July 20, 2007
"9/11 Truthers Garner More Support."
Here's what really gets me about the 9/11 conspiracy theory. How can anyone believe it now? Of course, it was always completely crazy, but some people believed it anyway because they imagined a hyper-organized, hyper-competent, hyper-secret Executive Branch. Now, you've watched all these years of struggling through the Iraq war. How can you cling to the premise that the Executive Branch is hyper-organized, hyper-competent, hyper-secret? Do they think Bush and Cheney deliberately conducted the war to give it the appearance of a big screw up in order to throw us off the track?
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103 comments:
You're right. How can they be so stupid and incompetent, yet able to pull that off and keep it secret for six years?
Of course we all know that fire doesn't melt steel.
The JFK assassination conspiricy theories are still cropping up after 40 years--Somehow I suspect my grandchildren will be reading theme and variations on 9/11. Its simply a part of human nature.
South Park had it right. These people are retarded.
hyper-organized, hyper-competent, hyper-secret Executive Branch
What always gets me is that you have to postulate a hyper-organised, hyper-competent, hyper-secret Executive Branch over a series of Democratic and Republican administrations going back to when the towers were first built. No wonder Vince Foster had to die.
How can anyone believe it now?
Because it has moved into the realm of religion.
Do they think Bush and Cheney deliberately conducted the war to give it the appearance of a big screw up in order to throw us off the track?
They aren't thinking; they're believing.
I think Roger is on to something - there is a natural human tendency to prematurely draw conclusions based on what we want to believe, regardless of any real evidence, because remaining agnostic can be so unnerving and discomforting. A quick look at this guy's biography gives a clue to where his prejudices may lie. A true believer.
The official story of 9-11 is full of holes
Truthers and truthism are not rational. Thus you cannot counter them with logical arguments. Which is why Mapes and Rather still insist that the forged National Guard documents are true.
I looked at the bio on the feature guy in the story. He's a mechanical Engineer, not a structural/civil engr. He does HVAC in big buildings, not big buildings.
Mr. Ayres is a nationally recognized expert in building air conditioning design and analysis, energy conservation, thermal energy storage, commissioning of HVAC systems, and earthquake damage to building mechanical systems, with over 55 years of experience.
as for the fire doesn't melt steel BS.
If steel wasn't considered structurally vulnerable (able to weaken) to fire, then why would the fire code in NYC require it to be "fire-proofed" with foam gunk or other materials.
The impact of the shredded planes blew through those floors and stripped all that gunk off those trestle girders
This cognitive dissonance from the far left is amusing and scary at the same time. They don't recognize that they hold diametrically conflicting ideas or world views and find nothing strange about that. "Bush is a mastermind manipulating the world and Bush is an idiot who can't walk and chew gum."
People that are so irrational that they are almost clinically insane are in danger of obtaining positions of power and becoming able to make decisions that affect the rest of us. Or.....maybe they are already there.
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/05/political-paranoia-of-left-parts-i-and.html
The JFK assasination conspiracy has at least some subplots and twists. The way the media and government worked was quite different 45 years ago.
This is just a mask for BDS. Yeah Rosie, fire does melt steel. And in case anyone is unclear, just because someone is an "engineer" it doesn't mean they are an expert in every damn thing in the world.
This is just a mask for BDS. Yeah Rosie, fire does melt steel.
two simple examples.
1. lots of folks have seen those Civil war pictures of troops (usually Union) posing in from of a big fire made from railroad ties, with the iron rails bent into pretzels lying on top? Admittedly those are iron rails, not steel, but the principle that iron/steel loses its strngth when hot prevails.
2. from my own background. Very very hard tough steel high velocity tank gun barrells start bending (sagging) after only a few shots. That is why the M tank's computers take that into consideration after every shot fired.
Drill Sgt: also old cavalryman here (2d Dragoons). And the hot sun beating down on a tank gun barrel will cause it to sag as well.
Although there are many pieces of "proof" the truthers rely on to sell their theory, here is one GLARING HOLE they NEVER address:
If BushCo was able to pull this whole, very complex 9/11 thing off so brilliantly, in order to set the stage to invade Iraq and steal the Iraqi oil, then why didn't they plant any evidence to show that Saddam was directly involved with 9/11, and why oh why didn't they plant some WMD's in Iraq to show they were right about that in the first place, both of which would have been very easy compared to the tremendous task of expertly wiring up two of the tallest building in the world with explosives without anyone noticing, and having them come down so cleanly after having two drone 727's slam into them!
Prof. Steven Jones (of controlled-demolition fame) is trying to correct things. You can still sign up for the training course on Peer Review he's giving tomorrow.
Ann, your argument has long been the most persuasive one against believing in any long-term, labyrinthine government conspiracy. I'm baffled by those who latch onto these things, but at least they were entertaining in X-Files.
It works like projection. There's something they don't want to believe.
Truthing is all just flak sent up, and to function doesn't have to make sense. It only has to prevent the obvious from being obvious.
Conspiracy thoeries are Fairy Tales for the paranoid. They serve the same function, provide the same degree of idealized comfort. But they're about as true as Snow White is about Romantic Love...
Dust Bunny Queen said...
This cognitive dissonance from the far left is amusing and scary at the same time.
People that are so irrational that they are almost clinically insane are in danger of obtaining positions of power and becoming able to make decisions that affect the rest of us."
sentence 1 is wrong. you will find most of the conspiracy theorists are right wing nut jobs who are waiting for the secret commie invasion as well.
sentence #2 certainly does explain Bush and Cheney.
Is Kevin Barrett is teaching this fall?
Oh where is The Smoking Man when we need him? He knows all the answers!
"Bobby Kennedy's assassin has been plotting 9/11 -- since 1968!"
I saw this one somewhere... Now that's planning! Even before the World Trade Center existed!
One thing that cracks me up about the "we did this to get Iraq oil" scenario is that it would have been much cheaper and easier to invade Venezuela or Nigeria, both of which produce more oil the US uses. (We could have even invaded Texas--okay, bad joke.)
hdhouse said...sentence 1 is wrong. you will find most of the conspiracy theorists are right wing nut jobs who are waiting for the secret commie invasion as well.
I think you are wrong, but perhaps we can agree that conspiracy theory guys are found across the spectrum "in the aggregate". However the distribution of nuts on any single conspiracy topic can be skewed left or right of the MEAN.
In this case, I think it is clear that the 9/11 Truthers are skewed Left, though there is a tail of them off to the right of the spectrum.
Course the folks that think that "Black helicopters" are gonna swoop down and "take our god given guns" from us are either off on the right end of the gene pool if white, or leftist militants if black.
The topic of the day: "9/11 wacko's" is a disease primarily of the left and highly correlated with BDS
As an owner of a large restaurant with 320+ employees in the late 80's, I found that those employees who believed in a JFK assassination conspiracy were usually my better servers and hosts, those that dealt directly with the public. We picked up on this every November 23rd, as discussion and observation of the day was a little more concentrated back in those days.
But I also found that I could not promote any of those employees into a management position, and I trained managers for other restaurants in our franchise. The JFK Truthers had way too many reasons when asked why something in the restaurant did or did not happen. And most of those reasons weren't credible.
I may be wrong, but I do believe there is a psychological disorder prevalent in those who, after seeing BOTH sides presented in the JFK or 9/11 incidents, continue to believe in conspiracies.
That is why Truthers may be good and nice people, but as a general rule, they are not fit to be placed in charge of a large number of others.
Sonicfrog asked: "If BushCo was able to pull this whole, very complex 9/11 thing off so brilliantly, in order to set the stage to invade Iraq and steal the Iraqi oil, then why didn't they plant any evidence to show that Saddam was directly involved with 9/11, and why oh why didn't they plant some WMD's in Iraq to show they were right."
Don't you see? It's ALL part of the plot. Their goal all along was to blow up the WTC (Why? 'Cause they thought it'd be funny. They're evil, remember?) Iraq was just to cover their tracks, just as Ann suggests. The bungled Iraq war PROVES Bush brought down the WTC. It's all very simple, really, once you see the The Truth.
