to do with...

Mclaughlin: Wrong! You didn't fit it into a sound bite. We turn to Fred Barnes!!!!

I agree with JMG. Science can be helpful, but not all things are wrapped up in it. (Sorry, Auguste Compte.)On Does biology work against religious sentiment? posted 3 years ago 59 Responses

And I'm not the only one...

...who disagrees with Dennett's views:

The reception of Dennett's work is consistently not what he would prefer. Professional scientists and philosophers regard his summaries and juxtapositions of their work accurate enough but usually irrelevant in a deep sense to the issue at hand. They are slightly annoyed. The lay audience, on the other hand, is swept away by his breathless reporting of new scientific findings, his clever use of metaphor and thought-experiment, and with his mischievous irreverence. They are non-critical; they have no basis for evaluating his claims.

http://www.logosjournal.com/gilman.htm
On David Quammen chats about evolution, science, religion, and his new book posted 3 years ago 38 Responses

Is niche-seeking competitive ?

Is niche-seeking competitive behavior? Couldn't it be seen as exactly the opposite? Don't animals frequently avoid competition?

Actually, there are documented instances of competitive behavior being maladaptive. I remember a study a while ago showing that "alpha-apes" (the competitive, aggressive ones) actually had much shorter lives than their peers due to stress and the fact that they had to fight off other would-be alphas later in life. I wish I could find a link to the study.

You could say that the niche seeking is itself competitive, but isn't that straining the meaning of the term, because the intention of the creature is not to compete?On David Quammen chats about evolution, science, religion, and his new book posted 3 years ago 38 Responses

Competition and Reductionism

There is something disturbing about a theory that says that there is no good act that doesn't have at its root some form of selfishness. It sounds to me like it's saying that materially-conditioned selfishness encompasses everything. I don't think I'm going to be teaching my kids that...

I'm not saying that natural selection doesn't have power to describe nature. (And I should admit to not knowing enough biology to really have informed opinion.) But does it have to describe everything? As Quamman notes, Darwin was "a materialist by disposition." And he was also a Victorian. He famously got his inspiration from Thomas Malthus, who couldn't have been more Victorian. This is from Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population:

The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation.

In other words, bluntly put, human populations die off because they are unfit to live, and this is the way of the world. This view strikes us today as barbaric and wrongheaded. Maybe Darwin just used this as a jumping off point, but certain ways of thinking have been known to smuggle their way into science before. (But again, I'm coming at this with a liberal arts education and not much of a science background. And to clarify, I'm not advocating Intelligent Design, Creationism, etc.)On David Quammen chats about evolution, science, religion, and his new book posted 3 years ago 38 Responses

I looked at his list again...

... and Exxon isn't there specifically, but a number of energy companies are, along with some other interesting clients. On A new series posted 3 years ago 24 Responses

Comment by the atmosphere:

The atmosphere:

"You know, those humans were releasing all this CO2, and so I was going to heat up. But then I saw that the humans were like, so intense. Their lawyers, policy wonks and number-crunchers were working really hard. So I gave them a break and suspended the laws of physics."On It's a poor indicator of progress on global warming posted 3 years ago 11 Responses

Galbraith's Affluent Society, Anyone?

Page 135:

Scientists [and other intellectuals are] imporant competitors of the businessmen for public esteem.

This competition is especially noticeable in comment on public affairs--on economic policy, foreign policy, the effect of government measures on popular morals and behavior... No one enjoys quite such distinction as the man who, by common consent, is allowed to look ahead and advise as to what we should do to promote or retard a particular occurence. The intellectual naturally assumes his authority on these matters. He is likely to be gifted well beyond the businessman in erudition and oral capacity. That felicity the businessman counters by stressing his identification with production...

...Were anything to happen to the prestige of production, it is plain that the businessman, whose mystique is his identification with production, would suffer severely in his competition with the intellectual...

