Sparring with Philip

Glancing back over the comments on previous posts, I discovered that Philip did, indeed, respond to my enviro slams, and I was thrilled beyond measure. I think Foodleking is right – this blog is better when it has a good foil, and Philip definitely qualifies. I’m not being disingenuous when I say that this guy is truly one of the world’s great people, although we clearly don’t see eye-to-eye politically. He’s a great musician, though, and he actually sings now, which I found surprising. We have much in common except when it comes to politics. When he found me on Facebook, he put it this way:

“Well, first of all, I'm not going to discuss politics with you, because we established long ago that you were dropped on your head as a child.”

So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I will momentarily cease to praise Philip for his many virtues and proceed to eviscerate his political errors, which are legion.

In my post, I quoted Paul Ehrlich’s dire warning in the 70s that only massive population control would prevent worldwide famines. I glibly stated:

“No population control. And no worldwide famines, either. Go figure.”

Philip responded thusly:

“Well, yes, in fact, massive localized famines all over Africa, caused by many things including runaway population growth. See also: streets of urban India, etc.”

To which I now respond:

Glad to see the “many things” qualifier in there, since ascribing Africa’s famines solely to overpopulation presumes that the world doesn’t have enough food to feed everyone. And that’s just plain not true. Back in the ‘80s, when Bob Geldof and the Band Aid/Live Aid/We Are The World crowd made famine relief fashionable, Geldof himself often noted that the world runs a surplus of food production, so it’s criminal that anyone, anywhere should go hungry. The problem is flawed distribution due primarily to corruption among African governments, not a lack of food, as Ehrlich wrongly predicted.

As for the streets of urban India, the streets of Hong Kong have a far greater population density and an almost non-existent poverty rate. India’s inept, socialistic government causes far more problems than the number of people. Indeed, underpopulation is crippling Russia and destroying the EU welfare state. As the Baby Boomers retire, we’re likely to see similar problems here in the U.S. because of our reliance on massive entitlement programs that don’t have a large enough population base to sustain them.

Moving on:

I pointed out that the oceans haven’t all died as both Ehrlich and eminent scientist/sitcom star Ted Danson predicted.

Philip begged to disagree:

“Giant dead zones extend miles off the gulf coast, salmon fishing BANNED in CA for this year because (probably, but not conclusively) ocean temperature rising has changed estuary patterns and they're not breeding. Killer whales seen thousands of miles south of any previously-charted migration patterns. all marine scientists warn of impending crashing of all important sea life populations. this is not some isolated crank case, but the outcome of the studies of a science as a whole. read up and get back to me.”

Philip’s right that I would need to read up quite a bit to refute any of this. Like George Costanza, I can only pretend to be a marine biologist. The best I can do is say that it sounds like hyperbole to me, and it certainly isn’t consistent with Ehrlich’s prediction that “all important animal life in the sea will be extinct [by 1980]” – clearly not true about the ‘80s or now – or that “large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish” - also nonsense. Danson was recently forced to admit that his earlier doom-and-gloom statements were inaccurate.

So even conceding Philip’s point that “all marine scientists warn of [an] impending crash of all important sea life populations” scares me about as much as it scared me when they did the same thing thirty some-odd years ago. You can only cry wolf so many times.

Philip, probably due to the fact that he has a life and has better things to do than respond to an obscure blog, didn’t try to defend the other ludicrous statements I cited re: the global cooling lunacy , the nation’s rivers boiling, the end of England, Kuwait’s oil fires causing nuclear winter, et al. If anyone can defend that stuff, I’d like to hear it.

He summed up thusly:

“and so it goes. this is what happens, oftentimes, when one argues with conservatives (even ones like mr. bennett who happen to be MUCH smarter than I) - denial of reality coupled with personal attacks = good radio ratings on AM dial.”

Brighter? Doubtful. Poorer? Probably. Would that I were on the AM dial. Although I like to think I went easy on the personal attacks. I did take an unnecessary swipe at Danson’s career, but come on. Cut me some slack.

And then the ultimate putdown: “very very GWB of you, JB. I expect more. try again.”

If only GWB could muster the intellectual stamina to make these arguments. We conservatives have got nowhere to turn, especially since John McCain buys into all this crap. Yes, I’ll try again. I’m going to have to keep trying to get my point across. It feels like nobody else is.

Philip also responded to my little blurb from the BBC about global temperatures not rising since 1998 as follows:

“he who judges global patterns by one year changes will bounce like superball in the brain.
- confucious.”

Perhaps that’s true. Ten years of no warming, however, might be indicative of a pattern. If present trends continue, we’re never going to get any warmer!

Hopefully, present trends will continue and Philip will continue to respond to this blog.