While we're very happy to have you in the Gulch and appreciate your wanting to fully engage, some things in the Gulch (e.g. voting, links in comments) are a
privilege, not a right. To get you up to speed as quickly as possible, we've provided two options for earning these privileges.
- You must reach a Gulch score of 100. You can earn points in the Gulch by posting content, commenting, or by other members voting up your posts.
- You may upgrade to a Galt's Gulch Producer membership to immediately gain these privileges.
Your current Gulch score:
But the worst of it is, if you were to bring this to their attention or try to have a discussion...they call you names. They have no idea how valuable carbon is to life, our atmosphere nor our planet...all they can think about is oil, oil is not even created by fossils, but you can't talk about that...they just scream louder while making up stuff.
To keep this light hearted and in perspective:...a so called scientist just announced that 'sea turtles' are causing climate warming...can you believe that?!
Now that proves that it's not your footprint; I say we celebrate and start walking all over everything!
Laughing my shinny butt off...liberals say the darnedest things...Didn't Art Linkletter do a show about that? hahahahahahahahaaaaaaaapfpfpf.
So now the rent-seekers are commanding their competitors and other opponents: Shut-up and get out of our way, on pain of arrest and imprisonment!
This is Dr. Floyd Ferris all over again.
I've been called a terrorist because I believe that medical decisions should be between families and their doctors (vs. the government). That's a real wakeup call.
Make no mistake - the hard left are master linguists.
But a rational discussion is not what the cognitive dissonants want. It is anathema to that mindset. They always come back with yeah but, yeah but, or a "so what are you saying" query followed by a ridiculously extrapolated irrational conclusion meant to distort the actual premise.
This Hartmann guy could not even acknowledge that Wisconsin and New England have been covered in mile thick continental glaciers at least four times while humans existed. But before man could even begin to allegedly affect the planet. He calls it a "schtick". What is that?
Paul Driessens point was exactly that in the beginning, that glaciers have come and go without human responsibility. But he was outshouted by Hartmann without a consideration for reality or even the basic courtesy of listening. And then accuses Driessen of what Hartmann himself is exactly doing. Amazingly typical.
CG is correct in saying that Hartmann is way off-base in calling for jailing people for free speech.
But, CG is making the same mistake as Hartmann by assuming that Driessen is lying. That implies your conclusions are already foregone on "climate change" and he is already convicted in the court of alleged "consensus".
It would appear in your viewpoint, the collective rules.
Tell me otherwise.
Of course not. That does not merit a response. But we have to accept reality and be open to new evidence, regardless of whether we like what the evidence has to say.
When will you start practicing what you preach? You are still defending the same unsupported garbage that you have been since you came to this site.
Look around you. People responding are literally denying the scientific reality of climate change. I've certainly heard of these people, but it's bizarre to meet one in real life. So it's funny you say I'm talking about unsupported garbage in a thread with people who cannot accept science. That's laughable.
Part of the scientific reality that must be considered is that temperature cycles appear to be more closely related to sun activity. A body of science work that must be seriously considered.
Unfortunately, part of the scientific reality that must be considered is the blatant data tampering that has been going on. From climategate e-mails, to the discredited hockey stick graph, to the discredited alleged 97% consensus, to the denial of research funds to those researchers and institutions that are considered skeptic, the scientific reality that objectivity is being compromised unfortunately means the issue has become political.
Where there is politics, there is an agenda. And the stakes that have been raised in this agenda means that this is not good.
I don't think anybody is denying the reality of climate change. It changes all the time, always has, always will. I have posted in the past that it was only about 13,000 years ago that New England was under a mile thick ice sheet. I have seen the glacial striations on top of Mt Washington in New Hampshire. And look at it now. That is extreme climate change!
But, the science is far from settled of the role that CO2 plays in climate change. It is said to be a greenhouse gas, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to atmospheric water vapor. So why the unsupported fixation on CO2?
Oh, I get it. The fossil fuel connection. The politics of energy and the control of people's standard of living. Note the key word here: Control.
Unfortunately what we are talking about is actually not so much about science, although it is a component, but about politics. Which is why I posted this under the category of politics.
Read Matt Ridley: THE NET BENEFITS OF CLIMATE CHANGE TILL 2080
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/...
And he is agreeing with the projections!
There is no evidence to support cause and effect of human activity and climate change. It is an attempt to increase centralized political power, which simultaneously destroys individual liberty and enslaves nearly the entire human population.
Your second part about accepting reality and considering all and new evidence, even should it be position changing is well put.
If accepting science outside of our own fields is collectivism, does that mean we cannot know things outside of our areas of expertise? Am I being collectivist if I accept that trials show I'm at risk for some disease and can mitigate the risk with some medical intervention?
"But, it is a leap of logic to even have a consensus of individuals conclude that because they think Driessen is wrong - that he is a liar. That smacks of smearing to stifle debate."
Maybe liar is the wrong word. But if you say the scientific opinion says one thing when you know it actually says something else, I call that a lie. Contrary to stifling debate, it's actually accepting science, which by it's nature invites scientists to find new evidence that changes our current models.
If someone in the 80s said medical science shows a high-fat diet isn't necessarily bad for you, that would have been a lie. The new evidence is showing that the claims true: high-fat in itself bad. But it would have been a lie in the 80s to say that was contemporary scientific thought. It was a radical idea that turned out to be proven later. Maybe it will get overturned in some new way by new data. That's the nature of science.
As mentioned before, a collective can be a group of individuals in commonality of rational thought, or it can be the more typical conception of lemmings chasing each other in lockstep ignorance.
I am not sure what you mean by "trials" in the medical field of statistics. That is confusing, but if you are saying you agree with a reported consensus on such a matter of medical study indicating a health risk, than yes, you are part of that collective. You may be a very informed rational individual and agree with the conclusion and join with the opinion, or conversely, you may just agree with it - because apparently everybody else does. There is a huge difference.
