Commies? Shit, that takes me back. But this is a simple example of argument by association, and it fails to make your point.
Example: if NAMBLA comes out in favor of net neutrality, that doesn't make net neutrality a bad idea. If Hitler was a vegetarian, that doesn't make vegetarianism a bad idea. Bin Laden opposed the invasion of Iraq; that doesn't make the invasion of Iraq a bad idea. (Of course, it doesn't make it a good idea, either.)
Now, you might be thinking that the original article's premise is the same sort of argument, but it's not. The argument by association would be "Philip Morris opposes anthropogenic global warming theory; therefore anthropogenic global warming theory is valid". This is not the argument that is made. The argument is "Philip Morris funds lies and deception, therefore (a) they're kinda evil, and (b) said flim-flam doesn't prove their point---they should make their point through science and evidence, or not at all". Savvy?
The first two rants I read contained the canard of "how can scientists tell us about the climate in twenty years if they can't tell us if it'll rain next week?". This does not inspire confidence in him.
It's way easier to respond to a documented noise machine with a clear profit motive and admitted money trail by waving into existence a morally equivalent noise machine for its opposition than it is to respond with any evidence, isn't it?
But maybe I'm wrong---maybe there's an analogous money trail of think tanks designed to subvert the scientific process which draw their paychecks from "eurosocialist elite coffers". If so, I'm sure you'll be kind enough to point me to it.
Scientists are too fallible. I, for one, welcome our new policy-setting lobbyist overlords!
But could you provide an example of those "leftist organizations" doing "the same"? I'm seeing a lot of Vast Left-Wing Science-Debasing Conspiracies being handwaved into existence in the comment threads here, in response to documented and admitted evidence of Philip Morris and ExxonMobil doing the same. It makes for a cute rhetorical flourish, but it's flawed in that it's bullshit.
But then ~1950 people started becoming more disrespectful twords learning.
Easy there, killer. What also happened in the 1950s was the GI Bill, which sent a lot of people to school. All that unwashed rabble. An institution previously reserved for the wealthiest few (about one in fifty) became available to one in four or five.
So, if by "more disrespectful twords learning", you mean "let those gosh-darn plebes try and rise above their station in life", then you're right. But you're kind of an elitist.
Multicast would rock for a lot of things, not the least of which would be Bittorrent, or any P2P app for that matter. Let the internet multiply your outbound bandwidth for you.
There are probably really clever architectural reasons why multicast is hard to implement, or doesn't scale to the entire internet, though. Darn.
Could you be a bit more specific about what you mean by "the ideals of Western Civilization"? It makes me think of the Enlightenment, but maybe you had something else in mind. I went to a school that seemed very up on the whole Enlightenment thing---you must be talking about something else. But what? Western Civilization is a phenomenon thousands of years old, which for most of its history was perfectly okay with slavery, racism and the subjugation of women---things that we're not cool with today. If you're talking about those things, then I'd reckon that you'd only find those things well-supported at, yes, BJU or Liberty.
On the other hand, you'd probaby find things like a belief that knowledge is good, that citizens should be equal under the law, that slavery is evil, and that citizens should be free to practice their religion as long as that practice doesn't infringe on the rights of others.
So it really depends on what you mean by Western Civilization. What did you mean?
Sorry guys, the science related to global warming has been so politicized about all you can do at this point is ask us to take it on your word, and that ain't worth spit anymore.
Which, if you've been paying attention, was the whole purpose of the disinformation campaign. If scientific truth is decided by whoever can hire the better sockpuppet with a doctorate, the concept becomes meaningless.
Scientists as a group have a long record of being on the wrong side of history,
Could you provide some examples of what you mean by scientists being on the wrong side of history? I generally think of science as having done pretty well for people (electriciy, medicine, sanitation, the internet, that sort of thing), so I'm having trouble seeing where you're coming from.
enviromentalists were among the worst of the bunch when it came to aiding and abeting the Soviets.
Are you... calling me a commie?
Apart from that, you'll find that most social justice struggles that we consider a done deal today (women should be able to own property, black people should be able to vote) were heavily supported in their day by liberals, progressives and yes, Communists. They may have been supporting monstrously murderous regimes on the opposite hemisphere, but if you're going to start tarring every movement supported by Communists over the last fifty years, you're going to look mighty strange.
That said, I still don't see how that would make a difference, even if you had backed up your claim with evidence. (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here.) Linus Pauling had wacky ideas about Vitamin C later in life. We're not all megadosing on Vitamin C, despite Pauling winning that Nobel Prize. William Shockley may have invented the transistor, but that didn't make his racism fly in the scientific community.
And I'm old enough to remember that back in the 1970's it was the Impending Ice Age that was going to kill us all, yet the proposed solution of eliminating industrial civilization (but only in the West, the 'developing world' had to be left alone) was the only way to save the world! When the science supporting an Ice Age evaporated we instantly went to Global Warming and amazingly both the cause (the wretched excesses of Western Civilization) and the solution were the same.
