Post by Brandon Shollenberger
Rhetoric in climate change debates has never been highbrow. There’s lots of name calling, gotcha games and other petty behavior. Still, there’s something about suggesting people you dislike should die that turns most people off. That’s why I was somewhat surprised when I read a blog post by Greg Laden which has this hypothetical situation:
Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh are in a boat. They are in the middle of a deep, cold lake. If the boat sinks they will die of hypothermia and their corpses will sink to the bottom. There is a device in the boat that will sink it instantly, or alternatively, propel the boat to the safety of the shoreline where there are three martinis waiting for them, but it all depends on all three of them correctly answering a question…The question is, “Is global warming real, human caused, and important, yes or no.”
You’ll note Laden doesn’t actually suggest anyone should die. He makes it into a game, suggesting they “Agree or Die.” And it is still just a hypothetical situation. It’s not pleasant, but it’s not horribly horrible either.
Naturally, Peter Gleick couldn’t live with such a tame statement, chiming in to say:
Very nice, Greg. Thanks.
And the Coulter, O’Reilly, Limbaugh situation seems like a win-win no matter what they answer. (btw, check the spelling on Coulter.)
That’s right. Peter Gleick thinks three people dying would be a “win.” The only other winning option to him is for them to agree with him. He is, quite literally, suggesting it would be good if people who don’t agree with him died of hypothermia.
Having found the link to Greg Laden’s post in Peter Gleick’s Twitter feed, I naturally responded to him there. Having nothing but contempt for Gleick, my Twitter response was not kind:
@PeterGleick It was nice to see you say it’d be good if people you dislike died. You really are insane!
Gleick’s response was… interesting:
@Corpus_no_Logos I guess you didn’t bother to read Laden’s piece. No one dies.
Of course nobody died in the piece. I was talking about what Gleick said, not what Greg Laden said. After completely missing the point, he promptly blocked me.
This is progress. Remember, Michael Mann recently said in his AGU presentation:
And to me, probably the best indication of the fact that there is, we are making progress is the heated rhetoric, the violent heated rhetoric, that we are now seeing from climate change deniers. It’s become far more outlandish, far more violent than anything we’ve seen in the past. And to me, that’s the signature of a dying campaign.
I’d say Agree or Die is pretty heated rhetoric. That means Peter Gleick is making progress for us!
Related articles
- Peter H. Gleick, ‘genius’ (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Self admitted cyber thief Peter Gleick is still on the IOP board that approved the Cook 97% consensus paper (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Fish Gotta Swim, Birds Gotta Fly, and Peter Gleick Gotta Lie (fakegate.org)
- Watch Michael Mann’s self aggrandizing AGU presentation (wattsupwiththat.com)
- The MAD MEN of Climate-Change Alarmism (wattsupwiththat.com)
Hypothermia? In a global-warming-world? Surely he meant heatstroke?
I guess it doesn’t occur to some people that others might be willing to die rather than agree with something they believe to be wrong. Especially if that could lead ultimately to others starving to death. Perhaps the greatest moral challenge our time is finding somebody, anybody, who would choose the personal integrity option.
Laden’s post is as infantile as insulting someone while claiming otherwise because it was delivered in an interrogative sentence. Gleick cheers out of desperation.
As you say, their gibber is just another example of the inanity of AGW rhetoric.
it is possible to answer Yes to Laden’s question and still think him and the Gleicks of the world are dangerous eco-fascists ready to ruin the world in their misguided attempt to save it.
I find Mann’s comment strange in the extreme. If anything I see MSM and people in general doing exactly the opposite of what Mann infers re a “dying campaign”. What is “dying” is faith in Climatescience and the blind acceptance that the models they use are accurate.
As for the inference that Gleick hoped people die – I have to say I find the interpretation tenuous.
I believe such an interpretation is akin to Alarmists labelling those who dare to question the dogma Denialists.
Gleick is such a deeply flawed individual that I would suggest we do the cause of true science no favours by stooping to the same low standards as the Alarmists.
