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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George Montgomery “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.”
Well, I would say you don’t understand it. 🙂 But as even John Ziman “In Reliable Knowledge” makes the same mistake, it is understandable. Popper is not claiming that a hypothesis or theory becomes *wrong* if it is falsified. Falsification is the *demarcation* principle between science and non-science, that is all. Newton’s laws were scientific because they could be falsified. And they could be falsified by evidence such as problems in the orbits of Mercury. Such issues then become boundary problems that lead to the pressures that might or not cause a paradigm shift, as later described by Kuhn. Popper thus believed that Freud was not creating scientific theories – he did not, however, believe that non-scientists were thus rubbish or misguided – they just weren’t scientific :).
Must disagree. Burning down a building is “terrorism” as it was done to make a point, threat, send a message. That noone was killed is a matter of circumstance.
George Montgomery at 12:45 am. ‘but there is “beyond a reasonable doubt”. It’s called the “95 per cent confidence” interval’. Therefore, if we take someone randomly from the population, it is beyond reasonable doubt that he/she is not gay.
What a bizarre post.
“Unlike many readers of this site, I have environmentalist sympathies.”
Like much of your poorly written post, the meaning is unclear. But if you claim that WUWT readers en masse hate or discount the natural world, you must have been reading another blog. What is the basis for this claim?
Then you say:
“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”.
Well, I don’t propose to get into a semantic argument about burning down buildings that belong to somebody else. It is called “arson”, and is rightly viewed as a serious crime in every jurisdiction where there are buildings. It can land you in jail for many years. This is because, not only are you destroying property, you are threatening lives and property onsite and adjacent.
As for your singular example of eco-terrorism, ask the scientists and their families, and their employers, who have been targeted by animal liberationists – with death threats and firebombs. Ask the power station in the UK that was closed down for a week by anti-coal activists climbing up the structure. No doubt other readers can provide other examples.
Thanks for providing this illuminating example of the thinking of those who wish to rule us.
Peter Miller says:
The biggest problems I have with ‘climate scientists’: is that they fail to work at a standard that would expected of their own ‘students’ taking an undergraduate course . It still amazes me that they ‘get away’ with tricks that would see a students essay marked as a failed .
Dear George Montgomery,
What you say is so dated.
I have never heard or used the word “consensus” in science. Consensus is a political word. It doesn’t exist in science. No it doesn’t mean 95% significance (which is quite weak unless in the social sciences). If consensus was meaningful in science we would still have a flat earth orbited by the sun, would be burning stuff with phlogiston and treating people with aphorisms and leeches.
Of course the “climategate” emails were leaked, that’s what whistleblowers do – they leak information. Do you seriously think that a thief stole the “climategate” emails? Where is the evidence? Who is this anonymous thief? Give us his/her name.
Let’s settle for a draw on this one.
The several inquiries on the climategate stuff fell in two categories. In one, the investigating comittee was made of people with vested interests who did not inquire about the actual problem but inquired about something else. It’s like when you hear a noise in the basement at night, run to the attic and conclude that nothing was happening after all.
The other, which I had the pleasure of reading in it’s entirety, was the one by the Parliament or so (sorry I dont know much about the UK). Which was very damaging in it’s text, damaging enough. Then concluded everything was really nice. It was an inquiry made by the same politicians who have been feeding the CRU with money for decades and implementing policies based upon the CRU. Would you expect them to reach the conclusion that they had been duped, lost taxpayers money and implemented baseless policies for decades? So they concluded everything went swimmingly, because all that politicians read is conclusions. To their praise the fact that the text flogs the CRU, contrarily to the conclusion.
As I said, all this is pretty much dated.
Lets see if the system doesn’t eat up this comment.
@george Montgomery:
Hi George, interesting post. I thought Popper made the point that any hypothesis had to be falsifiable and that scientist who made the hyothesis who should be able to specify what was falsifiable. As to Newton his sums worked to all intents and purposes, but he said himself that he couldn’t understand how the force acted between the two bodies, and made no attempt to guess what it might be – unlike climate scientists who tell you their failed predictions are cause by natural causes they can’t explain, Newton’s theory was replicable and falsifiable.
Geoffrey Boulton was an unfortunate choice you made for the distinguished neutral who looked at the work of the CRU and found no problems with it. He worked at the CRU of 18 years. Muir Russell didn’t look at the science, but failed to ask about Jones’ attempts to thwart FOI requests because he might have incriminated himself. Odd really given that the statute of limitations had passed and that the Information Commissioner had already said there was prima facie evidence of a crime. Russell (famed for turning a $60m dollar project into a $600m dollar project) in fact criticised the UEA for lack of transparency. Oxburgh reviewed the science, the UEA chose the papers for review, and no evidence was taken from critics. For reasons of complete transparency he asked his fellow reviewers to destroy all their notes and papers related to the enquiry.
