Jeff Dorchen comments on the DDT astroturf crew:
Of course, if you are psychotically averse to government policies, I suppose you might be deluded into thinking Rachel Carson, a zoologist who wrote a book on the environmental risks of chemical pesticides, was a mass murderer. But you would still be delusional. A sick, delusional person trying to smear, by extension, the entire sphere of activity and study known as "environmentalism." You are saying, "Thousands and thousands of scientists, activists and policy-makers are all just a bunch of irresponsible mass-murderers!" Now is that something a rational, responsible person would say? Not if it weren't true. And it isn't.
It's just as irresponsible as Intelligent Design advocates lying to the court in the Dover, Pennsylvania evolution case. It's just that, instead of trying to slip a fanatical Christianity into public education, it's an attemp to slip fanatical anti-government corporatism into environmental policy.
When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, she was attacked by Monsanto and other chemical companies as "hysterical." That's code for "wrong because you're a woman." They tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress the book by pressuring her publisher. Their motives were clear: they saw bad press for chemical pesticides as a threat to their profits. And because their motives were clear, they didn't succeed in persuading anyone.
And so they've learned since then to conceal their motives by co-opting the language of public advocacy.
And that's where you come in, you Astroturf groups, fake grassroots organizations. That's what you are doing, you who claim the environmental movement has blood on its hands.
You do a disservice even to those who support DDT use to fight malaria, because you manipulate and lie for the sake of corporate carte blanche. You thereby taint the reputations of genuinely good groups and people who associate with you. You are also creating vile rhetorical conflict where there need be none. That jeopardizes the credibility and long-term efficacy, not just of the caring people you smear, but of the caring people you attach yourselves to.
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Carson eh? OK, lets see where she gets her hysteria from. Says here on Wikipedia that As a child, she spent many hours learning about ponds, fields, and forests from her mother. Aha! Her mother was obviously hysterical too.
Further, In the process, she had to overcome resistance to the then-radical idea of having a woman sit for the Civil Service exam. In spite of the odds, she outscored all other applicants on the exam and in 1936 became only the second woman to be hired by the Bureau of Fisheries for a full-time, professional position, as a junior aquatic biologist. I'm seeing a pattern of hysteria here. She must have been hysterical to think she could do stuff that only men can do.
This really nails it, though At the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, Carson worked on everything from cookbooks to scientific journals and became known for her ruthless insistence on high standards of writing. I knew it! Writing cookbooks to secretly subvert the American scientific community! Probably stuck a muffin recipe in one of the "scientific journals" in an attempt to further influence the sexuality of the American male. You gotta watch out for this stuff, you know.
How would companies now benefit from increasing the use of DDT? I thought the patent expired.
(ps: typo in astroturf)
duggie, the objective is to attack environmentalism.
OK
these psychotic corporate-backed cause celebres always seem to intersect -- smoking, DDT, CFC/ozone-hole doubt, global warming skepticism -- you'll find right-wing sellouts like Fred Singer & the Cato Institute & Competitive Enterprise Institute always touting 'em!
Now now Carl, remember that even the Cato Institute drew the line at associating with John Lott.
err, Cato sponsors Fred Singer, nuff said...
I believe Meyrick's point was that while the job requirements for kooks are low, the bottom has not fallen out ... (yet)
"Now now Carl, remember that even the Cato Institute drew the line at associating with John Lott."
Posted by: Meyrick Kirby
Actually, they didn't. They were happy to hire him, and keep him on, long after it was clear that the only question about him was *how* massively dishonest he was. It was when he filed a really stupid lawsuit that they fired him.
You can tell how desperate someone is by how far back hey have to go to find "support" for their argument.
If they have to go back 35 years -- and focus on the purported "hysteria" of the author rather than the merits of her arguments -- you know they are pretty desperate.
This game is often played by the "stuck-in-high-school" Aynn Rand libertarians.
I think it was AEI, or it may have been AEI and Cato or how about the CEI, maybe the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, did someone say the Fraser Institute, naw them Canadiens, and so it goes.
This game is often played by the "stuck-in-high-school" Aynn Rand libertarians.
Heh. Actually, it's "Ayn" Rand, and you're partly correct. Although Rand hated libertarians, was much smarter than most of her followers and named herself after her typewriter.
Ironically, Rand was the epitome of the person she railed against in her writing: one who contributes little if anything of value to society.
Her writing is mediocre at best and her "philosophy" was a disjoint patchwork of juvenile ideas.
She many have been "much smarter than most of her followers", but that is not saying much.
Actually, Carlson had cancer for some time and thus WAS fairly hysterical about her environmental attitudes. [She was also adept at PR, and understood that crying 'WOLF' at very high volumes got attention.]
Whether or not intentionally, with her book she DID cause a massive over-reaction leading to a relatively unnecessary total ban on several very useful chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides. These would undoubtedly have saved hundreds of millions of lives, at a minimum, in the 3rd world over the near 40 years since. She was either an intentional mass-murderer or a hysterical accident of history.
peter
Latest attempt to smear Carlson by association: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/24/numberwatch_chlorine/