Comments on: Peter Gleick: New McCarthyism: Fear of Science and the War on Rationality

By: n

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:17:31 +0000

A couple of things,
The Environmental Defenders Office, New South Wales, Australia did report on its newsletter yesterday about a world-first climate-change judgement made by a US Court. So, as has happened in many other countries, in America too, judical arm might try and bring in the changes that its populace demands but gets side-tracked due to dishonest politics. But I am just giving you hope, not contradicting you.

Secondly, water has everything to do with climate change and if the politians do not and the bureaucrats are not allowed to accept that reality and work on it, we would have policies that spiral down into a sticky sticky situation.

By: bill crampton

bill crampton — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:24:28 +0000

I believe that the Glen Becks, Rush Limbaugh’s, Sean Hannity’s, etc exist to make those of us in the middle take our focus off the daily grind and look around at the world, decide there might be something wrong and try to do something about it. They are out there (as in waaayyy out there). It doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to say.
John Holdren may be all you say. But with the dramatic social restructuring that is being pushed down the general public’s throat the way we perceive it to be today, regardless of what the above critics do or don’t say, when a man like Holdren spouts ideas of how to control race and population by selective birth control or putting chemicals in the water to limit births, it frightens people. Now those statements may have been made in jest or at a time in his life when his ideology was different. But to have a person who has ever thought that a member of the leadership would frighten any sane individual.
It is all about power and who has it. Those people in government appear to not represent the other 50% of the country. What I mean is, the powerful will make sure they don’t drink the water with the birth control chemicals in it while the unknowing and unwashed will do it out of ignorance.
Careful…were not all as ignorant as many would believe.
If we want to change our society, it takes time. We as a culture have developed over thousands of years and many experiments in government and interacting as one person to another over time. Thousands of years of time. If there is change to be made in our society it shouldn’t be at the hands of the powerful but as a thoughtful, time consuming, trial and experiment period. Unfortunately we have gotten so used to all our problems being solved in 60 minutes (with commercials) that we want all our change neat and complete.
Life is a messy, brutal business (I’m an ER nurse, I know). It takes time to pass ideas on from generation to generation and incorporate them. Slow down.

By: Adam White

Adam White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:43:31 +0000

Another problem is that many Universities are dropping on the quality of education because they can make more money by graduating more students. The Bachelors of Science degree is becoming easier and easier to achieve but the people who get it, know less and less; all so the Universities can get more students and make more money.

By: Jeremy J. Schmidt

Jeremy J. Schmidt — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:45:02 +0000

An interesting synopsis. It seems to me that the assault on rationality has also come internally in the academy, from those research programs that dismiss rational discourse in favor of interpretations based on power, hegemony and the like. Such programs preclude water policies,and public policy writ large, based on rationality due to the many competing influences and biases found in political processes. There are no doubt problems and limitations with what counts as “rational” in policy making and the types of knowledge, beliefs and customs considered legitimate but it is high time we recaptured an understanding of rationality congruent with the complex systems we are a part of.