Tempest in a teapot: World Bank finds Green Technology saves money and creates jobs

 World Bank finds Green Technology saves money and creates jobs Gee, will wonders ever cease? It's hard not to be cynical. I have found reports to this effect going back ten or more years. So why did it take so long for the World Bank to get on the band wagon? Not exactly a group strong on "thinking outside the box" or "thinking ahead of the curve"! The absurd delay in smelling the coffee suggests another label: "reactionary". The uber-honchos at the World Bank appear to react to, but do not initiate change. And these guys - mostly guys, I notice - are supposed to be the World's Leaders, duh..

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/06/23/study-adds-up-benefits-climate-smart-development-lives-jobs-gdp

          As an example of earlier studies on the job creating potential of green jobs, here is a Union of Concerned Scientists report on green energy from 2013:

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/public-benefits-of-renewable.html 


          Citing a previous study they conducted four years earlier:

"Increasing renewable energy has the potential to create still more jobs. In 2009, the Union of Concerned Scientists conducted an analysis of the economic benefits of a 25 percent renewable energy standard by 2025; it found that such a policy would create more than three times as many jobs as producing an equivalent amount of electricity from fossil fuels—resulting in a benefit of 202,000 new jobs in 2025" 

          So now the World Bank, which wrecked so many 3rd world economies and got them off on a bad "development" trajectory, has finally seen the light of day..wow! Yawn.

              Even governments are (somewhat) aware of Climate Change. For example, the risks of sea level rise on the South East coast of the USA. All these insights, of course, conveniently manage to disappear around election time when the mantras of "economy - not ecology - stupid!" are endlessly repeated to hypnotize the consumer culture besotted masses.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/southeast.html 


         Karl Marx: "religion is the opiate of the masses". He said this way back in the 19th century. Consumerism has to some degree replaced religion as the 20th and 21st century mass opiate. Consumption functions like an addictive process conditioned by insidious omnipresent marketing. Do we feel down? Well, just go to the local shopping mall for a fix: the brain circuits activated are similar! Does the dying world frighten us? Consuming shows us that we not only exist (that we are not in danger of imminent disolution) but that we are "better" - have more social status - than those that cannot consume as much. (Vicious and constantly increasing social inequality is therefore inherent to the current economic system. It cannot be eradicated or simply reduced to "natural" levels without destroying or profounding modifying that system in some way..)

           This article by American environmental social activist and writer, Margaret Swedish, is well worth reading in its entirety, especially the concluding section on the erosion of citizens' rights in favor of corporations' "rights".

http://www.ecologicalhope.org/featured/how-the-worlds-collide/

http://www.ecologicalhope.org/about/books/

When "progress" collides with nature







At what price progress?

Railroad sign indicating that the cargo is crude oil, the stuff that blew up in Lac Mégantic, Québec last summer, killing 47..

internal blog links: link to 5 previous articles with key word Lac Megantic

Book Review: The Gaia Hypothesis, science on a pagan planet

Michael Ruse: The Gaia Hypothesis, science on a pagan planet. University of Chicago Press, 2013. 224 pages, references, index, figures

Gaia Hypothesis: formulated by British inventor / physical chemist James Lovelock and American biologist Lynn Margulis, circa 1970. In essence, this "hypothesis" holds that the living species of earth have "co-evolved" so as to regulate essential properties of their physical environment (temperature, oxygen level, acidity, salinity..) for the mutual benefit of all. (Alternative definitions are possible.) I placed the term hypothesis in quotes because some scientists refuse to grant it such high status.

       The Gaia hypothesis owes its genesis to the American space program. Lovelock was contracted by NASA, the American Space Agency, to devise a way to detect life on distant planets. Lovelock - showing his native genius - came up with an elegant and efficient method: search for spectral lines indicating the presence of life supporting molecules in the planet's atmosphere. Spectral lines are monochromatic emissions / absorptions of light (or similar radiations) by atoms or molecules. 

