Sheesh! Did climate change boost the crazy crop, or what?
Without much comment, a few stories that cropped up in the browser today; as the comic writer Dave Barry says, you can’t make this stuff up. If you were trying to sell it as fiction, they’d laugh you out of the room. Nobody could be that crazy . . . and yet:
- Creationists visited the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they found they don’t like what science knows about nature, especially evolution. Why did they even bother to go? Story at the Sensuous Curmudgeon.
- At Slate, David Weigel wrote about Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s plan to eliminate the state tax on gasoline — the tax that pays for roads and bridges — and instead tax hybrid cars. It’s stupid, because it dramatically increases taxes on clean air machines, and it creates the wrong incentives for a tax system. But it’s dramatically crazy because it sucks money out of the funds to build and repair roads and bridges. As best I can tell, it takes a tax that collects about $100/vehicle now, and imposes a tax on about 5% of cars, of about $100. There can’t be enough money coming in to replace the tax. In short, McDonnell’s plan damages jobs, hurts business, and leaves Virginia in the back row of well-run states. With patriot plans like McDonnell’s, who needs al Quaeda, the Soviet Union, or China?
Fox News’s Eric Bolling calls the distributive property of multiplication “liberal bias.” It must be embarrassing to flunk algebra so publicly on national television. RawStory image
- Sometimes the excess of stupid makes you feel embarrassed for them. Fox News distorter Eric Bolling accused teachers (natch!) of indoctrinating students in algebra classes. (See what I mean? You can’t make up this sort of crazy — oh, you don’t see what I mean? Read on). Seems Mr. Bolling has discovered — this is exclusive — that there are problems in algebra books that teach the distributive property of multiplication! Can you get much more liberal that that? Bolling wonders. The rest of us wonder, can Fox News sink any lower in the stupid sump. (Distributive property.)
- Meanwhile, in Tennessee, James Yeager who claims to be a consultant and instructor in security, urges people to arm up for civil war because, Yeager is sure, Obama is coming to get everybody’s guns. His profanity-laced YouTube rant is off of his site, but preserved for us (fortunately? unfortunately?) at RawStory. This is a bit too crazy even for West Tennessee — the state suspended the man’s handgun carry permits. (Would he have been so persecuted, had he been living in East Tennessee?)
- Hackers exploited a flaw they found in Java 7 — the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can’t figure a fix, and neither has Oracle, so Homeland Security urges businesses to disable Java on their browsers.
There’s a statue to Frank Zappa in Europe, another in Baltimore; Rep. Gingrey, not so much. Frank Zappa-Statue von Vaclav Cesak in Bad Doberan Quelle: selbst fotographiert Fotograf/Zeichner: Hei_ber Datum: 2003 Sonstiges: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
- Another Republican Member of the House of Representatives made a burro of himself with comments about rape. In a bad paraphrase of Frank Zappa, “Rep. Phil Gingrey, what’s gotten into you?” Gingrey misrepresents a district in Georgia.
- The House GOP is still threatening to shoot America’s economy in the head unless Democrats agree to crash the economy in the ditch with draconian, unnecessary and damaging spending cuts.
- Anthony Watts already has a half-dozen posts up denying the recent findings that 2012 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous 48 United States. James Delingpole, at The Daily Mail is just making stuff up. (
Should it be “Gourdian?”) I hadn’t realized there was a King of Denial crown up for grabs.Update, January 15, 2013: Greg Laden reported that the Watts blog has taken crazy to cosmic proportions.
There is good information out there. I hope there is an army of sane people to get the good information, and sort it from the bad.
I’m going to sleep on it. Good night!
More:
- McDonnell to Unveil Highway Funding Reforms (washington.cbslocal.com)
- Embattled CEO: ‘I Will Shoot’ Whoever Tries To Take My Guns (huffingtonpost.com)
- EDITORIAL: Governor Tax Hike (washingtontimes.com)
- GOP governor: Obama ‘minister of God’ (wnd.com)
- McDonnell’s roads proposal isn’t perfect, but it’s a start (hamptonroads.com)
- Va. gas tax eliminated and sales tax increased in McDonnell’s plan (wtvr.com)
- Gas-tax plan draws reaction from transportation world (hamptonroads.com)
- Grover Norquist lobbies against Bob McDonnell’s roads plan in Virginia (bizjournals.com)
- Proving Insanity (skydancingblog.com)
- Fox News Sinks to a New Low: The War on Algebra (mikethemadbiologist.com)
This one’s for you, Eric Bollinger; from Khan Academy, the Distributive Property of Multiplication:
(Did you notice that the answer was the same under the “liberal” distributive law as it was without its use?)
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] any values, but “absolute values.” Just wait until the “values coalition” wackoes hear! (Somebody should alert Eric Bolling at Fox […]
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[…] Anthony Watts’s erroneous views because Watts’s critics didn’t link to Watts (see comments in “It’s raining crazy”). Eratosthenes would find that funny, too, I hope, but not a demonstration of Eratosthenian logic […]
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From a friend on Facebook:
That’s a good shorthand; it’s not the rocks, it’s the pride in those rocks.
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At Morgan’s site, House of Eratosthenes, I responded…
…and…you were rightfully picked apart over here.
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[…] was given cause to reflect on this when Ed Darrell pointed to a melee going on between Anthony Watts and Greg Laden, in a futile endeavor to show what a dumb, […]
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[…] was given cause to reflect on this when Ed Darrell pointed to a melee going on between Anthony Watts and Greg Laden, in a futile endeavor to show what a dumb, […]
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At Morgan’s site, House of Eratosthenes, I responded:
Fascinating to me how you can take your own perfidy and blame it on others. In your world, conservatives are never to blame, no matter that they are the only ones in the room.
Anthony Watts is a crank. He’s a crackpot. Four out of the first five posts at his site when you asked me to look, were factually in error, or in the one case — you favorite, of course — just argumentatively wrong. No matter how fat you think Al Gore is, that says absolutely nothing about climate science, let alone do what you claim it does — refute Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning, and Nobel Peace Prize-winning claims, and make Anthony Watts a shining star.
Dunning Kruger absolutely applies to arguing in good faith, when one is arguing from a paucity of information, or in your case, dramatic bias that blinds one to the facts. That’s the point.
What an interesting attitude: “Even though I’m dead wrong, and my error will cost billions and kill hundreds of millions, I should be considered correct in my error, because my intentions were good — or at least, not really as evil as the results turned out to be.”
The post you’re defending, where Watts posted even more crackpottery than his usual stuff, a claim that life had been found in a meteorite, continues to be exposed as fraud. Watts is so far wrong that he can’t even recognize a complete fraud — no amount of disclaimer can excuse that. Turns out Watts’s source, Chandra Wickramasinghe, is not only a famous crackpot himself, but admits that he completely ignored the geologists who told him his rock is of earthly origin, and not even a meteorite. In true Dunning Kruger Effect form, he decided he knew better than the experts. Watts, who is a radio weatherman, decided he knew better than the experts who rejected the paper, and sided with the crank science journal that published it. I don’t know your science background, but you appear wholly unfamiliar with Watts and Greg Laden — Laden’s a practicing scientist — but you decided you know better than Laden, and sided with Watts.
I told you not to step in that dog pile. Pondering why I’d tell you that, you stepped in it. Now you claim I plotted to force you to soil your shoes, and that warning you away from it was part of the plot.
Don’t be surprised if Dunning or Kruger give you a call — not exactly out of the blue.
