politics

Godwin’s Law barn burner!

95 Comments

I’ve been in Wisconsin. When I got home, I surfed over to Roger’s blog to see if there were any more comments about the Pielke-Morano debate. I discovered the most flagrant demonstration of Godwin’s law I’d ever seen. Get this

How Climate Denialists Like Marc Morano and Anthony Watts, among other well-intentioned by seriously misguided people, See Climate Change Evidence, Inspite of it all

by Danny Bloom

Look at it this way: it’s as if trustworthy and trusted world intelligence from scientists and universities have ample aerial photos of marked trains making their way toward concentration camps in Nazi Germany during WWII during the Holocaust, photos and written reports of eyewitnesses of Jews being rounded up in ghettoes for eventual deportation to said death camps, and the evidence includes German govt statements about Jews and the Final Solution, intel reports that Jews were being gassed — this is in 1941, mind you! — AND to climate denialists like Marc and Anthony and Rush and Jacoby who say: “What Jews?” “What Final Solution?” What death camps?” “That’s all leftwing propaganda, it’s not happening, period.” “There are no Jews being rounded up and put on trains for Auschwitz and Treblinka. There are no showers with poison gas for the deportees; that’s all propaganda by the Holocaust Industry!” [snip]

Wow!

95 thoughts on “Godwin’s Law barn burner!”

  1. “Look at it this way: it’s as if… ”

    …there was a well-funded propaganda machine perpetrating a hoax.

    Andrew

  2. I may be caught up in the minutiae of the comment, but his statement is riddled with historical inaccuracies. To begin with, Auschwitz and Treblinka didn’t exist as extermination camps until ’42, they weren’t in Germany (they were in Poland), etc, etc. I guess this proves once again why invoking the Holocaust during a COMPLETELY unrelated debate is always such poor form.

  6. DG–
    This is much longer.

    The fact that Danny seems to have learned his WWII history from episodes of The Three Stooges makes this one a bit more fun.

  15. My Grandfather having died in a concentration camp in Teresienstadt , I deeply resent moronic posts of people (are they still people ?) like this Bloom .
    Even daring to compare some hypothetical 3°C variation in some hypothetical global temperature within some hypothetical number of centuries to the very real deliberate extermination policy shows a fundamentally rotten and amoral mind .
    The only thing I regret is that I cannot spit in his face .
    Contemptible rat !

  17. Mike Godwin, I am sure, enjoys the attention of this.
    An important corollary to Godwin’s law is that the first person to trigger his law, loses.
    I think the better observation of what the alarmists are doing is to compare their efforts to lead the world to climate utopia to
    this famous public leader:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Oe-jtgdI

  19. It is an interesting and extraordinary aspect of the AGW movement that these sort of feelings are common. If you disentangle it a bit, you have a view that something very terrible is happening as a matter of fact. In this case, the warming. Then you also have a view that the evidence for it is so incontrovertible that informed sincere honorably motivated skepticism is impossible. The most common motivation for intellectual dishonest skepticism would then be a personal commitment to a group benefiting from not having to do what is required if it is true, or appearing in a bad light if it is true.

    We can see how the case of various ethnic cleansings and genoicides have met those criteria at some point. At some point, to take a less emotionally laden example, it must have become incontrovertible that Pol Pot was bent on extermination, and the evidence once laid out in the form of photographs and eyewitness accounts must have been so clear that no other explanation of their existence was remotely plausible, other than that the events were happening as represented.

    It has often been difficult to see why the denial was being persisted in other than from political motives. For example, one might be sympathetic to the Nazi regime, or the Soviet Communist or Chinese Communist regime, or for some crazed reason be an admirer of Pol Pot and so reluctant to believe any ill of him.

    The curious thing about the AGW movement is precisely that it refuses to lay out its evidence in this way. We have Jones, Mann, Jacoby, Thompson, d’Arrigo – and probably lots of others, who will not reveal either data series or algorithms and code or other vital features of their studies which are needed for replication and auditing. This is very different from the genoicide cases, where the problem was not that the advocates refused to supply their evidence. Rather the problem was that the evidence was there in front of the doubters, but not being accepted.

    These luminaries of the movement demand agreement, accuse people of denying incontrovertible evidence, and simultaneously refuse to confront doubters with that evidence. This is little short of weird.

