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Ironies and Hypocrisies of Climate Deniers

While I despise statistics, I guiltily resort to them from time to time; the rest of the time, I come to my own conclusions from what I see on a wide variety of network news and cable opinion news (both MSNBC and Fox). By training I draw threads of evidence together and reach a conclusion, which is precisely what any decent lawyer does in court or when arguing an appeal. I have reasoned and hunched that most climate deniers are right of center and dogmatically dedicated to mostly evangelical and fundamentalist religions.

Only recently a segment of a show was dedicated to an attempt to reconcile science and religion with regard to climate change (no longer called global warming because too many deniers held that term absurd, just look at the blizzard in New York City. (Reminds me of the evolution deniers. They claim that God put the fossils in the earth "to fool Darwinists"!) The white preachers who joined some scientists on a junket to Juneau left the conclave clinging to their denier beliefs. (I was tempted to italicize the last word of that sentence: Boobical nuts hold in deathgrip their sacred texts, and since God is omnipotent He can be a bit capricious with climate phenomena; after all, He works in mysterious ways.) But one African-American pastor said he had changed his mind; he now believed in climate change.

Anyone who would believe that God put fossils in the earth to fool evolutionists is beyond the pale. There is no help in him. He must insist that climate change is a socialist Godless plot to turn the U.S. into a third world country by shutting down its coal burning gas guzzling manufacturing and consuming habits, including gluttonous gobbling up of precious hydrocarbonous resources. (The nuclear family goes to church on Sunday in a Suburban, which gets about as good mileage as a Sherman tank, while the rest of the week Mom does her shopping in the same vehicle, going across town and back...alone.)

Politically, these folks tend to be Republicans. A lot are tea party. They like Palin and Beck and their ilk. They are basically misguided boobs who might mean well in some disordered mind, but who propel us forward to their version of the Rapture, since ignoring climate change can only result in Bloomberg's Nightmare coast to coast. We will end up spending money we do not have just to save us from a Century of Catastrophes. Naomi Klein got it right when she pointed up the race between the Jihadists and climate deniers to end what was once called America. Perhaps the world itself.

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Permalink Reply by James M. Martin on January 9, 2011 at 5:42pm

No subject assumed here, thanks. I might agree.

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Permalink Reply by LarryL on January 9, 2011 at 7:19pm

who are you to decide whether global warming is "true" or not? or, if it caused by man's influence or natural causes? Are you a climate scientist? Do you also make claims on other topics in which you have no expertise? Should I ask you whether I have cancer or not, or should I ask an onocologist?

How about googling "scientific opinion on climate change" for the current state of scientific opinion on climate change - which was 98% the last time I checked.

As far as political motivation goes, do you think there might be a tad of motivation by industry and right wing "think tanks" that might be motivated to oppose the claim that global warming is real and is caused by man?

Read "Merchants of Doubt" for a detailed history of how industry has created doubt about matters of science - including that tobacco smoke causes cancer.

and global warming and climate change are descriptions of two different things. The globe warms and the climate changes. See this desciption from NASA

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name...

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Permalink Reply by James M. Martin on January 9, 2011 at 8:51pm

Thanks for your illumination. As an onocologist myself, I assure you you do not have cancer. Yet.

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Permalink Reply by LarryL on January 9, 2011 at 9:50pm

So if I went to 100 onocologists and 98 of them said I had cancer and that the likely cause was due to my smoking (if I smoked, which I don't), and two said I was fine, who should I trust, the 98 or the two?

Yet, with climate science, we reject what the 98 say because we think they are "in it for the money" - like climate scientists are rolling in dough or something.

I assume that you would not wrongly tell someone they had cancer just so you can rake in all the dough from the chemo and other drugs/procedures that might be needed to treat their non-cancer, yet we think thousands of climate scientists are doing this very same thing?

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Permalink Reply by LarryL on January 10, 2011 at 8:03am

so, let get this straight. We should use "youtube" to find out whether global warming is real or not? really?

huh, I would have thought assessing climate change would be a little more techinical than that. you know, ice core samples, oceanography, satellite images, tree rings, hundreds of thousands of temperature readings, etc, etc.

A $180 Billion dollar study? really - a $180 BILLION dollar study? are you sure it wasn't a gazilliion dollars?

and you consider yourself a skeptic?