Bertrand Russell’s explanation of the Dunning Kruger Effect.
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[…] was given cause to reflect on this when Ed Darrell pointed to a melee going on between Anthony Watts and Greg Laden, in a futile endeavor to show what a dumb, […]
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So much for the right wings claims that Obama is such a dictator and that he’s destroying the free market in this country:
http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
According to the Heritage foundation, a very conservative organization, the United States is 10th in the world for economic freedom.
Have fun choking, Morgan.
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Well, I don’t claim to know everything. That’s one reason why I’m able to admit things and in so doing, make myself able to learn, like: “Someone else might believe differently from me, and behave differently from me, and still know what he’s talking about.” It’s a good attitude. It’s done good things for me. I recommend it.
You’ve now had two chances to show how Watts is all these bad things you claim him to be. The first time it turned out you misunderstood the point of a cartoon. The second time it turned out one of your fellow lefty bloggers concealed relevant information that would have refuted his point, and you either couldn’t or wouldn’t see through the deception. You’re oh for two here.
As I’ve observed before. This is not about changing your mind. I simply WON’T do that, whether I’m willing to try or not. It’s about how far one has to go, to make lefty ideas look like good ones, and as you’ve shown before one has to go very, very far. It seems the doctrine of “I know what I’m talking about, therefore anyone who has a different idea must not know what he’s talking about” is an important part of it. I’m also seeing, information itself must be viewed as a sort of contaminant; here and there, lefties brag about not watching something or not reading something, Laden refuses to provide links even to the target of his momentary ire. So I see why you don’t like Watts. When he provided a rebuttal to Laden, he provided links to everything, making it known what he thought, but then leaving it up to his leadership to come to their own conclusions.
What else am I to conclude, but that on Planet Liberal, that must be the wrong way to do it. It’s clear he hasn’t won any points with you, by doing it the correct and proper way. Why don’t you log in and let him know he isn’t fooling you, how you know he’s been duped, Laden is not a liar, etc. Maybe in that context you can state the case in a way I’ll understand it; or, someone over there can help clue me in. Because, as you’ve stated it here, I’m not at all sure why you seem to think Laden did a fair job with this. “The other guy did it too” or something, that’s about all I can glean from what you said…
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You make it sound as if ignoring all the data and making other stuff up are legitimate points of argument. Watts is still in error, as we know you know by the red herring strategy. Links or not, he’s still wrong, and still crazy. If you can’t see that, you need more time in rhetoric, or science. Likely both.
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Make whatever note you want to on the links issue…
There is only one note to be made, and it’s been made, not to worry about that.
Watts is still in error on the science of global warming, and it’s pretty crazy.
There is, coming to a conclusion different from yours. And then there is, being in error. Those are two different things.
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And the old darling on the bench said, “Starts out defending Mr. Watts’s scientific integrity, but ends up claiming Watts must be linked to.”
Make whatever note you want to on the links issue. Watts is still in error on the science of global warming, and it’s pretty crazy.
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I don’t suppose you and I can agree to what is plainly obvious here, that Laden would have been doing a fairer job criticizing Watts, and offering his readers the common respect that should’ve been expected, if he at least included all these irrelevant disclaimers that Watts put in his piece? So the readers could make up their OWN minds about whether Watts had been duped. I don’t suppose you’ll concede just that much. Probably way too much to ask.
——–
Morgan, go to Watts’s site and ask him why he doesn’t link to Greg Laden’s blog, nor to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, nor to any of a thousand other sites that are critical of his errors.
Ask him why he doesn’t even allow trackbacks.
If you want to complain about unfairness, speak to the more serious violators first, and don’t stand up for unfairness before you do.
NO, then. And you’d like to divert the attention to what-the-other-guy-did. Can’t say I’m surprised.
So noted.
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Morgan, go to Watts’s site and ask him why he doesn’t link to Greg Laden’s blog, nor to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, nor to any of a thousand other sites that are critical of his errors.
Ask him why he doesn’t even allow trackbacks.
If you want to complain about unfairness, speak to the more serious violators first, and don’t stand up for unfairness before you do.
Is it a sin for me not to link to Watts? Then he’s the King of Sin. Why don’t you complain to him?
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I did not need to show that Anthony Watts was skeptical because that wasn’t the point. The point was that it was funny that he was looking at this claim at all.
Oh I get it, so that’s why he doesn’t link to Watts, even to give his readers the benefit of reading first-hand what he seeks to criticize. He must come from that weird Planet Liberal, where it is thought that people become smarter when they are deprived of information. That might explain why I’ve found it rather difficult to get any information across to you, on occasion.
I’ve noticed a lot of liberals labor under this misconception: You’re smarter if you can dismiss information more quickly, ideally before any of it sinks in. This would logically mean, at the extreme end of the spectrum, those among us who are the wisest are the ones who haven’t taken the time to learn a single thing. Especially if they form incendiary opinions about things they have never inspected first-hand, off in that direction lies true sagely wisdom.
I don’t suppose you and I can agree to what is plainly obvious here, that Laden would have been doing a fairer job criticizing Watts, and offering his readers the common respect that should’ve been expected, if he at least included all these irrelevant disclaimers that Watts put in his piece? So the readers could make up their OWN minds about whether Watts had been duped. I don’t suppose you’ll concede just that much. Probably way too much to ask.
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Morgan, maybe you should be nervous; in any case, you shouldn’t be flattered.
Anthony Watts is using your same argument:
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No mirrors in your house today?
You’re late to the party, by years, especially with regard to the many attacks on science by Anthony Watts. Thinking for yourself does NOT mean disagreeing with all other opinion. Thinking for yourself does NOT mean making a knee-jerk assessment that what Ed Darrell says is wrong.
Think? That would be good. Still waiting for you to demonstrate it, but not waiting for you to lead the way.
To science, quoting Wickramasinghe on such an issue, written up in that journal, is a lot like citing a rabid dog on the dangers of drinking water. We know what the answer will be, we know it will be biased, and we know it will be wrong.
Putting qualifiers in on such a story doesn’t spend the reader’s time well, nor respect the reader in any way. If you know it’s wrong with a 99% confidence level, the wise thing to do would be to ignore the story unless and until it is confirmed.
Otherwise, it’s just spreading crazy.
Telling the truth is a lot more than saying “this may or may not be accurate,” before repeating a falsehood.
Anti-leftism=knee-jerk group think that drags us through the swamps of error, reducing chances we’ll ever find the truth.
I’m amused that you think a call for accuracy is somehow “leftist.” Is that your confession that the facts don’t matter? Between the lines, and sometimes not between the lines, that’s what you’ve been arguing.
It’s also mighty clear that this is the operating philosophy of many on the so-called American right: Wrong about climate science, wrong about air pollution, wrong about family planning, wrong about preventing teen-age pregnancy, wrong about economics, wrong about education, wrong about taxes, wrong about America’s best days being past (they are not), wrong on civil dissent, wrong on the Constitution, wrong on history, and — God save us, because God knows the GOP can’t — wrong on the distributive principle of multiplication.
Winston Churchill is reputed to have said “We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing — after they have tried everything else.” Our future much depends on our short-circuiting that aphorism, and getting to the facts, getting the facts right, and doing the right thing without wasting time and without wasting resources by trying all the wrong things first.
I regret you don’t share my urgency on the need for accuracy, and action.
The American right’s motto: “FIRE! Ready, aim.”
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Morgan, Watts’s disclaimers don’t do away with the stain.
