Marc Morano sat down with Benji Backer to discuss the climate issues of the day. Here are the highlights from that interview.
Marc Morano sat down with Benji Backer to discuss the climate issues of the day. Here are the highlights from that interview.
Yeah! Grow up Benji!
always fun to see “old-hand” commonsense completely wipe out inexperienced and poorly thought out ideological claims. He didn’t even have to break a sweat in the process.
Go woke, go broke. All to apparent, Benji has failed to investigate this topic beyond the talking points said repeatedly from the activist, government and big media.
My niece majored in TV journalism and her major presentation in school was one on coal power plants. All of her “research” was courtesy of the Sierra Club. Sounded very wonky, though.
These days, the assorted schools need to drop their claims that they teach “journalism” or how to write ‘fact-based’ reports in English classes and instead admit that they teach how to promulgate propaganda talking points which aren’t open to question. I covered the fault in one particular English class example in my GelbspanFiles Teach the Children Well blog post, and more recently, I had to update my post on Banishing Questions with an example of a journalism student fleeing in terror from me pointing out how his report failed to question anything about troublesome details within it.
Twenty five years ago I was working on my masters in environmental engineering. I had to give a presentation on methodology to evaluate impact on people. I would be presenting to mostly working engineers, none in the fossil industry.
So I thought I would attach coal power plants. As a result of my research, I became a supporter of coal power plants. Like nuclear power plants no one is being hurt by emissions from coal plants.
I am not saying there are not contrived models showing the number of people being ‘killed’ based on emissions. No smoking gun because the level of pollution is not detectable.
We measure stuff. The model for a nuclear power shows exposure at the fence line to be 2 orders of magnitude below background. The measured levels are four orders of magnitude below that.
Would sound more impressive if you expressed the “orders of magnitude” as their 10 squared products – e.g. “more than100 times lower”.
?
100 times lower is an oxymoron. It is meaningless. If you said one-tenth or one-one hundredth, you would express the meaning you are looking for.
Sorry, this is one of my pet-peeves. I usually try to avoid excessive pedantry, but that one will trigger it every time.
Yah, but… Billy Joe Bob will say, “100 times lower?!? That’s a LOT! That’s a six-pack compared to a keg.”
Remember the audience. Grauniad readers need to understand how little radiation is being released into the wild.
correct, to a degree, no one is being hurt by emissions from a coal plant, but deaths due to coal extraction is a different story completely, claiming lives all the time right up to present day somewhere around the world.
search for
aberfanand that was after the coal was extracted.I agree! To clarify my support for coal it how things are in the US since about 1995.
I do not expect the NYT to investigate the human cost of solar panels made with slave labor coal.
When I worked at a nuke in China part of my job was to mentor a group of young engineers on nuclear safety. Would you like guess how common smoke detectors are?
George T says: “Go woke, go broke”
What a laughably ironic comment, George!
George is totally oblivious to the fact that the richest states in the U.S., with the highest average personal incomes, are those dreaded “woke” states, while the very poorest states, with the lowest personal incomes, are all “anti-woke” Red Rube Trumper states.
Another comically epic WUWT fail.
Wokeness didn’t produce their wealth, MGC. Hard-working non-wokey prior generations produced that wealth.
The present urban wokesters have had it so easy they take their prosperity for granted. They’re cruising along on the wealth past hard-working generations.
One day, after they legislate away low-cost energy and mandate all their give-aways, it’ll be gone.
Pat, your claim is false. Hard working “wokey” current generations are still producing that great difference in wealth in their states versus the poor folks in the “non-wokey” states. They are not merely living off past generations.
The main difference between the wealthy “woke” states and the poor “non-woke” states that has created that large wealth gap is intelligence. The “woke” folks embrace science, value critical thinking, are open to new ideas, and fully accept verifiable facts, even if those facts are at times inconvenient. The poor state rubes on the other hand belittle and trample on science, embrace delusional conspiracy theory thinking, refuse to consider new ideas, and blindly deny well verified facts. Like so many folks do here on WUWT.
Omg….cringeworthy from the youngster so naive, gullible and misguided.
He was simply repeating all the things that are being taught in K-12 schools as official curricula. Even the standardized testing is full of things about showing “the student has a thorough grasp of the dangers of man-made climate change on society.” The science section of their standardized tests get marked down if they use the scientific method and question the unsupported hypothesis.
