I’ve talked about the slimy “Forecast the Facts” campaign before, where they are attempting to label your local TV weatherperson/meteorologist as a “denier” and pressure TV station management into making that person “toe the line” by having a bunch of fake form letters sent by “local viewers”. It is simply paid astroturfing.
For example, look how they label KOAA-TV’s Brad Sowder for not even wanting to take a position because it is a “political issue”:
Political is right, because today, those flailing PR geniuses at The Center for American Progress aka Think Progress, a front organization for all things left and “progressive” with a now $30 million+ annual budget (From 2008: CAP, which has 180 staffers and a $27 million budget, devotes as much as half of its resources to promoting its ideas through blogs, events, publications and media outreach. Source: Bloomberg ) let it slip (whether by design or accident we don’t know) that THEY are behind this “Forecast The Facts” outfit.
We always wondered who was funding this hate campaign against your local TV meteorologist, now we know, here’s the screencap with the proof:
Even though there is no hint of this association on the “Forecast The Facts” about page. Pants on fire and all that.
For those who don’t know, Brad Johnson of Think Progress, is one of the worst offenders of political climate alarm hype on the planet. He’s paid to make up stuff like blaming the people who live in the south for their political views, and bad weather is the punishment:
Obviously Johnson has learned nothing in a year, because what he says today is the same brand of irrational ugliness and hate, bold mine:
Countless lives were saved this weekend by vigilant government officials who warned of deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska — states whose politics are dominated by anti-government, anti-science ideologues.Over 100 tornadoes struck down in 24 hours, but only six people died in Oklahoma, Sen. Jim Inhofe’s home state, thanks to warnings from the National Weather Service scientists he has worked to discredit
…
Wichita, Kansas, the headquarters of Koch Industries, suffered $280 million in damage from a ferocious twister, but the “ever-increasing government” demonized by the Koch brothers prevented any loss of life.
Support your local TV weathercaster and meteorologist, don’t let them be cowed by well funded political sliming coming from The Center For American Progress.
And the next time someone tells you that “skeptics are well funded”, remind them of how much money CAP gets and how they put it to use.
===============================================================
Less that 24 hours after I made this report on the slip, TP rushed this CYA press release out with a FLASH attached to it. Heh, sorry, I already scooped you.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/17/465268/brad-johnson-joins-forecast-the-facts-campaign/
R. Emmett Tyrrell said it best: “The liberal’s main goal in life is to annoy his neighbor.”
And slime everyone who disagrees with him.
Billions wasted on politicizing the weather, when could be put to science that counts. It is clear these people are psychopathic narcissists. They demonize the truth until their lies are accepted. They have read well the 1930’s European play book by which we have seen the sprouts of evil tyranny progress. Obliteration of rights is rampant, turning free nations into a third world country is the goal.
I think it’s about time they stopped using the word ‘progress’. Progress is an optimistic word and they assuredly do not represent optimism. I also think it’s about time they stop calling themselves ‘progressives’. Remind them that progressives brought on prohibition. Whoops, maybe ‘progressives’ is an appropriate description after all. It’s good to see, however, that they stopped referring to themselves as liberals. That was just a ruse, they were never classical liberals anyway. But I think they should call themselves what they really are: statists. That way they can claim honesty on at least one thing.
Out of all the atmospheric scientists, it is the meteorological forecasters that are most skeptical of a man-made global warming crisis. These are the ‘government officials’ that were instrumental in saving lives last weekend, not Hansen or Gore. They are real people, doing real science that has very real, positive impacts on very real people. In my opinion, the National Weather Service stands out from the rest of government as being efficient and cost effective.
Does Brad Johnson really believe that we are stupid enough to think that disaster’s strike states because they are represented by people who he calls anti-science ideologue?. How anti-science is that?
Instead of convincing people, Brad Johnson tries to bully the opposition into submission, and hits out at people who’d like to stay out of the fight. Good way to make LOTS of enemies. And wasn’t “bullying” another thing the liberals/progressives purportedly fight against?
