There are two things necessary for a mass movement to succeed: true believers and a well-defined enemy. The enemy of the climate change mass movement is fossil fuels and the Industrial Age, with the “deniers” being the enablers of planetary destruction.
In the past, the term “denier” has been associated with that extreme group who denies the existence of the horrible, tragic historical fact, the Holocaust. Many climate change true believers want the public to put anyone who questions or disagrees with climate change projections in the same category as the Holocaust deniers. But one is a fact, the other a contested projection. Nevertheless, they have been quite successful.
Here is one of the definitions of “denier” found on the Internet: “a person who denies something, especially someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of the scientific or historical evidence: a prominent denier of global warming.”
Here is Hoffer’s warning on the role of the true believer: “where mass movements can either persuade or coerce, it usually chooses the latter.”
Something we are seeing in spades.
It’s demagoguery. And it trivializes the Holocaust itself, in the service of a(nother) collectivist political agenda.
I’m suspicious of these results. And like most such studies, they’re not properly controlled, and we don’t know if we’re treating a symptom. It may be that the drug does reduce risk, but that the LDL reduction is a side effect, not the reason that the risk is reduced. And notice that there is no mention whatsoever of diet. My LDL is very low since I cut back on carbs.
Wow. I expected to see more sophisticated errors than this. These border on illiteracy, in my opinion. It shows what a disaster the education system is, from K-12 through overpriced college degrees.
OPEC’s cuts are treading water. “The simplified version is that U.S. oil production is reaching a point where OPEC can choose to sell 100 barrels at $50, or 125 barrels at $40. They can choose between higher profit margins or larger market share, but the days of having both are over for now.”
This is just a proposal; as she notes, Culberson is likely to restore the Europa lander. And in general, the White House proposes, and Congress disposes. What really matters is what gets appropriated.
The worst thing about the NASA budget proposal is that SLS/Orion survive. https://t.co/rAXed575QU
…with an artificial retina. This is great news. But I wonder how it would work for someone born blind. Could their brains learn to see?
[Update a while later]
There seems to be some confusion in comments. My point was that even if the brain starts to get the visual signal, it may not be able to learn how to use it. Learning to interpret the input and translate it into a map of the world is something that happens very early in development, and if it doesn’t happen, like language, it may not be possible to learn it as an adult.