Perri Nelson's Website 

Kool-Aid

I'll admit that I was once a Kool-Aid® drinker. I enjoyed it as I was growing up. Those little packets of food-coloring and flavor powder tasted good in water with sugar. It's a sure bet that it was a lot less expensive than soda pop. It's a shame that the drug culture and Jim Jones' Peoples Temple's 1978 suicide using poisoned Flavor Aid® resulted in the negative connotations of the term “Kool-Aid drinker”.

It's not a good idea to simply accept everything that someone tells you simply because you agree with their ideology. That's what people are implying about someone when they call them a “Kool-Aid drinker”. They're implying that “Kool-Aid drinkers” cannot think for themselves, and by extension that the person they are talking about cannot either.

Thinking is hard work. A lot of people try to avoid it. It's much easier to accept things that people we perceive to be authorities tell us than to think about them critically and to investigate their truthfulness. The sad thing is that often the things we are told by our authority figures are outright lies, or distortions of the truth designed to lead us by the nose.

The “Man Made Global Warming” hysteria that is sweeping the planet is a perfect example. We have it beaten into our heads that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas and a pollutant. Because mankind is burning "fossil fuels" to obtain energy we are dumping huge amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Therefore mankind is ultimately responsible for global warming.

If you point out to someone that believes in man made global warming that the CO₂ signature in atmospheric gasses trapped in ice cores seems to lag by years or decades behind other "temperature" related signatures in the geologic record your statement will be ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. They'll insist that a consensus of scientists has determined that global warming is real, and that mankind is responsible for it.

Are we also responsible for the warming of Mars? Since when was science driven by consensus anyway? I thought that science required a theory and experimental testing to validate or invalidate that theory. Once there was a consensus among authorities that the world was flat. This despite the observations by the ancient Greeks that the world had to be round.

Once there was a consensus among scientists that the Sun orbited the Earth. This despite the fact that the "models" scientists used to describe the universe had to include more and more complicated refinements to fit observations, such as the occasional retrograde motion of the planets.

The consensus argument seems to me to be just another way for those that use it to say that they've been drinking the Kool-Aid.

It's interesting what passes for “science” these days.

I've been wondering. Why is it that “human induced climate change” is a “left vs. right” issue anyway? I have some thoughts on that.

For now I'll just state the obvious, although I think it's wrong. The “environmentalists” are all on the left, and they're concerned about the damage we're doing to the environment. Big business and “big oil” are all on the right, and they're concerned about raping the earth to make their ill gotten gains.

That's the simplistic answer, and I think it's wrong. I'll be posting on that later.

This linkfest is for the 15th of October, 2007.

If you have something interesting you'd like to share, feel free to link it here and leave a trackback.

Just remember the trackback policy.

For the best exposure, go to the blogger's oasis and use the linkfest chooser to choose the posts you'd like to hook up with.

Trackback URI for this post: http://perrinelson.com/track.aspx?postid=1017
Permalink URI for this post: http://perrinelson.com/2007/10/15/1017.aspx

The Florida Masochist trackbacked with "The Knuckleheads of the Day award"

Today's winners are Jerry Scott Smith and Triton Aerospace.

Faultline USA trackbacked with "Why America Must Define Religion"

Does our American Constitution, which offers blanket and unquestioning protection of religious freedom, create the very means by which the destruction of American sovereignty can be accomplished?

The Florida Masochist trackbacked with "Florida the rules are different here Chapter CLVI"

People drop dead all over the Sunshine State on a daily basis. Even in trees and nobody even notices for two days. Isn't this a great state or what?

The Florida Masochist trackbacked with "Blogging Notes"

One of my favorite bloggers celebrated her 3rd Blogging Anniversary. Say congrats to Hooah Wife.

The Florida Masochist trackbacked with "Leftovers"

Some news from Mexico. No mention made if there was any Tabasco or Steak Sauce in the refrigerator also. Hat tip- "Klotz" as in "Blood". Go check Steve's post out, you'll get a chuckle or two. MEXICO CITY -- An aspiring horror novelist was arre...

