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August 06, 2007

Your Guess is as Good as Mine

It looks as if the debate on global warming is stepping up a notch, with Newsweek offering a cover story about "global warming deniers" and Sen. James Inhoffe issuing a scathing response. I've got to tell you, I'm feeling pretty confused right now. When everyone is politically motivated and millions – or, as it turns out, billions - are being thrown at scientists to take one position or the other, there really is no way for the average Jane like me to know what the truth is. Maybe global warming really is a conspiratorial plot being perpetrated by people who have the technology to manipulate the weather and thereby control the population through fear. Ahem.

First, to the Newsweek article. Sharon Begley writes that over the past nearly 30 years, a "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change." She points out their changing arguments, the failure of Democratic leadership to "bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage," widespread doubt amongst the public, and the money flowing to conservative think tanks and marginal scientists to produce "naysayer" information.

As for Sen. Inhoffe's rebuttal, it critiques Newsweek's use of the word "denier," which some take as insulting to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. It also includes the interesting tidbit that one of the contributing reporters, Eve Conant, was provided with data showing that while global warming skeptics received $19 million in grants from industry to produce reports questioning man's role and the extent of the global warming problem, $50 billion has been paid to scientists to provide the opposite point of view. In fact, more money was spent studying how "farm odors" contribute to global warming than all the money spent in the last twenty years on grants to global warming skeptics. One of the pro-global warming scientists quoted in the article, NASA's James Hansen, received $250,000 from the Heinz Foundation and then endorsed John Kerry for President.

So you can see why people would turn to the notion that weather manipulation machines are being used to keep the public frightened. And it's not without some basis in reality. For instance, former Defense Secretary William Cohen said in 1997 that eco-terrorists were working on technology that would enable them to set off volcanoes remotely and control the weather among other things. Specifically, at the April 28, 1997 Conference on Terrorism at the University of Georgia in Athens, he said:

There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic-specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.

So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that's why this is so important.

What's a girl supposed to think with all this wild stuff floating about and no real ability to see or understand the data? Ultimately, I think the answer for each person comes down to this: we tend to believe what we want to believe and we trust the leaders who seem to share our various political persuasions. And with our pathetic investment in quality education, including reasoning skills, mathematics and the sciences, we are as a nation ill-equipped to do anything else.

Which is precisely why I think character and honesty matter more in a politician any day of the week than political perspective.

Posted by Becky at August 6, 2007 04:50 PM