On October 16, I launched a 9,000 word essay on my conversion from a climate-change believer to skeptic. Anthony liked it and decided to run a short summary on WUWT.
That page now has over 450 comments, the essay has been viewed over 50k times, and it has had over 9k reads. It has led to discussions across the web, and, via the survey at the end of the essay, has led to a surprising 46% conversion rate of people becoming climate skeptics. These are small numbers, but they are also small steps toward an important goal. My essay is capable of reaching liberals, challenging their assumptions, and getting them to change their views.
The essay prompted a group of global-warming enthusiasts to write a long rebuttal essay, titled Climate Change is Real, and Important.
It starts with a large picture of a menacing fire in 2006, which the authors presumedly believe represents the fire and destruction of human-caused climate change. They have also attacked me on Twitter, using the standard name-calling and association techniques that have come to be the norm.
If you’re interested in the rebuttal and our response, please go to Climate Change: Is it Real and Important
We hope you find it worth reading.
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Unfortunatelly, this happens a lot: there are so many switches in this area, so I’m not surprised by another one. It’s both ironic and true and it seems this situation happens in most of the fields linked in any way to the climate.
“Smoking gun #1: The Hockey Stick is Wrong; The Medieval warming period was real and worldwide.”
I cant stop reading this fast enough.
Can we go to real problems now ?
Hi Knute have you ever heard of the Brontosaurus?
Oops wrong head! (urban legend has it the scientist grabbed another dinos head, truth is more bizzare)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brontosaurus-is-back1/
Human beings make mistakes.
Oh and I read all your posts
michael
Honored and back at ya.
Yeah bring back the Bron.
Dinosaurs and Earth Sciences were the first books my aunt bought me … I couldn’t even read yet. Sweet lady … sweet memories.
“When a group of people in government and industry decide on a policy, they can use carrots (good jobs, grants, and prestige) and sticks (loss of jobs and grants, organized slander, and worse) to make their guidelines clear, and most people will choose to follow those cues, even if they know that the policy is wrong. …” ~ biochemist Raymond Peat in http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fishoil.shtml
The above quote was in an article far removed from the CO2 will fry us to death meme. It was an article on various types of oils and how the industrial concerns and the government enforced a policy (a party line) that may be deadly to your health. I bet others here could relate similar items from other fields. When corporate interests and the government converge on a policy — the truth be damned.
The carrots and the sticks that the state and its minions can wield against anyone bucking the party line is an awesome force.
There is a very similar story here
http://www.amazon.com/How-Cure-Climate-Change-Denier-ebook/dp/B00GA2V4KM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447622316&sr=8-1&keywords=paul+caruso
Paul Caruso, an ex-Greenpeace member explain what it would take from the alarmists to get him to believe in global warming again.
That whopper was in the first paragraph. If it were true, the entire world would be challenging the consensus on climate change, including climate scientists themselves. That’s because the vast majority of people on earth have “financial or other interests” in the use of fossil fuels. They may not realize it, of course, but they do. If all fossil fuels on the planet were to suddenly disappear, cities would lose power and go dark, the internet and most communications would go down, transportation would come to a standstill, and privates jets would be grounded. The alarmists and political elites who constantly wish for such an event would cry and complain louder than the rest of us. Luckily, unless one of them was your neighbor, we wouldn’t be able to hear them.
Maybe Anthony does have game.
Considering the horse named “Anthonysgotgame” just won the 5th at Del Mar.
Gotta luv it.
The favorite in the next race is named “Oil”
I’m not kidding, nor expecting it to win.
I never get two wins in a row.
Still don’t.
David is spot on . But he left off the major problem of animal agriculture. He is a vegan so he probably did not want to exploit it.
Animal agriculture is the number one polluter and highest user of water and land resources. We need to go more vegetarian or we will run out of resources failing animals to eat.
I enjoyed your first essay, Mr. Seigel, and I posted it with links during a couple of online arguments because it’s easily digestible to the layman. Of course, I got the response of “conspiracy theories”, conclusions based on “blatant lies”, and “almost no critical thinking”. And of course, “why should I listen to a businessman instead of ‘experts’.”
Seriously, it’s exhausting – which is why I have such respect for those who stand at the forefront of this battle taking slings and arrows from these modern-day witch-burners. And I’m glad you’ve stuck to your guns, and taken the time to respond to the pushback.
You should, however, be prepared to accept the fact that there is literally nothing you can do or say to change a closed mind. And I guess that is the catch-22 – how do you deal with futility, when futility is not an acceptable option? Because these Warmists cannot be allowed to proceed, but they absolutely will not stop. Ever.
“Because these Warmists cannot be allowed to proceed, but they absolutely will not stop. Ever.”
Humans are mortal. And religion is pass down to next generation- this require work. And children tend to reject parents and other authority- it’s necessary for survival of any vague intelligent species. So regardless of how poor the educational system is, children will tend to reject the brainwashing or be too lazy to continue it.
So that the great thing about Human mortality. Though even if humans were immortal, they would simply get bored with it and/or the slow witted would get some leakage.
Warmists have already leapt the shark, and we are in the decay phase at the moment.
A death by boredom. Though people will come back to it again, because it will seem “new”- or “global warming” has already done this, and there no reason it will not happen again.
One could say the Left is all about re-doing old stupid ideas.
Vegetarian better for the environment? Have you see this TED Talk about desertification by Allen Savory?
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change?language=en
As late as 1969, [Savory] was advocating culling large populations of wild animals such as elephants, when they appeared to be destroying their habitat.[19][20] His research, validated by a committee of scientists, led to the government culling of 40,000 elephants in following years but he later concluded the culling did not reverse the degradation of the land, calling that decision “the saddest and greatest blunder of my life.”[21][22] This blunder [was] brought about by interpreting research data to fit the prevailing world-view that too many animals causes overgrazing and over browsing, (from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Savory)
This sorry man was responsible for killing 40,000 elephants before he realized that large herds of animals are what make the grass lands thrive.