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"Our emissions are boiling the planet, and most of our energy use is unnecessary." What's "unnecessary"? Energy drives modern technology, from your desk to you
by mkn 18y ago
"Our emissions are boiling the planet, and most of our energy use is unnecessary."
What's "unnecessary"? Energy drives modern technology, from your desk to your home to your doctor's office. Sure, if you don't care about quality of life, then energy use is unnecessary.
Really? This is your complaint? By 'unnecessary,' we can reasonably presume that the author means 'needlessly inefficient.' That much is evident to any sincere reader of the article who cares enough about the pursuit of knowledge to abide by the principle of charity: Put the best face on the argument before you refute it, otherwise you are not contributing.
The straw-man argument, "Sure, if you don't care about quality of life, then energy use is unnecessary," is wholly beside the point.
And while most scientists think our emissions are going to cause an increase in mean global temperatures over the next few centuries, "boiling the planet" is a long way off.
Again, this cannot be a serious complaint. The phrase 'boiling the planet' is clearly a metaphor. A surface reading would be that we're just raising the temperature of the planet to an unhealthy extreme. A more nuanced reading reveals that the author means that we are raising the temperature of the planet to such a high temperature that we are going to cause irreversible change, such as when one boils food and finds that no amount of refrigeration will bring it back to it's former state. More simply, we are doing something analogous to sterilizing the planet, though to a lesser degree, in that many species may ultimately be made extinct.
That's not entirely a rhetorical question, I honestly don't follow dead tree media and never got into it much as a kid.
This is evident from the shallowness of your misguided critique. More practice at reading, dead-tree media or otherwise, might have made you a skillful enough reader to have been able to follow the plot here.
- jacoblyles 18y agoThere's no need to be so aggressive. And I think I made it clear that the example I excerpted was only one of many offending sentences. I could easily pull others, if I were motivated to use my time in such a way. The piece in question made a quantity of assumptions that I normally only associate with activist literature, and not supposedly objective journalism. I don't consider that to be a hallmark of quality news.
- DTrejo 18y agoHe is reacting to a perceived attack on global warming. There is no need attack the language as activist, which you do even in this post. The goal of the green movement, at its heart, is greater efficiency in all walks of life. I think we all agree that efficiency is good. So why does word choice matter if motivates us to become more efficient?
- anamax 18y ago> The goal of the green movement, at its heart, is greater efficiency in all walks of life. Except that it's not about efficiency. It's often about a suggested lifestyle. (Hint - efficiency doesn't imply minimal.) And, the "efficiency" arguments are often false and or irrational. (Nuclear power anyone?)
- ensignavenger 18y ago> Nuclear power anyone? Yes please. You can build the plant in my backyard, I'll donate the land.
- ellyagg 18y agoYes, Time Magazine allows editorial writing throughout its content. I won't comment on what I think their biases are, but I'm pretty sure you can detect them on your own.
- randallsquared 18y ago"we can reasonably presume that the author means 'needlessly inefficient.'" Well, even that's wrong. If there was no need at all, then it wouldn't be done that way. I do this stuff for movies I watch all the time: "Well, Morpheus didn't know any better about the humans-as-batteries, and didn't understand how computing power might be a more reasonable use," and "Equilibrium might be set farther in the future than it seems to be, which would explain how things could have gone this far." When you have to fix up what a columnist really meant, I think that's a sign that something is wrong, and I agree with the your parent poster that this columnist either doesn't understand what he's talking about or is writing for effect without regard to accuracy.
- anamax 18y ago> The phrase 'boiling the planet' is clearly a metaphor. Oh really? > A more nuanced reading reveals that the author means that we are raising the temperature of the planet to such a high temperature that we are going to cause irreversible change, such as when one boils food and finds that no amount of refrigeration will bring it back to it's former state. Then the author is babbling. None of the science-based estimates suggest anything like that. If the author really thinks "sterilizing", "boiling" wasn't a metaphor but scare-mongering. > More simply, we are doing something analogous to sterilizing the planet, though to a lesser degree, in that many species may ultimately be made extinct. No, we're not. In other news - the sky is not falling.