“cringeworthy …so naive, gullible and misguided … ”
An ironically apt description of WUWT regulars, Steve.
Sad to see how deeply the ‘young’ have been indoctrinated with climate alarmism’, and how little they know of the complete inadequacy of ‘renewables’ to maintain civilization.
The young are easier targets than any other age group. From an early age, pre-school they know when things are “unfair”, They are also keen on improving the world and making it a better and safer place. The previous generations are regarded as the cause of the problem and cynical abusers of youth. When I was a lad it was nuclear disarmament led by CND and that a nuclear free world would be a better place. How this would be achieved, other than marches to Aldermaston, was never satisfactorially explained. Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament being the equivalent of going Net Zero alone on the totally misguided belief that the rest of the world would follow suit.
Now we’re into a Climate Crisis, Again we have to do something, we being everyone else, what and how exactly are never clarified or defimed. School Strikes for Climate, blockading fuel terminals and blocking roads make the protestors feel good about achieving something without having to change their lifestyle or having do some meaningful research.
At one time this was known as the arrogance of youth, alternatively the naivety of youth, I prefer to think of it as the innumeracy of youth
Our own Home Counties young Troll being a classic case
You can thank the American Educational System. All across this land indoctrination is #1 goal – like-think, all in IT together.
It’s been going on for decades. My late mother often saved clippings whenever any of her kids made the local paper – one of which captured me and several of my 6th grade classmates displaying our environmental ‘artwork’. Although this was way before the advent of Earth Day, my particular offering showed a factory with several stacks billowing black smoke, adjacent to a stream filled with dead fish. I only found out years later that my late father, a civil engineer whose first job post-WWII was working on the construction of a large coal-fired power plant in MI, was not pleased.
Our WWII fathers had experienced with streams fill with dead humans.
Building a coal fired power plant was making a the world a better place.
My contribution to making making MI a better place was building a nuke plant. It was the job of others to put pollution controls on the coal plants.
Our fathers saved us from evil. We cleaned the environment. You have to feel sorry for the young who worry about their future based on doom and gloom.
Well said.
One good thing from the pandemic is with the remote learning forced on students, parents could see for themselves the indoctrination going on.
For too long parents left their children’s education up to the hands of the professionals. Little did they know what the educational establishment was up to. After all, who would have believed CRT and the 1619 project were being taught as history? Who would have believed the LBGTQ+ indoctrination taking place?
Hopefully, parents won’t forget and will continue to work on overseeing their children’s education.
At a time in my career when I was having some financial difficulties, I turned to substitute teaching in grades 3-12 for some cash flow. I was astounded at how much things had changed from when I was in school. I decided then that every parent should spend at least one day a year sitting in on their child’s class to see how things were being done.
I highly recommend to parents that they look at the textual material that students are allowed to use.The indoctrination takes place because students are limited to using the sources that have been selected for them. The threat of losing marks for sourcing more broadly is real.
I remember an article about some (state? county? school district?) forcing parents to sign agreements not to watch or look into the school material if they wanted their children to access the electronic home school sessions.
The problem is that there are too many teachers that aren’t smart enough or brave enough to counter the propaganda. I have heard too many so-called “science educators” that don’t know their hind quarters from a strange quark.
More, more and more of Marc!
Morano would be more effective if he were less dismissive of his interviewer and less arrogant in tone. He provides useful information and is brilliant in his verbal delivery, absent the snark. If I were a “climate believer,” I would be turned off by his tone and not listen to his message. His delivery may appeal to the skeptic who likes to see climate alarmists “put down,” but he does nothing to appeal to anyone on the fence or who believes what they’ve heard in the media but is willing to listen to facts.
This is the kind of publicity we don’t need to help sway people to at least look at facts!
I disagree. People that have blindly accepted the “climate crisis” propaganda without question need to be pilloried and ridiculed at every opportunity. It’s less offensive and less destructive than the fear tactics that made them believe in the first place.
Stridency is a turn-off. Climate Nazism appeals to emotion, after all, so a civil delivery is a must if persuading the open-minded is the goal. Don’t give them an emotional reason to shut you down by being unlikable.
And that approach worked so well for Neville Chamberlain.
There are almost no young people who are open-minded on this issue. They either have a strong contrarian streak and avoided the indoctrination or they are brain-washed cultists out to save the world.
