Castanet

http://m.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/11/02/g ... a-homepage

Can you believe that still today in learned society, in houses of government, unfortunately, we're still debating and still questioning whether humans have a role in the Earth warming up or whether even the Earth is warming up, period," she asked, her voice incredulous.

"And we are still debating and still questioning whether life was a divine intervention or whether it was coming out of a natural process let alone, oh my goodness, a random process."

Rex Murphy: Governor General appoints herself umpire of questions of faith and science


In this wonderfully diverse Canada that Ms. Payette now represents, was it her intent to ridicule the religious beliefs of so very many faiths?

Rex Murphy

November 2, 2017


Delight in one’s own intellectual capacity is a delusion both frequent and foolish, and the desire to have others share in that rapture is almost always a disappointment. That we are all partisans for our own opinions is of course a truism, as is the consideration that opinions, particularly political ones, many times follow just as much from temperament as from reason. There is no Ideal Reasoner, and the truth of some questions is always a quarry and never a capture. That is why our finest sages, present and past, have always counselled against certitude, and cautioned that when we are most certain of something is precisely the time we should go over our sums.

Our recently minted Governor General, in one of her inaugural appearances, has been very quick off the mark to make her declarative presence known. She gave a talk at a science conference this week, a speech notable for its confident strength of assertion and readiness to pronounce determinatively on matters large and trivial, and which was unfortunately inflected with a tone of condescension that will do little to buttress the appeal of the mainly ceremonial office she now inhabits.

Merely as prelude, we should point out that the difference between elected and selected is more than a matter of the letter “s,” and add that being assigned to a state ceremonial office does not confer oracular status on a person. On the first, it must be clearly acknowledged that it is the elected, not the selected, who argue and debate the issues of the day and determine the worth and truth of the policies that emerge from that process. They write the laws: the GG, as ceremonial totem, the stand-in for an absent Regent of a hollowed-out Monarchy, affixes her signature to them.

Assertions on life and climate are on another plane entirely

Secondly, elevation to the GG office, delight and honour that it undoubtedly is, does not come with a certificate of intellectual authority, or the prerogative to delimit the scope of inquiry and debate on any issue the Commons or the citizenry may wish to engage. It is not at all evident that Ms. Payette is clear on these points.


Her speech had a scattering, pinball machine trajectory. In the space of a few sentences it went from climate change, to the origin of life, to newspaper horoscopes; from dicta on the “denialism” sometimes confronting the first, to the religious understandings of the second, and the vacuous absurdity of the third. The problem with this neat triad is that, while a tirade against horoscopy might be perfectly agreeable to most everyone (being a machine gun attack on a whole field of straw men — who reads horoscopes save for feeble amusement?), assertions on life and climate are on another plane entirely.

Her quote: “And we are still debating and still questioning whether life was a divine intervention or whether it was coming out of a natural process let alone, oh my goodness, a random process.”

In this wonderfully diverse Canada that Ms. Payette now represents, was it her intent to ridicule the religious beliefs of so very many faiths whose cosmologies include a divine creation, some as myth, some as a fact of faith — as opposed to a fact of science? It may be easy to flip a rhetorical knuckle at, say, Christian fundamentalists (almost a hobby for present-day secularists), but is the Governor General really comfortable with derogating the mythos of so many of the world’s religions, and implicitly at least, leaving them on a plane with the trivial fortune-cookie elaborations of the daily horoscope? Indeed, what of First Nations’ and other Aboriginals’ cosmologies, their spiritual practices, their belief in the “sacredness” of nature? Are these acceptable truths or facts in a scientific age?

It might be a further question whether the Governor General should seek to place herself as an umpire or judge on questions of faith at all. But more profoundly, the observations on the origins of life and the religious understandings of that most profound of subjects are not in contest, as evidently she thinks they are, with scientific understandings. They can, and in fact often do, co-exist. There is physics, and there is also metaphysics; facts are indeed truth, but truth is very often more than just facts. What we may observe and measure is not all of life, nor will it ever be. A backhand dismissal of the “truths” of religion, and the clear implication that they are the products of credulousness and ignorance (“can you believe…? Are we still debating…?” ) is a sophomoric indulgence.

Faith has its “knowing” and it is not the same as the “knowing” of science, and to make science with a capital “S” the singular aperture by which we may know all of life and the world is itself a secular heresy, which we know as Scientism.

SNIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

Naturally, Ms. Payette opined on climate science, and equally naturally placed inquiry and skepticism on what is proclaimed the consensus of that but emergent discipline as denialism – thereby endorsing the ugliest rhetorical term in this entire, explosive issue, which summons the butchery and cruelty of History’s greatest crime as a spurious backdrop to debate on an unresolved public issue. We have a right to expect better from Her Majesty’s representative.