Yes, liar is clearly the wrong word. Good point. But, in the debate where Driessen is accused of being a liar, the premises must be straightened out. Why is anybody being called a liar at all? He is not the one saying that "scientific opinion says one thing when they actually knows it says something else". Driessen is not the one saying that the pushed agenda of global climate change is lying because they know that it is not true. Where does that come from? He is merely saying that they are wrong. There is a huge difference between being wrong and being a liar.
But in the tactics then, of saying he is the liar, the debate stifling is the end goal. By the court of media opinion, being forced to accept the questioned science does nothing to encourage scientists to find new data to challenge the truly lemming like party line.
This means anyone who knows something outside his own field is a collectivist. I accept that that cellular respiration occurs in the mitochodrion, not because I've reviewed the primary sources for myself but because that's the consensus of people who study this stuff. Even in my own field, there are things I accept without being an expert on those specific points.
"Why is anybody being called a liar at all? "
Yes. Liar would be appropriate if we saw some private communication in which he admitted to saying something he intended to mislead. Here it's just an epithet that implies we know what's going on in his mind.
I have probably done the same thing as he Hartmann in the topic of natural medicine. If someone has a disease that science says is not curable but can be slowed down by a painful treatment, and there is a view contrary to scientific medicine that maybe some homeopathic treatment would work, I have an emotional urge to call the homeopath a "liar" and stop the bogus "debate". We all wish the homeopath were right or at least that the evidence were "debatable". The hypothetical alternative medicine proponent makes all these argument that I'm just blinding going alone with the oncology establishment that is funded by drug research without becoming an expert myself. A homeopath offering false hope seems contemptible and makes me want to say liar as an epithet even if I can't back up that they're being intentionally deceptive. Fortunately, I don't have the emotional urge to jail them.
I feel the same way about climate change, although I don't think addressing it will be anything like a grave disease. The technology will come along to address the problem and people who can't handle results they don't like will be able to come back to reality once engineers and scientists have a solution.
http://dailysignal.com/2015/10/09/ske...
Interesting how closely it parallels our discussion.
My thought is it's fraud if you say your product is somehow exceptional, i.e. our cigarettes have lower health risks, this fuels does not contribute to climate change, or this homeopathic medicine that really works. But if you promote the product with broad conspiracy theories such as "Cigarettes are safe." "Burning stuff doesn't cause climate change." "Homeopathy is real." "Organic foods are more healthful than GMOs," I think it's up to the buyer to evaluate those claims. It's a fine line. When a pharmacy sells alternative medicines on a shelf right next to scientific medicine, maybe falsely representing them as evidence-based medicine, IMHO they've veered into fraud.
I absolutely think companies like Exxon are lying, really shamelessly lying, posting fake videos that appear to be opinions of disinterested people from various demographic groups, to push the costs of their product onto future generations. I'll leave it to the courts to say when they've crossed the line into fraud. But I don't think it's fraud to say openly, "I make product X, and I think product X is safe," even when that statement is wrong according to science. There has to be some caveat emptor.
Yet, that is the methodology being cranked out and sold in our schools.
Hey libs, ever heard of geologic time, sun cycles and the energy budget of the earth?
Save the Planet: Stop Continental Drift NOW !!!!
We shouldn't give a whit what lefties and righties think about scientific claims. You learn things by observation and experimentation. This seems like an un-objectivist message board, where we look at something we can't predict and assert that all reality depends on what we wish it were. This is the path of quantum mysticism and post-modernism.
Poor choice of words perhaps. What I mean is I want to get past ideology to the actual facts. I don't care if liberals think GMOs are evil and pesticides do more harm than good or if rightwingers think greenhouse gases don't affect the world's climate and mutations and natural selection couldn't have produced life as we know it. I don't care if animal rights activists think a low-fat diet is better for human health.
To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, if you start with a theory before you have the facts, you find facts consistent with your theories instead of developing theories consistent with the facts.
Fortunately, it's the climate change hoaxters themselves who may get nailed as a result of their own call for investigation.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/02...
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
For what it's worth, I'd like to see the RICO Act ruled unconstitutional. It's main feature is similar to civil forfeiture -- the government freezes all your assets before it takes you to court, so you can't get a lawyer. That is not due process.
Second, even if they know better, it's a legitimate policy question how to pay for the costs. Maybe they have a model that says the economic growth caused by burning things, as opposed to finding a solution now, will produce wealth that will easily cover the costs of solving it in the future. I don't agree with that, but it's away they could not be lying or hard-core idiots calling climate change a hoax, and still not being committing fraud.
Please consider that the Earth was 'about as warm as it is now' during the Roman settlement of Britain (grape vineyards in S. England!). At that time, the Earth had about 300M people. At the time of US Independence, the world's population had climbed to about 3.5B...and we were in a little ice age.
It is pretty obvious that an attempt to relate the temperature of the planet to human activity is very like geocentricity: and attempt to make ourselves more central than we are to the topic under discussion. We humans have very little effect on global temperatures.
Jan
We also both agree that one cannot just 'take the answer I want'. So: this is a viable discussion. But what is happening - and is the source of the this thread - is that people who disagree with the socially-selected 'right' answer are being threatened with jail (and denied publication and tenure). That is bad.
Jan
Remember the shills and hucksters and scam artists and shysters are all Al Bore wannabe's
The temperature has not become warmer for about 20 years now. Also, man's contribution to the overall amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is small - less than 1%.
Jan
Jan, solves all problems
Jan
Jan
Jan, bravo him!
And then consider the Viking settlements in Greenland in the centuries around 1000 AD. And that same hot period drove the Anasazi off the Colorado Plateau when springs dried up.