An example: the biogenic oxygen of earth's atmosphere, produced by plant photosynthesis, is converted to small quantities of ozone in the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere. Ozone strongly absorbs some ultraviolet rays and the resulting absorption lines could be used as a "biosignature" indicating the potential existence of life on an earthlike planet.

http://www.pa.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/files/REU/Papers%202006/pistone_kristina.pdf 

       Prof Ruse is a philosopher of science at Florida State University. His goal in writing this book is to situate the Gaia Hypothesis within the contemporary cultural context and to analyze it from the perspective of philosophy and accepted scientific theory. (A somewhat circular proposition, one might argue, since philosophy and scientific analysis are also products of the ambient culture!) For me, the work was worth the effort, informing and stimulating, raising interesting questions and perspectives about the role of science in society today, some of them quite subtle and unexpectedly deep ("philosophical").

      Gaia Hypothesis reveals the mutual interactions - conflictual or symbiotic - between 1- the various "institutions" that comprise society, 2- science (itself one of these institutions), and 3- the work of the scientist. A flagrant example of such interactions are Darwin's attitudes towards catastrophic - rapid - change in the natural world. The industrial revolution created an increased demand for minerals and coal.  The increased intensity of mining operations combined with the emergence of modern scientific investigation of the natural world revealed what we now call the "fossil record", the mineralized remains or impressions of ancient life forms in soil and rock strata. From the beginning it was evident that this "record" contained many gaps, was fragmentary. Religionists tended to interpret these gaps as evidence for the Great Deluge of the Old Testament when an angry God punished sinful mankind with near universal destruction. The Deluge, it was held, also caused many animal and plant species to go extinct: dinosaurs were too large to fit on Noah's ark and so were left behind (!!) 

      As the fossil record became more complete, several gaps, corresponding to radical shifts in biota remained. Some thinkers argued for multiple deluge-like chastisements on the part of God. Others saw multiple creations / destructions of the the living world, either by Divine Providence or Natural Causation.

      As an avowed - and militant -atheist Darwin rejected such "episodic" or "discontinuous" interpretations of World History. And, be it noted, he also rejected the evidence of the fossil record itself. He, along with other scientists (geologists, naturalists,..), proposed an alternative hypothesis: Gradualism (other terms have been employed) which held that natural processes in the past are 1- essentially identical to those of today, 2- act steadily over time (at least on large geographic and time scales ) and 3- the gaps in the fossil record are simply due to physical discontinuities in geological processes. Thus a layer of dino bones under a layer of modern looking mammal bones need not imply a biological discontinuity. Instead, changes in hydrology, land elevation, sea level, etc might have resulted in erosion of intervening layers of fossils before a new phase of fossil deposition began. If we had a more complete record, Darwin argued, we would see dinosaur species slowly dying out and being replace by primitive mammals.

         Today, with increased knowledge of the chronology of geological events and a more complete fossil record, we have come to the conclusion that, effectively, Darwin was wrong and the religionists right (though for the wrong reasons!). Evolution is, in fact, marked by relative discontinuities - mass extinctions - which have profoundly modified the course of terrestrial biological evolution, a position sometimes referred to as "Neo-catastrophism".

 http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/11/book-review-great-extinctions-what.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/08/book-review-under-green-sky-by-peter.html 

        The lesson I drew from reading Prof Ruse's book is that science is, in part (and, to me, only in part), a "social construction". The scientist and the hypotheses which emanate from his brain do not emerge fully formed from the brain of Zeus! Rather, the scientist and his hypotheses are immersed in and emerge from a social, cultural, political matrix which, itself, has a history, a trajectory, a momentum, a "becoming" (French: un devenir). Science, and scientists, interact with, modify, and are modified by the institutions and the times they inhabit. There are quite a few examples in the book of such interactions, some a bit amusing, all informing.

        Thus, Rachel Carson, the pioneering ecological activist and author of Silent Spring (1962,) was not just an idealist but a consummate strategist to boot. One of her major informants of on-the-ground ecosystemic damage caused by pesticides was a biodynamic gardener, writer and speaker. Biodynamics is a form of organic farming developed by the Austrian medium-mystic Rudolf Steiner (1861 - 1925). Steiner can be seen as a forerunner of contemporary New Age movements and sects. He founded a philosophical, mystical, ethical school - Anthroposophy - and the Waldorf School system of alternative education based on play and creative self-expression within a social context.

          Rachel Carson, wisely, backed away from any overt association with her biodynamic collaborators. She realized that association with such marginals could be used against her by the large chemical companies who manufactured the pesticides she was denouncing.

          Science and society mutually interact. Point taken.

         James Lovelock is a British physical chemist and independent researcher / inventor who is proud of his lack of dependence upon direct institutional or government funding (of course, some of his clients, like the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (USA), are government funded, meaning that Lovelock does receive some indirect institutional funding).

