Guest essay by Brandon Shollenberger
Global warming proponents support genocide. That may seem hard to believe, but remember, they’ve said it’d be right to blow up dams and burn cities to the ground:
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage. If carried out willingly and on a sufficiently large scale, this process would require dismantling many of the key components of civilization; no person would be foolish enough to cut off their own limbs unless they were suffering from some kind of psychotic delusion, and no civilization would be willing to remove many of the pillars of its own existence. Looking from the outside, though, a civilization hacking off its own extremities would seem like exactly the right thing to do.
That view is not from some fringe element global warming proponents shun. James Hansen, arguably the most influential member of the cause, supported the book that statement was written in. Hansen has also suggested “coal trains will be death trains” and GHGs could “destroy much of the fabric of life.” Supporting genocide is incredibly extreme, but clearly extreme is acceptable to them.
But supporting genocide? That’s hard to believe. I’d need some strong data to make me even consider the idea. That’s why I collected some. (Note: several climate blogs were used, including WUWT here – Anthony)
Using the approach of Lewandowsky et al, I created a survey (copy here) which got 5,697 responses (two of which I filtered out for being incomplete). Three items on the survey were:
You believe global warming is a [sic] real.
You believe global warming poses a serious threat.
You believe genocide is…
Respondents were asked to rate their level of disagreement/agreement (1-5) on the first two. For the third, they rated bad/good (1-5).
I found statistically significant correlations (at the 99.99% level) for all pairings of these items:
As you can see, people who say global warming is real but not a serious threat are more likely to oppose genocide. On the other hand, people who say global warming is a serious threat are more likely to support genocide. The effect isn’t large, but it is statistically significant. There’s more. The survey also included the item:
You have never been wrong.
The effect is small but statistically significant at the 99.99% level. Believing global warming is a serious threat correlates with believing one has never been wrong. Believing you are fallible correlates with merely believing global warming is real. Combine these two findings, and we get:
- Believing global warming is a serious threat correlates with believing you are never wrong.
- Believing global warming is a serious threat correlates with supporting genocide.
Therefore, global warming proponents believe they are never wrong, even when supporting genocide.
Quick note, Stephan Lewandowsky built upon correlation matrices like mine by using factor analysis and structural-equation modeling (SEM). These cannot change observed patterns; they can only tease out additional ones. I am not replicating those steps.
Caveat: The results are obviously nonsense. However, they were gotten from the same methodology used by Lewandowsky and others. More to come…
bshollenberger says: @ur momisugly January 16, 2014 at 5:33 am
I’m starting to wonder if any critics have actually read what has been written.
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I doubt it. It is hard to read with your eyes closed and mind made-up. Also Fanatics generally do not have a sense of humor and certainly not when it comes to laughing at themselves.
I’m happy to note Greg Laden is still responding. His latest (there are a lot I’m leaving out):
https://twitter.com/gregladen/status/423913147213152256
Hooked a nice fat one this time! LOL! Please keep us informed of how long he will stay on the line.
Bob:
re your post at January 16, 2014 at 10:43 am.
Stop your red-neck trolling. It has become boring.
Richard
Brandon Shollenberger:
Thankyou for your reply at January 16, 2014 at 6:50 am which says to me
I also can’t think of another way to popularise it. But that needs to be done for the reason you say.
Is there any way you can write it up for a journal? That may help. And the publication would be ammo. for those who oppose promotion of the Lew. paper.
Any suggestions for ways to popularise it would seem to warrant consideration.
Richard
PS I wish I could also solve the name problem.
The previous comment was in response to Brandon Shollenberger
richardscourtney says: @ur momisugly January 16, 2014 at 1:28 pm
Brandon Shollenberger:
PS I wish I could also solve the name problem.
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That is the nice thing about being female. My maiden name was so bad the teachers could not pronounce it and I could not spell it. Best thing I got from my ex was a decent name.
Chris says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:41 am
“…this is clearly not the place for me to put posts. You are welcome to it. I won’t waste any more time trying to convince people that can’t be convinced of my beliefs and what drives them.”
