I was frankly surprised to see a line in the usual homely, not to mention horrendous, warning people are destroying themselves by denying the science of geophysics include a warning about part and parcel of the inevitable catastrophe:
The climate change deniers have won
By Nick Cohen, The Observer
Scientists continue to warn us about global warming, but most of us have a vested interest in not wanting to think about it
The American Association for the Advancement of Science came as close as such a respectable institution can to screaming an alarm last week. “As scientists, it is not our role to tell people what they should do,” it said as it began one of those sentences that you know will build to a “but”. “But human-caused climate risks abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes.”
In other words, the most distinguished scientists from the country with the world’s pre-eminent educational institutions were trying to shake humanity out of its complacency. Why weren’t their warnings leading the news?
I refuse to believe Mr. Cohen is unaware of the Golden Rule - "He who gots the gold rules" but Mr. Cohen is not just another part-time science believer like most purported liberals today. There is this line in the opinion piece that is not off topic at all though most liberals are as rabid on the subject as the Koch's on global warming:
But the right is also going along with an eruption of know-nothing populism. Just as there are leftish greens, who will never accept that GM foods are safe, so an ever-growing element on the right becomes more militant as the temperature rises.
http://www.rawstory.com/...
Of course any rational being who is not a full-fledged batshit crazy moron has to know that biology is part of our future - or there is none. But polite people aren't supposed to say it out loud. It is like not covering up the table legs in Queen Victoria's era.
Who is this Cohen fellow anyway? I was hoping to find out he was a scientist but, sad to say, he just seems to be a thinking sort who doesn't let his ears act only as high-speed conduits for trash talk shielded from the gray matter as it whistles through.
From Cohen's website:
No child dreams of growing up to become a pharmacist. They are never romantic leads or action heroes in films. As far as a search of my bookshelves and the web can tell, they are not the heroes and heroines of novels either. Doctors, detectives and spies are everywhere, while the ignored pharmacist is nowhere to be seen.
http://nickcohen.net/
Good Lord, it looks like this is the sort of man who would wink at a homely lass. No, I am not one of the ultimate lab monkeys myself but I have no trouble at all understanding the chemists are worth a whole herd of the other three though they are little valued unless they are poisoning the vittles or the water supply.
Guys like Cohen offer some slim hope for the planet. He manages to make one smile with grim forebodings. Saints be praised. He lives up to his name whatever the genetic heritage. I would lay a bet he even knows that "White Eyes" was the name of an American Indian as opposed to the idiotic phrase used by a phony Indian chief to describe the pallid European invaders in a John Wayne movie.
Best, Terry