I’m sure it feels like they don’t. It felt so darn good to think you got him nailed and were able to taint his rep as a science guy, and it felt good to envision him as a dupe being taken in by things, while you & the people who agree with you can float above all of it, keeping your heads while everyone else is losing theirs.
That’s the treacherous situation involved with feeling instead of thinking, you end up being like the pot calling the kettle black. That’s why it’s important to do what I did, think, locate the source of the complaint, read it for yourself. When the interested reader does this, it emerges that Watt’s link to the story was full of conditions, “if”‘s, grains of salt…he wasn’t duped by anybody. Neither would any readers of his who happened to be following the story, although that’s what this Laden character worked hard to make it look like.
Leftism == group-think. Foolish, foolish group-think.
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Hard facts on global warming: https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/annals-of-global-warming-nasa-data-show-warming-continues-through-2012/
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Morgan, Watts’s disclaimers don’t do away with the stain. The journal he links to is a crank science journal — it publishes crank, anti-scientific stuff. It does not deserve that kind of promotion.
That’s just one more chunk of crazy Watts promotes.
It’s the whole gestalt of crazy that bothers me. You even got sucked into it briefly — and you were working to be skeptical.
Nothing to be gained from linking to Watts in this discussion.
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But — in this case, Anthony Watts includes a lot of disclaimers in his post that are not visible in the screen-cap Laden included. And these disclaimers are directly relevant to the charge you’re making against him, in that they refute it: The idea that Watts was taken in by the diatom/meteorite meme. Turns out there isn’t a grain of truth to it.
This is where you agree that the slander against Watts was a Fillmore’s Bathtub moment, an urban legend I helped you debunk. For the sake of the liberals across the Internet who are being taken in by it, to help stop them from looking like morons.
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There is nothing easier to find on the internet than the frauds of Anthony Watts. He doesn’t need my linking to boost his Google rankings, especially for his anti-science, non-science, nonsense and hoax screeds. It’s a small contribution to reducing the clout of crazy, but a good one, I think.
Watts’s policy is not to link to sites that criticize him in any way, and in fact he deletes posts with contrary evidence. It may stoke his ego to link to him, but I’d hate to be the one who stoked his ego just one pixel too much, to cause him to explode.
Not linking to Watts is a blow — small one, albeit — for accuracy. He already ranks high on all climate change issues. His hoaxes, non-science, anti-science, nonsense and bizarre conspiracy ideas don’t need any more promotion.
There is a Gresham’s Law corollary in information: Bad information drives out the good. Watts promoted a crank science journal with dubious claims of extraterrestrial life — why would I link to that?
But for the internet’s ranking algorithms, plus Watts’s inherent and chronic unfairness to correction, I’d probably link, as I do with most hoaxes.
Nothing to be gained from it here, in this case.
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So if frauds should be exposed as frauds, why don’t you link to Anthony Watts when you talk about him?
Why doesn’t Laden?
Why doesn’t that other guy, you just linked?
It’s weird how you people don’t link to the things you want to expose. I link to you when I expose you, unless you’re part of something that’s much, much bigger than you and your name isn’t relevant to it.
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These frauds should be exposed as frauds, as I have started with this post. The supporters of the frauds should be pressed to look at the facts, and to make the case why we shouldn’t call a fraud, a fraud.
Millard Fillmore did not introduce the bath tub to the White House, regardless what the White House website said six years ago, regardless how many school books repeat the canard.
The Earth warms. Watts shouldn’t be getting away with claiming otherwise.
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P. Z. Myers’ takedown may be more clear as to why the “life in the meteoroid” post contributes the the crazy:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/16/diatomsiiiiin-spaaaaaaaaaaace/
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Morgan, you should stop guessing. The odds are bad at best, and you’re lousy at it.
Actually, in this context you’re the one who guessed, or at least took Laden’s word for what Watts was saying. I’m the one who took the time to find the post that Laden failed to link.
Now if you’re ready to actually read what is being said beyond a word or two, and RESPOND rather than throwing out whatever random bit of snark floats to the top of your little chestnut dispenser there, maybe we can return to the primary subject and address it from a more general, high-level altitude:
What is to be DONE about all these opinions out there that you do not like, being, uh…communicated, I guess. Should blogs be shut down? Maybe we can stop some people from voting? It’s valid if you don’t have any idea what to do about it and are just sort of carping about it, we all do that. But I’m curious about whether you have some sort of plan in place, or are trying to put one together.
So much of modern liberalism seems to have to do with putting a tiny coterie of elites in charge of everyday life lived by everybody else, and then making sure the “everybody else” can’t say anything about it. I find this ironic, since the vision is supposed to be to make a society that can work for EVERYBODY, and to “count every vote” as we hold elections on how it’s supposed to work.
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Morgan, you should stop guessing. The odds are bad at best, and you’re lousy at it.
Watts’s citation to a journal famous for anti-science, of an article by guys famous for getting the science wrong, is inexcusable, even with disclaimers. It’s like saying, “Well, green tea may cure stage 4 breast cancer in men; let’s reserve judgment.”
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William Souder, on Facebook:
[Mr. Souder is the author of On a Farther Shore, the great biography of Rachel Carson published in 2012, the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring.
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Morgan, you confuse snark with argument, you confuse rudeness with intelligent claims, and you confuse folderol with science.
I’m guessing you mean I’m confusing this Laden guy’s snark with comment, and his rudeness for an attempt to make an intelligent claim.
So Watts was supposed to have claimed there was intelligent life on another planet, and now that I’ve gone and found the link to his actual post for you, we see not only did he not claim this but his posting is chock full of disclaimers and grains-of-salt to be taken with the claim, that this Laden fellow saw fit not to pass along. He “linked” to Watts by means of just a screen scrape and not a link, which raised a red flag with me — not with you, since you liked the idea of bad things being said about Anthony Watts, whom you don’t like — and I did a few seconds of searching. Good thing I did. Watts was not saying what Laden said Watts was saying.
And now, since I found this out for you, I guess you’re going to say I’m not qualified to comment or I don’t understand science or something. Go ahead, pal. Let ‘er rip.
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Why should Greg Laden link to a guy who rudely dismisses Laden’s thoughtful contributions? Morgan, you confuse snark with argument, you confuse rudeness with intelligent claims, and you confuse folderol with science.
You can find Watts’s blog on your own, but you can’t figure out why anything there is credible, to tell us here?
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Sure: Where does Watts get off claiming there are signs of life found in this meteoroid, when no one’s found anything like that yet?
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Greg Laden, also, doesn’t seem to understand how to directly link to Watts. Once you take the time to read what Watts had to say, rather than Laden’s pejorative interpretation of it, you can get back to me and let me know what, specifically, requires a defense. Happy hunting.
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Sometimes its rocks-falling-out-of-the-sky crazy. Watts reported finding alien life. Incorrectly.
Is there no scientific enterprise Anthony Watts’s blog can’t screw up?
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/01/15/whats-up-with-that/
Greg Laden reported:
Still waiting for a defense of this sort of crazy, Morgan. No, your complaints about Al Gore, even were they correct (and they are not), does not make Watts’s crazy, correct by default.
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onkelbob, you forget that the objective here is not to judge strangers on the Internet, or their qualifications to form opinions, or to convince said strangers that they need to do a better job of deferring to other strangers on the Internet. Perhaps you think this is further example of me demonstrating I don’t argue in good faith or that I don’t know what I’m talking about; it really doesn’t matter. The issue here is, since Ed is obviously peeved with something Anthony Watts said, what exactly is that thing Watts said, and why is Ed peeved with it. Do they offer degrees in this particular field of study?
