Posts
Comments
I composed this specifically for LessWrong - so how can this be spam ?
That is really unfair. Perhaps I should have spoken more directly to the use of rhetoric, but in the field of global warming, the big discussion now is rhetoric and the denial of reason.
I will say that my writing is passionate, direct, but not spam. Perhaps you need another category for rejecting an uncomfortable comment.
Richard Pauli
I would love to debate God and angels - if for no other reason that it is essentially a harmless debate. Maybe a little hell and a few deaths by the hand of religious fanatics, but nothing compared with total extinction of humans. Science says this is inevitable unless we deal with global warming - and scientists are frustrated and pissed that the message is not getting delivered.
This is the ultimate debate between the rational and delusional.
Oh...excuse me, you are a rhetorical "skeptic" ?? feel free to check: http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/
The science is done. and most disturbing is why the news of a looming colossal crisis is not heard. Now scientists are getting disturbed by the human reaction... see "Climate change blues - how scientists cope" http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/articleALeqM5hfDbOOosZBSfIIlTutM5m42eWhCQ
The carbon fuel industry-backed rhetorical and PR tactics have keep this issue from proper discussion.... (similar tactics from the tobacco industry "We are not really sure that tobacco causes cancer") We are beyond discussion - and now trapped in rhetorical inaction. The tactics and the complicity of mass media means we are doomed by the denialism. Pity. This used to be a hell of a great civilization.
Yale University forestry school just posted an interview with Elizabeth Kolbert who played a major role in trying to bring the issue of climate change to the attention of the U.S. public. "Her award-winning series on climate change in The New Yorker in 2005 became the basis for her influential book, Field Notes From a Catastrophe, and she has traveled from Greenland to Alaska to the Netherlands reporting on the emerging impacts of global warming. " http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2130
And the best discussion I have seen on the wrestling with the rhetoriticians :
http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/30/why-scientists-arent-more-persuasive-part-1/ http://climateprogress.org/2008/10/13/why-scientists-aren%E2%80%99t-more-persuasive-part-2-why-deniers-out-debate-smart-talkers/ http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/16/abraham-lincoln-figures-of-speech-shakespeare/