Letters to the Editor
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This home game sounds fantastic
My problem with Camille Paglia is not the subjects she tackles, which are rarely substantive, but her carelessness of research and argumentation.
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Ideas, whether of the right or the left, deserve respect. But Paglia increasingly treats them like throwaway lines. The rapier thrust of true wit is not the bump-de-dump of a bad joke. But evidently Paglia can no longer tell the difference.
Paglia on Paglia.
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I'm getting better about this
I only read half of one response. How Ironically Ironic that you decided that you can't take the heat for a shitty article, so you answer fan mail.
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Camille, what do you know about the Climate?
Distortions in "An Inconvenient Truth"? Which ones, and be specific please. You say you're a skeptic, well, I'd have to say you don't know what you're talking about. The scientific consensus is overwhelming. The only skeptics left are a bunch of Exxon retainers and William Gray. Even Gray's protege is now moving away from his mentor's dogmatic refusal to see the facts.
Gray is a master at statistical analysis of Climate patterns. But he has his pet theory, Multidecadal Oscillation of the Atlantic Thermohalene Circulation, which he feels is responsible for all the variations seen in Hurricane numbers and intensities. But his famous predictions are based not on solid modelling, but on pure climatology (statistics); he's been right in the past, but nobody's talking about the fact that he's been horribly wrong for the last 2 years (2005 was way ABOVE his predictions, and 2006 was way BELOW). He's old, he's semi-retired, and as far as I can tell, he's suffering from that old age conservatism which hits a good number of us.
So if a brilliant light like William Gray can get it wrong, why would I give any time to a professional bullshitter like you?
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Paglia, global warming, and hot air
I was sucked into reading this article because I wanted to know why Camille Paglia is a "global warming skeptic." So I read through four pages of same-old-same-old political chatter ("Iraq is a disaster, we're creating new jihadists every day" -- yes, we all get that, thanks!) to find out what informs Paglia's skepticism. Here's what she has to offer:
Paglia:
"As a native of upstate New York, whose dramatic landscape was carved by the receding North American glacier 10,000 years ago, I have been contemplating the principle of climate change since I was a child."
Ummmm...yeah. I'm glad you're proud of where you grew up. Can we get back to why you are a "global warming skeptic"?
"Geology and meteorology are fields that have always interested me and that I might well have entered, had I not been more attracted to art and culture. (My geology professor in college, in fact, asked me to consider geology as a career.)"
Wow, a geology professor once gave you a nice compliment. Can we get to the part about why you're skeptical of global warming now, Camille?
"To conflate vast time frames with volatile daily change is a sublime exercise, bordering on the metaphysical."
Wow, Paglia, so science is, like, a spiritual quest? Groovy. So why are you a global warming skeptic?
"I have been highly suspicious for years about the political agenda that has slowly accrued around this issue."
Oh, so here it comes. Camille Paglia is a skeptic about a scientific issue because she has a distaste for environmental politics. Great. After all, if there are people you don't like behind an issue, there must be something untrue about it.
"As a lapsed Catholic, I detest dogma in any area."
Right. So basically what Camille Paglia is saying is that if there were a bunch of dogmatic "spherical earth scientists," Camille would be skeptical about the round shape of the earth. Why else are you a skeptic, Camille?
"Too many of my fellow Democrats seem peculiarly credulous at the moment, as if, having ground down organized religion into nonjudgmental, feel-good therapy, they are hungry for visions of apocalypse."
I see. So because some democrats, somewhere, are discussing what they feel to be an important issue in a grave, serious tone, that somehow indicates that something about the issue must be scientifically false. Right Camille? Good to see you're concerned with facts and enthusiastic scientific inquiry!
"From my perspective, virtually all of the major claims about global warming and its causes still remain to be proved."
Hmmm, Camille, I wonder what your perspective could be? How about you tell us which "major claims" are lacking in evidence? Would those include the major claims about the C02 levels being 4X greater than they've ever been throughout all of the earth's measurable history? Or what?
