Sheldon Whitehouse (D): Deniers Are InsanePosted By David Cotterell |
I posted the thoughts below in an earlier thread. Perhaps you could address them. They are certainly relevant to the question of the rationality or irrationality of the arguments of the AGW deniers.
Dave
Here ya go:
Some more thoughts on this:
1. what's the flip side that would justify a WORLD WIDE cover-up? Why are scientists world wide all colluding to oppress American energy companies? This is a contentious issue pretty much only in the US, whereas those that will feel the brunt of climate change first are developing-world countries, with seaward-concentrated populations, fragile food supplies, and poor infrastructure.
Who's doling out the bribes, how are they covering it up, and who could possibly afford to out-spend the energy industry?
2. Follow the money... the truth is usually in the opposite direction.
3. Most of the lead deniers know that they're lying about an issue that could realistically lead to the destruction of over 90% of the world's population (if not the entire human race) as well as most of the world's living species, within just a few generations. And they're doing it purely for momentary self-enrichment, at a time of record global inequality between rich and poor.
That makes them without exaggeration potentially the greatest villains in all of human history.
4. Imagine how terrible it would be if we took steps to clean up our world and then find out all these scientists were wrong?!!?
Oh the horror of a clean world when we could have left it dirty and polluted!!!
5. You cannot be a climate change denier and accept the validity of the scientific method. Climate change denial is just a small step above creationism.
6. Scientists are constantly trying to find mistakes made by other scientists. This is what they live for. Showing that someone else f'ed up an experiment or study gives them a huge hard on. With thousands and thousands of scientists all looking for each other's weaknesses, there is a pretty energetic system of checks that makes it hard for a really big mistake to get through.
7 If it was just about money then every single one of these scientists could all be bought out by a single week of Exxon profits. The reason that hasn't happened is because there are still scientists who value honesty above money.
Seriously, if you think that "AGW proponents" have more money behind them than "AGW skeptics" you're a really special type of retard.
8. if the "AGW proponents" were in it for the money, they wouldn't have to look to the future. They could just accept a big fat paycheck from Exxon or the Koch brothers today.
Surely you have to concede that if all of these scientists are just sellouts who do the bidding of the highest bidder for their services, it's pretty farking amazing that Exxon and the other big oil corporations can only garner 3% of the global scientific consensus, isn't it?
Those poor downtrodden multinational oil corporations just can't get a break, can they?
9. a) how utterly insane it is to think that the overwhelming majority of funding that goes into climate science actually goes into scientists' pet projects rather than observational platforms (such as satellites, radiosondes, etc.) that government agencies wanted before- and will continue to need irrespective of- anthropogenic climate change.
b) how utterly insane it is to think that scientists quickly and virtually unanimously identifying a problem that has a relatively straightforward solution (which is itself outside the bounds of their expertise) somehow will receive more funding than if they sustained the appearance of disagreement about (and thus the need for further research in solving) the question of attribution.
c) how utterly insane it is to think that someone studying ice sheet dynamics or ocean acidification during the Permian-Triassic boundary stands to personally benefit from a transition to a lower carbon intensity economy.
......and so on and so forth.
Dave
Dave
Here ya go:
Some more thoughts on this:
1. what's the flip side that would justify a WORLD WIDE cover-up? Why are scientists world wide all colluding to oppress American energy companies? This is a contentious issue pretty much only in the US, whereas those that will feel the brunt of climate change first are developing-world countries, with seaward-concentrated populations, fragile food supplies, and poor infrastructure.
Who's doling out the bribes, how are they covering it up, and who could possibly afford to out-spend the energy industry?
2. Follow the money... the truth is usually in the opposite direction.
3. Most of the lead deniers know that they're lying about an issue that could realistically lead to the destruction of over 90% of the world's population (if not the entire human race) as well as most of the world's living species, within just a few generations. And they're doing it purely for momentary self-enrichment, at a time of record global inequality between rich and poor.
That makes them without exaggeration potentially the greatest villains in all of human history.
4. Imagine how terrible it would be if we took steps to clean up our world and then find out all these scientists were wrong?!!?
Oh the horror of a clean world when we could have left it dirty and polluted!!!
5. You cannot be a climate change denier and accept the validity of the scientific method. Climate change denial is just a small step above creationism.
6. Scientists are constantly trying to find mistakes made by other scientists. This is what they live for. Showing that someone else f'ed up an experiment or study gives them a huge hard on. With thousands and thousands of scientists all looking for each other's weaknesses, there is a pretty energetic system of checks that makes it hard for a really big mistake to get through.
7 If it was just about money then every single one of these scientists could all be bought out by a single week of Exxon profits. The reason that hasn't happened is because there are still scientists who value honesty above money.
Seriously, if you think that "AGW proponents" have more money behind them than "AGW skeptics" you're a really special type of retard.
8. if the "AGW proponents" were in it for the money, they wouldn't have to look to the future. They could just accept a big fat paycheck from Exxon or the Koch brothers today.
Surely you have to concede that if all of these scientists are just sellouts who do the bidding of the highest bidder for their services, it's pretty farking amazing that Exxon and the other big oil corporations can only garner 3% of the global scientific consensus, isn't it?
Those poor downtrodden multinational oil corporations just can't get a break, can they?
9. a) how utterly insane it is to think that the overwhelming majority of funding that goes into climate science actually goes into scientists' pet projects rather than observational platforms (such as satellites, radiosondes, etc.) that government agencies wanted before- and will continue to need irrespective of- anthropogenic climate change.
b) how utterly insane it is to think that scientists quickly and virtually unanimously identifying a problem that has a relatively straightforward solution (which is itself outside the bounds of their expertise) somehow will receive more funding than if they sustained the appearance of disagreement about (and thus the need for further research in solving) the question of attribution.
c) how utterly insane it is to think that someone studying ice sheet dynamics or ocean acidification during the Permian-Triassic boundary stands to personally benefit from a transition to a lower carbon intensity economy.
......and so on and so forth.
Dave
