Actually, we have data extending over hundreds of thousands of years. Even so, saying it's the warmest year "ever recorded" still says that all the data we have supports the global warming thesis. You can always posit that x amount of data isn't enough, that a wee bit more data would totally freak everyone out and prove the total obverse of the original idea. That caveat is true whether you have 10 years or 3 billion years of data, because you never have absolutely all the data, ever. If we suspended science until we had enough data to satisfy the "scientists" churning out studies for the oil companies, we'd be waiting about as long as it would take tobacco company "scientists" to overcome their skepticism about the link between smoking and cancer.
Science isn't about Definitive Truth, devoid of all possible error, but about finding the best mental model we have to explain the data we have. That would be global warming. Do I think "critics" should be silenced? No, though I wish that people would recognize that a particular political movement is behind global warming "skepticism," just as the same movement is behind "skepticism" over the old age of the earth or evolution.
What research can you point me to that debunks antrhopocentric global warming but isn't funded by oil companies? Research was done by the tobacco companies casting doubt on the link between tobacco and cancer--do we present this to the schoolchildren as a viable alternative to mainstream medicine's theory (ahem) that smoking leads to cancer? If the alcohol industry produces studies casting doubt on the link between liver cirrhosis and heavy drinking, do we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're being objective?
You're hearing about it because during WWI the flu killed more people than said World War. The flu can be amazingly deadly if you get the right strain. While it's true that any disease could mutate and kill us all (staph and e. coli are good candidates) the flu has already shown itself to be a particularly nasty critter. They'd rather panic about it when there is still time to try to avert the catastrophe.
I wasn't that impressed with Kerry, but with politicians I never am. But I was impressed by one thing he said in the debates--"maybe we should judge less and love more." Do I think he would've been a fantastic, awesome President? No. I voted for him, but he wasn't that awesome. But neither was Clinton, Reagan, Bush I, Ford, Nixon, JFK, Eisenhower, Roosevelt (Teddy or FDR), and so on. Even Lincoln had his blemishes, which we only fail to see because of the civil war and his assasination. But do I think Kerry would've been better than the current model? Yes. We also would've been better off under Gore, H. Clinton, or any moderate Republican. Bush and his club o' world-shapers aren't conservative. They're blessed with a Wilsonian vision of saving the world for democracy on the shoulders of America's steely resolve. That means open-ended, poorly defined conflicts that chew up American lives for a handful of cliches and breaking our budget with a $700+ billion military. Sadly, I'd even prefer the old Kissinger realpolitik approach. It was amoral, but at least they recognized a limit to what force alone could accomplish.
Well, there are different meanings of the word "legal." These programs are legal in the sense that no government officials will ever be charged, not legal in the sense of being compliant with written law.
I know plenty of liberals, some of them bitter, but none who think Bush stole the election. The big guy never gets involved with this sort of thing. But when you have tens of millions of Americans who think he was literally anointed by God to be President as part of the battle against the forces of evil, it becomes increasingly probable that people would do it but not yap their gums afterwards. They would have had to leave the fold by the time they had their attack of conscience, and no one would believe them anyway.
Most of the liberals I know don't really blame Bush all that much, not in the sense that he orchestrated this or that. He's just viewed as a not-too-bright party-boy who got manipulated by PNAC ideologues like Cheney into bringing to fruition their grand vision for a new world. Now that it's falling to crap, all the visionaries are strangely silent, and ultimately it is the President's responsibility anyway. I feel sorry for him, but I wish he had been not just smarter, but more intellectually curious about the arguments he was hearing. No one is really smart enough to master all the foreign-relations issues out there, but is lack of intellectual depth, and his lack of humility, has really led to some serious disasters. I think this is pretty much the darkest time in US history since Manzanar.
One thing to keep in mind is that correlation != causation. The use of electronic voting machines is highly suspect, but it's not a smoking gun
If a bank manager deliberately installs a security system that lacks a camera in the vault that he has access to, and then money goes amiss, you don't pop up with "correlation isn't causation." When you have a CEO that promised to do anything he could to help Bush win reelection, and who worked directly for the Bush election campaign, and his company makes the voting machines in question that have no audit trail capability, no verifiability, and the outcomes are statistically anomalous, it's asinine to say "correlation doesn't equal causation." This is a clear, obvious, blatant case of malfeasance, not a set of bizarre circumstances that came together to make something look a little off.