His questions were the typical cultists view of “all the computer games are real and dangerous and the sky is truly falling upon us all!!!!” All that will help them is for life to hit them squarely in the forehead with a two-by-four. We can contribute by laughing in their faces.
All that will help them is for life to hit them squarely in the forehead with a two-by-four.
Unfortunately, that is how it always turns out…. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Being nice to Benji will not make him look for the truth. The truth would shatter everything he believes in and that cannot be allowed.
While they may ‘deserve’ it, it won’t win any converts.
The emotional shock of receiving disdain directed at poor ideas may have a beneficial long-term impact.
Agree. A weak job by Mr. Morano. There are plenty of actual data he could have cited to support his view. Wildfires are increasing slowly since 1983, but are way down since the first half of the 20th Century when there were many years of ten-fold higher fire rates and extents. There is no trend in hurricane intensity or number for many decades as revealed by Accumulated Cyclone Energy measurements and actual hurricane counts. Sea level has been rising slowly since before Abraham Lincoln was President as can be seen in long-term tide gauge measurements and continue to do so without acceleration. One sea level study has shown that sea level has been rising at the same rate as currently measured for as far back as 6,000 years. Mr. Backer wanted to talk about Charleston SC but Mr Morano cut him off. Had he allowed, the answer is that relative sea level at Charleston is rising faster than many other East Coast locations because the land is sinking – a clear observation that to date, has not been analyzed likely because the city’s mayor would rather sue than try and figure out the reason and do something about it, if possible. Norfolk VA has a similar problem likely due to groundwater pumping and Virginia’s Governor is trying to do something about it. Then there are polar bears, Arctic and Antarctic ice, the greening earth – the list goes on and on.
I’m not sure that facts on their own would convince Benji of anything.
Marc did point out things like tornadoes _not_ getting worse, but it seemed like Benji either didn’t comprehend, or maybe just thought it was an opinion.
Benji needs to be taught how to think, needs to be sceptical of big claims like ‘we’re all gonna die unless we have one world govt and eat lentils!’, and maybe look beyond what he reads in MSM articles.
Benji described himself as an interviewer, but seemed to be an interviewer who wasn’t interested in exploring what Marc was saying. For a guy who says he’s worried about the future he doesn’t seem to have tried very hard to understand where ‘climate change’ fits in the list of things he needs to worry about. E.g. I wonder if he’s noticed that his cost of living has gone through the roof in recent times. ‘Climate change’ should be the least of his worries.
Benji may have described himself as an interviewer . . . but he clearly was a interviewer with a not-so-hidden agenda.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to see the introductions/background facts for this interview, so its hard to judge if Benji revealed his personal bias prior to starting the interview.
As to Benji’s tactic of resorting to essentially “Well,I’m the one conducting the interview here/asking the questions here, so I’m not going to respond to what you ask me” . . . that’s his prerogative, but he was not consistent in that stance through the summary of the interview as presented in the above clip.
Right on! Look where mean tweets got the Donald. (/s)
I also disagree. I think that the messaging of the climate emergency is so pervasive that you need to be very, very aggressive indeed to make an impact. His dismissive tone also indicates extreme confidence in his knowledge and his position.
Meisha, I agree.
I’ve never heard of Benji but I think while Morano did bring up good points he’s a bit too quick to be dismissive of his interviewer. It’ll just turn off Benji’s supporters (whoever they may be) and they’re presumabley the ones Morano’s trying to convert.
Meisha, I have to, respectfully, disagree with you. The interviewer was dogmatic and arrogant in spouting baseless CliSciFi talking points. He needed to be firmly corrected and not coddled in an attempt to please others. He will hopefully go back and review the basis of the ill-informed statements he regurgitated. Embarrassment sometimes has that effect, especially with people having integrity.
The problem is he will not reflect, but walk back into the echo chamber that fed him that misinformation in the first place.
“…as carbon emissions have increased…”
______________________________________
And bang! Marc cuts him off.
Carbon emissions? What kind of carbon? Graphite, amorphous carbon, fullerenes or maybe even diamonds. What is it that he is talking about?
Lucy in the sky with diamonds ?
Everything claimed by the Climate Cult has happened before, has been happening right along, or is an exaggeration or a lie. The only thing that is new is that atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing.