On the "Nutters":
Vincent Bugliosi's New Book, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, does a tremendous job of analyzing the conpiracy mentality.
My favorite part:
Bugliosi was a keynote speaker at a legal conference, on matters unrelated to the assassination, in 1992. During the question and answer period, the assassination came up. Bugliosi asked how many of the 600 lawyers present believed in some sort of conclusion other than Oswald, acting alone, killing JFK. 95% of the audience raised their hands. Bugliosi then asked "What if could show you in less than one minute that you are intelligent people who are not thinking intelligently about the Kennedy assassination?" Despite cries of "you can't", Bugliosi asked that the time clock start, and asked first how many had read an article or book detailing a conspiracy theory - almost all of the same hands.
Then, saying that there are 2 sides to every issue, and wise people look at both before making a decision (after all, no matter how thin the pancake, there's always 2 sides), Bugliosi asked "And how many have read the Warren Commission Report"? You guessed it. No one.
Intelligent people not acting intelligently.
actually the Truthers have a comeback to the "bush incompetence" defense.
"THE JEWS DID IT"
specificly that Cheney outsourced it to the Mossad. Those sneaky jews are both competent and can keep secrets. Look at how they run the Media. That's why all the jews who work in the WTC didn't come to work and why the casualities were so low. 50,000 jewish bankers didn't show up at WTC that day.
I tend to think that conspiracy theorists are a cancer on democracy and seek to de-legitimize institutions The People create by telling us they secretly work against us. They are immune to rational argument and I personally feel the media and public should never give them any PR or accept them as "differing voices offering a dissenting position that must be debated."
I think that if you look at most conspiracies the end object is to slur the supposed conspirators through manipulation and dishonest use of the data.
An example is TWA Flight 800, supposedly shot down by a missile from a US Navy carrier task force. For that to happen, over 300 men and officers monitoring the air battlespace environment would have had to see the missile launch, the plane full of Americans destroyed, and then all parties and all the sailors that learned of the shootdown join in a 10-year long conspiracy to coverup mass murder.
Just so the conspirators could spread their poison in US society that the men and women of the eviiillll US Navy are capable of such acions.
Same with the assholes that claim the Mossad or the CIA on Cheney's orders killed 3,000 Americans at the WTC. The real target of the crackpots is not "finding the truth" - it is about destroying government legitimacy.
Another reason to detest and scorn these conspiracy people as not "harmless kooks" but the cancer they are was a reason that came from an Egyptian Engineer back when democracy was supposed to sweep the ME and reform it. The engineer said it would never work, because the Arab people are firmly in the grip of conspiracy theory. And Mullahs and government officials and corruption encourages conspiracy theory to displace anger onto the preferred targets.
"Everyone in Egypt KNOWS you invaded Iraq to take it's oil for the Jews. Your own Left supports that and their messages are reprinted by Mubarak's people." he said. "Did you know that a recent encephalitis epidemic was created by Jewish doctors? The whole conspiracy was well-laid out."
"And the Brotherhood has been successful in blaming ever ill of Egyptian society on conspiracies by Jews, Americans, Libyans, Mubarak's corrupt officials. High unemployment? That is the conspiracy by Mubarak to keep the youth jobless and powerless - it is thought to be carefully plotted out at the Interior Ministry. Our women are now almost all veiled compared to none just 15 years ago because the Mullahs have detailed a conspiracy by American Hollywood to turn our women into sluts...My own family believes much of that nonsense"
He said the Egyptians are incapable of democracy as long as his society is poisoned by widespread acceptance of conspiracy theory.
Imagine living in America where all your neighbors agree with Rosie O'Donnell theories, and the media pushed them relentlessly to deflect the masses from realizing the actual nature of America's problems. How much longer would our democracy function and last if they lacked any rational basis for what was responsible for various issues and problems and thus could no longer vote rationally and effectively on solutions?
I suppose the difference between the JFK conspiracy theory and the 9/11 conspiracy theory is that there is at least some credible evidence for the JFK assassination, while there is none at all for the 9/11 theory. Rational people can believe the former, but only a lobotomized chimp would believe the latter.
Sir Francis Bacon said it best:
"For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes"
anybody got a link to a credible discussion explaining the umbrella visible in the Zapruder film?
Althouse wrote:
Here's what really gets me about the 9/11 conspiracy theory. How can anyone believe it now? Of course, it was always completely crazy, but some people believed it anyway...
Yes, but you have people regularly commenting on your blog who refer to the science of global warming as a "fraud," a "hoax" and a "scam." Why do you find the backers of one goofy conspiracy theory crazier than the backers of another?
I don't know if I'd go as far as hdhouse and call most of them right wing. In fact, I'd say it's the opposite. In my experience, the majority of the truthers consider themselves extremely opposed to anything they perceive as associated with Republicans or as being even a shade right of center. When browsing the Screw Loose Change blog and JREF's (James Randi Education Foundation's) Conspiracy Theory subforum, the common insult is to call someone a "neocon", or a Republican, or a right wingnut, or to talk about how "your" party screwed up Iraq/Afghanistan/911, etc. Which is pure comedy, as many debunkers in the JREF forum tend to be liberals, and don't have any kind words for the current administration, yet don't fall into the trap of believing the conspiracy muck.
In spite of that split, I don't consider believing in conspiracy theories to be a left or right of political center issue. It's a credulity and critical thinking issue. I don't think being liberal predisposes someone towards acceptance of illogical theories. Rather, a good number of these headcases simply latch onto the memes that Republican=bad and consider themselves liberal in the sense they're opposed to those on the right, not liberal because they stand for liberal values. In fact, I do not think conspiracy addicts stand for any values, as they continually define themselves as being opposed to themes and values others espouse. If I had to classify them, I'd say they have a mix of reactionary mindsets with a philosophy oddly and schizophrenically espousing attitudes both anarchist (in the sense of defying any and all government actions) and semi-totalitarian (in the sense of government having great powers to investigate all the charges they make, undo all the activities the NWO/Illuminati/Neocons have committed, and stand vigilant against any power grabs by these shadowy groups).
But, it is most assuredly true that there are right wing headcases here and there who are truthers. Alex Jones is a prime example.
When I say that most truthers consider themselves leftists, I'm not tarring liberals/Democrats/any other categorization meaning "left of center" with that. Rather, it's more like truthers are trying to be part of a club that doesn't want them, and would never want such folks to begin with.
And preemtively, before the usual rush of truthers who inevitably storm any forum discussing 9/11 in any way at all and "ask questions" ("Hey, did you know that the building fell too fast?" "Hey, did you know a BYU scientist found traces of thermite??"... Gack!...), here are sites to arm yourselves with:
http://www.debunking911.com/
http://911myths.com/
http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=64 (Pay particular attention to the sticky links at the top: The "Gravy" links and the "Loose Change" movie debunkings).
http://www.jod911.com/
http://internetdetectives.biz/case/loose-change
Sorry to be so didactic, especially you all who already know this stuff, but the truthers' loaded questions always pop up when 9/11 is mentioned. It's like some of them continually monitor blogs just to spot opportunities to evangelize.
Yes, but you have people regularly commenting on your blog who refer to the science of global warming as a "fraud," a "hoax" and a "scam." Why do you find the backers of one goofy conspiracy theory crazier than the backers of another?
On the one hand you have a gang of proven screw-ups accused of successfully planning and carrying out the biggest screw-up in history, for reasons that make no sense to a rational human being.
On the other hand you have unfulfilled predictions of global ecological catastrophe from a crow which has already predicted six or seven of the last zero global ecological catastrophes. Some people are saying that the latest prediction, like predictions of massive population, complete ecological collapse from species extinction, global starvation, or any of the other disasters we were *supposed* to be decades in to by now, is just another load of crap from the usual crap purveyors.
While neither of the above positions is necessarily rational, the latter position is certainly much more *reasonable*. When environmental scientists have fed you a line of bullshit over and over again, you can be forgiven for assuming that their latest line is bullshit as well.
Pinky - you confuse scientific argument over phenomena with the assertion that a nefarious conspiracy of men as causative agents.
The gummint secretly beaming microwaves into the heads of people so they will obey commands to drink coke over pepsi - is a conspiracy theory.