As for going to an oncologist for cancer treatment I would too, but I wouldn’t go to one whose every prognosis had proven incorrect and who was proposing a cure far worse than the disease.
@george
““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.”
I have a problem with the concept of a published work being ‘true’ because it was reviewed by some others knowledgeable in the field. I do not think that is the purpose of published articles (revealing Truth).
Published articles are a conversation. You put forth your view as best you can then have it checked by people who have a clue what you are talking about. If someone opposes your opinion, they publish a counter-argument also checked by a few experts in the field. Neither has a grip on truth. It is the CAGW network who has elevated the ‘published literature’ to the status of a bible. “We are quoting peer-reviewed literature’. Meaning: therefore it is honest-to-God true. It was never intended to be ‘truth’, it is the current thinking of some people in the field. Some arguments between opposing factions run for years are are eventually agreed that both views were incorrectly constructed.
We have to get past the idea that annointing some portions of human knowledge makes the contents true. A lot of what gets published is arcane, dense, obfuscatory and deliberately written in opaque technobabble designed to keep non-initiates out. This is execrable because it restrains progress and promotes priestcraft. There is a role for specialised language but it has become a way to prevent competition and broader oversight – thus it is an abuse.
We can prove the peer reviewing process does not meaningfully guarantee ‘truth’ by looking at the junk science written in support of AGW. It is not even a conversation – the CAGW promoting authors conspire to prevent a conversation taking place! That is an attack on science itself!
Being 95% certain of something does not make it true. Mann’s manipulation of the data sets he used in his paper defending the hockey stick (Dec 2009? forgot…) was a blatant attempt to reach a 95% confidence interval while just as blatantly arriving at a predetermined conclusion in contradiction of the whole facts. 95% confidence is useful as a guide, not a bible. Mann has shown how to use it to lie, exploiting the trust generated by years of sincere searching for truth.
Climate science is no longer about truth, it is about not getting caught.
The historian in me always make me think of Fritz Hippler’s ‘The Eternal Jew’ when I see hater fims like this being made.
Just shows you, people don’t change, despite history’s lessons!
“… The implication is, if you disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming, next thing, you’ll be in favor of waterboarding.”
And your point is?
Waterboarding, snowboarding, surfboarding, as long as it helped up get Bin Laden, and I’m sure I speak for us all when I say how relieved I am that President Obama escaped the storming of the Bin Laden compound unharmed. Gutsy call, that.
” … if science depended on rhetoric and polls, we would still be burning objects with phlogiston and navigating with geocentric maps.”
Down here in Texas we burn steaks with charcoal and mesquite, and I’ve been navigating airplanes with geocentric maps my whole career.
“The only genuine eco-terrorist is Ted Kaczynski,…”
Seriously, McLaughlin, you’ve mistyped the url. This is WUWT, not the Atlantic Monthly. Kaczynski is a serial killer with three notches who got a sympathetic plea bargain from Janet
WacoReno, not an eco-terrorist.Mike in Houston
Knuckle-dragging environmentalist with an Earth Sciences major.
Wow! This is a redeeming characteristic?
What about the risk to the health and lives of the firefighters whose job is it to control and extinguish the fire before it can do damage to the environment and to the welfare of other people? Who gave him the right to put them in harm’s way or does that just not matter at all?
geoffchambers, Michael Moore actually spoke with the General Motors CEO Roger Smith before filming of Roger and Me began. He just pretended that he hadn’t, as it would not have fit the narrative.
He stole the scenario for what became Roger & Me from Michael Westfall. During a visit to Flint, Michael Moore was privy to the details of Westfall’s proposal for a documentary on General Motors that would use Ralph Nader’s idea of personalizing the harm done to Flint by focusing on individual GM executives and on Roger Smith in particular. Michael Moore was present at the meeting where Westfall’s friends discussed how to maximize the emotional impact of the film by using humor. It was the intention of the Nader group to use the profits from their documentary to help the people of Flint.
Michael Westfall generously offered Moore hundreds of pages of research on GM. Westfall even got Moore into a GM shareholder’s meeting where Moore interrogated Roger Smith at length as Moore’s camera captured every articulate response. Michael Moore had the opportunity to question Roger Smith a second time at a press luncheon and once again on an exhibit floor.
“Burning down an empty building in the middle of the night is not terrorism”,
That’s right,it’s Arson!
The writer needs to understand the root of terror from Latin before boldly stating what is and what is not terrorism. Burning down a building, empty or not, is an act in terrorem, hoping to compel the other part out of fear
“It’s called the “95 per cent confidence” interval.”