Marc does a great job at challenging the BS rhetoric employed by the true believers of the climate cult. I always cringe when someone who knows better repeats phrases designed by propagandists to mislead such as “carbon emissions,” “climate pollution,” “climate crisis,” etc.
Well, I’m convinced. Pretty sure Benji remains the opposite.
Ridiculing or embarrassing the opposition may feel good, but it won’t really change their mind. They may go away, but they will probably go away mad and want revenge.
playing nice is a failed strategy. this is friggin war!
Yes, it is just like the war in Korea and in Vietnam. The politicians won’t let the military terminate it.
Did they have the interview in the laundry room?
Why is there a picture of a mangrove bonsai on the screen throughout this interview?
😉
It’s all that remains of the Amazon rain forests?
The young reporter is a prime example of indoctrination. Completely faithful to politically charged pseudo-scientific questions being read that he knows next to nothing about. Education in America is a failure when it comes to the concept of individual thinking. It promotes all in it together, like-think mentality with an agenda. To that end they have been very successful.
Agreed. The young chap appears to not be in any kind of frame of mind to learn something from the person he is interviewing, only to reinforce what he has been told.
As Ben Vorlich mentions above, I think a large part of the problem is innumeracy. Younger people are generally somewhat naturally inquisitive and questioning. But if they lack even the basic numerical mental tools to ask the back-of-an-envelope questions then they will not be able to quickly refute arguments that don’t hold water.
That is by design. The goal of modern education is to turn out obedient proles who can be herded in whatever direction the elite wishes. A few more years and “Idiocracy” will be fully realized as prophecy rather than fiction.
FYI, Benjamin “Benji” Backer is not a reporter. He is the founder of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), an advocacy group that seeks to promote free-market solutions to the ‘climate crisis’. ACC is made up of primarily 20-somethings, who’ve all been indoctrinated into the ‘climate crisis’ since they were at their mothers’ teats but have conservative political leanings. I have a hope that some of them will eventually ‘smell the coffee’, and debating Marc Morano is a good start.
😎
I had to look him up too. (Didn’t realize from the post title that “Backer” is his last name.)
Do they really believe the Climate Political Science?
It sounds like ACC is a trojan horse with a Rino horn attached.
The little guy is absolutely right – his future is being wasted.
Wasted by:
## UK students are gonna be hit by interest rates on their loans close on what credit card companies charge
In the last 100 years, which generation didn’t believe their parents f-d up the world? Which generation didn’t believe everything would be better if only they were in charge? My generation had to deal with Vietnam, Watergate, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War, fear of nuclear armageddon, Jim Crow, legal sexual discrimination, etc. etc.
The Hippies went to California, grew up and raised kids.
Now look at California.
PS It goes back more than 100 years.
They [Young People] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things — and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning — all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything — they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.
(Aristotle)
“The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.”
(From a sermon preached by Peter the Hermit in A.D. 1274)
“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint”.
(Hesiod, 8th century BC)
“I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”
(G.K. Chesterton)
I had nothing but awe for my forebears who became refugees from the potato famine, made new lives for themselves in an alien land (Australia), and provided us successive generations with education, health care, opportunities for business ventures, etc etc.
They left nothing on the table for themselves.
You can find the same sentiments in many writings from Rome of 2000 years ago.
Don’t be a sucker, Peta. A study has shown that high levels of MATERNAL Glyphosate exposure during pregnancy can cause Autism. MATERNAL. Not “he”.
You know how they did the study? They gave pregnant mice a .39% solution of Glyphosate to drink. It killed them all. Then they tried a .039% solution. That’s thousands of times more than any human would ever ingest. No problems with the offspring. The little mice passed locomotion tests, three-chamber social interaction tests, and forced swimming tests.
Then they upped the concentration to .098% and saw effects in the offspring – they had trouble passing those little mice tests and, likely, would have had trouble on college entrance tests too.
This is another RIDICULOUS claim.
You really should do a whole lot more reading and a whole lot less writing, Peta.
We look down on the middle or dark ages as if people were ignorant but fail to recognize that logic and reasoning was very much part of education from the youngest years all the way through to the university curriculum.
Despite the explosion in knowledge and easy availabilty of enormous amount of information, students today have been dumbed down and are lacking in the skills of careful reasoning. They are moved by emotional appeals but hardly by an intelligent discourse. They want to be entertained but not forced to think deeply. Spoilt young people have lazy minds with too little incentive to put their minds to productive use in order to survive.