An argument over evidence that the Exxon Valdez spill caused a drop in herring population in the 90s vs it just being part of the normal population cycle - is a scientific controversy. It may have political, economic, and cultural proponent's beliefs entering the controversy, but like global warming, it is bottom line an accepted scientific controversy being hashed out by the planets top scientists....
That seems like an interesting problem, Drill Sgt. Do the computers prohibit firing if the barrel is already a certain temp?
I think Bugliosi is right. Conspiracy theories are far more entertaining and time-consuming than the actual truths.
I mentioned elsewhere the A&E special "The Men Who Killed Kennedy", e.g. But then I saw Penn & Teller do a short but interesting debunking of the Kennedy assassination on their show--just one key point, that Oswald couldn't have done it--by performing a similar shooting stunt and pointing out that they weren't military experts.
Then I realized I had never heard the other side. By the time I got around to looking at it, nobody pitching the official story wanted to talk about it any more.
The difference between global warming and 9/11 conspiracies is that being skeptical about global warming makes more common sense than believing in it. What sense does it make that humans can affect in any major way the climate of the entire planet for more than a very short period of time. Therefore, you are going to need real science that can be proven in a lab to prove that humans are causing global warming. So far the global warming science is hokey and full of holes.
In contrast believing that Bush brought down the twin towers without anyone finding out about it makes no common sense at all.
Just to add to Rev's 1:53 PM comment, there's also the curious coincidence that the solutions advaced by advocates of this putative crisis - massive government control over people's lives and the disembowelment of corporate america - just happen to line up with the pre-existing political preferences of these people. A lot of climate change evangelists come across as people who possesed the solution long before they hit on the problem to justify it.
About TWA 800:
I went to a flight school for my undergrad, and I was listening to a talk by one of the NTSB board members who investigate the crash. He said he stood inside of the reconstructed fuel tank that was the source of the explosion and could see exactly where the explosion began and how it moved outward towards the skin of the aircraft (they pulled all the bits of exploded airplane pieces off the ocean floor and rebuilt the entire damn airplane!).
Then I had a class on cockpit management and information use taught by this guy who did 757 instruction for TWA and then AA. His support for the missile theory was that the exploding gas tank "didn't seem right" and was "kinda fishy"...
It was faith, not facts.
oh hai
scuze meeh
im in ur gummint
making warz
and fly teh planes
and melting ur steel lol
all ur cheezburgers r mine
oh plus
I is ur fathur
Yes, but you have people regularly commenting on your blog who refer to the science of global warming as a "fraud," a "hoax" and a "scam." Why do you find the backers of one goofy conspiracy theory crazier than the backers of another?
You're assuming she agrees with every comment that's ever posted on her blog?
"Bush (and Cheney!) deliberately staged the 9/11 attacks, killing 3,000 people, to allow them to slowly sort-of erode the Constitution, kinda, and provide a pretext for a war in Afghanistan [for a non-existent oil pipeline] and Iraq [to seize all of its oil to, er, sell on the open market rather than ship to the US for free], and have managed to keep anyone from finding out about it for the past six years.
However, even though they're murderous traitors, they didn't arrange for the 9/11 attacks [and secret controlled demolition] to happen during peak business hours on a busy day, thus giving them the first originally feared 'hundred thousand dead', which would have given them the tools to really scare us all into believing we're really in super mega danger and thus give them more powers.
They also haven't sneakily staged more attacks to "prove" they need more powers and support, and they didn't even bother to plant WMDs in Iraq to make their war look justified."
Yeah, thats never made any sense to me, either. If they're that good at secret plots, and willing to kill thousands to destroy the constitution and start wars, wouldn't it make more sense to kill more people and do it right, and then plant evidence to shut up most of the anti-Iraq-war complainers?
Hell, the absence of WMDs in Iraq is as close to proof of the innocence of the Administration in that regard as anything I can imagine.
Any Administration playing dishonestly and staging attacks on the US would certainly plant some evidence in Iraq - that's cheaper, easier, and much harder to detect! Plus it shuts up all the complaints about a) bad intelligence b) "lies" about WMD c) justification for being in Iraq.
It'd be utter stupid madness for any crooked President to not do so - but they maintain both that the President is both utterly crooked and an organizational genius (or his team is, to the same effect).
Speaking of Truthers, Kevin Barrett has an insane letter published today in Madison's Capital Times in which he accuses "Madison's Progressive News Source" of being war criminals.
...journalistic decision-makers are following in the footsteps of Joseph Goebbels -- a path that ends at the scaffold.
Cyrus Pinkerton: Apple meet orange.
John - Cyrus' wingman made the same error yesterday. ADS has predictable symptoms. ;)
as for the fire doesn't melt steel BS
Heh...I worked in a steel mill for five years and this was news to me.
blake said...
That seems like an interesting problem, Drill Sgt. Do the computers prohibit firing if the barrel is already a certain temp?
short answer: no
Longer answer: Those sorts of safety systems are found on field artillery systems. plus all sorts of rules about the number of rounds you can fire in a given time period. see, there safety is a real problem and since you are firing at things 10 miles away and nobody is shooting at you in the here and now, letting the guns cool off makes since. not firing isn't your problem.
Now in a tank, as Roger and I would point out, The other guy is within sight, and he is firing at you. and if he hits, you are most certainly dead, so the small chance of having YOUR gun explode due to overheating is a lot smaller than the chance of dying if you DONT fire. rate of fire is king. shoot till you run out of targets or bullets. our gunnery standard required us to locate, engage and destroy three enemy tanks, while moving in 11 seconds. total. we could consistently do it in about half that time. The quick and the dead.
In reality, you dont have a huge number of "ready rounds" say 20, so you fire till you dont need to fire anymore. then you shift ammo into the "ready racks" again. rinse and repeat.
back to the gun droop. Yes, Roger is correct, the ambient temp also plays a factor. The M1A2 has a Gun tube reference collimeter. (fancy name for a little gizmo at the end of the gun tube that tells the computer how much droop and where the end of the gun tube is.). most of the heat induced errors are droop. there are also some dispersion errors (bullets wobbling out of a hot wobbling gun tube. The other player in controlling this issue is the thermal shroud. a metal wrapper around the gun tube that tries to keep gun temps consistent across all parts of the tube. cause if the gun is uniformly hot you get just droop. if it is randomly hot in one spot and not another, you get a tube that "pulls to the right" for example and your shots miss to the right side of the tgt, which just pisses them off and you as well.
Hey! It's the 38th anniversary of the walk-on-the-moon hoax today. 38 years is a long time to keep a secret. Bush and Co. are pikers compared to NASA.
a.k.a. Mike
Ice160 - that's genuinely eye-popping stuff. I especially love the part where Barrett says that the Iraq war "dwarfs" the final solution. I know we talk about giving loonies like this enough rope with which to hang themselves, but maybe we should make it clear that in his case, it's not meant as a metaphor.
Keith Ellison of Minneapolis, the first-ever Muslim member of the House of Representatives (D-MN), with ties to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, is a fan of Kevin Barrett.
In his recent remarks to a group called Atheists for Human Rights, Ellison likened of 9/11 to the Third Reich:
"It’s almost like the Reichstag fire , kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they [the Nazis] blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted. The fact is that I’m not saying [Sept. 11] was a [U.S.] plan, or anything like that because, you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box–dismiss you."
In Kevin Barrett's essay “Interpreting the Unspeakable: The Myth of 9/11,” he wrote “Like Bush and the neocons, Hitler and the Nazis inaugurated their new era by destroying an architectural monument and blaming its destruction on their designated enemies.”.
So at least one US Congressman believes this stuff.
Cedarford,
You misread my post, again. I wasn't referring to those who don't agree with global warming science findings, or even those who don't believe in science of any sort. I'm specifically referring to those who contend that "global warming" is a "hoax" (i.e., a secret plot coordinated by climate scientists worldwide in an effort to deceive the public into believing the "myth" of climate change).
If you like to focus your comment on the point I raised, please respond appropriately. If you'd prefer to ignore the specific topic I addressed and instead babble mindlessly about whatever subject happens to cross your mind, please continue as you have been.