Finally, an actual claim. The scientific press never claimed an impending catastrophic ice age. The popular press did. The scientific consensus, then, was that more research was needed. The scientific consensus, now, is that anthropogenic global warming requires public policy changes. The current situation, the current consensus, is without precedent.
They had USB scanners at the local Goodwill for about six bucks. Six bucks! 'Course, you had to dig through a box of wall warts, and at least one of them had a mangled drive belt, but if you're willing to bring a laptop, it's hella cheap.
I'd find that convincing if you could be a dear and dig up something analogous to the campaign of subversion, FUD and disinformation spread by ExxonMobil. Care to point out the millions upon millions of dollars funnelled to think tanks? The administration sticking its fingers into scientific reports (as it did with the 2003 EPA Report on the Environment) for political reasons favoring those well-connected mustache-twirling climatologists you've conveniently handwaved into existence? Stating your own fevered dreams as if they were fact doesn't make them so.
Really? Which scientists? The AP did a survey of climatologists; all those who had seen the movie confirmed its accuracy. But perhaps you think Senator James Inhofe is a better scientist. Or that Richard Linzen's $2500 a day he charges fossil fuel companies makes him an unbiased source.
Or perhaps you're just clapping as loud as you can and hoping that proves your claims.
You think that a vague desire to destroy the world muwahaha, which scientists have because they're, y'know, mad scientists, somehow secretly pervading the entire scientific establishment, is a more plausible source of bias than, y'know, simple short-sighted greed?
Also, I see that you've failed to come up with anything other than vigorous hand-waving to back up your claims. Did you bother to read the last paragraph of the post that you replied to?
In response to a post about anthropogenic global warming, you brought up ADM. If you wanted to mention "corn ethanol is backed by an evil megacorp", it would have just been a non sequitur. If you didn't mention it in an attempt to discredit Al Gore, why did you bring it up? If you weren't trying to make ExxonMobil look less evil by bringing up a different megacorp and making them look more evil, what were you trying to do?
I see a lot of the same claims over and over again. "We can't predict the weather a week from now; how will we predict the climate in ten years?" "Michael Crichton says it's all a liberal conspiracy." I wish there existed a resource like the index to creationist claims at the talk.origins archive. Like, if someone says "yeah, well, even Darwiniacs admit there are gaps in the fossil record!", I can just say "BZZT! CC201!" and not have to repeat myself.
Something like that for climate change would be really, really useful.
1. I'd be way more likely to believe all this talk about how ExxonMobil has no particular interest in public opinion on global warming if they hadn't created a vast network to spread disinformation on the subject. As it is, you've got some hand-waving there against a massive noise machine. The facts speak for themselves.
2. Have you even seen most of the policy recommendations laid out in An Inconvenient Truth? They mostly center around greater efficiency (drive a smaller car, commute less, conserve electricity). Saying "corn ethanol is backed by an evil megacorp, so climate change is a myth" is a red herring.
Oh, please. Al Gore is hardly fearmongering. If you take a quick glance, you'll see that the ExxonMobil noise machine makes a set of claims, and Al Gore makes a set of claims. You could be forgiven for thinking that, naturally, the truth lies just about in the middle. Most people don't have the time or the inclination to do their own research, and this is a common strategy---one tha the aforementioned noise machine takes advantage of.
ExxonMobil's claims are lies, half-truths, distortions and deceptive readings of old evidence. If they have evidence, they should submit it to the same process everyone else goes through. But they don't. They should influence your thinking on climate change about as much as the profusion of ID books at your local Christian bookshop means that it's just about as correct as evolutionary theory. The claims that Gore makes are backed up by consensus. By the best methods we have of finding things out, this is what we know.
So, pop quiz. Which seems more likely to you? (a) A cabal of college professors, not standing to lose much of anything, jeopardize their careers and their scientific credibility by conducting a widespread campaign of disinformation to subvert the scientific process and whip the public into a panic. (b) A cabal of titanic multinational corporations, standing to lose untold billions if carbon controls are implemented, conducts a widespread campaign of disinformation to subvert the scientific process and confuse the public.
I understand that it makes for good airplane reading, but come on. In the real world, Occam's Razor rips the whole mess to shreds. (Plus, isn't it telling that the best bit of media global warming deniers have on their side is an unabashed work of fiction?)
(Also, if you're going to claim the existence of the aforementioned scientist conspiracy, please provide at least as much evidence as there already is for option (b). Thanks.)
You can't equate the two. It's like saying that Clinton lied (about getting head), and Bush lied (about a variety of things), so they're both bad. See, it doesn't really affect me if the President gets head. I mean, dick move on his part and all, but it doesn't get me in much of a lather, y'know?