    Then, we have the significant difference that the evidence in the case of AGW is complex, numerical and depends on long chains of reasoning after considerable processing of raw data. Just trying to establish, for instance, was there an MWP, if so how large, and if so where exactly, requires all kinds of complicated judgments about proxies, their correspondence to temperature, their calibration. Then even after you get through what the facts are, there is a further chain of argument about what exactly we can conclude from it.

    Much of the argument depends not on data, but on models, and here again the chain of proof is complex and logically uncertain.

    None of this was true in the case of the genoicides, were we simply had to answer the question, is it happening, yes or no? Are people being shot? Or poisoned. Or transported. Are there mass graves? Huge camps? People vanishing without trace? This is pretty simple stuff compared to has Steig done the right thing in only using the first n Principle Components. Take Robert Conquest’s initial study of the Soviet genoicide. He did not need PCA, he simply relied on incontrovertible population statistics and casualty rates during WWII. There was a large margin of uncertainty, but in the end, there was a fairly simple case to answer. It was basically a matter of arithmetic, tied to eyewitness accounts leaking out of the regime.

    Yet the movement behaves as if, when we question whether Mann’s decentered PCA was a valid statistical method, we are doing something similar to being confronted with a deficit in population compared to birth/death statistics, which raises the question of what happened to them all, and refusing to accept there is a case to answer based on this simple observation. No, its not the same thing at all.

    Finally there is the issue that the genoicides do not admit of degrees and benefits. They were either happening or not, and they were evil if so. If warming is happening, it may be disastrous in scale, or modest and mildly beneficial. It may be part of a natural cycle and reverting to the mean, or it may be running away with us to a greater or lesser extent. It may be that adaptation is the most cost effective strategy, or it may be that we absolutely have no alternative but to act now and reduce emissions. All this is also very complicated, just doing the risk assessment on some of the more crackpot geo-engineering proposals would be a mammoth task. it is not even all that clear that the proposed reductions which the movement advocates will have the effects they claim are necessary, never mind the risks and side effects and unwanted consequences they may have. Yet once again, to be concerned about the details of implementation and effectiveness is treated by the movement as being on the same level as, for example, a refusal to intervene in Rwanda on the grounds that we had insufficient evidence that anything was happening. Its not the same thing at all.

    As you think this through, the more you think that the repeated comparisons of skepticism at any level on any elements of the AGW hypothesis to total denial of genoicides is a mixture of a social pathology of the movement, where it is sincerely felt, and a grossly inappropriate debating tactic, where it is not.

    ‘We have to get rid of the MWP’. Well. Its at the same level as ‘We have to get rid of the Ukraine Famine’. What we have to get rid of is people who spend part of their time denying the facts, and the rest in personal attacks on the people and their motives who do want to get to these facts, whatever they are. What we really have going on is advocates for a cause, regardless of the facts. The way we will put a stop to it is very simple, just focus on the facts and the evidence. In the end, we will get to the truth.

    It might even be a warming truth. But I doubt it, given the behavior of the advocates.

  20. Holy crap, what a rant.

    The dude’s lost his marbles.

    I went over to read the whole comment. He just keeps on going.

    THAT is your brain on drugs.

  22. At one point in his rant, Bloom says “Anthony Watts will ban me from commenting on his blog again.” Dude, I’d hope Gavin would ban you from RC for spewing that sh*t.

  24. I hope everyone is properly schooled in the inherent weakness in argument by analogy. If you use an analogy you will be just like Bloom, cause he used one too. hehe.

  25. Douggrell–
    I say, let him spew that junk. It gives us an example of his thought processes (and grasp of history.)

    Steven–
    Oh NO!!! I use analogies all the time!!!!

    Of course, the problem with Danny’s is he never takes the next step to explain how the analogy relates to anything. I could just say “Steven Mosher… he’s like a big pink cloud!!!”

    Then everyone can all wonder what the heck I even meant by that. (To tell the truth, I have no idea what I meant by that.)

  26. “Nazi Germany could have used a few more courageous skeptics.”

    That’s a nice one too, though more subtle. :-B

    Look, you have to understand the state of mind of these people. I think they are genuinely worried that AGW will have catastrophic consequences for a large part of the global population. They are a certain type of person with a certain psychological make up and background that makes them prone to worry about abstract things like ‘the planet’ or ‘humanity’.

    And in a sense it’s true that if CAGW does come about there are quite a few persons out there at the moment that are in a bit of an ethical predicament. Someone like Anthony Watts or Fred Singer or Ian Plimer (though they probably wouldn’t be around anymore if and when the catastrophe hit) would perhaps have reason to feel a bit guilty for their delaying tactics.

