I don’t think they’re that much into sowing doubt; they merely want to shift the discussion from What’s His Conclusion to What’s His Evidence, which is why the link goes on to modestly recommend “looking for objective research on climate change” rather than advocating some sort of “conduct all of the experiments personally” approach.
As the Monckton video shows, that is not the intention, as Heartland has not condemned Monckton for his repeated misrepresentation of what the actual science is, one has to conclude that they do not care that they are lying about what the actual researchers have found so far.
If we’re really interested in objective research, I’d say we should look in peer-reviewed international journals rather than a public relations firm with a past history of defending tobacco companies, and present tendency of receiving funding from large oil companies and foundations with a strong self-interest in climate change denial.
But that’s just me. I’m sort of goofy that way.
Okay, so after I find the objective research on climate change, where does Heartland go from there?
MANSON FOUND OBJECTIVE RESEARCH ON CLIMATE CHANGE CONVINCING, TOO, YOU KNOW!
Again, isn’t that their explicit point? That people shouldn’t believe such conclusions – whether offered by anyone in general or Heartland itself in particular – but should instead look at “what the actual researchers have found so far” rather than believing Heartland or Monckton (or anyone else) about “what the actual researchers have found so far.”
Or, as Euphonious Polemic puts it:
That seems to be their argument – albeit broadened out to something more like you shouldn’t get your conclusions from us, or from people on either side of the issue; you should instead just go straight to the facts, and come to your own conclusions.
[QUOTE=Pashnish Ewing]
Okay, so after I find the objective research on climate change, where does Heartland go from there?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think it goes anywhere else; they’d presumably feel they’d sown sufficient doubt if (a) they can get enough folks to say I don’t care who says it, I care whether it’s true, such that (b) enough folks then consult the objective research for themselves, at which point (c) enough folks conclude, shucks, now I don’t believe it’s true.
To be ruthlessly fair, self-interest is not necessarily a disqualifier when it comes to research funding. I think it a fair bet that many of the people who financed global warming research did so in the calm confidence that the results would support their preconceptions. That’s legit, no one who is utterly honest with themselves is going to deny that they might have some personal biases when approaching research on an issue like this, that’s like denying your humanity.
I welcome funding for research, even if the funding comes from people who are convinced that the results of that research will benefit their positions, economically and politically. So long as the research is done in accepted fashion and subject to peer review, all that good stuff, bring it on!
The example that leaps to mind was research funded by tobacco companies to “prove” that lung cancer was caused by viruses. And they did. in fact (IIRC) discover that there are cancers caused by viruses, which is an intriguing and valuable result, in the way that all such knowledge is valuable.
And now for the preaching part. Let me roll in this pulpit… (ahem)…
Brothers and sisters, pals and gals, it is possible…possible, mind you!..that we could be on the brink of a golden age. Energy is about the only thing that really matters, with enough energy you can do damned near anything. With cheap, green and abundant energy, even the lowliest of humanity would benefit enormously. Subsistence farmers would not only subsist, they could have lights at night so their children can study. How many Einsteins have we lost because the potential genius is lost to drudgery and malnutrition?
What are the odds? I have no idea. But we may very well be one genius away from that gold standard of cheap green energy. Hell, we are energy, bubbles of energy afloat in a rushing stream of energy, we are surrounded by it, its all around us. One “eureka!” may be all it would take. How can we afford not to take that gamble? Energy is light, power, food, and education. If we had put serious money into this quest forty years ago, where might we be now?
Are the odds against us? I don’t know, but this I do know: if the odds are a hundred to one against, the bet is one dollar, and the payoff is a million: you make the bet. Then you gaze up at the moon, cross your fingers, offer a pantheists prayer To Whom It May Concern, and remind yourself of the footprints on that moon.
Here endeth the lesson. Peace on you.
If that was really their intention, they did a sucky, sucky job of it. I don’t get that from the billboard at all.
Uh uh, and they expect many gullible people to not follow it. It seems that you are missing the evidence that shows that they are clearly lying..
Twice. Once for the misleading and lying description of what researchers report and again when they tell you “It’s true, check it for yourself!”
Doubling down on their mendacity is possible as they demonstrated.
I wonder who will have more blood on their hands?
The funders of the Heartland Institute?
The directors of the Institute?
The maketers who sought out donations with denial as a selling point?
The ad agency or creatives who designed misleading ads?
The Other Waldo Peppers who get duped by this type of marketing and try to pass on their ignorance?
Of course, I’m not saying any of them actually have blood on their hands … I’m only asking questions.
I am, though, acknowledging that IMHO they’re sick fucks.
Oh, I agree. But imagine for a moment that they actually believe most people on the other side are just mindlessly parroting a conclusion because someone they trust said it – and then ask yourself what poorly-thought-out method they’d hit upon to make those folks say, wait, what? I don’t believe this because of who says it; that would be foolish.
Everything falls into place if that’s what they genuinely think and were shooting for; the ads don’t really make sense otherwise. (Heck, look at Anne Neville’s post; she nearly hits on the desired response by criticizing the ads for making a ridiculous point: regardless of who says it, she argues, consider what we can check.)
But I don’t doubt that they’re lying; I’ll naturally agree that I don’t see a “check it for yourself” as a lie, but the first part isn’t like the second.
[QUOTE=Rhythmdvl]
The Other Waldo Peppers who get duped by this type of marketing and try to pass on their ignorance?
[/QUOTE]
Which part do you think I’m duped by?
These folks put the ‘rat’ in irrational.
This is one of the topics that even some of my closest friends disagree about.
But, not a one of them would stoop to this kind of evil crap.
I would say that the discussion should be between the actual scientists who study climate change, but it appears that such a discussion has already occurred and that the vast majority of these men and women agree that climate change is happening and that it is anthropogenic.