I belive I commented on the association at the time. Another Soros front.
The only problem with shining a light on these people is that it forces them to find another rock to hide under…
“Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers”
What exactly are they infering in this headline? Gaia is exacting revenge on the non-believers?
A fine recipe from the Goebbels cookbook.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels
“National and socialist! What goes first, and what comes afterwards?” Goebbels asked rhetorically in a debate with Theodor Vahlen, Gauleiter (regional party head) of Pomerania, in the Rhineland party newspaper National-sozialistische Briefe (National-Socialist Letters), of which he was editor, in mid-1925. “With us in the west, there can be no doubt. First socialist redemption, then comes national liberation like a whirlwind…”
“Storms Kill Over 250 People In States Represented by Climate Pollution Deniers”. Charming title. So who did those state cheese off? Gaia or Zeus? Should they have conducted human sacrifice to ward off the anger of the Earth?
Attn. Anthony:
“people who like in Oklahoma”
change to “live”
Think Progress is pretty much blatent left wing propaganda. Still, I was slightly dissapointed, when a link to a post on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog was edited off the end of a comment I made here a week or so ago:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/04/battery-karma-taxpayers-green-investment-in-battery-company-withers/#comment-945729
When I included this link in a comment at Reason’s Hit&Run blog, another commenter responded that he would have to rinse his eyes out with clorox after clicking on a Think Progress link.
[REPLY: Canman, the moderator who approved your post is NOT shy about documenting why he may have snipped something. That is, in fact, our SOP. If there was a problem, it may be elsewhere. -REP]
Thanks for the insight Anthony. I’ll get this out to my friends.
…or “people who like Oklahoma..”
Seems like we could use another anti-communism type trial:
As I’ve always said, global warming is a conspiracy created by scientists, the science organizations, the research journals, the universities, the government, NASA, the EPA, the liberal media, the liberal politicans, the green movement, the hippies, and of course the progressive bloggers, all doing the bidding of George Soros, Al Gore and James Hansen hiding out in their underground lair (below sea level of course) who concocted the whole thing in order to control your life, your money and your precious bodily fluids.
[REPLY: You know, that is NOT what you’ve always said and your juvenile attempt to see if WUWT will approve anything is not appreciated. Address the issues substantively or get lost. -REP]
Brad Johnson reminds us that most humans haven’t progressed much beyond the Aztecs. AGW is nothing more than a call for human sacrifice to please the gods. The detached human view (where man is removed from nature instead of being part of it) has led to so much of the horror of recent history. This applies to all political and religious extremes, but the Left seem to be taking an especially fond liking to being cruel these days.
[snip – over the top – sorry – Anthony]
Peter says:
April 16, 2012 at 4:12 pm
“As I’ve always said, global warming is a conspiracy created by […]NASA,[…]James Hansen”
Funny that you mention Hansen whose alarmism nets NASA 1.2 bn USD a year. A coincidence that NASA’s employee constantly cools the past to create the illusion of a strong warming trend?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/FY12-climate-fs.pdf
After we talked about Rothera station in Antarctica on notrickszone, which, unbelievably, had its trend adjusted DOWNWARD by Hansen, as opposed to his usual upward trend adjustments, it didn’t take a week for GISS to partially correct their mistake.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/04/13/hansen-shocks-adjusts-antarctica-temperatures-changes-warming-trend-to-cooling/#comment-93038
You’d think the alarmists would have realised by now that the internet is our turf. They should stick to the traditional MSM, because every time they try to pull a fast one in our jungle, we catch them out.
Pointman
In Australia we could deal with these pests with this. (INAL)
Criminal Code Act 1995 – Appendix E – Online Offences 474.17: Uses a carriage service in a way (whether by the method of use or the content of a communication) that reasonable persons would regard as being menacing, harassing or offensive.
Penalty: 3 years
We don’t tend to tolerate bullies very well here and they can’t hide behind the “Right to free speech” because we don’t have it. It is only implied in our constitution, it is not a given here.
