“We can’t really debate the course of modern technological civilization with people who are opposed to modern technological civilization per se.”
In “The Truth About Fracking” at the National Review Online, Kevin Williamson writes:
Given all that, the data are on the side of fracking. But the political momentum is on the other side. It remains likely that the EPA will take its heavy hand to the industry, a development for which the enviro-Left, led by Occupy Wall Street, is positively howling, which is frustrating for environmentalists such as John Hanger. “If there’s no fracking, the unavoidable consequence would be a sharp increase in oil and coal consumption. Even if environmental and public-health issues were your only concerns — leave aside national security and the economic impacts — that fact alone should give you some pause.”
But don’t bother with evidence: The opposition to fracking isn’t at its heart environmental or economic or scientific. It’s ideological, and that ideology is nihilism. Environmentalism is a movement that began with the fire on the Cuyahoga River in 1969 and a few brief years later had mutated into the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (motto: “May we live long and die out!”), which maintains: “Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense.” (Good luck with that “less dense” thing, geniuses.)
Benign environmentalists are opposed to pollution, as all sensible people are; malign environmentalists are opposed to energy and most of what it enables. Their enemy isn’t drilling rigs and ethane crackers and engineers and their technological marvels: Their enemy is the kind of civilization that makes such feats and wonders possible, the fact that a smart guy with a big idea can make a hole in the ground and summon up power from the vasty deep. Their enemy is us. We can debate best drilling practices, appropriate emissions regulation, wastewater-disposal techniques — the engineering stuff — and even hare-brained ideas like the Pickens plan.
But we can’t really debate the course of modern technological civilization with people who are opposed to modern technological civilization per se, your mostly middle-class and expensively miseducated (and forgive me for noticing but your overwhelmingly white) types afflicted with the ennui of affluence, who suddenly take a fancy to the idea that life might be lived more authentically with a bone in one’s nose and a trip to the neighborhood shaman — the shaman who might, if the spirits smile upon him, initiate you into the ancient mysteries of the burning spring.
It’s too bad that we have lost the ability to intelligently debate issues based on facts and science; seems all we can do is yell at each other like five year olds. That will get us nowhere.
Reread my last post, further discussion is pointless.
Funny, you people are way ahead of me at that. The reality is, we don’t know why they died out, all we have is theories. Now we’re paving over and destroying everything in sight and seem to feel we have the right to do so. That is the real ignorance in action.
Dinosaurs died not because of overpopulation or because of “natures solution”, they died because of celestial mechanics, gravitational laws, bad chance and dumbness. You’re making an ass of yourself GreggM.
You want to do something but do you have any evidence that it works ?
Nothing is worse than ignorance in action.
Somebody like YOU, imo, are the people with minds “shut-steel-tight.” At the End of things, when we have Global governance, THAT’s when the state-murder will occur, just as the Shoah didn’t happen in Nazi-Germany, until AFTER the Enabling Act, and Hitler had total power. GreegM, “deniers of deniers” like YOU, imo, are the “Useful IDIOTS” of eventual State Terror, because you can’t establish that warming is occuring, (because it is NOT), but it doesn’t MATTER to you,–you just NEED your pathetically WRONG, DOGMA, and we should ALL pander to that, despite what we can see & feel & indeed, research? Look at Europe,–look at the Conspiratorial LIES of the East Anglia Scientists–the Michael Mann-caused global warming,–YOU, imo, are the mindless Greed apparachek of Warming that would foist tremendous EXPENSE on the World(–causing MORE starving Poor)–for NOTHING… except your EGO! You’re NOT debating me, –YOU, imo, will NOT LOOK at REALITY! There was recently a letter from 38 scientists alledging climate-change, but over 22 of the 38 were ADMINISTRATORS–I KNOW, because my Father had those titles and that’s exactly what he did. Mengele, was a Globalist, and a Scientist, and yet he didn’t DO scientifically VALID research, with his experimental medical crimes at Birkinau, did he? He also was a Green of his era, an officer of the SS, whose fellows developed the present Green agenda, –less, for now, –the ethnic-racial stereotypes. Advance a green agenda, and you ARE TALKING about liquidation, because the Enviro-Nazis WANT 9/10ths fewer people on Earth, they’ve SAID so. The coming nuclear attack on the USA will take 20-40million outright, with many being “sick” but living but slightly less than their normal span, but at 9/10ths to be eliminated, the World will be “ankle-deep” in blood, here & elsewhere. Will ankle-deep, be enough for you, Greegm? Go on Netflix, and watch the movie, “Good”, where a professor’s attitudes on euthanasia, are wrapped-up by Bureaucrats into a State apparatus, and what happens with that, will you? Thank you.