Pogo - notice how he qualifies the point: "I’m not saying [Sept. 11] was a [U.S.] plan, or anything like that because, you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box–dismiss you."
Everyone got that? Ellison isn't saying that he thinks it was a conspiracy. Why isn't he saying it? Because he disagrees with it? Because it's nuts? No, because saying it is how "they" "dismiss you." The subtext seems pretty clear.
So at least one US Congressman believes this stuff.
Yeah, but since he was affiliated with the Nation of Islam it was a given that he was an idiot long before he ever opined on 9/11.
Revenant,
Please see my response to Cedarford. You'll see that I'm referring not to those who disagree with global warming findings, but those who believe that global warming is a "hoax" (as I said in my original post).
When environmental scientists have fed you a line of bullshit over and over again...
Would you please provide me with examples in which the consensus opinion of environmental scientists has amounted to being "fed ... a line of bullshit over and over again?"
Sloan,
Reread what I wrote. I'm referring to those who argue that global science is a "hoax," not those who are global warming skeptics.
Simon,
Unless you are referring to climate scientists as those who, in your opinion, advocate "the disembowelment of corporate america," your comment isn't at all relevant. In order for global warming to be a "hoax," climate scientists would have to be in on the fraud.
Do you have any evidence that climate scientists favor "the disembowelment of corporate america?" In fact, do you have any evidence that politicians who have advocated various remedies for global warming (e.g., Al Gore, Tony Blair, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy) favor "the disembowelment of corporate america?" If so, what in your opinion do they stand to gain from it?
John Althouse Cohen wrote:
You're assuming she agrees with every comment that's ever posted on her blog?
Not at all. However, the global warming science "hoax" group post at Althouse on this subject fairly regularly. I would have thought that someone who finds the 9/11 conspiracy folk "crazy" would have at least noted that she has a small group of nutters who comment regularly on her blog about a climate "scam." IMO, the same irrationality that drives the 9/11 conspiracy theories lies at the heart of the global warming "hoax" conspiracy theory.
I'm not insisting that she comment, btw. She likely has a perfectly good reason for not remarking on it. Maybe it's a case of not biting the hand that feeds you.
Cyrus,
I'm not with the crowd (if such a crowd exists) who think it's a deliberate hoax. I think chickenlittle's 1:08 comment is right. Global climate crisis, if true, is an extraordinarily convenient truth for most of its proponents because it can be used to demand the kind of solutions - which concededly my earlier post was somewhat hystrionic about - of massive regulation of what businesses and individuals can and can't do that those people have long believed in. Do you think it's just coincidence that climate change is the orthodoxy of the left, and the solutions they advocate are basically the same solutions they advocate for everything else?
Well, this is really sad. Usually, with a topic like this, you get one or two true believers who somehow swing by. And they link to crazy stuff, which links to other crazy stuff, and it's highly entertaining.
Oh well.
I would have thought that someone who finds the 9/11 conspiracy folk "crazy" would have at least noted that she has a small group of nutters who comment regularly on her blog about a climate "scam." ... She likely has a perfectly good reason for not remarking on it.
Wha?! Make up your mind! Those two statements contradict each other.
Simon,
It is ironic that the CT was one of the first media outlets to give Barrett an undeserved aura of legitimacy and wider exposure by publishing his op-eds. His unhinging is complete now.
Simon wrote:
Cyrus' wingman made the same error yesterday. ADS has predictable symptoms.
Simon, I realize you are trying to offend but honestly, some of your responses demonstrate remarkably poor reading comprehension.
First, to correct the basic error you've made, I haven't assumed, as John suggests, that Althouse agrees with the global warming "hoax" bunch. Read what I wrote. Basically I ask her why she hasn't commented on the global warming "hoax" claims. As I see it, her failure to comment on the hoax claim so far does NOT indicate that she agrees with it. I'm a little surprised that you'd make such a basic logical error in assuming that.
Second, I don't have a "wingman," but based on the link you provided, I assume you are referring to the comment of Luckyoldson that you misread the other day. Now, to be fair to you, Lucky had a typo. Here's what he wrote:
What a blog.
An endless posts...trashing JFK
I assume he meant to write in the second line "And" rather than "An," although perhaps you read it as "An endless post..."
In context, it's most likely he meant it to read this way:
What a blog.
And endless posts...trashing JFK
Here is your "clever" response to him that you've linked to:
Unless I've missed a post, that's all been in the comments. Commenters' views ≈ the blogger's views?
Of course, that's not at all what Lucky was saying; you misread his post and responded with an irrelevant comment.
Simon, if you will, please read my comments carefully before responding. I shouldn't have to repeatedly correct other commenters who misread my posts. If you want to zing me, try to find a legitimate target before you strike.
Whatever. I'll concede the spectrum of nut jobs to Drill Sgt. In fact I'm not sure it has any party lines. However it is lunacy to ascribe a 9/11 plot to Bush and Co. As Lydia says in Bettlejuice, Otho, you can't even change a tire.
Cyrus,
You really are wearying. Your attempt to re-write LOS' comment doesn't accomplish anything: he argued that there were "endless posts" that were "trashing JFK." That's susceptible to two meanings. He could have meant there were endless posts on this blog trashing JFK, which is totally false and which I thus discounted. Or by "posts" he most likely means "comments" - in which case he's either equating Ann's views with those of commenters, who did trash JFK (which is what my rejoinder to him said), or he inferred Ann's views from what actions are or aren't taken by her in reaction to given comments (which is exactly what you did above, as noted by JAC.)
Pinky - You are still doing apples and oranges, as one poster said, in confusing a major scientific controversy with conspiracy. And your attempt to lump critics of global warming in with tinfoil hatters was as obvious as it was clumsy...along with your theatric plea for Althouse to notice such bloggers on her Blog..
In a major scientific controversy, numerous distinguished parties with solid academic standing confront the issue and make their case. There may be some politics overplaying the issue as part of a scam to benefit a group, for fraudulent or purely concocted data to be introduced then debunked (polar bears are dying in droves.....but that stuff is peripheral to the scientific debate, the forensics.
And rarely are there accusations of deliberate evil and criminality...the debate is civil with no effort to "achieve justice" against the parties one side disputes..
In a conspiracy the event has already happened - and the "truthers" come from a fringe with no solid standing as mainstream experts and attempt to introduce an alternate explaination of a small or impossibly massively large cabal (7-11,000 involved in hushing up the fake moon landings, 300-400 Navy personnel concealing their "murder" of over 100 Americans on TWA Flight 800) that "concealed the real truth" for nefarious reasons. And it is always with the goal being about bringing such conspirators to "justice, full account".
Please see my response to Cedarford. You'll see that I'm referring not to those who disagree with global warming findings, but those who believe that global warming is a "hoax" (as I said in my original post).
Ok.
So, cyrus -- who, exactly, are the people "people regularly commenting on [Ann's] blog" who claim that global warming is "a secret plot coordinated by climate scientists worldwide in an effort to deceive the public"?
Not me, not Simon, Fen, pogo, Sloansaurus; not hdhouse, Alpha, or Lucky; not Drill Sgt, Dustbunny, Beth, MadisonMan, Hoosier, or Internet Ronin... who, exactly, believes that, who posts here "regularly"?
Who are these straw men you're talking about who (a) regularly post here and (b) claim that there's a coordinated worldwide conspiracy of scientists? After you've established that they actually exist at all, THEN let's discuss whether or not they're worse than the 9/11 crowd.
Not me. Don't forget not to include me, Rev.
a.k.a. mike
Simon wrote:
Do you think it's just coincidence that climate change is the orthodoxy of the left, and the solutions they advocate are basically the same solutions they advocate for everything else?
Simon, since I'm currently living abroad, I have a different perspective than many if not most Americans. There is essentially no global warming skepticism in Europe. The "Left" and the "Right" agree on the fundamental science and only differ in the remedies they propose. Indeed, there are a few skeptics (as noted recently by the Royal Society), but I am unaware of any person or group insisting that there is a global warming "hoax."
