You just have to laugh when you see articles like this.
Excerpts from an article by Mike Sandler:
Humans have put too many heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, and now the Earth is running a fever. But there’s also an increasingly toxic atmosphere in the blogosphere, where climate deniers strategically confuse the issue, delay meaningful government action, and harass scientists and authors.
For decades, the media presented the climate “debate” as two sides that were evenly or closely matched. Then a few years ago, around the time Hurricane Katrina struck and Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar and he and the IPCC were awarded a Nobel Prize, the media began to realize that climate science is real and has consequences, and the “other side” is almost all empty rhetoric.
…
More sophisticated denier methods often appeal to:
- Free speech (as if achieving consensus on climate science somehow takes away their Constitutional rights) or
- The nature of scientific inquiry means always questioning your assumptions (ironically, the people who question the science of climate change, are likely those who question all science).
Gosh, excercising free speech and questioning assumptions, why, why, they’re TERRIBLE!
You can read the whole thing here. but I wouldn’t count on being able to leave comments:
Climate Deniers are Polluting the Blogosphere
Of course the thought hasn’t occurred to Mr. Sandler that the bulk of opinion has shifted.
“Gosh, exercising free speech and questioning assumptions, why, why, they’re TERRIBLE!”
In future this will be seen not as a scientific debate, but a psycho-social phenomenon, whereby political activists tried to subvert science and free speech. And the outcome should be lesson about the internet age for all journalists. The game is up girls and boys – we can critique your work by providing facts, in real time and with global reach. Second-rate rubbish will be identified and attacked, by people including some who know a lot more about your subject that you do.
On Huffpo I wrote, “There isn’t any credible scientific evidence that CO2 will cause any significant, negative change to our biosphere.” And they seem to have posted it (?). In fact, most posts seem to disagree with the Huffpo “consensus.” Do I need to find a new status quo to rail against.
Bankers. F@ur momisugly#% um.
If the world didnt suck, we would all fall off.
Mike Sanlder is doing a great job in that regard
Guilty, your honour! And I have no remorse and will keep clogging and blogging as long as they keep spewing out AGW pollution..
After reading this intellectual masterpiece, the only thing I want to say is!
I’m proud to be a blogosphere pollutant!
I think “Climate Deniers are Polluting the Blogosphere” = AGW Antagonists are winning the Battle of the Blogosphere…
After reading that load of hogwash at HP, I’ve concluded that it’s not the blogosphere which is clogged up, it’s Mike Sandler’s brain!
In truth I feel sorry for the guy. He hasn’t looked at the evidence and as accepted the CAGW drivel like a baby taking milk. Another ‘useful fool’ for the CAGW propaganda machine.
Well, then I guess this will irritate Mr. Sandler even more;
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90853/6959757.html
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90853/6956238.html
I wonder how many people reads People Daily. Not few, I imagine.
Problem is: emissions of nonsense contributes to the madhouse effect
probably more harmful than the greenhouse one.
Mike Sandler is an idiot.
Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad
The only way I make sense of this is with two components:
a. people who have recently become disillusioned with consumerism and material abundance (in the 1st world) and want some new purpose and meaning in life — enter Gaia which is sacred and beautiful like a deity but doesn’t fall into the traditional notion of religion as there’s no personification of a deity, just a “web of life” (can appeal to Buddhists and Yoga types because it can appear “spiritual but not religious”)
b. the “old” materialistic world which continues to do business, build infrastructure, and look for new opportunities — if it wasn’t for politicians trying to cut deals, global warming would still be a fringe issue only spoken about by group a. amongst themselves, bemoaning the state of the world.
Part of the problem is that as people change gradually, they eventually get into some new “fad” or “purpose”. For many this has been the environment.
When the new purpose or lifestyle is still in its early stages, it looks truly amazing and every aspect of life “has to be” this new thing. Basically it is like a “cult” stage. When people get into it, they want to forget and suppress whatever came before. Old friends who don’t believe, old products, old interests, these things all fall away and are forgotten. People will instead start to identify with not being a consumer (even though they still go to the shops and buy stuff). The car they buy is still a car, just a little smaller.
Consumerism is just consumerism, kinda useful and necessary because we all have to eat, live in houses, pay bills. But when people start to go beyond just consumerism (because they’ve actually got most of what they need already) then they start to actively reject consumerism in order to get onto the next thing, like, service to humanity, or service to the environment, or whatever. But this active rejection is highly polarising. So it becomes a real problem. It becomes “good” versus “evil corporations”.
It is a problem. We really need ways to reintegrate the post-consumers with healthy consumerism again. Many people on this blog probably do this already, handling both ecological concerns and material concerns together.
But until there’s a better route through the rejection stage, then we’ll continue to have these insufferable accusations of evilness.
