Monday, November 16, 2015

Part 6 - Debating ClimateDepot fan: AGW religion (epilogue)


Will responded to the final installment of my series back at #1, and considering that he tossed the "AGW is religion" turd at me, I decided Will's comment deserved the spotlight and a closer look.  (supporting links at the bottom)

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Will at 3:48 PM November 16, 2015 wrote:

Yours is not a debating site (1) but instead is an AGW religious site (2). I destroyed the AGW conjecture with one of my arguments that you did not disagree with but then decided just to ignore. (3) There is evidence that the climate sensitivity is 0.0 (4) and hence CO2 does not affect climate. (5)

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Will, good to hear from you, sad to hear you didn't learn a thing.  
Now let me say this about that:

Yours is not a debating site (1)

    If not, it's because AGW contrarians hide from anything that forces them to produce rational responses in writing.  They fear it because it exposes their weak underbelly, no substance, just a lot of flimflam.
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but instead is an AGW religious site (2)

    Then as if to highlight the hopelessness of attempting to communicate with one of your persuasion you lob that idiotic religion meme at me.  Religion is a belief system, our climate understanding is based on a huge body of scientific facts - even if you choose to ignore most of it and misrepresent the rest.

I challenge you, or anyone else, to explain how you arrive at such a conclusion?  Heck, can you even explain what it means; what do you think makes AGW a religion? 

Saturday, November 14, 2015

So, you wanna debate Michael Crichton's fraud?

I made some edits for clarity this morning, I can't deny this post is about Crichton - but the more important point is examining and understanding how serious science gets twisted and manipulated for fun and profit.

The obscene conflation of fiction and reality - it has terribly disconnected people from an awareness and "appreciation" for this planet we depend on for everything, and it's going to bite us.  Those who intend to get through need to get to understand these tactics.  (10:25am 11/15/15)
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A fella was offended that I dissed Michael Crichton in the comments section of a YouTube video of his 2008 appearance on the Charlie Rose show.  Considering I still hear people using Crichton's science-fiction thriller State of Fear as though it were some serious guide which justifies distrusting and ignoring today's fact based climate science understanding, I find the once quite interesting writer turned himself into a sociopath and I'm not going to let Mr.X.'s criticism go unexamined.  I'll back up my opinions with links to many more authoritative and informative articles that dissect and explain his intentionally malicious errors.

Mr.X.  (11/14/15) writes
(1/4) +citizenschallenge, Michael Crichton was a vastly more intelligent man than you and I both could ever hope to be stranger. The man was far more than a "fiction writer". He was a doctor, anthropologist, biographer, and yes a talented writer and motion picture producer. 
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Oh dear, I though climate science contrarian types loath appeals to authority?  Aren't you forgetting this is about misrepresenting important climate science for political motives?

Mr.X., please why does Crichton's excellent background in etcetera - trump the education and acquired knowledge of professionals such as a Schneider, or Santer, or Mann, or for that matter, the collective consensus of a huge global community of experts who have dedicated their lives to studying various aspects of our global climate engine?

What part of Crichton's biography gives him dispensation to misrepresent and lie about the real climate science consensus?  
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(2/4) Mr.X. continues:  He used his "fiction" not only to entertain people but also to provoke a social commentary, and make the common man question things. 

Part 5c - Debating ClimateDepot fan: final thoughts


WillH - 10/26/15

Will:  ... I myself was once a Sierra Club member. I developed a soft spot for that part of the world after having gone to summer camp between Sequoia and King Canyon National parks and then doing a lot of back packing in the Southern Sierras but since then the club's politics has driven me away. 
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This is ridiculous, what in the world does the Sierra Club have to do with honestly learning from the body of authoritative evidence regarding manmade global warming? 

I agree the Sierra Club isn't what it once was, so what?
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Will:  Maybe I inherited a soft spot for the mountains from my father who was born in a mining town in the mountains of southern CO. 
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So what?  Besides, consider the miner's legacy - knowing how to take stuff out of the ground, maximize profits, then run and leave huge messes behind for others to clean up.  Trust me, I've seen it, I lived in Silverton 79/85 and worked at the Mayflower Mill 83/84ish (crusher operator and ball/rod mill operator) - even worked underground (track crew - Gladstone) for a few months - so I've seen it from the inside.  I also watched the Animas River run orange/yellow yuck this past autumn.