What a load of paranoid BS!!! I’m debating you right now, I haven’t threatened to kill anyone (unlike that statement about rounding up all liberals and shooting them) nor have I advocated the government taking over your life. You deniers are denying all scientific evidence about global warming while swallowing every lie the corporate shills feed you. The ultra-conservative Iders are not educable at all, their minds are shut like the old steel trap, shut tight!
If you don’t think they are a danger to science and scientific progress, you are REAL dumb. These people are running around preaching hatred of all secular humanists, any scientists like astronomers, physicists and geologists who say the Earth is more than six thousand years old, any biologist, doctor, or life scientist who teaches evolution, uses stem cells for research or supports the right of a woman to choose whether she will get pregnant or not. They would take humanity right back to the dark ages and force you to worship their version of god. The only difference between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists is that the Christians haven’t started blowing themselves up, yet. They both want their religions to be the only ones and are quite willing to kill anyone who thinks otherwise. Why do you think they wail and gnash their teeth when an Israeli is killed but are mum about the murder of Palestinians. That’s what the crusades were all about.
Their goals are a bit extreme but, if we do nothing, nature will take its course. Natures solution will be guaranteed to be worse, seen any dinosaurs lately?
“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” -Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say. In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.” - Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier
“It is of course not only our numbers which will come to an end. Civilization is made possible by agriculture. Agriculture is unsustainable. If it weren’t obvious already, you can see where this is going. There’s no predicting the timeline of civilization’s collapse. Techno-fixes and any resiliency industrial society possesses may draw it out. No matter, a better future, indeed the only future for humanity and the rest of Earth’s inhabitants is one beyond civilization. Whatever our course, we have only to consider the agricultural origins of our ecological crisis to understand civilization is an unsustainable trap. A collapse of civilization is inevitable and work with zest toward a shift to a tribal, wild way of living.” – Dr John Feeney is a prominent green campaigner who has written for the Guardian newspaper, the BBC, and many other Green journals and websites. He was the winner of the 2007 ECO award. In 2009 he received the Global Media award from the Population Institute for his work.
“Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.” - Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” - Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor
I always find it amusing that it’s the “creationists”and IDers — who merely have a personal opinion on creation, not necessarily on the mechanism via which the creation emerges and flourishes (*hint: there isn’t necessarily a conflict between a God-created universe and evolution) — are “the real problem”, while anti-humanist, anti-open-non-political-scientists who want to use bogus, easily proven false theories to dictate and control society to the tune of trillions of dollars and at a human cost that is hardly even calculable are just “out for the little guy.”
Right. Gregg, how dumb do you think we are?
The creationists are merely another opinion, so they could later follow the scientific method. So the creationists of the Right are NOT the “problem”. The “Problem” are those who want to RAM a Political (Green/Communist) CONSENSUS into people, subverting, completely, the Scientific process. Greens say, basically, it’s ALREADY DECIDED, now no more “need” to DO science/research/programs, send the scientists off the Gulags or up a chimney, or simply de-fund them, so they won’t do research, find discrepancies, REPORT those, and EMBARASS…the STATE! The 15th Century Roman church had your attitude, and “whupped-up on Capurnicus”, because he wouldn’t follow “consensus” that the planets revolved around the Earth(–they all revolve around the Sun)! Sheihan & GreegM, you’ve both taken the same “Dumb-pill” on this! Give me a ROOM of educatable Christians, rather than ONE, flaming-assh–e Leftist, which the Climate-ranks are surfeited with! Or is research going to be the WHORE of Green Apparacheks–laughable MORONS like Hansen, et al. Imo, Hansen may lapsing into Senility. Go READ those East-Anglia emails, about how they have to “fool” us, to accomplish their agenda(–political, NOT scientific). At the center of the Universe, billions of Earth years could be thousands of “heaven-years”, so BOTH conventional science and creationism could be compatible, and NOT at varience, subject to personal interpetations. I am NOT a creationist, but I understand what they’re saying. YOU GUYS…are “pseudo-scientists” imo. Shut-off debate, and raise Nazis! Encourage opinions, and FLOURISH… in all ways! The market will punish the morons, IF…those markets are free! If fracking uses the Canadian LPG-injection process, extraction is enhanced, and no water is used, so none is polluted.
Science education has been going on for the last 50 or so years because there has been huge amounts of pseudoscience rather than actual science, and far too many students have not been exposed to science at the high school level.
All of the pseudoscience SHOULD be sent back to dark ages, as well as all of the statistical nonsense, and students of science should be failed if they can’t comprehend the fundamentals of the various sciences.
Nice, is he also talking about the Creationists who are destroying science curricula across the country? These people are trying to send science back to the dark ages! Science education is going backwards in this country and it is directly because of right wing religious zealots!