[Toro]

Global warming is happening. Mankind is almost certainly contributing to it, though by how much is uncertain.

But are the effects catastrophic?

Maybe, I don't know. Nobody does. But the probabilities are low.

I do know that people get themselves worked up into a frenzy, including very well respected members of the scientific community, as we saw with the AIDS scare 20 years ago, which is reminiscent of the apocalyptic forecasts for global warming.

Quote:

The tide of doom reached its highwater mark between 1985 and 1987. It was as if scientists were in competition to launch the most titillating picture of impending disaster.

William Haseltine, Harvard AIDS scientist and collaborator with Robert Gallo, declared the epidemic to be

"major peril to our entire species. We haven't seen anything that we can't control except nuclear bombs, that's of this magnitude. We've got big problems".

Another Harvard scientist, Myron Essex, added the exhortation that

"we must act fast enough now so that we won't have 20-40 million Americans infected 5-10 years from now"

The action he indicated was unstinting funding of AIDS research. Dr Matilda Krim, Director of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, a recipient of AIDS research dollars, likened AIDS to the 1918 influenza epidemic:

"In ten years it could affect even a million people [in the US]. Worldwide, it can be 10 million, 100 million. God knows."

Jerome Groopman, MD, yet another Harvard scientist, told a Discover Magazine reporter in 1986:

"This is much, much worse than anything I would ever have envisioned. To think there are going to be a quarter of a million people in the US alone with the disease by [1990]."

(The actual 1991 figure was 46,986). Pulling out all the stops, Harvard celebrity Steven J. Gould told a New York Times reporter that AIDS might eventually reduce world population by 25%.

Why didn't credible health authorities calm the feeding frenzy? Because credible authorities instigated it. Consider this authoritative statement of the orthodoxy in Confronting AIDS (1986):

If the spread of the virus is not checked, the present epidemic could become a catastrophe. The Institute of Medicine-National Academy of Sciences Committee on a National Strategy for AIDS therefore proposes perhaps the most wide-ranging and intensive efforts ever made against an infectious disease . . . a massive, continuing campaign should begin immediately to increase awareness of the ways persons can protect themselves against infections.

The media loved it. Editors and television producers groomed their symbiotic relationship with experts. HIV mutated to the Media Transforming Virus. The more the media craved calamity, the more forthcoming scientists were. Big-name entertainers got into the act as well. Rock Hudson has been mentioned. Randy Shilts credits his celebrity with collaring free-floating anxiety and sympathy and directing it toward the disease. Benefit concerts and candlelight vigils were held. Comedians diverted audiences with AIDS jokes. Phil Donohue and Oprah Winfrey squeezed the story to the last tear. Oprah beguiled her viewers with a stupendous spectre:

"Research studies now project that one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That's by 1990. One in five. It is no longer just a gay disease. Believe me."

They loved it. Oprah knows entertainment.

America exported AIDs infotainment to Oz. Here is Glynns Bell in The Bulletin cover story of 17 March 1987.

He is a victim of the AIDS holocaust, a disease that is insidiously spreading through nearly every country in the world. Caused by a treacherous and slow-acting virus, it knows no national borders, no age or sex, no colour, creed or race. It has already infiltrated Australia and lies silently poised to strike at the heart and health of the country.

After pausing to note that this evocative image is discordant with the actual number of AIDS cases, Bell sugar-coated dull facts with an exciting fantasy:

"But the time bomb is ticking. Australia is counting down to the moment when AIDS stops being a localised firefight and, like herpes, become all-out warfare on the general population".

Our newspapers were an obliging conduit from the World Health Organisation's epidemic hyping. WHO created the monster figures on African AIDS by multiplying reported AIDS cases and infection by 100. Journalists were delighted at the prospect of catastrophe. Thus the Sunday Express, in 1986, reported excitedly:

"the deadly disease AIDS is now so out of control in black Africa that whole nations of people are doomed, leaving vast areas of now populated land devoid of a single living person within the next ten years".

The justification for balancing truth with effectiveness was what WHO AIDS director Jonathan Mann, MD, called the "hidden factor". The hidden factor is the AIDS cases not counted because they haven't been reported. African doctors didn't know whether to laugh or cry at this showmanship. After asking "Where are all the graves?" Dr. Konotey-Ahulu went on to pose a second question: "Why do the world's media appear to have conspired with some scientists to become so gratuitously extravagant with the untruth?"