        Lovelock is a gifted scientific instrument inventor with numerous patents to his name. He has occasionally invented instruments that the scientific community said were "impossible".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock 

        For me, the most fascinating parts of Prof Ruse's book dealt with the philosophical aspects of the "Gaia debate".

        There are probably at least two levels to this debate. On the popular level, a large section of the public - vaguely anxious by the disquieting roles science and technology are playing  - uncritically embraces several popular versions (?or debasements?) of the hypothesis. Perhaps the hypothesis affords us a way of tapping into a "holistic" vision of the world, a type of thinking many people intuitively recognize is lacking in our modern materialistic, reductionist - "scientific" - way of thinking and approaching problems. Many things have been read into the Gaia Hypothesis that Lovelock and Margulis, especially the former, never proposed: Gaia is a conscious being, "She" is the "soul of the World" (the Anima Mundi of ancient philosophy), Gaia consciously directs evolution. She may even be placated or induced through magical rites into satisfying human desires (the analogy with traditional forms of payer for divine intervention is only too evident!) Any or all of these positions, beliefs or practices may, of course, be valid (from various perspectives) but, in reality, they form part of the popular reaction to the hypothesis and do not necessary represent what Lovelock was trying to say. On the scientific level of analysis, Lovelock saw Gaia as the biochemically integrated  and goal directed behavior of the totality of living organisms on earth. The goal direction - teleology - proved to be an extremely controversial point of the hypothesis for a significant segment of the scientific community. Darwinists, in particular, because of their early battles with Christian creationists, were always sceptical of explanations involving teleology (purpose).

         Lovelock's lack of training in biological science began to show. In nature, "form follows function": wings are adapted to flying. But wings, Darwinists insist, were not "designed" by some Great Designer in the Sky. Rather, adaptations - like flight - that increased the chances of passing on one's genes were "selected" by the "struggle for survival". Thus what functions well - without being consciously designed - survived and is passed on, even becoming more perfect over time (Darwin). But, in the case of Gaia, where does the selection that would give rise to her integrated, self-regulating properties come from? Gaia is obviously not an individual organism to be eliminated in some competitive race to survive long enough to pass genes to the next generation. Since selection only operates on the individual in competition, "Gaia" could not have evolved self regulating properties.

         In some fundamental ways, Ruse argues, Lovelock failed to really grasp the point the Darwinists were trying to make. I suspect this is the case. Years ago, my environmental interests led me to study the Gaia Hypothesis. In reading Lovelock, I was at times a bit shocked with what blithe naivete he introduced ad hoc teleological explanations to explain Gaia's workings.

          For example, he explained the production of iodine containing gases by sea kelp as an (essentially) altruistic mechanism to transport iodine inland for the benefit of land vertebrates. These organisms have thyroid glands which require iodine to function. Whoa! Wait a minute! I thought. What is the advantage the sea kelp get from pumping gaseous iodine shoreward? There appears little or no benefit to the kelp. Lovelock simply didn't know enough about the rules of the biology game, did not understand the ideology of the biological community.

         A more "ideologically acceptable" explanation of the kelps' iodine transport looks at the benefits to the kelp of extracting iodine from seawater. The kelp employ the iodine they extract to reduce the salinity of the interior of their cells. Too much salt is harmful. A byproduct - unintended - of the kelps' "self-serving" iodine metabolism is the release of iodine to the atmosphere. Prevailing winds then carry it inland and vertebrate life, at some point in its evolution, began to exploit the ambient iodine as a metabolic booster (the hormone thyroxine). The latter point is important: land vertebrates began to exploit iodine because it was ALREADY present in the environment and had appropriate chemical properties. The kelp do NOT send iodine for our benefit! Such bad science did not help Gaia's reception among scientists who were more critical, on the whole, than the public.

         It is at this point that the whole debate begins to take on a philosophical / ideological flavor and touch on some really fundamental questions about the way the universe works. We touch here on the question of individual versus group evolutionary selection. Or the perennial war in Western science of "reductionism" versus "holism" (now appearing in the guise of contemporary issues and interests). 