"Climate change, keyed to solar cycles, is built into Earth's system. Cooling and warming will go on forever."
Gee, thanks, Camille. You're using the old, "climate change is natural and cyclical" argument as if it somehow invalidates the evidence for global warming. Yet you completely ignore the fact that cyclical climate change is factored into global warming theory and what scientists have examined shows changes well beyond what could be expected due to natural fluctuations of temperature.
"Human habitation is always fragile and provisional. People will migrate for the hills, as they have always done."
Hmmm. I guess this is Camille's "everything going to shit anyway so we might as well not care" defense.
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---continued from previous message-----
"Who is impious enough to believe that Earth's contours are permanent? Our eyes are simply too slow to see the shift of tectonic plates that has raised the Himalayas and is dangling Los Angeles over an unstable fault."
Huh? Now we're talking about geology and tectonic plates? Camille, the subject was global warming! Not continental drift! Wake up, lady!
"I began "Sexual Personae" (parodying the New Testament): "In the beginning was nature." And nature will survive us all. Man is too weak to permanently affect nature, which includes infinitely more than this tiny globe."
Ummmm.....Camille? Can we get back to why you're skeptical about claims of global warming? Saying "cataclysmic change is inevitable" is pretty different from saying "I am skeptical that cataclysmic change will occur."
"I voted for Ralph Nader for president in the 2000 election because I feel that the United States needs a strong Green Party."
Great. That turned out so well, didn't it?
"However, when I tried to watch Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" on cable TV recently, I wasn't able to get past the first 10 minutes."
So Camille, are you then admitting that you didn't even watch the scientific presentation? Or did you watch the whole thing at some previous time? Are you skeptical of global warming because the movie was too boring to sit through?
"I was snorting with disgust at its manipulations and distortions and laughing at Gore's lugubrious sentimentality, which was painfully revelatory of his indecisive, self-thwarting character."
Did we see the same movie? The only "manipulations" I saw were some soft piano music accompanying Gore's reflective narration about his feelings on the environment. What were the distortions? What is wrong with Gore saying something sentimental about his childhood experiences near a lake? And what does any of this have to do with your global-warming skepticism?
"When Gore told a congressional hearing last month that there is a universal consensus among scientists about global warming -- which is blatantly untrue -- he forfeited his own credibility."
That's funny, I could have sworn that at least two major groups of climate scientists (numbering in the hundreds) issued statements to the effect that they all agreed that human-caused global warming was a real phenomenon that is as serious as Al Gore makes it out to be. Do you remember those, Camille? Have you read the statistics? Are you denying that somewhere in the realm of 99% of scientists in fields related to global warming agree it is a real, human-caused phenomenon? How did Gore forfeit his credibility here?
"Environmentalism is a noble cause."
Thanks for that, Camille. We needed you to tell us that.
"It is damaged by propaganda and half-truths."
Okay, so how about you provide a single example of somebody slinging blatant propaganda or half-truths? You haven't so far.
"Every industrialized society needs heightened consciousness about its past, present and future effects on the biosphere."
Wouldn't such heightened consciousness include becoming more educated about human effects on the environment? (By, for example, sitting through all of "An Inconvenient Truth" instead of only the first 10 minutes?)
"Though I am a libertarian, I am a strong supporter of vigilant scrutiny and regulation of industry by local, state and federal agencies."
Bravo, Camille! Where do we send you your award?
"But there must be a balance with the equally vital need for economic development, especially in the Third World."
All righty then. So how do we balance that? By not having adhering to international environmental agreements whatsoever -- which seems to be the Bush administration's current policy?
"A bankrupt thermometer factory in Franklin Township, N.J., vacated its building in 1994 but ignored a directive to clean the premises of residual mercury toxins..."
What. The. Hell. Are. You. Talking. About??? Does this have anything to do with global warming skepticism? Or are you simply padding your response with irrelevant anecdotes to mask the utter insubstantiality of your position?
Seriously.....this is almong the most irresponsible things I've ever read from a supposedly progressive individual.