But I believe this is going to suddenly change and much to their dismay.
Skeptics continue to ignore their most powerful weapon. There is no man made climate change from increasing CO2 concentrations.
Accepting there may be some amount of unspecified warming completely changed the conversation above. Had Marc instead stated that solid science shows there will be no warming, he would have quickly got the attention of the interviewer.
The result would be to raise the issue that the scientific debate has been politically stifled. Real scientists with solid facts are being ignored. I think the interviewer would have found that interesting. Why has he never heard about it?
Here’s the science in a nutshell:
1) The basic greenhouse effect is saturated. That means all the surface energy that can be “trapped” by greenhouse gases is already being trapped. I doubt the interviewer was aware of this fact.
2) This has led to what is called the enhanced greenhouse effect. It’s unlikely the interviewer has ever heard of it even though it is mentioned in IPCC reports. This effect is based upon claiming increases in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere slows the loss of energy at the top of the atmosphere (TOA).
3) There is no evidence of any slowing of energy loss at the TOA. Instead, Miskolczi 2010 describes the results of the analysis of 60+ years of NOAA data which shows the greenhouse effect has remained constant.
4) Dr Bill Gray provided a logical mechanism for this to occur. Enhanced evaporation at the surface will increase water vapor which is a lighter molecule. This will increase the speed of convective currents in the atmosphere which drives the air into higher, colder altitudes. As a result, more of the water vapor is condensed out of the air reducing the high altitude greenhouse effect due to water vapor.
5) The increased evaporation is driven by the increase in CO2 itself. CO2 increases low in the atmosphere will increase the amount of low energy photons striking the surface of the planet. Low energy photons are absorbed right at the surface and therefore will enhance evapotranspiration.
6) The combination of a slight increase in the CO2 greenhouse effect and a slight decrease in the water vapor greenhouse effect keeps the overall greenhouse effect constant as was found in the NOAA data by Miskolczi.
7) Here’s a view of the high altitude water vapor content.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericSpecificHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
Would this be too complex for the interviewer to understand? Maybe. But, he would have walked away with the knowledge there really is science that is in direct conflict with the alarmist narrative.
Richard,
1) depends on your definition of “saturation”. CliSci’s will quickly debunk your argument based on the “wings”. 2) not worth using as a discussion point. 3) TOA has increased according to “ Earth’s energy budget” in WikiP.. but they use this as evidence of warming, so you aren’t going to end up with debate points, plus mention of Miskolczi is like naming Dr. Kevorkian as a great humanitarian. 4) Gray’s stuff should be taught in school, it’s that relevant, instead of extinguishing a candle with CO2, so you’re right on this one…5) no, temperature drives evaporation…6) see 3…..7) anything from Humlum’s site is good for greenies to read.
“would this be too complex for the interviewer to understand ?”. In Benji’s case, yes.
1) The wings are essentially irrelevant as there simply isn’t enough energy there to amount to any future problem.
2) This is the main basis for claims of future warming.
3) Yes, TOA IR radiation has increased with the temperature as is expected regardless of CO2. The key point, it hasn’t decreased.
5) Temperature is simply a measure of kinetic energy. It is energy that drives evaporation. Increased CO2 IR energy is absorbed slightly differently but will increase evaporation just like any other energy.
6) I don’t care what other people think of Miskloczi and neither should anyone else. He highlighted the NOAA data that demonstrates no change in the overall greenhouse effect across 60+ years. Dr. Gray’s ideas provide the mechanism that supports those observations.
Keep in mind that Gero/Turner 2012 provides additional observational evidence that supports Miskolczi and Gray. Feldman et al 2015 show that the CO2 IR energy at the surface really is increasing. Gero/Turner show that the overall energy level stayed constant for 14 years of measurements.
The real point is Benji would not have needed to fully understand this science. The knowledge that good scientists have uncovered data and ideas that negate the warming effect of CO2 would be enough. He’s probably never heard this before.
June: Gee whiz Ward, You were a little rough on the Beaver.
Ward: The boy has got to grow up at some point.
He needed to point out that the “facts” cited by the interviewer regarding record heat, record storms, droughts, and whatever else, are all lies, propagated by people who have fraudulently rewritten historical data sets to show trends that measured data do not show.