         Lynn Margulis (1938 - 2011), who joined Lovelock in popularizing the Gaia Hypothesis, was, however a trained - if sometimes controversial - biologist and a self-avowed holistic thinker. She was probably better equipped intellectually to recognize the ground she was fighting on, the nature of the battle and the arms to employ. Ruse notes that her collaboration with Lovelock in popularizing the Gaia Hypothesis was fairly short lived. Ruse suggests this may have been due to Lovelock's (essentially) ideological commitment to a deterministic - reductionist worldview inherited from his training in the physical (as opposed to the biological) sciences.

      
         Scientific fundamentalism? "Fundamentalist" Darwinists insist that natural selection only selects fitter individuals. This is the classical default position, honed by decades of intellectual warfare with religionists (creationists, theists) and "holists" seeking some "vital" essence in life which distinguishes it from non-life. Holism, in addition, has, especially in popular manifestations, tended to attract some pretty hairy characters, further eroding its credibility among "serious" scientists.

        Since the 1970s, Evolutionary Psychologist (AKA Sociobiologist), E O Wilson has argued that more global traits of organisms, those involving social interactions between individuals, can also be selected for. Such selection could operate on a gene regulating a neurotransmitter associated with an increased tendency for social cooperation between individuals of a species. If increased cooperation had survival value, claims Wilson, the gene in question would, of course, be selected for. Groups in which the gene was more prevalent would out compete groups with lower levels of the neurotransmitter. They would produce more offspring. Thus the mutant gene would rise in frequency over time. But the competing entities here would no longer be individual but groups of individuals of a given species in competition with other groups of the same species. The group, not the individual, is the site of selection in this hypothesis. Some Darwinists, however, seem intellectually incapable of accepting - or even understanding - such an idea. Science too has its fundamentalists..

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/10/book-review-e-o-wilson-social-conquest.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/09/book-review-moral-animal-by-robert.html 

       Basically, the debate between individual versus group selection may be seen as a case of the old Holism versus Reductionism Wars. Reductionists live in a Lego universe:

           "Wholes" - organisms, living cells, ecosystems, molecules, societies.. (anything which has an identifiable boundary) - can, for the reductionist, be broken down into "elemental" functional subunits: atoms, chemical elements.. whose behavior can be described, usually, with simple mathematical equations. Theoretically, if one has a complete set of elemental subunits, properly described, one should be able to completely describe any complex entity composed of the subunits as well as its behavior(s).

 

                               A cityscape represented in Lego blocks (as "atomic units")

            Much of the power of modern technology derives from applying reductionist analyses to the physical world. We need only think of the way modern gadgets are constructed to the see the "lego world" mentality at work. (Lego itself is a cultural artifact produced by a reductionist industrial mind set - it merely reflects back the worldview it emerged from..)

           Today, however, our proliferating, interlocking, mutually reinforcing crises - demographic, environmental, climatological, technological, economic, spiritual,.. - are demonstrating the limits of such reductionist approaches to complex, self-organizing systems like our world. Such "wholes" are now seen to be demonstrably "more than the sum of their parts". Otherwise we would not be in the trouble we now are! Complex self-organizing wholes though which energy and matter flow, we now are beginning to understand, are systems that generate novelty and surprises (technically speaking, these are dissipative systems - footnote 1). Life itself is the major novel "emergent" we observe on earth. Such systems, while indeed composed of simpler elements, causally linked by simple equations, need to be observed "from the top down" if we are to grasp their most interesting - "emergent" - behaviors. We must adopt a holistic approach to grasp their full complexity and richness of response.

          For me, the most interesting point is not whether such behavior actually exists in Gaia but the degree of ideological commitment  shown by opposing sides and how this commitment expresses itself. Such commitment - sometimes bordering on fanaticism - often results in people "talking over each other's head".

        In truth, it is still too early to say if Gaia has legs and will last. At the very least it is a useful metaphor, especially at the popular level, to get people to consider the impacts of our economic behavior on the world we live in and how these impacts affect our own health and welfare. Gaia says: what goes round, comes round. But as a scientific theory, it is still early days and the jury's still out..