A smoking gun isn't proof of anything. A smoking gun lying next to a guy who was shot, and gunpowder on your hands, your fingerprints on the gun, and people who heard you telling him "I'll kill you!" doesn't prove you shot him. It is entirely possible that circumstances just made things look that way. But few rational people would ignore the preponderance of the evidence. Sometimes the obvious is just obvious. If Diebold was run by management that explicitly wanted Bush reelected, and Diebold machines were used in districts whose vote was mathematically off, and Diebold made their machines so no one could check the accuract of the vote, your skepticism isn't really open-minded anymore.
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The Swift Boat ads cost Kerry the election. Allegations don't have to be true, or even credible, or even make sense. The media just spends more time talking about "the controversy" rather than using critical analysis on the claims themselves, and this perpetuates the story rather than revealing it as a silly smear campaign. When the story isn't "are these claims true or false," but instead, "People are talking about the Swift Boat ads!" then the notoriety of the story, rather than the veracity of story, becomes the point, and our penchant for bread and circuses hamstrings our ability to intelligently discuss anything. The news media has stopped being news and started being just entertainment that is based on the news.
All those "new ideas" on global warming are coming out of oil-company funded research. Strange that the bold, cutting-edge research is limited to thsoe who have a financial interest in ignoring anthropocentric global warming. That's like trusting a Haliburton study on whether or not there has been fraudulent billing on contracts in Iraq. Would you consider that dependable?
the previous generation entered out of a love of draft deferments, which is why you have a collection of leftists professors
Yes, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and the vast majority of the neoconservatives who avoided the draft would agree with you. Let's see what John Kerry and John Murta (both of whom were wounded in combat) think of global warming, eh? Al Gore served in the military, if I'm not mistaken. You're loony if you think that global warming advocates are just a bunch of cowards who couldn't face Vietnam in the 60s/70s, and now are too chicken to face the "tough evidence" on global warming out of a deep character flaw. Is that really an argument you find persuasive? That IS an argument I haven't seen before, I'll admit.
The Academy has become one giant mess of group-think.
Anyone can challenge "The Academy," provided they do science and provide alternative, credible, evidence-supported theories to explain the evidence as it stands. "The Academy," as you call it, is the mainstream scientific community you depend on for airplanes, automobiles, heart transplants, antibiotics, and so on. Oil-company-funded "research" into global warming, while ostensibly full of would-be mavericks challenging the status quo, doesn't actually provide any new research. That entire field is just dedicated to debunking one subject--anthropocentric global warming. They aren't a bold new vanguard that is going to uncover the untold riches of a new renaissance in science. They are about as relevant to actual climatalogical study as The Discovery Institute is to study on genetic diversity.
All true. The difference is that Al Gore is not claiming to be an expert. Gore is pointing to, and deferring to, the mountain of evidence, along with the consensus of the climatological scientific community, the community that was persuaded by the very evidence he is pointing to. Gore is acting as a loud, strident, eloquent, persistent voice for the scientists, whereas Crichton is telling you that he's smarter than all the scientists. Al Gore is trying to get us to hear what science is saying, while Crichton is saying "nah, it's all hooey." One of these positions involves humility and knowing one's limitations, and one does not.
You seem to link to... facts. Hmm. Okay, time to shift the debate to your tone, underlying ideology, bias, your scorn for the working man, how smart you think you are, how you're a pawn of Al Gore, how you're just mad about the 2004 election (it's over, man--give it up!), how you're starting the 2008 election a bit early, how you were SO duped by George Soros, how you'd be real real happy if Al Queida took over our country, and even if you wouldn't, you seem to be playing right into their hands. What else... oh that's right, you hate Bush! We get it, man, thanks. Ah, the far left in action--I'm sowwy, did we huwt a wittle spotted owl? Spit on any veterans today? Why did you kill Vince Foster? New World Order! Black Helicopters! Randy Weaver! Aaaagh why do you eat babiiiiieeeeesssssss.....
Yes, the planet will be fine. What they're referrering to is the life on the planet. My apologies for assuming that was obvious.
