I s’pose the point of stunts like this isn’t to persuade people who think Rush is great; there’s pretty much no hope. But there are, I imagine, quite a lot of people who are neither here nor there on both Rush and AGW who might hear about this and at least absorb something about a) Rush’s level of intellectual rigour and b) the quality of science reporting in general.
Given that I saw BBC News 24 reporting breathlessly on a free energy device that “breaks all the known laws of physics” (!) the other day, I actually have a fairly hard time singling Rush out as a particularly bad example of bad science reporting. While he may (ha) have been too eager to believe the paper he quoted, at least he was taken in by people who deliberately tried to sucker him, rather than suckering himself as so many other supposedly reputable outlets seem to do.
I coulda sworn we were talking about the comparative effectiveness of different approaches, not their rightness. And this one’s ineffectiveness is proven.
And they’d say (and even this librul thinks there’s logic to it) that I’m free to waste my own money if I please, but the gummint has no right to take my money from me if they’re just gonna go waste it.
C’mon, you know that.
Well, yeah. But they’re still not going to listen to you. And by this point, you’re so deep in the weeds that nobody else is, either.
I’m not expecting them to.
I’m not after the fanboys. I’m after the ‘respectable’ pundits who are willing to share with Rush some of their veneer of respectability.
He’s doing exactly the sort of thing they (for the most part falsely) accuse the lefty blogs of doing. And the Broderites really don’t like having their intellectual inconsistency pointed out to them, so who knows, it may do some good.
Dude, this was the truth: Rush was willing to bite on a total fake, as long as it supported his side of the argument.
If you can’t see the moral difference between supporting your own position with bad evidence or a dishonest argument, and giving your opponent an opportunity to do so, then I think there’s no point in us going back and forth anymore.
This article was like leaving a $5 bill on your desk, and watching from a hidden vantage point to see if your co-worker grabs it. If he’s honest, nothing happens. If he’s not, you can catch him taking the $5 bill. But there’s no dishonesty in leaving the bill on the desk.
Aside from any techniques which might be used at Gitmo, I can see no way that Rush would be willing to admit that AGW exists, or even that he was stupid in being so eager to embrace the story which inspired the OP. So why bother wasting your time creating such things and tilting at those windmills? Better to deal with people who are at least willing to listen.
And in wasting their money, they’re feeding the government they hate. What with all those gas taxes and the like.
I also know that most of the people who scream about “socialized medicine” have no trouble driving on the socialized roads we have in this country.
Yeah, so?
And those pundits would be whom, exactly? Coulter? Fox News?
I doubt it.
And how is this different than what he accuses the other side of doing?
I guess there’s no point. I don’t think that it’s a valid tactic at all. At best, it’s a cheap shot, at worst, it’s being dishonest.
And what’s Douglas Adams say about dealing with people leaving bricks under hats? If you don’t respond to one bait, they’ll throw another and another at you until you take it, or if you show you’re of strong moral character and refuse to take anything, they’ll punish you for that.
Who said anything about changing Rush Limbaugh’s mind?! I didn’t, and you know I didn’t. Quit fucking with the goalposts, 'kay?
As I’ve said at least twice in this thread, I’m not even aiming at changing the minds of his legion of dittoheads.
I’m after the D.C. pundit class, like I’ve said repeatedly. Do you think they “would be willing to admit that AGW exists, or even that [Rush] was stupid in being so eager to embrace the story which inspired the OP”? It’s hard, I know, to characterize that as “tilting at windmills,” so you pretend that I’m out to change Rush’s mind.
When come back, bring honest debating.
Exactly. The dittoheads - who you’re trying to convince - have no trouble at all with inconsistency. You know that too.
Then what’s the point of your proposal, if it won’t work and your response to that reality is “yeah, so?”
See my mention of “Broderites” which you quote.
Your obliviousness is impressive.
I suppose it depends on what he accuses the other side of doing, doesn’t it? Given his outlandish claims, very little could be worse than what he accuses the left of doing. There’s no way to compete with that, I’m not trying to, and I never said I was.
Look, you may think you’re debating me, but it’s apparent to me that you’re debating someone else, someone who’s said things on the same topic of what I’ve said in this thread, but taking distinctly different positions.
Why don’t you and he have a nice debate? I’m stepping out of this one.
They might as well be one in the same. Which D.C. pundits are you talking about? Do you honestly think that anyone who’d align himself with Rush, on any level, is really going to give a damn? How many people on this board, who embraced him have changed their minds because of the things that have been posted here? One? IME, they’ve either dismissed everything that’s been said with handwaving or simply left the boards.
Wait, you’re calling for honest debating, but you think that it’s okay to feed the otherside false information?
I’m not trying to convice the dittoheads. Or are you a dittohead? Because you’re currently the only one I’m engaged with in this thread.