Page 100:

Scientists are not without prestige in our day, but to be really useful, we still assume that they should be under the direction of a production man. "Any device or regulation which interferes, or can be conceived as interfering, with [the] supply of more and better things is resisted with unreasoning horror, as the religious resist blasphemy, or the warlike pacifism."

Sorry, one more:

I know I wrote that I had posted my last comment, but I started the Karen Armstrong book I mentioned above, and thought this passage was relevant (BTW, she also deals with the questions of violence brought up earlier):

Most of the Axial philosophers had no interest whatsoever in dogma or metaphysics. A person's theological beliefs were a matter of total indifference to somebody such as the Buddha. Confucius resolutely refused even to discuss theology, claiming that it was distracting and damaging. Others argued that it was immature, unrealistic and perverse to look for the kind of absolute certainty that many expect religion to provide. Indeed, when philosophers did begin to teach a militant orthodoxy, it was a sign that the Axial Age was drawing to a close.

What mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved. Religion was about doing things that changed you at a profound level. Before the Axial Age, ritual and animal sacrifice had been central to the religious quest. You experienced the divine in sacred dramas that, like a great theatrical experience today, introduced you to another level of existence. The Axial sages changed this; they still valued ritual, but gave it a new ethical significance and put morality at the heart of the spiritual life. The only way you could encounter what they called 'God,' 'Nirvana,' 'Brahman,' or the 'Way' was to live a compassionate life. Indeed, religion was compassion. Today we often assume that before undertaking a religious lifestyle, we must prove to our own satisfaction that "God" or the "Absolute" exists. This is good scientific practice: first you establish a principle; only then can you apply it. But the Axial sages would say that this was to put the cart before the horse. First you must commit yourself to the ethical life; then disciplined and habitual benevolence, not metaphysical conviction, would give you intimations of the transcendence you sought.

Of course, I don't expect hyper rationalists like PZ Myers and his readers to have much of an appreciation for this distinction.

(Why I'm posting this, I don't know. Probably no one's reading at this point...)On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

Not speculation

The sheer number of arguments tends to support skepticism

The "sheer number of arguments" doesn't support anything. Look at how many of them are simply wrong. Look how many are based on incomplete information. Some are outright distortions.

Lawyers like to offer "sheer numbers" of arguments in a court of law, but that doesn't mean they have a case.

The "sheer number" likely shows how many misinformed people insist on speaking, and happen to have the outlets to speak. It also likely shows how determined some people are to deny things that they see as inconvenient.

Scientific speculation offered as established fact.

This is not "speculation":

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/...

Now in a certain sense, all science is speculation. Conceivably, according to science, some contrarian science could arise for the law of gravity. But as Naomi Orestes put it in the Los Angeles Times:

Some climate-change deniers insist that the observed changes might be natural, perhaps caused by variations in solar irradiance or other forces we don't yet understand. Perhaps there are other explanations for the receding glaciers. But "perhaps" is not evidence.

The greatest scientist of all time, Isaac Newton, warned against this tendency more than three centuries ago. Writing in "Principia Mathematica" in 1687, he noted that once scientists had successfully drawn conclusions by "general induction from phenomena," then those conclusions had to be held as "accurately or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined...."

Now we do have very strong, multiple lines of empirical evidence for man-made climate change (as you see in the link above). And evidence of other factors causing the warming is weak at best (as Orestes alludes to above above). This is why the National Academy of Sciences concluded in 2001:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising.

But It's "How to Talk to a Skeptic"

And there are still people out there who think "global warming is a myth." All you need to do is google that statement and see that it still gets said.

I think Coby is just getting started. And it's not about convincing Grist readers, it's about informing people on how to talk to others who aren't so well informed...

I applaud Grist's migrating Coby's hard work onto Grist. I think it's a great place for it to gain a higher profile and a wider readership.On 'There is no evidence' -- Yes, there is posted 3 years, 1 month ago 59 Responses

Former World Bank Economist to Tony Blair:

Global warming could cost the world's economies up to 20 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) if urgent action is not taken to stop floods, storms and natural catastrophes.

