Posted on 12/29/2006 12:41:31 PM PST by wagglebee
Primitive man worshipped nature and imbued inanimate things with human qualities. So do environmentalists.
James Lovelock, one of the movement's godheads, and the godfather of the Gaia hypothesis, imbued the earth with mystical powers. The Lovelock-inspired concept of "planetary consciousness" is really a philosophical excrescence of animism, "the belief that natural objects, natural phenomena and the universe itself possess souls."
Nature worship is a form of this fetishism. Primitives worshipped idols and amulets but also conferred divine honor on the sun, moon, mountains, rivers, trees and animals; air, fire and water. Environmental animists à la Lovelock believe that to tamper with one aspect of the interlocking system of "organisms, surface rocks, oceans and atmosphere" is to tempt fate.
To quote Lovelock's adoring acolytes at the New York Review of Books, this balance is now being disrupted by "our brief binge of fossil fuel consumption." Reduce ocean levels of algae and "teeming billions will perish," or so they say.
Most of Lovelock's earlier gloomy predictions have not panned out, but this has done nothing to cool the reverence he receives from media. They, like Lovelock and his ilk, aim not to "save" men, but to subjugate them to Mother Earth. Indeed, major media have had a good reason for pushing apocalyptic climate-change theories for over a century.
"A global central planning authority is implicit in all potential international efforts to combat alleged global problems," explains economist George Reisman.
Environmentalism is socialism revived; the Greens are the Reds incarnated.
In his seminal work, "Capitalism," Reisman elaborates on the philosophical affinity between these maniacal movements: The Reds argued that "the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as 'exploitation,' 'monopoly' and depressions. The Greens claimed that the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as the destruction of the ozone layer, acid rain and global warming. Both claim that centralized government control over economic activity is essential. The Reds wanted it for the alleged sake of achieving human prosperity"; the Greens for the alleged sake of avoiding environmental damage."
Republican Sen. James Inhofe recently traced the historical arc of media hysteria: "[F]or more than 100 years, journalists have quoted scientists predicting the destruction of civilization by, in alternation, either runaway heat or a new Ice Age."
The Business and Media Institute, a valiant defender of the free market, is in agreement, after "conducting an extensive analysis of print media's climate change coverage back to the late 1800s." Its report, ""Fire and Ice," found that "the print news media have warned of four separate climate changes in slightly more than 100 years – global cooling, warming, cooling again and, perhaps not so finally, warming":
"Many publications now claiming the world is on the brink of a global warming disaster said the same about an impending ice age – just 30 years ago. Several major ones, including the New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek, have reported on three or even four different climate shifts since 1895."
Warnings of an approaching ice age lasted well into the 1920s. Then, an imperceptible warming in the earth's surface saw the Times begin to blow hot air about global warming. This phase ended when, in the 1950s, Fortune magazine heralded an Ice Age. For some time, the Times remained suspended in journalistic permafrost but soon warmed, in 1975, to the idea of "A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable," to quote its headline. Hot on the heels of this cold cycle, the paper joined the current crop of Chicken Littles to bewail global warming.
That's right, not so long ago they clucked about global cooling; now they claim the sky is falling because of global warming.
More fundamentally, theirs is, ultimately, an "argument" against continued economic progress. Be it warming or cooling, the goal is the same: Climate kooks want to scale back the market economy that is responsible for the magnificent living standards enjoyed in industrialized countries.
To accomplish this unchanging ambition, these mutant Marxists have had to create a theory that can't be falsified – the kind of "theory" Karl Popper referred to as irrefutable. As Popper reminded us, "A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is," of course, "non-scientific."
Thus evidence that contradicts the global warming theory, climate kooks enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in weather patterns – warm or cold – is said to be a consequence of that warming or proof of it.
Then again, a leap of faith is necessary if one is to sustain a belief that the specimen that designed the microchip and painted the Mona Lisa is no better than a monkey – a creature that has never created anything, lives in trees, throws coconuts and hoots to communicate.
Thus evidence that contradicts the global warming theory, climate kooks enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in weather patterns – warm or cold – is said to be a consequence of that warming or proof of it.
This is a perfect explanation of the way the left operates!
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This commentary explains the left on every level.
I actually heard a proponent of Global Warming say the fact that we've experienced normal weather patterns this year is proof of global warming.
Yep, EVERYTHING is "proof" of their agenda-driven theory.
