Greed Oil Petroleum!
Written by "Socrates" as a comment to "Why the Pope Should Scare Climate-Change Deniers" by Anna North, New York Times, 2015-09-22
Showing posts with label Deniers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deniers. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
I have a negative climate change rating?
I don't fully understand the rating, but my blog "The hoax is that there is no climate change" was given a -0.72 rating by The Carbon Capture Report,
Does this mean that the raters or the rating programs don't understand irony? Many think that climate change is a hoax. So, isn't a way to spoof the idea that there is no climate change is to call the idea of no climate change a hoax?
There I went again! Using convoluted thinking to show an idea is not valid and few understand my meaning. Sigh!
Does this mean that the raters or the rating programs don't understand irony? Many think that climate change is a hoax. So, isn't a way to spoof the idea that there is no climate change is to call the idea of no climate change a hoax?
There I went again! Using convoluted thinking to show an idea is not valid and few understand my meaning. Sigh!
Saturday, June 01, 2013
Oklahoma, tornadoes, Pat Robertson, God, and James Imhofe
Pat Robertson supposedly stated that the deadly tornado that destroyed homes and killed people in Moore, Oklahoma was because people didn't pray enough. See "God and the Moore Tornado", Roger Talley, Examiner, 2013-05-25. This in turn cites "Pat Robertson: Tornadoes Could Have Been Stopped If People Had Prayed", Huffington Post, 2013-05-20, which in turn uses a video from other sources.
What exactly did he say? If you watch the video, both the Examiner, which seems to have a bias toward religion, and almost all the other "short quote" media, didn't give the full context of Robertson's statement. In the video, Robertson gives a scientific explanation of tornadoes, stating that this is the way God set things up to provide thermal balance for the earth. He then asks why people build in places with known dangers. He does state that God could have stopped the tornado if enough people had prayed. That is quite a different statement than God punished Moore because not enough people prayed.
This pokes a bit of a hole in the joke that I have, but I'll push on anyway, partly because the Examiner article put this spin on it. What if the Moore tornado was a warning from God? Could it have been a warning not about prayer but about re-electing James Imhofe to the U.S. Senate? After all, Sen. Imhofe is one of the chief global-warming deniers in Congress.
All kidding aside, the data is not in on the connection between global warming and tornadoes. As usual, we have the usual suspects jumping to draw their own conclusions. On one side global warming doesn't exist because scientists have not found a definitive link between tornadoes and global warming, and on the other side tornadoes must be increasing in severity because of global warming. Actually, global warming could increase them or global warming could decrease them. For a balanced view on the research in progress, see "Tornadoes and Global Warming", Robert Kunzig, National Geographic, 2013-05-22.
What exactly did he say? If you watch the video, both the Examiner, which seems to have a bias toward religion, and almost all the other "short quote" media, didn't give the full context of Robertson's statement. In the video, Robertson gives a scientific explanation of tornadoes, stating that this is the way God set things up to provide thermal balance for the earth. He then asks why people build in places with known dangers. He does state that God could have stopped the tornado if enough people had prayed. That is quite a different statement than God punished Moore because not enough people prayed.
This pokes a bit of a hole in the joke that I have, but I'll push on anyway, partly because the Examiner article put this spin on it. What if the Moore tornado was a warning from God? Could it have been a warning not about prayer but about re-electing James Imhofe to the U.S. Senate? After all, Sen. Imhofe is one of the chief global-warming deniers in Congress.
All kidding aside, the data is not in on the connection between global warming and tornadoes. As usual, we have the usual suspects jumping to draw their own conclusions. On one side global warming doesn't exist because scientists have not found a definitive link between tornadoes and global warming, and on the other side tornadoes must be increasing in severity because of global warming. Actually, global warming could increase them or global warming could decrease them. For a balanced view on the research in progress, see "Tornadoes and Global Warming", Robert Kunzig, National Geographic, 2013-05-22.
Friday, March 23, 2012
The hoax is that there is no climate change
The real hoaxer is Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla who has been pushing his views for decades that there is no climate change. He is not above distorting data to prove his point; for example showing only the worst case scenario of NASA scientist James Hansen rather than best, likely, and worst. Since the worst case wasn't happening, Inhofe claimed that Hansen must be wrong.
I did a search on Hansen, NASA, climatologist, inhofe and found dozens of screeds against the existence of climate change. Many of these seem to pick on the tiniest shred of information to support their contention that scientists are wrong about global climate change.
Hm, thirty years ago it seemed that every January in the Twin Cities there would a week of temperatures of 20-30 below zero Fahrenheit. That's about 45 degrees latitude. In the last few years in Duluth at 47 degrees there have been few days with all day temperatures that low.
