Sunday, March 29, 2009

Time to be politically incorrect

There's a "debate" raging on QRP-L as the result of a person's posting last night about "Earth Hour". Most of the resulting comments were about the "Global Warming" argument. The one that bothered me the most was not a post itself - but the signature line that appeared at the end of it.

Here is that "tag line":

"Welcome to the Anthropocene Epoch - a point in geologic history characterized by an environment substantially altered/damaged by human activity..."

OK. It's cute - but damaged? Damaged?

C'mon! Give me a break! I'll not deny that as a species, we humans have caused a lot of pollution and have used a lot of resources - but we have damaged the planet? How come for most "Greens", history started yesterday? Yes, since the Industrial Revolution we have put a lot of stuff into the air, water and land. But we're destroying the planet? How about billions of years ago when we had more than a gazillion volcanoes spewing all kinds of carbon into the atmosphere? More than we could possibly ever generate? Guess what, the planet is still here!

How about the untold number of cycles of the sun which have caused periods of warming and cooling - Ice Ages and Warm Periods - and these all happened without humans even being around! It is the height of arrogance and conceit to think that we humans are responsible for everything.

But the Global Warming movement has become the new approved secular religion. Previously accepted organized religion is ridiculed and has been removed from the public square. To invoke the name of God get you labeled as just a little bit weird, perhaps even a little "ignorant" with underlying tones of people accusing you of being a racist or homophobe. Saying a prayer to the Judeo-Christian God in public gets your behind hauled into Court or worse. All instances of religion are looked upon as hokey superstition and are to be vanquished from our midst because "We know better, now".

But worshiping at the Altar of Gaia is not only accepted, it is encouraged! The people who worship Gaia are intelligent, hip; and are "in the know". Funny thing is how intolerant they are of people who don't agree with them. Scientists who dare to disagree are stifled, fired or not hired because of their views. More and more are starting to make their disagreement known now; but for the "Non-Believers" the fate is as bad as any Inquisition.

And the Global Warming movement has become a sacred cash cow, too. Follow where the billions of dollars in grant money is going - it's not hard to figure out. And where's the most Reverend Leader of the Church of Gaia (Al Gore) making his money? Selling "carbon credits" while the rest of us poor fool hardy souls use less energy in years than he does in a day.

Conservation of resources and being a good steward to the planet is a wonderful thing and is to be encouraged. Going over the top and recommending such idiotic practices as self-sterilization in order to not bring more "carbon producers" into the world is so stupid as to be bizarre.

God help us!

73 de Larry W2LJ

10 comments:

  1. There are plenty of people who don't worship "Gaia" who believe that global climate change is caused or partially caused by man. To equate this to a new religion is to wrongly and rather simplistically marginalize the concerns and scientific evidence, just as it is wrong to marginalize Judeo-Christian religion or any religion for that matter. But if one really wants to get into a religious argument, how can anyone base scientific beliefs (i.e. Earth created in six days 6,000 years ago) based on the verbal and later written traditions of uneducated and arguably superstitious sheep herders in the desert thousands of years ago?

    There are certainly those who are cashing in on this movement, and often I cringe when I hear politicians speak of it. Often the most vocal are the ones who shouldn't be talking about it. But if you look at the graphs, global climate change is real. Whether it is man-made is another discussion. Even if it is not certain if we're causing it, it is much more prudent to take action now then wait decades longer. Furthermore, some of the actions make sense in light of our population growth and the ramifications of a petroleum energy-based society.

    There are certainly radicals involved on both sides of the global warming debate, just like there is in religion. There are plenty of people cashing in on religion as there is with global climate change. But just like that is no reason to entirely reject religion, there is no good reason to not take reasonable steps to address what is potentially a global environment issue caused by man.

    BTW, I missed the whole QRP-L debate; I'm on the "other" QRP-L. :-)

    73

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  2. I swear, why is it SO HARD to talk about ham radio without all of the conservative wackaloonery ...

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  3. Conservative wackaloon - I'll wear that as a Badge of Honor. Thank you for your well thought out rebuttal.

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  4. Anonymous4:20 PM

    W2LJ wrote:

    "All instances of religion are looked upon as hokey superstition and are to be vanquished from our midst because "We know better, now".

    Considering that the Catholic church imprisoned Galileo for saying that the Earth revolves around the Sun, instead of the other way around, it's pretty easy to make the argument that religion is "hokey superstition" and certainly we do know better now.

    :-)

    73 de Jeff

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  5. To which the Catholic Church has recanted and has admitted the error and wrong doing. The Catholic Church isn't in the Dark Ages anymore. Scientific reasoning is welcome and accepted. You'll have to better than offer that as an argument.

    ;)

    73 de Larry W2LJ

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  6. Ooops, that should have been - You'll have to offer a beeter argument than that.

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  7. Anonymous8:45 PM

    I suppose it's something that the church made that apology, though it was three hundred and fifty years after Galileo had died while under house arrest and hundreds of years after the truth about planetary motion was known.

    But that's really the point -- the religious are always dead certain that they are "right" about whatever hokey superstitions that they believe while claiming that those who disagree are dead wrong.

    Maybe a few hundred years from now the church will also apologize for having told people in Africa that using condoms was a "sin"?

    Of course that apology won't come until millions have died unnecessarily for having listened to what some claim is the "word of God".

    If I were catholic I would be powerfully curious to know if the Vatican was using a better "receiver" for information from the heavenly tropo layer these days than the one used in the Dark Ages...

    :-)

    73 de Jeff

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  8. Then I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree. It's obvious that we hold onto two different value/belief systems; and that we have two totally opposite ways of looking at things. I respect your point of view, even though your tone towards me seems to be leaning towards condescension.

    You want to discuss the AIDS epidemic and what can be done about it? There's other times and places for that. Those are heady subjects that can't be issued properly in the comments section of an Amateur Radio blog. From your comments to me; it's obvious that you'd probably think that my thoughts on that are naive, backwards, and out of touch, anyway. They start with the concepts of fidelity and selflessness. Those are ideas that seem to be out of synch with this world anyway.

    73 de Larry W2LJ

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  9. "Politically Incorrect"may not equal correct.

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  10. I'm with Larry. This man made global warming myth is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the public. Politicians have leapt on the bandwagon seeing their chance for a greater glory. The public has been taken in because yes, the weather has been getting warmer. Businesses have seized the opportunity to make a buck selling "greener" versions of products - at a premium, of course. And there's a whole new gravy train for scientists and advisers who subscribe to the theory and can reap the grants and travel to international conferences - by plane, of course - to discuss the impending armageddon.

    A former British Chancellor of the Exchequer published a 140 page book that came to the conclusion that even if global warming is man-made, the cost of adapting to it would be less than that of trying to prevent it, as well as being more politically possible. And that was before we had a global recession.

    Isn't it time we all took a cool look at global warming?

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