‘But there were these climate scientists at the University of East Anglia,’ you’ll chirrup, excitedly. ‘And leaked emails show that they were conspiring to conceal research that…’ Yeah, whatever. Not interested. So some of them are crooks. It’s like giving up on doctors because of Harold Shipman. I appreciate that you lot don’t like to be called ‘climate change deniers’ because of the implied Holocaust equivalence but, melodramatic as it is, the comparison hasn’t come from nowhere. You are the forces of anti-science, anti-reason and anti-fact. Your natural bedfellows are the 9/11 Truthers — people who believe that the way to deal with something frightening which they don’t understand is to recast it as part of a convoluted fantasy which they do. Go back a few hundred years, and it’s people like you who would have cried ‘witch’ and run for the kindling when the village crone predicted that bad things might happen if you shagged your sister.
Translation: I don’t care if he is beating his wife, she probably deserved it.
I will bet a million dollars this guy has not even spent 5 minutes at a science-based skeptics site. He is basically saying “once I willfully ignore all science-based skeptics, I come to the conclusion there are no science-based skeptics.”
Mr. Rifkind and his lot are welcome to send my any critiques of my video on the science of the skeptics position. Operators are standing by.
Actually, Hugo, you’re in the very crowd that’s crying “Witch” in its 21st Century guise, as part of the anti-scientific AGW Panic…which bears great resemblance to the (at that time ‘consensus science’) Witch Craze of the late middle-ages & early enlightenment period, in almost every regard….
“It’s like giving up on doctors because of Harold Shipman”
actually, it’s more like giving up on madoff securities because of bernie…
After this CRU story broke, I have had some discussions with faculty colleagues (chemists) who are otherwise really quite smart and rational. They more or less gave me the same song as Mr. Rifkin, even going so far as to uncritically parrot terms such as “denialists”. Not interested in looking at the evidence themselves.
It is really amazing to see what group think and herd instinct can do, even to intelligent people.
Great example of the pot-calling-the-kettle-black syndrome. Can you imagine any more self-righteous, arrogant people calling others what they so evidently are? Their blindness is staggering. It scares me how insane people are around these issues today; denial in bucket fulls. What is frightening is that rationality is not only discarded but its opposite is embraced as mainstream.
It comes from letting someone else do your thinking for you. Not surprising, since the entire educational system is geared to creating the “appeal to authority” mindset.
Just decide what is the politically correct authority, then twist your brain into pretzels justifying anything the authority might say.
It’s the grand tradition of authoritarian societies everywhere, from Adolf to Fidel to Pol Pot to Kim to Mao to Stalin to Barrack.
“I will bet a million dollars this guy has not even spent 5 minutes at a science-based skeptics site.”
That statement seems overly strong. It could take him five minutes just to type statements involving “denier” and “Exxon” and “earth-rapist” and other meaningless accusations. However, there could be a good chance that he has spent less than 5 minutes in trying to understand scientific-based questions and issues found at skeptic sites.
Adiff, you took the words right out of my keyboard, no one resembles a baying mob shouting “burn the witches” more than the warmists do. Shouting “Denier Denier” does not constitute an argument. Warmists, If you really do have an argument, stop the name calling and present it and if we are unable to refute it, you win.
There has been a brief period of mild winters and hot summers which now appears to have come to an end. there has now been a short period of unsettled and wetter than usual weather resulting in fairly severe localised flooding. Scientific studies have predicted catastrophic temperature rises, not only have these predictions failed to happen but the methods used in predicting them have now been completely discredited.
If rational people are to be convinced that catastrophies of literally Biblical proportions are just around the corner you are going to have to do a little better than name calling.
“Go back a few hundred years, and it’s people like you who would have cried ‘witch’ and run for the kindling when the village crone predicted that bad things might happen if you shagged your sister.”
To expound on adiff’s comment, Hugo’s anlogy is interesting, as it rather well fits the global warming bandwagon’s actions; who, after all, is running around saying that bad things are going to happen based on some nefarious predictions that the village of global warming’s wizards are making? Instead of “shagging your sister” though, substitute “released CO2 into the system.”
