Here is yet another of a multitude of good videos on issue of Global Warming.
I corresponded with a pro-Global Warming environmental engineer during the past week who admitted that the “science” and data used to support global warming was faulty, but he was unapologetic. His attitude was that it was pretty much OK to lie about your data, if the ends justified the means. He wrote, “the scientific community has been hurt by their efforts to present a united front whereby to lead people to salvation”. Yep, those were his words, exactly. What exactly did he mean by “present a united front”? Why would a group of real scientist doing objective work need to present “a united front”? Isn’t science just supposed to investigate, and report the factual results of the research and let the results of the research point to the answer? You shouldn’t need a “united front” if the facts are scientifically solid and verifiable by a 3rd party. And what does “whereby to lead people to salvation” tell you about his mindset?
Two things were obvious from my correspondence with him: First, Global Warming advocates weren’t lead to their view of Global Warming by the results of scientific inquiry…they started out with a belief, and tried to legitimize their belief by back-filling with manufactured “scientific” arguments. Hence, the “scientific research” supporting Global Warming didn’t have the usual differing points of view, peer reviews and other checks and balances that true scientific research demands. They don’t want true unbiased scientific research, because it doesn’t support their beliefs and their agenda; hence the oft heard characterization of Global Warming as a “secular religion”, which brings me to point two:
Secondly, the most rabid of the old-time door-to-door Jehovah’s witnesses, far-right bible-thumping fundamentalist or Jihadist Muslims have nothing on Environmentalist Extremist when it comes to religious fervor, and having a “save the world” complex. Their mission is to change our world “whereby to lead people to salvation”. That’s pretty darn scary when a group with that much “religious” fervor, and with so little regard for truth or true science tries to affect public policy and public expenditures to the extent that Global Warming Extremist have. They will lie, distort data and ignore facts to drive their agenda.
So if environmental extremist aren’t motivated by good science, and their beliefs take on religious attributes, how do we understand them? I think there are at least two levels of supporters of Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming. The problem with both groups is that their self-identity has become tied up in their cause, and though proven wrong, they may not be emotionally mature enough to adjust to a new reality. One group is just well-intentioned average people who naturally want to be good stewards of the earth and got sucked into the hype. The second group is the leaders, the movers and shakers behind the movement, and their motivation appears to be partly self-serving, but even more so, their motivation is to promote a philosophical and political agenda.
As Patrick Moore, co-founder of GreenPeace has said, [If you want to listen to it, and I highly recommend that you do, go to the 4 min, 20 sec place in this video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dzIMXGI6k8&feature=player_embedded]
by the mid 1980s, the majority of people in the world pretty much agreed with all of the reasonable demands that the environmentalist movement was making. So the environmentalist movement had to resort to an increasingly radical and extremist agenda in order to maintain a reason to exist. This is the self-serving aspect of their motivation. Consequently, reasonable people like Patrick Moore disassociated themselves from the movement, and now only radicals and extremist are left.
As for the philosophical and political agenda, Patrick Moore said it better than I could, so I will just quote him:
“The other reason that environment extremism emerged was because world communism failed, the Wall came down, and a lot of peaceniks and political activist moved into the environmental movement, bringing their Neo-Marxism with them, and learned to use green language in a very clever way to cloak agendas that actually have more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than they do anything with ecology or science.”
As with any endeavor that is not based in truth, the environmental movement is now doing more harm than good. For just one recent example, witness the recent corn ethanol debacle. Governments poured big $$$ promoting growing corn for ethanol. Corn turned out to be a bust for ethanol. You have to put more energy into getting corn ethanol than you get out from the finished product. Now THAT’s a real energy saver isn’t it? You would have thought that maybe they could have done a little more REAL scientific research before they poured all of that money into it. But the push for ethanol was ideologically and politically based, and so the hard engineering and science was never checked out. And the negative side effects from this little experiment were felt world-wide. The government push for corn ethanol resulted in higher demand for corn. Farmers sold their corn to the ethanol markets instead of the food market. Farmers ramped up to produce more corn. Ethanol processing plants were built. Corn prices rose because the demand for corn was high and poor populations in Mexico and other parts of the world that rely heavily on corn for food suffered. And then when it was finally realized that corn ethanol was not viable, new processing plants that had only been in production for a few months were mothballed, and farmers who had ramped up for higher production were left holding the bag. But did the Enviro-freaks learn anything from this? Nope, they just moved on to their next project…Cap & Trade.
Let’s do ourselves a huge favor…in the fall elections, let’s do a thorough house-cleaning of Congress and vote out any of any of our representatives or senators who are stupid enough to keep falling for this stuff… ANYONE who supports CAP & TRADE should go.