They truncate graphs of wildfires to eliminate the many decades when fires were incredibly worse, they simply make up stuff like hurricanes being worse, and ignore that we just had the longest hurricane drought in recorded history, he does not mention that the warming over the past hundred years is off of the coldest temps since the interglacial started, and that those cold centuries were disastrous for human beings, nor does he mention that almost all of the warming since 1850 had already occurred by the early 1900s. He never mentions that graphs published by alarmists have been fabricated by simply changing what was measured in the past, and that the same graphs as of 20 years ago showed no such thing, at which point the keepers of those records just plain doctored them.
He did not mention that it has been far warmer at many times over the period of human history, and on a slightly longer time scale, the warmth greatly exceeded current temps. Along with pointing that out, he should have pointed out that these warmer periods were not any kind of disaster, but precisely the opposite.
He could have noted that climate alarmists have continually claimed that “climate change” was wrecking crops and agricultural yields, and that all of these claims are flat out contradicted by actual data. The alarmists say things that are close to the opposite of true, not merely incorrect.
He needed to point out that if the interviewer took the time to look at the actual data for each of his assertions, he would find out that each of them has no facts to support the claim…it is all propaganda by people who get paid to be fear mongering climate trolls.
Marc does better than most when it comes to discussing these things with people who believe as the interviewer believes, but he and all of us climate realists need to do far better.
Point out that the US has lowered emissions by far more than Germany, and did it while lowering prices and creating jobs, while Germany has caused prices for energy to skyrocket and barely moved the needle on emissions, while at the same time making them utterly reliant on hostile powers for the energy they need to actually keep people warm and fed.
People in Marc’s chair need to have their own clipboard, one full of factual and altered versions of the graphs, articles from warmista scientists before they were warmistas, graphs of geological periods of time showing CO2 does not correlate with the global temperature pattern, etc.
It’s clear Benji Backer doesnt know squat about climate or conservation. He clearly shows how indoctrinated and blinded he has become by the politically motivated climate fear mongerers. That he suggested recent wildfires have been made worse by climate change reveals he knows nothing about fire ecology and simply parrots the alarmists BS. Its a total tragedy and perversion that he founded and head’s a group called American Conservation Coalition when he shows he doesnt know squat about real conservation. I’ll guarantee I’ve done more to promote better environmental stewardship than he ever has, and my success evolved because I rejected global warming catastrophic tropes and pursued real conservation by understanding ALL the factors affecting our environment. That he claims to speak for all the young people who fear rising CO2 is jeopardizing their future, only shows he is a mindless idiot.
Jim,
You are one of the few conservationists I respect. The Sierra Club was my childhood experience with conservationists and they were awful. Actually threatened to sue my Boy Scout Troop for volunteering to construct boardwalk trails in the Tehachapi Forest to prevent erosion caused from all the day-trippers hiking up the trails. Turned me off to people who call themselves conservationists for the rest of my life (so far – I’m not dead yet…)
Thanks for being a rational conservationist.
Thanks for the kind words
A good example of how well CC propaganda has taken hold. No facts, just opinions. And when Marc corrected (continually) Benji it went right over his head. We are now living in a world where opinions/consensus instead of facts rule the roost. Most thought and believed the internet would enlighten people but never did they realize that to can be corrupted.
But FEELINGS are the most important thing these days.
I know Benji Backer. He is intelligent, honest, and earnest. Misguided due to the indoctrination he has received, yes, but then, who amongst us didn’t have youthful views that we have subsequently altered, if not abandoned? I would like to echo Meisha’s comment that Morano’s tone was unnecessarily snarky and dismissive. People like Benji who are truly curious and honest will eventually alter their belief set, but I’m pretty sure that Marc’s interview delayed rather than hastened this process for Benji and many others like him.
What is Marc Morano’s goal? Fire up the believers (and inspire them to donate more)? If so, bravo. But if the goal is persuade the next generation to shed the ideological shackles placed upon them by our current “educational” system, sorry, total fail.
Grow a pair.
Mozman, I totally agree.
It looked a bit like Morano was trying to prove how smart he was. He should have probed Benji’s talking points one by one in more depth and more calmly. The everpresent smile doesn’t help at all…it makes it look like Morano is treating Benji’s comments with contempt.