Since you can’t, or won’t, follow that topic, I fail to see how it matters what you think the global climate is doing, or what your (non-meteorological) qualifications have to do with it…or, what other strangers on the Internet those qualifications impress, or why. The issue would have more to do with Anthony Watts’ qualifications, and perhaps Ed Darrell’s qualifications. If it’s an issue at all. Am I right?
Please point to specific examples of where I have argued in bad faith. Frankly, your post comes off as the mutterings of someone, as they say, “educated beyond their hat size”: You got a degree in something that ends with “studies,” and it seems you envision this as a sort of license to proclaim victory over someone in an argument (about a subject not directly related to your degree) without examining the points made in sufficient detail to make your own assertion any more believable. That, of course, is not what education is for.
Ed,
Since you’re changing the subject now to economics, I’m going to take it as a given that you can’t respond to the obvious point that carbon emissions have increased during the time that Phil Jones said the global temperature has plateaued out and held steady, thereby destroying, or doing great damage to, the idea that human activity is significantly changing the climate through carbon saturation. So if we’re all in agreement with that, then I’ll go ahead and bite:
How can we not get from the idea that it is imperative to end this recession now, through a situation in which more people have jobs — now, or real soon — to what seems to me like an inevitability, that it should become less risky and less expensive for businesses to employ these people? That just seems like common sense. Raining crazy indeed.
It seems to me, here, that “arguing in bad faith” is simply a label to be used for whoever doesn’t go along with the doctrine. And the doctrine, here, consistently is that the state should be given greater power over the people, regardless of what the subject is, what the “science” is behind it, what the facts say or where the conclusions lead; always, the power is to be taken away from the individual, and centralized, and anyone who objects is uneducated and should change their mind — they are “Dunning Kruger” cases if they do not do so. Seems it never really becomes any more complicated than that.
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Morgan, you’ll hate this one: Krugman is right.
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What OnkelBob said.
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Be careful what you say, like Miranda these words can be used against you. To wit, some questions (one of which I am sure I know the answer).
Do you believe that the overall atmospheric temperature is on a trend where it is rising? If you believe that to be true, do you believe that humans are responsible for that trend? If you do not believe either is true, what evidence is necessary for you to change your mind? Finally, what qualifications do you have to evaluate that evidence or lack of evidence?
And to be fair I will answer them – Yes, I believe the trend is for higher temperatures, and yes I believe that humans have created a system where we are contributing to that trend. The evidence that would sway my opinion otherwise would be increased telemetry that showed satellite sensors are showing overall lack of change in atmospheric temperatures. Moreover, advances in paleo-climatic sciences and models that show similar steep increasing trends in atmospheric CO2 would convince me that humans may not be the principal driver in those trends. I have an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies, Writing for the Arts and Sciences. My current job in a developmental Biology uses many of the same skills I acquired in my geography studies. I perform image analysis of confocal and multi-layer images (i.e, Scanning Electron Microscope and Positron Tomography) and so have a strong understanding of remote sensing technology. Moreover, I am also doing work to develop skills in bioinformatics, developing computer models that analyze the conservation of DNA and RNA strings across vertebrate species.As such I am qualified in the technology used in acquiring terrestrial data, and the systems used to analyze the data. Furthermore, my participation in the scientific process, namely the submission of papers and findings to peer review, affords me an appreciation of those activities.
Here’s your opportunity – demonstrate that any discussion with you is made in good faith. So far your words do not indicate that is the situation. Indeed, very little of what you have written have shown you understand the underlying science or are qualified at recognizing your qualifications and limitations. Just as I would never presume to tell the PI ‘s I work with that their premise in biology is incorrect, they always defer to me regarding the physics or statistics of any experimental results I deliver. You do not seem to understand that you don’t understand and that you are unqualified at deciding who is a reliable and accurate source and who is a charlatan.
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Ooops. Thanks for the correction.
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One slight point of clarification.
The article by James Delingpole to which you link is from the Daily Mail and not The Guardian.
These two British papers are very different. The Daily Mail supported Hitler before the war and since then has gone to the right and to the crazy.
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Can you explain, even briefly, how that momentary plateau negates any part of the claims of those you call “alarmists?”
Can you tell me why I should bother?
Look at the thread as it exists now. I’m repeatedly chastised for failing to bring evidence to prove my point, when I’m not making any point to prove, and I bring the evidence anyway. Then it happens many more times, it’s abundantly clear that this is nothing more than a throwaway catchphrase “you never bring any evidence,” rather like a dog barking. Then I bring you a fifteen-year-period in which the temperature does not rise, according to the head of the UEA, overlapping with a twenty-year-period in which carbon emissions have increased steadily, according to a climate hysteria website citing its source from the IPCC report of 2007.
And STILL I’m not done proving it. It’s obvious what your game is here…meanwhile…when I bring you three sources for another point you say “the first link points to Infowars” and dispense with all three. I bring that up later and you say “I already dealt with that.”
It is what I said: Question is not whether I will convince you, the question is how far you have to go to remain convinced of the opposite. And you have to go very far. Yes, it’s raining crazy alright.
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No scientist ever predicted “carbon up, ‘earth mean temperature’ must be up, evenly, without any fluctuation, at all times.”
What scientists note is that, decade over decade, as CO2 levels rise — CO2 being the most significant greenhouse gas undergoing significant increase in a fashion that could change climate.
Can you explain, even briefly, how that momentary plateau negates any part of the claims of those you call “alarmists?”
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So, your assumption is that if we see natural fluctuations in a worldwide trend, the trend is wrong?
NO. Somehow — and I’m not quite clear on how — a simple statement like “carbon up, ‘earth mean temperature’ not up” has caused ambiguity, or confusion, or afforded you some opportunity to distort my statement. Of those three I’m thinking it is the last one…but I’m lacking the time or inclination to come up with a simpler or more concise way of saying it.
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So, your assumption is that if we see natural fluctuations in a worldwide trend, the trend is wrong?
That still doesn’t excuse Watts’s denial of the trend.
You asked what Watts got wrong, I told you. You complained I hadn’t linked to Watts’s easy-to-find website. I gave you four examples of his perfidy in the first five posts he had up at that moment. You didn’t respond.
You complained that it’s accurate to call Al Gore fat, but I pointed out it’s an irrelevant canard. You said Gore is still fat, and wastes energy. I provided significant links to the facts of Gore’s life. You’ve offered not a whit of evidence that he wastes energy, and your claim that he drives big cars is bogus.
Without answering, you misquoted a misquote of Phil Jones, claiming he must have been in error. I corrected your misquote and explained patiently why it was wrong to claim he said what you claimed.
Do you ever respond to an argument, or give a moment’s thought to the argument you most recently made and its refutation?
Not once have you referred back to Watts’s extensive writings to defend his accuracy. Not once.
Watts is wrong on the science, and shame on him for sticking to his error. Compounding his error isn’t going to convince anyone he’s right.
Have you seen any of the serious climate measures over the past few months? I mean, did you bother to read them, and perhaps compare to what Watts and his fellow travelers have claimed?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/01/130109-warmest-year-record-2012-global-warming-science-environment-united-states/
http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/image/2013/by-a-wide-margin-2012-was-the-united-states-warmest-year-on-record-3
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/01/09/noaa-2012-warmest-year-on-record-for-the-us-48/
Image from here; link will go to latest data (cooling isn’t going to show up this year, nor next): http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
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Yes, I’ve read about all that: To keep the canard going, we have to pretend Dr. Jones was “taken out of context” and meant to say something different from what he actually said. AGAIN, Ed, I’m not trying to convince you of anything, if I was engaged in such an attempt we’d all have to admit the obvious, that I would/will not succeed. I will NOT convince you, no matter what.
