On the book review program on C-Span today one of the presenters was Rick Shenkman author of "Just How Stupid Are We?" subtitled "Facing the truth about the American voter."
Mr. Shenkman is a historian who comments on the appalling lack of basic knowledge that most Americans have about their country or the world for that matter. He contends that this lack of knowledge allows most voters to be easily manipulated by politicians and their Madison Avenue campaign apparatus. He quotes some astounding statistics regarding how few Americans can name the three branches of government, know that there are 100 senators, and even after five years of war can find Iraq on a map of the world. He also points out that in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary and even though it was never stated reason for the Iraq war by the administration, fully 50% of American voters still think Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks.
Yours truly is not surprised by these findings and recall that it was many years ago that some wag opined that as a politician one can never go wrong underestimating the intelligence of the average voter. Even Jay Leno has picked up on this with great comedic effect with his man on the street interviews.
My own view is that the American people are not stupid. It is clear, however, that most of them are blissfully ignorant and almost intentionally uninformed. One may ask how can this be in an age of media overload, instant communications and 24/7 news channels. I believe the problem is that most people have complete lack of curiosity about anything that doesn't directly affect them personally and immediately.
Building on a point in an earlier post, you see the seeds of this phenomenon in the active resistance to excellence in our public school systems. Unfortunately for most kids today it is cool to be ignorant, and ignorant teens grow into ignorant voters.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
The Inevitability of Global Warming
In my last post I made reference to a recent book titled "Unstoppable Global Warming" by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery. This book should be required reading for all politicians, educators and journalists. (The good news is it is on the New York Times best sellers list.)
Singer and Avery provide overwhelming, peer-reviewed scientific evidence that:
1. We are at the beginning of a natural 1500 year (plus or minus 500 years) global warming cycle that began about 1850.
2. That the globe was warmer during the days of the Roman empire and during the medieval warming period from 900 -1300 AD than it is today. (Note - long before the industrial revolution and human generated CO2.)
3. To the extent that man-made CO2 emissions may cause a minor (i.e. .005 degree C/per century) increase in average global temperatures this is overwhelmed by the natural solar driven causes of global warming.
4. All of the scary scenarios pushed by the global warming activists including rapidly rising sea levels, extraordinary species extinctions, famines and droughts on an unprecedented scale, more violent weather and climate related human deaths are totally without merit and in fact can be proven to be in contradiction to our experience during previous natural warming periods.
5. Historically global temperatures increase in advance of atmospheric CO2 increases demonstrating that increases in atmospheric CO2 are a result and not a cause of increased global temperatures.
6. The Global Circulation Models and the now fully discredited Mann temperature data (aka the hockey stick graph) used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and super scaremonger Al Gore are totally without any scientific merit and in fact were purposely manipulated to fabricate an anthropogenic global warming frenzy.
7. The human race has much more to fear from the next inevitable cooling period than it does from the current natural warming period.
Singer and Avery also suggest that those who promote the human-caused theory are motivated by either by research grants (the university researchers and "scientists") or a way to hijack the environmental movement to promote a leftist (i.e. hate the relative "rich") agenda designed to control and deminish the living standards and restrict individual choices particularly in first world nations like the US and Western Europe.
Unlike the irrefutable data that the authors present on the facts about inevitable (and slow) global warming, motivations are hard to prove and risky to posit. However one can not help but see in the rhetoric and policies put forth by the anthropogenic warming alarmist crowd a ring of high credibility in the authors' ideas.
Finally Singer and Avery persuasively put a stake to the heart of the whole ill conceived and doomed-to-fail Kyoto protocol treaty that thankfully will die a natural death in 2012.
You must read this book!
Singer and Avery provide overwhelming, peer-reviewed scientific evidence that:
1. We are at the beginning of a natural 1500 year (plus or minus 500 years) global warming cycle that began about 1850.
2. That the globe was warmer during the days of the Roman empire and during the medieval warming period from 900 -1300 AD than it is today. (Note - long before the industrial revolution and human generated CO2.)
3. To the extent that man-made CO2 emissions may cause a minor (i.e. .005 degree C/per century) increase in average global temperatures this is overwhelmed by the natural solar driven causes of global warming.
4. All of the scary scenarios pushed by the global warming activists including rapidly rising sea levels, extraordinary species extinctions, famines and droughts on an unprecedented scale, more violent weather and climate related human deaths are totally without merit and in fact can be proven to be in contradiction to our experience during previous natural warming periods.
5. Historically global temperatures increase in advance of atmospheric CO2 increases demonstrating that increases in atmospheric CO2 are a result and not a cause of increased global temperatures.
6. The Global Circulation Models and the now fully discredited Mann temperature data (aka the hockey stick graph) used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and super scaremonger Al Gore are totally without any scientific merit and in fact were purposely manipulated to fabricate an anthropogenic global warming frenzy.
7. The human race has much more to fear from the next inevitable cooling period than it does from the current natural warming period.
Singer and Avery also suggest that those who promote the human-caused theory are motivated by either by research grants (the university researchers and "scientists") or a way to hijack the environmental movement to promote a leftist (i.e. hate the relative "rich") agenda designed to control and deminish the living standards and restrict individual choices particularly in first world nations like the US and Western Europe.
Unlike the irrefutable data that the authors present on the facts about inevitable (and slow) global warming, motivations are hard to prove and risky to posit. However one can not help but see in the rhetoric and policies put forth by the anthropogenic warming alarmist crowd a ring of high credibility in the authors' ideas.
Finally Singer and Avery persuasively put a stake to the heart of the whole ill conceived and doomed-to-fail Kyoto protocol treaty that thankfully will die a natural death in 2012.
You must read this book!
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