"And you know this how? You have studied it at length and concluded that climate change is a hoax. Or you’ve concluded that the global average temperature will go up a few degrees but we will somehow adjust? That the drought in California is just a random blip? Not saying it couldn’t be, but why can’t you pay attention to the people who have spent their lives studying it? " (Hari Seldon)
What I have studied is John Cook’s global warming consensus study (called 97 percent something or other), and his public presentation. He claims to be a scientist of some kind (a social scientist, I think), and he’s spent his life studying how to create propaganda, apparently. That so-called study is so hypocritical and twisted it makes me want to shout from the mountaintops that no one should trust this man. Nor should you trust his website, Skeptical Science. Not because what it says is or isn’t true, but because you can’t trust the creator of it. If someone was willing to put so much effort into putting out propaganda like his consensus study, who knows how he twisted all the facts in Skeptical Science?
(I’d like to point out that the reason I looked at that 97 percent consensus study so intently is because I read Jose Duarte’s very dense essay of criticism directed at it, and besides actually viewing the Youtube of Cook’s presentation, all I really did was fact-check Duarte’s essay. I encourage everyone to read it, maybe print it all out and take it in one paragraph at a time. It’s reeeeallly long.)
And my point is…
I don’t think Dr. Cook is an anomaly. I think there are a lot of university professors who output papers with twisted facts and outright lies. So no, Dr. Seldon, I am not content anymore to believe those people who claim they have spent their lives studying one topic or another and take them at their word. I’m not stupid; laypeople are not incapable of understanding logic arguments simply because they are not in the enlightened golden circle of the tenured.
Especially with something so crucial to the world as AGW, I want it explained to me, bit by laborious bit, no matter how complex. And I’m nothing special; there must be plenty of people out there who feel the same way I do. So there’s definitely a viewing audience for this TV program that keeps running in my head:
(cue the trumpet solo)
Nova presents… Anthropogenic Global Warming 101… How Man’s Activity is Warming Our Beloved Planet to Dangerous Levels…
(more serene music)
…made possible from support by viewers like you… thank you…
Ever since I heard of global warming as a political issue, I’ve been waiting for this program, something dumbed down just a little for laypeople, that explains fundamentally and incontrovertibly, from A to Z, how artificial activity has affected the Earth, and the evidence for it.
I’m still waiting.