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)
It’s all part of the sick wish-fulfilment fantasies of these loathsome and insane cultists. Let’s never forget the 10:10 video, which is the archetypical version of their hate and anti-life religion.
Just a variation of the ghastly video that portrayed the murder of innocent men women and children by being blown up in front of others if they dared to be a sceptic and which most alarmists thought was hilarious fun, it is symptomatic of a fanatical cult mindset. They hate sceptics not because the are wrong but because they could well be right, it would mean the end of a socio political narrative called man made global warming. They are wrong in all respects and including a distinct and shared lack of moral decency.
“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.””
So they all say No and go to shore QED.
The answer to the hypothetical question is obviously “No”, so Martinis all round.
Only the lame brained and deceitful would say “Yes” and I don’t think they should go to the bottom of the lake, but rather if they are ‘climate scientists’ they should be forced to do something useful and get a real job in the real world.
“[…] That’s why I was somewhat surprised when I read a blog post by Greg Laden […]”
Why would you be surprised by anything Greg Laden writes? The only thing surprising about Greg is which hymn he will choose to sing from the Official Hymn Book of the Church of CO2-based CAGW. And it’s no surprise that he’s always a little off-key.
Try finding something he’s written that’s brilliant, insightful, acccurate, and civil all at once. Now that would be a real surprise.
Incidentally, the scenario described is the description of a terrorist / hostage incident, the three hostages are in jeopardy of their lives – the scenario also does not say what the “correct” answer is the hostage taker could easily declare both answers as wrong and sink the boat. It’s a bit like Sophie’s choice.
When your out to ‘save the planet’ everthing is OK in your own mind, Even hopping other people die , and it is hardly the first time AGW fanatics have expressed this type of view.
If you put 3 climate alarmists in a boat, they’re still just as stupid.
Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.
Terry Pratchett
“Is global warming real, human caused, and important, yes or no.”
There’s 3 questions there, not just 1:
1. is it real? seems to be, though the ongoing temperature record manipulations make it look more than it really is
2. is it human-caused? probably partly, yes
3. is it important? not really, since natural variation seems to drive much larger swings in temperature than global warming does (witness the last 15/17 years of no warming).
But I guess that wasn’t the point….
Agree or die. Godwin’s law prevents me from stating the obvious.
Get ’em in front of a Nuremburg style tribunal and hang the lot of ’em – isn’t that the Delingpole solution.
@Geckko
Absolutely, in the analogy the “correct” answer is subjective. Even using only scientific evidence there will be a certain amount of subjectivity and as you say the answer will be on the balance of probability rather than a definitive statement either way.
However, I do not think the analogy is about finding the answer to the question. It’s about if you they care what the correct answer is. He’s saying Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh are not interested in finding the correct answer only finding the “answers” they want. The hypothetical situation is to force them to want to find the correct answer and then he suggests their opinion will change.
But I think the same criticism could be made of Greg Laden as well. The debate is quite polarised and many involved are looking for the answers to support their “team” rather than trying to find the correct answer.
no pressure?
“Noooooooobody expects the Gleickish Inquisition. My chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency! Er, among our chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and a near fanatical devotion to The Cause! Um, I’ll come in again…”
H/t Monty Python.
Was this really worth a post on WUWT?
The trouble is, the whole scam is born out of the minds of neo-leftists, neo feudalists, & eco-Stalinists, encouraged by the bloodsucking intellectual onanistic lawyers & the like, who want to reduce the global population to 500 million. It I they who with arrogance contempt for their fellow human beings, want to decide who lives & who dies. After all that is what Agenda 21 is essentially all about, a Socialist Dystopia, run by the neo-elites, (my euphemism)! Their dilemma< how to actually carry out their envisaged atrocities of max execution, by conventional gas, by shale gas, or just plane good old fashioned starvation! I re-phrase my old question to them all, "Just how many people must die (directly or indirectly) as a result of failed computer models, green policies, green energy/renewables, put a figure on it, is it 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, 1,000,000, before you change your mind?"
pl forgive the typos, max should have read mass! 😉
Well, at least they’ve admitted they don’t really believe the global warming pause is hiding in the water.
Re: omnologos July 18, 2013,12:32
“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.”
That is so true it bears repeating.
Many people understand that there may well be some warming (though far less than the alarmists tout), but 1. the potential harms are not great; 2. our ability to accomplish any reduction is slight; and 3. what little we can do at this time cannot be achieved without inflicting greater harm.
This posting is a brilliant confirmation of Michael Mann’s comment.
Big discussion about little people.
‘ Kasuha says:
July 18, 2013 at 3:40 am
Was this really worth a post on WUWT?’
Yes indeed it was. It serves to remind us of the twisted minds of the malignant narcissists and fanatics who drive the AGW/CO2 fraud with their lies and fake science.
Agree or die sounds familiar. Maybe Gleick is green with envy and thinks his face should be on the cover of Rolling Stone instead of Flashbang’s?
My senario is that he, Mann, Trenberth, Hanson, Cook, Schmit, Jones, et al are all stuck in the middle of that same lake …. period, end of story. What happens to them? We don’t care because they all paddled themselves there in the first place.
Bob says: Big discussion about little people.
Leprechauns protest!
Here are a couple of quotes from the CRU emails by Dr. Phil Jones.
On hearing the death of a leading global warming sceptic, John Daly:
in another email he writes:
Here is the railway controller, Rendrand Pachauri, on sceptics:
Here is a story about fear and violence over global warming:
Yet Michael Man has the audacity to say:
It is their campaign that is going through the pain of its dying days and he knows it. Today, the media are questioning the temperature standstill in unprecedented numbers! Back in 2010, after sceptics had pointed out the lack of warming, they were far more silent. A continued lack of warming (in the absence of major volcanic eruptions) will end their scandalous campaign. It has to.