[Buddha-l] EARTH HOUR 2012

[Richard Hayes]

On Mar 31, 2012, at 15:35 , SJZiobro at cs.com wrote:

> Live long and prosper, Richard!  This is a clever way of saying, "When irrevocable global warming will occur."  Then, unlike now, it will not be a hoax.

Do you have any idea of what the meaning of the word "hoax" is, Dr Ziobro? According to my dictionary, a hoax is a humorous deception. It's a form of amusement at someone else's expense. It's difficult to see how anyone could think that the hypothesis that the mean temperature of the planet is rising because of warmth trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels could be regarded as a joke. I doubt very much that the scientists who have conducted studies on this topic for the past thirty years are doing their work just to raise a giggle.

An alternative sense of "hoax" is a malicious deception. Again, it is difficult to see how anyone could seriously believe that there is any malice involved in formulating their hypothesis. Whom could the thousands of scientists who have formulated the hypothesis possibly be hoping to harm?

To say that the global warming hypothesis is, like any scientific hypothesis, possibly wrong in some of its details is an intelligent thing to say. To dismiss it as a hoax, as if it were a practical joke such as Piltdown Man, is, I'm afraid, a rather stupid thing to say. (I am reasonably confident you used the word in jest, Dr Ziobro, so I am not accusing you of saying something stupid. If you were not joking, then I take it back; you were saying something stupid after all.)

There is an interesting book recently published by Clifford Bob entitled "The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics." Bob's thesis is the so-called "left-wing" enterprises such as NGOs and lobby groups have been somewhat over-studied in the social scientific literature, and that much less attention has been paid to international efforts to promote causes associated with what some people call "right wing". (I myself find the concepts "left" and "right" completely useless unless one is talking about the arm that a baseball pitcher throws with, but I use those terms because Bob does.) Not surprisingly, Bob shows that the tactics used by all special-interest groups are pretty much the same. They consist of misrepresentation, oversimplification, vilification, character assassination, the use of emotionally charged language (such as the word "hoax"), and distraction. That is only a partial catalogue of the devices used in political discourse these days, and Bob observes (accurately, I think) that no side has a monopoly on the use of these diversionary tactics. What is perhaps alarming is that it is becoming more and more difficult to find anyone anywhere who doesn't use these tactics and who instead looks carefully and dispassionately at evidence.

The particular "right-wing" causes that Clifford Bob chronicles in his study are the carefully orchestrated international campaign to prevent (or eliminate) gun control (even in such gun-shy nations as my beloved Canada!) and the equally orchestrated international campaign to criminalize same-sex partnerships (and no, I don't mean the biggest same-sex partnership of all, the Vatican). It makes for pretty sobering reading, wherever one places oneself along the political spectrum. (It's not just the issues he chronicles, but the methods that political advocacy takes all along the spectrum, including the middle, that takes one's breath away.) If you've ever had a soft spot in your heart for reason, this book will give you plenty of good reasons to despair.

Another very sobering read is Chris Hedge's recent book "Empire of Illusion: The end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle," which takes up where Neal Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" left off (which in turn takes up where Huxley's "Brave New World" left off). If you have ever been in a classroom full of students who can't write anything longer than a text message and can talk for hours at a time about every detail of "The World of Warlock: The Wrath of the Lich King" but couldn't find the planet earth on a globe, Hedge's book may offer some insight into how we have gotten where we are—and where we may be heading. One detail that caught by attention in an early chapter: Google reports that fully 25% of all Google searches are for pornographic sites. (Fortunately for buddha-l readers, the other 75% are for Sanskrit words used by Buddhist philosophers.)

Richard Hayes