Observations From the Back Row: 6-1-11

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“De Omnibus Dubitandum”

In Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, an Athenian ambassador refutes the Spartans’ claim that they are going to war with Athens on the principle of justice.

"Calculations of interest have made you take up the cry of justice––a consideration which no one ever yet brought forward to hinder his ambition when he had a chance of gaining anything by might"

Thucydides presents here a permanent truth of interstate conflict: when force will not get a people what they want, they will often cloak their ambitions in lofty principles like justice in order to gain sympathy, buy time, and win allies. - Bruce Thornton

Please think about this for a while. This is an appeal to the ideals of those they are attempting to destroy; and doing so by misleading them with their own values in order to attain that goal. The keys to worthwhile critical thought are collection of information, retrieval of information and correlation of information. In other words, read it, remember it and put it together properly based on the idea that everything we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality. The green movement is constantly changing itself “into and angel of light” in order to keep everyone believing they are working to mankind’s benefit. Nothing could be further from the truth. RK

Now it's bugs!
Bacteria often leave their hosts feeling under the weather. And even when the hosts are high-altitude parcels of air, microbes can be a source of inclement conditions, a Montana research team finds. Cloud-borne bacteria might even pose climate threats by boosting the production of a greenhouse gas, another team proposes……So his team dissected the icy balls, along with hundreds of smaller ones collected during a July hail storm south of campus. Michaud now reports finding germs throughout, with the highest concentrations by far — some 1,000 cells per milliliter of melt water — in the hailstones’ cores…………Moreover, certain cloud-borne bacteria — the French team identified at least 17 types — degraded organic pollutants to carbon dioxide at least as efficiently as the sun did. Amato’s team reported these findings online February 9 in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions……..This microbial transformation of pollutants to carbon dioxide occurs even in darkness.

My Take - There are some really interesting findings discussed in this article, but what struck me most of all was the pollutant degrading qualities of bacteria. It has been clear for some time that industrial pollution can be taken care of by the planet’s self curing qualities, after all, the planet Earth is capable of a substantial amount of self pollution. Volcanic activity is one such example. Bacteria are one of those cures. While still being responsible, and showing responsible care for our planet we can certainly ignore all the scare mongering by the greenies. Remember there is a difference between an environmentalist and an environmental activist. An environmentalist is defined as someone who is concerned about the environment, which is pretty much, everyone. An environmental activist is concerned about power, control and money. Concern expressed about environment by these people is merely the tool used to attain those goals.

Human Sacrifice on the Altar of Gaia

In the past thirty years, scientist James Lovelock, Fellow of the Royal Society in England and originator of the Gaia Theory, has published several books on Gaia. It was around 1970 that Lovelock first came up with the name "Gaia" for the Earth (he usually puts a capital E on Earth). In his latest outing, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity, he assures us several times that he uses the name as a metaphor. But it turns out that for him a metaphor is not just a rhetorical device: He finds Gaia a "useful metaphor" because the present ecological crisis "requires us to know the true nature of the Earth and imagine it as the largest living thing in the solar system." Here the metaphor Gaia turns out to be the way to know the true nature of the planet. Then Lovelock invites us to a change of "heart and mind" so that we may "instinctively sense" Gaia as a living planet. How can we instinctively sense a metaphor? Evidently, Gaia is for him far more than a trope. While he admits that the name offends the "scientifically correct," he declares that he is "unrepentant" about using it because this metaphor is a "path to the primitive feelings of the unconscious part of our minds." That's the part he thinks we can use to contact Gaia.

Lovelock speaks of our planet's evolution as the story of a female who has grown "old and has not very long to live." In the last century, she was "enlightened" in her "seniority" when human beings let her see herself from outer space "while she was still beautiful." The implication here is that our planet is alive and self-aware, and that she sees herself through our eyes

My Take – This may seem a little loony (and it is)  to those who haven’t followed the green movement or looked deeply into what they actually stand for, but he isn’t alone and the “deep ecology” loons really do believe mankind is a “virus” that has to be eradicated from the planet; either entirely or decimated to the point where mankind’s population has been seriously reduced. Even those who don’t want mankind eradicated would like to see 90% less people alive. Once again….this is who and what they are! So when they demand legislation that restricts pesticides, or any other modern technology that makes life easier, by claiming that it is “for the children” we can be assured this is horsepucky that is nothing more than an emotional hook to lure the unsuspecting.

We need to get this!  Everything the green movement has promoted or stood against generated dystopia everywhere in the world. Why would we believe that isn’t what they really want? We shouldn’t!

Everything we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax -

Of cabbages and kings,

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings."

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