This article is “fluff” and is disappointing
You need to check the presentation here. Without Gleick’s 2nd statement being put in italics, your post doesn’t make much sense.
Laden has previous form. He was kicked off a blogging network for making “behind the scenes” violent threats against a fellow blogger who disagreed with him. Fortunately that blogger stood up and spoke out.
It doesn’t surprise me that Gleick would jump into bed with him. These two have no morals. What is perhaps worse is that so many turn a blind eye to this behaviour.
I think you need a bit more of the example from Laden to understand his point, which is not “agree or die”:
“They don’t know who is asking the question. It could be the Heritage Institute, it could be Michael Mann with his finger on a remote that operates the device. But they are told that the best available science will be used to determine if they are wrong or right.
They will all answer “yes.” ”
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/06/19/why-you-sound-so-stupid-when-you-say-global-warming-has-stopped/
Let’s also remember that Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh aren’t the most moderate of people. How many have they wished dead during their careers? The fact that they have all supported torture by waterboarding may be the most karmic analogy to putting them in that boat over cold water, although obviously supporting real torture is far worse than a thought experiment. I suspect there is no accident that those three were chosen rather than, say, Lindzen, Spencer and Salby.
Gleick has become emboldened by the failure of Heartland (criminal Damage, Defamation, False Statements) or the FBI (Identity Fraud) to prosecute him. A normal person would have been so ashamed they would have quietly disappeared, but not our Peter ‘the climate warrior’. It is not too late to make an example of him and expose the whole sham in a Court.
There is a consistent wish of an end to human progress and anti people sentiment (wishing even deaths) running through alarmist and ‘green’ hopes for the future.
These comments are totally in keeping with the AGW/CC approach to solving the “problem” by imposing draconian measure on us all in order to save the planet from their fearful imaginations.
You have cut too much context from the analogy. It not a case of “Agree or Die” as you suggest. It can be better described as “Get the answer correct or die”.
Greg Laden is saying if the lives of Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh depended on them answering the question “Is global warming real, human caused, and important, yes or no.” correctly then using the best availably science they would answer it differently than they do now. Greg is suggesting Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh are not currently interested in answering that question correctly.
Greg Laden’s middle name wouldn’t be “Bin” by any chance, would it?
Given that the global warming tribe are supposed to be largely scientists with a love for facts and “truth”, daydreaming violence and/or death for their opponents seems an odd way to go about things. So does hatred, for that matter, and name calling and all the rest.
All they have to do is show us the evidence they purport to have. Science down through the ages involved showing and teaching. If they are right, show us.
Is that so hard? Well, yes, of course it’s hard. They don’t have it to show. That means they KNOW it’s not true, hence the hatred.
For all those warmists out there who truly believe, please, ask those climate scientists to show what they have. More people become skeptics because they look into the data for themselves, or try to, and come up against a wall when it comes to the pro argument. Skeptics become skeptics not because they’ve been blinded or bought. If you truly believe the world is in danger, insist that climate scientists show what they claim to have.
It must really annoy the genuine believer that climate scientists are refusing to show their work when the world is so at risk. Honestly, start insisting and see what you find.
Hypothetical situation:
You are a prominent albeit narsacistic “Climate scientist” who despite hoping for catastrophic global warming, has seen no significant global temperature increase for over 14 years. All the peer reviewed science you treat as holy writ has been shown to be completely without skill by those you despise. Your opposites both know this and report it to an ever attentive public, frustrating your efforts at accruing increased acclaim and fortune.
Now you have a choice.
You can act in accord with established scientific ethical behavior that you have criticized your scientific opponents as lacking, admitting the predictive failure of all the pathetic theories you hold dear, and use your immense “genius” brain power at actually advancing scientific understanding of our world,
-or-
you could commit fraud against a celebrated advocacy group of your scientific betters that had invited you to tell them why you believe you are correct. By employing identity theft you fraudulently impersonate one of their board members, and finding no smoking gun to support your paranoid view of a grand anti-global warming conspiracy, commit forgery by creating a document filled with the same bizarre rhetoric which only you and your cohorts use in your conspiratorial ranting. Further by using the same false delusional “document”, you proclaim to the world you have discovered the vindication of all your (paranoid delusional) suspicions .