In answer to your question, I don't see the exclusive overlap between global warming remedies and political interests of the "Left" internationally. See for example the proposals of Conservative leader David Cameron. I also note that nuclear power is one of the global warming remedies proposed in Britain--this hardly coincides with favorite options of the "Left."
I think political people are keen to use or abuse science and scientific findings as it serves their political interests. However, the view that worldwide scientific research is part of some grand "hoax" is far more troubling. From my point of view, it's nutty on a scale surpassing the 9/11 truthers.
John Althouse Cohen wrote:
Wha?! Make up your mind! Those two statements contradict each other.
It's sarcasm, John. I'm sorry it wasn't more obvious--I don't claim to have great writing skills.
The real conspiracy theory is that the evidence for WMD's in Iraq was falsified.
That is what liberals should be playing up.
Let's face it. Bush didn't need 9/11 to start a war in Iraq. It's not as if he used 9/11 to try and fight Al Queada. He's been ignoring them for the last 6 years . . .
Revenant wrote:
So, cyrus -- who, exactly, are the people "people regularly commenting on [Ann's] blog" who claim that global warming is "a secret plot coordinated by climate scientists worldwide in an effort to deceive the public"?
There are a few on your list who qualify. However, you are not one of them.
Within the last week, there was a blog entry about Gore. Among the comments were these remarks:
Gore's not going anywhere. He's merely a SoreLoserman leveraging the Climate Change hoax.
The global warming fanaticism is probably the biggest scam in the last 1000 years.
This isn't new; I've seen similar comments at Althouse before. I'm not going to go back and look at comments in previous blog entries with Gore or climate change as subjects. I have no doubt though that you'll find the same sentiments expressed by the same people.
There is essentially no global warming skepticism in Europe.
Given that Europe is also the center of anti-GM hysteria, that isn't a particularly impressive statement.
cyrus pinkerton said...
"Simon, since I'm currently living abroad, I have a different perspective than many if not most Americans. There is essentially no global warming skepticism in Europe."
You don't have to tell me that - I spent two decades living in England (which isn't exactly in Europe, but is increasingly of it), I grew up there. Children are reared on global warming orthodoxy. Heresy is not tolerated - which means that skepticism, if it comes, must come much later, and means rebelling against deeply-ingrained assumptions. That it's taken root is proof of nothing more than what can be accomplished in a school system that doesn't believe in providing children with the basic intellectual tools of adulthood - critical thinking, research, skepticism, the scientific method, and so forth.
"The "Left" and the "Right" agree on the fundamental science and only differ in the remedies they propose."
So what's your point? That there's a center-left consensus in Europe? Big deal. That's pretty well know
"I am unaware of any person or group [in Europe] insisting that there is a global warming 'hoax.'"
See my previous reply and Revenant's 5:01 PM comment. You keep asserting that there is a group not only out there in the wild, but on this very blog, who belive that climate change is a deliberate and orchestrated hoax. Who believes this?
"I don't see the exclusive overlap between global warming remedies and political interests of the "Left" internationally. See for example the proposals of Conservative leader 'David Cameron.'"
You may be living there, but you really haven't begun to comprehend if you think that citing David Cameron is an example of how "the right" is on board with something. David Cameron today is indistinguishable from the Tony Blair of 1997, and the party's going along with it because they are desparate to win. I've quoted this before, but there There used to be a joke about American politics in Britain, and it went as follows. America, it was said, has two political parties: the Republicans, who are very much like our conservative party, and the Democrats, who are very much like... our Conservative party. The premise was the supposed center-right homogeneity of American public life. I rather think that joke has now turned around. Britain today, I would say, has three political parties: and all three are very much like our Democratic Party. There is a center-left homogeneity to British politics that the Conservative party has galloped to occupy. Thatcher must be apalled, and I imagine Oakeshott raising a dispirited eyebrow from beyond the grave. Moreover, as I've pointed out before, even during the Thatcher period, British conservatives are far more statist than American conservatives. Thus, your point only holds water if we assume that (1) European conservatives support statist remedies and (2) European conservatives are unlike the American left - yet there is nothing in the mainstream of British political life today that we would recognize as "conservative" in any of the senses that word is used in American political discourse.
There are a few on your list who qualify.
Who, exactly? Why are you being so shy about naming the names? I mean, besides the fact that you'd then have to actually defend your claim, I mean.
Gore's not going anywhere. He's merely a SoreLoserman leveraging the Climate Change hoax.
That was said by Fen, and it was made clear in the follow-up posts that he did not mean "hoax" in the sense you're claiming he used it in. His claims were (a) that specific aspects of the Climate Change debate, such as the "hockey stick", were hoaxes (which is true) and (b) that global warming advocates ignore contradictory evidence, which is also true (Al Gore being an excellent example). The use of the term "hoax" may have been rhetorically sloppy, but no allegation of world-spanning conspiracy was made. He was referring to the fact that these people are peddling falsehoods for profit.
The global warming fanaticism is probably the biggest scam in the last 1000 years.
... which was said by "Joe", whoever that is. And his name wasn't on my list. So who are the other people on my list that supposedly think these things?
This isn't new; I've seen similar comments at Althouse before. I'm not going to go back and look at comments in previous blog entries with Gore or climate change as subjects.
Of course you're not. Because, like me, you did a Google search looking for "global warming hoax" and got about two dozen hits -- the two above, and the rest from lefties attacking the "hoax" straw man.
Cedarford wrote:
Pinky - You are still doing apples and oranges, as one poster said, in confusing a major scientific controversy with conspiracy.
Cedarford, I have to conclude that you are incapable of reading what you don't want to read. I specifically distinguish between global warming skeptics and those who believe global warming is a "hoax." Why you can't comprehend that is beyond me.
I'm going to have to stop responding to your posts unless you can focus on a point. It's a complete waste of my time to have to explain to you, repeatedly, what my original post said. If you can't catch on, I'm going to have to chalk you up as a lost cause and move on.
By the way, for the global warming skeptics here, I've noted recently that your favorite prominent global skeptic, Lindzen, made the following admission:
There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true.
I'll leap into the cesspool of global warming conspiracy theories :)
Revenant said: Who are these straw men you're talking about who (a) regularly post here and (b) claim that there's a coordinated worldwide conspiracy of scientists? After you've established that they actually exist at all, THEN let's discuss whether or not they're worse than the 9/11 crowd.
1. As was postulated earlier, there is a nice alignment between Global warming theory and world government / planned economy centralists. an alignment of interests.
2. there is also an alignment of interest between funders of research and climate scientists. If you want funding, you need to propose on topics and produce research that supports the conventional wisdom.
as for my own beliefs, I'm agnostic.
a. Is the world getting warmer? most certainly.
b. Is man producing lots of CO2, most certainly, though CO2 has been higher before.
c. Is the warming related to CO2 rather than solar radiation. No proven connection. In fact there is strong evidence of global warming on other planets in the solar system
d. is the warming irreversable? not clear. what is clear is that it was warmer a thousand years ago, when crops were grown in Greenland. Man didn't cause that warming cycle and the earth cooled after that.
e. if global warming is caused by manmade CO2, is that a bad thing? some places will grow more crops some less. overall?
f. if global warming is bad, can man do anything to reduce the problem? not clear.
Thanks for the explanation, Sarge. It highlights something that I think is necessary for a good conspiracy theory to take root: Ignorance.
In particular, the ignorance we all have of certain extraordinary circumstances--but also the ignorance of things that are not that extraordinary but outside of our day-to-day existence.
I mean, hell, you could hold up a match to a steel pin and say, "See? Fire doesn't melt steel!" Logic dictates otherwise but that's another story.
The fake moon-landing thing, though: We did it once, 35 years ago. What the moon-hoax people point out (like the moon's gravity not "looking right") is stuff that we have little good way to experience personally. Similar with some photographic artifacts and--there's that guy who says the Van Allen Belt would kill anyone who passed through it.
Similarly with 9/11: I seem to recall some surprise about the buildings falling that only made sense in retrospect (considering the full fuel tanks). And the Pentagon, you know, "where are the holes for the wings (that would be there if this were a cartoon plane crash)?"
It wouldn't be hard to write a convincing (to ignorant people) article on how the heat from firing shells would necessarily melt a tank nozzle, therefore, all that tank footage is just propaganda.
