Muller had started BEST to audit the climate data because he swallowed the ideas that Watts and others have regarding Climategate. Muller had commended the “fine” people at WattsUpWithThat before for pointing at the “manipulation” of the data by the climate scientists that was “revealed” in the Climategate scandal, this accusation of conspiracy by the climate scientists BTW was huge news 2 years ago, but as for the current debunking of that made by the most important skeptic? As John Stewart pointed out 2 days ago, the McRibb coming back at McDonalds was bigger news…
Coming up next, we will see (almost all!) those Republicans in congress that stopped any meaningful measures to control emissions because they believed in that false conspiracy to do the right thing…
This is a thing you always get worked up about, and I don’t see why. The debate over the human role in global climate change isn’t really a scientific one at this point. It’s been pretty clearly established. The people who deny it don’t deny it for scientific reasons. They deny it because, if it’s true, to fight global warming will be expensive and require some pretty major lifestyle changes, and that’s something that’s politically and psychologically unacceptable for a lot of people. So, it’s not a matter of what the scientific evidence shows, and they’re not going to change their opinions.
Before it was moon hoaxers, then 9/11 truthers, the reason is the same: when the overwhelming evidence goes one way the stupid burns too much, and when it is allied with political leanings it is worse, because thanks to the efforts and inaction of politicians, some are preventing many changes from becoming reality.
However, even there, there is evidence that most of the assumptions like “mayor lifestyle changes will be needed”, are not as serious as a good number of deniers want to make it be.
[Worlds fastest street legal ELECTRIC CAR 1972 Datsun 1200 White Zombie.]
Regarding Republican inaction, I think this researcher that got to talk at a recent conservative climate conference (mostly a denialist meet), that was organized by the Heartland Institute has it. He told the mostly polite crowd (with connections to big business) that their inaction will hurt them more in the future so they should stop listening to the denialists and begin to offer solutions instead of offering just inaction.
And to fight it well requires being proactive and never seeing really seeing what your dollars are buying. Essentially operating on faith that the predictions based on the science are true and accurate and that the dollars being spent on mitigation solutions are working as intended. I can understand why a lot of people have a hard time swallowing this pill. I can’t understand why right wing fundamentalists have an especially hard time swallowing it. Taking things on faith should be right in their wheelhouse.
How would you feel if most of the Republican candidates for President were moon-landing hoaxers and wanted to shut down NASA because they supposedly lied about it? This is like that, but worse, since losing NASA would lose a lot of science, but losing the global warming debate might lose our civilization and the lives of hundreds of millions if low lying areas like Bangladesh flood.
The problem, as pointed out in the OP, is that the unwashed, stupid masses and the politicians have already made up their minds on this topic and consider any evidence presented now, no matter how overwhelming, to be irrelevant. Those people have moved on to more important topics, like the McRib (Mmmmmm… McRib) and they don’t want to hear about this latest bit of evidence. They believe what they choose to believe and that’s that. Which is sad.
The choice was for these two things: *willfully ignorant ***or **cowardly (there is a difference among republicans, I do think that most do know what is happening, but they go the way of the coward and tell their followers what they want to hear). But yeah, I said before my grammar is a crime against nature :), as for the real clime against nature, on the other side of the pond guys like the “I’m only an interpreter of science and no, I do not read scientific papers” Delingpole are also getting the boot.
Items like this are important because one of the excuses now from weasels like Watts is to claim that “this is old news” and “skeptics” like them **always **claimed to accept that the earth was warming, that is bullshit, doubt was and is their product.
Aren’t you wrong since public opinion re: global warming has gone up and down over the years and libs have been wringing their hands because it’s been nose diving ever since that e-mail faux scandal a couple years back?
I may be wrong insofar as there might be a few people remaining on the fence who are falling onto one side or the other (mostly the wrong side lately due to things like the e-mail faux scandal). Beyond that, though, it seems to me that most people have decided that either this is actually happening and is likely a Very Bad Thing or this is a giant global conspiracy by the greedy international supervillain science community to extort money from poor, innocent oil companies. Generally, they would much rather discuss the menu at McDonalds or what Lindsay Lohan has been up to lately than read any other information on the topic of global warming.
I wouldn’t like it, but I also wouldn’t expect them to admit we landed on the moon just because another study came out showing we did.
Look, anybody who’s reasonably intelligent and has seen the evidence knows that global warming exists. I know it, you know it, Mitt Romney knows it. Mr. Watts knows it. Hbns in this thread knows it. People do not deny global warming exists because they don’t believe it exists. They deny global warming exists because they think lying about it benefits them. And in a lot of cases it does benefit them. They get an awful lot of money for denying it.
So showing that Watts is wrong isn’t really notable. Of course he’s wrong. Everyone knows he’s wrong. He knows he’s wrong.
I’m not one of the deniers. I do think GW is happening and man has played a role in it. But I think it’s no where near the catastrophic levels the chicken little crowd is squalking about. It’s become way to politicized now and the actions of those scientists during climate gate kind of sealed it’s fate for me.
Call me when a town on a coast line starts slipping into the ocean, then I’ll be concerned. That’ll probably be in a couple of 1000 years.
First, all the investigations and audits demonstrated those those “actions” were just human wishful thinking typed on private emails. The right wing media and many clueless reporters on the mainstream pumped up accusations that where not true against the scientists.
As I pointed out so many times in the past, when contrarians find what really happened in Climategate they usually don’t demand to their sources of information to explain why their reports screwed with the truth so much and made others believe in falsehoods like the one you are talking about here, instead of demanding that your sources to do it better or that they report the clarifications and exoneration with the same strength as they reported the “scandal” or choosing to dump their sources for not being reliable, I just expect you to continue to ignore the evidence.