Peter says:
April 16, 2012 at 4:12 pm
As I’ve always said, global warming is a conspiracy….. blather….blather…. blah…
========================================================
This coming from a person who thinks there’s some big oil conspiracy paying us bloggers and commenters?
Peter, the fact is, it doesn’t take a conspiracy to have like minded ideologues come to similar conclusions. Do some of them colude and conspire from time to time? Sure they do, the emails clearly demonstrate that they have. If you want to live your life in denial of these facts, that’s fine, just don’t have your delusions interfere with the rational part of society.
What’s amusing is that these self-identified progressives are now singing praises to the government. Imagine that. Of course, Center for American Progress being the Democrat’s flag ship “think tank,” beloved by Hilary Clinton, acting as the shadow advisor to the WH and lavishly watered by the usual supects…all this could have something to do with that.
Methinks they are wasting their millions on PR shlocks and incompetents who’d get the boot in any self-respecting agency, though, as we shall see when this adolescent campaign fails.The malignant, dictatorial and patronizing idiocy in “Exhibit A”…i.e., Anthony’s screencap…won’t warm too many hearts.
I prefer to call them Regressives, rather than Progressives, because it seems obvious to me that everything they do is designed to hinder the progress of mankind.
This is so bad. It’s like they are trying to rush things through – attack “deniers”, pass laws and taxes, clamp down on public thinking – all before the balloon burst for them. As though if they can only peg AGW in place legally and morally, it will somehow make it true. This would be sad if it weren’t so utterly horrible.
There is a website with extensive data on leftwing networks — and AGW is part of the left.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/
If you spend some time, you can drill down to various funding sources, etc. There is a link to a website with IRS data on foundation funding.
Progress and progressive are Marxist derived terms.
Read Karl Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism.
Its no coincidence that the 20th century’s most important philosopher of science, was also the 20th century’s most important critic of Marxism.
Do facts have anything to do with weather reporting anymore ?
keep shining the light on these cockroaches – it scatters them.
now, if somebody would stop spilling all the crumbs they feast on, they wouldn’t be here in the first place.
“Over 100 tornados struck down in 24 hours”
Wow, those are some powerful bureaucrats!
“I think it’s about time they stopped using the word ‘progress’. Progress is an optimistic word and they assuredly do not represent optimism.”
I ALWAYS refer to so-called “liberals” as reactionary leftists.
trouble posting on Tips again today, but this is relevant nonetheless.
australia is so over-committed to a carbon tax/ETS, yet the EU/EC still haven’t worked out how to rig the game yet:
16 April: Reuters: Barbara Lewis: UPDATE 1-EU carbon trading reform proposal this yr-Oettinger
Writing by Nina Chestney; editing by James Jukwey
The European Commission is likely to prepare a legal proposal on reforming its emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) before the end of the year, EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said on Monday.
Speaking at a European Wind Energy Association conference in Copenhagen, Oettinger said the 27-nation bloc’s trading scheme was failing to set a strong enough price to encourage investment in low carbon energy…
The European Parliament has called on the commission to draw up a plan to withdraw a certain number of permits from the scheme, but there is still division among member states…
Oettinger did not specify what the commission would propose but said the the trading scheme needed to be more immune to shocks, referring to the fact that caps on emissions were set too high and the system’s design failed to properly account for the effects of recession…
One way of introducing tighter caps would be for the EU to target a 30 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 instead of the current aim of 20 percent.
Poland, which as a heavy user of carbon-intensive coal fiercely opposes anything that could drive up the price of carbon permits, in March vetoed an attempt by the Danish presidency to get agreement on more ambitious milestones for carbon reduction.
Responsibility for reform of the ETS falls under the EU Commission’s climate division, rather than energy, although it has ramifications for energy policy…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/16/carbon-eu-idUSL6E8FGBRW20120416
Ally E. says:
April 16, 2012 at 4:44 pm
This is so bad. It’s like they are trying to rush things through – attack “deniers”, pass laws and taxes, clamp down on public thinking – all before the balloon burst for them. As though if they can only peg AGW in place legally and morally, it will somehow make it true. This would be sad if it weren’t so utterly horrible.