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Permalink Reply by James M. Martin on January 10, 2011 at 12:38pm

I donno. I am still looking for a qualified onocologist to diagnose cancer of the climate.

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Permalink Reply by LarryL on January 10, 2011 at 3:23pm

lol,

good luck with that James. Quite a coincidence that I used onocology as an example with an onocologist - or was it providence???

I enjoyed your original post, James, but the whacko responses from yet more denialists got my ire up a bit. I hope most people don't go around trying to diagnose cancer, yet we seem to have a lot of "climate experts" that are willing to reject the diagnosis of the state of our climate .

Perhaps it's because anyone can stick their head out a window and tell whether it is hot or cold, sunny or raining, that we think we are climate experts and are qualified to rendor our expert assessment onto the masses.

"The Shock Doctrine" just made my reading list. Thanks for the tip.

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Permalink Reply by James M. Martin on January 9, 2011 at 11:58pm

If 98% of onocologists said anything I would wonder who they were.

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Permalink Reply by Chris G on January 10, 2011 at 12:37am

Hi Jim,

I've been studying this lately because of another post about conspiracy theories and changing weather patterns.

You might have to cut and paste the links. The below information is a draft of email's I've sent out to several friends.

Chris

I started reading about global warming and came across the following article that says CO2 must be capped at 350ppm to prevent runaway heating of the earth by eliminating coal emissions.

http://solveclimatenews.com/news/20091124/why-we-must-phase-out-coa...

This lead me to information about carbon capture and storage

http://www.grist.org/article/coal-in-question/

I found information on how the cost of decreasing CO2 can equitably be shared around the world on the Greenhouse Development Right web page. This is lengthy and I’m only part way through it.

http://gdrights.org/

References to agricultural practices led me to

Sustainable/Holistic vs. Destructive/Conventional Agriculture

http://www.climatesos.org/climate-solutions/sustainableholistic-vs-...

I began wondering how using genetically modified (round up ready) corn, and soybeans effects soil biology, thinking that it would kill microorganisms in the ground reducing how much carbon the soil holds. I found out that about 90% of the soybans planted in Indiana contain Monsanto’s Round up Ready trait. (http://www.fr.com/files/uploads/publications/DSU-Medical-Corp-v-JMS...) If that represents the nation as a whole how many ten’s of thousand acres would that be? And came across the following.

http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/jan10/scientists_find_negativ...

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find the European Journal of Agronomy, Volume 31, Issue 3, Pages 111-176 (Oct 2009)referenced in the above article without paying for it. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5023-2009-999689996-1482152)

How food production in the U.S. damages the climate.

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19

percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves

contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=1&...

I’ve read several reports linking swine flu to industrial pig farms.

In 1896 a professor wrote about carbonic acid changing sunlight levels.

http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf

It was taught in school through the 1960's (and how much later I don't know)- so denial isn’t plausible.

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Permalink Reply by Chris G on January 10, 2011 at 1:17am

Substitute Sustainable/Holistic vs. Destrictive/Conventional Agriculture above for this

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Permalink Reply by Peetpeet on January 12, 2011 at 7:10pm

Religion and politics aside, the carbon driven climate change model is bogus.
Carbon dioxide is a trace gas, which absorbs a very small spectrum of infra-red energy and has a small specific heat capacity with which to absorb said heat in order to convection heat other substances it comes into contact with. Conversely, water, one of the most abundant substances on earth absorbs energy across the light spectrum, and has a greater specific heat capacity to absorb that energy, subsequently it is the heating and cooling of the worlds oceans which primarily drives our climate globally. The sea level rising is bogus too - go search youtube for 'ice cube melting in a glass' and watch if the water level changes; people are mistaking coastal erosion for rising sea levels, and then blame climate change for it.
Some of the most strongly held theories of carbon-driven climate change violate the fundamental principles of thermodynamics and even the archimedes principle.

Lastly, why is this topic under 'introductions', should be in 'watercooler', maybe?

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Permalink Reply by James M. Martin on January 12, 2011 at 7:38pm

Because the idiot who posted it did not make sure it was being posted in the proper place. As the great Victor MacLaglen, in John Ford's "The Informer," would say, "Twas I who informed on your son, Mrs. McPhillip. Forgive me, forgive me...."