Friends, this article is a must-read. It exposes many of the fallacies that are eating away at the modern environmental movement like a cancer. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/
Dr. Waddy: "For that you be apprised right well of the perfidy of this promulgation of dangerous and heretical falsehood, you are commanded to appear before the Inquisitor forthwith. You are denied advocate, as your plain purpose is dark and fell - of this there can be no doubt contemplated or countenanced. You will be afforded no chance for advocacy, for you would use it only to compound your evil. There must never be allowed such manifestly antisocial humbug." Anyway . . .
ReplyDeleteIt may well be that radicals already know what the author supported so well. But their overriding goal is comprehensive governmental control, not a salubrious environment. The less workable the solution, the more opportunity for government and the more manna for them.
Jack, I would be surprised if that were true -- that most leftists KNOW that their environmental "principles" and prescribed remedies are bogus. On the contrary, I think at least 95% of the time leftists believe their own propaganda. Moreover, they don't view it as propaganda. They view it as "science". Even the "Trump is a jerk" part. That's science too. Anyway, the holes in the "green energy" agenda are massive, but as you say perhaps the main goal is control, and that's certainly achievable, so we had better take their pronunciamentos seriously.
ReplyDeleteDr. WaddY: I certainly think your points plausible and I do not say that reflexively. In my view, it cannot be that the entirety of the left has, through a scientifically creditable process, concluded that our economy and our energy generating regime is discredited. That simply cannot be. Rather, the majority of them have surrendered to emotional arguments affirming what they wanted to believe all along. They have invested their "intellectual" and cultural lives in the "verity "that what their side decrees is true and unassailable. The principled process of rigorous scientific confirmation is very much beyond their ken, lacking as they are demanding intellectual challenge. Their convictions are informed only by emotion. Believe me, I know them, being an intellectual mediocrity myself (I am completely sincere in that assertion).
ReplyDeleteNonsense, Jack! You're anything but a mediocrity. But I would agree that, ultimately, the positions of leftists are founded in emotion. They are well-acquainted with many "facts," yes, but they understand those facts through the prism of their values. Fair enough. The same holds true for you and I.
ReplyDeleteI suppose you're asserting that liberals have a greater allergy to "inconvenient truths" than conservatives? That they manipulate facts more readily? That they're capable of greater levels of cognitive dissonance? Hmm. Perhaps. I'd like very much to believe that all that is true...but how do we know for sure?
Dr. Waddy: The MSM's leftist biases may provide some evidence; it has an immense effect on public opinion and its possible that many reflexive leftists derive emotional satisfaction from what the MSM urges on them or are intimidated by the MSM"s vindictiveness. Also, I remember a Prof at New Paltz telling me that if he challenged his students intellectually too few would sign up for his courses and he would lose his job. My guess is that that problem has worsened.I saw an earnest young man walk out in a huff from a class on post 1949 China, taught by a very distinguished Prof who had been a Nationalist Officer and was unable to return but who was painfully objective. The dear young thing had signed up not to learn but to be massaged and the Prof. had said something he "knew" to be untrue about the exalted Mao regime. Again, I'll bet given today's swamp of leftist bigotry in the American academy Profs like that might well face auto da fe and that that reality sends a clear message the young that truth is to be found not in clear thinking but in "feelings".
ReplyDeleteJack, it certainly is true that the modern left is fixated on feelings. Witness their insistence that ideas (and even objects) which make people of color and other favored groups "uncomfortable" must be expunged. Their analysis of all things Trump is also an exercise in hysteria. All that's true, but I'm still skeptical that conservatives, writ large, would be any less dependent on emotions and on subjectivity... I don't mean to belabor the point, but I always blanch when I hear claims of superior rationality. They're easy to make, but hard to prove or even explain.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: You make a very plausible point and I do not at all mind your supporting it. Certain it is that we conservatives are motivated by energy. But that energy derives, I think from our conservative tendency to view present events as soundly and revealingly compared to the past. The left compares the present to the empirically unverifiable future and benefits from the intellectual speculative freedom it affords them. They need not muster fact; it doesn't exist yet. I do think we manifest intellectually superior argument in that we learn from the past's lessons.
ReplyDeleteThat's a very good point, Jack. Conservatism is, in a critical sense, empirical; leftism is speculative and utopian. Unfortunately "history" is such a vast library that it can be bent to almost any agenda, but you're right that at least conservative claims can be tested with evidence. That's a start!
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