Propaganda: The spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.
The word idea is fitting and appropriate in this definition from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. Hypothesis also comes to mind. It is Earth Day in many places across the globe today, and unfortunately, it’s also a day for media outlets to disseminate stories about something many of them refer to as “Global Warming”. This term, in the general use, is an inaccurate term. Any meteorologist worth his degree will tell you it’s impossible to get a general temperature for the world as a whole at one given point in time. You can get an average temperature for many places, over a long period of time, but who determines what places are used to get these temperatures? How many places and sources for these temperature readings would it take to get an accurate average? With a little thought, one begins to see the enormity of the problem of proving this particular hypothesis.
To determine whether the globe is warming or cooling over a relatively short period (decades or even centuries) is a huge problem. It has been possible for years for modern scientists to study ice and sediment across the globe that shows, without a doubt, that there has been climate change. There have been long periods of very cold temperatures and very warm temperatures, generally, across the entire world. The Ice Age is a very obvious period that is known to most everyone with even a basic education. The earth has had several of these cycles and it can easily be “seen” by scientists now that study the earth and the climate on earth at given points in its history. (I encourage everyone to read that link for Ice Age.) The terms global warming and climate change have become synonymous in the minds of many people, but unfortunately, they are not the same. They’re not even close.
Personally, I think it is the responsibility of everyone to educate themselves on what is hypothesis, theory, and fact. These are all very distinct terms in relation to our current environmental state, and to arbitrarily believe, without education or scientific process, is a failure on our part as members of the human race. Our success and survival as a people rests on our abilities to educate ourselves and make informed decisions. I think our efforts to be “green” and to think about our impacts on our planet are mostly genuine and sincere. I also think that many good things do come from our efforts to avert actions that can negatively affect our world and environment. Also, obviously good things like recycling and utilizing wind power for electricity have shown to minimize our negative impact on our environment.
The one thing I would like to one day see is the end of the promulgation of stories and information not backed by scientific fact or processes. Stories and the compilation of information based purely on emotion is often the product of indolence. This lack of impetus to procure fact is our scourge and can, ironically, lead directly to everything that people try to avoid in the first place.
The following link is a story that's an unfortunate example of this, emblazoned on
Education is progress.. Editors at MSN would be wise to heed this.
2 comments:
Check it out ...
http://theglobalhoax.com/politics/
Well said...There's a reason I surround myself with smart people..
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