# Yes, let's teach the controversy. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 8, 2014, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261 "2014-01-08T08:52:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/121 "2014-01-19T17:44:44Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > As merely an observer to this thread, the only clear “fuckhead” here is you, **FXMastermind**. You’re a pompous idiot with terrible reading skills and an arrogance that is as breathtaking as it is farcical. You’re not “bitchslapping” anyone, but rather revealing to anyone who can read that you’re an imbecile. Shhhhh! Dammit, don’t _tell_ him that! It might ruin the fun! Oh, who am I kidding? It won’t affect anything. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/122 "2014-01-19T17:48:51Z")
Someone had to say it, but no, it won’t affect the character (rather, the lack thereof) of his posts or his inability to use critical thinking or, frankly, basic reading skills. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/123 "2014-01-19T17:49:34Z")
“Yes, yes, Good. Let the butthurt flow through you …” ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/124 "2014-01-19T17:59:00Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > As merely an observer to this thread, the only clear “fuckhead” here is you, **FXMastermind**. You’re a pompous idiot with terrible reading skills and an arrogance that is as breathtaking as it is farcical. You’re not “bitchslapping” anyone, but rather revealing to anyone who can read that you’re an imbecile. QFT, and looking at the last reply from FX, his sense of humor is not even impressive. It is as useless as are his sensors to detect pseudoscience, or when he is a jerk, or a serial molester of other poster’s quotes. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/125 "2014-01-19T18:10:22Z")
And FX is wrong on the hate part also, 😛 I post to learn about what the scientists are telling us, I love learning even how far off reality the pseudoscientists are regarding a subject. One thing that many before me noticed is that it is also a property of pseudoscientists to cherry pick and with a straight face claim that the scientists and experts are supporting their positions, never mind that the scientists and experts in the same articles or sites are telling us the opposite conclusion that pseudo scientists reach. No wonder many that work to defend education from pseudoscience are putting climate change contrarians in the same column as the creationists. > **[Climate Change | National Center for Science Education](https://ncse.ngo/climate-change)** > > The National Center for Science Education is the only national organization devoted to defending the teaching of climate change in public schools. Human-caused climate change is not scientifically controversial. Although most U.S. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/126 "2014-01-19T18:40:16Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I post to learn about what the scientists are telling us, HAHAHAHAHAHA! now that was funny. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/127 "2014-01-19T18:52:22Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > HAHAHAHAHAHA! > > now that was funny. So, you know everything already? with such a dizzying intellect you should publish to show all those scientists that their expertise is not needed. Not holding my breath for that one. 😛 What I’m following is what I preach, no one is an expert on everything, we have to rely on what the experts report and anyone that claims to know everything about a subject is wrong, particularly when dozens of papers are published on the subject of climate science every month. For contrarians to learn about how far they are going is easy to learn all what they do: > **[Infographic: Scientists Who Doubt Human-Caused Climate Change](https://www.popsci.com/article/science/infographic-scientists-who-doubt-human-caused-climate-change/)** > > A survey of the past year's papers demonstrates that the science is in on global warming. > [@](#): > > In over 2,200 peer-reviewed articles about climate change by over 9,000 authors, published between November 2012 and December 2013, just one author and paper rejected human actions as the cause. Of course that will not do in discussions, that is why FX and many pseudo scientists have to pad it with misrepresentations of what the experts are reporting. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/128 "2014-01-19T19:08:29Z")
It’s fucking hilarious, because GIGOgalloper is the last person to ever learn anything from any thread. And he constantly spams threads with off topic vast walls of text from warmist sites, that he usually doesn’t even understand. Priceless. But seriously, he turns every thread into a GIGO against the world wall of text spam topic. Every goddamn topic, no matter what it is about, after GIGO posts, it’s a global warming argument. Exactly like every other topic he posts in. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/129 "2014-01-19T19:16:45Z")
Be advised that the classic SDMB post for an imbecile who is convinced beyond all reason that he is thrashing his opposition handily is: _“Winning!”_. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/130 "2014-01-19T20:18:51Z")
“Warmist”?? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/131 "2014-01-19T20:46:42Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You’re really a [deep-cover liberal](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deep-cover_liberal), aren’t you, **Drunky?** 😃 Loved this bit from that page: > [@](#): > > Whether or not these people actually exist is an open question. An alternative theory to explain the existence of people like this is related to the existence of Poe’s Law—that liberals themselves just can’t possibly grasp that alternative views this extreme can seriously exist. Therefore, real wingnuts must be taking the piss, it’s the only thing that makes sense. This isn’t entirely a fault; anyone with even a modicum of confidence in the goodwill of humanity will have their view threatened by ten seconds in the presence of Ann Coulter. Assuming or theorising that Kool-Aid drinkers are in fact parodists or insincere may just be a way of resolving the cognitive dissonance of wanting to think that everyone is, deep down, a good person while watching Glenn Beck make an ass of himself. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/132 "2014-01-19T20:49:41Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Be advised that the classic SDMB post for an imbecile who is convinced beyond all reason that he is thrashing his opposition handily is: > > _“Winning!”_. But you have to shout it through a paper towel tube, while squatting. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/133 "2014-01-19T20:55:03Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Be advised that the classic SDMB post for an imbecile who is convinced beyond all reason that he is thrashing his opposition handily is: > > _“Winning!”_. > [@EddyTeddyFreddy](#): > > But you have to shout it through a paper towel tube, while squatting. Please, not even \*\*FXMastermind \*\*deserves to be compared to that waste of oxygen that “paper tube” poster was. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/134 "2014-01-19T21:09:40Z")