        I liked this book. Give it maybe 8 on 10. I apologize for the text in white background above. The internet gremlins are responsible, not me - I tried to remove it several times. Any suggestions, from the techies..?

footnotes

1- dissipative system: examples - organism, living cell, beehive.. but also some non-living systems like hurricanes, tornadoes, the earth's climate "machinery", crystals and viruses. Typically such a system has an active, more or less well-defined, boundary which separates it functionally from its (usually simpler) environment. Generally, "small" amounts of matter may (usually are) exchanged with the environment across the boundary: food goes in, waste goes out (in the case of organisms). Most importantly, energy (including information) crosses the boundary and a significant amount of energy is stored within the boundary (for example as fat tissue, a source of energy for emergencies). The "system" - the stuff inside the boundary - uses the energy flow across the boundary to do self-organizational work: the metabolism of the cell repairs cellular damage. When growing, the cell increases its mass, using matter fror the environment. Energy absorbed (from food) is used to organize that matter into living tissues. Waste heat - degraded (high entropy) energy - is evacuated to the environment. The system is said to organize itself - self-organize - at the entropic "expense" of its environment (2nd law of thermodynamics). To organize itself the system degrades high quality (low entropy) energy - such as sunlight - into degraded (high entropy) waste heat. The waste heat released to the environment has a reduced capacity to do further useful work (thus is said to be "degraded energy").

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SELFORG.html 

Harper: who lives by the sword dies by the sword

 abbreviations used in this article:

GW - Global Warming

         Prime minister Stephen Harper has championed the cause of mothers and children on the world stage. Here is a glowing review recently published in the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/blake-bromley/maternal-health-summit_b_5441546.html

http://globalnews.ca/news/1363979/ban-ki-moon-to-speak-at-child-health-summit-in-toronto/ 

          Harper's traditional Christian evangelical values may be partly responsible for his position. We simply give credit where credit is due. His support is welcome. On the international scene, family issues - including women's and children's rights to education, health and security and the right to birth control - do not receive the attention they deserve. This is both tragic and stupid. World leaders speak of the need for "sustainable development" but scant attention is paid to the fact that the fastest way of reducing population growth to sustainable levels is to promote female literacy. Military spending makes money for the those who can afford the biggest lobbies and pay for the biggest goodies (defense industry contracts) for compliant national politicians who jump through hoops.. We fail to reflect upon the fate of children brutalized in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria: as adults they will fill the ranks of tomorrow's terrorist gangs. Disempowered, brutalized children will eventually strike back as brutalizing adult fanatics. As a planetary society we fail to recognize the wisdom of the African proverb: it takes a whole village to raise a child.

            Prime minister Stephen Harper recently berated parents duped by pseudo-scientific fraudsters who link autism to childhood vaccination. Their refusal to have their kids vaccinated is now allowing formerly "conquered" diseases like measles and even the dreadful polio to make a comeback. Harper expressed irritation and confusion at this behavior. Who, in their right mind, would deny proven science! All very rational.. till, of course, you look at Harper's own precedents..

            Stephen Harper has not exactly been a paragon of rationality when it comes to judging the value of published science. He accepts that there is no valid statistical evidence linking autism to vaccination. But when it comes to atmospheric physics, he rejects established, peer-reviewed science and joins the cultlike global warming (GW) deniers and "sceptics". In other words, he does not judge science on purely rational grounds but "cherry picks" the "science" that fit his own political and economic world view. In one of his more egregious outbursts - admittedly made when he was still an Albertan provincial politician and had not made the move yet to the Federal arena - Harper addresses a letter to Reform party members denouncing the Kyoto Accord on Greenhouse Gas Emissions as a "socialist scheme" - ! sic ! to "suck money out of wealth-producing nations". Those Evil Commies again! - gee, I thought they all died out years ago, sort of like dinosaurs..

http://www.one-blue-marble.com/harper-and-climate-change.html

           From a scientific perspective, Harper's lies (or confusions) are as egregious as anything the autism / vaccination crowd ever came up with - and for the future health and stability of this planet, probably a hell of lot more destructive in the long run. GW, pontificates Harper, is based on "tentative" science. (It isn't but his readers want to believe it just like the autism / antivaccination crowd want to see "official" medical science tumble in the dust.) Worse, GW science is "contradictory" (???) Well, yes, science - based on the public demonstration of truth: experiment and peer- review - is necessarily based on the public confrontation and conflict of opposed models of reality. That's like, duh, the way it's supposed to work.. What Harper failed to convey was the fact that the existing evidence weighs strongly in favor of the human causation of GW.

