Renewable Revolution

Alan said, 

The environmental harm of something must be weighed against benefits or desirable effects.

By WHO, Alan? By WHO? Answer the QUESTION. Your dancing is going to STOP right now.

ONLY scientists can answer those questions because politicians ARE NOT OBJECTIVE.

DEFINE "desirable effects"!

Are you saying the environmental laws passed because of the influence of the book  titled, "Silent Spring"  WERE NOT justified?

You know EXACTLY where I am going with this. And you DO NOT want to accept the premise that serious warnings of potential extinction by the scientific community are logical and reasonable. So, you begin to hem and haw about the "evidence" of DDT. It was mostly BANNED, pal. So, OBVIOUSLY, we don't know what would have happened if they hadn't banned it. What a breathtakingly irrelevant question!

And what about the increased environmental awareness that book caused. Are you going claim that was an "overreaction"?

You KNOW that if you accept that dire warnings based on science AND the precautionary principle (that does NOT require a lot of dead things proof to be justified, by the way) have a salutary effect in getting society to ACT to improve the environment, then you cannot mock warnings of N.T.H.E. on our present trajectory.

So you want to grasp at a few "DDT ain't that bad" straws. Look it up, pal. School is out on what DDT does. I will not descend into minutiae and hairsplitting. If you think the book "Silent Spring" was "Exaggerating Extreme Outcomes" and therefore a "mistake", go away, NOW.

I just argued the false equivalence you made to Ashvin. It's a propaganda technique. You used it on Ashvin. He bought it. I don't.

I said to Ashvin ,

Quote

Your assertion that a tiny group can "overreact" to a tsunami of propaganda by TPTB to keep people asleep is not a logical statement; it's ridiculous. But it is based on your view that there IS NO massive propaganda effort to put people to sleep (SEE: Endowment bias or Confirmation bias).

Ashvin said,

Quote

No, I do believe there is a massive propaganda effort to keep people ignorant, materialistic and apathetic. Now your tone is dismissive.

I liked the way Alan put it - the Doom overreactions and the propaganda spewing are two sides of a counterfeit coin. Neither one reflect reality and are counter-productive to real progress.

That is a contradictory group of statements. I am not being dismissive. I am merely stating the fact that you firmly believe my firm view of a high probability of N.T.H.E. is illogical and unreasonable, even though you haven't heard all the evidence. You accuse me of exaggerating extreme outcomes with insufficient evidence to claim a firm position.

Yet you FIRMLY refuse to take the possibility seriously without evidence. The precautionary principle of science, which you claim to agree with, does not require that level of FIRM proof (that you are demanding is needed) to justify drastic, rather than incremental measures. Do you understand that?

But let us say you have a point and I am "overreacting". The precautionary principle of science DICTATES that the burning of fossil fuels be stopped, like, YESTERDAY. All the evidence is not in. It's an extrapolation, like the decision to pass all those  laws made after "Silent Spring" was published.
 
The laws were a good try. They haven't worked enough. But corporate TOES were stepped on to get those laws passed. The corporations learned the wrong lesson from those laws that cost them some profits.

That's why people like the Koch brothers and MKing do what they do. They have an agenda and they have a LOT of financial backing. Cui bono from branding warnings about N.T.H.E. as hyperbole and sky is falling bull****, HUH? WHO would lose a lot of money if most people listened to Doomer Warnings about N.T.H.E.? Propaganda works. That 's why they finance a tsunami of it.  :evil4:

The statement by Alan about two sides of a counterfeit coin is a false equivalence. You agree that there is a massive propaganda effort to keep people ignorant, materialistic and apathetic. Then you calmly state that a tiny group of awake people, outraged by the environmental degradation unprecedented in human history, evidenced by extinction rates (that are also unprecedented and accelerating, NOT becoming less frequent) are "overreacting"?

What does your coin look like, a cone with a tiny flat point 0.00001% of the size of the base? THAT's a "coin"?

No, that is a false equivalence.

Alan's counterfeit coin.   

The "counterfeit coin" is part of the agnotology MO of the defenders of the status quo. They also make frequent use of the null hypothesis (no harm done  ) to defend polluting practices as a cost benefit exercise. I smell you are trying to do that.   

The fossil fuel industry learned it from the tobacco industry. The "there is no scientific evidence of harm" is part and parcel of the null hypothesis mendacity.

You seem to know too well how that propaganda pitch works. I do too. Here's just one of six posts I made on that malicious, but clever, MO.

This is one of six posts I will make over the next several days on Agnotology as excerpted from the excellent book on this topic that I have been perusing. The purpose is to educate you on how TPTB game us. Feel free to pass these posts on to any naïve friends or family.   People who don't like the mushroom treatment need to know how little access to historical truth and scientifically accurate information we actually have in this country. 



IOW, for centuries, TPTB have had a HABIT of lying both actively and PASSIVELY (keeping information from you!). This has corrupted our culture and impeded scientific progress. It's getting WORSE, not better.   

Agnotology: Part five of six parts

NOTE that YOU and Ashvin make accusations that people who "overreact" prevent progress. I know who REALLY is trying to prevent progress. I think you are preventing progress by your firm belief that drastic measures are not required. I think the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and chemical profit over planet polluters agree with you.

You still haven't said ZIP about the extinctions. I presented extinctions as evidence of the high probability of N.T.H.E. Your "extinctions are bad" is a non answer. Don't play stupid with me. I'll make it clearer below.

Your posts on China did not  outline the environmental pluses and minuses. So, you have nothing new. I'll move on to the environment in general later.

Is "extinctions are bad - so what?" part of your "cost benefit" exercise too?  What a practical fellow. A little biosphere diversity loss is nothing to get too excited about, right?  After all, the corporate profits are still rolling in, right? It's all about GDP, right?

No, it isn't. It's ONLY about life and death.

SNIPPET:

THE EXTINCTION CRISIS

It’s frightening but true: Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals — the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half-billion years. We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year.

Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day [1]. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century [2].

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/

Yeah, right Alan, I'm just "overreacting" here and you are being "rational".