Baa
My oath, that phrase is very racist against Dutch people. It would seem our learned blogger friend does not know manners, let alone math or science for that matter.
I was there when it began, long before the media tried to make head or tail of this free speech space.
The best have allowed comments and the rest are fools allowing disconnect to kill audience, thru bastard unreasoned censorship.
The trouble is that this nonsense is routinely fed to our schoolchildren. Just like religeon, the warmists seek their converts young to ensure their beliefs gain credence over the long term
For the sake of reason, I will explain blogspace tends to sort itself out.
Always has, I have had many mates down the years and a few unfriends too.
But if your site is good, they will always come.
I seen the first 5 go live.
Well, what about blogs that simply don’t say _anything_ about global warming, one way or another? Aren’t they guilty of apathy, of avoiding an “earth-saving issue”, and therefore clogging up the blogosphere with nonsense as well?
Right. Way to attackfree speech, Sandler (you idiot)!
And what is all this about confusing facts? Doesn’t that mean something in the warmist set of facts contains something to be confused, such that a contrary position is the result? For example…
Chickens lay eggs. Foxes eat chickens.
Now, let’s confuse some facts. We all like to confuse facts, right? Alright then, let’s do it! 🙂
Foxes lay eggs. Chickens eat chickens.
There is no way to confuse the stated fact that would result in a contrary position. The best one can hope for is just saying something different to the original statement.
Of course, they can’t come right out and say what they really mean… That there are too many contrarian bloggers than they feel comfortable with. That would make it obvious what they’re really complaining about. They don’t want any opposition!
But adding insult to injury, the use of the word confusion implies that we can only mix up what they say, and not have any original thought about it. Such silly and confused children, we are. And that’s because they don’t want to acknowledge that people can think for themselves, either. Why, that would mean… (gasp!)… opposition, which they don’t like!
I understood that free speech was precious in the USA. Or is that only free speech for those whose talk is approved in some quarters, such as the Huffington Post. There seems to be a nasty touch of Macarthyism in its views.
and that sir Gobalot Sanders is why you are not a blogger, just a clogger.
No one gets it right, but good bloogers know when they it wrong.
Me I am a centrist, that gives me a target rich environment to operate in.
I know back in the Box Jack.
Blogging is an Australian US invention, mostly US.
It gets worse – from Australia, news today that Prime Minister Rudd has delayed emissions trading until 2013 at the earliest. We are about to have an election and this takes it off the table for the coming term as well as the current one. He has washed his hands no doubt. He was always a fraud and now the Greens know it too. ETS dead in Australia – pop the corks.
browsing through the empty comments I wonder if Realpolitic is converting more people to skepticism than any “denier” site (as he would call them). His attitude is enough to turn anyone off the AGW side.
And then like, there was Katrina….like that was
our wakeup call! It was like hello… Mc People
we’re killing the planet. Ya know, we shouldn’t
listen to them cus they’re not like the IPCC. There’s
like millions of scientists….and like five of them.
That’s why I blog at the Huffers post….Smart
people…Dugh!
I was going to post a comment there, along the lines of the author’s assertions that:
“…deniers don’t want to change their lifestyles or worldview.”
Well, just as AGW catastrophic alarmists do not, in face of the facts.
Then there’s the truly bonkers “If there’s no action before 2012,” says Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel peace-prize-winning IPCC, “that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” If you are a denier, it’s not too late to change your ways…yet. Do some research, but more importantly, open your mind. If you are already working to stop climate change, decisionmakers [sic] and the public need your help navigating through the polluted blogosphere and towards real climate solutions. Working together, we can leave a cleaner, more sustainable blogosphere for our children.”
“Raj Pach says…by 2012 or it’s all over..sustainable blogosphere for our children…’
I’d be dealing with a certifiable lunatic, here. And it honestly scares me. I don’t want to sign up my details to a blog with this nutter in charge. Or is that just me?
If you’re braver than me, or just more foolhardy, please point out the slavering idiocy of his arguments. Ta
JER0ME (20:34:03)
That’s big news from down under, Jerome. Thank the world for sensible Ozzies.
“the media began to realize that climate science is real and has consequences, and the “other side” is almost all empty rhetoric”
Name calling and begging the question are all good signs that the alarmists are losing the arguments.
Having read some of the comments on the HP site, it seems that most warmists are in denial of the facts, but then most seem to be incapable of debating in a rational manner.
I wish they would expend more effort on realistic attempts to right man’s ecological wrongs, reduce the tyranny and greed of the ruling classes of most countries around the world, eliminate the deadly clashes between opposing ideologies and religions and develop a practical means of mining all the cheese on the moon to solve the problems of starvation around the world.
Well, maybe the latter is fanciful, but it is about as realistic as cutting emissions/taxing carbon to save the world, at the same time dragging the more developed economies back to the dark ages.