Wednesday, December 17, 2008

An Oklahoman gets it

Here's a terrific letter in today's The Oklahoman. Mr. Harding just made my day!

It’s a mental illness

The Environmental Protection Agency is kicking around the idea of taxing cattle at $175 per head, due to concerns that methane gas produced by cows contributes to global warming. U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York says the idea stinks. No pun intended I’m sure.

Estonia has already passed such a tax. New Zealand kicked around the idea a year after joining the Kyoto protocol fiasco. The good news is that 650 dissenting International scientists from around the globe are set to challenge the climate change claims made by Al Gore and others. One of these scientists, a former Nobel Prize winner for physics, Ivar Giaever, states, "I am a skeptic ... Global warming has become a new religion.”

It’s not a new religion. It’s a mental illness that anti-capitalism socialists have seized upon. They’ve skillfully exploited those who are eager to believe humans (especially Americans), and now cattle, are to blame for climate change no matter how ridiculous the claims are. We’ve already seen the cost of goods and services driven up needlessly by unproven science.

It’s indeed time for change: Let’s get back to science based on facts, not opinions by those with political agendas.

David Harding, Moore

3 comments:

  1. Mr. Harding offers no evidence that belief in "global warming" is a mental illness. Rather than refute the claims of "global warming," he offers an appeal to authority (650 scientists), which is a fallacy, and a vicious ad hominem (the claim that the advocates of GW are mentally ill), which is also a fallacy.

    Many years ago, in studying the rise of the Nazis in Europe, I read (perhaps in William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) that one of the tactics Nazis used in countering their critics was to claim that their critics were mentally ill. That seems to be the same tactic Mr. Harding is using.

    The basic cause of history is not mental health/illness but ideas, especially fundamental ideas--that is, philosophy.

    P. S. -- As a layman, I reject the claims of political advocates of "Global Warming," particularly in the form of ICACC, Imminent Catastrophically Anthropogenic Climate Change. Such claims are not proven to my satisfaction--as a layman. They make no sense as they are stated by their foremost evangelist, Al Gore.

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  2. Burgess - I do agree with you regarding Mr Harding's use of the claim of mental illness, which leads me to believe that perhaps I need to reevaluate Mr Harding's letter.

    When I first read it this morning I was euphoric about seeing information about global warming skeptics which I am not used to seeing in the media - which made me willing to excuse Mr Harding's assertion of mental illness.

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  3. Many times in my life I have erred in supporting individuals who, on closer examination, did not deserve it. In my case, I think my hunger for heroes was so great that I jumped at the chance to cheer. I was often mistaken. Being on a near-starvation diet leads one to leap at any sustenance seemingly offered.

    There are heroes. In our time--and in our cause--they are quiet. I think of this whenever I read of someone like Robert Mayhew, Andrew Bernstein, or Tara Smith publishing a new book. I remind myself of what they must have gone through over the years to accomplish that task: thinking, researching, planning, writing, receiving criticisms (sometimes hostile or ignorant), revising, defending (against those who want to change the work to fit their desires), and then preparing for the onslaught of criticism once the book is published.

    There are heroes, but we have to learn where to look for them.

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