Monday, May 28, 2007

 

Seeing is Believing

In his important essay, The Necessity of Atheism, the English poet Shelley said that if we sensed something, we were almost bound to believe it. I can, in a sense, notice the daily revolution of the Earth and its yearly procession around the sun by noticing night and day and the change of seasons, although plenty of people for hundreds of thousands of years noticed the same things I do but didn't know we were a rotating planet orbiting a sun. But noticing, for example, that it was 80 degrees today in Denver is hardly evidence of planetary climate change over more than a human lifetime.

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, however, says that she has sensed, in some way, climate change. Here's her exact quote about her entourage stopping for a few hours in Greenland, where we saw firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality; there is just no denying it.

What? She was only there a few hours. Did it change in that time? Or did she see a glacier that had melted back a few miles from where someone told her its face used to be (and no doubt truthfully told her that)? The story doesn't say.

The story also says that President Bush rejected [the Kyoto] accord, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfair excludes developing countries like China and India from its obligations.

I think it would have been more accurate to say that President Bush continued the Clinton policy of rejecting that accord...

At least the reporter called him President Bush. The editorials in the New York Times usually call him Mr. Bush.

UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi also had two statements on the History Channel program regarding Star Wars. The statements were pro-Star Wars but I really can't remember anything she said. It was in politicalese. Hasn't she seen the last 4? Not quite my idea of good filmmaking.

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Comments:
Sounds like the kernel of a good voir dire.
 
Eat me.
 
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