It’s bad, but could be worse. Desperate people become angry and afraid and then become dangerous. Desperate, angry, fearful people with virtually unlimited funds can become very dangerous. Something to always keep in mind.
“Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers”
That leaves 50 million in states represented by non climate pollution denying whatever, huh? CA and NY and you’re already over that number.
Did these people ever learn arithmetic in grade school?
just one more version of “The Thought Police” …
“Countless lives were saved this weekend by vigilant government officials..”
Is this a paraphrase of some old Pravda story?
Of course, in the absence of Government sponsored weather forecasting nobody would bother with it and everyone would just die. Thank heavens our government saved us again.
An opinion buying machine that makes registered lobbyists in D.C. look like people you’d have a beer with.
Peter Kovachev says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:05 pm
Ally E. says:
April 16, 2012 at 4:44 pm
This is so bad. It’s like they are trying to rush things through – attack “deniers”, pass laws and taxes, clamp down on public thinking – all before the balloon burst for them. As though if they can only peg AGW in place legally and morally, it will somehow make it true. This would be sad if it weren’t so utterly horrible.
It’s bad, but could be worse. Desperate people become angry and afraid and then become dangerous. Desperate, angry, fearful people with virtually unlimited funds can become very dangerous. Something to always keep in mind.
*
Yes, I’m there already. It’s going to get ugly – it is getting ugly – but that ugliness will further expose them for what they are. Worldwide we need changes in government and for those new governments to pull the plug on funding. My guess is that’s what these communists see coming so they are coming heavy handed now. Panicking. I can see why it is part of the process of their collapse, but OMG it’s scary all the same.
pat says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:55 pm
“Poland, which as a heavy user of carbon-intensive coal fiercely opposes anything that could drive up the price of carbon permits, in March vetoed an attempt by the Danish presidency to get agreement on more ambitious milestones for carbon reduction.
Responsibility for reform of the ETS falls under the EU Commission’s climate division, rather than energy, although it has ramifications for energy policy…”
We should just prohibit the Danes from selling hydrocarbons on the world market.
The fun thing about Western Europe is that nobody here seems to know what logical thinking is.
In Canada there is an argument about whether organizations such as The David Suzuki Foundation should be de-listed as a charitable organization eligible for tax refundable donations because, by the rules, such organizations can spend only 10% of their revenue on advocacy AND that they must be “Canadian” donor supported to qualify. The DSF is shrieking about a freedom of expression violation, and that they receive 94% of their money from Canadians, while ignoring the fact that most of their revenue comes from non-Canadians (like the Pacific Institute and WWF/Greenpeace) who set up “Canadian” fronts to disperse their non-Canadian sourced monies. It strikes me that groups in the US probably receive a lot of their funding as tax-deductible donations, but the groups have definitions, as in Canada, that limit advocacy.
Is it possible – Climate Depot would be good on this – that the CAGW alarmist groups fall into the advocacy but non-charitable categories in the US as they do in Canada?
The Greens, intellectual or emotional or not, are surprisingly money oriented. The idea of paying 100% dollars for their opinion is not as happily received as paying 50% or less.
Is this applicable? Are US groups like WWF in a problematic position vis-a-vis their tax status as they (apparently) are in Canada?
Did I miss it? How is CAP getting their funding? Funny how the lack of AGW belief among those highly trained weather professionals does not seem to raise a scintilla of doubt in the tiny minds of the CAP staff.
Peter says:
April 16, 2012 at 4:12 pm
This is one of the better a$$ biters I’ve cut and pasted in a long time. Stay thirsty my friend.