> [@](#): > > It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the Climate Gate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist. Hal Lewis > **[Harold Lewis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lewis#Resignation_from_APS)** > > Harold ("Hal") Warren Lewis (born October 1, 1923 – May 26, 2011) was an American Emeritus Professor of Physics and former department chairman at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He was chairman of the JASON Defense Advisory Group from 1966 to 1973, and was active in US government investigations into safety of nuclear reactors. > In his 1990 book Technological Risk he warned of the risks of global warming. In 2010, after 67 years of membership, he resigned from the American Phy... ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/135 "2014-01-19T21:46:57Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Hal Lewis > > [Harold Lewis - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lewis#Resignation_from_APS) [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/10/11/206850/hal-lewis-resigns-from-the-american-physical-society/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/10/11/206850/hal-lewis-resigns-from-the-american-physical-society/) > [@](#): > > A physicist named Hal Lewis who doesn’t know the first thing about climate science has resigned from the American Physical Society because he doesn’t know the first thing about climate science. > > The anti-science crowd has, with unintentional irony, compared his words of resignation to “a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door.” That laughable assertion might be a half-truth, I suppose, if scientific views were no different from religious ones, which, I suppose, for the disinformers they are. And it might even be a quarter truth if Luther hadn’t actually included any theses in his letter but instead cited, say, the work of Nostradamus in defending his critique of the Catholic Church. But it isn’t even be a semi-hemi-demi truth because it won’t be leading to a major new science religion of Lewisism, since, of course, that’s not how science works. > [@](#): > > Seriously. Or, rather, not serious in the least bit. > > First off, he apparently doesn’t know what the word “literally” means — I’d like to assume he knows what the word “trillions” mean. But then he repeats and insists on trillions. Where the frig are all these trillions of dollars? America’s entire GDP is $14 trillion. There are tens of millions of dollars involved, to be sure, although only a small fraction of that money ends up in the hands of U.S. physicists, who really are only a small part of climate science research. So it is hard to see how the APS could be corrupted by it. > > Second, it is just absurd for him to say that climate scientists are somehow corrupted by “the fame and glory” — that was precisely what motivated many of the giants. And as a trivial aside, travel was always one of the perks of being a big-league physicist. Heck, they actually had sabbaticals every seven years! > > Third, the Inhofe-esque statement “this is the greatest and most successful pseudo-scientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist,” accuses the scientific community broadly defined of conspiring in deliberate fraud – and not just the community of climate scientists, but the leading National Academies of Science around the world (including ours) and the American Geophysical Union, an organization of geophysicists that consists of more than 45,000 members and the American Meteorological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (see “Yet more scientists call for deep GHG cuts“). Such a statement accuses all of the member governments of the IPCC, including ours, of participating in that conspiracy, since they all sign off on the Assessment Reports word for word. And it accuses all of the leading scientific journals of being in on this fraud, since the IPCC reports are primarily a review and synthesis of the published scientific literature. > > Fourth, “Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.” Well, if you are getting most of your “facts” from Nostradamus Montford, well, I daresay that’s the very definition of no longer engaging in the scientific method. See, for instance, the outstanding Real Climate post, “The Montford Delusion.” > [@](#): > > Feel free to debunk whatever statement you find more absurd — “people and plants die from cold, not warmth” is notable. But far more so is: > > > [@](#): > > > > I know of nobody who denies that the Earth has been warming for thousands of years without our help… > > This line tells you the author not only doesn’t follow the scientific literature, but that he doesn’t actually associate with or talk to anybody who does. > > That statement made Eli hopping mad. As he explained, “Well, actually most people who have a clue think that without our contributions the surface would be cooling a bit right now due to the Milankovitch cycles which have reached and passed the warm peak.” Indeed, he points us to the 1980 Science article, “Modeling the Climatic Response to Orbital Variations,” which concludes > > > [@](#): > > > > Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years. > > Of course, that piece is by John Imbrie and John Z. Imbrie — and they sure sound like the names of conspirators in some sort of pseudoscientific hoax, no? Even back in 1980 they were just in it for the trillions! > > More recent money-grubbing conspirators include those folks at the National Center for Atmospheric Research: > > > [@](#): > > > > Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, new research indicates. The study, which incorporates geologic records and computer simulations, provides new evidence that the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions that are overpowering natural climate patterns. > > But Lewis knows not a single person who denies the earth has been warming for thousands of years. > > Lewis’s unscientific statemenst really aren’t a surprise. The notion that ‘puny’ humans