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Pigsaw

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You want opinions, look at the clip. I'd like information. Where does this clip come from? It appears to be Russian in origin, but I never heard of Alyona or of Rick Mooney. What are their qualifications? A cursory look (I didn't get past the three-minute mark) shows that these two, whoever they may be, aren't serious. Think about it: Al Gore could convince the mainstream media that he was qualified in scientific matters, but these people can't. This has got to be a symptom of something. It reminds me of a really cheesy infomercial, designed to look like a news show or documentary but really an advertisement, too amateurish to be taken for the real thing.

The anti-science people, contrary to what Alyona and Rick say, are losing. Climategate, glaciergate, climategate 2 and fakegate have pretty much demolished global warming. Polls show that most Americans never did believe it, and the number is going down. Creationism never got off the ground in its efforts to hijack the schools.

Republicans aren't the only anti-science people anyway. Opposition to genetically-engineered foods and to fracking are not Republican causes. Observe what happened to Larry Summers when he suggested that intellectual skills might be sex-linked.

Edited by Reidy
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I have seen this company's work before, and they put all sorts of weird stuff out there. Like they have that stefbot guy from youtube on there (an "Anarcho-Capitalist"). I figured that their angle is to put anything forward that they percieve to be undermining trust in the united states government.

As for the actual video-

You can't just label something as obvious, or incontravertible because a scientist or a group of scientists calim that something is a fact. "Global Warming" or "Global Climate Change" is not "Science". it is a conclusion made by people using certain methods that they claim are science.

Just because you are a against a popular theory backed by scientists that does not mean that you are against science.

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Reidy, your posted a comment and you did not even watch the whole video. Is that an "emotional" response on your side? The video claims that libertarians have emotional responses when presented with facts that threaten their "libertarian world view" and that they cannot apply reason when looking at things they disagree with.

Also, why is it relevant if americans don't "believe" in global warming?

:sarcasm: The majority of americans are very reasonable people :sarcasm:

Sorry to be offensive, didn't mean to :).

Edited by Pigsaw
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(You) posted a comment and you did not even watch the whole video. Is that an "emotional" response on your side?

No, it's a judgement about the value of my time. I don't watch infomercials to the end either. Did they say anything interesting after the 3-minute mark?

(W)hy is it relevant if americans don't "believe" in global warming?

It's relevant as a piece of evidence that junk science isn't as powerful as these people suggest and that conservatives and libertarians aren't the only or even the primary purveyors of it these days.

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  • 1 year later...

I didn't even watch past Rick Santorum's clip.  I heard what she was talking about, saw the display behind her (money versus science) and knew what I was watching.

 

And that is actually an emotional response on my part.  I don't enjoy being referred to as a moron (even by implication) and at this point, yeah, the discussion of global warming "deniers" actually does illicit an emotional response.  Namely irritation.

Because you talk about global warming as if it were self-evident, and you regard anyone who rejects it as being "anti-science"; by which you mean anti-reason and unwilling to accept the facts of reality.  That is what you mean by that; yes?

 

But Al Gore and his innumerable ilk are not the prophets of reality.

 

In fact, while the acceptance of global warming is an issue of faith versus reason, I'm standing on the rational side of it.

Have you ever seen firsthand evidence of it?  When you step outside, do you see global warming in the cloud formations?  (pun wholeheartedly intended)  I sincerely doubt it.

And since you couldn't possibly have any concrete evidence of manmade global warming (aside from the edicts of its clergy, which is the entire crux of the issue) then you are, in fact, substituting the bromides and platitudes (charts included, this time) of someone's arcane knowledge for your own rational judgement.  You reject your own senses in favor of "scientists" who spend most of their time declaring emergencies.

You may feel this is an unfair description of it; after all, YOUR prophets aren't privy to divine revelation, but college degrees in climatology.  And it only makes sense that climatologists know more about it than normal people could ever hope to, right?  So why not take their word for it?

 

Why not, when they're so consistently wrong?

Why not, when their dictates directly contradict your own experience?