And some people would believe it. And if you did it as a joke, and said so later, it would be evidence that THEY had gotten to you.
cyrus pinkerton said...
"Within the last week, there was a blog entry about Gore. Among the comments were these remarks: Gore's not going anywhere. He's merely a SoreLoserman leveraging the Climate Change hoax. The global warming fanaticism is probably the biggest scam in the last 1000 years."
No name, no link. Just a vague assertion. Like your wingman LOS, you decline to provide links and expect other people to research your assertions, which basically obliterates your credibility.
"I've seen similar comments at Althouse before. I'm not going to go back and look at comments in previous blog entries with Gore or climate change as subjects."
Again, like LOS (and Freder, for that matter) you make assertions, playing fast and loose with the facts, and when challenged can offer no examples, and demand that the people who disagree with you do the research to back up your arguments.
Speaking of hoaxes, though, didn't Carl Sagan (et al) confess to fudging the "nuclear winter" scenario? I can't any cite for that.
I do know that the program was bad, though. Overly simplistic. Designed to show a particular result to create a particular movement.
And so, four guys (Sagan et al) launched a theory that was championed by thousands, and which was supposed to be used to shape global politics. The vast bulk of people pushing it believed in nuclear winter but it was not proven by any stretch.
That's what you call a hoax. You could even call it a conspiracy, but you have to realize only those four guys were in on it. (There was plenty of dissent, I think, but you don't get airtime by NOT advocating global catastrophes.)
Don't talk to me about computer simulations; I know the AGW folk like to say "climate is different from weather," and it is, but that doesn't make it any easier to predict, only longer to prove whether a prediction is correct.
Simon,
It isn't my fault that John and you misread my question to Althouse. That's a failure on your part to read with comprehension. I never imply that Althouse agrees with the global warming hoax claim. Your error.
No matter how you spin it, you misread Lucky's post. His complaint about the blog entry, and his second separate complaint about the posts (comments) did not imply that Ann endorsed the views of each of the commenters. Your reading of it that way was clearly incorrect. Again, your error.
Cyrus,
Both points in your 6:21 PM have been rebutted above and don't merit repetition of those explanations. Readers can make up their own minds, and I'm confident in resting on that.
Simon wrote:
No name, no link. Just a vague assertion. Like your wingman LOS, you decline to provide links and expect other people to research your assertions, which basically obliterates your credibility.
As usual, Simon, you've typed before thinking. Revenant politely asked me for examples. I provided quotes for him (i.e., did the research) and he quickly found the blog entry I referenced. Since it's late here and I'm working, I'm disinclined to look through old blog entries now. I hope Revenant will understand, and if he wants more examples, I will try to get to it tomorrow.
Again, like LOS (and Freder, for that matter) you make assertions, playing fast and loose with the facts, and when challenged can offer no examples, and demand that the people who disagree with you do the research to back up your arguments.
Incorrect, again. I did offer examples. I provided two quotes and referred to a recent blog entry. I made no demands of Revenant; rather, he asked me to provide examples, which I did.
I don't know how you get things so wrong sometimes.
If I get a chance, I will respond later to your bizarrely misguided comments about the state of science education in Europe and politics in Britain.
Oh, and just for the record, England IS in Europe. I would have thought that someone who lived there for two decades would know that.
Simon wrote:
Both points in your 6:21 PM have been rebutted...
Is that so? LOL! Well, what you lack in reading comprehension, you make up for in overconfidence.
Revenant,
There are several errors in your last post. Let me correct them quickly:
1. Who, exactly? Why are you being so shy about naming the names? I mean, besides the fact that you'd then have to actually defend your claim, I mean.
I don't have time at the moment to review old blog entries to collect names for you (it's 1 AM here). However, since you have access to the same archive, you can complete the search yourself if you feel an urgent need for names.
2. His claims were (a) that specific aspects of the Climate Change debate, such as the "hockey stick", were hoaxes (which is true)
LOL! Now the "hockey stick" is a "hoax!" On what basis do you claim the "hockey stick" is a "hoax?" And is there some bizarre new definition of "hoax" that you and Fen are using that doesn't involve deceit?
3. that global warming advocates ignore contradictory evidence, which is also true (Al Gore being an excellent example).
Give me some examples, please.
4. The use of the term "hoax" may have been rhetorically sloppy, but no allegation of world-spanning conspiracy was made. He was referring to the fact that these people are peddling falsehoods for profit.
Sorry Revenant, but the science of global climate change is not confined to America. If there is a "hoax," it is a worldwide "hoax." Also, please tell me who is peddling falsehoods for profit? And given that Fen scolds me for pointing to the fact that global warming skeptics like Lindzen are paid handsomely by the energy industry, why does acknowledgement of a profit motive tarnish the claims of global warming advocates but not global warming skeptics?
5. which was said by "Joe", whoever that is. And his name wasn't on my list.
No, the comment was made by Sloan.
6. Of course you're not. Because, like me, you did a Google search looking for "global warming hoax"
No. I wouldn't do the search that way. Since I've exchanged comments with these people, I'd go back to Althouse blog entries with relevant tags. "Gore" is the most likely tag to produce results.
Pinky - You are still doing apples and oranges, as one poster said, in confusing a major scientific controversy with conspiracy.
Cedarford, I have to conclude that you are incapable of reading what you don't want to read. I specifically distinguish between global warming skeptics and those who believe global warming is a "hoax." Why you can't comprehend that is beyond me.
No, I'm afraid it is you that is being argumentative and complaining that every other poster is somehow "misreading you".
My problem is that you confuse a major scientific controversy with a conspiracy case you continue to lamely try to make. That "certain posters", in their criticism of accepted European orthodoxy, are actually conspiracy theorists of the same ilk as the fake moon landing tinfoil hat crowd.
There is very little of that with global warming, save what comes from some kooks on the Left trying to make it into another reason to be anti-American and blame us for dying polar bears and shit - and the supply side unlimited growth and population growth exponents who think resources are without end, pollution sinks unlimited in capacity, and the more population explosion the better for all of us...
The center of the scientific argument is being handled professionally by scientists working with considerable private and government funding - working with universities, with donated free time on company supercomputers and with a range of experts in other disciplines that have nothing in common with charlatan conspiracy theorists.
I personally believe, by the way, that global warming is real and CO2 plays a contributing part. What I don't know, and the data doesn't show, is what the magnitude of the problem actually is - but what we presently know does not justify a major crashing in our standard of living or depopulating America like Europe is doing simply so China and India can burn fossil fuels without Kyoto limit..
Like with the GM ban and eradicating nuclear power, belief in the "magic health effects" of organic food - I think the Euroweenies jumped the gun and overreacted on the possibility that we face a global warming problem of future effects so severe, we have to begin dramatic, radical measures right now, while exempting much of the world from joining in the sacrifice.
If there is a real problem, then we should no go off half-cocked like the technologically illiterate Greenies wish with their dumb insistance that biomass, wind, solar and "using less" will work when alternate energy sources will amount to 5-8% of the energy mix at best. And we are looking not just at India, China and a billion others becoming modern energy users in a modern society where they are no longer subsistance farmers, but at exploding 3rd world populations that the same Greenies say have a right to live and work in the West.
Things now utterly lacking in the debate that the insipid little morons think can be solved "if only SUVs are banned and we embrace the glorious rays of the sun!"
"I mean, hell, you could hold up a match to a steel pin and say, "See? Fire doesn't melt steel!" Logic dictates otherwise but that's another story."
In all fairness - what little I'll ascribe to the truthers - this argument has degenerated from the original, slightly more erudite "theory", which went "Jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt the steel supports in the WTC buildings". It's actually factually true in one sense: If you just burn a puddle or container of it in the open (assuming the container itself wouldn't melt), then stuck a chunk of steel into it, it would never melt. It might soften quite a bit, but it would not turn liquid; most of the heat would just dissapate into the air. The lie in that "theory" was in inferring that jet fuel was the only combustible in the area, and to ignore how fires work inside structures (at the JREF forum, there's a firefighter posting "Basic principles of fire behavior", which is an interesting read to firefighting laypeople like me). Jet fuel melting steel by itself with no other considerations? Of course it wouldn't melt. But that was not the case with the Twin Towers, or the debris of those buildings post collapse.
