First of all, congratulations Nicholas Maxwell in getting this into the
paper - I knew your contribution was too erudite to be published as a
letter!
The avid bloggers: having read about a fifth of the comments after George
Monbiot's article on Tuesday, 09 March (I did not have the strength to
plough through any more) I wondered how many (or few) people they emanated
from. Perhaps someone with nothing better to do (!) could do a protocol
analysis of this material, as it seemed very repetitive in style as well as
content.
The alacrity of these contributors tells me that they are down on the
starting blocks as soon as the newsagent opens to make this response. I, as
an average person, did not have time to look at Monbiot's article and the
subsequent blogs until after 6.00 p.m.
Not being familiar with this method of communication, I was alienated by the
anonymity of the contributors. I was brought up to believe that an
anonymous letter does not count; if you are afraid to own what you have
written, then it automatically lacks validity. Also, astonishingly, quite a
few of them did not seem to have heard of the most elementary rule of debate
(after 'Stand Up, Speak Up and Shut Up') which is that if one is reduced to
abusing or personally insulting one's opponent, one is admitting in so many
words that one has no case (No case, abuse plaintiff's attorney). Of
course, if one's object is not debate but simply intimidation - perhaps
intimidation of the blog readers? - then that may have some use.
I would refer everyone to a University College London lunchtime lecture
called 'See no evil: the (im)morality of denying genocide' by Dr Saladin
Meckled-Garcia which took place on 28 January, 2010. A lot of what he says
about the denial of various genocides of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries applies, I think, to the Anthropogenic Global Warming denial
industry. These lunchtime lectures are on-line at www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl
Yours sincerely
Marie Parker
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