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Jan, shock and horror (but not surprised, I guess)
This also fits Gorbechev's statement that says in essence: "In order to establish a world government, there will need to be established a world religion "Environmentalism/Gaia", a world economic system "European style Market Socialism" and a world form of government "United Nations - Federalism". All three are being put into place to the detriment of freedom.
Jan
I enjoyed Crichton's works immensely - they were always very well researched and contained significant premises to how we view life. May he rest in peace.
If it makes you feel better, your book and Robert Gore's book were my two favorites from last year. Fortunately all of you are still with us.
Jbrenner, if you like Clancy and Flynn, you really - and I mean **really** - need to buy (Objectivist guru) Robert Bidinotto's first two Dylan Hunter novels, "Hunter" and "Bad Deeds."
The subject of "Bad Deeds" is radical environmentalism, with the villain of the novel being an "Earth First!/Humanity Last!" militant type, who's backed by a cabal of D.C. ... - well, just read the novels. Given the subject of this thread and the context of Objectivism, this should be considered must-reading, and, again, some "homework" to cheer about. I think I should do a separate recommendation post - if not a new thread dedicated to Bidinotto's writing on its own - because these are two phenomenal books, and Mr. B. is reportedly hammering out the third of the series as you read this.
They should be read in order (so far,) because there are references in "Bad Deeds" to events in "Hunter," and that is a happy assignment, because "Hunter" is a phenomenal debut (no accident that it shot to the top of all of Amazon's "Thriller"- and "Romantic Thriller"-related bestseller lists within weeks of publication.)
Here are the Amazon reviews by some guy ( :whistles: ) for both of the books:
Hunter:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2NNLQGU1DY...
Bad Deeds:
http://www.amazon.com/review/RNQSO403SZT...
I also highly recommend author Stephen England, whose work in turn Bidinotto recommended to me. England is not an Objectivist, but last weekend I just finished reading the first of his Shadow Warriors series, "Pandora's Grave," and was duly stunned - particularly given that England began writing "Pandora's Grave" at age 19 and finished it two years later. It's the kind if thing that makes you want to pinch yourself and say stupid things like "No way..." Way. 8^] I haven't gotten the time to do a review yet, but trust me when I say that "Pandora's Grave" is better than the best action-thriller movie you've seen in recent years, ten times over. "Cinematic" is the word that springs immediately to mind...
.
Nice to meet you, DriveTrain!
Freeman Dyson does compare the extremist belief to a religion and questions the computer modeling.
“They are very bad tools at predicting climate…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiKfWdXX...
IMO, almost all "computer modeling" is worthless, except for perhaps very narrow market forecasting models and some truly scientific "predictive" polls, e.g., Rasmussen. And those examples are closer to art than science.
However, I had no choice but to learn a lot of it, and what I did see in the "ClimateGate" scandal was horrible, even if you accept the theory. The whistle-blower was a techie himself, and spotted not just bad programming but some outright false data. A little bit of it made some legitimate press, especially in Britain, but most of what was exposed was eventually forgotten (like say, a Clinton scandal), and the UN and others still trumpet clearly false "models". Big surprise.
Also, once again easy to find online, but his "Inconvenient Truth" film is full of very convenient lies, over and above a lot of the "scare scenes" in it are animated. His Oscar is about as well deserved as, hmmm, Obama's Nobel Prize...
If he were serious, he would Skype that speech, and tell his listeners/viewers why.
The human mind is a terrible thing (sometimes) and stupid is as stupid does!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8P...
Environmentalist are EVIL.
Jan
Jan, sometimes longs for berserk
I first heard, indirectly, of "environmentalism" in 1968, when I was working in a grocery store part-time while attending what was, and still is, one of the furthest Left universities in America. A student came in and asked for "biodegradable" detergent. Both the manager, who happened to be with me, and I looked at him and said: "Huh?" A few months later I became for aware of "the Environment" as a "hot" topic among the more vocal extremist students (I guess you could say my "consciousness was raised").
Luckily I discovered Rand a short while later, so never drank the Kool-Aid, in fact quite the opposite.
So I've always seen Environmentalism as a religion, but it was nice to see someone as popular and influential as Crichton address it as such. (Although I thought in the second half he still seemed to acknowledge it a more of a "problem" than it really is.)