Obviously Johnson has learned nothing in a year, because what he says today is the same brand of irrational ugliness and hate…
When the “progressive” message doesn’t sell, the playbook says to repeat it more often and more loudly, because in their universe, the failure doesn’t lie in the message, but in the audience. Watch for an increase in the number of polemics urging “re-education” and “treatment”…
Government Officials? I happen to live 1/2 mile from where one of the beasties touched down this weekend. While the National Weather Service does provide valuable and life saving information the local weathermen and chase teams provide the most valuable service “Early Warning”. I can’t think of a time when a warning was issued that was not first reported my the local news weathermen.
I grew up with the extreme weather in OK. Floods, Droughts, Heat Domes, Blizzards, 4″ Hail, Ice Storms, and Tornadoes. If I remember the quote right ” Will Rogers , If you don’t like the weather just wait a minute.”
Peter said:
April 16, 2012 at 4:12 pm
“As I’ve always said, global warming is a conspiracy created by scientists, the science organizations, the research journals, the universities, the government, NASA, the EPA, the liberal media, the liberal politicans, the green movement, the hippies, and of course the progressive bloggers, all doing the bidding of George Soros, Al Gore and James Hansen hiding out in their underground lair (below sea level of course) who concocted the whole thing in order to control your life, your money and your precious bodily fluids.”
Regarding the above (an attempt at sarcasm as blatant with the indirect reference to the general in the Dr. Strangelove movie):
“Conspiracy” is the wrong term. If, for example, Greenpeace makes an inaccurate statement on nuclear waste disposal (where deeply buried manmade isotopes are actually not that major in the long term compared to the literally many trillions of tons of uranium / thorium / potassium-40 naturally existing at a few parts per million concentration in Earth’s 30000 quadrillion ton crust), that is not a “conspiracy” but the relatively natural result of the inclinations of the majority who enter the group in the first place.
An implausible conspiracy is when something requires implausibly complete unity down to the individual level, when something would collapse upon any significant number of dissenters spilling the beans.
Global warming alarmism is not such and not a “conspiracy” in those terms as the movement survives and remains stable even when hundreds of climate scientists *have* dissented. There is paper after paper dissenting (as seen well on lists at co2science.org where often one can find a copy of a paper online just by googling part of its title in quotes plus pdf next to that). CAGW claims represent the tendencies and natural leanings of a majority (not 100% but a majority) of the kind of hardcore environmentalist activists who particularly enter and rise to the top of the media-influencing organizations with the greatest interest and funding.
Such as the average utility company actually does not generally have their survival dependent on the outcome on the AGW debate one way or another; if electricity prices rise, they would just pass them on to consumers. Those companies specialize primarily in real physical production, not propaganda generation. It is rather some major environmentalist groups who have their funding base, their reputation, and more heavily tied to trying to convince the public. Accordingly, it is really not surprising that there have been billions of dollars on the pro-alarmism side while yet even Greenpeace could only find a relatively paltry few tens of millions of dollars ever given to the skeptical side.
Add to that how most of the media loves scare stories for attracting attention even while having little scientific literacy (like the journalists not knowing the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation who made the stories about cell phones versus bees only for effects to turn out to be from a natural fungus).
A claim that hurricanes have skyrocketed from global warming is an exciting news story.
A boring but valid observation that there has been nil overall rise in hurricane frequency (if looked at globally avoiding tricks like cherry-picking a couple decades of the North Atlantic while ignoring decline simultaneously elsewhere from weather fluctuations) is not what tends to make a news story at all.
The (utterly inaccurate) hockey stick is exciting. The following is not:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
http://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/media/images/monsoon1_h.jpg
No different than Tides Canada astroturfed LeadNow.ca, NotOurBudget.ca, OpenMedia.ca, The Tyee and so many more…
An old concept, but this reminds me of the tactics of: “The People’s Front for the Liberation of ……………..”
The end justifies the means – lies, distortions, half truths, libel and threats are just part of the deal.
Henry Clark says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:19 pm
Such as the average utility company actually does not generally have their survival dependent on the outcome on the AGW debate one way or another; if electricity prices rise, they would just pass them on to consumers.