But, what's all that got to with understanding climate science?

Friday, November 13, 2015

Will, take a peek at Morano's Climate Hustle

Speaking of ClimateDepot's Marc Morano, that alpha attack-dog of the Republican/libertarian machine.  A character who I believe is an exemplar of the sorts of individuals who have became the force driving the past decades meltdown in constructive-dialogue and statesmanship.  With bigger than life egos and never learning from their mistakes.  Instead always doubling down with ever more self-certainly, extreme slander, hostility and misrepresentations - and never ever an ounce of self-skepticism; or curiosity about the available Earth observation information.

Will, I just found out that Marc's created a film Climate Hustle (yeah, talk about  bringing politics into it) and he's scheduled a world premier at the Cinéma du Panthéon in Paris during the upcoming climate conference.  Guess it's his way of making the case for willfully ignoring down to Earth realities.  

Graham Readfearn has written an article about Morano's "Climate Hustle" which I'm reposting for your edification (without ads even  ; ).  But first, here are some other information rich articles regarding this political thug and denier of our collective dependence on a healthy planet:

Peter Imrichold dog thoughts.com | Posted on January 19, 2015

ClimateDepot.com founder Marc Morano has been called “the Matt Drudge of climate denial,” the “king of the skeptics,” and “a central cell of the climate-denial machine,” and he revels in these descriptions. Although he has no scientific expertise, he is adamant that manmade global warming is a “con job” based on “subprime science.”  
Morano gained prominence working for two of the most vocal climate deniers in the U.S.: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who notoriously called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” and Rush Limbaugh, who we named Climate Change Misinformer of the Year in 2011 for his steadfast denial of climate science and wild conspiracy theories about the climate change “hoax.” 
These days Morano is paid by an industry-funded group to run the climate denial website ClimateDepot.com. At Climate Depot, Morano serves as the de facto research department for the right-wing media’s attacks on climate science, and mobilizes his readers to target individual scientists and reporters for telling the public about climate change threats.  (link to read all of it)
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The Planet Wreckers  | 10 Jun 2012
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This Man Wants to Convince You Global Warming Is a Hoax
Marc Morano broke the Swift Boat story and effectively stalled John Kerry's presidential run. Now he is working against an even bigger enemy: belief in climate change.
Somehow, he seems to be winning. 
By John. Richardson  |  MAR 30, 2010 
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Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
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Marc Morano's Climate Hustle Film Set For Paris Premiere With Same Old Denial Myths

Marc Morano is never short of a superlative or two, but when it has come to promoting his long-gestating documentary Climate Hustle, the climate science denialist extraodinaire has been outdoing himself. "We are putting together what I think is the most comprehensive, unique, entertaining and humorous climate documentary that has ever been done or attempted," Morano…

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Part 5b - Debating ClimateDepot fan: of politics and environmentalism


In this installment I'm taking another bite out of WillH's last comment.  It's only the next sentence, since he continues getting personal and rather than be reduced to calling him names or some such nonsense, I'd rather explore his words in more detail.  Admittedly, I'm also hoping I'm not the only one getting something out of this.

WillH - 10/26/15
Will H writes: .. (see 5a "Concerning Our Failure to Appreciate the Weather"  I did read your article. You seem to be primarily into the politics of AGW and are an environmentalist. "
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"Primarily into the politics" ?  What does that even mean?  Do you have a rational explanation?  What are you yourself doing if not "politics"?  You certainly aren't contributing to the science.  What about your pal ClimateDepot's own Mr. Morano,  that alpha political operative, Mr. Swift Boat himself, he doesn't know anything but power-politics and slashing his way through a campaign.

WillH, it is your side that's deliberately politicizing climate science and scientists right to explain their science in a complete and clear manner.  It's politics that's out-screaming their rational message with manufactured scandals and misrepresenting what climate scientists have actually been saying and doing.

Then you crank it up another notch branding me an "environmentalist."

Ah what a fantastically contrived Republican attack tactic that one is.  Hate the environmentalist, the tree hugger, the people who care about this planet from which we evolved and upon which we depend for our sustenance and quality of life.

Why despise the people who recognize that humans and society are dependent on a healthy biosphere, clean air and water and space to move?  Why hate the people who want to slow down the relentless destruction of the very resources that all of us and most especially our children depend on?