Of course, even if they were 100% confident, that doesn’t necessarily make it true. Confidence is merely a subjective feeling, it has nothing to do whatsoever with likelihood. All of the IPCC projections claim the 95% confidence level too… and they’re delusional because they’re black boxes with variables standing in for things they don’t understand.
Your review of this movie reminded me of another documentary that I saw that was basically an anti-Monsanto and anti-genetically modified movie: Food, Inc. While it made some good points, I researched some of the so-called facts in the movie and found out the “victims” of Monsanto weren’t as innocent as the movie made out. I also asked a friend of mine who is a farmer about Monsanto and he acted like Monsanto was the best thing to happen to farmers since fertilizer. I am not saying Monsanto is an upright company. I do believe that Monsanto is targeted mostly because environmentalist hate, for no good reason, genetically modified crops.
P.S. Just because I post here does not mean I care nothing for the environment. I care for the environment, but within reason. Do not think that the fringe defines the majority.
“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.”
I agree. He’s an arsonist, not a terrorist. Punish him for arson.
BTW I see no difference between somebody being killed through terrorism vs. arson.
Usually, arsonists are as mentally deranged as are terrorists, maybe even more so – a terrorist could argue that he is a kind of guerilla fighter for some worthy goal.
“Thanks for providing this illuminating example of the thinking of those who wish to rule us.”
With apologies to our host: Puzzling Commentary. Was there no other ‘review,’ Anthony?
Dennis Ray Wingo at 11:02 pm:
Dennis, What you wrote above should be distributed far and wide, and be required reading by any and all who expect their voice to be taken seriously. I thank you for your clear thinking and the ability to put your thoughts and convictions (nay, expertise!) out there for public consideration.
Well done, Sir!
I’m with leg, LamonT, Baa Humbug (postings 1, 2 and 3), redc and many others.
Burning a building – empty or not – is a threat. That makes it terrorism.
When you say, “Unlike many readers of this site, I have environmentalist sympathies,” you are dead wrong. Most of us have environmental AND environmentalist (in the true sense of the word) sympathies. What we are seeing with the Greens is the destruction of the environment, not its protection. The Green leaders are not environmentalists in any sense of the word, they just use it as their battle cry and a lever against humanity. It’s a mask.
You have every right to your opinions, of course, but I would like to suggest to get to know this site and the commenters a little better, you might find the REAL environmentalists are here, trying to save the planet from politically driven eco-vandalism.
Dennis Ray Wingo: I’m right behind you on that analysis (as of it mattered). That’s why I question whether the supposed beliefs of climate alarmists have anything to do with liberalism or the beliefs of some skeptics have anything to do with conservatism.
The questions are scientific and economic. Unfortunately some of those who have spoken on these platforms have revealed not rationality but the ugly side of academia – a deeply unpleasant and abusive political system that is able and willing to crush dissent and free expression of ideas in the service of ideology over and over.
So Mr. McLaughlin what is it that makes “….crowds of conservatives waving flags, wearing garish outfits, and holding up signs with ……….. warnings about Obama introducing communism.” ridiculously exaggerated? Obama literally is a Greedy Lying Bastard.
I can’t spell, either ; “I would like to suggest YOU get to know this site…”
2nd attempt to post…
It’s interesting, regarding peer review, to read this post at Bishop’s
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/10/review-of-what-counts-as-good-evidence-for-policy.html
Especially what is reported on the opinion of Richard Horton, editor for The Lancet. Also on activist science by public health doctors.
“Unlike many readers of this site, I have environmentalist sympathies.”
Intelligent readers of this site care about the real environment and real toxins and degradations. I donated and supported Greenpeace in saving the whales, dolphins.. and discontinuing atmospheric atomic testing years ago. Today, I wouldn’t give them or WWF and the like a penny – I note they are out in the streets in force trying to make up the support they have lost in recent years of decent sympathetic folk. Even the founder of Greenpeace quit the org years ago and argued it had been hijacked by extremists. I even believe Michael Moore had a few points. Regarding “environmentalist sympathies”, I’m afraid I would be pretty selective about which environmentalists I would have sympathies with. I’m not sympathetic at all with those who use environmentalism dishonestly for sociopolitical agenda, evidenced by hiding declines, cherry-picking and cooking data, destroying emails, gatekeeping and disciplining the scientific publication process . If CO2 was such a danger, why the need to operate like this?
Regarding burning down an empty building – man, you sure are tolerant. This would terrorize local residents and, given that these clowns likely didn’t have a fire specialist consultant on board – whose to say they weren’t lucky they didn’t burn the whole neighborhood down. Other than that, a fine article.