And what makes it a religion IMO (and these thoughts are certainly not original to me) is that it's a large number of true believers following a mass movement which has no scientific basic in reality, and never did. Plus, the crucial religious element of "fear" and dire consequences if we don't follow the advice of our dear leaders (sin, and thee shall burn forever in Hell). And, once again as others have pointed out, a huge call for "self-sacrifice". And finally, any dissent is treated by the faithful as true heresy. I'm glad the clip didn't end with Crichton burned at the stake.
I won't say much more, as so much has been said, but I've always looked at Environmentalism as the replacement for the Socialist religion, as it's failure in both theory and practice became increasingly hard to deny. Environmentalism is the new "global crisis" that we need to be protected from, and surprise, the UN is there to save us via a New World Order.
If you look, there are lots of actual real scientists out there debunking AGW, including former believers, even within the UN itself.
This is one video I like, as it is an actual debate between a "true believer" and a reasonable, well-spoken and informed climate change skeptic. Moderated by John Stossel, who I always find good.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/01/28/w...
So, when I went off to college in 1973 to major in Geology - a real science that is based on chemistry, physics, optics - hard traditional sciences - there was this science elective called Environmental Engineering. OK, we'll check it out. Turned out be a primer in Social Engineering instead. I was pretty angry. I didn't realize much at the time but did notice the railing against industrialization and the constant call for "national" initiatives, etc.
Environmentalist equals socialist in the meaning of today's global agenda politics. Rare is the discussion that a free society of individuals with private property rights, free markets with all the incentive to improve and produce, is the best societal organization for clean water, clean air, and productively "sustainable" land. Let alone "social justice".
I saw this in the west from the 1980's to the present with the federal efforts to get the ranchers off of the public lands. The 100 + years of settlement patterns of self reliance and production passed down through generations of ranchers was now - according to government environmental (social) "engineers" - destroying the pristine majesty of the magnificent open spaces of the west. Trampling wild flowers, driving off endangered species that have been there all along, befouling natural springs - even raising the dust that impairs the visibility at the Grand Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches - every aspect of their independent activity has come under attack by reams and reams of bogus studies of "ecosystems" by college spawned bureaucrats replete with federal grants, subsidies and revolving door connections with NGO's, Conservancy Trusts, alphabet agencies and the like.
I would say the traditional ranchers are the true environmentalists, but I would not insult them in such a fashion. They are the ones that watch the productivity of the land - gee - so that they can keep producing from that land, they are the ones that improved the springs, the flow of groundwater benefiting the stock and all kinds of wildlife. They are the ones that watched for the right time of seasons when cheat grass is still edible, moving the stock to stem it back and preventing late summer wildfires.
Now, with federal agencies having driven most of the ranchers off of the land or seriously reducing the AUM's, the public lands have become raging conflagrations under their "sustainable" management practices. I have personally known ranchers that when growing up in the 50's and learning how to round up stock, handle horses, irrigate crops, had never even seen a government bureaucrat. Now, they periodically have to go to town, to the BLM offices, to the FS offices, hat in hand, and grovel for their grazing "privileges" on the King's land. I heard one guy saying that getting up on those mornings to pay homage of feeling literally sick and knotted in the stomach and fearful for his livelihood.
Environmental equals social - in the worst meanings and intentions of those words.
In 1979, Theodore Sturgeon wrote a forward for "Image of The Beast" by Philip Jose Farmer in which he describes;
"There is a vast number of honestly simple-minded people who can, without hesitation, define: Pornography, science fiction, God, communism, right, freedom, evil, honorable peace, liberty, obscenity, law and order, love--and think, and act, and legislate, and sometimes burn, jail, and kill on the basis of their definitions. These are the Labelers, and they are without exception the most lethal and destructive force ever faced by any species on this or any other planet, and I shall tell you clearly and simply why." .....
"The lethal destructiveness inherent in Labelling lies in the fact that the Labeller, without exception, overlooks the most basic of all characteristic of everything in the universe--passage: that is to say, flux and change. If he stops and thinks (which is not his habit) the Labeller must concede that rocks change, and mountains; that the planets change, and the stars, and that they have not stopped because of the purely local and most minor phenomenon that he happens to be placing a Label on in this place at this point in time."
