Michael Moore for Dummies
Guest post by Rod McLaughlin
Unlike many readers of this site, I have environmentalist sympathies. I think green anarchist turned film-maker Craig Rosebraugh once did some good. When he organized the “Liberation Collective” in old town Portland, or organized protests against police excesses, he was doing something useful. When he was a spokesman for extreme environmentalists, this was not “eco-terrorism”. Burning down an empty building in the middle of the night is not terrorism: it doesn’t terrorize anyone.
The only genuine eco-terrorist is Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber”. One of the most effective bits of Rosebraugh’s new documentary, “Greedy Lying Bastards”, is when it shows a billboard put up by the skeptic Heartland Institute, with a picture of Kaczynski, and the legend “I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?”. But Heartland’s idiotic mistake has nothing to do with the facts of global warming. It doesn’t show that the medieval warming period didn’t happen. It doesn’t prove that the warming in the last century was unprecedented and man-made.
Rosebraugh is shameless in using guilt by association. He tries to give the impression that global warming “deniers” tend to be American knuckledraggers, ignoring sane, smart people around the world who doubt the global warming hysteria. For example, he forgets to tell us that the three most prominent Canadian skeptics boycotted Heartland because of the above-mentioned own goal.
Left-wing American documentaries, like this one, or Michael Moore’s, or one I saw about the evils of Walmart, tend to insult the viewer by bombarding her with one side of the story, and words like “lying”, “greedy” and “bastards”. Watching Rosebraugh’s movie, every time the narrator said that there is lying and greed on the skeptic side of the debate, I wondered whether he’d consider if these vices occur among the promoters of climate change “theory”. He did not.
Unflattering shots of one’s opponents, selective information about funding, tear-jerking anecdotes about sea level rise, and shots of hurricanes and fires, with no statistical analysis to show if these events really did increase during the 20th century. All this Rosebraugh learned from Michael Moore, who has been criticized for “dumbing down the left”. Rosebraugh does the same with environmentalism.
To be fair, Rosebraugh did mention billionaire George Soros funding warm-mongering organizations, as well as the mega-rich Koch brothers backing “climate change deniers”, but only in passing.
It doesn’t matter if the CEO of Exxon says global warming is not unprecedented and anthropogenic, because it’s in his company’s interests. This has no bearing at all on whether or not it’s true. It’s the old “self-serving argument” fallacy. Just about any argument and its opposite serves someone: you have to figure out whether it’s right or wrong independently of interests.
Rosebraugh chooses the most plausible-sounding defenders, and implausible critics, of the anthropogenic global warming position. Worse, he almost avoids citing any of the numerous scientifically-trained skeptics. An honest approach would be to interview Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKittrick, who first broke Michael Mann’s “hockey stick”. Or Joanne Nova, or Anthony Watts, the creator of Watts Up With That. Or Judith Curry, a scientist of whom Michael Mann revealingly wrote “I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause”. Skeptical professor Richard Lindzen does appear, but not for long enough to explain his rejection of climate change hysteria.
For his leading climate skeptic, Rosebraugh chooses Christopher Monckton, who, by carefully selecting from his presentations carefully, is made to look like a nut. In reality, he’s merely eccentric. If you read his stuff, Monckton has a grasp of logic unheard of among warm-mongers, misanthropists and fluffies. Rosebraugh tries to refute Monckton’s views on the grounds that he isn’t “a scientist”. This is a variant of the logical fallacy of “argument from authority”.
This implies that you must accept what scientists say. So what do you do when they disagree? Two giants of science, Richard Dawkins and Edward Wilson, recently had a debate about kin selection theory. Dawkins used the number of scientists who support him as an argument. Wilson showed no mercy: “It should be born in mind that if science depended on rhetoric and polls, we would still be burning objects with phlogiston and navigating with geocentric maps.”
Michael Moore
I’m not a scientist either, but I understand logic, and the work of Karl Popper on scientific method. I know that ad hominem, post hoc ergo propter hoc, ad populam, and ad verecundiam arguments have no validity.
I first became a skeptic when I read climate “scientists” using the word “consensus”. Anyone with even a cursory familiarity with scientific method knows that that word is not in a scientist’s vocabulary.
In contrast, the argument of Rosebraugh’s documentary, like the global warming movement in general, relies on “scientific concensus”. It can therefore be dismissed out of hand.