I’ve not seen any evidence that yours will work, either.
You actually think that someone so misguided as to what the facts of the situation are, is actually going to abandon the only “bully pulpit” they have because of this? You’re dreaming.
So is yours if you think that this is going to stop the Broderites from coming on Rush’s show. He’s got too many listeners who’ll eagerly swallow whatever he spits out for them to walk away. They know the scientific community isn’t going to listen to them, so they’re only hope is folks like Rush who have a wide audience.
Never said that you were trying to compete.
And you may think you’ve got a shot in hell of convincing people that he’s full of shit, but unless and until he has a complete meltdown on the air and starts tossing about the N-word, he’s going to continue to have a large following, and so long as he has a large following, the Broderites, et. al. are going to continue to come on his show. If they actually cared about science, they wouldn’t be denying that AGW is real would they? The science is solid on that, despite what they may claim.
Bye. Don’t let the thread hit you on the ass on your way out.
Why so? Let’s say Mr. Smith, ostensibly straight, writes a column about gay rights, making a compelling argument in favor of gay marriage. When he is exposed as being gay, why will his argument have lost merit?
I think, again, you are conflating arguments from authority (which **brazil84 ** uses, and where ad hominem is legitimate) with other sorts of arguments, where ad hominem is fallacious. Presumably, the pro-gay-marriage arguments stand or fall on their own; the legitimacy and accuracy of the data cited by brazil84, on the other hand, depends on the motives and expertise of the people presenting these data, and there is nothing wrong with questioning their motives or expertise.
I agreed with you before, but here I disagree. Or, more likely, we’re two ships passing in the night. An argument — any argument — stands or falls on its own. A dubious authority may raise suspicions, particularly about motive, but until and unless the premises of an argument are shown to be false or the logic shown to be invalid, independent of the argument’s source, the burden of proof is on the person who questions the argument. That’s because the argument has been made. The maker rested his burden by the act of making. Now, it is the turn of the other person to show where there are problems, not with the maker but with what he has made.
I think I see the confusion, I was not revealing a secret, I was emphasizing the industry he works for as I assume most people would not be aware of this.
I’m sticking to my guns. In cases like this, where people such as **brazil84 ** and I don’t know the science, we are relying on those who do to report the data in an objective way. Now we all know that there are a thousand ways to lie with data–to present a skewed or unrepresentative sample, or to misrepresent the consequences of the data, etc. And in scientific debates, we laypersons have to rely on the person presenting the data not to do any of these things; it is beyond my competence to do more than the most modest checking-up after any allegedly scientific organization’s data. So if it turns out that the organization publicizing certain data is, say, a group set up by an oil company, then I think we have good reason to doubt that the data is clean. Now obviously, for a climatologist who knows the science, the data speaks for itself–but the climatologist doesn’t have to rely on the authority of others with respect to AGW. Non-climatologists such as myself do, and so it is an argument from authority, ad hominems allowed.
Then why are you disagreeing with me? Because that’s exactly what I said, just worded differently. By all means doubt. All I’m saying is that “Hey! Your guy is paid by an oil company” does not equal, “Aha! I have destroyed your argument!”
Actually, per his FAQ, he doesn’t exactly work in it any more.
But I do now see your point. Perhaps I’m too trusting in expecting people to ask themselves questions like, “Who is this guy?” and, “Why is he saying this?” and look for answers.
[Lumbergh]Uh, yeeeeaaah. [/Lumbergh] Maybe you haven’t noticed, but this thread isn’t exactly a hotbed of discussion. It’s pretty much hit the “drop off point” so I don’t expect it to be around much longer. Which means, you’re basically done with it (as are we all).
It’s possible that you mean something other than what you say here, but as written, this is simply and verifiably false.
What do you do if you have correlation and want to demonstrate causation? You find a mechanism - that is where this goes beyond statistics and mathematics into science. The mechanism by which greenhouse gases can cause global warming (described in this Wikipedia article - pay particular attention to the diagrams under “Radiation Transmitted by the Atmosphere”) has been known for over a century.
Even those who might be termed “global warming skeptics” do not argue that CO[sub]2[/sub] and other gases cannot absorb infrared radiation. Most will argue that it is the amount retained which is insufficient to explain the observed temperature rise. In arguing that it is not retained, you appear to move from a disagreement over degree to a disagreement over the principles of physics, which may be advisable on another boards, but I would not recommend it here.
For what it’s worth, and please keep in mind I have no dogs in this race, I happened to be listening during this portion of his show.
He admitted, on the air, that it was a hoax, that he got suckered. I’m not sure what came out after that as I was sure commercials were finished on my normal station, so I switched over.
Also, he was not on the air on Friday, supposedly as a self imposed “exile” for a day. For whatever reason.
