Merchants of Doubt and Skepticism

I will get to the Merchants of Doubt movie questions father on. Let me say first that in my opinion there are several assumptions about large political ideas and why people are in agreement or disagreement about them and their context that are incorrect in the movie. It might have been beyond the scope of the video to consider social reality very far. 

Sometimes people are incredulous that people can believe certain things, yet the context for that belief may be the inability or unwillingness for people to invest in finding out the truth or falsehood of an issue. That may occur for several reasons, the least of which is not that people may feel it doesn't matter what their opinion is believing wealthy controlling interests will have their way with the political system anyway.

I have discovered another reason that people do not take a wide range of issues seriously that involve change to more energy efficient and sustainable economics. It is that some people are simply crude and prefer to use the narrow interest reinforcing easy, and often dirty economic establishment that does not require change or adaptation. It is just better in that paradigm to disregard global warming, greenhouse gassing from fossil fuels and so forth and continue to take home a good paycheck from those businesses. It is also relevant to keep one's head down and not voice support for any sort of change from the financed establishment. Many people are just not that bright, through no fault of their own, don't feel they can change things and are glad enough to simply earn a living. Sometimes they will not invest time in researching abstract issues. Good leadership needs to find solutions without expecting majority support in some cases, when the majority are more focused on just personal and narrow self-interests.

There is the additional problem of the political institutions themselves being incapable of promulgating remedies to certain large scale challenges, especially when it requires political reform. Politicians are in government for a fairly brief time and individually may be out-powered realistically by the 1% of establishment wealth. Capitalism has degraded into corporatism today and reforming capitalism as it is applied within law would be far more difficult than reforming the Christian Church.

Now that I have got this little prolegomena to my essay out of the way, I can continue and answer the questions about the movie. Well, nearly. I should point out that the link to the movie didn't work for me. One can rent it however, or find an alternative link such as; 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMxMPdkcknM

The three assigned questions shouldn't be too difficult to answer; 

"How are seeds of doubt sown?"     

"Do political views play a role in when and why people take skeptical alternatives seriously? Pay special attention to how some libertarians in the documentary vigorously respond to data indicating climatological effects of human influences."

"How do you evaluate their response? Are they really reasoning critically? Or could one say, in this context as well, that they fall short in creative reasoning?"     

I should stipulate that I am naturally a little skeptical of many things especially after reading Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. That tome describes the social reality and its machinations of interaction. One is observing that from an existential viewpoint with detachment intentionally. All of reality viewed as such is contingent and conditional. Doubt as temporality and phenomenality is an element of everything. Well thats good enough since epistemological certainty is really absolutely possible anyway. In the era of quantum uncertainty the point is easier to understand, yet one has working hypotheses and probability estimates about the complete complex of compresence.

Pro advocates and expert witnesses are not unfamiliar in jury trials especially involving large potential settlements and awards. The problems of sophists arguing in support of a position they were paid to support has been around for a while (2500 years). Television and other media allow for oceans of propaganda and false advertising for profit to occur. Not only tobacco and oil have put out some whoppers, so have labor unions through omission and commissions as well as the broadcast media generally.  Global warming remedies are not the only thing lacking from government- so is adequate taxation on the 1% that own most of everything. As far as mass political and media organizations go, one would need to be skeptical that any were very truthful or unbiased rather than the opposite. It is like Diogenes looking for an honest organization.

Maybe people expect smart leaders to lead to smart things and hope that government that cannot design economies except in planned totalitarian systems historically are not really the only people that can get it done concerning fixing global warming and the ecosphere. Too many average people want to believe the world eco-cornucopia is a limitless box full of good things forever.

Social organizations tend to have similar goals as do political movements insofar as they accomplish objects of desire for insiders versus outsiders. Modern politics packages too many issues together. Use-truths arise and corrupt worthy initial organizational goals. Global warming remedies may not be so important as the will-to-have-power of those pursuing remedies to it ostensibly.

There are many people that would accept global warming and the need to fix it yet would not vote for politicians that would work to correct it if that also means accepting a package of atheism, homosexual marriage, socialism and so forth. There may be few global warming remedy seekers that would be willing to vote for a politician who did not also support homosexual marriage, abortion, legal intoxicating drugs and so forth. Political issues are not addressed individually in politics always and that has unfortunate consequences. Voters must choose the lesser of evils, and much of the left-leaning global warming remedy seekers also desire promotion of the rest of a political agenda that would displace the established.

The economic changes required for a healthy ecosphere are not addressed at all by either major political party in the United States. The Green Party is inarticulate and virtually dead without even 1% support nationally. Ecological economic theory is not understood by most though it is part of  college curricula in many places. Forming a stable and enlightened body politic is nearly impossible with the left-supported surge of illegal migrants with little education or ecospheric conservation interest; they move to increase consumption.

Libertarians in the movie 'Merchants of Doubt' illogically associated Global Warming remedies with government regulation increases. Government could help find a remedy that is true yet nothing can substitute adequately for the will of smart, industrious and able business people with a will to lead to a sustainable and recovering ecosphere. Libertarians in the fil were dogmatic rather than creative or critical in reasoning.

Libertarians may regard the dangers of totalitarianism in the form of socialism as a grave danger yet have blinders on usually to the equal and similar dangers of corporatism and plutocracy in repressing individual development and expression. To reform government to a functional democratic condition and capitalism at the same time such that it limits the concentration of wealth, limits the size of corporations to 10,000 employees and number of corporations anyone may invest in at three, while providing better business terms for ecospherically efficient business is requisite for a sustainable planetary environment ecologically speaking. In a green economy where no individual may have more than a thousand times the wealth of the most poor member of society surplus wealth through taxation can be spent on restoring the ecosphere and other large public-interest projects such as space colonization.