Who is National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE), i.e. THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1758057/posts?page=33#33
The powers they have:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:\+42USC7603
Environmental Emergency Powers:
Excerpt:
the Administrator, upon receipt of evidence that a pollution source or combination of sources (including moving sources) is presenting an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health or welfare, or the environment, may bring suit on behalf of the United States in the appropriate United States district court to immediately restrain any person causing or contributing to the alleged pollution to stop the emission of air pollutants causing or contributing to such pollution or to take such other action as may be necessary.
/excerpt
I call 'em "watermellons": Green on the outside, red on the inside.
>>>I actually heard a proponent of Global Warming say the fact that we've experienced normal weather patterns this year is proof of global warming.
Gore's threat:
Today, the Federal Office of the Environment and Public Works has released this statement:
NUREMBERG-STYLE TRIALS PROPOSED FOR GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICS
http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568
Rudolf Carnap (a rather under-appreciated modern logician and philosopher) suggested that if people have been wrangling with a problem for a long time, then they are probably posing a question with no solution. The preservationists may be guilty of a massive error of inaction, but it is worse than that. They didn't even set up the problem correctly.
If the Preservation Hypothesis does not exist, if the guiding assumptions are flawed, if there cannot be a goal, if there is no technical method, if there are no output variables by which to judge the results, how can it work? If the motives of those employed by the decision-making system are toward acquiring power through environmental failure, then the results are likely to be destructive. If the sponsors of an illogical and destructive system seek control of all factors of production, then their motives must be founded upon either faith or greed.
Consider faith. Deep Ecologists deny that their body of practices and beliefs constitutes a religion, although they publicly engage in animist and shamanist rituals and speak reverently of Gaia (the "Earth Mother Goddess") as the source of true scientific knowledge:
"Gaian perception connects us with the seamless nature of existence, and opens up a new approach to scientific research based on scientific institutions arising from scientists' personal, deeply subjective ecological experience. When the young scientist in training has sat on a mountain top, and has completed her first major assignment to 'think like a mountain', that is, to dwell and deeply identify with a mountain, mechanistic thinking will never take root in her mind. When she eventually goes out to practise her science in the world, she will be fully aware that every interconnected aspect of it has its own intrinsic value, irrespective of its usefulness to the economic activities of human beings."
- STEPHAN HARDING
Gaia was supposedly a Minoan earth goddess, adopted by a clearly wealthy, and reputedly earth-worshipping and pacifist civilization on Crete. Unfortunately, the popular beliefs about Minoan civilization largely represent the neurotic whimsy of Sir Arthur Evans, the first major excavator at Knossos. Evans was obsessed with proving that Minoan civilization had Aryan origins, and demonstrated a propensity to contort his observations in order to project upon them Druidic beliefs. Current evidence suggests that constantly warring Minoan city-states were overrun by Mycenean Greeks, perhaps after a nearby volcanic eruption. Maybe they had been weakened and their numbers were reduced. They did sometimes eat their children. One thing that we do know: They are no longer with us.
Some Deep Ecologists think that a consequence such as befell the Minoans might not be so bad. Such are adherents to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHMT, pronounced "vehement") or the Church of Euthanasia (whose central tenets are: Abortion, Sodomy, Cannibalism, and Suicide).
If a belief system has a flawed foundation in logic, a codified structure of beliefs, a hierarchy, icons, a personified supernatural deity, and spiritual rites, then it is equivalent to a religion whether it has a 501(c3) or not. If a religious body of belief starts to direct policy, it is equivalent to an establishment of religion capable of confounding all civic deliberation. Perhaps the only thing that keeps deep ecologists from being sued successfully is that they don't have an office or a bank account.
These folks are on the power curve. Consider greed.
Together, environmental activists and agencies of the United States government have advocated a plan of human withdrawal and ecological inaction over 50% of the continental United States: The Wildlands Project. The plan is to set aside enormous "core reserves" with "connecting corridors" surrounded by "buffer zones." The plan is being enacted over the objections of both landowners and many scientists. The published goal is to institute the plan, as soon as possible, nationwide, based upon the mere assumption that to withdraw human action constitutes preservation of natural resources. There has been no fractional experiment with published expectations, established methods, or means of measuring relative success. There certainly has not been an experimental trial. The first indications are by no means promising and, because of the preconditions listed above, are subject to interpretation. The real goal is resource land acquisition.
