It's that damned tendency to substitute "he said, she said" for, you know, actual fairness and balance. Which, done right, would be learning the truth and reporting that.
As Paul Krugman said, if GW Bush said, "The world is flat," the next day the headlines would read, "Opinions differ on shape of earth." I wish the newspapers would "get it," already. I don't understand why NYT reporters go to the CEI, or why their editors let quotes from them into print. The CEI is no more credible than the flat-earthers, and I don't see why any publication which wants to claim intellectual respectability gives them any more ink than the flat-earthers.
Y'know, I've been wondering for a very, very long time now: What exactly is the goal of the climate-change deniers? What are they hoping for?
Deniers of evolution, I can at least understand their anxiety. It takes a certain mindset -- the mindset of a scientist -- to accept being wrong about something. Certainty is a comforting thing, and I can understand that. It's what drew me to mathematics.
But the climate-change deniers are not being told, "Your basic understanding of the world, every comforting story you've been told since the cradle, is wrong" so much as "Hey, we probably shouldn't be fucking up the environment quite so much".
...I mean, their philosophy seems to amount to: "Oh, yeah? Well, we're gonna keep right on pissing in the soup, and you can't stop us! Neener-neener-neener!"
Ahem. Apologies for the vulgarity. It's early, I've not had much sleep the last couple of days, and I'm finding it hard to temper my disgust with anal-expulsive man-children.
I think what's up with the climate change denialists is that most of the driving force behind them is the fossil fuel industry.
you know--the very guys who stand to lose big time if we stop dumping excess CO2 into the air.
"Business as usual" is making the fossil fuel industry literally billions of dollars--and they stand to lose most of it if we quit using fossil fuels--which in the long term is basically the only answer I can see to the CO2 problem.
There's not a single answer. The big, destructive attacks on scientists are mostly funded by people who make money from fossil fuels. There's some perpetual adolescents who simply don't like hearing no. And who, after all, wants to hear that we've made a huge mistake and we need to change a lot of the ways of our lives, probably to harder ways? But, also, I believe, it is simply that many of us still imagine that the universe revolves around us, and badly do not want to change that idea.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 11:16 am (UTC)What exactly is the goal of the climate-change deniers?
What are they hoping for?
Deniers of evolution, I can at least understand their anxiety. It takes a certain mindset -- the mindset of a scientist -- to accept being wrong about something. Certainty is a comforting thing, and I can understand that. It's what drew me to mathematics.
But the climate-change deniers are not being told, "Your basic understanding of the world, every comforting story you've been told since the cradle, is wrong" so much as "Hey, we probably shouldn't be fucking up the environment quite so much".
...I mean, their philosophy seems to amount to:
"Oh, yeah? Well, we're gonna keep right on pissing in the soup, and you can't stop us! Neener-neener-neener!"
no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 11:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 06:01 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure I've been more vulgar than that a few times.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 06:00 pm (UTC)you know--the very guys who stand to lose big time if we stop dumping excess CO2 into the air.
"Business as usual" is making the fossil fuel industry literally billions of dollars--and they stand to lose most of it if we quit using fossil fuels--which in the long term is basically the only answer I can see to the CO2 problem.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-04 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 11:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 05:57 pm (UTC)Having a law against teaching evolution is crazy, of course, but he did break the crazy law.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 09:31 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, the Tennessee Supreme Court found a technicality with the setting of the penalty that derailed the appeal.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-09 05:53 am (UTC)