Sadly, yes, science has been wrong in the past. It will no doubt be wrong again. It's a human endeavor, limited by the nature of our perception, instruments, data, mortality, intelligence, and so on. Good luck living without medication, electricity, airplanes, sanitation, and all those other things that this undependable, ideology-laden worldview has saddled us with. If only they were infallible, we could trust them! Oh, what to do!?!
Oh, screw it. I'm throwing caution to the wind. Science gave me air conditioning and antibiotics, so I'm just siding with them. If global warming is the best that science has come up with today, then I'm going with science. Just as soon as there's another show in town that shows itself even remotely as capable at finding out about the world around us and validating those findings via experiment and, well, lasers and spaceships, then I'll reconsider my alleigance. I'd like to know how you fare without science (you can be the control in our little experiment), but since you won't be using this internet-thingy (electrons are a theory, don't ya know, and they've been wrong before) so I guess you'll just have to send a genie to let me know how you got on.
No, that would be Newsweek you were thinking of. The popular press is notoriously alarmist and loves hyperbole. During the early 1970s there were articles investigating climate change, and at that time the climatalogical community was unsure because they were only starting to study the subject in-depth. As the data accrued over the ensuing 30+ years, consensus has solidified that global warming occurring, and human activity is accelerating it beyond what it would otherwise be. You're acting as if there was a scientific consensus back then (global cooling) and they've all swung around like lemmings to support global warming. Not so--there was no consensus on global cooling, just a few exploratory articles in a new field of study. As the data accumulated, more ice cores and so on, the burgeoning data led them to the consensus they have today. You're faulting the scientific process for the capacity to learn. Admirable.
If you want the same answer for all time, stick with religion. Science is a process by which we learn about the world around us. Science's best answer 30+ years ago was different than it is now, because now they have more data, better models, better computers, etc. It's also called "learning," meaning that your knowledge changes. A system that doesn't learn and improve isn't very useful. If you're going to distrust the best answer science has because they might revise it sometime in the future, turn off your computer, turn off all the lights in your house, and never take medicine again. Don't drive a car or use chemically sanitized water or food.
Scientific analysis is always provisional, but that provisional, groping, slow, fallible process gave you all of those things, and you damned sure shouldn't trust them. Only religion gives certitudes. If you don't trust science, then don't trust the fruits of science. By their fruits shall ye know them, and all of that.
From where I'm standing, science seems dependable, and really the only somewhat reliable, if ultimately fallible, system we have for finding out about the world. I know the response is usually "we should do absolutely nothing until we know absolutely everything," but there is a point past which skepticism is just arrogance and bullheadedness. The preponderance of the evidence is too overwhelming to reject, and the price is too high to ignore.
It's interesting that you consider global warming to be a "liberal" issue, since anthropocentric global warming is the consensus of the entire climatalogical community. And Al Gore didn't claim that he invented the internet. Both the idea that global warming has been politicized, and the story about Gore claiming to have invented the internet, are entirely partisan, fictitious lies and distortions foisted on you by one political movement. Way to be alert to being politically snookered.
And Michael Crichton's books, though they sell well, are not scientifically valid. That is pretty well-known. Medical Doctors, even Harvard MDs, are not automatic authorities on every scientific subject on the planet. Crichton is not a climatologist, and I'm fairly sure you were aware of that seemingly obvious fact. Would you take your local proctologist's word about quantum mechanics? Is your dermatologist a reliable authority on string theory?
When it comes to climatology, you might want to look at what the climatologists have been saying--and they've been saying for decades that humans are contributing significantly to global warming. Are you saying that all the climatologists are wrong about climatology, but Michael Crichton, Harvard M.D., really set the record straight in his fictional novel?
It doesn't suit me. I'm not good at any of the games that result in wealth, power, and oodles of loose women. But I recognize that the world is what it is. It preexisted me, and will outlast me. If I expect it to change to suit me, I will only increase my own unhappiness. If I can learn to adapt myself to either exploit, accomodate, accept, or tolerate the places where the world works differently than I do, then I will be more happy, not less. But if you fight against the world, you will lose. Being good with electronics, or math, or music, or art, doesn't change that. Happiness may actually be largely overrated. Van Gogh was no doubt miserable, as was Mozart. If geniuses were well-adjusted and emotionally balanced we'd have a lot fewer masterpieces in the world.
