It’s been a rough couple of days so allow me ease into this week with some majesty, beauty and art – an amazing clip from filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg’s “Wings of Life”. It uses high-speed images and time lapse photography to uncover the hidden world of pollination.
TED should be a favorite for anyone interested in the ideas which are changing our world. Love it.
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Conservative, anti-science, knuckle-dragging ignorance is alive and well in Texas.
Top environmental officials under Perry have gutted a recent report on sea level rise in Galveston Bay, removing all mentions of climate change. For the past decade, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which is run by Perry political appointees, including famed global warming denier Bryan Shaw, has contracted with the Houston Advanced Research Center to produce regular reports on the state of the Bay. But when HARC submitted its most recent State of the Bay publication to the commission earlier this year, officials decided they couldn’t accept a report that said climate change is caused by human activity and is causing the sea level to rise. Top officials at the commission proceeded to edit the paper to censor its references to human-induced climate change or future projections on how much the bay will rise.
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TCEQ even deleted a reference to the fact that the bay is currently rising by 3 millimeters a year—five times faster than the long-term average. The edited version that TCEQ sent back also killed a line noting that the bay’s “future will be strongly regulated by the now rising sea,” as well as the factual assertion that the disappearance of the wetlands is “due mainly to direct human intervention.” The officials also cut out the statement that the water level rise “is one of the main impacts of global climate change.”
The degree of willful ignorance on the part of GW deniers is astounding. Fossil fuel lobbyists line the pockets of politicians as they go about the dirty business of censoring scientific research on the causes and effects of climate change. None of this is new to conservatives and Republicans. From day one, the Bush administration blatantly censored government funded research which ran counter to the story they were promoting. From 2007.
The Bush administration was yesterday accused of systemic tampering with the work of government climate scientists to eliminate politically inconvenient material about global warming.
At a hearing of Congress, scientists and advocacy groups described a campaign by the White House to remove references to global warming from scientific reports and limit public mention of the topic to avoid pressure on an administration opposed to mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions.
Such pressure extended even to the use of the words “global warming” or “climate change”, said a report released yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project. The report said nearly half of climate scientists at government agencies had been advised against using those terms.
And here’s a 2006 piece on James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s top climatologists.
…this imminent scientist says that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there is little point in discussing climate change with your run-of-the-mill, Fox News parrot. These people are clueless. Enough of them would believe that the earth is flat and the center of our solar system if Bill O’Reilly believed it to be so. If these fools are unwilling to accept the scientific consensus of 98% of the world’s climatologists over that of a lying monkey, it’s fair to assume that anything anyone else has to say on the matter will have little impact on their beliefs. It’s an old line but true nonetheless – you can’t fix stupid.
The focus needs to be on ensuring that as many as possible of the politicians who push an anti-science, GW denying agenda, remain out of power. If there’s no Rick Perry or George W. Bush to appoint officials with the authority to censor and make a mockery of science, then maybe, truth and common sense can win out.
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Bob Inglis is the type of conservative you wished the Republican party had a few more of within their ranks. He’s the type of rare conservative who makes the term ‘reasonable Republican’ appear to be a little less of an oxymoron and more of a possibility.
Bob Inglis served six term in the U.S. House of Representatives as a member from South Carolina before finding himself a casualty of the Tea Party train wreck in the 2010 midterms. In the run-off for that year’s Republican primary, Inglis got decimated by the Tea Party favorite in a 71-29 percent landslide. Despite posting a solid conservative record in his 12 years in Congress, it was determined that Inglis had crossed party lines once too many times – a definite no-no for a political party where simply having one of their members agree with a liberal on the time of day is enough to demand that the person be drawn and quartered.
Inglis’ had committed the unforgivable sins of voting for the TARP bailouts in 2008 as well as siding with Dems in opposing the Iraqi troop surge in 2007. He was also one of only 7 Republicans to side with Democrats in voting to disapprove fellow SC Rep. Joe Wilson for yelling out “liar” during President Obama’s 2009 address to Congress. Obviously, Bob Inglis had made the decision to maintain his right to think for himself over any attempt to pursue pure partisan politics.
And despite Inglis’ willingness to compromise and side with Dems on a few, specific issues, he still maintained a “93.5% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and his endorsements from the National Rifle Association and National Right to Life.” But alas, it was not enough to save Inglis from the Tea Party Inquisition, especially in light of the fact that Inglis was determined to hold on to the one belief which makes all teabaggers, wingnuts and Fox News personalities cringe in horror and uncontrollable rage. The very conservative Bob Inglis, a 12 year member of Congress, had the audacity to…(gulp!)…to…to…believe in science!!!