Each state has a Board of Public Utilities, or the equivalent, which rules on proposed price increases. The boards are political animals and, if public (i.e., “voter”) outcry puts pressure on the politicos who hold the purse strings, they will *not* approve a rate increase, regardless of how legitimate the utility company’s justification.
McCarthyism is alive and well it seems.
REP, obviously just a lame attempt to parody skeptics by channelling Gen. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.
CAP and its ilk may be well funded, but how many people are actually paying attention? Those web traffic graphs that Anthony occasionally posts seem to indicate that CAP et al are preaching to a steadily dwindling choir. I’d be curious to know how many broadcast meterorologists actually give a skinny rat’s ass about being on CAP’s list.
I (guiltily) like my schadenfreude as much as the next guy, but not to the point of helping to resurrect that which is better left dead.
Sometimes the best response is no response.
Paddi Agree far too much attention is being given here to silly warmists blogs etc… stick to data I say
Using “liberal” and “left-wing” as labels for people like Brad Johnson is inappropriate. They are neither liberal nor left wing but truly “Lunatic Fringe.”
Man Bearpigg says:
April 16, 2012 at 10:54 pm
McCarthyism is alive and well…
…and being practiced by those who condemn it the loudest…
If they keep calling sceptics “deniers” then I think we need to associate them with the Nazi philosophy of “if you tell big enough lies, repeat them often enough and give them government backing, then most people will believe them”.
I have always thought of the CAGW extremist views as much like the error bars on an historic temperature chart, or the 1 sigma grey area on the ice charts in their effect on the public. (i.e. me) You can drag your audience above or below the line to a certain extent but as the rhetoric becomes increasingly bizarre you lose the audience. By crossing the error bar into the unknown you only carry the true believers with you. For example if you suggest a sea level rise of 12 inches you may well carry your entire audience but by the time you reach a prognostication of 20 feet you will have no-one but acolytes left. This is entirely independent of the veracity of the facts. it is all about the personal experiences of the public and how far beyond those experiences their psche can accomodate.. When you reach the heights of claiming that Tornados only strike oilmen and republicans you have kind of crept outside the error bar!
[snip – over the top – Anthony]
Rod says:
April 17, 2012 at 12:40 am
If they keep calling sceptics “deniers” then I think we need to associate them with the Nazi philosophy of “if you tell big enough lies, repeat them often enough and give them government backing, then most people will believe them”.
The full quote is more appropriate here: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Goebbels knew human nature — and WUWT is one of the greatest enemy of the Statists…
“We always wondered who was funding this hate campaign against your local TV meteorologist, now we know…”
It’s called CAP and Tirade…
This 2008 NYT article has the Sandler Foundation as the start-up for CAP:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/magazine/09Sandlers-t.html?_r=2
“Since the late 1980s, the Sandlers used their wealth to finance a variety of nonprofit organizations, including Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union and Acorn, the grass-roots organizers. In 2003, they started the Center for American Progress, which is intended to be a liberal counterweight to the heavyweight policy centers of the right, like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. So far, (2008), the Sandlers have given around $20 million to the center.” (Last year Soros announced a $100 million award for Human Rights Watch over ten years).
More on CAP funding here, (including $500,000 from Walmart), although the Sandlers aren’t mentioned. http://www.groupsnoop.org/Center+for+American+Progress.
Soros was an initial funder and still donates via Open Society Institute. John Podesta was Clinton’s Chief of Staff, co-chair of Obama’s transition team and has advised him on by-passing Congress with Executive Orders and use of Federal Agencies, http://tinyurl.com/2w3ldwm. He is a member of the Leadership Council of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, (an interesting web page): http://www.jointoceancommission.org/leadership-council.html
Former EPA head and Climate “Czar” for the start of the Obama presidency, former Gore assistant Carol Browner, is on the board at CAP, as is Van Jones.