Well, Einstein bothered to wear a suit. I'd bet Edison showed up in decent clothing, too. Look up Fermi, Von Neumann, Dirac, and all the insanely bright people who built modern physics--all pretty decent dressers. Our culture has come to the point where it accepts slovenly dress, and the geeks have staked out the low end of that low range of acceptable behavior. There is nothing about sandals and t-shirts that are particularly creative. Putting on a shirt with a collar and wearing socks doesn't waste so much of your intellectual energy that now you can't be smart. That's just pretentious, overblown tripe. They're posturing, saying, "I'm too smart to bother dress like you" and for a long time that was allowed. I'm not saying they should be shot, only that I don't have much sympathy.
I also don't have much sympathy for Draper et al. He's an interesting person, but that doesn't pay the rent. He was really good at a narrowly defined field. But that field only exists in the context of filthy rich corporations or military contracts, both of which have pretty well-known rules for the individual to survive and thrive. There are savants in the world who are geniuses in one field but basketcases in others. That's sad, but it doesn't mean that the world wronged them somehow. All of that being said (and I realize that I'm not overflowing with the milk of human kindness) I do find savants fascinating. I've read biographies of Rimbaud, Wittgenstein, Kerouac, and god knows how many others. They do make the world a better, more interesting place. But being interesting doesn't really mean anything in a capitalist society. Or even in non-capitalist societies, for that matter. Rodin starved to death, didn't he? Van Gogh didn't seem to be a highly successful person financially.
Well, if you're right-wing, you're sort of stuck when it comes to this issue. All of the environmentalists are left-wing, and some of them are pretty far-left-wing. Our political environment is extremely polarized, and you'd be pilloried for saying "you know, Al Gore has a point on this one" in a group of conservatives. They don't want to admit, ever, that any left-wing person is right on anything. On top of that, the right wing is largely populist, and heavily evangelical, both movements that have always, always been distrustful of science and academia. It isn't stupidity, but ideology. Their entire political environment feeds into the idea that the average man in the street is smarter than the pointy-head intellectual.
Those fossils really aren't old, because the Earth is only 4,000 years old. Those "fossils" you speak of were planted by Satan to fool us into believing in evilution. Next you'll be buying into global warming. Fool!
Yes, but the document that contains the part about "cruel and unusual punishment" is a historical artifact, and is not seen as either a guide to or a check on government power. It has some procedural weight, in defining the terms and requirements for office, but not much else. It has a few fans, but even those generally pick and choose, so the end result is that no one really supports it. The left wing supports Amendments I, and III-X. The right wing supports Amendment II. The left wing thinks the right wing is living in the distant past and is taking things out of historical context, and the right wing thinks the left wing is filled with communists who hate America and want the terrorists to win.
And that's the mainstream--if you go to the poles, the far left wing thinks the right wing is a neo-Nazi movement, and the far right wing thinks the left wing is the actual, real-life tool of Luciver to destroy American and drag your kids to Hell. Neither actually share the suspicion of government that caused the forefathers to write the Constitution. Constitutional rights are seen as either technicalities or outdated relics, or both. Today, the Bill of Rights wouldn't have a chance in hell of passing.
You can say that some 14 year old can't make an informed decision- maybe they can't, I can't speak for them and nether can you. But I can say that it's certainly the lesser of evils.
Well, if they picked up a sniper rifle and killed someone we'd definitely consider them responsible for their decisions, It wouldn't matter if they had an IQ of 82 and had been beaten in the head with a shovel. But if they layed down with a 30 year old, then they're a victim, a mere wisp of a child, the picture of bucolic innocence, and it would be the end of civilization as we know it to recognize their capacity to decide for themselves whether or not they want to have sex.
both of them dropping the ball and wasting millions of taxpayer dollars/pounds
I think you're misnunderstanding the root goal of large, lucrative government contracts. Even when these programs fall through, millions (most likely billions) of pounds/dollars have already changed hands. The companies exist to make money, and they lobby the government towards that end--the goal is the money, not the final product. The final project is just a pretext. If Iraq for example falls through and we pull out entirely, Haliburton has still made billions of dollars, and those with stock options will still get richer.