    In that sense it’s not so strange for someone like Danny Bloom to fringe the law of Godwin, so to speak, out of sheer frustration. Because you have to admit: If AGW is happening, there is not much action being undertaken (lots of plans, lots of promises, lots of theory, lots of political spinning) to get to the core of the problem and do something about it. If you really believe as a warmist that time is running out, it’s no wonder that you get frustrated .

    Imagine that you think your mother is showing symptoms of a terminal disease that can be cured if treated on time, but everyone else in the family convinces her it’s not true, she should wait a few weeks more before going to the doctor, etc. Some people can go nuts over that and shout at everyone at a birthday party that they’re all &#$*@ who don’t love their mother. Danny Bloom does. It’s not a good way to change things, even if they can be changed. But that’s what he did.

  27. Neven–
    Of course the difficulty is that when you feel sure about something and are not believed, you will feel equally frustrated whether you are right or wrong. And screaming at everyone at the party is likely to make them suspect you are irrational– and therefore even more likely to be wrong.

    It might be wiser for Danny to calm down and think of more productive ways to convince people to take action. As it stands, many will simply discount everything he says after he says “Nazi”.

  28. Ooh! ooh! I has an analogy: “Lucia… she’s like a vine-ripened tomato!” (runs out of room, refuses to answer questions)

  29. lucia (Comment#20174) September 17th, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    The inherent problem with argumentation by analogy or metaphor is exactly the issue of calling out which predicates are picked out by the comparison ( mosher is a pink cloud) and which predicates are excluded. lakoff has a great article on this. I could go on forever about the use of metaphor in epistemology.. later.

  30. Lucia, I agree. I don’t mind Godwin’s law so much, but in general it’s a no-go strategically speaking.

  31. steven–
    Yes. That’s the problem with analogies. They can be powerful. But the speaker and listener have to somehow understand what makes the analogy “true” since parts of the analogy will always be “false”.

    It’s one thing to use anolgies to evoke. If I say “Ice is like glass!” in some contexts that might help someone understand ice can be clear. But if my intention was to persuade that someone other than me to trudge out into the snow, cut a block of ice and use it to replace the broken window…. well….”

    But replacing an argument with an analogy often fails… miserably.

  34. The problem is, its not argument by analogy. Its argument by attempting to smear your opponents with the charge of intellectual dishonesty and moral turpitude, while refusing to supply the evidence you claim to have which is so totally convincing.

    The science is settled, but I cannot or will not show you the proof, and you are a wicked Nazi if you do not find this convincing.

    How is this different from having a secret trading algorithm and not releasing my trading record because its a trade secret. But wanting you to invest?

  35. He’s a pink cloud concerned about the use of metaphor in epidermis, but we don’t know if he has a thick skin or thin skin.

  36. Michel, thanks for a couple of those, “Gee I wish I’d said that”, moments (20156, 20217). What seems evident is that Bloom seems exceedingly confident despite (or maybe even because of) his obvious ignorance. Reminds me of an observation I once heard that it’s not wrong to say stupid things if you are truly ignorant, but it’s terribly wrong to be that ignorant.

  37. Neven (Comment#20178) I think said it pretty well. I was not calling climate denialists as Nazis. I do not think that way. I am just saying that they are in denial, the way many people during WWII were about the fate of the Jews in Europe. Nobody realized the extent of the tragedy until it was too late. Let me assure you here, I am NOt an alarmist. i am alarmed, that’s all. I am trying to issue a cri de coeur. You can listen to me or dismiss me. I cannot see the future, and I am, like most of you said above, NOT a scientist. I am might even be stupid and dumb and ignorant. Then again, I might be trying to raise the alarm, in my own ignorant, dumb and stupid way. This is not about me. Or you. This is about us. I think NEVEN said it very well here:

    “Imagine that you think your mother is showing symptoms of a terminal disease that can be cured if treated on time, but everyone else in the family convinces her it’s not true, she should wait a few weeks more before going to the doctor, etc. Some people can go nuts over that and shout at everyone at a birthday party that they’re all &#$*@ who don’t love their mother. Danny Bloom does. It’s not a good way to change things, even if they can be changed. But that’s what he did.”

    Thank you, Neven, for understanding what I am up to. I like this: i see that my neighbor’s house is on fire and that the entire family, mom dad and kids are in there. Do I just go back to sleep or do I call the fire department and run over and see what I can do to help out? that’s all this is about. I am phoning in to the global fire department. It’s up the fireman to do what they have to do. I just phoning it in.