Bob Inglis, when given a choice between staying true to his innate intelligence or siding with the mentally deficient crazies who now controlled his party, opted for the former. In the end, he was mocked for it and it was a factor in his loss of position within the Republican party.
One year later, Inglis has not given up in trying to educate his fellow Republicans and conservatives. Here’s an excerpt from a piece Inglis wrote in Bloomberg on Monday.
The National Academy of Sciences says, “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks.” Several recent studies have found that 95 percent of climate scientists are convinced that the planet is rapidly warming as a result of human activity. But a George Mason University-Yale University poll in May found that only 13 percent of the public realizes that scientists have come to that conclusion.
You would expect conservatives to stand with 95 percent of the scientific community and to grow the 13 percent into a working majority. Normally, we deal in facts, we accept science and we counter sentiment…
OK, there’s some BS in the above. No, conservatives do not, for the most part, deal in facts. It’s simply not something these people do well. It might be a genetic defect, I don’t know, but if you need better convincing, tune in to the next Republican primary debate for a true example of what a lie-fest is all about. It’s a sight to behold.
But that aside, Inglis’ message to conservatives is clear and intelligent. He’s asking them to wake up and return from their decades long journey into the nether regions of insanity – a journey which has gotten a little more unreal with each passing day…
Alright, alright, maybe he’s not saying all of that, but Inglis has issued a warning to conservatives. Here were his parting words to his party after his 2010 loss at the hands of a Tea Party candidate.
“It’s a dangerous strategy, to build conservatism on information and policies that are not credible.”
It certainly is but unfortunately for Inglis, his Republican party and, I imagine, an entire nation, his fellow conservatives are just not listening.
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According to Public Policy Polling, only 21 percent of Republican voters in Iowa believe in global warming (and only 35 percent believe in evolution). Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates, one that Mr. Romney is determined to pass at all costs.
So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe.
What does it say about Americans, or more specifically, about Americans who support a candidate who expresses blatant anti-science beliefs? What does it say about the future of a country attempting to compete in a world where countries are placing greater emphasis on science and the new technologies fueled by advancements in science?
Science should be a politics free zone safe from manipulation and bias by those who carry a political agenda. And yet, here we are in 2011 where individuals gets demonized by right-wing ideologues, liars and fools for simply supporting the overwhelming consensus on climate change by the world’s scientists.
Only in a place Galileo could ever fully understand would the science of evolution and climate change be hot topics in a political campaign.
But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect.
Madness.
UPDATE:
Here’s proof that long after rising sea levels have turned New York City into a modern day Atlantis and the last remaining polar bear has left for that big ice floe in the sky, there will still be some climate change deniers screaming out, “Hoax!!”
A few conservative Roman Catholics are pointing to a dozen Bible verses and the church’s original teachings as proof that Earth is the center of the universe, the view that was at the heart of the church’s clash with Galileo Galilei four centuries ago.
“Heliocentrism becomes dangerous if it is being propped up as the true system when, in fact, it is a false system,” said Robert Sungenis, leader of a budding movement to get scientists to reconsider. “False information leads to false ideas, and false ideas lead to illicit and immoral actions — thus the state of the world today.… Prior to Galileo, the church was in full command of the world, and governments and academia were subservient to her.”
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Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine ponders not whether there is purpose to the universe but on whether there is any point in believing there need be a purpose.
“…try being an atheist for just an hour or two to see how it feels — and to ask themselves what would change if they stopped believing. Would you lose all purpose in life? Would you quit work? Would you stop being nice to other people? Would you cease loving your spouse, supporting your family, interacting with your extended family, contributing to your community, or participating in your society? Would you abandon all activities that lead to a sense of transcendence and spirituality?Of course not! Shouldn’t we love our families, be nice to other people, and support our communities because those things are good in and of themselves? Of course!
Whether there is a God or not, all of these purposeful activities — and many more — stand as ends in themselves in the here-and-now, not as means to some other end in the hereafter. Purpose is not some prop on a momentary stage before an eternal tomorrow, where its ultimate meaning will be revealed to us. Purpose is created by us through the courage of our convictions and the honor of our actions.
Ponder that.
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