Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Not Scientific; Not American

This morning I heard a paid spot by "Scientific American" on the radio, explaining that the pollution created by manufacturing in China, is, in fact, the fault of...

...wait for it...

...can you guess...?

...think hard...have you got it...?

...of  course you have...

...AMERICA!...


Yes. We selfish, greedy American consumers who want all that cool stuff, but don't want to pay a lot for it are the cause of WORLD POLLUTION.

Yes. That was actually their thesis. That American consumers want it ALL. And they want it all CHEAP. And have purposefully given American jobs to the Chinese to make that happen."

Yes, that's exactly what they implied: That America's consumers had made the conscious decision to destroy the manufacturing base in our country, so we could have poorly made, cheap jeans and tee-shirts made in China.

They explained that because of greedy, selfish, grasping Americans, China's manufacturing—and the pollution that attends it—is up by 5%.

And lest any complacent greedy, selfish, grasping American imagine that 5% isn't that much, they hasten to make clear that because of the HUGE amount of polluting Chinese manufacturing, 5% is, indeed a HUGE amount.

"5% of HUGE is HUGE" is the math*, you see.

Therefore a HUGE amount of the pollution that China produces is directly the fault of American consumers.

So, they conclude (without actually verbalizing it) that if the greedy, spoiled, selfish, grasping, needy, bratty American Consumer would stop buying all those Chinese goods (because they've handed all the American manufacturing jobs to China, and can't get them made by Americans), the world would be a better, cleaner, less polluted paradise.

The clear, articulated message to Americans is:   DO WITHOUT!

There is no mention of who's responsible for all the rest of the HUGENESS of the pollution, of which 5% is the "fault" of America.

I'm guessing that according to these people, pollution created by anyone other than America, is, by some unacknowledged standard, ACCEPTABLE pollution.

After all, people gotta eat.

More White Guilt anyone? Extra large servings at "Scientific" "American".

/gun

*What the math is NOT, is that China is polluting the world like crazy will all their careless non-environmentally-friendly, pollution-belching factories...and that a tiny part of that is products sold in America, DIRECTLY BECAUSE of the draconian regulations and high taxation which have chased manufacturing out of America by effectively making it impossible to operate a business without any hope of profit in their own, home country.

3 comments:

  1. I would buy SA at the airport before a long flight and extended trip as a treat for the heavy travel I was doing. It was good until the lates 70s and early 80s when it got into advocacy science. Consumer Reports did the same thing and I stopped getting both of them. Both magazines expressed an elitist viewpoint, essentially claiming to be smarter than everyone else, knowing what was best for everyone else and insisting the world would be better if we just acknowledged them as our superiors.

    Consequently, advocacy corrupted the science of SA and the objectivity of CR. Many other mags have suffered the same fate but they are loved by the elitists that buy them. You see, that makes the purchaser one of "them".

    Maybe I should just subscribe to G&A?

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  2. I stopped reading SA years ago precisely because it had become, as you point out, no longer "Scientific" or "American".

    Same with Wired magazine. When my current subscription expires, it won't be renewed.

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    1. National Geographic is as bad, or worse. When the Left politicized science, there went the (formerly) science-based magazines as well.

      I haven't found a weather web site on the Internet that doesn't dribble and spew "global warming" all over you, too. I can't imagine they don't understand it's all a lie. They must be afraid they will lose market share as all of the Lefties stop hitting their sites, were they to tell the truth and stop pandering to the AGW crowd.

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