In order to get the land it sometimes has to be acquired over the pesky objections of its owners, with the temerity to indicate that the preservationists have no idea what they are doing. The key point of leverage is control of the water in the connecting corridors. Given the democratic claim on the use of water as a commons, the key to a public taking becomes the management and interpretation of specific provisions under either the Clean Water Act, or uses of water pursuant to the Endangered Species Act. Determining the outcome nearly always involves a court of law, where the assumptions of a judge and the infinite legal resources of government render the decision nearly a fait accompli or a coup de grâce (depending upon your perspective). The agencies and activist organizations are armed with experienced lawyers and "experts." The landowner and their legal representatives are usually unschooled in the conduct of dispute or technical argument and are very unlikely to have either deep pockets or sufficient data from expert witnesses.
The experts are, of course, scientists. Technical testimony in environmental cases is often composed of value judgements of the degree of threat to or criticality of an ecological resource. These experts are representing themselves to the courts as objective witnesses of activist organizations, universities, and government resource agencies. If, however, these same scientists have been trained to subject their observations and data to what is, at least functionally a religious belief system, then they make their testimonies before courts of law on the bases of such subjective science.
Under a biocentric ethic, our Gaian scientist believes that everything is ecologically critical and all economic value to the property owner is to be disregarded. Such a "scientist" is fully capable of the delusion that subjective interpretation is equivalent to objective data or that dishonesty 'in the defense of nature' might not be a moral failing.
A judge is no judge of technical integrity and has no experience upon which to evaluate testimony other than by considering university credentials and the quality of the legal presentation. Consider the above quote in that regard as applies to the expert testimony of such a scientist.
The courts are predisposed to make judgements on the behalf of government agencies under the erroneous assumptions that the testimony is objective and that employees of the U.S. Government are representing policies according to laws passed by Congress. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First, most Federal resource agencies are members of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are likely to take positions in the legal conflict, contrary to the agencies' constitutional and organizational mandates. These private NGOs require agencies of the United States Government to adhere to multilateral treaties as a prerequisite to membership, WHETHER RATIFIED OR NOT. Some such treaties have been specifically rejected. The texts of these treaties grant virtually unlimited power governing land use within the United States to those agencies.
These treaties, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, were designed and drafted by activist NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). Congress never allotted payment of Federal Agency membership dues to these international organizations. Both these organizations were started with grants from private, tax-exempt, "non-profit" foundations of the major stockholders in oil companies. These treaties, originating at these NGOs, were blessed by United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and routed for "approval" to the respective member governments of the UN.
Would the UN be representing an interest in acquiring global control of all resources? Under the current plan for reorganization, the UN plans a congress of NGOs that subsists entirely off grant money as supposedly representing civil society: The People's Assembly.
What kind of government gets to decide who represents "the people?" One that is sponsored by greed and controls "the people" by fealty to faith.
In addition to the philosophical bias on the part of testifying NGO grantees and agency professionals, are also direct career interests. Agency executives often circulate through a revolving door, at either environmental NGOs or private foundations. There is obvious reason for these political appointees to exert pressures upon technical civil servants with few other career options. The inherent conflict of interests in technical testimony thus deepen, to say nothing of the ethical considerations regarding ecosystem health. Though the human propensity to cower in compliance in return for personal security can be understood, it cannot be morally condoned.
The members of any group, with deeply held beliefs in a cause, will suffer frustration if they don't get what they want. It is natural for them to elevate the consequences of failure to heed their claims. Upon attributing the point of contention to an issue of collective survival, it isn't hard to justify internally any means to achieve their ends. It is predictable then, that they rely upon the courts, executive fiat, or the irreversible slide down the road to serfdom. Once they get their paycheck in service to that cause, it makes the case more personal. Desperate activists will accept support from any source, even if that source was the historic cause of the very problems they seek to solve! They do it to get their way, through legal coercion at the pleasure of its direct beneficiaries: a moneyed elite interested in manipulating the global commodity value of resources or their substitutes (as we shall see in Part V).
To socialize a commons is to control the factors of production. It is a way to power. A financial elite can dominate the political appointees in charge of administrative bureaucracy. That elite will always subordinate ecology to the acquisition and maintenance of power. It is an ultimately corrupting process destructive to its purpose.
Social "scientists," subsisting off of the ill-gotten cash from the scions of the industrial robber barony, are gleefully destroying the very foundations of individual freedom that have the best hope of fulfilling their dreams. They are selling scientific subjectivity and a biocentric ethic to dedicated human beings, confused into believing they are engaged in unselfish acts. They are mucking with the scientific method. They are destroying the technical integrity of young people, who commit their lives to save the environment.
