This article reminds me of the tenuous assumptions of causation that many, particularly pseudo-environment-scientists, seem to make. For example, I’m confident everyone reading this is familiar with Al Gore’s signature graph of temperature against carbon dioxide levels, and that most are perfectly happy to assume what he would like them to: that causation can only possibly be one-way; that temperature is influenced by CO2 levels. “How can it possibly not mean this?” they automatically exclaim as a result of an Al Gore-style indoctrination, “Just look at the data”. Few however are willing to probe further into this case, but those initiated individuals who are have by now discovered this causation has in fact been widely contested and that it has been shown that the CO2 level curve actually follows the temperature one, lagging by a few centuries (or was it decades?).
Another example of false assumptions and associations being drawn is the warming of the earth after the industrial revolution which is widely believed to have been consistent with pollution levels. Again graphs look convincing, but evidence now points to rising temperatures on other planets in our solar system around the same period; I hope for their own sake that environmentalists do not claim pollution has now got so bad that we’re warming Pluto as well!
Of course these counter-evidence examples have been disproven, re-proven and then repeatedly contested, and one will have to come to one’s own conclusions on them after a rigorous scientific study of the data and articles written thereupon before having any real authority and credibility when commenting on this subject; but my point still holds: that it is highly dangerous just to take data and make assumptions whose verity is dubious. In my opinion, great rhetoric can never make up for incorrect and biased assumptions when put up against thorough scientific research, and I just wish this attitude were adopted by a greater proportion of the world.
Gedanken: Stream of consciousness 