Letters to the Editor
-
One More Thing For Tonight (It's 3AM):
I'm taking on Buttman for Joseph - the kid's 25 and just getting started in life. He needs to know how the world works. How Buttmen can use statistics, and a half-assed education, to squash evidence he doesn't like about a subject he does. About how black people can get beaten down by their "friends".
CaptainGroove - what can I say? - you're the "Bomb Dizzle", Boy!
You go get the flag, I'll play the drum, and (maybe, if he behaves) we'll let Joseph play the flute, as we march all over the Buttmen of our precious "land of the free and home of the brave.
Now, say good night, Gracie.
"Good night, Gracie."
-
Fear vs. Foresight
>I find it alarming when Lefties start demanding the same kind of orthodoxy, purity and strict adherence to party line that is the hallmark of Fox and the RNC.
I would, too, if that's what was happening with this issue. Had Ms. Paglia shed a photon of light on the issue of the science behind the global warming issue, even to argue with it, or had she shed a photon of light on the politics of how we should be responding to the scientific information we have about global warming, there would not have been this enormous outpouring of letters. Instead, she was pretending to be Mr. Science, only at least HE has a master's degree--in science. She took one geology course many decades ago. Her take on the issue had not one substantive argument. And even her take on "Al Gore's movie" was based on her personal distaste for the subject of a movie that was envisioned, written, and produced by many people--but NOT Al Gore. He and the work he has courageously devoted so much of his life to were the subject of that movie, but it wasn't his movie.
And speaking of courageously facing the future, most of the environmentalists I know, including me, have been assessing future possibilities not out of fear, but to make realistic assessments of what can and should be done to prevent horrible outcomes. That's why many decades ago environmentalists were already looking at the Mississippi River dam and levee system and saying ahem--this is a bad approach which will destroy the wetlands along the river, the estuary at the bottom of the river, and we're definitely going to have catastrophic floods which will destroy cities along the river. Doom and gloom? Look at the flood 10 years ago that destroyed East Grand Forks, MN, at the flood a year and a half ago from a Category 3 hurricane that didn't do much damage until the storm surge breached the levees, and tell me about those doom and gloom predictions, which weren't made based on fear but on a prudent assessment of likelihoods using actual science. I heard so many people saying New Orleans should never have been built below sea level in the first place, but guess what--it wasn't. The city literally sunk with the weight of overdevelopment, exactly as those "doom and gloom prophets" had predicted, not because people were brave to overdevelop there but because it's human nature to impetuously move full steam ahead without foresight--exactly the macho approach that Ms. Paglia admires.
Real ostriches may not face the world with knowledge, courage, and sound planning, but they face it with their eyes open to reality. It's people like Camille Paglia who bury their heads in the sand, fearful to look beyond the first ten minutes of a movie because it might require some bravery on their parts to face the facts. Like Ms. Paglia, Rachel Carson didn't have children, but she took responsibility for doing something to protect future generations. Paglia is probably right that we humans can't change the physical universe. But we can, and have, altered our own planet in ways that make our cities and the children living in them exceptionally vulnerable. And the truly brave among us, if we care about children and other powerless human beings and wildlife, are willing to fight to protect them. It's the cowards burying their heads in the sand who are staying in the dark out of fearfulness and complacency.
-
Preserving Paglia
Please keep Camille Paglia. Her spice is one of the elements that attracted me to Salon, and I've missed her (Tom Tomorrow can't take up all that slack, and Garrison Keillor, to risk a mixed metaphor, is weak medicine). She is like the clowns serving to break up the melodrama of circus.
I take the opposite side from her in the matter of climate change, but I would hate for storm-trooping political correctionists to drive her away from your pages.
Her polymathic presumptiveness may alienate some, but I can dismiss it and just luxuriate in her directness and fluency, sometimes disagreeing or simply befuddled.
-
Pelosi and Truth
You have an interesting take on truth. While 5 male Republican congressmen can go to Syria and meet with Assad and question the administration's Middle East policy, when Nanacy Pelosi does it it sends mixed messages. Is it because she is a Democrat or because she is a woman? Or is it just because the right wing press jumped all over her and ignored the Republican delegation?
As for global warming, it is unquestionably the concensus of the scientific communitee that global warming is a reality and is being affected by human action. As a working scientist I have searched the literature for a peer reviewed article that denies global warming. There are none. There is no real consensus on the predicted results of the warming, but that is not the same thing as agreeing on the reality of increased carbon in the atmosphere and it's affect on the average global temperature. As average temperatures increase we could see many results; including increasingly cold winters but even hotter summers, warming in coastal areas and cooling in the interior, or even the eventual return of an ice age. Those results, like a snowstorm in April, don't mean that the earth is not going through severe climatic change due to increased atmospheric carbon.