So if we’re arguing about anything here, we’re conducting a test to see what you need to do to keep the climate change scam going. Turns out you need to do quite a bit. We’re already pretending things are the opposite of what they really are, for the sake of your argument, and that’s about as thick as the particulate matter can get.
Regarding this “plateau” and “what Jones meant to say was”: More & better information brings a new, and more useful, perspective. Here are the projections and observed measurements of carbon emissions 1990-2010, and posted at a climate-alarmist site, to boot. This is during the “plateau” period Phil Jones was discussing.
Carbon up, “earth mean temperature” not up. For those paying attention, the entire premise has been destroyed. But I’m sure you’ll conclude anybody else who hasn’t taken the time to learn a single thing about any of it, is better informed, as long as they come to the right conclusion. Alright then, if that method works for you then you can have it.
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At the site you refer to, Morgan:
And:
Scientists admit where their evidence is weak. You would do well to follow his example, and not accuse him of saying things he didn’t say.”Statistically significant” is a potent qualifying phrase that does not negate the fact that 1998 and 2012 are the two hottest years in history, even unrecorded history of human life, so far as anyone can find.
“Sorry 300 people died in Europe from the heat wave; but the heat isn’t statistically significant” is a poor message in the condolence letters, you know?
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Phil Jones said the rate of warming seemed to plateau. He neither claimed there was no warming, nor said it was ended, nor said we should do nothing to stop further warming.
Cherry picking: Good if it’s harvest time at the cherry orchard; bad with regard to policy arguments.
What did Phil Jones say he said?
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So when Phil Jones himself said there was no warming for the previous fifteen years, that was a logical fallacy?
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Here’s the thing, it is apparent that those who dispute the evidence rely on arguments based on logical fallacies. Be it ad hominem, argument from authority, argumentum populi, or a host of other fallacies. The arguments supporting climate change are mostly (and unfortunately not solely) evidence based. To claim Watts uses evidence ignores his blatant cherry picking and fault-ridden methodology. To demand others point out those faults, despite having had the faults documented and exhaustively described in previous situations demonstrates bad faith. The reason few sane people engage in such disputes because it is apparent that the discussion has no value. There is no point; there is no evidence that will be sufficient to cause Watts or his acolytes to admit that they neither understand the situation (and so defer to those who at least have a better understanding) nor will they admit that their position is not subject change. Such people hold a dogmatic belief and are not interested in facts or logic, they are simply there to justify their position, a position that is immutable. Make all the claims you wish, they will be promptly ignored, and correctly so, as being unproductive to the discussion and made in bad faith.
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I missed it, if you did. You gave three biased and inaccurate sources carping erroneously about a cartoonish charaterization of Al Gore, and I dealt with those.
Where is your evidence Watts is accurate on any issue dealing with global warming, especially in his anti-fix-it policy stances? Did I miss that? Did you hide it again in post one has to use a magnifying glass to figure out?
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AGAIN with the “Where’s your evidence Morgan.” It’s off topic, because again, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I simply was asking about what you had in mind with Anthony Watts, that’s all.
I’ve shown you evidence of the only thing I’ve asserted here, and you dismissed it because you didn’t like it. Maybe the time’s come for you to present some evidence that you do anything to evaluate evidence once it’s given to you.
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Not in his claims that warming was not occurring (which I don’t think even he argues any more, though his guest posters often do), not for his claims that damage would be slight, not for his policy claims that humanity would be damaged by clean air, not for his claims that cleaning the air costs more than we can afford.
What hard data Watts is responsible for, urging more careful selection of the data to use only those stations that he deems most nearly perfect in placement, also do not support his case — see the BEST analysis which Watts supported right up to the moment the report was published denying Watts’s claims (humorously, Watts has NOT asked to have his name taken off the paper denying his conclusions — have his cake,and yours, too).
These electrons come at very low cost, Morgan. By all means present Watts’s arguments and the data that back them up.
You keep saying he’s accurate — but you won’t say where. You keep saying he presents evidence, but you don’t show us any.
Watts above all does NOT supply good evidence for his positions — and when confronted with that fact on the issue of Rachel Carson and DDT, he started inventing a story of Rachel Carson being socially tied to the Kennedy’s, in a wrong-headed defense of Christopher Monckton’s bizarre claims that Carson held the Kennedy’s under her sway, and that Kennedy appointed William Ruckelshaus to head EPA specifically to “get” DDT. You’re a sane person, and you can figure that if President Kennedy died in 1963, his appointing Ruckelshaus in 1970 or 1971 is unlikely at best . . .
“Evidence?” I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
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Conversation started when Ed made the assertion, said assertion being, what one reads in the title of this post. He then meticulously went through the evidence to support HIS claim, conspicuously leaving out any links to Anthony Watts while including Watts in his list nevertheless.
You’ll see I asked for linkage — not in the spirit of “I want to win this argument and this is the only card I have left to play in the game” the way you and Ed constantly do, but because I was genuinely curious. Watts, after all, provides good solid evidence for his positions, with links to the source of his hard data, and one is very often left wondering what the rebuttal might be. So Ed provided six links, placing special emphasis on this cartoon. I helped him out by explaining the cartoon is not simply an ad hominem attack on Al Gore’s body weight, although the body weight is relevant. Gore likes to live large. He doesn’t act like the planet is really in a state of crisis. That’s what the cartoon is about.
Now you guys want me to provide evidence to support this, as if we are in a process of ME convincing YOU of something. This is not the case.
Also, I notice I have actually delivered evidence to support Al Gore’s conflict of interest here. Three links, to various sources, all supporting the same assertion. Let the record show that Al Gore’s rebuttal to this is something like “If you think I’m in this because of greed, then you don’t know me”…in other words, Al Gore’s rebuttal is Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes.
Let the record ALSO show that Ed’s technique for dealing with evidence he doesn’t like, is to take one of the links, figure out it points to a domain on his naughty list, bluster away for his reasons for not liking that particular source — and then, as a consequence of this, dismiss all three sources. Now in this case, I suppose that is somewhat fair; the whole point to the post is, things going on in the world, and being said, that annoy Ed. If I ask for supporting evidence I should be prepared to see points made that conclude with “And I don’t like it.”
But to get into some cock-fight about which side is making more money off presenting their side in the global warming chicanery, is to miss the point. If I believed the planet was in peril because of the emissions of human activity and I was REALLY sincere about my motives in spreading the word, I’d be driving…well, pretty much what I already drive, a four-banger, and riding my bike whenever the time allows for it. Actually, that’s what Jimmy Carter does, and he’s a lot older than Al Gore. But nobody who really pays attention to Al Gore thinks that Al Gore takes Al Gore seriously, so they don’t take him seriously either.
And no, Ed, I’m afraid “advising” doesn’t qualify for my criteria. I specifically stressed the creation of wealth where it did not exist previously, something Gore doesn’t do. When the savvy sage throws out friendly self-deprecating jokes about not being able to turn on his own computer, it’s time to drop the mythology about how he invented the Internet and all the rest of that. Just another beltway boy who’s good at forming contacts, and getting his name into the credits when it’s time for the “contributors” to take a bow.
