People, I hate 'em.

I'm in a very gloomy mood today, which is unusual since I began the meds several years ago.

Last night, I watched the Frontline episode called Climate of Doubt, which recounts the propaganda campaign being carried out to sew the seeds of doubt about climate change.  The effort, funded by folks like the Koch brothers, is similar to that of the tobacco companies to try to prove that cigarettes are not dangerous.  You find a few scientists, some of whom really have convinced themselves that climate change isn't real, others of whom can merely be bought, and you have them declare to a scientifically illiterate public, "I am a scientist, and climate change is bunk."  The weapons of these people are soothing reassurance, magic trick-style misdirection, and misuse of statistics.

There are people behind the disinformation campaign--oil company executives, et al.--whose short term financial interests are served by our continued inaction on global warming.  Their true believers seem to be those who fear government meddling with free enterprise more than they fear anything else.  The true believers are short sighted.  They can only manage to see a single danger.  Indeed, in a telling moment, one of the interviewed scientists characterized current climate science as Marxist.  In other words, this man's political fears cloud his vision, so that he cannot see beyond them.

Meanwhile, his fellow propagandists characterize the current scientific consensus as politically driven.  (I have often noticed how deftly conservatives accuse their enemies of the very sins they themselves are most guilty of.)

And do the renegade scientists counter the consensus with good science of their own?  No, they either make conspiratorial accusations about the scientists they are trying to discredit, or misuse the scientific data to cast doubt into minds that are all too ready to be soothed into thinking that there are no problems.  Indeed, the anti-climate change science propagandists seem untroubled by their own lack of contradictory data, and keep working nonetheless.  Their own barely submerged knowledge that they are wrong seems to make them work all the harder to prove they are right.

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I am further troubled by the closeness of the election.  In Mitt Romney, I see a man who changes his own opinions (i.e., lies) several times a day.  And I have a hard time understanding why so many of the population are so unaware they are being bullshitted.