Rosebraugh deals with the “Climategate” revelations of 2009 as follows:
· he presents the scandal as a conspiracy to derail the Copenhagen climate talks
· he claims, without evidence, that the emails were “stolen” from the CRU in East Anglia
· he uncritically accepts Michael Mann’s assurance that the emails were quoted “out of context”
· he fails to mention that all the emails are online, so we can judge if phrases like “Hide the decline”, “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith?”, “Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same?” and “We have to get rid of the medieval warming period” are less damning in context – they aren’t
· he claims that the various inquiries exonerated the warmists, without saying how
Another technique he borrows from Michael Moore, is showing crowds of conservatives waving flags, wearing garish outfits, and holding up signs with ridiculously exaggerated warnings about Obama introducing communism. And rejecting climate change panic. The implication is, if you disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming, next thing, you’ll be in favor of waterboarding.
Related articles
- Movie review: “Greedy Lying Bastards” a global warming documentary with sobering evidence (denverpost.com)
- Greedy Lying Bastards (powerlineblog.com)
- ‘Greedy Lying Bastards’ film uses a fake cover photo, recycled PR from 2005, cites opinion of a ‘truther’, is directed by a former ELF spokeman and uses a big dose of hate to make its point (wattsupwiththat.com)
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Okay, probably a fair review and, with no desire to see the movie, I’ll take your review at face value. However, you almost lost me right off the bat with “… Burning down an empty building in the middle of the night is not terrorism: it doesn’t terrorize anyone.” Here on one hand you treat with fairness the two sides of the AGW issue. But then on the other hand you exhibit a “the end justifies the means” moral equivalency for an illegal act. How can you honestly make such a statement? If I was the owner of the building, it would have terrorized me. If I was a neighbor, or a transient hiding in the empty building, I would have been terrorized. Although it digresses from the gist of your article, I for one am curious how you justify this statement.
Hmm, Rod you make the fundamental mistake of thinking that people who oppose environmentalism are against environmental conservation. Most of those opposed to environmentalism are opposed not because they don’t want to help the environment but instead because they think those promoting modern environmentalism don’t think critically about their actions and what they oppose.
Worse it appears the the modern environmental movement since the late 70’s early 80’s is more about taking a snap shot picture of nature and keeping nature from changing away from that picture. Something very unnatural and against the fundamental laws of nature that nature is always changing. If you took a picture of an untouched wilderness and returned to take another in 20 years there would be differences.
The rest of us recognize that nature is a changing thing and so try to work with it. We aren’t interested in freezing it into a static never changing mass but instead in learning about it and helping keep what we believe is the best of it. More environmental conservation. Look at our host. He is interested in solar power and energy conservation. Both of those topics he has covered positively when he sees an appropriate use of it to promote. What we are against is blind actions just …. because.
You’d be nice and calm if someone with an agenda burnt down your house whilst you and your family are out to dinner one night.
It would never occur to you (and you’d never be alarmed or terrorized) that by chance you or your family might have been in the house when the “do gooder” environmentalist put a torch to it.
And no, just because a building may be thought to be empty doesn’t lessen the crime. Hobos and homeless people often frequent abandoned buildings.
As soon as a person with an agenda stops civil discussions and starts violence, they’re terrorists in my book.
Good review, but a bit unfair to Michael Moore. His first film was all about trying unsuccessfully to interview someone he disagreed with – as if Rosebraugh had made a film called “Looking for Anthony” about his unsuccessful attempt to interview the champion of climate scepticism.
Michael Moore’s films tell the story he wants to tell, and reach tens of millions. I think he’d be ashamed to be associated with “Greedy Lying Bastards”. Maybe someone should ask him?
You know, there is something that is almost never discussed in the debate regarding the consensus climate science position. It is the proposition that not only do the climate scientists understand climate change, they understand what to do about it.
A climate scientist is usually trained in, well, climate science. Here are links to a couple of the foremost programs in the U.S.
http://scrippseducation.ucsd.edu/Graduate_Students/PhD_Program/Specializations/Climate_Science/
http://www.princeton.edu/aos/phd_program/
The Geosciences department collaborates with GFDL to provide an academic program of courses and seminars including physical and chemical oceanography, paleoceanography, and paleoclimatology.
All of these programs are in the physical sciences. There is not a single program in climate science that I can find globally that provides any training in energy engineering, systems engineering, systems architecture, or any other practidemic field that would provide any of these climate scientists with competence to provide answers to get humans off of a hydrocarbon industrial system and onto an alternate one that did not produce CO2. So why are the listened two in that arena? There can be no appeal to authority as they are not authorities in any discipline that is associated with energy.
James Hansen cannot have any authority when he talks about coal death trains. That would be like myself talking about the instruments that a heart surgeon use.