That stark warning was given to Tony Blair and his cabinet yesterday by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank economist, and is said to have left cabinet ministers chastened by the magnitude of the threat posed by climate change.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1932727....
On Cleared up once and for all posted 3 years, 1 month ago 9 Responses

There's got to be a better way to frame this...

I've heard this dice analogy before. What it says is that it's a question of probability, the parameters of which are handed down to us by experts, who have this or that climatology degree, wear sciencey-looking white coats, yadda yadda yadda.

So you can never say climate change caused any severe storms. But doesn't this open the way for some absurdity at some point in the future? Let's say we get to the point where the dice are loaded to the point where only one face of the die means that climate change didn't cause a storm's severity. At what point do we release ourselves from saying "we don't know?" Perhaps not until it's too late for the persuasiveness of our certainty to have any impact on the problem.

I think Gore's movie was on the right track when he gave people an idea of the mechanism that creates the severe storms. He showed Katrina moving over the warm water and talked about how climate change means more frequent, unusually warm water. I think this is the better way to go. We can say something like climate change produces patches of progressively longer-lasting, warmer waters, creating more windows of opportunity for severe storms. Climate change creates more vulnerability for bad storms hitting our coasts. Something like that. Maybe someone can say this clearer than me.

I remember Roger Pielke saying that a bigger problem than CO2-enhanced storms ,is that too many people live on the coasts, and that more people move there every day, and that this creates more risk than climate change does. This may be true, but this doesn't take some things into account:

One-- people who choose to live on the coast bargain that they'll get natural hurricanes, but they might feel differently about human-enhanced hurricanes (and some people in third world countries that live on the coast didn't even produce much of the CO2 that caused the problem).

And Two-- stronger hurricanes are a major data point on the public's radar that we are changing the world. If we're creating stronger hurricanes, we can only guess what other problems we are creating.

So anyway, I don't think hurricanes, or even Katrina should be dismissed as part of the climate change discussion...On Cleared up once and for all posted 3 years, 1 month ago 9 Responses

Robust and Coif...

On Apropos of absolutely nothing posted 3 years, 1 month ago 24 Responses

Sounds like it to me.

It sounds like one-size-fits-all to me. Harris is talking about a set of:

psychophysical laws that underwrite human well-being... provid[ing] an enduring basis for an objective morality,

which to me sounds an awful lot like the

one set of universal and unalterable principles govern[ing] the world for theists, deists, and atheists, for optimists and pessimists, puritans, primitivists, and believers in progress

that the philosophes proposed (according to Berlin).
On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

McCain

He is, if anything, more enamored of war and foreign aggression than the neocons.

Wow. Is that even possible?On Who's doing what posted 3 years, 1 month ago 20 Responses

"Man"

I should have said "human kind." Sorry ladies. You're definitely in there too!On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

The problem is fundamentalism, not religion

Take a look at this clip from Bloggingheads TV:

http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=98&cid=367&i...

I think it says quite a bit about how paranoia about religion is unwise. A position of principled tolerance is much smarter (not to mention the best informed). JackH makes a good point that you can categorically disagree with something and still give it due respect. (If you have time, I also recommend listening to the whole dialog this clip came from, which is quite interesting.)

With regard to Brudaimonia's comment above, what the heck are "the  principles of a ritualistic, organized religion"? Are there such monolithic "principles" that make all "ritualistic, organized religion" intrinsically anti-environmental? This is the type of thing that makes me think we're looking at a kind of Bertrand Russell-style hyper-rationalist ideology, instead of a well-informed, considered opinion.

