# Matt Walsh: Climate alarmists, I can’t take you seriously until you start living like the Amish
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [May 2, 2017, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702 "2017-05-02T08:30:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Great\_White\_Dope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_White_Dope)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/1 "2017-05-02T08:30:33Z")
An excellent rant from Matt Walsh on the obvious fraudulence of the climate change industry.
**[Matt Walsh: Climate alarmists, I can’t take you seriously until you start living like the Amish](http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-cant-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/)**
> [@](#):
>
> I can only assume that you don’t believe it because your actions do not at all resemble what one would expect from someone who does believe this sort of thing. With very rare exceptions, you continue living just like the rest of us. Maybe you recycle your plastic bottles, maybe you ordered a salad at Panera Bread today, but for the most part you are just another callous Homo sapien murdering the planet and cannibalizing the future of the human race. Why? How? You think the world is about to end, for God’s sake. What are you doing sitting at Starbucks like the rest of us? Why haven’t you renounced all modern technology? Why haven’t you fled to the mountains before the sea engulfs your family? Why aren’t you doing… anything?
>
> I can only imagine how I would react if I _actually believed_ that the extinction of all mankind was imminent, and my lifestyle was directly contributing to it.
He’s right, you know. Among the most telling signs this whole movement is a charade is that those who are behind it don’t behave at all as if they believe it.
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### Author:  [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/2 "2017-05-02T08:39:27Z")
From the sweet aroma of freshly baked apple pie to the succulent flavors of a homemade beef stew, there is something for everyone when it comes to home-style Amish recipes.
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### Author:  [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/3 "2017-05-02T09:08:47Z")
This is stupid.
I could go in more depth as to why, but I’m not gonna. This is just stupid.
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### Author:  [@Didactylos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Didactylos)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/4 "2017-05-02T09:09:06Z")
Climate change skeptics: I can’t take you seriously until you stop using every logical fallacy in the book to defend your so-called ‘skepticism’ :rolleyes: :dubious:
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### Author:  [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/5 "2017-05-02T09:15:00Z")
Amish Butter:
1. Churn butter.
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/lOfZLb33uCg/maxresdefault.jpg ""Weird" Al Yankovic - Amish Paradise (Parody of "Gangsta's Paradise")") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfZLb33uCg)
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### Author:  [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/6 "2017-05-02T09:37:53Z")
There’s a popular perception, shaped my shoddy media portrayal, that individual action is the key to mitigating pretty much any social justice harm. This generally isn’t true for most things for the simple fact that individual action generally has very limited spread. Instead, policy changes are what drive large scale change.
Take plastic bags for example, decades of “reduce, reuse, recycle” have barely budged people’s plastic bag usage because only a small percentage of people is this one of the top most important things in their life. But a simple 5c bag tax drops usage by over 30% because now it affects everyone.
Smart thinking environmentalists are driving impact through policy change like a carbon tax. The benefit of individual action in this scheme is to normalize environmental behaviors and make policy change more politically feasible.
So Matt Walsh has a poor understanding of the process by which political change happens and uses that poor understanding to create a straw man.
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### Author:  [@Great\_White\_Dope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_White_Dope)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/7 "2017-05-02T09:39:09Z")
What logical fallacies would these be, Didactylos?
Being skeptical of a claim when said claimants don’t behave as if they believe it is in no way logically fallacious. It’s common sense.
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### Author:  [@Rick\_Sanchez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Sanchez)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/8 "2017-05-02T10:03:30Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#):
>
> What logical fallacies would these be, Didactylos?
>
> Being skeptical of a claim when said claimants don’t behave as if they believe it is in no way logically fallacious. It’s common sense.
What would be the point? If we all lived like the Amish we _may_ avert the dangers of climate change, but we’d just be swapping them for the dangers of living in a pre-industrial society (no modern medicine, no decent transport infrastructure, no effective national defence etc…) so it wouldn’t actually _solve_ anything.
It’s a stupid idea, and Matt Walsh is probably quite a stupid person.
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### Author:  [@Didactylos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Didactylos)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/9 "2017-05-02T10:05:43Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#):
>
> What logical fallacies would these be, Didactylos?
I’ll give you this
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False\_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma)
but generally
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#):
>
> I could go in more depth as to why, but I’m not gonna. This is just stupid.
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### Author:  [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/10 "2017-05-02T10:09:30Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#):
>
> Being skeptical of a claim when said claimants don’t behave as if they believe it is in no way logically fallacious.
Addressed in **Shalmanese** ’s post above. It’s like claiming we can reduce homelessness if everyone who cared about the subject gave any homeless person they saw $10. It wouldn’t remotely solve anything.
> [@](#):
>
> It’s common sense.
On the one side we’ve got 97% of the world’s climate scientists who have come to the same conclusion with a very high degree of certainty and great piles of data. On the other we have Matt Walsh’s inability to understand the fundamental issue at hand and your “common sense”. I know which side I’m sticking with.
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### Author:  [@Rick\_Sanchez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Sanchez)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/11 "2017-05-02T10:14:14Z")
> [@Matt Walsh](#):
>
> Imagine, by comparison, if almost every major pro-life activist also happened to sit on the board of Planned Parenthood. If one or two were exposed as hypocrites in this way you might overlook it, but all of them?