I actually happen to have training in systems architecture. My degree is in engineering physics, which is a combination of the physical sciences as well as mechanical and electrical engineering. My work and at the University of Alabama in Huntsville included the design and architecture of an entire off planet civilization, one where hydrocarbons are non existent and thus we are forced to look at the requirements for that civilization not considering that as an energy source. I have written books on the subject and am an acknowledged expert in the field. So why in the world would I listen to a climate scientist tell me that only by converting the entire world to solar panels and wind turbines can humans survive?
There is an absolute achilles heel of the entire environmental movement in their advocation of this strategy. A simple question illustrates the problem. How, after there are no hydrocarbons available for powering our industrial society, are you going to make solar panels and wind turbines to replace the ones built before the end of the hydrocarbon economy? There is an enormous and unaccounted for subsidy of solar and wind by oil. If all oil was removed, we could not produce sufficient energy by using solar and wind and hydro to replace what was built before. Thus is my support of nuclear power, first uranium, then thorium, then nuclear fusion. This is my expert opinion on the subject. I don’t care if every single climate scientist in the world came out in favor of solar panels and wind turbines as our energy solution, they are simply not competent to make that determination. So why do they push it so? Why, at the end of the day, are their solutions exactly the same as the environmental movement’s was in the 1970’s? Why are people from their own world such as James Lovelock who have done the research and have come to the conclusion about nuclear energy on their own so pilloried after doing so?
Answer these questions, and you have reached the root of the problem with climate science today.
Sorry. Ya lost my interest by the attempted justification of the destruction of private property. I have no further reason to read the musings of a criminal appologist.
Outraged agit-prop is what the Green/Left does; sometimes it’s done well, sometimes not.
Rosebraugh’s effort isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, by any means — at least while the legacy media so eagerly picks up on anything which supports climate alarmism.
I can sum up the book in just two words: Ugly propaganda.
Quite succinct, Rod. It especially helps to ground Monckton’s oft-loquacious logical analysis. It is amazing how operators like Mann continually reveal their underlying motives with statements like the one dissing Judith Curry. Tracking his facebook page is almost nauseating, for all the confirmation trolling he engages in. Yet these people have the ear of the MSM, who regurgitate (with modifications) the company line in an uncritical frenzy. I try not to worry about the effect this has at the policy level, but Obama’s Stealth Climate Policy (ignored during his re-election campaign, but central in he Inauguration speech) clearly indicates that the tricksters are hard at work.
Your very first sentence:
“Unlike many readers of this site, I have environmentalist sympathies.”
You couldn’t be more wrong.
We should always attempt to keep discourse to a civilized and as reasonable exchanges.
James Hansen, Al Gore, the masters of warming hyperbole.
Then, remember a clip made by a bunch of loony activists called 10:10 released on YouTube and with kids and exploding heads.
On the side of the righteous?
Who is righteous – certainly not the governments of the West and don’t ever try and tell me an investment banker who works for Goldman Sachs knows about ethics but of course he knows about ‘carbon trading’.
Politics, money, lies, wanton ‘liberal’ hyperbole, more statistics………………………. and global warming.
The greatest lie: CAGW.
OK, that’s funny.
“Unlike many readers of this site, I have environmentalist sympathies.”
I think most readers of this blog are environmentalists.
There are some issues with this review, apart from its not being in the genre of movie reviews.
I understand the work of Karl Popper too, and it is oft mis-quoted. If Popperian falsification was an apt description of the scientific method, Newton’s Law of Gravitation would have been abandoned when it was found not to describe the motion of Mercury around the sun. The point Popper was making related to giant leaps forward in scientific understanding when an existing theory is overthrown by a new theory.
“Consensus” is an accurate term across all the branches of science when applied to peer-reviewed literature. It does not mean “certainty” as implied by the reviewer. In science, there is no such thing as certainty but there is “beyond a reasonable doubt”. It’s called the “95 per cent confidence” interval.
Of course the “climategate” emails were stolen, that’s what hackers do – they steal information. Does the reviewer seriously think that a whistle blower released the “climategate” emails? Where is the evidence? Who is this anonymous whistle blower? Give us his/her name.
And why should we, the film viewers – scientifically literate and illiterate alike, go to the trouble of judging the “climategate” emails when they have been reviewed by multiple panels/committees/inquiries containing experts such as Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, professor emertius University of Edinburgh? Their collective conclusions were no misconduct, scientifically sound, accurate, etc. They concluded that the trouble was not with the science, it was scientists overstepping the mark and proceeding as if by “papal announcements”.
With regard to a “scientist” knowing more about his/her field of expertise than a non-scientist, say Lord Monckton, that’s correct e.g. when it comes to cancer, I’ll take the diagnosis and treatment offered by an oncologist before that of a well-read accountant.