Why not, when they so rabidly jabber for the undoing of the past 200 years' progress (enforced at gunpoint)?

Why not, when they conspire in the shadows with all manner of politicians?

 

Why not take their word for it?  The experts in secret knowledge can't be wrong, after all.

 

Imagine if Galileo had done the same.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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If global warming were real, it wouldn't need to be proliferated this way.  The theory of evolution or the theory of relativity weren't rammed down people's throats the way this is.

 

And really, when you stop and think about it, the asserted danger is almost a trivial little part of it.  You never hear: "The climate is changing, and calamity could befall us. . . " without the words " . . . unless we take drastic measures!"

There's minimal discussion of the causes of global warming, and all possibilities given are somehow an integral part of modern life.  Think for a moment about the alleged sources of greenhouse gasses:

 

-Gasoline and coal, without which there could be no electricity, no industry and nowhere near the current human population

-Aerosols

-Methane from domesticated animals, but for some reason not wild ones

 

When you consider the "pressing dangers" of deforestation and overpopulation, we can stop growing crops and breeding while we're at it.

 

Take any one of these claims and imagine if we actually just outlawed it, altogether.  No more gasoline, or no more farms, or perhaps no more children.  Picture that and you'll see why this bothers me so intensely.

Take any one of these claims (global warming, overpopulation) and see if you can find a single one without a pre-packaged remedy of the type above.

Manmade global warming, the scientific theory, doesn't exist independent of manmade global warming, the recipe for tyranny and genocide.

 

Now, you tell me something.  If someone were advocating such things, suggesting that we return to the ways of our ancestors and perhaps decrease the surplus population while we're at it; would such a person deserve to be categorized alongside Newton, Edison or Einstein?  Are they essentially the same?

Whatever shoddy excuses for men that they are, they are NOT scientists.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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What is your opinion, Pigsaw?I thought the video was mostly trash. It was a book promo (calling it an infomercial is not inappropriate) for a guy who now makes his living explaining the idea of confirmation bias and then uses that to demonize his political sect's opponents. There is truth to the idea that libertarians react to this issue emotionally, but that sort of person exists on the fearmongering side of this issue also. Confirmation bias is a fact of life for anyone of any political persuasion. But, Mooney's assertion that a discussion of climate science isn't going to matter is complete nonsense; he doesn't want to talk about evidence. He wants to sell a book and he'll use salacious smear tactics to do it. And he has the nerve to mention echo chambers!

Edit: Having said this, it is interesting to note that the costs of "fixing" climate change are being hidden by the claim that such costs are, in fact, not costs because they fix externalities that shouldn't have happened in the first place. That argument appears to be more persuasive to libertarians.

Edited by FeatherFall
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Harrison, I think you're inviting exactly the kind of smears proliferated by Mooney when you discuss the issue this way. When people discuss this issue they rarely define terms, and that works for the fear mongers. There is broad consensus regarding the direct effect of CO2; about 1 degree C per doubling of CO2 - most skeptics agree with this. The trick of vague terms is performed when we start to layer or conflate terms that denote entirely different concepts.

The direct effect of CO2 is just one part of the "Greenhouse effect." But, because CO2 is the chemical that man seems to have the most control over, the phrase, "greenhouse effect," is used as a substitute for, "the direct effect of CO2." Terms are further obfuscated by use of the phrase, "global warming," to include the idea that that the greenhouse effect (and therefore CO2), is driving the temperature instead of simply being a contributing factor. "Climate change" is the final switch that smuggles in the idea that the globe is not just warming, but warming in a very bad, probably catastrophic way - such as the idea that feedback mechanisms triple the direct effect of CO2. Fearmongers work very hard to carry the consensus about the "greenhouse" effect over two steps thereby conjuring up a consensus about any peripheral and catastrophic claim made by climate researchers.

Claiming there is no consensus plays into their hands. You'd do better to identify the common ground and embrace it so others can't steal it to support something else entirely. This has the added benefit of focusing the discussion on the science instead of the chearleading, so that each side can exchange information in a meaningful way.

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