Haliburton is only an example, because it holds true with every private company getting money from the government for a service/product that is never ultimately provided, or is provided poorly. Citizens wring their hands over the "wasted" revenue, but for the politicians and businessmen, nothing was wasted at all. Politicians can grandstand and act as if they're doing something vital, and businessmen make millions at the public trough. If you start viewing government contracts as corporate welfare first and as a means to the identified end second, you wouldn't always be right, but your cynicism would make your analysis correct more often than the alternative assumption.
What would they blow up in the USA? The vast majority of the violence in Iraq is from the Sunnis attacking the Shiites, combined with the Shiites attacking the Sunnis. It was predicted beforehand that removing Saddam would unleash ethnic strife and slide the country into civil war, and that's exactly what happened. Al Queida plays a very minor role in Iraq. Yes, Iraqis generally think our presence is part of the problem, think they're worse off than under Saddam, and generally want us to leave, but that doesn't mean that they're going to fly to the USA to attack us.
You're conflating ethnic strife with Wahhabism, which is a different beast. Wahhabism is strong mainly in Saudi Arabia, who funded and supplied the terrorists that actually attacked the USA. But some people who shall remain unnamed are from families with longstanding financial ties to Saudi Arabia, which of course has nothing to do with our still being allies with them though they are they main financiers of anti-US terrorism, but you know, it just looks funny.
And if you mention "Bush bashing," I promise your penis will fall off. Tell me that my facts are wrong, that my analysis is inaccurrate, or just ignore me, but saying "You don't like Bush!" is not a rebuttal of any argument, allegation, insinuation, or anything else. Right or wrong, it's irrlevant, and I"m sick of hearing it.
Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves
The things I procrastinate are things I know I can wing well enough at the last minute and still get by. I'd bet many procrastinators are similar. Not everything has to be done right now. Plus, I've found that many problems self-resolve if you ignore them, or you find out later that they weren't the emergency they first seemed to be. We're just too mired in the cult of efficiency, and everyone is convinced everything has to be done now-now-now so you can do more-more-more. We would do well with less doing and more thinking.
Thanks for the link, but don't go getting optimistic. Just google "evolution" and "second law of thermodynamics" and you'll see the most resilient chestnut in the history of all chestnuts. It's like a Platonic, ideal chestnut, the one on which all others are modeled, however imperfectly. It will never die, and it mocks its own falsehood and absurdity with a chuckle of disdain.
The key (as with evolution vs creation) is teaching the children to be critical thinkers and giving them the skills to take information from various sources and weigh and measure it before synthesizing it into thier view of reality.
So.... what data do you present to school children when discussing global warming? The scientific community has come to a consensus. The scientific community is the one that invented antibiotics, air conditioning, airplanes, lasers (ooh, cool!), spaceships, and video games. The way of looking at the world that developed all of that also led to the conclusions we collectively call "anthropocentric global warming."
Now, opposed to that, we have a collection of reaaaaaally old books written by some goat-tenders, well, and a former tax collector, about 2000 to 3000 years ago. Now, they never saw an X-box, and they didn't even have light bulbs or refrigerators, but the stories they wrote back then say that global warming probably isn't happening. Actually, the stories don't say that, not that we can find, but Billy's dad, who reads the stories a lot, is a Republican, and he's really really sure that being a Republican and believing in those old stories means that global warming is all just made up phoney icky stories. Okay, so who do you vote for? Science (holds up laser and a toy rocket ship), or these stories (holds up fake-leather bible and an 8x10 photo of Roy Moore hugging John Ashcroft)?
Now that would be the balanced, equable presentation you were thinking of. Good luck with that. But you know that the zealot in question doesn't want that. He just wants global warming (and evolution, and the age of the Grand Canyon, etc) to be brushed aside, because he thinks doing so will make America a more "Godly Country." We need to stop pretending that the global-warming naysayers are just raising honest objections out of a conscientious sense of intellectual honesty. It's a cultural battle between their side, who they think are "God's People/Joel's Army/whatever" and the people who live in the modern world, who they call "secularists/evil/minions of Satan." If you think I'm exaggerating for effect, you might be mistaken.
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Science isn't about Definitive Truth, devoid of all possible error, but about finding the best mental model we have to explain the data we have. That would be global warming. Do I think "critics" should be silenced? No, though I wish that people would recognize that a particular political movement is behind global warming "skepticism," just as the same movement is behind "skepticism" over the old age of the earth or evolution.