Campus Progress is active in cultivating EPA and promoting student action against coal plants etc:
As I’ve always said, global warming is a conspiracy created by scientists, the science organizations, the research journals, the universities, the government, NASA, the EPA, the liberal media, the liberal politicans, the green movement, the hippies, and of course the progressive bloggers, all doing the bidding of George Soros, Al Gore and James Hansen hiding out in their underground lair (below sea level of course) who concocted the whole thing in order to control your life, your money and your precious bodily fluids.
I think Peter here has succinctly summarized in one clear sentence what some people believe to be true. He did this without resorting to “it’s not this and it’s not that” weasel words to avoid taking a firm stand. He just comes straight out with positive affirmations. A lot of scientific organizations (AAAS, NAS, AGU, etc.) have written policy statemements on global warming that do much the same thing.
Here’s what I want to read: I want to read a sentence from Anthony Watts stating what he believes is the truth about global warming. Not the “it’s not this and it’s not that” sort of ambiguity, but the same sort of positive affirmation language that Peter incorporated.
[REPLY: Peter writes a caricature that you think is an accurate reflection of skeptical thinking and then you demand that Anthony provide a statement that you hope you can use later to play gotcha games? There are some people frequenting this blog who need to get a life even more than the moderators do. -REP]
So there is a well-funded anti-science conspiracy after all.
Funny how only another alarmist would be gullible enough to fall for Peter’s snark and take it seriously. Are all of them really this dense?
and how typical is the overtly self-righteousness in the demands – “I want to read a sentence…” blah blah blah. Because for him it is ALL about belief! Here’s an idea – how about “we believe that the Science should be pursued honestly and completely wherever it leads, and when there is scientific uncertainty that needs to be communicated just as completely as any scientific certainty is. No “narratives”, no wishcasting, no apocalyptic alarmism to try and achieve some political goals; just SCIENCE, plain and simple.
And done by real SCIENTISTS, not “media experts” with expertise in astroturfing and little else.
Phil C, I want a winning lottery ticket.
Funny thing one of the characteristics of a politically left leaning person is never being taught the word no at a young age and as they grow older this morphs into thinking everybody should do what they say, the difficult bit when they get to adults is how they then deal with someone saying no, it usually leads to adolescent tantrums .
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/16/booker-mentions-mann-mann-has-a-twitter-tantrum/
Peter writes a caricature that you think is an accurate reflection of skeptical thinking
I never wrote that I think it’s an accurate reflection of skeptical thinking. I wrote that some people believe it to be true. Big difference.
then you demand that Anthony provide a statement that you hope you can use later to play gotcha games?
I never wrote that I demand Anthony provide a statement. I wrote that I want to know what he believes to be true. How stating what one believes to be true is a “gotcha game” escapes me. Big difference again.
Phil C proves that he fundamentally does NOT understand Science at all!!
Science is about PROOF, not Belief!!! But ironically, Phil C’s statement stands as pretty good proof that his entire climate stance is his religious vehicle of choice – no wonder he is so outraged at any heretics who might challenge his preferred orthodoxy!
“I wrote that I want to know what he believes to be true.” Torquemada became infamous for making exactly the same demands of his victims several centuries ago.
Phil C
“I wrote that some people believe it to be true. Big difference.”
No. You believe that some people believe it to be true. Big difference.
Phil C — He (peter) did this without resorting to “it’s not this and it’s not that” weasel words to avoid taking a firm stand. He just comes straight out with positive affirmations.
Just want to make sure I’m following your thought correctly Phil – So if I responded to another commenter; “I never wrote that I think….” or ” I never wrote that I demand…” you (phil) would consider those “weasel words” and/or not “positive affirmations”?
But ‘progressing’ on from silly destractions to the topic at hand, if there is anyone here that wishes to defend the well-funded astroturf bullying tactics of CAP aka Think Progress directed at local TV weatherpersons or meteorologists, this post would be a great time to make your case. Any takers?