Mr. McLaughlin, do I have news for you. WUWT readers based on years of reading their comments have a healthy appreciation for the enviorment. Using myself as an example, I bird watch, feed birds, recycle religiously, have participated in enviorment clean up efforts, and have all my life contributed to conservation causes both with money and political activism. I’ll bet, based on the comments I have read, that thousands of WUWT followerers do similar actions. Indeed, our godfather, Anthony Watts, is notable for his own efforts. I remember, for example, when he did a whole post on how he had changed the lighting system in his own house to use low wattage bulbs.
Unfortunatetly what has happened is that many of the traditional conservation organizations have become so obsessed with global warming they have abandoned classic conservation activities. The situation has gotten to the point where local chapters on some of these organizations are rebelling against the central administrations. I specifically refer to the Audobon Society in the northwestern US rebelling against wind factories because of bird and bat kills. Also there are grassroot effort in various scientific societys against the national administrations adoption of strong anti carbon positions.
All in all, I think if you hung around here for a while, Mr. McLaughlin, you would be surprised at how we WUWT devotee are enviormentally attuned.
On the other hand , tou sure got it right about that so called doctumentary!!
There is a place for onesided doc-shock films. The very idea of balanced is dodgy, and allows the media or censors to decide what is acceptable and normal. So the problem is not this film is selective in its truth. The problem is a suitable right to reply or fair access to the media to foster debate. If you have this, people will pick up on errors of fact and form their own opinion. While the scientists do not play fair in the journals, the education system and the media will not play fair.
I wish I could type. Lets try devoteeS and you instead of tou! Also effortS! My vocabulary out paces my spelling ability. And yes I proofread. Bah!
Nobody seems to understand that mankind has been had you cannot heat water from above on this planet because surface tension blocks the transfer of heat through the surface of the water. You can radiate water but you cannot “heat” it. It follows that you can increase the temperature of the atmosphere but it will not affect the temperature of the ocean. Somebody tell Trenberth.
I stopped reading at
“Burning down an empty building in the middle of the night is not terrorism: it doesn’t terrorize anyone”
You’re very misguided in thinking that. I give you as examples of not terrorising by burning empty buildings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meibion_Glynd%C5%B5r
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-warnings-that-scotlands-patient-nationalism-could-turn-nasty-1505824.html
http://gawker.com/5976473/arson-cracked-testicles-and-internet-death-threats-how-animal-rights-extremists-are-learning-from-the-people-who-murdered-george-tiller
lost me at burning down an empty building isn’t terrorism. Didn’t bother to read much after that. The whole point of them doing that was terrorism. Everybody with a lick of sense knows burning a building without removing the plastics etc.. is bad for the environment.
Guest post by Rod McLaughlin: “When he was a spokesman for extreme environmentalists, this was not “eco-terrorism”. Burning down an empty building in the middle of the night is not terrorism: it doesn’t terrorize anyone.”
=========================================================
Interesting. Looks like, let us say, burning down extreme environmentalists’ (empty) homes in response would not be terrorism, according to your concept. It would not terrorize extreme environmentalists, right?
The biggest problems I have with ‘climate scientists’ are:
1. Serial data manipulation.
2. The deliberate and widespread policy of merging the concepts of AGW (a mildly interesting minor phenomenon) and CAGW (a scary theory with no supporting evidence and not found in the geological record).
3. Refusal to debate leading sceptics for spurious reasons, but in reality not wanting to have their ‘science’ sliced and diced.
4. The supposed scientific consensus about global warming – as a practicing scientist, I know of no other scientists who think that CAGW is anything other than a complete crock.
5. Having financial resources at least 1,000 times those of sceptics and yet perpetuating the lie that sceptics are funded by Big Oil.
6. Creating a heresy out of natural climate cycles, so that they can be ignored and their theories on global warming be allowed to provide the reason for the recent modest warming over the past 150 years.
7. Climate scientists and dodgy, gullible politicians’ mutual dependence on each other.
8. Advocating and achieving widespread media censorship of sceptic views.
This is a lame comment to post, a “me too.” But then LamonT beat me to it.
The fact that some people criticize the political-finantial-pseudoscientific aspects of CAGW doesn’t mean they dont care about nature or the environment. They also do care about obnoxious scams and believe that sound measures must be grounded in sound facts.
Finally, nature and the environment change. Climate changes. Distinguishing natural from artificial change is not simple.
ROD, please don’t presumptuously generalize about readers at WUWT not having environmentalist sympathies. If you want to influence people don’t make assertions on matters on which you have little or no knowledge
Telegram to Self:
“Burning down an empty building in the middle of the night is not terrorism: it doesn’t terrorize anyone.” STOP (reading) Add one “Rod McLaughlin” to “nut-burgers to ignore in future” list. STOP END