On Mar 11, 2:03 pm, "Dan Luke" wrote:

Anyone who makes up his mind on this subject solely by listening to Al Gore
or James Inhofe is just being lazy--or partisan to the point of debility.

My beef is against the campaign of disinformation that is trying to make it
all go away by shooting the messenger: science. Consider one of the charges
one hears repeated over and over, "The scientists can't be believed; they're
all lying to get paid." What becomes of our culture if this idea becomes
conventional wisdom?

In all fairness -- plenty of "scientists" have been paid to lie or
support some position. This is no revelation.

Case in point -- Jarvik. Anyone who saw those ads and knew anything
about him knew they were intentionally misleading.

We are bombarded by "scientists" proclaiming all sorts of nonsense.

The anti-nuke crowd in the '80s was the genesis of this phenomenon --
groups of "scientists" speaking on things they weren't necessarily
qualified to pontificate upon. Yet they did, ad naseum.

[Background: The "issue" in the 80s was US deployment of new
technology arms, not whether nuclear weapons were harmful if used. The
"scientists" demanded that the US unilaterally disarm, assuming that
the Soviets would follow suit. This only reinforced the perception of
"scientist's" naivety, further reducing their potential for swaying
the internal debate]

Whenever we hear about GW, the proponents always quote their pod or
batch or covey of scientists, when further study find the majority are
specialists in something far removed from macro- and paleo-
climatology.

And you wonder why our "culture" is wary of "scientific
pronouncements"?

And as far as "campaign of disinformation," it seems to me the NY
Times, Time, Newsweek, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, et al all comporting with
the Gore view is hardly wilting under a "campaign of disinformation."

Dan