I bow to you sir. I am sitting here in gratitude for your measured response. The issue is very politically charged and our egos get so easily involved. In some ways this is strong practice for those who are ready for it.
The politicization of this issue and a few others has spawned fields of academic inquiry – from anthropologist, to social psychologies, science and technology studies or the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research @ http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/
What is unreasonable is to baselessly smear the work of volunteers who are simply trying to help the planet , to impugn their motives
I put it to you that I too am trying to help the planet. And yet I hope we can agree I was not treated with the respect you are asking be extended to these volunteers.
What did I say that causes you to believe that I impugned their motives?
I did question the skillfulness of one part of their practice.
Which is why I strongly urge Buddhists to develop a set of principles and guidelines for the noble path of engaged action.
One of major principles I recommend would be to look to the model of the Buddha who studied a diversity of practices and thus gained a broad, I would call it a trans-partisan, perspective which he used to good effect in his teaching. For the current case that means seeking out the critical comments and involvement of people with the ability to act as “devils advocates”. Even better, the best critics would be the so-called skeptics or lukewarmers – the ones that are often cruelly labeled deniers. The difference is often more one of certainty and urgency but many lukewarmers support a carbon tax for instance.
, and to compare them with a noxious fool like Trump.
Ok, I’m dropping that attempt now. It’s a very difficult practice to look at the ways we might be doing unskillful things similar to what people we despise also do. It would have been wiser to deal with one challenge at a time.
There is a cross-party minority of us who are waking up to a realization that in some ways we might have contributed to some of the causes and conditions that led to the election of President Trump. That by the way is how deep I think a mature Buddhist engaged action needs to go. But we don’t have to do it all at once!
On the contrary, they have relied on the most authoritative sources, and have fairly represented what those sources say.
Science and the dharma to some degree are not big on proof by authority. The ultimate authority is what is and what can be known. I would caution you that what NASA says in public statements and to the press is too often differs in some aspect from what their serious scientific papers say.
I have to go now. More later.