Chronic Murmuring

Then there's all that mercury in all the oceans, in the fish, and in us.

Of course there is a crazy environmetal fringe. Last time I looked, there was a nutball Christian fringe (several, in fact). Does that mean that everything to do with Christianity is just that -- a bunch of kooky flakes with no merit?

No, and Crichton doesn't say that. If you read the article, you'll see that he criticizes environmentalism for its religious tenets, and for replacing scientific evidence and rationality with faith propositions. I encourage you to read it.

I did read it. I would encourage you to realize that different people can take very different interpretations from the same message. I guess I was leaping ahead to how this will be used to "prove" that all (or nearly all) environmentalism is wrong.

Then again, if every environmental action were undeniably and perfectly "right," it would stand as a truly-unique human achievement.

Oh, my bad. Your comment sounded like a non sequitur, since neither I, nor the article I posted, suggest that "all of environmentalism is wrong."

Not your bad ;-) my comment DID sound that way and probably is an NS. Wht he said is exactly true (not completely true, but what is?). While I may quibble (and more) with some of his assumptions and conclusions, he is right as far as he goes.

Then the whole "good science" argument can start....

On a totally different note, that's the first time I've ever read anyone speak with such rage about the DDT ban. One, I didn't know there was a DDT ban, but two, I didn't know it could cause such passion in a person. I found this site, devoted to refuting the "DDT Ban is Bad" myth. It gives a number of the arguments, and the accompanying evidence, as to why the ban was so harmful to developing countries, and attempts to refute some of them. Apparently, this a widely debated subject, or at least was at one time.

I suspect that there is a lot of relgious fervor and revisionism on both sides of this issue. What I think I have witnessed is people of all stripes grabbing the study results that support their political stance and ignoring or denigrating those that do not.

I've seen that (and done that) myself. I don't doubt that this is a complex policy issue, requiring much familiarity with the literature. When, and if, you have conflicting empirical findings surrounding the same kind of study, then it only further removes a regular person from being able to determine what is actually going on.

I never do -- well, I never ADMIT that I do.

Hardly ever.

I enjoyed the good debunking of the wacky wing of environmentalism. But I am a little disturbed by the absolute 'modernism' of his approach. Religion=faith=nonrational, Science=reason=ouronlyhope.

Basically, environmentalists are bad because they are like religious people, and we all know they are bad. A necessary evil, as he learned when studying anthropology, but an evil just the same.

I find faith and religion very reasonable in a scientific sense -- then again, as Xon knows, I also believe that B.F. Skinner inadvertantly proved predestination through his work in Behaviorism! I'm weird like that.