72 bar falls 20.76 0mph ESE dew-point 64 sunrise 6:29 sunset 7:58 Lughnasa
Waning Crescent of the Corn Moon
A Sierra club blogger caught these comments after her light hearted, energetic account of her second day at the Democratic convention:
What I would like to know is the substance of what is being said and promised to America. The rest is nonsense and not worth our time.
I would also like more substance. This is time consuming, I don’t appreciate my time being wasted on insignicant information.
I agree with Bruce. Less fluff, more substance.
I posted the following:
Geez. Lighten up. Color is part of the information. This kind of crabby feedback is part of the problem we have in general. Who wants to listen to folks who sound like tight-lipped great-grand parents?
The environmental movement has a large dose of self-righteousness that often brooks no dissent. It is not unlike the New Left of the sixties. The tone and flavor of “I’m right and you’re not” creates a sense of condescension that impeded the capacity to get our message to the people who need to hear it. Are we wrong about some things? History assures us we are? Which things? Well, it is not history yet. This reality should make us more humble.
I watched a good film the other night called U-571. The plot is irrelevant here, but the Captain said to his Ex O, “To be a captain you have to make decisions with imperfect information and no time for consideration.” This is the human condition on all the great issues of the day. We get further with each other if we admit our information is imperfect. What we look for is the trend, the decision that if not made will hurt us more than inaction. Climate change sure seems to be one of those decisions. Could we have some of the science wrong? Absolutely. Is the trend clear enough to make decisions now imperative? Seems so to me.
But there may be some who read the data differently. They might disagree about urgency, agency. They might disagree, as noted physicist Freeman Dyson does, with the assumptions that go into the climate models. Those of us, though, who see the need for action must make our case in a way others can at least agree with us that acting is more important than the possibility of being wrong in some of the details. That’s our task.