Phil C says:
April 17, 2012 at 5:26 am
Anthony is more a real scientist than is Phil C. When studying something with a noisy signal, answers are not clear. Strong beliefs generally get in the way of understanding anyway, hence problems with when Himalayan glaciers will melt or using the wrong sign on Tiljander(sp) data goes uncorrected for so long.
Until we get a better idea of just how the climate drivers fit together, I doubt you’ll see a clear statement from Anthony. Ditto from any scientist worth paying attention to.
It makes no difference what my “religious” views are or what I “believe” to be true regarding the facts of climate change. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” I thought this website is a vehicle for the facts behind climate change, and I simply would like to know unambiguously what climate science facts Anthony Watts stands behind.
So Phil, now you want to talk about “Facts”??? Up until now, you were all about beliefs! But I suspect that those words mean the same thing to you, which may be why you’re incapable of questioning your own.
But you want facts – so here’s a few. How about the “Fact” that all the “facts” which the warmist model depends on fall apart under any kind of honest and open scientific scrutiny? Or how about the Fact that your movement’s patron saint, Peter Gleick, is a self-admitted Liar and a Thief? And how about the “Fact” that a warmist wouldn’t know a true scientific fact if it jumped up on the counter and played a pennywhistle while singing “I Am A True Scientific Fact!!!”
are those enough “facts” for you?
Hugh K — If you go back to my complete post, you’ll notice that I followed my “I never wrote” with a repeat of what I did write. The moderator characterized my original post as “an accurate reflection of skeptical thinking” when I made no such assertion. I take offense with the moderator’s putting words in my mouth that way, so I am simply setting the record straight with what I did write.
Same with the suggestion that I “demand” facts as a way to play “gotcha games.” Again, I made no demands; I’m looking for people to back up their claims with verifiable facts.
wws writes: How about the “Fact” that all the “facts” which the warmist model depends on fall apart under any kind of honest and open scientific scrutiny?
Then it should be a no-brainer to produce a detailed line-by-line refutation of the most recent IPCC technical report, which has been available for four years. Where is it?
“Forecasting the Facts”. A bit oxymoronic. Something like the invert, “Hindcasting History”, which Think Progress is really expert at.
Phil C says:
April 17, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Hey, how about a big oil supported group the size of the IPCC dedicated to do that?
Oh yeah, no big oil supported group. So we have to rely on a lot of examinations of pieces of interest. E.g. Donna Laframboise’s (sp) looks into the IPCC’s references to the popular press.
Also, a line-by-line review is a very reactive response. Things like the http://nipccreport.org/ is much more proactive.
Perhaps you’d like to produce a line-by-line refutation of that. It’s shorter than the IPCC reports, and probably just as much a no-brainer for you to knock off.
Reblogged this on TaJnB | TheAverageJoeNewsBlogg.
Ric Werme writes: Perhaps you’d like to produce a line-by-line refutation of that. It’s shorter than the IPCC reports, and probably just as much a no-brainer for you to knock off.
That was done over 3 years ago by Real Climate at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/not-the-ipcc-nipcc-report/langswitch_lang/jp
Phil C says:
April 17, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Then it should be a no-brainer to produce a detailed line-by-line refutation of the most recent IPCC technical report, which has been available for four years. Where is it?
Still in peer review, but here’s the latest installment:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7177230/New-errors-in-IPCC-climate-change-report.html
Tom J says:
April 16, 2012 at 3:01 pm
I think it’s about time they stopped using the word ‘progress’…..
Obama’s Science Czar, John Holdren, called it de-development of the United States and pushes among other things“Limiting the amount of energy available….
This very good Video of a liberal democrat giving a talk to the Tea Party (jaw drops) shows how Holdern’s 1970’s objective ~ “massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States.” ~ is now being implemented.
Seems to me the correct term to use is de-development not ‘progress’ because that is exactly what is being implemented.
The history of the term “progressive” is tied up with Fabianism, and its conceit that it represented a new stage of development or evolution. The “progress” it envisaged was its own coming domination of the lower orders of unenlightened, who were to be “progressively” ( 😉 ) culled according to the precepts of eugenics.