I refuse to accept that pro-lifers believe what they _say_ they believe until they start killing abortionists and blowing up clinics en masse. Anything less is just rank hypocrisy.
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/12 "2017-05-02T10:30:07Z")
Wow. The OP isn’t even trying to hide the trolling.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/13 "2017-05-02T10:39:04Z")
I love the following food items, chosen at random:
Quality camembert
Duvel beer
Capicola
That special Spanish ham
Pork belly
High quality tomatoes
Whole milk
Fresh orange juice
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### Author:  [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/14 "2017-05-02T10:49:28Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#):
>
> There’s a popular perception, shaped my shoddy media portrayal, that individual action is the key to mitigating pretty much any social justice harm. This generally isn’t true for most things for the simple fact that individual action generally has very limited spread. Instead, policy changes are what drive large scale change.
>
> Take plastic bags for example, decades of “reduce, reuse, recycle” have barely budged people’s plastic bag usage because only a small percentage of people is this one of the top most important things in their life. But a simple 5c bag tax drops usage by over 30% because now it affects everyone.
>
> Smart thinking environmentalists are driving impact through policy change like a carbon tax. The benefit of individual action in this scheme is to normalize environmental behaviors and make policy change more politically feasible.
>
> So Matt Walsh has a poor understanding of the process by which political change happens and uses that poor understanding to create a straw man.
I am reminded of a thread where someone made the excellent and obvious point that millions of gallons of water could be saved if _every_ home had a small stand-up urinal, as found in all the best public lavatories.
Someone — drearily — answered that there was nothing to stop the suggester from installing one in his own house.
---
### Author:  [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/15 "2017-05-02T10:52:45Z")
The problem with the guy linked in the OP is he’s insisting that all the “climate alarmists” are equally extreme. They aren’t. The majority are not claiming humanity is going to go extinct over global climate change.
Additionally, he throws out stuff like:
> [@](#):
>
> Around the time of the first Earth Day, we were told that hundreds of millions would be starving to death per year within ten years of that date.
Yes, some people claimed that would happen _if nothing was done to avert it_ The “prophecy” was not intended to be an absolute “millions die no matter what!”
In addition, [poverty.com](http://poverty.com) claims 21,000 people a day die of either hunger or hunger-related causes, which works out to about 7.5 million a year, or around 360 million since the first Earth Day (actually more, because there have been some epic famines over that time period in various locations, and these days we’re doing a better job feeding people, but this is a quick and dirty calculation). So, in fact, the “alarmists” were correct - hundreds of millions HAVE died from lack of food over the past 4-5 decades. It’s just that, against the backdrop of the entire human population, and because it happened over time instead of all at once, it’s gotten sort of lost in the background. And the former “alarmists” would also argue that without their raising awareness and lobbying for change the death toll would have been higher.
> [@](#):
>
> Yet, here we are, standing on dry land. How many times are you allowed to be wrong about the end of the world before we are justified in not taking you seriously anymore? I’d say that threshold, whatever it is, has long since been reached.
The problem is this guy is demanding a level of accuracy in predicting the future that just doesn’t exist.
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/16 "2017-05-02T11:34:58Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#):
>
> An excellent rant from Matt Walsh on the obvious fraudulence of the climate change industry.
>
> **[Matt Walsh: Climate alarmists, I can’t take you seriously until you start living like the Amish](http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-cant-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/)**
>
> He’s right, you know. Among the most telling signs this whole movement is a charade is that those who are behind it don’t behave at all as if they believe it.
The message itself implicitly proposes a classic “either / or” logical fallacy: If we don’t use fossil fuels, then society will collapse and we will all have a lifestyle no better than that of early hominids.:rolleyes:
No, we don’t have to live as the Amish in order to want a cleaner environment. It’s possible to have BOTH a modern lifestyle and an environment that remains productive. I know people like you don’t believe in history and archeology, but the historical record shows that civilizations die out completely because of climate change.
---
### Author:  [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/17 "2017-05-02T11:57:03Z")
He actually has a point, but it’s:
A: A very weak one, ignoring human nature and the existence of an objective reality unrelated to human fallibility.
B: Not honest since he’s lying. There are plenty of climate change proponents who limit their climate impact as much as any Amish even if most of us fail, and he’s not taking those seriously either.
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### Author:  [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/18 "2017-05-02T11:57:31Z")
I just realized, Cameron is an undergraduate. That means not only is the semester over but he’s off for the summer.
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### Author:  [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/19 "2017-05-02T12:04:34Z")
Just to be clear, this isn’t the comedian Matt Walsh from the Upright Citizens Brigade, this is pandering ultra right douchebag Matt Walsh.
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### Author:  [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2017, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/matt-walsh-climate-alarmists-i-can-t-take-you-seriously-until-you-start-living-like-the-amish/785702/20 "2017-05-02T12:37:16Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#):
>
> What logical fallacies would these be, Didactylos?
>
> Being skeptical of a claim when said claimants don’t behave as if they believe it is in no way logically fallacious. It’s common sense.
Tell me, do you have to believe in electrons for your lights to work?
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