The ONLY reason why these findings are being disputed is that remediation of this phenomenon will require a fundamental shift in common industrial practices. But, it doesn’t take much to convince people that everything is going just peachy-keen because change is usually met with trepidation by the majority of the American public.
The bugaboo of ‘falsifiability’ seems to be your personal corner of denailism. Whether your hands are as bloody as the H’land institutes are is for your own conscious to decide. (This assumes, of course, that you’re not of diminished capacity.) Perhaps you’ve had minimal effect on overall discourse; that your denial efforts have been limited to the Boards where you’re mostly just laughed at (except by fellow denialists and the occasional American Petroleum Institute bot). Great, I guess you could say your hands are likely clean. Have you limited yourself to here, or have you spread ignorance around in wider circles and with wider effects?
Of course, the ads’ false equivalence breaks down when we stop to consider that the United Nations and the mainstream media probably ARE considerably more trustworthy
than, say, Charles Manson when it comes to telling the truth about a complicated scientific issue.
No individual human can hope to determine the facts about all complicated scientific issues completely independently, so at some point we’re all going to have to rely on expert opinion to some extent.
But that doesn’t mean that all opinions are equally reliable or unreliable. Some opinions really are more expert than others.
And I grant that it’s entirely falsifiable, so I don’t see where you think any “denailism” comes in.
Yes, well, my “conscious” is clear so long as the worst thing you can say is that I treat falsifiability as, er, something of a bugaboo.
Are you still solely referring to the importance I place on falsifiability, or is there some other alleged instance of ignorance you have in mind?
I’m trying to imagine something that I believe, that I could get someone else to ‘wake up’ and consider because I tell them that Charles Manson, Ted Kaszinsky, *et al *believe it.
“Charles Manson still believes in Creationism. Do you?”
No, I just can’t see green-lighting this. Granted, I can’t see what their point was. I can’t see what they thought they would accomplish. Perhaps your conclusion is correct.
Maybe someone working for the Heartland, or in the marketing campaign, detests them and sabotaged their message “question your beliefs” intentionally.
Things may be different now (I stopped reading most of your posts a while ago), but you had/have a penchant for wading into any conversation about climate change screeching about falsifiability as if it disproves or negates the rest of the conversation. You press your ignorance on the subject such that a casual read could leave someone with the impression that you had something of a point; that the bugaboo of falsifiability means that climate science is largely formed on substandard ground and its predictions are wholly unreliable and useless for any policy making purpose.
As I said, I largely bypass your posts in climate threads, so this could be wrong. For all I know, you could have been saying all along that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses have so changed the chemistry of the atmosphere that not inconsequential climate change–in line with the Fourth IPCC Report–is inevitable. This level of change is likely to lead to millions of deaths throughout the world, to untold economic damage and substantial increases in general misery (i.e. through food shortages, increased disease vectors, etc). However, the exact extent of these effects are unknowable, suffice as to say the will be present.
Well, it’s certainly my opinion – and, I’d hope, yours – that the crucial first step in assessing predictions is clarifying whether they’re falsifiable; if they aren’t, then, sure, the rest of the conversation probably isn’t worth having. But since the predictions in question happen to be falsifiable, my bugaboo is of course satisfied.
If the predictions aren’t falsifiable, then, yes, I suppose “unreliable” and “useless” sound about right. As it happens, though, they are falsifiable, so I don’t know why you’d find my concerns about falsifiability at all troubling.
Oh, no, certainly not. I said quite different stuff back when I’d never heard a falsifiable prediction about the subject – and still find it remarkable that I only ever come across unfalsifiable ones in the newspapers and on television – but eventually GIGO supplied a falsifiable prediction, which satisfied me completely.
(In fact, GIGO’s first falsifiable prediction satisfied me just as completely, until he for some reason disavowed it; his second falsifiable prediction likewise satisfied me, until he for some reason disavowed that one as well. But so long as he hasn’t yet disavowed his third one, I remain entirely satisfied with it and vote that we should act accordingly.)
Right. Just like I already linked from SourceWatch:
But, this does not reflect well on Heartland nor on its message, as you seem to think it does. It does not make them champions of skepticism, rejection-of-authority, or ignorance-fighting. It makes them the equivalent of trolls. Hired trolls.
Well **Rhythmdvl ** things have changed, but not by much as you can see.
Right now TOWP has accepted that this can be falsified, but he still has a blind spot in accepting that that was the case after several decades of experiments.
He is settling down on ad nauseam arguments and dumb devil advocate tactics.
Unfortunately the emphasis is in the dumb part.
like for example:
[QUOTE=The Other Waldo Pepper]
(In fact, GIGO’s first falsifiable prediction satisfied me just as completely, until he for some reason disavowed it; his second falsifiable prediction likewise satisfied me, until he for some reason disavowed that one as well. But so long as he hasn’t yet disavowed his third one, I remain entirely satisfied with it and vote that we should act accordingly.)
[/QUOTE]
As we agreed, we accept the projections and most likely predictions from the IPCC, the dumb part here is that I was correct all along in saying before that it is for some dumb reason essential for TOWP to find a fault on a poster in a message board, the most likely reason is so there is no need to deal with the science at all.
The point here is that it does not matter what my theories made to humor him made early were valid, what it counts is what the scientists and the IPCC said, and the dumb point from TOWP is that even when he was getting his silly falsification points up, serious men of science already had reported what the real score was so far and after all these years. This hammering on falsification is just useful to avoid dealing with the science or in this case, with the facts that show the mendacity of the Heartland Institute.
I guess since it seems that it can not be put in the way of a falsification, it means that therefore the say so’s of the Heartland Institute are the truth.. 