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Tell us, Morgan, how much money has Watts made off you and your fellow deniers?
I find it hilarious that a conservative Republican and a self claimed lover of the free market is alleging that people are making money off being “Climate change alarmists” and that if they were that somehow makes what they’re saying suspect.
What, Morgan? You only like people making money and the free market when its benefitting your side?
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Also, see here for a way to act against global warming: https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/annals-of-global-warming-federal-advisory-committee-draft-climate-assessment-report-released-for-public-review/
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One could benefit from actually reading about Al Gore — and so far as I know this profile doesn’t even mention his supreme-act-of-fatherhood, putting his career on hold while helping his son recover from an auto-pedestrian accident that seriously injured him: New Yorker profile of Al Gore, “The Wilderness Campaign.”
That 2004 profile mentions a black Cadillac. One ought to be aware that Gore now drives a hybrid Lexus.
Morgan won’t read it. Facts are anathema to the true believers of global cooling and the supremacy of American drift-instead-of-action.
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Gore qualifies for “old fashioned way” on points 2 and 3 of your standard.
You’ve still not offered a whit of evidence that Gore profits from alarmism (he doesn’t), that Gore behaves hypocritically, especially by wasting energy as you first alleged, nor have you offered any evidence that Watts is accurate in his predictions of global cooling, that global warming is not occurring, nor his misquided and wrong prophecy that sea levels won’t rise, that storms won’t do more damage, or that we don’t need to act to save the planet in a condition conducive to human habitation.
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So, Gore makes his money the old fashioned way, doing intellectual work for people who like his advice a lot ..
That isn’t making money the “old fashioned way,” to my way of thinking. That has a lot to do with Thomas Sowell’s definition of “intellectual” which he uses as a pejorative: Practitioner whose practice begins with ideas, and ends there as well, such that the ideas are never tested against reality. The “old fashioned way” to make money I think would be 1) through manual labor, 2) producing an intellectual work that actually changes the STATE of something, for the better, or 3) return on investment capital. In simpler terms: As a reward for having created wealth where it did not exist before.
But that isn’t really the subject of the discussion. The subject of the discussion is that Al Gore is a hypocritical buffoon, Anthony Watts put up a cartoon saying so, and because of this you wrongly accused Mr. Watts (and subsequently myself) of making assertions without having “hard evidence” to back up those assertions. Can we know agree that when you repeat this cliche you don’t really intend to back it up with anything? I said Al Gore makes money off his fearmongering, you wrongly said that I didn’t provide support for this, after reviewing the evidence I did provide you concluded it doesn’t count, for no better reason than you don’t like what it says.
But, to return to my main point, Al Gore doesn’t behave as if the planet is in the state of crisis he says it is in. So the people who receive his message uncritically are either ignorant, apathetic, or somehow envision themselves as in a position to share in the profits from the fearmongering.
If you disagree, that’s fine. But I think it would be more honest if you were to engage the arguments made, rather than declaring the evidence doesn’t count just because you personally dislike what it says.
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And to top it off, none of your complaints about Gore lends any credibility to Watt’s continued, unwarranted and unethical denial of global warming.
The Earth warms, whether Al Gore is fat (he isn’t), or whether he makes money from investing in green technology and energy-wise companies.
We need to act, now, to mitigate, reduce, and stop global warming, and to mitigate what disaster we can mitigate at this point.
Gore may be close to Daniel as a prophet, and close to Jesus in the powers you imagine him to have, but he didn’t stop the Mississippi from flowing, didn’t blow away Breezy Point, didn’t melt the Arctic ice cap, and didn’t burn down Tasmania.
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Sorry I missed those three canards.
First, all your sources are suspect. Not investment grade. InfoWars is more famous for hoaxes than information.
BUT, none of the projects there make money off of climate hysteria. They make money off of good business practices.
They save other businesses money.
So they don’t meet your criteria of profiting off of climate hysteria, though they again expose you as a dillettente supporter of capitalism.
P.S.: Most of Gore’s personal fortune increase flows from his board positions, at Apple and Google. He dropped one (I forget which) when the two companies went into competition directly.
So, Gore makes his money the old fashioned way, doing intellectual work for people who like his advice a lot (Jobs and Apple and the Google crews all regard Gore as a genuine oracle — he did, after all, save AARPANET, and thereby pave the way for the modern internet). Your claim that he profits from panic remains completely unevidenced — I mean, not even a whiff of an iota of evidence. And you’ve not even attempted to justify the bizarre charge that he wastes energy and drives a big gas guzzler.
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Morgan, where did you provide an iota of evidence about anything? You claim Al Gore drives a big car…
And with that, we can all now finally agree that your false indignation about “You never provide a gram of evidence” is nothing more than theatrical bluster, right? If it was a question of yours that gelled properly with the conversational flow, which it isn’t, the answer would be “Jan. 12/2013 5:55pm.” But we see now this is just a cliche you put out there when you’re cornered. You challenged me to summarize in a 30-second statement any support of any statement Anthony Watts has made, highlighting as a specific source of your angst this cartoon about Al Gore’s hypocrisy. I explained that the attack on the man’s body attribute, while accurate, was not purely an ad hominem attack, rather that the weight issue was simply “frosting on the cake” one might say; the real attack was against Al Gore’s hypocrisy, and by extension against the hypocrisy of those who argue for the same actions he does, with similar motives.
The point to it is, as I stated indirectly and now I’ll just come out and say it: People who insist the planet is in a state of crisis, like Mr. Gore, tend not to behave as if the planet is in a state of crisis. They drive huge cars. They eat to excess just like any other American, caring not one bit if they’re working off the excess calories.
See, unlike many on the left, I don’t choose to condemn others simply for their lifestyle choices. “Eat[ing] to excess just like any other American, caring not one bit if they’re working off the excess calories” — this comes perilously close to exactly what I’ve been doing during the holiday season of ’12. The issue is not the overeating, it’s the hypocrisy. While I packed on the Christmas pounds, I did not form entire media campaigns talking down to my fellow American citizens, to taper down their lifestyles lest the planet’s continuing survival be placed in jeopardy. I certainly did not do such a thing to make huge amounts of money. I haven’t done those things. Al Gore has.
Now, why do you need me to point out that there’s something else going on here besides obesity? Al Gore is holding huge bags of money in the cartoon, which are clearly intended to say something. Money hasn’t got a lot to do with being a fat porker. A lot of fat people are poor. A lot of rich people are skinny. To me, it’s clear what the cartoon is saying: Al Gore, and those like him, want everybody else to behave as if a planetary crisis is imminent and immediate action on our part is obligatory, while they themselves do not behave this way and will take only cursory and cosmetic action on their own behalf. They’re not willing to go-without, even as the rest of us do so.
Now, this was the example you chose first and foremost. I’ve explained it to you as clearly as I know how. And you were supposed to be the one who was supposed to offer evidence that Mr. Watts is part of this “raining crazy,” which as I’ve noted before, you have not been successful in offering. So tell me more of these iotas of evidence I’m supposed to be offering for something if you could; what exactly is missing?
Maybe you could explain something for me. How come “hypocrisy” means everything in the world to liberals when Republican men who’ve cheated on their wives, wish to point out President Clinton’s infidelity, but when left-wing gasbags tell us we have to consume fewer resources and emit fewer pollutants to SAVE THE PLANET while they themselves are chowing down and smogging it up like there’s no tomorrow, suddenly hypocrisy doesn’t mean anything?