"Passage is most evident in what we call life than in any other area. It is not enough to say that living things change, one must go further and say that life is change. That which does not change is abhorrent to the most basic laws of the universe; that which does not change is not alive, and in the presence of that which does not change, life cannot exist."
"This is why the Labeller is lethal. He is the dead hand. His is the command, STOP! He is death's friend, life's enemy. He does not want, he cannot face, things as they really are---moving, flowing, changing; he wants them to stop."
Sturgeon goes on to explain why the Labeller does these things, but what I've quoted defines for me, quite perfectly, the religion of environmentalism, the environmentalist. He fears change, he wants to feel safe, he feels that if only everything was like yesterday (like yesterday being his image of yesterday) everything would be perfect. He doesn't realize in his simple, non-thinking beliefs that others have moved into the priest positions of his religion with more malevolent purpose, and are using him to further their goals of control and power over all. He sees a perfect, Eden like life of safety and love. He's become pro-death and anti-life.
He rejects that and explains his ideas:
“We're not doing a great job [with the environment]… It's been a disaster what we've done. So, when I look at how we treat the environment, I think we have to be flexible. I think we have try things and see how they turn out. We have to be ready to change course. We have to be able to adapt. We have to say we're wrong, and let's do it right. We have to do research… We need a scientific approach. We need a non-religoius approach. We need a way to look at this and do better than we've done, a lot better. It's essential for you guys and your children.”
His ideas seem more "environmentalist" than the religious creed strawman he describes at the beginning. It seems like this is question of definition.
Now I find that most people who are Green don't camp and don't really have a clue about the wilderness. Most of the best ecologists are the hunters, who actually talk about 7 year cycles of predators and game animals. (One such hunter just told me that he was not going turkey hunting this year because he thought that turkeys were are their 7-year-low. He wanted to wait another few years until they were approaching their max population and he could then be a good predator.)
So, I am an environmentalist (note absence of caps) but am totally opposed to Environmentalism.
Jan
I thought I heard a little of this from my kids. One is in a public school and the other private. They were saying many factually correct things, but they also said to protect the environment they should not use computers as much. That's backwards. We need to protect the environment so we can enjoy our computers and whatever else we want in life. I do *not* think there's an creed-like-environmentalist conspiracy, but I'm going to be vigilant against the creed-like environmentalism in their school.
Pathological ideologies take on a life of their own, with believers obediently promoting what they're told. Common sense rarely enters the picture, as you discovered in the contradictory message being fed to your kids.
Looks like we're back to definitions again. What constitutes a "conspiracy?"
He is a smart guy with words, and it seems like he is aiming to dismiss them by calling them a religion. That has to infuriate anyone with genuine religious beliefs.
-----
Anthropologists define religion as:
1. It is a collective set of beliefs.
2. There is a leader or leaders who promote the belief
3. There are followers who make some kind of contribution or change to their lifestyle based on the belief
4. Their religious view affects and defines their total view of the world and how right and wrong (morality) get determined
-----
To me - that hits the nail on the head of what constitutes a religion - #4 in particular.
This is the concept I have been looking for to address why we (who may individually have been environmentally conscious) may be considered EVIL by Environmentalists...It is because of Original Sin! Wow.
This concept also has straightened out my thinking as to why we are all Racist and Sexist. We have had slaves and second-class citizens in our history and because of that we are all tainted by Original Sin. Great. Now I understand.
And what I understand, I can argue better against.
Jan, delighted and a bit grim
Jan
That is the captive elephant in the room. Someday, we will wake up and know that we are strong.
Jan, like an Ent
If one side responds instead with, "...from this data..." then it is not so.
If both sides respond with, "...from this data..." then it is a discussion, not a religious war, and science triumphs (whichever side 'wins').
Jan
Personally I do not think there will ever be a "win" like that. I think we should concentrate on fighting against the statist policy solutions, not against the science.
I am a lukewarmist. I observe that temperature has increased slightly but not per hysterical prediction.
I totally agree that the correct solution is to get the government out of the picture and take the governors off technology and industry. That is where the good solution to energy lies (and if GW does occur, then it will solve that in passing).
I am glad you like the distinction I drew. It is frustration that people call names instead of doing science.
