Greetings, all, Yes. It is human nature when things are complicated and much unseen to conclude that the situation must be caused by a cabal or a conspiracy. Usually, though, these perplexing and often frustrating human-based situations are the result of inadvertent patterns of interaction and cognitive limitations.
I would add another 'cause' of these situations -- and would include cold fusion and global warming in these -- the relative ineptitude of the 'good guys' (however you define them!) to communicate their PoV. Too often the 'good guys' resort to attack and invective. Advocacy is substituted for effectiveness, righteousness for influence. As I see it, influence is solely dependent on having access to the person or group that one wants to influence. If one has access, then only the interpersonal and communication skills of the 'good guy' will determine the outcome. Does this make sense? -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 9:45 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Vo]:Red Hot Lies thomas malloy wrote: >>The notion that thousands of climate experts are engaged in a >>massive fraud is preposterous beyond words. It is conceivable that >>they are wrong, but absolutely, positively out of the question that >>they are engaged in fraud or that > >The point of my posting these reports is that there is a dissident >group of planetary scientists who question AGW. Yes, this is common knowledge. >You won't hear their voices in the main stream media because it is >controlled by the Oligarchy. On the contrary, these people probably get proportionally more mainstream press coverage than conventional planetary scientists do. Just about every article on the subject mentions them. (I mean that they are probably less than ~1% of the total, so only 1 in 100 articles should mention them, to make things proportional. That's a rather silly analysis, I will grant.) Compare this to the fraction of cold fusion scientists represented in the mainstream press: 0%, even though they far outnumber the cold fusion skeptics. This is not caused by an "Oligarchy" but rather by specific people such as the editor of the Scientific American, the science writer for Time magazine, and others who are well known to me. These people are not politically powerful Svengalis. They are not hidden manipulators of public opinion. They are inept, uneducated, self-important fools who happen to have landed in jobs that are way over their heads. Sort of like George W. Bush. A relatively small number of specific individual people are responsible -- not some amorphous Oligarchy or Hidden Conspiracy. The same is true of Holocaust denial, tobacco company denial that smoking causes cancer, Wall Street credit default swaps Ponzi schemes and other scams, and other irresponsible lies and misunderstandings. - Jed