__________________
Nice flounce.
richardscourtney, sadly, there’s no way results like this would get published in a journal. The methodology I used is complete bunk, and it’d be caught if submitted to meaningful review. Results like Lewandowsky’s could pass because people liked them so they didn’t look closely. Those same people would dislike my results so they’d look closely.
That said, it might be possible to do a paper discussing the methodological problem I’m highlighting which uses this as an example. I’m not sure though. As a non-academic with no publishing experience, I wouldn’t even know how to start that.
That reminds me. I had originally said I’d be posting about my results somewhere between Monday and Friday. I’ve obviously posted this, but I haven’t posted a serious examination of the results/methodology. Should I try to have that posted tomorrow, or should we take more time to milk the humor first?
I feel like two days isn’t enough time for laughter before the more serious stuff, but I don’t want to drag things out for too long and make people impatient. Any thoughts?
@ur momisugly Brandon Shollenberger
—
Glad you had your fun.
Now please p**s-off, back into your low traffic website, that will never see a surge like this again.
Sorry if that hurts your feelings.
No one is waiting for your next production, believe me.
Or, did you expect a different reaction ?
I mean, that was the point wasn’t it, to get a reaction ?
@Brandon Shollenberger:
Brilliant! Have you read Umberto Eco’s ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’? Your comment about “teasing out” desired correlations makes me think you are (or would be) an admirer of that story… However, given the writings of many of the Eco-fanatics, who, seems to me, tend to be Progressives or of the Left, sadly, they DO support genocide. It was Margaret Sanger who started Planned Parenthood, originally a Eugenics crusade to help end undesireable bloodlines; i.e, people other than good white anglo-saxon/protestants of European decent like herself. Eugenics was a Progressive program praised by Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, Teddy Roosevelt, caused the Lost Generation in Oz, and was taken to it’s nadir with the Nazi “Final Solution.” Recently, loons of the Eco-Left (within the last 40 years) have taken up where the Progressives left off (many of the Eco-Left could be described as ‘Red-diaper Babies’ or appear to share sympathies therewith) and have written variously about cannibalism as a way to reduce the planet’s population, and that child slavery would be considered a minor crime next to cutting down a tree (these last two reported in Ian Wishart’s ‘Air Con’; I hadn’t seen them before, can’t recall the criminals which stated them, but they were well documented)…
The acorns didn’t fall very far from the tree, surprise, surprise.
I’m afraid that although your little demonstration/comedy was poking fun, you accidentally (or accidentally on purpose?) struck the truth: the Eco-fanatics HAVE supported genocide.
And struck a nerve, as measured by the bitter snivelling of some recent posts, which would tend to corroborate my belief about Eco-fanatics, Alarmists (as opposed to those who honestly believe that the globe is warming—I don’t: I think it will eventually return to the 22 degrees Celcius average of the last 4.5 billion years, which does NOT mean it’s ‘warming’. The ups and downs we’ve seen are barely noise on that timescale), and Progressives/Lefties. Not that any of THEM would be reading posts on WUWT…
Of course not. Again, kudos! Terrific bit of fun!
Doing some basic analysis of the raw data (linked from http://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/warmists-are-never-wrong-even-when-supporting-genocide/ ), I have to conclude there are far too few warmists sampled to draw a statistical conclusion about them. On the other hand, the various data available elsewhere supports the cited conclusion. Which isn’t a surprise when you consider the logical conclusion of radical environmentalist thought.
I wonder what Ehrlich’s responses would have been. Or were.
u.k.(us), thanks for making me laugh. If I had wanted to drive traffic to my “low traffic website,” I’d at least have demanded Anthony refer and link to it in the blog post.
p@ur momisugly Dolan, I’ve never even heard of it. The one time I tried to read one of Umbert Eco’s stories, I got bored out of my mind by the fifth page. I probably just picked the wrong one to start with.
Peter Hanely, the lack of data on warmists is sort of a “duh” thing. The demonstration depended on not getting many responses from them. It makes the results meaningless, but it also makes the process in line with what was done by Lewandowsky, Wood and others. They relied on similarly limited data for their results.
Brandon Shollenberger:
In your post addressed to me you say January 16, 2014 at 4:53 pm
That is exactly what I was suggesting. Indeed, I thought providing such an example was your purpose.
It may be useful to your production of a paper if you email me.
Richard