I remember skiing on March 30, 1968 on decent snow at Buck Hill, south of the Twin Cities. For the last few years Spirit Mt. in Duluth has closed by the end of March. This year Spirit Mt. closed by March 19!
The hardest people to argue with are those who sow discord with misinformation. It is a real-life Whack-a-mole situation. Two scientists with the Union of Concerned Scientists attempted to do so in "The Climate Change Hoax", Andrew J. Gunther and James J. McCarthy, Kansas City Star, 2012-03-21. Among other things they point out is "Does this 'hoax' date back to 1896, when Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius presented his findings that human activities releasing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could change Earth's climate?"
See also "Mission Impossible: Global Warming Debunking Debunking", Melvyn D. Magree, Reader Weekly, 2008-03-13.
I did a search on Hansen, NASA, climatologist, inhofe and found dozens of screeds against the existence of climate change. Many of these seem to pick on the tiniest shred of information to support their contention that scientists are wrong about global climate change.
Hm, thirty years ago it seemed that every January in the Twin Cities there would a week of temperatures of 20-30 below zero Fahrenheit. That's about 45 degrees latitude. In the last few years in Duluth at 47 degrees there have been few days with all day temperatures that low.
I remember skiing on March 30, 1968 on decent snow at Buck Hill, south of the Twin Cities. For the last few years Spirit Mt. in Duluth has closed by the end of March. This year Spirit Mt. closed by March 19!
The hardest people to argue with are those who sow discord with misinformation. It is a real-life Whack-a-mole situation. Two scientists with the Union of Concerned Scientists attempted to do so in "The Climate Change Hoax", Andrew J. Gunther and James J. McCarthy, Kansas City Star, 2012-03-21. Among other things they point out is "Does this 'hoax' date back to 1896, when Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius presented his findings that human activities releasing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could change Earth's climate?"
See also "Mission Impossible: Global Warming Debunking Debunking", Melvyn D. Magree, Reader Weekly, 2008-03-13.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Climate change and so-called bipartisanship
How can there be bipartisanship on any issue when there are more than two sides? Actually, as Stewart Brand writes in "Four Sides to Every Story", New York Times, 2009-12-14 there is a continuum from alarmists who think there is no problem, to those who think caution should be applied to a possible problem, to those who think we should address a given problem, to alarmists who think the problem needs immediate, drastic action.
Brand divides the stances on climate change into the Denialists, the Skeptics, the Warners, and the Calamatists. The real scientists who are Skeptics are often quoted by the Denialists, much to the discomfort of the Skeptics.
This division could be applied to many issues, like health care. We have those who deny there is a problem and even exaggerate the effects of any propose solution and those who exaggerate any problem and deny that proposed solutions will do enough. Then there are all the people who recognize there is a problem, something should be done about the problem, disagree on the severity of the problem and about which solutions are most appropriate.
Unfortunately, the Denialists and the Calamatists too often control the public discourse and make the work of more reasoned minds more difficult. It is even worse when the Deniers and some Skeptics are locked into one political party and the Calamatists, the Warners, and some Skeptics are locked into another political party. With this arrangement how is any real bipartisanship possible?
We would be much better off if we had five political parties: Denialists, Skeptics, Warners, Calamatists, and Referees. The last party would examine the positions of the Skeptics and the Warners, and blend them into politics of the possible. Hopefully, the Denialists and the Calamatists would be marginalized to mere commentators.
Spelling changes from Deniers and Calamitists to Denialists and Calamatists made 2010-01-23.
Brand divides the stances on climate change into the Denialists, the Skeptics, the Warners, and the Calamatists. The real scientists who are Skeptics are often quoted by the Denialists, much to the discomfort of the Skeptics.
This division could be applied to many issues, like health care. We have those who deny there is a problem and even exaggerate the effects of any propose solution and those who exaggerate any problem and deny that proposed solutions will do enough. Then there are all the people who recognize there is a problem, something should be done about the problem, disagree on the severity of the problem and about which solutions are most appropriate.
Unfortunately, the Denialists and the Calamatists too often control the public discourse and make the work of more reasoned minds more difficult. It is even worse when the Deniers and some Skeptics are locked into one political party and the Calamatists, the Warners, and some Skeptics are locked into another political party. With this arrangement how is any real bipartisanship possible?
We would be much better off if we had five political parties: Denialists, Skeptics, Warners, Calamatists, and Referees. The last party would examine the positions of the Skeptics and the Warners, and blend them into politics of the possible. Hopefully, the Denialists and the Calamatists would be marginalized to mere commentators.
Spelling changes from Deniers and Calamitists to Denialists and Calamatists made 2010-01-23.
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