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Morgan, where did you provide an iota of evidence about anything? You claim Al Gore drives a big car — wholly without evidence — and then you complain when I point out the big vehicles he rides in are mass transit?
Dunning-Kruger Effect — yeah, people who loudly proclaim what they don’t know about, such as, “Al Gore is fat and he wastes energy.”
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Germany produces enough wind and solar power to replace 22 nuclear power plants.You’re saying we can’t do the same, Morgan?
I’m something of a film buff and my favorite film in the last 15 years has been the Lord of the Rings series. The film, when it was being produced, was New Zealand’s single largest employer. The film brought in boatloads of money for New Zealand’s economy and New Line Cinema.
They made that film with an almost obsessive need to protect the environments they were shooting in. For the prologue of the first film they had hundreds of extras running around. And yet for rehersals they laid down carpet to protect a rare moss that was present on the mountain side.
When they were building the Edoras sets on Mount Potts they lifted up the native tussock grass and kept them in greenhouses. They dredged gravel up from the creek and used that to make the roads. They built the buildings without changing or damaging the environment. And when they were done they put it all back exactly the same as it was before they arrived.
The point I’m making, MOrgan, is that protecting the environment is not harmful to the economy. One can be environmentally concientius and still make a profit. Are you saying that we in the United States..the country your side so loves to claim is the best country in the world can’t do what New Zealand or Germany did? Is your party’s patriotism and pride as Americans just an act? Is it just a jingo? Or do you actually mean it?
But if the environment is destroyed, Morgan, there will be no economy. If your side is wrong we’re all dead and our descendants are just as dead. The wars, strife and chaos that will arise if you and your fellow deniers are wrong will make every preceding war look like childs play, Morgan.
That’s the legacy you want to leave the world? That’s the legacy you want to leave your children and grandchildren? That you’re too cheap and too lazy to lift a finger to protect the environment they’ll live in?
Thank you for proving beyond a shadow a doubt that modern day conservatives and teabaggers are the most immoral, most selfish, , most destructive, most self entitled people on the face of the planet.
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To you, any bus or any other form of mass or shared transit is a “big car,” nevermind that it saves money, energy and other resources. We see how you are.
Well, we’ve been here before haven’t we. You need to alter my statement in order to make it look like I’ve departed from the plane of reality — which creates a situation in which you’re the one who actually left it, and so hasty is your departure that you cannot see what has taken place. You were must mentioning the Dunning-Kruger effect?
Where did I mention I was talking about mass transit?
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Since this is a cornucopia of crazy, may I ask a question not touching on climate for the moment?
Mr. Yeager says if the President uses the executive order, he (Yeager) is “gonna start killing people”.
Would any of the conservative, Republican, Anarcho-Libertarian folks looking in care to speculate as to WHICH people he intends to kill? I know what my fellow liberals think. The idea is that Yeager intends to raise up an army of “patriots” to kill federal agents and possibly assassinate the President for his “uppity” behavior.
How is this different from what Timothy McVeigh did? Please tell me conservatives and Republicans are working hard to contain this kind of treason and homicidal misanthropy. I am sure the Anarchists are already on board. But Republicans? Heaven forefend!
If Mr. Yeager DOES get his second American Civil War…a notion ten years ago I thought highly improbable (but now fear might be closer than we think)…does anyone left or right honestly believe it would accomplish anything? Can Jethro, Joe-Bob, Cletus and their army of beer-bellied, tea party flag-waving “patriots” last more than five minutes against the United States Marine Corps?
I have met, interviewed and interacted with Mr. Yeager’s sort on a number of occasions. Most of these weekend warrior militia maniacs are not only fat & lazy, they are dumb as a box of hair. I wouldn’t give them decent odds against Al Qaeda. But against our military? One shudders to even entertain the notion.
I may not like dumbs. But I don’t want to see them slaughtered. Of course, that’s usually what treason will get you.
Jim
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No, it’s worse. Gore doesn’t make such cheap shots at others, the way Limbaugh did. Gore didn’t call Limbaugh fat, drug-addled, or sex-crazed, even though the public record supports such charges.
It’s not the same because Gore takes the moral high road.
Gore doesn’t say we have to curb lifestyles — I’m interested that you claim he calls for drastic reductions in consumption.
Where? Can you provide references?
Gore’s written a series of books over the past 30 years on these topics. He urges smart development and wise, sustainable development, he urges cleaning up pollution. I can’t think of any place he has ever argued for less economic development, or a curb in resource use.
I’m in Missouri today. Show me the evidence for your claim.
Scandalously falsely, yes. Why do you assume that we must abandon our family homes instead of retrofitting them, as Gore did? Why do you assume that we must build huge energy-wasting office buildings, instead of working from home?
The scandal is in the advocacy for waste instead of wisdom, as you echo here.
That’s funny. Why is he criticized for this? Is there a cogent reason why his use of the latest and best technology is a problem, other than your apparent dislike of intellectual activity and research?
He puts his money where his heart and public advocacy are. We cured acid rain in the U.S. with these exchanges.
Next you’re going to complain about how profitable Gore has been, which of course is a direct refutation to any claim of any problem with his activities promoting pollution control as a private citizen.
Yeah, like that. “Al Jazeera mess?” You really don’t like capitalism, do you. Not even deep down — you don’t like capitalism in any form when it functions to the benefit of the masses, who I guess you would prefer to be poor and unhealthy, to your neighbors, for reasons we can only guess at, or for Democrats, who you wish would run closer to Joe Stalin, and whose use of capitalism to expose the flaws in your erroneous philosophy you consider a personal affront rather than a learning opportunity.
What “mess” do you claim is there? Gore founded a (finally!) semi-sucessful cable channel, and he sold it to the highest bidder, which happens to be a successful news organization funded by and based in the home country of one of our most powerful and gracious Arabic-land allies.
Reminds me of the complaints about the French, how George Washington could teach them a lesson in liberty, how they don’t know the first thing about liberty in America and what the Statue of Liberty stands for — though, as Washington well knew, it was French aid which saved Washington’s tail and won American liberty, and though the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France.
What next? You’ll complain Frederick Douglass lived relatively well, so had no portfolio to complain about slavery? You’ll complain that Rachel Carson, found to be scientifically accurate by a panel of the nation’s best scientists, didn’t have the right to speak about harmful chemicals?
Don’t let the door to the Reality Saloon hit you on the way in; but if it does, come in anyway. It’s really more convivial drinking the “water of life” of reality.
Have you read a newspaper in the past decade? I’ll concede you appear not to have a clue what you’re talking about — and in your wildly inaccurate and needlessly and misleadingly snarky assault on Al Gore, you make the point that you don’t have a case in favor of global warming and climate change.
You make Gore out to be Solomon and Socrates both, in comparison.
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And so we see the divorce from reality:
That’s only true if you assume, as you appear to, that the only proper response to a climate crisis is sackcloth and ashes.
Gore lives pollution cleanup probably better than any other human alive, as the author of the Superfund Act, as the chief promoter of clean air and clean water while he was in Congress (actively supported since), and as one of the most successful, if not profitable, promoters of technology to do things more cleanly and with much less energy use.
To you, any bus or any other form of mass or shared transit is a “big car,” nevermind that it saves money, energy and other resources. We see how you are.
(I’d love to see you try to put evidence to that claim. You’re welcome to try here.)
