Lovelock was Alarmist!

Apparently he no longer believes that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” But who with more than half a brain ever did believe the second half of that? (The first half of course is obviously true unless some medical miracle gives us all 100+ year lifespans.)

It infuriates me that the media always anoint those with the most extreme and outlandish views as the “leading” proponents of any movement. The point seems to be just so that when they eventually are seen to be ridiculous or back off from their position then others can chime in with “I told you so” and “see! The whole thing was ridiculous”.

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2 Responses to Lovelock was Alarmist!

  1. SteveBrooklineMA says:

    Well, I don’t think the press sets alarmists up just so they can fall. I think the press likes “the sky is falling!” stories because it sells papers.

  2. alan says:

    When I first noticed this phenomenon was back in 1968. The Time magazine reports on the Democratic Party convention in Chicago singled out the “Yippies” not just as figures of interest but to define them as the “leadership” of a movement which included everything from purely pacifist anti-war types through hippies and a range of traditional leftist tendencies. At the time I suspected that some of them were just clowns and others were agents provacateurs and I thought that the tone of the article was a deliberate attempt to manage (and sabotage) the evolution of a political movement. Theatrics and extremists have a role and deserve attention, but there’s a difference between reporting on what they say and do and crediting them as the spokespeople for others who have not agreed to that. I may be paranoid, but I often suspect that the latter is done, not just to sell papers but also to make it easier to discredit a point of view. (And to be frank I often see it done from the left as well as the right.)

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