Again, I think the problem is fundamentalism, not religion. As for the issue of religion and practicality that Brudaimonia brings up, Karen Armstrong addresses this in her work. And I think she has some more points to make in general that are very relevant to this thread:

Secularists and fundamentalists sometimes seem trapped in an escalating spiral of hostility and recrimination. If fundamentalists must evolve a more compassionate assessment of their enemies in order to be true to their religious traditions, secularists must also be more faithful to the benevolence, tolerance, and respect for humanity which characterises modern culture at its best.

As for Jason's observation that "greatest prejudice in American society is reserved for atheists." This is true in certain circles, but not others (most of academia for instance). And then there's this old story:

When told that India was the most religious country in the world and Sweden the most secularized, the eminent sociologist Peter Berger is said to have replied, "Then the United States must be a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes."

Anyway, this isn't true lately (and I'm as unhappy about that as anyone here). But I think it would be a good thing if the Swedes and the Indians had a bit more understanding for each other.On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

And just to point out

And just to point out an obvious thing, the Old Testament is not read as a literal guide on things to do. You don't see people going out and sacrificing sheep or following Leviticus down to the letter.On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

Right, that's my point.

The Hebrews weren't unique in being a bit warlike and barbaric sometimes. The ancient Greeks could be that way too. This doesn't mean that we reject either of them.

Here's a Wikipedia article on Greek Pederasty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_pederasty

Cahill talks about this subject in several places in Sailing the Wine Dark Sea.

I don't mean to be homophobic at all.

And looks like you're right, human sacrifice may have been be a pre-Hellenic thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_religion#Worsh... (5th paragraph down)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice#Human_sacrifice (5th paragraph down)

I was relying on something I had read a long time ago about the Minotaur myths...

(Admittedly, these are Wikipedia articles. If anyone sees anything wrong or missing from these articles, please chime in.)On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

We don't quite agree

I think this is too broad a characterization:

I think the blind faith and fear of science religions bring out in many is exactly the antithesis of what we need most: reasoned debate and an acceptance that we are not as exceptional as we are accustomed to believing. This last point runs entirely counter to the thrust of all religious thought: that we are somehow elevated by our god above all other living things.

This doesn't characterize all religious people. Many are serious and dedicated, not to mention educated (remember, the task of educating  clergy played a major role in building our  university system). And these people may be an important party to convince in the process of public recognition of environmental problems. As Malcom Gladwell pointed out, a population often changes in unpredictable ways.

The other thing is that a sense of the transcendent and values often go together. I remember seeing a 60 Minutes segment with a Reagan-appointee climate scientist who said that his job wasn't to do anything but report his data to higher ups. This kind of values-free, technocratic approach bothers me. A little bit of populism, even religious populism, shouldn't be dismissed. This could be one of the ways the issue gets "reframed" as Malcom Gladwell put it.

Just lecturing and debating people doesn't always cut it. Here's a George Lakoff quote:

Within traditional liberalism you have a history of rational thought that was born out of the Enlightenment: all meanings should be literal, and everything should follow logically. So if you just tell people the facts, that should be enough -- the truth shall set you free. All people are fully rational, so if you tell them the truth, they should reach the right conclusions. That, of course, has been a disaster.

Now, the average churchgoer may not be as rational as you'd wish them to be. But their leaders went to seminary and studied theology. And theology does have some reasonableness and intellectual weight to it, despite what Richard Dawkins and his ilk may say.On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

Prof. Scorce said:

I take no solace in trying to interpret the words of men trying to interpret the ravings of a genocidal tyrant in the sky.

I think this is an example of what Terry Eagleton called

vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.

But that's fine that you don't believe in a personal god. You're in good company.

What I'm disagreeing with, doctor, is your prescribing that view for the entire environmental movement.

Listen to this quote from Jurgen Habermas:

Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization.

Habermas is an atheist. But I think he would disagree with what you imply, that consorting with people in religious congregations is essentially intellectual slumming, bordering on a waste of time, etc.

