Marc2b
Posts: 6660
Joined: 8/7/2006 Status: offline
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quote:
.........you ask what makes me think that a university doesn't twist facts to fit an agenda.......firstly, there has to be an agenda. All you have done is pick a few buzz words and call them an argument. What does a socialist have to gain from losing industrial society? Sod all, to be honest.....socialism tends to make its base in industrial groups. However, oil companies have a clear and obvious thing to lose from a green agenda. So, i say again, how come the vast majority of scientists support the idea of a man-made effect on global warming? What, specifically, do they have to gain from destroying the industrial base? (This is, i assume, what you fear a green agenda actually means). Your list of words signally failed to answer this question. i feel you see a conspiracy where none exists. Basically, in my opinion, there is a large group of people (scientists) who look at the evidence base and come up with a consensus on what it means. There is a smaller, but more powerful group, whose interests are not served by paying attention to what the bigger group of people say. So, they pay people to lie about the evidence, and some people buy into it. Your list of words, "Socialism. Communism. Totalitarianism. Power. Money. Ego.", simply doesn't constitute an agenda. It's just a list of words describing people you don't like. "When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduce to the quest for power." – Alston Chase That’s because the agenda (which in this case is "saving" the planet) is just a facade. Do you think Al Gore’s concerns about global warming are entirely altruistic? Or might he have elective office in mind? How many concerned citizens give him money so he can save us from global warming. Fear is the most common tactic of those seeking power (and power is so satisfying to the ego). You are only half right in your assumption on what I think a green agenda actually means. There is indeed a small lunatic fringe of radical greens that want to destroy industrial society. Fortunately, they have confined themselves to burning ski resorts and SUV dealerships. Even more fortunately, they haven’t killed anyone – yet. Most "greens," I believe are decent people with genuine concerns but their concerns are based upon fear and biased information being fed to them by those who seek to acquire money and power with their contributions and their votes. I don’t doubt that there are altruistic scientists out there but scientist are human, They want to advance their careers, they want to secure that grant, they want to get published, they want to hear praise from their colleges, they want to prove other colleges wrong. Sometimes it’s not so much the evidence they gather but how they present that evidence – or how others interpret it. I believe that you and others on this thread have fallen into (or at least, gotten a leg caught in) what I call the ideological trap. The ideology seals itself off from outside feedback. Facts which support the ideology are accepted while facts that don’t are dismissed, and those who dissent from the ideology are vilified (if the ideology gains actual power, much worse happens to them). This is (I’m repeating myself again) my concern with the global warming "debate." I see it as just another ideology whose purpose is to scare people into giving power to others. The outside covering may be different but in substance it serves the same purpose as fear of terrorists, fear of the Christian right, fear of the secular humanist, etc. As I said before, I do not doubt that six billion human beings don’t have an impact on the climate (an I am not against a clean environment) I just don’t see any reason to panic about it since the climate is going to change anyway wether or not we have an impact on it. And I see no reason not to question what others are trying to spoon feed me. What does scare me is that others get so riled up about it.
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Do you know what the most awesome thing about being an Atheist is? You're not required to hate anybody!
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