                          Traditional science versus Neocon NewScience


          Like a polished charlatan Harper grossly distorts fact by a deft combination of "misinforming through omission" and a folksy, down home appeal to "common sense". GW science is refuted because it "focuses on carbon dioxide, which is essential to life, rather than upon pollutants". Can't be more commonsensical than that: I imagine Harper, Stetson crowned, leaning back in an old rocking chair on the homestead back porch, sucking on a full headed wheat stalk, chatting with the folk. In the background, the great prairie sunset blazes redly on the horizon amidst rocking oil rigs.. What Harper omits is that too much of a good thing can, in fact, be deadly. Carbon dioxide, like salt, fits in that category. Too little salt and your life expectancy drops because sodium and chloride are "essential to life". Too much salt, though, and your life expectancy falls: that's why governments' and medical bodies promote reduction in salt use..

         Like pseudo-science gurus, Harper creatively mingles speculation with self-evident truth. Thus the Kyoto Accord will destroy jobs. In reality, nothing is likely further from the truth! Years of studies by economists suggest rather the contrary. High Tech energy industries like the petrochemical and the nuclear produce few long term jobs. Aside from some initial, temporary job creation in the construction sector, high tech energy is capital intensive and labor dis-intensive. High tech energy production: a few guys walking around big buildings full of lots of heavy - and expensive! - equipment. Green energies - based on renewable sources like sun, wind, tide, geothermal energy, biomass.. - actually tend to have lower capital to labor ratios: more guys working in smaller buildings with smaller, less expensive, pieces of equipment.

         Finally, Harper plays the populist, (one fears ,racist), redneck card again. He doesn't like 3rd world nations who, initially, do not have to conform to the Kyoto Accord gas emission reduction targets. Such a delay of implementation, while admittedly controversial - and debatable, is at least the admission of the need for some kind of international social justice. Historically, the industrial world built up its wealth on the backs of the colonized races (cheap labor and raw materials) while having a free hand to pollute for a century and a half (since the Industrial Revolution). The controversial provision to phase in 3rd world compliance at a later date was, at least, an attempt to deal with this flagrant historical injustice. Harper hypocritically seems to imply that all the right is on one side, no need for debate..

          It is a bit difficult for me to reconcile 

1- Harper's apparently sincere and (aside from some unfortunate concessions to Right wing conservative christian groups) rational promotion of mother / child health issues with 

2- the inanity of his positions on GW (and environmental issues in general). 

         Perhaps we see here another example of the (apparent) "hypocrisy" or "multi-faceted" personality noted so often in authoritarians. The left hand of the authoritarian rarely knows what the right is doing. The authoritarian personality seems to lack "integrity" (especially in the senses of psychological "unity", of the ability to argue rationally or of attitudinal "coherence"). Authoritarians therefore often provide flagrant examples of the very vices they denounce so vehemently in the groups they detest.

          In the present case, Harper experiences apparently heartfelt consternation with parents who do not accept scientific knowledge regarding infectious disease and refuse to have their kids vaccinated. Yet has not Harper gone out of his way to discredit and muzzle GW science? Does he not condemn in others what he freely does himself? Inconsistent - like a good authoritarian..

           In a more philosophical vein, I'm led to an observation on human nature from the newly emerging science of Evolutionary Biology (AKA: Sociobiology). Because humans evolved from back stabbing, power hungry dudes similar to modern chimpanzees, we use guile and deception to advance our social status - "primate politics", in other words. Thus chimps are said to possess a "Machiavellian psychology". Unfortunately, humans also make lousy liars. Unconscious tics and visual / auditory cues give the lie away, except for psychopaths: they have an ace up the sleeve when they can lie with a straight face. But crafty mother nature (natural selection / evolution) came up with a solution: humans are naturally hypocritical. We don't scrutinize our own positions with sufficient rigor. Therefore, we readily end up believing our own lies, our own BS. Like the psychopath, we, too, end up lying with a straight face (the psycho just knows he's BSing everybody..) From this perspective, the authoritarian, having a more "polyfaceted", less internally integrated personality, accepts his own BS a bit easier than the rest of the population. 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/09/book-review-moral-animal-by-robert.html

             The author of The Moral Animal (above link) suggests a pedagogical approach to morality originally advanced by Charles Darwin and his circle. We should educate ourselves to compensate in the opposite direction of our natural (hypocritical) bent. We should be instructed in school to learn to look at all sides of issues, to learn to critically scrutinize our own positions for flawed logic or self interest (and not just criticize reflexively the opinion of our adversaries).

author of autism / vaccination scam loses medical licence 

A little truth, a little candle..