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aids/chap5.htm

[DerbyX]

Funny how people who refute global warming always seem to point to science calls that are seemingly proven wrong.

Why not quote science that was correct? AKA every bit of technology we have today is science being right. A shitload of medical advances.

If I quoted what people in the fifities thought life would be like in the 90s cpuld I refute reality?

[PluggyRug]

Methinks global warming killed the bird flu virus.

Global warming was started by the same people who bought all those generators to stave off the Y2K fiasco.

[sandorski]

Logic is your friend. If you read your own posted article, you'll see what a fool you were to make this argument.

[Zipperfish]

I'll still lay my bets with science. Tends to be right over the long term. UNlike dogmatic political persuasions and religion, science is self-correcting.

Also, pointing to past events where science has been wrong may prove that sceince is not always right, but it does little to prove that climate change is wrong. I agree wiht sandorski--bad argument.

[tritium]

1 in 5 heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS by 1990

Well I survived 1990, I'm o.k. thanks.

[Arctic_Menace]

tritium wrote:

1 in 5 heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS by 1990

Well I survived 1990, I'm o.k. thanks.

So did I, and I was only two years old, muthafucka!!!

[tritium]

Arctic_Menace wrote:

tritium wrote:

1 in 5 heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS by 1990

Well I survived 1990, I'm o.k. thanks.

So did I, and I was only two years old, muthafucka!!!

Jesus, I hate when people do that. I feel so old.........

..

[Arctic_Menace]

Who the Hell is Dinno?!

[TheQuietKidd]

tritium wrote:

Arctic_Menace wrote:

tritium wrote:

1 in 5 heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS by 1990

Well I survived 1990, I'm o.k. thanks.

So did I, and I was only two years old, muthafucka!!!

Jesus, I hate when people do that. I feel so old.........

BTW, Dinno said hi.

Men don't get old, they get wise! Therefor, you can't really be that old because you're comparing studies that are decades old to modern science.
Also, if you want, you can also talk about how this changed attitudes and behaviours which changed the projected outcome. Not to mention the sciences that brought out new treatments to try and handle HIV.
So really, you just proved that the craze works! It gets things into motion.

Oh, and I was only 2 in 1990 as well! Hoorah for being a young'in!

[tritium]

Arctic_Menace wrote:

Who the Hell is Dinno?!

Dino from the Flintstones. Cartoon dinosaur.. you know, "so old walked with the dinosaurs." Never mind.

[TheQuietKidd]

Whoa, where the fuck did that Dinno thing come from?

[tritium]

TheQuietKidd wrote:

Men don't get old, they get wise! Therefor, you can't really be that old because you're comparing studies that are decades old to modern science.
Also, if you want, you can also talk about how this changed attitudes and behaviours which changed the projected outcome. Not to mention the sciences that brought out new treatments to try and handle HIV.
So really, you just proved that the craze works! It gets things into motion.

Oh, and I was only 2 in 1990 as well! Hoorah for being a young'in!

What the fuck was all that garbly-gook, you find your mothers stash again. Quit smoking that cheap suff, it fuckes with your head.

[TheQuietKidd]

Hmmm... Lets see if I can figure out what I was trying to say.
I think I made a really lame joke about you being stupid and young? Older = wiser, you is not wise, therefore not old? Be damned if I know lol

Hmmm, second part is about how your article in a way proves that the "craze" over these issues works to ensure that they are stopped in time. As people "craze" over it, more attention is put forward by those who have the power to stop it as they have to adapt to the changing mind set of the general populace. Therefore things get done and that big crisis is averted.
With aids, we developed critical treatments and people decided that it might be a little smarter to not just fuck every person of the opposite sex you see. With global warming, people are going to start taking steps to reduce the shit they pump out (while not affecting their lifestyles too much) and then as the continued research finally finds something that can help, fuck... I forget where I'm going with this. But yeah.
The craze works, it gets things done.

I think your article works against your argument.


!!!!!
I forgot to say
"Just cuz I'm a young Leafs fan, doesn't mean you have to group me in with that wacko kid that got banned..."
It was my neighbours stash! Why you should never leave your door unlocked when you go to the bathroom

[tritium]

AIDS Cure Possible, Study Suggests