Jan
I answered in a bit more detail than was probably necessary because I wanted to be sure that I gave you an answer that was "...from this data..." and not just "because it is SO". I am much less attached to any one answer than I am to the concept that the answer be scientifically valid.
Jan
I have recently discovered (by some online research) that the 'old vines' (which had been mostly exterminated by the Phylloxera blight) still remain in a few vineyards in France...but mostly in Chile. I have a fondness for Chilean wine. I wonder if the vines planted in England were the old variety, since they had not had Phylloxera there.
Jan
It is not the way I would have laid out the argument, but I disagree that anything could fit into his definition.
Unfortunately most people currently use the phrase 'believe in science' to mean accept unquestioningly a specific theory that is currently popular. If you live long enough, pretty much every scientific theory from your youth get's overturned.
I'm still waiting for us to find the exceptions to gravity!
If you assume that what you believe is actual truth then you risk being blind to your own errors.
I believe that the scientific method can be used to find truth and that it can be used to understand any aspect of the real world. I cannot prove either of those propositions.
I don't 'believe' in gravity -- I accept observations of its existence as a working hypothesis in the absence of contradictory data.
There are interesting people to discuss things with.
Haven't read any Von Mises -- little formal philosophy actually. But my reading list is growing. I was sent off to look into Karl Popper based on your comment yesterday.
To sum up what I got from the "Cliff's Notes" (i.e. Wikipedia version). You can prove something false, but not true. As you say, you can still work with knowledge you haven't proven true. Of course that implies the "science is never settled" .
In your objection to omniscience, are you contending that you could consider something true and an omniscient entity would know to be false and it would actually BE true, as opposed to you being wrong?
I guess you are pushing me in the direction of Popper.
Science never has any certainty about anything. All theories have a level of doubt, which is reduced every time testing does not break the theory. As WilliamShipley said, even the theory of gravity has a tiny level of doubt.
(We seem to agree on that, yet your comment was phrased like a counterpoint.)
Inventors are never satisfied with "good enough". Business entrepreneurs know that without continual improvement, their product and service offerings will eventually be surpassed by their rivals. What is the point of technological improvement if we are satisfied with "good enough"?
I choose to recognize where my sphere of knowledge begins and ends knowing two critical things: that it is not the summum bonum and that it is highly likely that it ever will be the summum bonum of the matter. And that is OK. What I do not accept, however, is that my current sphere - limited though it may be - is my end goal in the matter. At some point is that sphere "good enough" to get certain tasks accomplished? Absolutely. One doesn't need a master's in fluid dynamics to unclog a toilet. But to design a better toilet?
What if one wants to know why all the dinosaurs died? What if one wants to solve Grand Unified Theory? What if one wants to build a terraformer for Mars? For these types of endeavors, the concept of limited knowledge is self-defeating. One MUST be willing to step beyond his or her preconceived notions not only about what they think exists around them, but about their own abilities as well.
But there are actually two standards at play - not one. The first is the ultimate standard itself: omniscience or 100% surety. The total portion short of 100% is made up of faith (the belief that something is true) but we should also be cognizant of the non-omniscience implicit within these assertions.
The second standard is what measure of surety is sufficient for a specific task, which you correctly point out is usually not 100%. We may not need to know whether or not our house will withstand a magnitude 6 earthquake or be infested with termites within 10 years, but if one satisfies himself with less than 100% surety, he inherently accepts the portion of faith that makes up the remainder!
In physics and chemistry, we track precision and accuracy (different concepts with regard to measurement) because inherent in every measurement we make is _uncertainty_ - or incomplete knowledge due to limitations of instruments, our own intelligence, etc. We can assert that 2 + 2 = 4 with better than 99% surety because of the sheer number of times it has been asserted successfully, but there will always be a minute portion of that which remains ambiguous because perhaps we haven't yet tried to assert 2 + 2 = 4 within a black hole or some other obscure or trivial circumstance. It is the age-old caveat: "as far as we know".
Thus knowledge is not a characteristic of a person at all - surety is. And surety is a measure of the amount of applicable knowledge one has obtained.
But humans move up stairs in an up and down stride which means that you actually go up a lot farther than the height of the stairs. On another level there is the variation in gravity as you move away from the earth. Your weight changes as you inhale and exhale.
We don't solve problems with the perfect answer, we do good enough for the purpose.