Planck's Constant trackbacked with "Six Word Stories - My shortest Post"

Over at Pete Lit, we were invited to write a story in six words. My entries? A Muslim, his wife - a beating.

Pirate's Cove trackbacked with "Duncan Hunter Calls Out Chertoff To Finish Section Of Fence"

Probably the best candidate for president whom no one knows about A California congressman yesterday called on Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to override a ruling by a federal judge ordering the delay of construction of security fencing ...

A Few Shiny Pebbles trackbacked with "Battlefields: the Movie "Redacted""

A man named Brian De Palma has made a movie called Redacted, about the Iraq War. (It’s already been discussed a lot on the Internet, in some important opinion pieces, such as here, here, here, here, and here. ) In...

Right Truth trackbacked with "Learning to Live With Being Right (Right Truth Exclusive)"

Learning to Live With Being Right. By R.J. Godlewski © October 15, 2007, All Rights Reserved The advent of the Internet has made it extremely difficult being who we are. As technology increases in scope, so too does our ability

The Random Yak trackbacked with "Just in Time"

Ever since The Random Spouse and I pulled Yak the Younger out of the local childhood indoctrination center public school, I’ve noticed some remarkable changes in his personality. He no longer fears bullies who threatened to beat him up.  (Note:...

Big Dogs Weblog trackbacked with "Hillary’s Birthday is Just Another Reason to Break the Law"

There will be a big gala next week to celebrate the 60th birthday of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the next Queen of America and ruler of all her subjects, you know, the little people. This will be a star studded event that might actually bring in between 1...

The Amboy Times trackbacked with "Bush is a Clueless Dhimmi"

I guess I shouldn't be surprized. After all, this is the same guy who wanted to hand over our ports to the UAE, leaves our borders wide open during wartime, and even favored an aviation training program for Saudi students

Woman Honor Thyself trackbacked with "SaY to No JesuS….say YeS to “Mo”"

No. You’re not drugged and you did not wake up in an alternate reality sweet friends. ...

Right Voices trackbacked with "BUSH: “You’re fixin’ to see what they call a fiscal showdown in Washington,”"

Oh My! Dave In Texas: “Fixin to” is what we say when we’re about to screw your sister and steal your checkbook, and also kick your dog and throw firecrackers into your mailbox. It’s serious shit. See, it confuses you cause it do...

Adam's Blog trackbacked with "Religious Freedom Under Fire"

From leftist reaction to Ann Coulter’s statements on people becoming Christians to the ACLU’s mind-reading attempts, Religious Freedom is Under Fire…Also, a punishment is far too lenient for parents who kidnapped a woman to force an a...

Leaning Straight Up trackbacked with "Do you know who Irena Sendler is? You should."

She was an activist of Polish Underground and Polish anti-Holocaust resistance in Warsaw, a courageous woman who was responsible for saving the lives of 2500 children in the brutality of Hitler's regime. During the early 1940's was a Catholic soci...

Leaning Straight Up trackbacked with "Video Break- Flashback to 1983"

Not feeling too hot tonight, so here is a video clip of special significance to me. This is from the US Festival May 29, 1983 in Southern California. The clip is the band Triumph playing their encore of Fight the Good Fight.  This i...

third world county trackbacked with "“Shut Up and Go Sit in the Corner, Ann… “"

…the fit-throwing by the Hivemind is completely unwarranted. As usual. ...

Right Voices trackbacked with "Maine school wants to provide contraceptives to 11 year old students; no parental notification necessary…"

The Pill would require parental permission, condomes wouldn’t. A sixth grader will remember to take her pill everyday? How do you feel about the fact that your kid could be receiving birth control, and the health officials don’t need to ...

Shadowscope trackbacked with "The Nobel Peace Prize"

So how did this thing come about anyway? The Nobel Peace Prize is one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. The Peace Prize is awarded to "the person who shall have done the most or best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for holding the promotion of peace congresses" So WTF exactly did Al Gore win it for?

