The Sky is Falling!

While I wrestle with the vexing issue of whether and how much the base climate change data has been manipulated there is still the uneasy feeling of salesmanship. When I took a Business Communication course many years ago, one technique they mentioned was "backing the hearse up to the door".

This is a sales technique that uses naked fear to sell some good or service to the prospective customer. Examples of it are on TV all the time. If they're not using sex to sell something, it's about our fears. And the sense that there is an overplayed emotionality to the sales pitch for CACC(GW) reminds me uncomfortably of this technique.

Mark Shea brings in some nice insights from GKC while expatiating on this theme:

PANIC!!!!!:

The pattern that emerges over the decade is that the preferred governing style of our Ruling Classes is to scare the daylights out of people with some sort of world-imperilling threat and then use the panic to stampede us toward this or that consolidation of massive power.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

The Wisdom of GKC

continues to impress me. He correctly identifies the erroneous thinking that was only beginning to disturb the world a hundred years ago:

The Not-So-New Scientist:

In the latest issue of New Scientist, Michael Brooks tries to explain religious belief away with evolutionary theory:

While many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Things.)