Rush Limbaugh alone takes care of that for the other side. This claim about Al Gore, that he’s somehow abusing resources by gaining weight, demonstrates the total factual and moral paucity of the pro-pollution arguments, Morgan. You have no evidence, you make crass and inaccurate assumptions, and even when trying to deny it’s purely extraneous ad hominem, you make it even more inaccurate ad hominem.
What evidence have you that Gore’s long-ago weight gain was abuse of resources? None.
Where is your compliment to him for losing the weight? That would make him next to Jesus in your continuum of deities, wouldn’t it?
You don’t know much about teleconferencing, nor about international relations, I see. Why are teleconferences more workable for people who don’t have the technology? Why must all discussion of action in remote places and the third world, be moved to boardrooms in comfortable international financial capitals?
We can’t fix the problems by conspicuously ignoring them first.
None of your arguments gets within an astronomical unit of making a case that global warming isn’t occurring, that we don’t need to act soon, an that acting will be a huge boon to the world’s economies. If there’s a red herring shortage, we’ll have to blame it on you.
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Not if the planet is in crisis they don’t. So that’s problem one, the “you can’t take it with you” angle. This conspiracy, as I understand it, is to make the planet uninhabitable thereby killing every species of flora and fauna upon it, to enrich that ol’ bottom line. This next part I cannot refute because it has never been adequately explained: How’s this work, exactly? Have they got a hidden moonbase all ready for their hasty exit, where they can arrive loot in hand, twirling their mustaches and laughing diabolically while the rest of us perish here with the adorable woodland creatures?
Problem two, blessed relief, involves a return to the original subject: Ed provided good linkage for all of his complaints, save for the one source who enjoys the best reputation, Mr. Watts. I found that a bit odd and asked for linkage here as well, and he provided this cartoon about Al Gore, incorrectly summarizing it as an ad hom attack about our former Vice President’s current body weight, when in fact his weight problems are only a part of what the cartoon seeks to ridicule. The point to it is, as I stated indirectly and now I’ll just come out and say it: People who insist the planet is in a state of crisis, like Mr. Gore, tend not to behave as if the planet is in a state of crisis. They drive huge cars. They eat to excess just like any other American, caring not one bit if they’re working off the excess calories. They jet off to remote locations to have these “international conferences” about climate change strategies, when teleconferencing would do.
Bringing attention to Al Gore’s personal weight gain is not the same as attacking Rush Limbaugh over personal weight gain. Gore’s message is that “the planet has a fever” and our current lifestyle is unsustainable unless/until we drastically cut and slim down our consumption of the resources. He has already been scandalized over his mansion’s huge carbon footprint, for his enormous computer monitors, for his personal interest in his carbon offset exchange companies, and now for this Al Jazeera mess. He simply doesn’t behave like a promoter of audacious living. If he’s not a scam artist, he’s doing a great job of acting like one, I’m sure you’ll concede that much, right?
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My apologies.
I’ll put it this way, Morgan.
You say we should dismiss the claims that the environment is in crisis because people are getting rich off doing so.
And yet you want to believe people saying that environment isn’t in crisis despite the fact that they’re getting rich off doing so?
What? You don’t think Big Oil stands to make money by propping up you and your fellow deniers?
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Let’s try to keep it polite. At this point, it’s really important to let those opposed to saving the planet explain their cases really well — so that the flaws will be obvious to others, if not to themselves.
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To quote:Who is making money telling you the environment is in crisis? No one. The money is in denying it…
Tell me, Morgan..who is making money telling you the environment is not in crisis?
You know, Morgan, it’s 2013. One would think you’d have at least developed a few more brain cells since 2012.
Apparently not.
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Name someone who makes money doing climate research.
Come to reality, Morgan. That’s an old canard. There’s no big money in professorships, nor in science life on NSF grants (in which, it is a crime to lie — which tells us why there are NO climate “skeptics” doing research for the NSF).
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Who is making money telling you the environment is in crisis? No one. The money is in denying it…
Untrue.
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Who is making money telling you the environment is in crisis? No one.
The money is in denying it, or more accurately, those making money off of pushing the environment over the cliff are using their money to fog up the discussion.
Seriously? You and Rip van Winkle have been asleep for two decades?
I’ve already gone first. Note the links my last answer.
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Can you summarize in a cogent, 30-second statement, any credible argument Watts makes?
Watt merely embeds the cartoon. The point that the cartoon makes, aside from a purely relative claim (albeit, one that can be supported by evidence in a lot less than thirty seconds) that Al Gore is overweight, is that Al Gore is a hypocrite.
To be frank about it, Ed: To even begin the task of summarizing the argument, I’d need to get a better reading of what parts of it are in dispute. To my knowledge, none of the statement “Al Gore is a hypocrite” is in dispute, nor can it be in dispute, in fact the only specific rebuttal YOU have provided so far is “It’s raining crazy.”
So perhaps you need to go first. Meanwhile, I’ll consider acting like the environment is in crisis, when the people who are making all this money telling me the environment is in crisis, themselves start behaving like it is in crisis.
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The level of science illiteracy and pure gullibility among Watts’s supporters astonishes.
Seriously, Morgan? He backs up the claim? Remember, Watts is the guy who cried for years that NOAA was incompetent at siting weather stations, and so helped persuade the Koch brothers to fund a study using Watts’s hand-picked data; and when that study showed warming exactly as NOAA measured it, Watts disowned his own data. Denial is a raging torrent through anti-warming, Craziland.
How? Can you summarize in a cogent, 30-second statement, any credible argument Watts makes? ‘Booga, booga, Al Gore is fat’ falls far short of convincing, to most people, because gobbledy gook and inaccurate, inartful ad hominem aren’t even denials.
If one has no standards at all, they are easily met.
Meanwhile, the Earth still warms, or, “Eppure, lei si scalda!” as Galileo would have put it.
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Okay, so he is able to back up what he’s saying after all.
I can see why you didn’t want to link to it.
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Our cup of crazy overfloweth:
1. Rep. Paul Ryan, who one would wish would know better, has doubled down on the GOP favoritism toward rapists, part of the GOP War Against Women (if they don’t think there should be a War Against Women, why don’t they stop waging it?).
2. The crazy gunslinger from Tennessee apologized for making remarks that win the attention of the Secret Service, but gets his lawyer to show up, too, making it clear he doesn’t really mean to apologize. You can’t make this stuff up.
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Does it matter whether Watts can back up anything he says? Do facts sway anyone in the Dunning Kruger Squads of the Right?
I hoped to avoid promoting Watts’s particular craziness — though, of course, I did provide the link to the nut at the Gourdian. Just go to his blog and start reading.
Here Watts lies about Paul Ehrlich, the 1970s, and science today — all in the first couple of sentences.
Here one of Anthony’s Anointed Minions digs at the New York Times for no good reason, AND science and scientists.
That’s two out of the first three posts up right now.
Three out of the first four.
Four out of five — this post explains the totality of Watts’s scientific philosophy (“Al Gore is fat.”)
Here WattsUp complains that NOAA can’t read semaphore, or something about signalling that has nothing to do with what NOAA actually said, nor the is in any way a rebuttal to the science, but gives the Wattsaliens their hourly dose of the weekly minimum requirement of snark.
You’re not suggesting Watts isn’t denying it of course — you’re just forgetting his URL, right?
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I realize you’re blogging more about your frustration with the other side having something to say, than about the actual claims made. But “Anthony Watts already has a half-dozen posts up denying the recent findings that 2012 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous 48 United States” might have benefited from links to some of the half-dozen. Can he back up his denialism with some hard facts and/or sound logic, or can he not?
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