Ignorant, stupid, insane or just plain evil? (#6 in comment series)

For the record, any comment posted over here is fair game for finding itself featured as a stand-alone post.  I don't change any words, beyond occasional courtesy spell correction, paragraph-breaks, highlights.  My commentary is clearly marked. Or as in this case, I don't have a word to interject.  

I believe it belongs upfront, because Kevin's comment did an excellent job of boiling it down to basics.  If your struggling with figuring out the climate science contrarian mind-scape, here's a short but good read.

At January 30, 2016 at 8:08 AM , Kevin O'Neill said...

It's really pretty simple logic: By assembling a list that contains completely contradictory claims all PopTech is promoting is ignorance, uncertainty, and doubt. Color me surprised (/snark).

Knowledge is gained by comparing competing claims and discarding those that are not consistent with all the evidence.

As with most of the denialsphere, PopTech shies away from actual definitions.

The theory of AGW is pretty simple: Human activities have the net effect of making the planet we live on warmer. The theory is true. If not, there's a Nobel Prize awaiting the paper that shows our current understanding of radiative transfer is completely incorrect.

The only doubt then is magnitude and effect.

Magnitudes are pretty well bounded and room for scientific disagreement exists, but the margin of disagreement leads to differences of at most a couple or three decades before we reach popular temperature benchmarks (2C or 3C above pre-industrial).

Effects are multiple and confounding. I.e., global warming has winners and losers. The general consensus is there will be more losers than winners.

1000 or 10,000 or 100,000 peer-reviewed papers don't change any of the above. It's the Sun! No, it's the wind! No, it's cosmic rays! No, it's the AMO (PDO, NAO. CIA, black-helicopters)!

But tree-rings .... clouds .... emails .... Al Gore is fat!

The question really comes down to: Ignorant, stupid, insane or just plain evil? Which category does PopTech fall into?  

I consider the run-of-the-mill commenter at WUWT to just be ignorant. No, great sin in that - we're all ignorant on different subjects. Of course more than a few simply can't understand the basics even when they're spoon-fed the answers. You can't fix stupid.

And of course there are the requisite number of conspiracy theorists - global warming is just a big fraud promoted by a cabal of well-paid climate scientists. Yes, and the moon landing was staged on a Hollywood backlot.

Now, if your local denier/pseudosceptic doesn't fall into one of the above categories we have but one left: just plain evil. Evil knows. They know the snake oil they're peddling and do it with eyes wide open.

Four glass slippers; which one fits Andrew?

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No surprise, Poptech couldn't resist lashing out and repeating his tired old rationalization, and never for a moment slowing down enough to think about the real issues.
Or responding to my questions.  In any event, I brought it on myself and this is all about a learning experience so I'll respond to some of Poptech's comment up here where I can format it for clarity.

PT:  Rebuttal: The list is a bibliographic resource not a unified scientific theory and does not discriminate between competing skeptical viewpoints. 

CC:  Furthermore the list doesn't discriminate between utter bullshit and skeptical arguments that may have held validity back in the old days but have since been resolved by on-going science research.

Poptech's list does nothing to educate anyone about the state of climate science understanding about what's happening to our planet.

PT:  It is left up to the person using the resource to make up their own minds regarding any mutually exclusive claims. 

CC:  However, Poptech's list is expressly intended for people who don't want to do their own thinking.

PT:  Anyone open minded would accept the existence of independent thought and debate on climate change.

CC:  Remember the sage warning, keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains falls out!  

Instead of counting angels on a pin head and fabricating phony debates, we'd be better off learning what's actually happening out in our world.

PT:  Attacking the list with strawman arguments is all alarmists have. 

CC:  Your collect itself is all about a "straw man" arguments.

My argument is that your list has nothing to do with climate science reality  You admit as much in your first sentence.

You want me playing into your fantasy.  I refuse.  

My other argument is that we need to be learning about the geophysical realities of our planet not indulging in your infantile efforts of avoidance.