Sunday, February 24, 2008

THE IRONIES OF POLITICS AND SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE IN POLITICIANS

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

John Tory is a remarkably intelligent and sympathetic man. I'm sorry his effort on religious schools cost him the election.

We are stuck with the truly ridiculous Dalton, a man whose every move reminds me of a mediocrity stuffed full of ambition.

Oh, the ironies of politics.

Dalton has done almost everything wrong from his first day on the job, blubbering endlessly, failing to act where he should have, and squandering resources on nonsense like an 800-number for bullying or a new trillium logo. It just doesn't get any sillier and more wasteful.

He spent a fortune on "official" advertising going into the election - which his dishonest fixing of the date allowed him to plan ahead in great detail - setting an ugly precedent for Ontario.

He bribed the public with a cheap, last-minute notion of a holiday - not even thought out enough to realize all the unhappy consequences, as for the courts - and given it a name that would make that old snake, Tom DeLay of Texas, smile.

He's made a huge pile of needless and unfulfilled promises, suggesting serious questions about his mental stability.

He's endangered the reputation of Ontario as a place where there is dependable electricity.

Tory made one mistake.

And Tory ultimately would have been a quality prime minister, the kind of conservative we used to have in Stanfield and Clark.

Instead in Ottawa, there's no one fresh on the horizon but the Iceman, Harper, and his weird assistant, MacKay, reminding me of Dr. Frankenstein and his lab assistant, Igor, in one of those old Universal horror films.
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Journey Man,

You show, by your own words, limits to your understanding of science.

Evolution is only a theory, as is relativity, as is quantum mechanics.

Science stopped having "laws" in the 19th century.

It has only hypotheses and theories, which are endlessly tested against new observations. As soon as the observations stop agreeing, a new theory is sought and the old one thrown out. This is a never-ending process.

Scientific theories are rigorous to start with, else other scientists wouldn't waste their time and resources testing them.

Creationism, of course, is not a theory at all in this sense. Its supporters use the word “theory” the way a teenager might say I have a theory about my girlfriend.

Tory, I am sure, understands this, but he was caught desperately trying to defend his religious-schools policy. Not good, but he wasn't being fiercely demanding either. He is not an ideologue, our most dangerous type.

On the other hand, Dalton is an ideologue, and one who has demonstrated complete scientific ignorance, time and time again.

His stuff about coal-fired plants was colossally ignorant. Ontario's plants are among the cleanest on the continent, and if you close every one, we'll still get all the drifting stuff from about 150 coal plants in the U.S., many of them far dirtier. And, what's more, we'd be buying power from them, thus increasing their filthy output.

So now, after a few inefficient windmills put up to advertise for the green set, we're getting a whole new barrage of nuclear reactors, a technology Ontario has had a poor and costly time with and whose waste no one on earth knows what to do with.