Another quote, this one from Huston Smith (paraphrasing the Chronicle of Higher Education):

"If anything characterizes modernity, it is the loss of transcendence, a reality which surpasses and encompasses our everyday world." It is a simple logical mistake to think that science alone is the royal road to truth, that it can open the door to truth of every sort.

If someone turns to a 2000 year old religious tradition to find transcendence, and they do not to sign up to the whole Bertrand-Russell-style rationalist paradigm, that's an unsurmountable problem?

Now there is a certain kind of rationalist who can't even relate. In that category I put Richard Dawkins and the chainsmoking Christoper Hitchens. Hitchens writes that the very impulse for anything transcendent is "dangerous" because "it involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason."

That's fine if you believe that, Christopher, but could you leave Mother Theresa alone? (And while we're at it, in my mind you're not qualified to lecture the rest of us about the sleep of reason. No matter how much Trotsky you read at Oxford.)

But anyway, my point is that I don't think the wholesale prescription of these kinds of views is good for the environmental movement. We should be reasonable, but also inclusive. It's called democracy for a reason.On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

No doubt

Hi, Patrick--

I Sometimes worry about these online forums a bit. I think you can lose something when things are so anonymous. People can just talk past each other without seeing points of agreement, myself included sometimes.

No doubt our adversaries on the religious right are the ones with the worst problems with tolerance and hearing differing views. I think there's no comparison between their behavior and the occasional intolerant comment by a non-religious person towards religion.

But when these comments do occur, as they seem to more often these days, often it isn't flattering for our side. I think some people feel that if someone isn't a total rationalist, they're not worth dealing with. Now, an exclusive kind of rationalism is an important part of the liberal political tradition which has gradually evolved in the direction of technocracy.

But not everyone is a technocrat. And not everyone is a "card carrying rationalist" like a Richard Dawkins. And I think this is a good thing. So I don't believe that we're slumming, so to speak, if we include non-technocrats --even non-technocrats with a religious bent-- in our political life. They're worth having as allies. And if you meet some of them, they can actually can be pretty rational and have common sense.

So, shorter version: forming alliances with people in religious congregations is not slumming. It can be. But I when I hear categorical statements that it is (and you hear this sort of thing a lot from people like Dawkins and Hitchens) I find them hard to pass over and say nothing.On A guest essay by Melanie Griffin posted 3 years, 1 month ago 13 Responses

Strong leaders who can make allies

I think I'm just responding to the fact that religion bashing seems to have become fashionable in some circles. I agree with Evan Derkacz over at Alternet and David Weinberger that this isn't the best thing for the causes that people are trying to espouse.

Fundamentalisms of all sorts are a problem. Market fundamentalism is a problem, but that doesn't mean that you don't form alliances with people who happen to be well connected in the market. Similarly, there are religious people out there who would make good allies for us, friends even. Not all of them, to be sure. But it bothers me when someone looks sideways at this sort of effort and calls it, in a blanket way, "strictly pragmatic." I don't think you make allies when you're welcoming people in an insincere way like that.On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

Thanks for your reply...

What I'm arguing is that the polarization has been due to fundamentalists and right-leaning politicians influencing the religious electorate, not Christianity itself.

We've had plenty of very good leaders who were religious, for instance MLK and Ghandi, and others that were more "under the radar" but were influential nonetheless, like Reinhold Niebuhr and Thomas Merton. Ideally, we would have more of these types of people influencing the church-going electorate. I'm just saying we should not write everybody off, and pay people some due respect. I'm not expecting that every churchgoer is going to run out and read Thomas Merton's Rain and the Rhinoceros, but maybe some will-- hopefully some leaders of congregations.

For the record, I consider myself an agnostic like David Weinberger.On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

Let me try to reparse that

What I meant to say was, some people (E. O. Wilson, for instance) may not be able to reach certain types of people themselves, but may be able to reach others who can. You get the gist anyway. My point was not to write people off. It's a bad idea.On Energy is better spent elsewhere posted 3 years, 1 month ago 93 Responses

Well said.