    Danny, on your side too!

  38. I guess I’m just not getting anywhere with this stuff. I thought a big pink cloud was what formed over red noise.

  39. I think Michel is correct, the point is not argument by analogy but by association – the analogy is incidental. Of course the analogy falls apart when scrutinized. It is only used because Nazis and Holocaust deniers (or those turning a blind eye to the Holocaust) are imprinted on our minds in era as the worst possible examples of humanity. By calling the denier’s character into question, one doesn’t have to concern themselves with the denier’s arguments. It’s the same as (forgive the analogy) implying current protesters are motivated by race, or anti-war protesters are motivated by hatred of their country. If you associate them with racism or anti-Americanism, you can simply dismiss them instead of addressing their concerns.

  40. Danny–
    If you think you are achieving a positive goal by your histrionics, by all means continue. People will continue to point out they sound like deluded histrionics.

  41. Danny B — mate you may have the best motives in the world but do you really think you are going to chnage anybody’s mind by calling them Nazis? Your stuff seems more likely to get people so annoyed they will just go knock a forest down and burn it. If you really want action on climate chnage then you need a new tatic.

  42. Danny Bloom,

    My parents were around during the buildup to WWII, and my dad, who served in the US Army in Europe, entered a concentration camp the second day after it was “liberated”. I can assure you that my parents were shocked and horrified by what my dad saw, and they were in no way aware of or in any way discounting (or denying) information about the fate of Jews and other ethnic minorities in Europe in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.

    Your attempt to draw a parallel between Nazi actions and the global warming controversy is incredibly obnoxious and incredibly insulting. You should get a life pal.

  43. Danny, one fears that what you are up to is refusing to address the evidence, the real complexity of it. Refusing to address the real difficulties in choosing what, if anything to do, given the uncertainties.

    Finally, you treat acknowledgment of these issues as evidence of bad faith. The bad faith and denial one fears is all your own. The evidence really does permit sincere well informed dissent from the AGW movement’s party line. If you focus on the evidence instead of waving your arms about irrelevancies, you will see this.

    Just start by asking yourself, if the evidence is so convincing, why can it not be made available? Why cannot Mann, Jones, d”Arrigo, Jacoby, Thompson etc simply release their code and their data?

    Why could Madoff not ever supply a list of the trades he had made? Is it like that? Or is there some innocent explanation, and if so what the hell is it?

    Stop waving your arms, and get to grips with the evidence. It will set you free. Its the only thing that will.

  44. Re Danny Bloom #20237.

    Danny, you say, “i see that my neighbor’s house is on fire … I just phoning it in.”

    Now let’s get real serious for a minute. Answer two questions—carefully. First, how do you KNOW your neighbour’s house is on fire? Are you sure what you are seeing is really fire in their house, or possibly reflected lights on their windows from a couple of rotating police flashers up the hill, or a new video game on a super sized new TV set inside the house, or did you just wake up from an inferno oriented nightmare, or, as in“12 Angry Men”, did you have your glasses on when you looked? Or did another neighbour come running into your house screaming there is a fire and you had to act fast (was this the usually careful, cool and calm neighbour, or the village drunk prone to hysterical bouts of the DT‘s)? In the framework of your analogy the first issue to settle is if there really IS a fire. Then, and only then, do you start shouting alarms. Otherwise you are not helping solve a problem by “…just phoning it in”, you’re contributing to a panic that will cause a great deal of harm. Ignorance here is not an excuse for a lack of prudence.

    Second question. You say, “…I am NOt an alarmist. i am alarmed, that’s all”. You imply a difference, but don’t state it here. Well as I see it, in contrast to an alarmist an alarmed person CAN be watchful and silent. That seems to make you an alarmist. Agree?

    Finally, a suggestion. Your analogies are not helping you get things straight. Consider the muddle you have here: the earth is NOT a house on fire, and there is NO global fire department. So there is NO need for you to phone anything in to anybody. First, deal with the issue of AGW. As to particulars regarding this point I prefer to refer you back to Michel’s comments in 20277 above. But I would also add that there is a difference between evidence and arguments from authority (or press releases)—in other words, concentrate your obviously great energies into overcoming ignorance instead of frothing about as the neighbourhood saviour.

  45. Jamie, above, I have never once called anyone’s character into question! If you read my posts, i always show respect to everyone as a human being, and I never call into question their character, I like everyone. So you are engaging in misinformation by saying “By calling the denier’s character into question, …..”