"It wouldn't be hard to write a convincing (to ignorant people) article on how the heat from firing shells would necessarily melt a tank nozzle, therefore, all that tank footage is just propaganda."
Unfortunately, that's exactly the type of syllogistic argument truthers construct. I've seen far worse stretches of logic.
There are some more intelligent attempts around - one emeritus professor built a case for WTC steel melting due to explosives by "proving" (snort) there wasn't enough potential energy in a gravity collapse to explain the molten metal (notice the sophistry: He completely waves off the fires by citing an 800 degree figure from NIST which doesn't mean what he thinks it means, and uses that in his energy calculations. Or in short, he ignores what the firefighter taught me: Don't forget the other combustibles. They matter). Another engineer is challenging the "official story" with calculations of the potential energy available in the specific 9/11 collapse scenario. It doesn't prove his thesis on what did happen is correct (he believes thermite was used), but at least he's trying to make an intelligent argument.
But those are exceptions. Currently, the JREF'ers are seeing (and some of the Screw Loose Change posters are starting to see) people reversing the "fell into its own footprint story". The same ones who were in the beginning claiming that the towers nearly completely falling into their own footprint was proof of demolitions use are now claiming that the presence of wreckage outside the towers footprints are proof of demolitions use. Or in other words, their contradicting their own prior arguments. It's one thing to change one's conclusion because of new evidence - that's merely intellectual honesty - but it's a whole new level of sophistry to state one argument as proving something, then when shown that the exact opposite is true latch onto that exact opposite argument as the proof of your thesis. It's a mind boggling abuse of logic. But, that's conspiracy theorizing.
Cedarford wrote:
My problem is that you confuse a major scientific controversy with a conspiracy case you continue to lamely try to make.
Wrong again. I understand clearly that you misread my original post. Fine, I accept this limitation of yours.
What do you misunderstand about my post (at 3:45 PM) to you in which I write:
I wasn't referring to those who don't agree with global warming science findings, or even those who don't believe in science of any sort. I'm specifically referring to those who contend that "global warming" is a "hoax"
Or for that matter, my post at 3:49 PM:
I'm referring not to those who disagree with global warming findings, but those who believe that global warming is a "hoax"
Or my response to Sloan at 3:54 PM:
I'm referring to those who argue that global science is a "hoax," not those who are global warming skeptics.
Or my response to you at 6:05 PM:
I specifically distinguish between global warming skeptics and those who believe global warming is a "hoax." Why you can't comprehend that is beyond me.
etc...
Cedarford, why is this so hard for you to comprehend? Please try harder.
Cyrus: I don't accept your comparison between Global Warming skeptics and 9/11 conspiracy theorists. 9/11 is an event that already occurred, and questions people have about it can mostly be answered through research of the facts.
The Global Warming Consensus is a theory of human-caused climate change heading towards disaster that's based on models, speculations, forecasts, and predictions, as well as suggesting solutions that are painful but may not actually do any good. The majority of scientists have often been wrong on these sorts of things in the past. I'd think that people who are overly confident they know the truth would not have to demonize skeptics as you are doing. Your demonization makes some people more skeptical, because it makes Global Warming Censensus look like a religion.
----
Cyrus: There is essentially no global warming skepticism in Europe.
Off the top of my head, Czech President Vaclav Klaus believes there's a lot of propaganda in Global Warming. And I've seen some articles in British newspapers offering alternative theories for climate change from European scientists (that the sun is causing some of it) which I'm not in a position to assess.
And, in Denmark, Bjorn Lomborg - director of Copenhagen Consensus and Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute - believes global warming is real, but that the hype over the issue causes politicians to support costly but ineffective and inefficient "solutions" like Kyoto, which stifle our economic and technological advancement (that is, the things that help us actually solve problems).
And, he wrote: There is another reason why it is wrong - I would even say amoral - to overplay the case for combatting climate change. We cannot do everything. Our resources are limited, and our attention is quickly diverted from one fashionable cause to another. We must ask ourselves if spending $150 billion every year for the rest of the century to postpone warming for six years is really the best use of that money.
For the cost of implementing Kyoto in just one year, we could permanently provide clean drinking water and sanitation to everyone on the planet. Of course it is unlikely that Emmerich will cast Brad Pitt as a sewage engineer in Kenya for his next glamorous movie. Nor are there many good plotlines to be made from tales of a government which invests in malarial vaccines, or of a global conference called to remove trade barriers. But these are real options that policy-makers face every time they spend a dollar with the intention of easing human suffering.
The world needs a rational basis for making such priorities.
You continue: I don't see the exclusive overlap between global warming remedies and political interests of the "Left" internationally.
Maybe not, but I often read blogs of libertarians in Europe and they talk about the Left using global warming hype to advance anti-capitalist agendas.
Here's an example from a speech by Swedish libertarian author/blogger Johan Norberg:
So the rich get richer, and the poor get richer even faster than the rich. Both Marx and Lenin were wrong. Enter a modern socialist like economist Robert Heilbroner. In 1989 he famously admitted:
“Less than 75 years after the contest between capitalism and socialism officially began, it is over: capitalism has won. The tumultuous changes taking place in the Soviet Union , China , and Eastern Europe have given us the clearest possible proof that capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism.”
But Heilbroner did not make peace with capitalism. Zero-sum mentalities don’t die easily. Someone would have to pay for this success, right? Right. Heilbroner said that he was still opposed to capitalism, but now because it would result in heavy cost to the environment. After having been opposed to capitalism because it would create waste, inefficiency and poverty a socialist could now be opposed to capitalism because it was too efficient and created too much wealth, because that would destroy nature.
That's sorta been Rush Limbaugh's take, a take some Europeans have come to independently. Norberg is concerned about the environment, and in his speech he gives a case for why capitalism helps us deal with environmental problems. So why do environmentalists want to stifle it?
I agree there's less skepticism in Europe that global warming is happening, and I myself don't believe it's all a hoax, nor do I oppose taking some steps "just in case". I merely suspect it's being hyped, and the fear-mongering is being used by the Left. Some people in Europe can see that, too.
BTW, for those of you who have asked me to answer your questions, I'll ask you to return the favor. Revenant, see my post at 3:49 PM. Simon, see my post at 4:02 PM.
loafingoaf,
I appreciate your thoughtful response, but it's now past 3 in the morning here and I'm not going to give your comment the careful reply it deserves until the morning. However I want to make clear one important point that I think you've missed.
I'm not referring to global warming skeptics, as you assume. I'm referring to those who believe that climate scientists are deceiving the public by promoting a global warming "myth." These people deny that there is a scientific basis for climate change predictions.
Also, I don't deny that there are some climate change skeptics in Europe. What I said is that they are a much smaller minority than in the United States.
That's all for now. I'll respond more fully later.
I am unaware of any person or group insisting that there is a global warming "hoax."
I think perhaps some on the right think its a hoax in the sense that 1) Man is causing it or 2) a naturally occurring phenomena being exploited by global warming proponents to advance their agenda. I don't think its much of a coincidence that after the fall of the Soviet Union, global warming has become the cause celebre of the left. Communism was clearly unappetizing but its much easier to sway the masses when you show polar bears dying and NY under water.
So in that sense, some may see it as a 'hoax'. I for one simply believe climate changes. Indiana was covered by a glacier once so it clearly got pretty darn warm at one point to melt it and I don't think SUVs and corporate jets contributed to it.
Cyrus: Good grief, when you have to spend 20 posts to argue that what you meant in a two sentence post 8 hours ago, you might want to consider that its you not being clear, rather than blaming us for misinterpreting you.
I've not gotten to this point in life not being able to understand people speaking clearly.
I don't have time at the moment to review old blog entries to collect names for you (it's 1 AM here). However, since you have access to the same archive, you can complete the search yourself if you feel an urgent nee for names
So first you claim that multiple people who post here regularly believe there is a worldwide conspiracy to trick people into believing in global warming.
Then, you claimed that several of the names I mentioned were among the guilty.