It's kinda like saying that Israel kills civilians (by accident), and Hamas kills civilians (on purpose, and as many as possible), so they're both bad. It trivializes wrongdoing.
But, denying a person food or sleep, or peace and quiet, is not torture. Dunking someone's head under water is not torture either. It just breaks down his defenses, it stresses his resolve until he cooperates.
Peachy. So, to clarify, you're cool with the cops doing this to you if you're accused of a crime? You know, so you cooperate.
You're not seriously equating the labeling of CDs with the war on drugs, are you? I don't know anyone who got his house taken away by the war on obscene lyrics...
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Commies? Shit, that takes me back. But this is a simple example of argument by association, and it fails to make your point.
Example: if NAMBLA comes out in favor of net neutrality, that doesn't make net neutrality a bad idea. If Hitler was a vegetarian, that doesn't make vegetarianism a bad idea. Bin Laden opposed the invasion of Iraq; that doesn't make the invasion of Iraq a bad idea. (Of course, it doesn't make it a good idea, either.)
Now, you might be thinking that the original article's premise is the same sort of argument, but it's not. The argument by association would be "Philip Morris opposes anthropogenic global warming theory; therefore anthropogenic global warming theory is valid". This is not the argument that is made. The argument is "Philip Morris funds lies and deception, therefore (a) they're kinda evil, and (b) said flim-flam doesn't prove their point---they should make their point through science and evidence, or not at all". Savvy?
If you're hiring PR men to subvert the scientific process, it's a fair sign that you can't win on science alone.
The first two rants I read contained the canard of "how can scientists tell us about the climate in twenty years if they can't tell us if it'll rain next week?". This does not inspire confidence in him.
I believe I've heard an interview with a director with the same last name, and it was pronounced "FOO-kwah".
It's way easier to respond to a documented noise machine with a clear profit motive and admitted money trail by waving into existence a morally equivalent noise machine for its opposition than it is to respond with any evidence, isn't it?
But maybe I'm wrong---maybe there's an analogous money trail of think tanks designed to subvert the scientific process which draw their paychecks from "eurosocialist elite coffers". If so, I'm sure you'll be kind enough to point me to it.
Scientists are too fallible. I, for one, welcome our new policy-setting lobbyist overlords!
But could you provide an example of those "leftist organizations" doing "the same"? I'm seeing a lot of Vast Left-Wing Science-Debasing Conspiracies being handwaved into existence in the comment threads here, in response to documented and admitted evidence of Philip Morris and ExxonMobil doing the same. It makes for a cute rhetorical flourish, but it's flawed in that it's bullshit.
So, if by "more disrespectful twords learning", you mean "let those gosh-darn plebes try and rise above their station in life", then you're right. But you're kind of an elitist.
Multicast would rock for a lot of things, not the least of which would be Bittorrent, or any P2P app for that matter. Let the internet multiply your outbound bandwidth for you.
There are probably really clever architectural reasons why multicast is hard to implement, or doesn't scale to the entire internet, though. Darn.
She tasted like ashes and fire.
Which was pretty hot at the time, but I guess it'd annoy me if it was always like that.
On the other hand, you'd probaby find things like a belief that knowledge is good, that citizens should be equal under the law, that slavery is evil, and that citizens should be free to practice their religion as long as that practice doesn't infringe on the rights of others.
So it really depends on what you mean by Western Civilization. What did you mean?
Which, if you've been paying attention, was the whole purpose of the disinformation campaign. If scientific truth is decided by whoever can hire the better sockpuppet with a doctorate, the concept becomes meaningless.
Could you provide some examples of what you mean by scientists being on the wrong side of history? I generally think of science as having done pretty well for people (electriciy, medicine, sanitation, the internet, that sort of thing), so I'm having trouble seeing where you're coming from.
Are you... calling me a commie?
Apart from that, you'll find that most social justice struggles that we consider a done deal today (women should be able to own property, black people should be able to vote) were heavily supported in their day by liberals, progressives and yes, Communists. They may have been supporting monstrously murderous regimes on the opposite hemisphere, but if you're going to start tarring every movement supported by Communists over the last fifty years, you're going to look mighty strange.
That said, I still don't see how that would make a difference, even if you had backed up your claim with evidence. (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here.) Linus Pauling had wacky ideas about Vitamin C later in life. We're not all megadosing on Vitamin C, despite Pauling winning that Nobel Prize. William Shockley may have invented the transistor, but that didn't make his racism fly in the scientific community.
Finally, an actual claim. The scientific press never claimed an impending catastrophic ice age. The popular press did. The scientific consensus, then, was that more research was needed. The scientific consensus, now, is that anthropogenic global warming requires public policy changes. The current situation, the current consensus, is without precedent.
They had USB scanners at the local Goodwill for about six bucks. Six bucks! 'Course, you had to dig through a box of wall warts, and at least one of them had a mangled drive belt, but if you're willing to bring a laptop, it's hella cheap.