On a lesser point, it truly is unbecoming for the Governor General, appointed by a furiously environmentalist prime minister, who has made “climate change, global warming” the central pillar of his government, to be opining with such certitude and aggressiveness on that precise issue. Policy is for the elected, not the selected. And however much she holds strong opinions on the subject as Julie Payette the individual, it is not in her brief as our Governor General to advocate her personal views under the stamp of Her Majesty’s office.

Footnote: I see the Minister for the Environment and Climate Change has applauded Ms. Payette for her endorsement of the consensus on climate change. A minister of the Crown applauding a Governor General for her thoughts on a public issue that is both contentious and current betrays a total misunderstanding of the operations of both offices. Rideau Hall is not a wing of the governing party, and vice versa.

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-mur ... th-science

maryjane48 wrote:
Can you believe that still today in learned society, in houses of government, unfortunately, we're still debating and still questioning whether humans have a role in the Earth warming up or whether even the Earth is warming up, period," she asked, her voice incredulous.
"

I agree - there shouldn't be any debate about the man-made climate change myth until some scientific proof can be put forward that it actually exists. Ms. Payette makes a great point. Until then, why even debate such a stupid hypothesis?

At times like this I am relieved that, for the most part, the rest of the world pays little or no attention to Canada. Let's hope anyone who might have caught this assumed she was kidding.

But of course her point is ifcyou think humans have nothing to do with climate off topic

Good on the Governor General.

She is a woman of science, and has every right to stand up for science and ridicule those who choose to remain ignorant and take faith based approaches over science and fact.

Interesting though that many might criticize a scientist who mocks unscientific views at a science conference.
Thankfully she isn’t talking to you. She is talking about you.

I am happy she is our Governor General. And as man made climate change is not up for debate in our parliament, she is a great choice.

In June, for instance, the House endorsed the Paris accord by a vote of 277 to 1 (Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant being the lone dissenter). Each of the three major national parties promised action on climate change in their 2015 election platforms. And perhaps only two current members — Gallant and fellow Conservative MP Brad Trost — have publicly questioned the scientific consensus on climate change.

Thankfully the queen’s representative in Canada’s views are aligned with those whom we elect to represent us.

^^^^Your faith in science and so called fact may itself be unfounded but feel free to ridicule me, it's okay.^^^^

“Faith in science” is an oxymoron. Nothing about the facts I present are unfounded.

I choose to live a life based on fact. You can choose a life of ignorance if you wish, but in the end it will only harm you.

Omnitheo, If you're gonna edit your posts like that then how can we have a discussion? Oh right, you were ridiculing me. Got it.

I edited my posts to add to them before I saw any other replies, rather than simply spamming replies to my own posts.

Sorry?

maryjane48 wrote:But of course her point is ifcyou think humans have nothing to do with climate change then you have mental illness

the climate is always changing. Are you referring to the unproven hypothesis of "man-made" climate change? if so you should clarify that. Just using the term "climate change" doesn't really mean anything.

Omnitheo wrote:Good on the Governor General.

.

why? She sounded like a complete idiot.

She has a degree in computer eng, and only worked in her field a few years. Her greatest skill is being able to spin in space without puking. She knows pretty much zip about climate and has more of a political history than anything.

Jlabute wrote:She has a degree in computer eng, and only worked in her field a few years. Her greatest skill is being able to spin in space without puking. She knows pretty much zip about climate and has more of a political history than anything.

She is also a Canadian businesswoman, former astronaut, and engineer. Payette has completed two spaceflights, STS-96 and STS-127, logging more than 25 days in space. She served as chief astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and has served as capsule communicator at NASA Mission Control Center in Houston.


In July 2013, Payette was named chief operating officer for the Montreal Science Centre, and in April 2014, she was appointed a director of the National Bank of Canada.[4]


Payette was born on October 20, 1963 in Montreal, Quebec,[7] and lived in the Ahuntsic neighbourhood, attending Collège Mont-Saint-Louis and Collège Regina Assumpta.[8][9] In 1982 she completed an International Baccalaureate diploma at the United World College of the Atlantic in South Wales, United Kingdom.

For her undergraduate studies, Payette enrolled in McGill University where she completed a Bachelor of Engineering degree in electrical engineering in 1986, after which she completed a Master of Applied Science degree in computer engineering at the University of Toronto in 1990. Her thesis focused on computational linguistics, a field of artificial intelligence.[8] [10][11]

Between 1986 and 1988, Payette worked as a systems engineer for IBM Canada's Science Engineering division. From 1988 to 1990, as a graduate student at the University of Toronto, she was involved in a high-performance computer architecture project and worked as a teaching assistant. At the beginning of 1991, Payette joined the Communications and science department of the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland, for a one-year visiting scientist appointment. When she returned to Canada, in January 1992, she joined the Speech Research Group of Bell-Northern Research in Montreal where she was responsible for a project in telephone speech comprehension using computer voice recognition.[12]


have anymore unfounded sexist remarks about someone who clearly deserves to be gg and does infact have a understanding of the facts of human caused climate change