I don’t put myself in this position.
It’s weird how much more “dug in” everyone is now; it’s even worse than when Trump was in office. Solely on the basis of what the former president claims, the MAGA crowd believes the election was stolen, and they’re doing everything in their power, including acts of great violence, to reinstate their leader.
This is a discussion that I simply don’t want to have.
This anti-science rhetoric is one of the core challenges facing humankind.
Where it’s coming from is hard to isolate. Sure, there are disinformation campaigns that have been emanating from Big Oil dating back to the 1980s, but for these to be effective there needs to be a glorification of ignorance running through our culture, one that promotes a deep contempt for people of learning and intelligence.
Was there ever a time in the history of Christianity that the teachings of Jesus weren’t perverted to be used as a force for evil? Yes, there were remarkable examples like the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, but did it ever really let up?
Today’s Evangelical Christians aren’t burning heretics at the stake, but they couldn’t possibly be further from the ideals of compassion and kindness, especially to those who need it most.
There is something superficially appealing about the content of the meme here. We do have brains, with which we can process information.
The problem is that disinformation does exist, and we’re surrounded by it.
Science is the totality of objectively truthful statements about the world around us, according to our species’ capacity to understand them at any given point in time. Disinformation is any deliberate attempt to obscure those truths, and our culture is swimming in it.
If you believe, for instance, that anthropogenic climate change doesn’t exist, you’re simply incorrect. Yes, given the Internet, you can find information that might send you in that direction. But, whether it was created by an oil company or any of a variety of crackpots, it’s just plain wrong.
Thanks to New Yorker cartoonist Furn for this gem.
We certainly do have plenty to dread.
Here’s an interesting analogy. Its author is comparing:
a) an authoritarian dictator’s brutal attempt to take over a neighboring democracy with ~180,000 troops (not 10K), tanks, bombs, and a variety of other military tools, indiscriminately murdering, raping, and torturing large masses of innocent men, women, and children
with
b) desperately poor and endangered people seeking a safe place to live.
If the Republicans take over Congress in the midterms, we’ll have this level of stupidity to blame.
Sadly, many Americans are motivated by xenophobia and the false notion that immigrants are the reason that they’re failing to get ahead financially. But can these folks possibly represent anywhere near a majority?
Aren’t there a ton of constituencies that want nothing whatsoever to do with the GOP, especially women?
In any case, what Harvard Law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe says is correct: the upcoming 2022 midterms may be our last opportunity to preserve democracy.
If you want one of these “wind trees” for your back yard because you find them attractive, that’s up to you. If you think they could represent a cost-effective way to generate electricity, you’re completely incorrect.
In the 14 years I’ve been covering electric transportation, I’ve seen the announcement of many dozens of low-speed EVs, every one of which has failed to gain any real traction in the market. Manufacturers of cars that don’t pass highway safety standards must limit their vehicles’ speed to such an extent that they are truly inconvenient, and even dangerous, to drive on open roads.
As suggested in the photo here, this does not prevent charlatans from raising capital from uniformed investors.
A reader sent me this meme composed by British economist Richard Wellings. My comments:
The reason we have a water shortage is prolonged droughts, largely driven by climate change. Reservoirs hold water; they don’t make water. I.e., we have plenty of reservoirs, but they don’t have enough water in them. In fact, we’re considering knocking down the Glen Canyon Dam, thus combining Lake Powell and Lake Mead, so as to reduce losses due to evaporation and leakage.
The average uptime of the U.S. electrical grid is 99.96%. Americans experience, on average, four hours of downtime per year. The only significant problem we have is in Texas, whose grid (ERCOT) is operated so as to maximize investors profits, rather than to provide reliable power. Many of us consider this an outrage.
About 4% of U.S. farmland is dedicated to biofuels, almost all of which is corn ethanol as a gasoline additive, the laws for which were put into place in the 1970s when oil prices hiked as a result of the oil crises. They can only be repealed by an act of the U.S. Congress, which is unlikely due to the power of the farmers’ lobby.
There are aspects of the “green agenda” that are, IMO, off kilter, but people who are critical of the general concept are just as ill-informed as Richard Wellings.
My wife commented on this piece, “Yes, he’s a moron.” I replied, “Actually, my supposition is that he himself is not a moron; he just believes, and I’m sure he’s correct, that his readers fall into this category.”
I take exception to authors whose business model boils down to angering idiots by lying to them. How about a little intellectual integrity?