Stuck On Stupid trackbacked with "41 Fools Part 2: Rush 1, Fools 0"

  The 41 Democrat Senators that signed the letter to Rush Limbaugh’s Syndication Company (Clear Channel) have been hoodwinked by Rushbo. Limbaugh has obtained their original letter and is auctioning it off on EBay with the proceeds ...

Pirate's Cove trackbacked with "Air America’s Randi Rhodes Mugged: Blame The Right Wingers"

I’ll say right off the bat, get well Randi (via Memeorandum) Randi Rhodes was mugged on Sunday night on 39th Street and Park Ave, nearby her Manhattan apartment, while she was walking her dog Simon. According to Air America Radio late night host ...

Angel responded with:

nice insights Perri..neither side seems blameless..sigh..and pass the kool aid!..lol :)

Emmanuel responded with:

Hi, I want to make some remarks concerning your statements. I agree that consensus is a sufficient argument for global warming, but I think it's still remarkable that 90% of all scientists agreed that global warming is "almost certainly " caused by man and it's certainly going to pose a problem. I mean, even if man is not responsible for global warming, I think we should something about it, since we have, for the first time, a significant influence on climate and therefore the power to change it. if we want to avoid another katrina disaster in new orleans or massive death tolls in Africa because of recordbreaking heat, we should temper not only our CO2 emissions, but also other harming chemicals that destroy fragile ecosystems who keep our climate normal. Some will think man has no influence on climate and we should not even try to reduce emissions, because it's useless. that is a mistake. In the nineteenth cetury, industrial factories that process coal for steel, blew so much sulfur dioxide in the air, it reflected the sunlight and actually ecreased earth's temperature by some degrees. that same effect took place when that vulcano in Indonesia erupted and also put alot of sulfurdioxide in the air. anyway, I think the fight doesn't end with CO2,we also should think about conserving environment for the future, and not destroy natural resrves for oil, as mr. wants to do in Alaska. But hey, I'm from Europe, (Belgium to be precise, so excuse me for my terrible English,) so you guys probably think of me as some other crazy left wing eco terrorist, which you can, it's a free country.

Perri Nelson responded with:

Emmanuel, your "facts" are incorrect, as is your reasoning.

First of all, there is no consensus of 90% of scientists that says that global warming is "almost certainly" caused by man. The IPCC panel report for which they shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore was backed by about 2,500 scientists. There is a MUCH larger consensus of about 17,800 scientists that the mass media ignores that considers human activity to have little, if any, affect on climate.

If we've got such a significant influence on the climate, why is it that if every nation on the Earth were to suddenly cut back their "carbon" emmisions to pre-1990 levels that there would be little or no decrease in the observed rate of warming? Why is it that no European nation is able to meet their goals according to the Kyoto treaty?

Regarding "another Katrina"... are you aware that one of the worlds foremost meteorologists has debunked the claims that "global warming" and hurricane frequency and/or intensity are related at all? Dr. Gray found that "there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed."

Dr. Gray also came to the conclusion that there is a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures which actually drives global warming, and he predicts that there will soon be a cooling period lasting several years.

Regarding the "natural reserves" in Alaska that would be "destroyed", the once proposed drilling in Alaska would have involved less than 2% of the area of the reserve in question. Drilling operations in Alaska have been conducted in the past with little damage to the environment, and the pipeline that was built to pump the oil from the North Slope to areas where it could be collected and stored actually ended up enhancing the Caribou population.

Speaking of Volcanos. The Indonesian volcano that you mention actually pumped more CO2 into the air than an entire years worth of human CO2 emmissions, and it did it in a single eruption.

I would like to thank you for visiting my site, and invite you to come back again. And no, I don't think of you as an eco terrorist, but I do believe you've been drinking the global warming Kool-Aid. Your comments illustrate that quite nicely.

ablur responded with:

What a well reasoned and carefully executed argument. I am also pleased that you back it all up with facts. Very Refreshing!