      In case you didn't know it, Climate Change (CC) and Global Warming (GW) are hoaxes concocted by evil Lefties to take control of the world and impose a World Government of Slavery.

"There is no Global Warming Crisis

My reason for writing this article is not that I have any hidden agenda, but that I have an intense dislike of being manipulated, lied to, and treated like a fool.
The whole “human caused global warming” idea is a fraud, and we are all the unwitting pawns in a chess game for which the prize is the control of the planet under the New World Order, and the World Government, something the Bilderberg Group have been steadfastly and furtively working towards for over 50 years. This world government will be appointed, not elected, can not be removed from office and will not be held accountable to anyone, but will be controlled from behind the scenes by the power elite. This is absolute power, and as we know absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The “human caused global warming crisis” with its associated carbon credit offsets trading is just a big, unscrupulous, fraudulent business. Worse still, on the back of this artificially created global crisis, this hoax, the people and governments of the world are being asked to agree to massive new taxation, (which will not be paid to their own governments, but to the United Nations),  and the surrender of their national sovereignty to this new World Government. This is what the Bilderberg group want, for the UN to become the World Government, which they will control."

            Obviously, at this point we have tipped over into a paranoid delusional system. The United Nations is the (hidden) World Government in waiting, right.. And the moon is made of green cheese.. 

       http://sannyasinman.hubpages.com/hub/new-world-order-bilderberg-copenhagen-global-warming-scam

               Then, of course, there's the protocols of the Elders of Zion, an earlier paranoid delusional system, that lost some popularity in recent years due to some unfortunate publicity (World War II..)

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion

                Nevertheless, in its heyday, the Protocols were promulgated by no less a luminary than auto-magnate, Henry Ford. He printed half a million copies and distributed them throughout the USA in the 1920s. And the Protocols still, it seems, have followers today!

http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/przion2.htm#PROTOCOL%20No.%201 

             I have been told, with great assurance, that the IPCC studies on GW / CC and their consequences have been cooked up by a conspiracy of climate scientists who plan to "make trillions" off the carbon credit trading market. Oh, those greedy climate scientists! 

            Actually, for anyone who has studied Earth Science or met earth scientists, the truth is quite different. For starters, earth scientists who really do want to make a bundle of money, do not teach in universities! They work for oil companies, where geology and paleontology provide valuable clues as to where oil or gas are likely to be found. Earth scientists who don't work for oil companies and teach at universities are definitely NOT there for the money. (Actually, if I were "following the money trail", I would trace it from oil company sponsored Right Wing think tanks - the Cato Institute, for example - and their disinformation campaigns, payed for by the oil companies, all the way back to the CEOs and the shareholders. That's the money trail I would follow if I were seriously looking for one..)

               Anyway, to set things straight. The following citation is from paleontologist Donald R. Prothero: Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs, Columbia University Press, 2009, page 244. In this concluding section of the book, Prof Prothero discusses, for the benefits of students, the potentials and risks of choosing a career in paleontology. There ain't much money and jobs are scarce. Then..

 

"So despite all the gloom and doom that I've spread through this epilogue, the bottom line is that if you really love paleontology and can't imagine spending your life doing anything else, then go for it. That's the way I was from the beginning, and I made it. This life has its advantages, too. The pay is not great, but you get summers and Christmas vacation off to do research if you want. With my grant funding, I'm paid to travel to some of the most beautiful places on earth and to camp, hike, and collect fossils. I choose my own research topics and work on what I want to work on, with no boss telling me what to do - that is, as long as I produce at the end. When I'm not in class, I decide what to do with my time, and most of the week I teach only part of the day. It's definitely not a nine-to-five, five-days-a-week job. Most important of all, I get the satisfaction of making new discoveries and studying fascinating fossils and geologic problems. My research and my publications are my permanent legacy to generations of paleontologists who will come after me. Our field routinely works with scientific papers and books written, and specimens found, more than a century ago, so that's a kind of immortality that few other jobs can claim.

Yes, becoming a paleontologist is a difficult task with long odds, but if you love fossils the way I do, the rewards are worth it."

          We're a long way from the golden handshakes of oil company and financial institute CEOs who have screwed up and get paid millions for their errors!! This is a man whose passion is knowledge and the thrill of the chase..