Scientists Say…?

Dear Editor,

Enough, already. I find it curious that months later my LTE still evokes responses. I can’t help but get depressed after reading reader comments regarding global warming/climate change. I know that being Bonner County, a certain amount of backwardness is to be expected, if not encouraged, but please folks, give it a rest.

Perhaps one of you budding geniuses out there can explain what is meant by “scientists say,” because that’s the only response I hear to counter any argument which proposes an alternative reason for the radical earth changes the planet has been experiencing over the last two decades. So forgive me if my eyes don’t glaze over and I faint dead-away because you say “scientists say.” The earth changes we are witnessing have nothing (or scant little) to do with greenhouse gasses or the amount of C02 in the atmosphere.

But, you retort, “95 percent of all scientists say (blah, blah, blah.)” Or, “35,000 scientists all agree that (here you may insert your own personal belief because as portrayed in the mass media, the subject has all the trappings of a religion, complete with its own environmental .)” Where are all these scientists? Did they gather in some big auditorium and personally admit their views, or did they make a check in a box on a piece of paper for a mail-in questionnaire? Were they pressured to go along with the accepted group-think where billions of dollars in the form of grants and funding are at stake? Were they afraid of peer pressure if their answer went counter to convention?

Or, the most likely answer: These scientists have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Lest we forget, in the name of ethnic purity, scientists in Nazi Germany argued for the elimination of the insane or physically challenged.

So what’s the easier sell to a highly-propagandized public: earth-penetrating tomography or guilt? The auroral electrojet or a self-recriminatory carbon footprint? Most of you so-called environmentalists wouldn’t know an occluded front from a pound of red meat, so gimme a break.

Cort Gifford
Sandpoint