This is no way to convert people to your point of view. Don’t just bombard them with facts…try and understand their point of view and just show them calmly and politely where it’s wrong.
Alastair I totally disagree. You distort the interview. Morano asked Benji a few times to explain what he means, but Benji just put him off with “I’m asking the questions!” Benji was clearly not interested in honest discussion, but more interested inpushing bogus talking points.
Mozman, Agreed Benji revealed how totally indoctrinated he has become. He sounded like Greta wearing a conservative mask. So if you truly know Benji, instruct him on how to have a discussion
“What is Marc Morano’s goal? Fire up the believers (and inspire them to donate more)? If so, bravo.”
Now, you were saying something about unnecessarily snarky and dismissive . . .
Nearly every question Benji asked included either lies or highly misleading statements. I don’t know where he’s getting his information from but whoever is telling him stuff like “worst five years for fires in history in just the last ten years” is lying to him, since that is 100% untrue.
Unfortunately he was repeating lesson plans from K-12 “Science” classes. One of the many reasons I am considering retiring when my grandchild reaches school age and home-schooling him. The total bull that I hear from so-called “Science Educators” passed as fact infuriates me any time I am speaking with one.
If someone creates doubt in my mind regardless of whether they say it nastily or sweetly, I am going to research and look for some answers….and sometimes I find I am wrong in my thinking… I don’t think Morano has anything to answer for….its pretty hard to speak respectfully to someone who talks about consensus and young peoples feelings, states blatant falsities as truth and believes that computer models can predict the future climate when they cannot even get the weather right a week out, all the while wanting to make out your an idiot and score a couple of gotcha moments….. Morano did a great job and every thing stated was factual and correct. Made Benji look like a twat…he now needs to go away and research better, not just look for confirmation of his belief systems.
Benjamin is a TRUE BELIEVER.
Backer is following the Kathy Newman style of interviewing. First he states his beliefs as fact and is trying to corner Morano as a denialist.
Ummmm . . . I do believe the sentence under the above article’s video:
“Marc Morano sat down with Benji Backer to discuss the climate issues of the day.”
could better reflect the actual content of the video by this rewording:
“Marc Morano mopped the floor with Benji Backer in the course of discussing climate issues of the day.”
There are no “highlights” in anything that Marc Morano says. This guy is as ridiculously anti-science and as totally disingenuous as they come. Shame on WUWT for even mentioning this pathetic charlatan.
Got any objective evidence to go with that rant?
Gordon, pretty much any visit to Morano’s utterly ridiculous, wildly dishonest Climate Depot website will provide mountains of evidence. One example is the “State of the Climate 2021” report by Ole Humlum, which is loaded with falsehoods.
So, you are transferring your asserted sins of Ole Humlum onto Marc Morano simply because he refers to Humlum’s “State of the Climate 2021” report?
If you consider this to be “objective evidence”, you have a much larger and more important task at hand . . . namely, informing the Library of Congress to begin a purge of all books and publications that you judge, in your own words, to be “utterly ridiculous, wildly dishonest . . . loaded with falsehoods”.
Please provide WUWT readers with updates on your progress toward that end.
Gordon, Morano has carried all kinds of ludicrous, lying, anti-science nonsense on his website, for years on end. The Humlum article was just one example of what happens to be there currently.
By the way, no where did I mention “purging” anything. Nice false strawman “argument” there.
Our free speech rights are a massive public benefit, but with it comes some drawbacks. Propagandist nutjobs like Morano filling gullible folks heads with anti-science garbage and outright lies is one of those unfortunate drawbacks.
MGC is just a hateful troll. He still refuses to provide any objective evidence to support his drivel. “Shame on WUWT” readers for giving him any time.
Yes… MGC is an unfortunate drawback of free speech.
Sorry that you are psychologically incapable of accepting easily verified facts, steve.
Morano doesn’t limit his lies to just climate change. He is such a stinking liar that he even parroted the ludicrous claim that the Jan. 6th insurrection was a “false flag” operation. He also made the total nutjob claim that “mask wearing is associated with higher incidence of flu and influenza”, which is of course utterly absurd. Data demonstrates that incidence of flu decreased greatly during the pandemic, precisely because of behaviors such as mask wearing.
I just had to watch it a second time…..Marc Morano stating “Grow Up!!!” is the statement of the century. That is the solution in a nutshell.