What research can you point me to that debunks antrhopocentric global warming but isn't funded by oil companies? Research was done by the tobacco companies casting doubt on the link between tobacco and cancer--do we present this to the schoolchildren as a viable alternative to mainstream medicine's theory (ahem) that smoking leads to cancer? If the alcohol industry produces studies casting doubt on the link between liver cirrhosis and heavy drinking, do we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're being objective?
You're hearing about it because during WWI the flu killed more people than said World War. The flu can be amazingly deadly if you get the right strain. While it's true that any disease could mutate and kill us all (staph and e. coli are good candidates) the flu has already shown itself to be a particularly nasty critter. They'd rather panic about it when there is still time to try to avert the catastrophe.
I wasn't that impressed with Kerry, but with politicians I never am. But I was impressed by one thing he said in the debates--"maybe we should judge less and love more." Do I think he would've been a fantastic, awesome President? No. I voted for him, but he wasn't that awesome. But neither was Clinton, Reagan, Bush I, Ford, Nixon, JFK, Eisenhower, Roosevelt (Teddy or FDR), and so on. Even Lincoln had his blemishes, which we only fail to see because of the civil war and his assasination. But do I think Kerry would've been better than the current model? Yes. We also would've been better off under Gore, H. Clinton, or any moderate Republican. Bush and his club o' world-shapers aren't conservative. They're blessed with a Wilsonian vision of saving the world for democracy on the shoulders of America's steely resolve. That means open-ended, poorly defined conflicts that chew up American lives for a handful of cliches and breaking our budget with a $700+ billion military. Sadly, I'd even prefer the old Kissinger realpolitik approach. It was amoral, but at least they recognized a limit to what force alone could accomplish.
Well, there are different meanings of the word "legal." These programs are legal in the sense that no government officials will ever be charged, not legal in the sense of being compliant with written law.
Most of the liberals I know don't really blame Bush all that much, not in the sense that he orchestrated this or that. He's just viewed as a not-too-bright party-boy who got manipulated by PNAC ideologues like Cheney into bringing to fruition their grand vision for a new world. Now that it's falling to crap, all the visionaries are strangely silent, and ultimately it is the President's responsibility anyway. I feel sorry for him, but I wish he had been not just smarter, but more intellectually curious about the arguments he was hearing. No one is really smart enough to master all the foreign-relations issues out there, but is lack of intellectual depth, and his lack of humility, has really led to some serious disasters. I think this is pretty much the darkest time in US history since Manzanar.
A smoking gun isn't proof of anything. A smoking gun lying next to a guy who was shot, and gunpowder on your hands, your fingerprints on the gun, and people who heard you telling him "I'll kill you!" doesn't prove you shot him. It is entirely possible that circumstances just made things look that way. But few rational people would ignore the preponderance of the evidence. Sometimes the obvious is just obvious. If Diebold was run by management that explicitly wanted Bush reelected, and Diebold machines were used in districts whose vote was mathematically off, and Diebold made their machines so no one could check the accuract of the vote, your skepticism isn't really open-minded anymore.
The Swift Boat ads cost Kerry the election. Allegations don't have to be true, or even credible, or even make sense. The media just spends more time talking about "the controversy" rather than using critical analysis on the claims themselves, and this perpetuates the story rather than revealing it as a silly smear campaign. When the story isn't "are these claims true or false," but instead, "People are talking about the Swift Boat ads!" then the notoriety of the story, rather than the veracity of story, becomes the point, and our penchant for bread and circuses hamstrings our ability to intelligently discuss anything. The news media has stopped being news and started being just entertainment that is based on the news.
All true. The difference is that Al Gore is not claiming to be an expert. Gore is pointing to, and deferring to, the mountain of evidence, along with the consensus of the climatological scientific community, the community that was persuaded by the very evidence he is pointing to. Gore is acting as a loud, strident, eloquent, persistent voice for the scientists, whereas Crichton is telling you that he's smarter than all the scientists. Al Gore is trying to get us to hear what science is saying, while Crichton is saying "nah, it's all hooey." One of these positions involves humility and knowing one's limitations, and one does not.
You seem to link to... facts. Hmm. Okay, time to shift the debate to your tone, underlying ideology, bias, your scorn for the working man, how smart you think you are, how you're a pawn of Al Gore, how you're just mad about the 2004 election (it's over, man--give it up!), how you're starting the 2008 election a bit early, how you were SO duped by George Soros, how you'd be real real happy if Al Queida took over our country, and even if you wouldn't, you seem to be playing right into their hands. What else... oh that's right, you hate Bush! We get it, man, thanks. Ah, the far left in action--I'm sowwy, did we huwt a wittle spotted owl? Spit on any veterans today? Why did you kill Vince Foster? New World Order! Black Helicopters! Randy Weaver! Aaaagh why do you eat babiiiiieeeeesssssss.....
Sadly, yes, science has been wrong in the past. It will no doubt be wrong again. It's a human endeavor, limited by the nature of our perception, instruments, data, mortality, intelligence, and so on. Good luck living without medication, electricity, airplanes, sanitation, and all those other things that this undependable, ideology-laden worldview has saddled us with. If only they were infallible, we could trust them! Oh, what to do!?!
Oh, screw it. I'm throwing caution to the wind. Science gave me air conditioning and antibiotics, so I'm just siding with them. If global warming is the best that science has come up with today, then I'm going with science. Just as soon as there's another show in town that shows itself even remotely as capable at finding out about the world around us and validating those findings via experiment and, well, lasers and spaceships, then I'll reconsider my alleigance. I'd like to know how you fare without science (you can be the control in our little experiment), but since you won't be using this internet-thingy (electrons are a theory, don't ya know, and they've been wrong before) so I guess you'll just have to send a genie to let me know how you got on.
If you want the same answer for all time, stick with religion. Science is a process by which we learn about the world around us. Science's best answer 30+ years ago was different than it is now, because now they have more data, better models, better computers, etc. It's also called "learning," meaning that your knowledge changes. A system that doesn't learn and improve isn't very useful. If you're going to distrust the best answer science has because they might revise it sometime in the future, turn off your computer, turn off all the lights in your house, and never take medicine again. Don't drive a car or use chemically sanitized water or food.
Scientific analysis is always provisional, but that provisional, groping, slow, fallible process gave you all of those things, and you damned sure shouldn't trust them. Only religion gives certitudes. If you don't trust science, then don't trust the fruits of science. By their fruits shall ye know them, and all of that.
From where I'm standing, science seems dependable, and really the only somewhat reliable, if ultimately fallible, system we have for finding out about the world. I know the response is usually "we should do absolutely nothing until we know absolutely everything," but there is a point past which skepticism is just arrogance and bullheadedness. The preponderance of the evidence is too overwhelming to reject, and the price is too high to ignore.
And Michael Crichton's books, though they sell well, are not scientifically valid. That is pretty well-known. Medical Doctors, even Harvard MDs, are not automatic authorities on every scientific subject on the planet. Crichton is not a climatologist, and I'm fairly sure you were aware of that seemingly obvious fact. Would you take your local proctologist's word about quantum mechanics? Is your dermatologist a reliable authority on string theory?
When it comes to climatology, you might want to look at what the climatologists have been saying--and they've been saying for decades that humans are contributing significantly to global warming. Are you saying that all the climatologists are wrong about climatology, but Michael Crichton, Harvard M.D., really set the record straight in his fictional novel?
It doesn't suit me. I'm not good at any of the games that result in wealth, power, and oodles of loose women. But I recognize that the world is what it is. It preexisted me, and will outlast me. If I expect it to change to suit me, I will only increase my own unhappiness. If I can learn to adapt myself to either exploit, accomodate, accept, or tolerate the places where the world works differently than I do, then I will be more happy, not less. But if you fight against the world, you will lose. Being good with electronics, or math, or music, or art, doesn't change that. Happiness may actually be largely overrated. Van Gogh was no doubt miserable, as was Mozart. If geniuses were well-adjusted and emotionally balanced we'd have a lot fewer masterpieces in the world.
I also don't have much sympathy for Draper et al. He's an interesting person, but that doesn't pay the rent. He was really good at a narrowly defined field. But that field only exists in the context of filthy rich corporations or military contracts, both of which have pretty well-known rules for the individual to survive and thrive. There are savants in the world who are geniuses in one field but basketcases in others. That's sad, but it doesn't mean that the world wronged them somehow. All of that being said (and I realize that I'm not overflowing with the milk of human kindness) I do find savants fascinating. I've read biographies of Rimbaud, Wittgenstein, Kerouac, and god knows how many others. They do make the world a better, more interesting place. But being interesting doesn't really mean anything in a capitalist society. Or even in non-capitalist societies, for that matter. Rodin starved to death, didn't he? Van Gogh didn't seem to be a highly successful person financially.