The antithesis of this book is designed to connect the results with the perpetrators, the philosophy with the policy, the motive with the means, and the local with the global. Each of us will see our own piece of this terrible conflict. The message to many environmentalists, here, is this:
You are being used. It doesn't work the way you think it does.
To render observation subjective is to engage in self-deception. A scientist, engaged in such art, is trafficking in opinionated guesswork for the mere benefits of self-aggrandizement and a subsistence paycheck. Without technical integrity, deep ecologists may do irreparable damage to everything they say they love, to their great personal sorrow.
I wish the GWs would explain why the icecaps on Mars are melting due to solar activity, but we are only affected by SUVs.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1741427/posts?page=21#21
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1741427/posts?page=20#20
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1741427/posts?page=19#19
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1741427/posts?page=18#18
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1741427/posts?page=17#17
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1741427/posts?page=16#16
It's not about how way out these people are, it's not about their religious beliefs. They may consider themselves followers of the Wiccan faith, but they do not have a leg to stand on.
I am a polytheist, what you said about primitive man is true, now I'm not arguing religious beliefs, or opinions. Yes these people are whacked. Yes, these people have no way what so ever to back up their point - because like you (you and I) I see Junk science as junk science, and know as well as you that the scientific community would laugh these people out of virtually any hall where science IS spoken.
Do not though, belittle your predecessors. They were intelligent - had none - if any conveniences resembling anything close to what you possess at this time. We cannot as a people forget where we came from, or who walked before us.
Liberalism is the way it is, because they forgot, and refuse to recognize who their ancestors were, or are.
Respectively
SS
Marxists have many 'weapons' to use.
Backward thinking pagans, all of them. Everyone knows you aren't sophisticated unless you blow your nose into a piece of cloth which you carry around with you all day and you worship an invisible man in the sky.
>>>The Wildlands Project.
Political buzz word alert, 'rewilding'
A little more on that:
from the August 30, 2005 edition
Rewilding America, Pleistocene Style
The Monitor's View
Ever since Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, defining wilderness has not been easy. What often looks wild or "pristine" has probably been altered by humans over centuries. And in recent years scientists have tried to coax nature back to some concept of an original state by bringing back long-gone species, such as wolves, the American elm, or prairie plants.
Now a team of ecologists proposes a radical step to recreate the pre-human wilderness of North America by reintroducing large predators like those that lived 13,000 years ago.
This eco-team, writing recently in the journal Nature, proposes a gradual "rewilding" of the continent with today's relatives of the large mammals that lived during the late Pleistocene era. Such a step is seen as necessary to restore the empty ecological niches caused by eons of human activity. The pronghorn antelope, for instance, still runs as if it's dodging the extinct American cheetah; its evolution may benefit by restoring that relationship.
Some 60 or so species of lions, horses, camels, elephants, and other animals were made quickly extinct after the earliest humans showed up. Many of their relatives in Africa and Asia could not only act as modern ecosurrogates in North America, but those facing extinction might flourish in a new but familiar environment.
This idea may be practical for animals, but is it meaningful to Americans? Do ranchers really want cheetahs around? Can elephants be contained in large parks, as proposed? Can scientists even accurately recreate the old "wilderness"?
This proposal deserves a serious look-see to help the constantly moving debate over wilderness in the US. At the least it provides an intriguing intellectual backdrop, and possibly a conservation benchmark if implemented in small degrees.
What is the proper role for humans in nature? What species are worth preserving at a cost to human activities? Such questions come up dozens of times a year across the US.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973, for instance, is up for renewal, and one bill would change it to provide a better balance for humans in nature's mix. A new federal law allows exploration for oil and gas in a seashore national park off Mississippi that includes designated wilderness areas.
The Wilderness Act itself called to preserve areas "where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." About five percent of the US now carries that mystical label of wilderness.
The impact of humans, both ancient and modern, has left few North American habitats "untrammeled," and the removal of large predators was probably one of the biggest environment-shapers. Today's exploding deer populations testify to that.
A controlled experiment to set up a few fenced-in "Pleistocene parks," as the group proposes, could just revive the ancient ecology for North America's species, while saving a few endangered ones. It would also put a brighter spotlight on the lingering question of what is authentic biodiversity when humans aren't involved - if that's possible.
And another must read:
The Pleistocene Park Project—Removing Civilization from North America
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1568683/posts?page=9#9
GGG?
ping
Interesting, but not pingworthy. :')
It's attrotious! I've even heard the talking head numbskulls referring to his quotes as evidence the administration is beginning to adhere to the manifest destiny (sarc) of man caused climate change!
These are the Born Again Pagans!!!
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