It’s interesting that (in Germany at least, if not more generally) the “Witch Craze” of the early modern era was triggered by a rapid change in climate (i.e. onset of The Little Ice Age)… The various experts of the Church organizations and academics decided that ‘maleficium’ was to blame (since they,of course, couldn’t find anything else…it must be witchcraft, eh?) These experts constructed an entire body of ‘science’ demonstrating the agency of witchcraft, proving its existence, and providing policy to address it (most notably ‘witch finding’, trials and executions). This body of ‘consensus science’ was defended against the occasional skeptic (read: “denier”) and general common sense without any vast explicit conspiracy, simply via the agencies of mass hysteria, herd mentality and ulterior self-interest (after all, who has any use for witchcraft scientists if there isn’t any witchcraft crisis, or even witchcraft itself?). Folks as intelligent as Hobbes and Bacon were suborned. Bacon started out skeptical, but as the weight of published articles (or what passed for such then) so overwhelmingly supported a witch crisis, came to believe it simply must be true. Hobbes began by lending credence to the consensus of expert opinion, but eventually decided the arguments weren’t valid, no matter how popular. Today we see a ‘twist’ on the phenomenon, with a very real scientific realm (climate science) being suborned by ideology, belief and emotional advocacy, producing something very much akin to that earlier Witch Craze. And it’s almost certain to have the same kind of impact: hundred of thousands (if not millions in this case) of innocent victims, essentially ‘burned at the stake’ of ’emissions reductions of CO2′, and again most will have been poor, members of marginal communities, and … yes …. especially in Africa, women. My guess is that after all is said and done, the net result (beyond the aggregate individual want, suffering, death and lost productivity) will be the discrediting of the ‘Environmental Community’ in particular, and ‘Science’ in general, from any direct role in policy making, much as the first such craze cut further intrusion by the Church into politics ‘off at the knees’ for generations afterward.
Science, as represented by the government-academic conglomerate, appears to have veered rather badly ‘off track’!
Adiff, good story. However, I would leave out the analogy of burning witches and starving Africans. If we really cared, we could afford to lift Africa out of poverty, with or without carbon taxes and similar.
I believe the Copenhagen Treaty Summit should be cancelled! How in God’s name can this be considered a legal agreement when a Huge Amount of the basis for the Climate Change Data has been found to be Fraudulently Sabotaged and absolutely Inaccurate? This is signing an agreement Document that has no Legal Foundation of Realistic conditions or elements due to inaccurate and Manipulated Data as described and therefore, anything stated on this Copenhagen Treaty Document should be considered Null and Void! Why create a Pandora’s Box, subject to Lawsuits and Misgivings due to total inaccuracy of Scientific measurements? Which now is proving to be the case! This Treaty has no Legal ground to stand on and is and will be a False Document from day one!
Any lawyers want to help out by filing this Copenhagen Treaty be classified as an illegal Treaty!
There are four reasons the UN and IMF, Global Elitist Members Re: Ban Kai Moon ( Who has openly expressed his stong desire for Global Governance ), PM Gordon Brown, Bilderberg Member Henry Kissinger, Senior Bilderberg Member David Rockefeller as well as an unprecedented number of Dictators that run various countries who are members of the United Nations this Copenhagen Treaty that was designed to acquire four goals, the least of them being climate improvment or protection as Lord Moncton has stated!
(1.) To de-industrialize Sovereign Countries ( No Jobs keep you dependant on State ) ( 2.) Take your money and assets – Hence, Fraudulent Carbon Emmissions and Carbon Gases for Carbon Credits and Carbon Taxes! (3.) Take away your property (4.) Take away your Sovereignty and Freedom!
Check out what Government is doing behind your back at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU
http://www.gopetition.com/online/32485.html ( For Canadians who do not wish to lose their Sovereignty should PM Stephen Harper sign the Copenhagen Treaty )
“Mr. Rifkind and his lot are welcome to send my any critiques of my video on the science of the skeptics position. Operators are standing by.”
You’ve proven enough times that you don’t have a clue how to respond when your idiotic beliefs are shown to be wrong. You just ignore criticism and simply repeat your bullshit ad nauseam. You are really a tragic case of someone too stupid to understand how stupid they are.
Huter: Excellent post! When you can’t respond with factual rebuttal, respond with vitriol! Bravo!
Hunter – you are a godsend! Keep blowing hard, brother/sister, you just might convince more people to look at the data (now there’s some positive feedback for you). After all, in the time it took for your brain to react to the “insult” to your dogma, someone started to educate themselves on the issue. You’re doing much good in this world – we can’t thank you enough.
“You are really a tragic case of someone too stupid to understand how stupid they are.”
I know you are, but what am I?
(Or was that response too mature for the likes of Hunter?)
hunted is sounding more and more desperate.
Mike, No matter how much wealth you threw at the problem (persistent African economic under-performance) you’d find it impossible to “lift Africa out of poverty”. That can only be done by the Africans themselves. Most of the nations of Africa have intensely counter-productive governmental and social systems. Until they repair these, no outside assistance can change the productive profiles of those states. About the only end of any massive outside assistance effort would be a temporary enrichment of small groups of thugs (the very ones running…and ruining…those states today!)
Ah, but all this belongs in another blog-site altogether!