can drastically change something as vast as the Earth’s climate is really an amazing paradigm shift. Many scientists and others simply can’t get their heads around it, so they don’t even bother to read the scientific literature or talk to actual climate scientists. They know in their gut it can’t be true, just as for decades many geologist couldn’t accept the paradigm of plate tectonics. > > The term paradigm as it applies to scientific understanding was popularized by Kuhn in his classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Indeed, when I first read Lewis’s statements, I was reminded of something I remembered reading in the book about how “the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time”: Bottom line, his cluelesness is explained because he was an expert on high energy particle physics but a lot of his work was related to superconductive materials, not climate science. Of course this only shows that my original impression of FX was the correct one, he is a loopy conspiracy theorist. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/136 "2014-01-19T22:18:51Z")
I told you the warmist would say he was poopy. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/137 "2014-01-19T22:24:23Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > I told you the warmist would say he was poopy. Not just me, but the APS: [http://www.aps.org/about/pressreleases/haroldlewis.cfm](http://www.aps.org/about/pressreleases/haroldlewis.cfm) > [@](#): > > APS Comments on Harold Lewis’ Resignation of his Society Membership > > WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a recent letter to the American Physical Society (APS) President Curtis A. Callan, chair of the Princeton University Physics Department, Harold Lewis, emeritus physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, announced that he was resigning his APS membership. > > In response to numerous accusations in the letter, APS issues the following statement: > > There is no truth to Dr. Lewis’ assertion that APS policy statements are driven by financial gain. To the contrary, as a membership organization of more than 48,000 physicists, APS adheres to rigorous ethical standards in developing its statements. The Society is open to review of its statements if members petition the APS Council – the Society’s democratically elected governing body – to do so. > > Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false. Neither the operating officers nor the elected leaders of the Society have a monetary stake in such funding. Moreover, relatively few APS members conduct climate change research, and therefore the vast majority of the Society’s members derive no personal benefit from such research support. Of course as we established that they are also part of the conspiracy they do not count in the universe of FX. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/138 "2014-01-19T22:46:29Z")
> [@](#): > > In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. [Web Archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20131230233308/http://www.thegwpf.org/hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society/) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/139 "2014-01-19T22:49:42Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > [Web Archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20131230233308/http://www.thegwpf.org/hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society/) Wrong also. > **[Debunking Misinformation About Stolen Climate Emails in the "Climategate"...](https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/debunking-misinformation-about-stolen-climate-emails)** > > The international controversy over emails stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit has generated a lot of heat. > [@](#): > > Debunking Misinformation About Stolen Climate Emails in the “Climategate” Manufactured Controversy > > The manufactured controversy over emails stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit has generated a lot more heat than light. The email content being quoted does not indicate that climate data and research have been compromised. Most importantly, nothing in the content of these stolen emails has any impact on our overall understanding that human activities are driving dangerous levels of global warming. Media reports and contrarian claims that they do are inaccurate. > > Investigations Clear Scientists of Wrongdoing > > Six official investigations have cleared scientists of accusations of wrongdoing. > > ``` > A three-part Penn State University cleared scientist Michael Mann of wrongdoing. > Two reviews commissioned by the University of East Anglia"supported the honesty and integrity of scientists in the Climatic Research Unit." > A UK Parliament report concluded that the emails have no bearing on our understanding of climate science and that claims against UEA scientists are misleading. > The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Inspector General's office concluded there was no evidence of wrongdoing on behalf of their employees. > The National Science Foundation's Inspector General's office concluded, "Lacking any direct evidence of research misconduct...we are closing this investigation with no further action." > > ``` > > Other agencies and media outlets have investigated the substance of the emails. > > ``` > The Environmental Protection Agency, in response to petitions against action to curb heat-trapping emissions, dismissed attacks on the science rooted in the stolen emails. > Factcheck.org debunked claims that the emails put the conclusions of climate science into question. > Politifact.com rated claims that the emails falsify climate science as "false." > An Associated Press review of the emails found that they "don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions." > > ``` Of course this happens when the denier sources never update their “information” that they continue to report to their peanut gallery. Some are more nuts than others. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/140 "2014-01-19T23:14:08Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Among _ **us scientists** _ he is credited and honored, not dismissed. And your degree is…? And in which field? And from what university? Who is this ‘us’ you are ass-pulling your ‘appeal to authority’ from, in this case? :dubious: > [@FXMastermind](#): > > Fight ignorance, don’t spread it. Precisely. So what’s _your_ excuse for doing _exactly_ the opposite, when you keep continually perpetrating your bullshit? On pretty much _every_ subject you try and desperately flail at, trying to address? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261.md?page=8)