Well said, Patrick. I agree. I think people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are not tolerant, and they're simply not helpful. And they often don't know what they're talking about, either. On A guest essay by Melanie Griffin posted 3 years, 1 month ago 13 Responses

OK, Greenie

If can you can show us that you have the slightest idea what you're talking about when it comes to climate change, we'll take you seriously here, believe it or not. We won't cut your mike like Faux News.

Of course, this will mean that you'll have to actually engage real people, not two dimensional talking heads, and you'll be exposed to facts that aren't masticated and spoon fed through the right-wing, boob-tube industrial complex. I know its scary to go outside the mothership. And your Karl Rove talking points won't help you here. But you can do it. On More navel-gazing! posted 3 years, 1 month ago 10 Responses

"Nonsense" to the NAS?

Those extreme scientists over at the National Academy of Sciences, they were commissioned by the White House to do a study, and they reported that:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.

Those pesky scientists with their scientific method and peer review. What have those scientific institutions ever done for us lately, eh?

So your Carbiniferous [sic] Age was about 300 million years ago. The reason why it was so hot back then? Umm, it could have to do with the fact that the plants hadn't taken in the CO2 yet. And they also hadn't died to create fossil fuels, whose CO2 we're presently re-liberating into atmosphere. This is some pretty basic stuff.

As for the swings in past climate, they track to the CO2 levels. See this graph:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig2-22.htm

Logically, if we introduce more CO2, we'll get more warming, as that's what's happened in the past. The heat-trapping properties of CO2 is an observable property. And CO2 has been experimentally detected as an agent of atmospheric warming.

As for the temperatures and CO2 levels hundreds of millions of years ago, you might really dig and argue that temperatures don't track to CO2 as reliably as they do over the past 400,000 years (the period covered by the graph above). An energy-funded think tank recently tried to float that argument. But as Tim Lambert put it:

Well yes, over hundreds of millions of years, things like continental drift and long term changes in the sun are more important to climate than CO2. I'd keep that in mind if I was try to predict what the climate would be like in 100 million years.

But we're not thinking about life in 100 million years, we're thinking about lives that are a bit closer to home, I would think. Which is why the denial industry should get a clue.On An excerpt from a new book by George Monbiot posted 3 years, 1 month ago 36 Responses

These emails speak for themselves.

As for the very few coherent "arguments" they offer, this website answers all of them in layman's terms:

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-talk-to-...

 On A few choice bits from the hate mail that's come today posted 3 years, 1 month ago 9 Responses

WWII analogy nitpicking

The controversy over WWII analogies is over style, not substance. Frankly at this point, I welcome just about any debate. If we have to debate over style, then fine, because the debate over the substance won't be far behind. And they will lose hands down on that one, especially if they're debating someone as capable as David Roberts.

And I think Roger Pielke is being overly sensitive with his nitpicking the term "climate change denialists". If we can't use that term in this case, when can we, Dr. Pielke? If you argue that there's hyperbole involved, I think the denialists can take it. Again, the CEI can spend some of its copious resources helping their fellows process their grief over being labeled "denialists" or whatever.  

Denialism, Nuremburg, these are hyperbolic, but they're appropriate. You could argue over how hyperbolic, but then you have to get into matters of substance. If they want to debate that substance, please do. In prime time. With Inhofe and David Roberts as talking heads, any day of the week.On I have arrived posted 3 years, 1 month ago 26 Responses

Not So Much

Pinker is one of the fab four, along with Dawkins, Dennet, and Wilson.

Yikes. Chomsky is ok, but Dawkins and Dennett. I agree with this post at Alternet:

http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/42125/

Then there was this Dennett appearance on Radio Open Source:

http://www.radioopensource.org/is-god-in-our-genes/

There's something unjustifiedly triumphalist about both these guys. Not great spokesmen for their fields, IMHO.On Woodward's new book is terrifying posted 3 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses