Letters to the Editor
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Climate Change
The National Academy of Sciences was created in 1862 to advise the U.S. government on scientific issues. Only the very best research scientists in the world are invited to become members of the national academy, and becoming a member is one of the highest honors a scientist can achieve.
The committee assigned by NAS to assess climate change and make recommendations to U.S. policy makers has concluded that global warming is real, that much of it is caused by man, and that it is time to start doing something about it. Ms. Paglia's scientific analysis on the topic doesn't really impress me, even if her geology professor in college asked her to consider geology as a career.
The NAS intro page to it's climate change research is here:
http://dels.nas.edu/globalchange/
A link to a 24 page pdf summarizing NAS's research and position on climate change is here:
http://dels.nas.edu/basc/Climate-HIGH.pdf
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Amazed at Salon
I was astonished to read my first Salon article and find that it was reasoned and not clichéd. Congratulations.
I was also amazed at the vituperative ad homonym attacks standing in for reason to refute her.
I did not see her points refuted about global warming.
25000 Scientists. Will someone here do research to see just who these people are and what they are expert in? I too have watched the idea change into a dogma. As a science teacher, I am still waiting for convincing evidence of man's role.
Diversity of ideas. What an idea!
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"Amazed at Salon"
Dude, you are so full of crap.
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Paglia's Climate: Unchanged Since 1992
Camille is a successful academic. I'm sure she has plenty of connections. I bet she understands how science works. I bet it would take almost nothing for her to be reach out to a credible and trustworthy advisor who could give her an honest and informed perspective on the scientific discussion of climate change.
But that would distract from analyzing Al Gore's troubling personality and from caricaturing liberals. It would be so annoyingly non-trivial.
God, what a lightweight!
These letter writers, these articulate showoffs with their pandering letters and Paglia-sound-alike prose, wouldn't bother me so much if their target, who I used to find interesting, weren't such a sucker for their mimicry.
Nowadays I find very little merit in Camille's opinions. I just see discredited narratives, weak analogies to the same old pet interests, and anachronistic political analysis. Bogus ideas, their expression well executed.
Pat her on the back though. She bugged me enough that I wrote in.
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Despair
Camille, Salon, whoever:
I am an undergrad in Arts in Canada. I smoke weed (when I don't have a paper due) and vote Liberal (i.e. left-y) and support gay rights/marriage etc. and the letters to this column kind of make me want to jump off a bridge.
Camille, I f***ing love you. I don't know if I believe in human-caused global-warming either. As of now, I don't. No proof. The letter writers asked for proof - show me the proof? I'm a frickin' ARTS student and I get the difference between correlation and causation! I will pay Salon the $35 (or whatever it is) if you keep her. I am at the best university in Canada (that's not bragging, really, because most of us can't construct a sentence but we're ALL good at BSing that we can!) and, this is a bit lame I suppose but articles like this make me want to cry. Cry or laugh. Because everyone posting here seems to have an opinion, but few seem to have a reason. Argue with what's been said, idiots.
God, seriously, if this was 3 years ago when I thought Salon was the final word, I'd be suicidal. Why not question yourselves? Why not?
Why not?
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NO
way
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Does she just make this stuff up and think no one will notice?
These appear to be the reasons that Camille Paglia is skeptical of global warming.
1) She has been contemplating the principle of climate change since she was a child.
2) She has an understanding of vast time frames and might have been a geologist.
3) Secular Democrats have a psychological need for doomsday scenarios.
4) Manhattan will be flooded someday anyway.
5) Al Gore is a sentimental messenger.
6) Believing in global warming will impede the modernization of poor countries.
7) She is really bothered by chemical waste that hurts children.
Can someone please explain to me what kind of logic connects these assertions to the conclusion that the temperature of the atmosphere is not being influenced by human activity?
In the meantime, since she considers herself capable of judging scientific theories from her keyboard, perhaps Ms. Paglia can weigh in for us with her opinions on these scientific topics:
1) Is there sufficient matter in the universe to halt the expansion that began with the Big Bang?
2) Is the proton stable, or will it, like the neutron, eventually decay, and if so, what is its half-life?
3) How many protons are there in the nucleus of the uranium atom? The standard “answer” is 92, but so many textbooks repeat this number, it is starting to seem terribly “dogmatic”.
Egad, Salon, is she the best you can find?
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This is an excellent example of a "straw man" argument
"It is true that there is a peace-at-any-cost wing of the Democrat Party, but I do not belong to it. Some members of that wing still adhere to the 1960s hippie credo (descending from Jean-Jacques Rousseau) that people=good, society=evil, and (as the Beatles said) all you need is love."
Okay... name a prominent Democrat who says that the United States should never get involved in a war, regardless of the cost, because love will find a way. It's really easy to criticize Democrats if you set them up as fools who think that "love" is the answer to every problem. The reality is that Democrats are as willing to fight to defend this country as Republicans. What we are not willing to do is to fight wars make us look weak and incompetent while not achieving any recognizable goals and costing untold lives. Love isn't going to solve the worlds problems, but hate sure as hell isn't going to, either.
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It's hard to bear...
Camille Paglia's articles are the intellectual equivalent of a spoiled bear rummaging an ill-secured trash bin. On reading one of her columns, I get a visual image of a lot of well-chewed garbage strewn across a parking lot. I find it odd that Salon has chosen to rehabilitate this particular bear. I would only add that the odds of doing so are against you.