Now, you're claiming that you haven't actually looked up any names because you're too busy and it is late. In other words, your second claim was a lie (you don't know the names and thus couldn't know they were among those I cited) and your first was a wild guess at best.
And you think *I* should waste my time looking for these names? Your reading comprehension skills are obviously lacking, because I thought I'd made it quite clear that I think the reason you didn't name names is because the "regular posters" with those beliefs don't actually exist.
Oh, and by the way -- that bullshit about you being "too busy" to look up names because it is so late in the evening would have been a lot more believable if you hadn't written another couple of thousand words worth of posts during the couple of hours following the one I'm responding to here. You've got plenty of time to sling more bullshit, just no time to back up the stuff that's already been slung.
Give me some examples, please.
I'll think about it after you provide that list of names I requested hours ago.
But even if Fen and I are wrong about the hockey stick and Al Gore's deceptiveness (which I do not think we are), that doesn't mean that Fen was claiming a worldwide conspiracy when he used the word "hoax" -- ergo he still doesn't make your mysterious list of nameless, paranoid hoax-believers that allegedly infest the comments section here.
Sorry Revenant, but the science of global climate change is not confined to America. If there is a "hoax," it is a worldwide "hoax.
Your reading comprehension's on the blink again. Even if we assume that Fen was speaking of the global warming panic industry as a whole, he wasn't speaking of it as a conspiracy.
The porn industry consists almost entirely of plotless, all-sex porn -- not because there's a conspiracy, but because that's what the market wants. There's been a multibillion dollar market in ecological catastrophe for nearly half a century now, which means people produce product to serve that market. No conspiracy is necessary.
Another part of the problem is that the environmental sciences are a field with a lot of very strong moral beliefs associated with it, and which tends to attract people who are already environmentalists before they ever learn enough actual science to make informed judgments about the state of the world. This means that -- unlike, say, physics or chemistry -- the environmental sciences tend to be populated by people with pre-existing strong moral and spiritual beliefs about the state of the world and its relationship to humanity.
So what you have, then, is tens of billions of dollars of research money from governments and organizations that really, really want to hear about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket -- because that's what their budgets depend on, and people have a miraculous ability to convince themselves that anything that makes them money is an absolute good -- chasing after a pool of scientists comprised largely of people who thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket before they ever took a college course. That this scenario produces results indicating the world is going to hell in a handbasket is completely unsurprising.
Since I've exchanged comments with these people, I'd go back to Althouse blog entries with relevant tags.
How amazing that you are able to clearly remember the conversations you had with them, yet unable to remember their names.
Cyrus: I'm specifically referring to those who contend that "global warming" is a "hoax" (i.e., a secret plot coordinated by climate scientists worldwide in an effort to deceive the public into believing the "myth" of climate change).
"Hoax" was my term, but I never proposed any such conspiracy theory. You're making stuff up to discredit me, a standard tactic Global Warming fanatics employ against skeptics.
Revenant: That was said by Fen, and it was made clear in the follow-up posts that he did not mean "hoax" in the sense you're claiming he used it in. His claims were (a) that specific aspects of the Climate Change debate, such as the "hockey stick", were hoaxes (which is true) and (b) that global warming advocates ignore contradictory evidence, which is also true (Al Gore being an excellent example).
Precisely. Thanks for the read.
The use of the term "hoax" may have been rhetorically sloppy, but no allegation of world-spanning conspiracy was made. He was referring to the fact that these people are peddling falsehoods for profit.
Yes, I admit it WAS rhetorically sloppy. I was mentally associating "Kyoto Hoax" with Global Warming when I used the term. My mistake. Hope that clears things up for Cyrus.
Cyrus: LOL! Now the "hockey stick" is a "hoax!" On what basis do you claim the "hockey stick" is a "hoax?" And is there some bizarre new definition of "hoax" that you and Fen are using that doesn't involve deceit?
Mann deliberately ommitted cooling evidence/data from his model that didn't dovetail with his conclusion. That involves deceit.
Likewise, Gore took a global warming report signed on by ~1000 scientists and presented it with a summary coversheet that did not accurately represent the findings of the report. I think Ann had a similar experience with this shenanigan when she signed on to a constitutional scholar's petition defending Clinton from impeachement.
My use of hoax was perhaps sloppy, fraud would have been more precise:
48 results for: fraud
1-10 of 48 results Next »
Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus - Cite This Source
Main Entry: fraud
Part of Speech: noun 1
Definition: deception
Synonyms: artifice, bamboozlement*, bamboozling, blackmail, cheat, chicane, chicanery, con, craft*, deceit, double-dealing*, dupery, duping, duplicity, extortion, fake, fast one*, fast shuffle*, flimflam*, fourberie, fraudulence, graft, guile, hanky-panky*, hoax, hocus-pocus*, hoodwinking*, hustle*, imposture, line, misrepresentation, racket, scam, sell, shakedown*, sham*, sharp practice*, skunk*, smoke*, song*, spuriousness, sting, string, swindle, swindling, treachery, trickery, vanilla
http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/fraud
Hope you're having a good weekend Cyrus.
Fen wrote:
Mann deliberately ommitted cooling evidence/data from his model that didn't dovetail with his conclusion. That involves deceit.
Fen, I appreciate your efforts in previous threads to address at least some of the scientific issues relating to the original Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) (MBH98) "hockey stick" reconstruction. However, your statement above is NOT an accurate assessment of the situation.
There have been legitimate technical issues raised concerning proper application of principal component analysis (PCA). These issues relate to the use of different conventions for normalizing data. This is one of the main criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick (2005) (MM05). MM05 also question the use of bristlecone pine data in the MBH98 reconstruction.
Recent work by Rutherford et al (2005) and Moberg et al (2005) address these concerns. In each case, the basic "hockey stick" reconstruction remains. That is, the new reconstructions show that the late twentieth century hemispheric warmth is anomalous, in agreement with the conclusion in MBH98.
BTW, for the sake of accuracy, it was McIntyre and McKitrick who censored key proxy data from the original Mann dataset.
Fen, I particularly like hocus-pocus as a synonym for fraud; it would be magical if you would find a way to use it in your comments.
I hope you are enjoying your weekend too.
Fen wrote:
"Hoax" was my term, but I never proposed any such conspiracy theory. You're making stuff up to discredit me, a standard tactic Global Warming fanatics employ against skeptics.
Yes, you used the word hoax in reference to climate change science. I attributed nothing to you, not even the quote. Since I made a point of not identifying the source of the quote, how have I discredited you?
To be accurate, I wouldn't classify you as a global warming skeptic. To my way of thinking, a global warming skeptic is familiar with climate science and has a scientific basis for reaching a different conclusion. I judge you to be a disbeliever of one sort or another, not a skeptic.
The word "hoax" refers to a "plot to deceive," or alternatively "a fake or fabrication." I don't buy Revenant's suggestion that there is some other "sense" of the word "hoax" that doesn't involve deceit. In any case, Revenant undercuts his silly argument anyway when he assigns this opinion to you:
[Fen] was referring to the fact that these people are peddling falsehoods for profit.
"Peddling falsehoods for profit" sounds like fraud to me. If you scan your list of synonyms for fraud, you will see the word "hoax." In other words, Revenant seems generously to be letting you have it both ways. It appears to me that your complaint should be with Revenant; he is the one discrediting you.
Cyrus: Yes, you used the word hoax in reference to climate change science. I attributed nothing to you, not even the quote.
Yes, you did:
"I'm specifically referring to those who contend that "global warming" is a "hoax" (i.e., a secret plot coordinated by climate scientists worldwide in an effort to deceive the public into believing the "myth" of climate change)." - Cyrus 3:45 PM
Cyrus: Since I made a point of not identifying the source of the quote, how have I discredited you?
I was the only one to use the term "hoax". And you chose to attribute a stawman argument to my use if the term:
"(i.e., a secret plot coordinated by climate scientists worldwide in an effort to deceive the public into believing the "myth" of climate change)." - Cyrus 3:45 PM
60 some odd comments could have been rendered unnecessary had we (the collective group) adhered to the principle of defining one's terms.
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