I'd find that convincing if you could be a dear and dig up something analogous to the campaign of subversion, FUD and disinformation spread by ExxonMobil. Care to point out the millions upon millions of dollars funnelled to think tanks? The administration sticking its fingers into scientific reports (as it did with the 2003 EPA Report on the Environment) for political reasons favoring those well-connected mustache-twirling climatologists you've conveniently handwaved into existence? Stating your own fevered dreams as if they were fact doesn't make them so.
I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that you were one of those people cheering when Dario Ringach was terrorized out of his research.
Really? Which scientists? The AP did a survey of climatologists; all those who had seen the movie confirmed its accuracy. But perhaps you think Senator James Inhofe is a better scientist. Or that Richard Linzen's $2500 a day he charges fossil fuel companies makes him an unbiased source.
Or perhaps you're just clapping as loud as you can and hoping that proves your claims.
You mean like the IPCC panel?
You think that a vague desire to destroy the world muwahaha, which scientists have because they're, y'know, mad scientists, somehow secretly pervading the entire scientific establishment, is a more plausible source of bias than, y'know, simple short-sighted greed?
Also, I see that you've failed to come up with anything other than vigorous hand-waving to back up your claims. Did you bother to read the last paragraph of the post that you replied to?
In response to a post about anthropogenic global warming, you brought up ADM. If you wanted to mention "corn ethanol is backed by an evil megacorp", it would have just been a non sequitur. If you didn't mention it in an attempt to discredit Al Gore, why did you bring it up? If you weren't trying to make ExxonMobil look less evil by bringing up a different megacorp and making them look more evil, what were you trying to do?
I see a lot of the same claims over and over again. "We can't predict the weather a week from now; how will we predict the climate in ten years?" "Michael Crichton says it's all a liberal conspiracy." I wish there existed a resource like the index to creationist claims at the talk.origins archive. Like, if someone says "yeah, well, even Darwiniacs admit there are gaps in the fossil record!", I can just say "BZZT! CC201!" and not have to repeat myself.
Something like that for climate change would be really, really useful.
1. I'd be way more likely to believe all this talk about how ExxonMobil has no particular interest in public opinion on global warming if they hadn't created a vast network to spread disinformation on the subject. As it is, you've got some hand-waving there against a massive noise machine. The facts speak for themselves.
2. Have you even seen most of the policy recommendations laid out in An Inconvenient Truth? They mostly center around greater efficiency (drive a smaller car, commute less, conserve electricity). Saying "corn ethanol is backed by an evil megacorp, so climate change is a myth" is a red herring.
Oh, please. Al Gore is hardly fearmongering. If you take a quick glance, you'll see that the ExxonMobil noise machine makes a set of claims, and Al Gore makes a set of claims. You could be forgiven for thinking that, naturally, the truth lies just about in the middle. Most people don't have the time or the inclination to do their own research, and this is a common strategy---one tha the aforementioned noise machine takes advantage of.
ExxonMobil's claims are lies, half-truths, distortions and deceptive readings of old evidence. If they have evidence, they should submit it to the same process everyone else goes through. But they don't. They should influence your thinking on climate change about as much as the profusion of ID books at your local Christian bookshop means that it's just about as correct as evolutionary theory. The claims that Gore makes are backed up by consensus. By the best methods we have of finding things out, this is what we know.
So, pop quiz. Which seems more likely to you? (a) A cabal of college professors, not standing to lose much of anything, jeopardize their careers and their scientific credibility by conducting a widespread campaign of disinformation to subvert the scientific process and whip the public into a panic. (b) A cabal of titanic multinational corporations, standing to lose untold billions if carbon controls are implemented, conducts a widespread campaign of disinformation to subvert the scientific process and confuse the public.
I understand that it makes for good airplane reading, but come on. In the real world, Occam's Razor rips the whole mess to shreds. (Plus, isn't it telling that the best bit of media global warming deniers have on their side is an unabashed work of fiction?)
(Also, if you're going to claim the existence of the aforementioned scientist conspiracy, please provide at least as much evidence as there already is for option (b). Thanks.)
Sirrah, you have convinced me! I'm going to get on a plane right now so I can find George Monbiot and kick him right in the balls.
You can't equate the two. It's like saying that Clinton lied (about getting head), and Bush lied (about a variety of things), so they're both bad. See, it doesn't really affect me if the President gets head. I mean, dick move on his part and all, but it doesn't get me in much of a lather, y'know?
It's kinda like saying that Israel kills civilians (by accident), and Hamas kills civilians (on purpose, and as many as possible), so they're both bad. It trivializes wrongdoing.
You're not seriously equating the labeling of CDs with the war on drugs, are you? I don't know anyone who got his house taken away by the war on obscene lyrics...