-
A few more comments
I just peeked in here after a couple of days and noticed a few more interesting posts. The Paglia article will soon scroll completely off the main page, and by then it will be more trouble than it's worth to keep up with, but here are a few closing comments and responses.
To DeeGeeOh: I appreciate your message. A few responses --
"I don't think that simply repeating "Has no bearing on the truth or untruth of GW science" is quite the slam dunk that you might think that it is here."
It's definitely not a slam dunk. I do feel the need to emphasize and maintain a separation between the question of whether global warming is true and criticism/fear/concern about the methods people have proposed for "solving" the problem. Sam Sham seems to be using a very backwards thought process that goes something like this: "I don't like the solutions to global warming, therefore I doubt the existence of global warming." This thought process seems to extend to many people. I would hope some would recognize how backwards it is to wish away a problem because of a distaste for some of its proposed solutions.
"Lots of matters that have no bearing on the actual "truth" or "falsity" of the science are nonetheless plenty relevant to the issue of credibility. It's absolutely fair and right that we bring matters of motivation, psychology, and history into that debate."
There is a place for such discussion, but it can also very easily taint and overwhelm the debate, which people are all too willing to let it do. I have read enough and seen enough to believe that most people's concern about global warming is genuine and based in a self-checking concern rather than overconcern or so-called Chicken Little syndrome. Personally I am a skeptic first about all things, and I know many others who are also skeptics first. Being a skeptic first means that your initial impulse is to examine and question everything about a subject. When people were saying Y2K would wreak havoc on civilization, there was obviously an irrational hysteria there, and it only took a little reading and research to find cracks in the claims. Global warming is different. I've been watching this subject ever since I can remember, and I've seen skeptics (including people I know) attack it from multiple angles. Slowly over time I've seen the harshest and sharpest-minded skeptics own up to the fact that the evidence for global warming is strong and getting stronger. It's not a hysteria or a psychological, peer-pressure based phenomena, and among those with skeptical, scientific minds, the opinion about global warming is not divided on partisan lines.
"For example, it's perfectly admissible to bring up the issue of Al Gore's refusal to engage in a debate if the issue is his credibility to act as a spokesman for a movement."
If the debate were about Al Gore's credibility as a spokesman, then it would be dismissible. But the debate is about the truth of global warming. Paglia brought her distaste for Al Gore into the discussion and then admitted that it so overwhelmed her that she declined to hear out his evidence. What I understand about Al Gore is that he does not want to become the central spokeman for global warming due to his awareness that he is a politically controversial figure. I also would discourage people from making too much of Gore declining to debate people. First, I don't know the context of those stories (I haven't checked up on it and don't even know for sure if it's true) but Gore could have declined debates for any number of reasons, even schedule conflicts. It may also be the case that Gore doesn't want to enter into a debate that pits liberal vs. conservative in what should really be a scientist vs. scientist debate. It would create a spectacle and possibly result in rhetorical pot-shots that would further sully the entire discussion. Gore's repeated point (and one I think is immensely important) is that politics should be set aside when discussing scientific truth. One's political ideology should never come into play when arguing whether 2 + 2 is 4, or whether the earth is flat, spherical, or ovoid. Only the evidence and reasoning should matter. You'll notice that in "An Inconvenient Truth" Gore largely avoids any sort of partisanship. The debate is not about Gore.
"It's a point easily and (in my opinion) persuasively argued (what's the point of having a politician debate a scientist? A layperson won't understand the science and a scientist won't be impressed with anything the pol has to say"
A scientist can make things understandable to a layperson. I don't think Gore was speaking as a politician in "An Inconvenient Truth," I think he was speaking as an amateur scientist who has honed his communication skills and understanding of a subject over time. I think this is part of what makes the movie so interesting. If Gore were speaking as a politician it probably would have been a mediocre film. As history has proven, politics are not the man's strong suit.
"But, even in your superb commentary, I see a little bit of what troubles me about the GW discussion in general (but not the only thing); namely, a tendency to treat your confidence in the credibility of those whom you chooose to believe as some sort of Universal Truth that's unworthy of even discussing."
I don't believe truth is universal, just that strong evidence is universally better than weak or non-existent (or purely rhetorical or anecodotal) evidence. Show me real evidence that pokes real holes in the global warming evidence and I will re-examine my conclusions. I realize these distinctions are lost on some people.
--- more ---