One day climate change skeptics will be seen in the same negative light as racists, or so says former Vice President Al Gore.
With his several mansions, a fleet of SUV's, at least two house boats, private jet travel and who knows how many wide screen televisions in support of his lavish lifestyle... Al Gore will be known for operating a fleet of slave ships.
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19 comments:
The comparison is a bit forced, but I actually agree with the general spirit of what he said. Especially this part:
"This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money,"
...because we all know how climate scientists are just swimming in grant money. And that the financial interests of (say) energy companies in Texas are just dwarfed by comparison.
so you calling me a racist,too?
water off a duck, i tell ya... water off a duck...
I don't think anyone is calling anyone a racist.
I think Gore's (forced, like I said) point is that intransigence over climate change will at some point in the future be viewed--like institutional racism now--as misguided and largely incomprehensible to future generations that simply know better.
I also think he could have chosen a better analogy, such as insistence upon the earth being the center of the universe. But I imagine he was also trying to be provocative, and in that he was clearly successful...
Brian, with billions spent annually in climate research, almost all of it on research which back the IPCC model, yes, they do happen to be swimming in money. That doesn't make them wrong per se, but it is a fact that governments are spending a lot more on the topic than are oil companies.
And if the begged questions, hasty generalizations, falsified data, hidden data, and such which plague climatology are representative of "science" as a whole, then science deserves to be discredited.
Put differently, you can start talking to me about their credibility when more then 30% of climate monitoring stations are properly situated according to their own criteria. It's a GIGO model, to put it mildly.
With Algore running the ships for rum,sugar, and slaves.
"This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money,"
as a whole? like, they are throwing biologists and chemists under the bus,too?
not buying it.
as somebody who isnt buying gore's chicken little narrative, i'm also making no sweeping judgement of climatologists, other than to say that i hear there are questions and issues not being addressed... and that this issue is way too politicised to the point where i'm not likely to believe that i need to give up my car while the pope of climate changed kills us all with his own habits, IF what the pope says is true.
Not buying it either. Climate science is a joke, but not because it's being attacked. It's a joke because it has willingly associated itself with demagogues like Gore. They're also burdened by the bad optics of hypocritical personal energy usage on the part of climate change crusaders. If the science is solid, they need to cut loose the losers and screamers and stick with data. Not hiding it would help too.
I've re-started my response three times.
Fuck it.
What would convince you guys that climate change is happening, and that human activity has something to do with it?
This is a serious question.
Note that I am not particularly invested in convincing you that it is. Mostly because I'm honestly not completely sure about it myself. Seriously, I'm not.
BUT...I do have a hard-earned respect for what it takes to become a research scientist, in any discipline. And I do know that while bad actors exist in every human endeavor, the institutions of peer review, publication, and the scientific method constitute the best (albeit imperfect) means man has devised of arriving at iteratively better approximations of how the natural world works.
The fact that you can cite instances of scientific fraud don't mean that these institutions are broken. It means that they work.
Don't talk to be about demagogues when you line up behind people who dismiss an entire profession because their professional consensus is politically and economically uncomfortable.
It's the Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario. It's possible there's a wolf, but it's difficult to trust at this point. It's a tough thing when someone wears the credibility of science like a mantle and then demands that everyone enact their political program. Because then you have two forms of potential destruction which compete. And they have become (inextricably?) linked.
The question is how to delink them and let science be science. For that, folks like Gore need to be shunned. He kills credibility like Roseanne Barr kills libido.
Shorter WB: "I don't like Al Gore, so I don't have to listen to anyone who says the same things he does."
Brilliant.
this post wasnt about the merits of the global warming hoopla. it was about pointing out the hypocrisy of the pontificate.
Brian, credibility matters. Global warmists squandered theirs. If you don't like it, blame us. That's perfectly logical.
In any event, scientists who are on board with the whole AGW still think our efforts are worthless unless China is on board. You've got to ruin the whole damn earth to save it, not just the West.
I'd say this -- to paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, I'll believe there's a crisis when those who are telling me there's a crisis start acting like there's a crisis. I would fully expect that someone who believes that CO2 is causing climate change to limit his/her use of private planes, to use one example. If the scientists and their political patrons who believe that AGW is happening were holding their conferences on Skype, it might help their credibility. Instead we see them jetting off to Copenhagen and Kyoto and other places. And we see Al Gore's well-documented extravagances over and over.
Brian, there's little dispute that the climate changes. It's even possible that the activities of man can have an impact, especially in certain parts of the world. There's evidence that the Sahara Desert is larger now than it was in the past and that human activity may have played a role in the change. But (and you knew the but was coming), the evidence of AGW is far from complete or even agreed upon. There are rather a lot of scientists who dispute the larger theory and implications of AGW. Until recently, it seemed that some of these scientists were systematically excluded from the process of peer review and denounced. I would think that scientists who were confident about the soundness of their theories would welcome the scrutiny of skeptics, but that hasn't been the case. All of these challenges should be part of a necessary peer review of the research, data points and conclusions of the IPCC.
Bubba's point about the location of weather stations is especially important. If we do not have consistent data points, it's well-nigh impossible to determine what's really happening. I could be convinced that AGW is real, but the reliance on modeling, especially modeling based on data that seems to be corrupted (cf. East Anglia) puts me firmly in the skeptic camp.
to ne fair: brian is not defending the findings of global warming. he's defending the scientific community in general, and its integrity. for good cause, btw.
he kinda knows the scientist business a little better than most.
Defending science? Against whom? I don't have a problem with my best friend from growing up who is working on cancer research. I don't have a problem with my uncle who is working on something mitochondria or some such thing. Nor do I have a problem with another friend who teaches science courses at a New Jersey university. I have a problem when science gets perverted by liberals to try to institute big government schemes. Most people aren't anti-science. They are anti-manipulation and anti-hypocrisy.
to ne fair: brian is not defending the findings of global warming. he's defending the scientific community in general, and its integrity. for good cause, btw
I get that. What I'd argue is that some of the scientists who are skeptics are also defending the integrity of the scientific community.
We do have to deal with this assertion Brian made:
Shorter WB: "I don't like Al Gore, so I don't have to listen to anyone who says the same things he does."
That wasn't fair to Picklesworth at all. And it's kinda surprising, because it's been my experience that Brian argues in good faith.
You know what? I'll own that I was a bit flippant, there.
I (really) don't give two shits about what is "liberal" or "conservative", so when I hear an argument with even a whiff of simple partisanship to it ("Gore need to be shunned," "science gets perverted by liberals to try to institute big government schemes") I tend to stop taking someone seriously. Perhaps unfairly, in this case.
As to against whom I am defending science, I'll refer you to my comment in the thread above (just so I don't have to repeat myself.) I realize that seems pretty far afield from what we've talked about in this thread, but I do think it is the relevant context for Gore's remarks.
And just to let you know I'm not some bleeding heart hippy, here's something I wrote about government and climate change a couple of years ago:
http://samedishdifferentsauce.blogspot.com/2008/07/climate-change.html
Brian,
There isn't a person alive who plays on the internet that hasn't written something that was flippant. Part of the deal.
Brian, to put it mildly, I'd take a lot of climatologists more seriously if just once, they'd give up their two week paid vacations flying to Bora Bora to have a videoconference because they truly believe that burning 500 gallons of kerosene just to get there would actually do harm to the environment.
I'd take them more seriously if they shared their data, which they go to the courts to avoid doing. I'd take them more seriously if they apologized for the many nasty tricks they've played with the data.
Kinda like the same guys who kept Piltdown Man from scientific inspection for decades, really.
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