Well, if you're right-wing, you're sort of stuck when it comes to this issue. All of the environmentalists are left-wing, and some of them are pretty far-left-wing. Our political environment is extremely polarized, and you'd be pilloried for saying "you know, Al Gore has a point on this one" in a group of conservatives. They don't want to admit, ever, that any left-wing person is right on anything. On top of that, the right wing is largely populist, and heavily evangelical, both movements that have always, always been distrustful of science and academia. It isn't stupidity, but ideology. Their entire political environment feeds into the idea that the average man in the street is smarter than the pointy-head intellectual.
Those fossils really aren't old, because the Earth is only 4,000 years old. Those "fossils" you speak of were planted by Satan to fool us into believing in evilution. Next you'll be buying into global warming. Fool!
And that's the mainstream--if you go to the poles, the far left wing thinks the right wing is a neo-Nazi movement, and the far right wing thinks the left wing is the actual, real-life tool of Luciver to destroy American and drag your kids to Hell. Neither actually share the suspicion of government that caused the forefathers to write the Constitution. Constitutional rights are seen as either technicalities or outdated relics, or both. Today, the Bill of Rights wouldn't have a chance in hell of passing.
Haliburton is only an example, because it holds true with every private company getting money from the government for a service/product that is never ultimately provided, or is provided poorly. Citizens wring their hands over the "wasted" revenue, but for the politicians and businessmen, nothing was wasted at all. Politicians can grandstand and act as if they're doing something vital, and businessmen make millions at the public trough. If you start viewing government contracts as corporate welfare first and as a means to the identified end second, you wouldn't always be right, but your cynicism would make your analysis correct more often than the alternative assumption.
You're conflating ethnic strife with Wahhabism, which is a different beast. Wahhabism is strong mainly in Saudi Arabia, who funded and supplied the terrorists that actually attacked the USA. But some people who shall remain unnamed are from families with longstanding financial ties to Saudi Arabia, which of course has nothing to do with our still being allies with them though they are they main financiers of anti-US terrorism, but you know, it just looks funny.
And if you mention "Bush bashing," I promise your penis will fall off. Tell me that my facts are wrong, that my analysis is inaccurrate, or just ignore me, but saying "You don't like Bush!" is not a rebuttal of any argument, allegation, insinuation, or anything else. Right or wrong, it's irrlevant, and I"m sick of hearing it.
Thanks for the link, but don't go getting optimistic. Just google "evolution" and "second law of thermodynamics" and you'll see the most resilient chestnut in the history of all chestnuts. It's like a Platonic, ideal chestnut, the one on which all others are modeled, however imperfectly. It will never die, and it mocks its own falsehood and absurdity with a chuckle of disdain.
Now, opposed to that, we have a collection of reaaaaaally old books written by some goat-tenders, well, and a former tax collector, about 2000 to 3000 years ago. Now, they never saw an X-box, and they didn't even have light bulbs or refrigerators, but the stories they wrote back then say that global warming probably isn't happening. Actually, the stories don't say that, not that we can find, but Billy's dad, who reads the stories a lot, is a Republican, and he's really really sure that being a Republican and believing in those old stories means that global warming is all just made up phoney icky stories. Okay, so who do you vote for? Science (holds up laser and a toy rocket ship), or these stories (holds up fake-leather bible and an 8x10 photo of Roy Moore hugging John Ashcroft)?
Now that would be the balanced, equable presentation you were thinking of. Good luck with that. But you know that the zealot in question doesn't want that. He just wants global warming (and evolution, and the age of the Grand Canyon, etc) to be brushed aside, because he thinks doing so will make America a more "Godly Country." We need to stop pretending that the global-warming naysayers are just raising honest objections out of a conscientious sense of intellectual honesty. It's a cultural battle between their side, who they think are "God's People/Joel's Army/whatever" and the people who live in the modern world, who they call "secularists/evil/minions of Satan." If you think I'm exaggerating for effect, you might be mistaken.