Interesting not to Global Warming Model errors. Water Vapor is the largest of the green house gases. Water Vapor far surpasses CO2. Unfortunately, the modeling scientists could not generate a formula to predict cloud cover or humidity when calculating warming. Clouds are one of the key components of cooling as well as water vapor and its evaporation enhances these effects. Since they could not come up with a means of dealing with this incredible portion of the Greenhouse gases, they simply ignored it and all possible ramifications that may come from water and clouds. More accurately, they tossed it out because it was too complicated.

David responded with:

*sigh*

Perri, I try, I really do, to not simply throw my hands in the air and ask climate alarmists, "Are you getting these hare-brained ideas beamed to your minds from some mothership orbiting Uranus?" *LOL*

Let me commend to your attention a wonderful, easily accessible, book, Kicking the Sacred Cow by James P. Hogan. Hogan is an engineer-become-sci-fi-writer who is an adamant supporter of the scientific method for exploring the physical world. And he's mad as hell (my interpretation :-)) and simply not going to take it any more as politicized "scientists" (read: "naked liars") and others turn science into a religion, unmoored from any honest examination of facts with reason.

His section on climate alarmists is devastating, and it's replete with enough footnotes and references to sink a battleship.

But if you want to control your blood pressure, read the book in small doses (besides, it'll give you plenty of time to research some of the references :-)).

[Relevant--I think--rabbit trail--] The section on Rachel Carson that more or less simply condenses Ecological Sanity by George Claus and Karen Bolander [sadly OOP *sigh*], is the single most concise retelling of the most shameful (and ongoing) destructive acts of the leftist eco-alarmists to date, IMO. While the information is readily available in many venues, now, the silence of the Left, the ecological alarmist movement, Mass Media Podpeople and Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries (our nation's colleges and universities) about the devastation wrought by the woman who is arguably the greatest mass murderer in history, "Saint" Rachel Carson, is telling.

That almost every single solitary person who supports--against reason and facts--the assertion of Anthropogenic Global Warming also supports the (LYING) views of the woman who is responsible for more human deaths* than Hitler, Genghis Kahn, Stalin, Pol Pot and (fill in the blanks with a dozen more mega mass murderers) combined, by many estimates is enough for me to class their (most generous estimation) monumental wilfull stupidity as genuine evil.

*yes, direct deaths from malaria--the single biggest target of DDT use--is only about 100,000,000, but that's just the tip of the iceberg: deaths and illness--malaria alone has debilitated, temporarily or permanently, over 14,000,000,000 people since Ruckelshaus banned it at the behest of Carson and her cadre of liars--that deplete the workforce and make populations sucesptible to other illnesses, have led to or exacerbated famines and other issues that have caused perhaps as many as five times as many deaths, according to some estimates. And they have to remain estimates, because the political power of eco-alarmists is inversely proportionate to the (rare and usually fabricated) factual content of the message they proclaim.

On almost every issue since the 70s (almost; not all) eco-alarmists have been wrong.

Oh, Hogan's not the only one who sees the lies, damned lies and peer-reviewed lies of "consensus science" as falling far from being science, or even honest polemics. But Kicking the Sacred Cow does concisely round up and roundly castigate, major fields from the worship of evolution to Gaia worship and do it very readably (with, as I said, copious references you can check for yourself--a feature I really appreciate).

I am afraid I have become part of the problem as regards fighting for reason against the climate alarmist B.S.--because I tend to call a thing by its true name, and climate alarmist True Believers just don't respond well to being told what they are spouting is B.S.

Your post, and others like it (Russell Seitz's posts about climate alarmists don't wualify; if anything, he's harsher with them than I could ever be--*heh*), may--just may--stand a chance of reaching one or two True Believers with a bit of reason. Hmmm... science apologetics? *heh*

Well, was that enough of a coffee-sleep-deprived ramble or what? :-) Oh, well. I am surprised I managed to even occasionally be on topic. *heh*