For those of you looking to take a break from Mideast news, check out Reason science correspondent Ron Bailey’s “Green with Ideology” — a critically-minded look at (and rebuttal of) the “scientific community’s” attack on Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist. A teaser:
The bitter anti-Lomborg campaign reveals the hidden crisis of what we might call ideological environmentalism. Ideological environmentalism goes far beyond sensible efforts to reduce pollution or protect wilderness. It argues that the modern world fosters institutions and ideas that exploit and oppress people and degrade and destroy the environment. According to this view, the only solution to the supposedly looming ecological crisis is the sweeping, global transformation of the world
3 Replies to “Science Fictions?”
Global warming is an obvious hoax perpetrated by do-gooder nanny-statists, and I stand with My President and the Nobel laureate Dr. Lomborg in urging you parents out there to also discard the pervasive and insidious Socialist propaganda about the adverse effects of air pollution on our children. A Commie plot if I ever heard one! So what if Maine is soaking in 90 degree weather in mid-April, so what if there’s broad consensus in the “scientific community” that emissions are accelerating warming–I’m just glad I have brilliant thinkers like Dr. Lomborg and Dr. Georgie W. Bush (or, as I like to call them, Bjorn and Bjorn-Again) to help me distinguish all that Socialist hysteria about greenhouse gases from Real Science. Why, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has been on record as saying that our first responsibility as Good Americans is to deregulate industry and give millions in welfare to our beleaguered corporate CEOs. (No, wait–Jesus said to limit stem-cell research so that we can all continue to die of horrible diseases. Sorry.) Gosh, I could go on and on about how tickled I am that people are finally heeding Our President’s wake-up call about this darned global warming myth, but it’s time to get the kids ready to go to their public school, where, Praise the Lord, they are still required to say the Pledge of Allegiance. (Now if only the schools would do away with all that “science” stuff and teach good, old-fashioned creationism!)
Marc’s comments only prove Bailey’s points, if you ask me. Don’t agree with the ideological environmentalist? Be prepared for a pie in the face—if not in actuality, at least rhetorically.
First (to be fair), lets’s see what “Marc” is reacting to. Ron Bailey, in his essay, talks of “ideological environmentalism,” a worldview under which “the only solution to the supposedly looming ecological crisis is the sweeping, global transformation of the world
I would go further, Jeff. I suggest that the term “global warming” is used in two different ways: to describe the <i>phenomenon</i> that the Earth is getting warmer (and has been since the late 18th century), and to describe the <i>ideology</i> that this increase in temperature is solely anthropogenic, and that it can only be combatted by de-industrialization, which must be accomplished by putting power and money in the hands of the appropriate NGOs.
I think that deliberate confusion between the phenomenon and the ideology, sown by people like “marc thomas” (to say nothing Steven Schneider and David Suzuki) is responsible for much of the apparent debate on the topic.