Why all the self-destructive paranoia and contrived hatred for everyone who believes differently than the Republican/libertarian mindset?  What's with using every advantage modern science has to offer when it comes to your profits and comforts - but then ridiculing, attacking and ignoring those segments of the same solid scientific community who's information is inconvenient for your self-centered expectations?  It's childish and ultimately self destructive... and that we are really doing this to ourselves is beyond comprehension to me.

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Will, as for my essay, 
Concerning Our Failure to Appreciate the Weather
By Peter Miesler • 20 October 2015 • The Humanist

Allow me to run through my main points.

To begin with, it was a reflection on "An Essay Concerning Our Weather" written in 1995, which itself was my reflections on the previous couple decades of weather/climate/scientific/political history.

The first essay was inspired by a cartoon in the Denver Post by Mike Keefe, this revisit was built around the cartoon with speculation on what was going through the cartoonist's mind.  I'm gratified to have Mike assure me I got it.

used with permission from Mike Keefe

I explain the basic outline of what's understood about our climate system and what increasing our atmospheric greenhouse gases, (read global insulation), will be doing to our planet.  The Keeling Curve is certainly not politics, nor is the paragraph describing our planet's changing CO2 levels and likening it to one of our climate engine's regulators.

Then a brief outline of, what for that time, were a foreboding string of extreme, even unprecedented, weather events over the previous couple decades.

This led to our Great Dilemma back in 1995 - 

Part 5a - Debating ClimateDepot fan: Myth of the noble climate science opposition

Will, if I'm ever going to get through your last comment I need to take it in segments, here's my first installment.  Your opening sentence raised my hackles because it's such a patently false description.  Therefore, in addition to my Reposts of the previous days, this session is going to be all about offering you a gallery of information that supports my claims regarding the base dishonesty at the root of the past decades worth of Climate Science Contrarianism.

WillH  at 7:44 PM, Oct 26, 2015
"There are great people on both sides of the AGW issue. 
It is sad that they are not all still with us. …"

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Nonsense!  

On the one side we have a very tiny group of über-wealthy individuals with passionate political convictions - sure "great" business magnets, power politic players, PR tacticians, able to purchase what they want.  Thing is, they are people obsessed with achieving their own goals, they have no interests beyond self-interest, and they buy people who are willing to sell themselves. Money enabled the megaphone, self-interest drove the message.

So it was, "think tanks" sprouted like weeds and an alternate universe of thinking was fabricated to serve their lord's myopic-vision. All of it ringing of Machiavelli empire building struggles, not of learning about our planet.  

What happened to curiosity and wanting to understanding how our planet operates or how our society has and is changing it?   What happened to that eons old human drive to make the world a better place for our children's generations?

WillH my friend, self-interest über alles is all this other side you love knows.  I can point you to the evidence.  The truth is out there.  You just gotta poke around.
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Chances are if you read something of prominence that bad-mouths the "establishment" scientific community and their ability to form a rational fact-driven consensus - I'll bet its been authored by one of these characters.

Climate Science Misinformers
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I understand that everything I share on this page has already been categorically ex-communicated from the Republican/libertarian realm of consideration.  
So Will will dismiss it with a breezy wave.
So it goes.
Yet...
Yet...
This information and the story it tells is real - 
pretending it don't exist, 
don't make it go away chump.  

WillH, you have been had by a great PR con job.  
The tragedy is it's our kids who will be paying the price for our failures.

Chronicling the timeline, the participants and their tactics:

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

In the beginning, Lord Lawson's Idea... the GWPF

I keep trying to finish my response to Will H's last comment, but in the process, all sorts of interesting diversions distract my attention.  Stories that stand alone and that I see as evidence supporting the message I'm trying to enunciate far better than my clumsy words can.  This one is another look at some of the "great people on the other side" of this debate, their motives and maneuvers.

A popular political myth is that today's vocal opposition to the overwhelming scientific "consensus" is some sort of noble intellectual effort.  When in actuality it's no such thing!  Here's an inside look at just what an orchestrated cynical, power-politics driven act it really is.

Brendan Montague wrote this a couple months back.  I've posting some interesting excerpts, hoping it will encourage you to read the complete version.
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By Brendan Montague • Tuesday, September 8, 2015 

This DeSmog UK epic history post explains how Lord Lawson’s climate denying Global Warming Policy Foundation was actually created.