Of course everyone, including those you counted on for support sees through your illicit, hypocritical attempts at discrediting your opponent, thus revealing the true content of your pathetic character.
So which do you choose to do?
Oh yeah, a couple of years later you publicly wish your enemies would die.
Sounds a bit like the good old Witches’ trial to me, devised of course simply to remove something percieved as a problem without bothering about the truth of the matter.
If you aren’t a witch you drown, if you are you live but are put to death. In the end the truth of the case didn’t matter, once accused you were toast and the “problem” was quickly despatched either way.
I don’t understand why you bother cultivating the Martyr Complexes of some of these people.
If O’Reilly’s in the boat, the lake must be pretty shallow.
Jimmy Haigh. says: July 18, 2013 at 12:07 am
Hypothermia? In a global-warming-world? Surely he meant heatstroke?
Or in this case, backstroke.
By withdrawing access to reliable, dependant energy sources and replacing them with unreliable energy sources which are particularly unreliable during extreme weather events will result in a lot of people dying needlessly.
Mr Shollenberger, I have very little good to say about either Gleick the liar and disgrace to science or Laden, who was indeed thrown out of Freethought Blogs for using violent and threatening language to a co-blogger called Justin Griffith, but I think your post is oversensitive and too quick to take offence. People make “win-win” jokes like that all the time. Yes, Gleick is LITERALLY suggesting it would be good if people who don’t agree with him died of hypothermia, but the point is that his words were never meant to be taken literally.
Here in the UK an unfortunate man called Paul Chambers had to fight a case all the way to the High Court to quash his conviction for making an obviously joke threat on Twitter to blow an airport sky-high if it did not reopen quickly enough for him to fly to see his girlfriend. The common sense attitude in these circumstances is to mildly reprove people for making a joke in poor taste, or laugh at it if that’s how your sense of humour takes you.
Of course a sceptic would never be dumb enough to get in the boat in the first place and it’s only in the nasty fantasies of warmists that they get to a point where they could force them.
@John.
It is indeed “agree or die”. The “truth” is a matter of science not a simple case of observation. You don’t know the “truth”, Gleick doesn’t know the “truth”, Laden doesn’t know the “truth”. They just claim that they do – hence the false premise of this thougt experiment. It is revealing that there is no “I don’t know” or “I am not certain” or even “in parts yes and in parts no” options to Laden’s question.
I would bet a penny to a pound that Anthony would say he does no know the “truth”, similarly with other high profile skeptics like Steve MacIntyre, Andrew Montford etc.
Why I feel more comfortable beng a skeptic is that the large maority of them (maybe 97% of them) would feel the same. you can stick to the “truth”, skeptics will stick with the science.
“That’s right. Peter Gleick thinks three people dying would be a “win.” ”
The leftist liars and thieves have become ethicists. Ethics is their replacement for morality. They needed to replace Morality with Ethics to justify mass killings (Gleick); genetic manipulation of children (Liao), brainwashing and conditioning (Liao), etc etc.
When you see an Ethicist approaching, RUN.
From my art studio I note that everybody dies but when us Ivy League inorganic/organic/genetics chemists with a further background in micro-fabrication go Galt due to persecution of both open and critical thinking in science, everybody also dies a lot younger, and Republicans get half the blame.
Thomas says:
July 18, 2013 at 12:47 am
“Let’s also remember that Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh aren’t the most moderate of people. How many have they wished dead during their careers?”
Zero. Why do you ask? Hey, we can play this game too.
How many has Obama wished dead during his career?
Nothice that his wish is the command of the drone pilots.
Hundreds? Thousands?