tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6727975.post2617922554798525485..comments2024-03-25T16:30:58.213+13:00Comments on GREENIE WATCH: JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6727975.post-30455376355239282332008-03-23T14:05:00.000+13:002008-03-23T14:05:00.000+13:00'Scientific American', used to be (in the 50s-80s)...'Scientific American', used to be (in the 50s-80s) aimed at other SCIENTISTS, for them to catch up on other fields, so as a boy whose father owned a library of back-issues, I couldn't follow a thing. They had differential equations and I was still in grade school!<BR/><BR/>I am supported in this claim by the Wikipedia entry on the magazine:<BR/><BR/>"In the 1990s the target audience changed, from other scientists in unrelated fields, to educated general readers interested in science issues. This change is lamented in an article The Demise of Scientific American by Professor Larry Moran."<BR/>__________________________________________________________________________<BR/>(1) John Renni (current editor of 'Scientific American'):<BR/><BR/>(a) "To give them ["denialists"] even one paragraph in a 10-paragraph article would be to exaggerate their importance."<BR/><BR/>(b) "We all know science is a flawlessly objective quest for ultimate truth pursued by scientists who are all paragons of dispassionate enquiry. That is, except for the scientists who keep badgering us about global warming and plasma physics and boo hoo hoo, all the rainforests are dying. Those guys are clearly money-grubbing careerists conspiring to fool the public. Their hearts aren’t pure - not like the nice biomedical researchers who work for the tobacco companies."<BR/><BR/>[Does this man sound overtly POLITICAL and PARANOID or what? Guess what, they fired the last guy because of competition from Discover magazine, which, although biased itself, is MUCH better read. Scientific American is still review articles, and not new news, but those articles are BORING and depressing, all about illness in a bad way, and half of them suggest at the end "Cognitive Behavior Therapy" which I thus assume is their new income source (product placement alert).]<BR/>__________________________________________________________________________<BR/>(2) Jonathan Piel (former editor of 'Scientific American' from '84 to '94):<BR/><BR/>(a) "The editor of Scientific American since 1984, has resigned [another story is he was fired when the magazine was sold to a new owner and yet another story is that he politically fired a Creationist who wrote a regular article]. John J. Hanley, chairman and chief executive, said yesterday that Mr. Piel's resignation was the result of the magazine's decision to adjust its direction and expand its audience."<BR/><BR/>(b) "80 is the new 60, which is good for gaffers like you and me. Even the standard of living of poor people in Western countries is the envy of people living in the undeveloped world. We are an inevitable outgrowth of the physical processes in the Universe, as an inevitability instead of a surprise." (2006)<BR/><BR/>(c) "I'm a conservative with a small 'c'. Economic activity requires a tremendous amount of human creativity and energy. I've had the thrill of starting a business enterprise to create a product, that other people found useful, to put it on the market, to help other people succeed. Private enterprise takes quite a licking in our popular culture. The truth of the matter is that our economy is a tremendously high standard of living. With global warming...but that to mind mind is a matter of tuning and correcting, it's not a condemnation of the system. It's not a matter of saying that: the whole thing is a disaster; we've got to start over." (honestly condensed verbal interview quote, on the topic of Marxism, interviewed by a classic Bucky Fuller advocate, 2006)<BR/>__________________________________________________________________________<BR/>(3) Patrick Moore (member of the group who formed Greenpeace):<BR/><BR/>[http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/images/drmoore.jpg]<BR/><BR/>(a) "I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern environmental movement is the romanticization of peasant life. And the idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world. The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries. I think it's legitimate for me to call them anti-human."<BR/><BR/>(b) "I don't even like to call it the environmental movement any more, because really it is a political activist movement."<BR/><BR/>(c) "The campaign of fear [$12 million of Greenpeace's budget] now being waged against genetic modification is based largely on fantasy and a complete lack of respect for science and logic."<BR/><BR/>[In Philadelphia, in 2006, Greenpeace accidentally issued a press release containing the words "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]." The final report warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns. This has been claimed to be the most explicit demonstration of Greenpeace scare-campaigning to date. A Greenpeace spokesman claimed the memo was a joke that was mistakenly released.]<BR/>__________________________________________________________________________<BR/>(4) Nigel Calder (former editor of 'New Scientist' magazine out of England, from '62 to '66):<BR/><BR/>(a) "Just as a time when after WWII, industry was booming, CO2 was increasing, at yet the Earth was getting cooler, and starting off scares of a coming ice age, it made absolutely no sense; it still makes no sense."<BR/><BR/>(b) "Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system."<BR/><BR/>(c) "I have seen and heard their spitting fury at anybody that might disagree with them, which is not the scientific way. The whole global warming business has become like a religion and people who disagree are called heretics. I am a heretic. The makers of this programme are all heretics."<BR/>__________________________________________________________________________<BR/>(5) Jeremy Webb (current editor of 'New Scientist' magazine, beginning in the 90s):<BR/><BR/>[He's the guy in the middle, next to Venter:<BR/>http://www.edge.org/documents/ontheroad/images/connors.webb.venter1024.jpg]<BR/><BR/>(a) "The evidence is vast and the urgency of taking action becomes clearer with every new scientific study. Some of the most obvious signs are visible in the Arctic, where rising temperatures and melting ice are dramatically changing the region’s unique landscapes and wildlife—as well as people’s lives and livelihoods. Across the globe, other early warning signs include melting glaciers, shifting ranges of plants and animals, severe violent weather, flooding and the earlier onset of spring. This is if scientists predictions are on the conservative side. The Polar ice caps are melting at a faster and faster rate, and this is shutting down the 'Trans-Atlantic Conveyor' or Trade Winds, which is in danger of switching course, plummeting northern Europe and North America into an Ice Age. This is the reality of Global Warming and Climate Change."<BR/><BR/>(b) "If we don't use power wisely we are possibly likely to crank the Earth's control systems to such an extent that we create our own mass extinction. We could once again make the world too hostile for life to handle. Notice that the loser is not the planet, it managed for 4-billion years before we arrived, nor is it life; as we've seen, life will bounce back, it's just that humans may not be there to see it."<BR/><BR/>[Alarmism alert. Sells magazines, and forces their main income, car-makers and oil-companies, to place full page public-relations "green future" ads.]<BR/>__________________________________________________________________________<BR/>(6) James Lovelock (author of 'Gaia' which is analogous to Bucky Fuller's term 'Spaceship Earth'):<BR/><BR/>"Nuclear is the new Green."<BR/>__________________________________________________________________________<BR/>- NikFromNYCAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com