    What I am calling into question is how some climate denialists don’t want to face facts. And that’s their right, of course. Marc Morano and Anthony Watts and Jeff Jacoby are all good people, I have never called into question their character at all. I am just saying: just as people did not realize the extent of what was happening in WWII in Germany, so too there are some people today who for ideological reasons, I guess, don’t want to see what is happening today in regards to climate change. that is NOT character assasination, Jamie, please…. !

    AND MARC Morano recently censored me. He posted my post about this stuff above and then less than a day later he abruptly took if off his front page. Why? He told me: he felt I was doing this just to get attention and he would have no part in my attention whoring…… But I still like Marc and respect him as a human being, even though i now have evidence, direct, he practices censorship……..that is because he trades in misinformation. bad boy he is.!

    I

  46. lucia (Comment#20252) re “Danny–If you think you are achieving a positive goal by your histrionics, by all means continue. People will continue to point out they sound like deluded histrionics.”

    Lucia, I am not doing this for you. You already have your mind made up. I am doing this …. for future generations. For the archives…… check back with me in 500 years and let’s see who was deluded and who was not. This is about the future, Lucia, not today. You go your way, I will go mine. Civilly. We can be friends.

  47. Andrew23 (Comment#20254) re: “Danny B — mate you may have the best motives in the world but do you really think you are going to chnage anybody’s mind by calling them Nazis? Your stuff seems more likely to get people so annoyed they will just go knock a forest down and burn it. If you really want action on climate chnage then you need a new tatic.”

    Andrew, my good mate, thanks for your comment. I am not trying to change anyone’s mind. They have to do the heavy lifting themselves. AND Andrew, read carefully my post on my blog again, I did not call anyone a Nazi, I never use that word except for the German nazis of yesteryear. I have never ever once called any denialists a nazi. Please don’t say I did that. I didn’t. read again. As for try a new tactic, there is no use, Andrew. We are headed for major climate chaos in the next 500 years, it won’t begin for another 200 years….this is all preparation time, for the archives. Read me again in 2500 and you will see how right I was. and not ME! I am just a student of the much much smarter people than me. James Lovelock for example. Read him first.

  48. Danny–
    I never imagined one for one moment you were making Nazi allusions for my sake. What do you think I have my mind made up about?

  49. SteveF (Comment#20256) re: “My parents were around during the buildup to WWII, and my dad, who served in the US Army in Europe, entered a concentration camp the second day after it was “liberated”. I can assure you that my parents were shocked and horrified by what my dad saw, and they were in no way aware of or in any way discounting (or denying) information about the fate of Jews and other ethnic minorities in Europe in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. …..Your attempt to draw a parallel between Nazi actions and the global warming controversy is incredibly obnoxious and incredibly insulting. You should get a life pal.”

    SteveF, once again, you are NOT reading what I wrote. I did not say your father was in no way aware of what was happening in WWII, your father was aware when he liberaated those camps. God bless you Dad! But I was talking about earlier in the war, 1941, 1943, when the USA and UK did not thing to stop the concentration camps, even though they had info and docs about what was going on and USA radio jocks, even then, went on USA radio and said Nothing to Worry ABout, Heil Hitler! really. Father Coughlin anyone. There were many people SteveF who went around with their eyes closed then. that is ALL I am saying. Bless your father, God bless him yes!

  50. Ron (Comment#20281) RE: “Danny, you say, “i see that my neighbor’s house is on fire … I just phoning it in.”
    Now let’s get real serious for a minute. Answer two questions—carefully. ”

    Ron, you raised some very good points there, really, and I salute you, sir, for raising them in a very rational and reasoned way. I am listenting to what you wrote. very well said. Thanks. I agree with much of what you said.

    See? I am not an alarmist. just worried. I am a worrier. If there is no reason to be worried, okay, teach me more, I will try to calm down. See? I am a rational person, too. SMILE. Let’s keep talking this way…. !!!!

  51. Danny–
    It appears no one is grasping your message. Maybe you could consider finding other ways to get your message across. Less inflammatory methods that actually make some sort of sense might work.

    But if you prefer indulging in Nazi-allusions, I guess you’ll keep doing it.

    As for your worrying… so you worry? Not my problem. I’m sure I’ll find I can sleep tonight without giving the slightest thought to your staying up all night quaking with fear. Try Sominex or something. It might help.

  52. Lucia, you are doing it again. I am NOT indulging in NAZI allusions, I never once called anyone living today a NAZI, please do not mis represent me. You are not reading my post clearly. Why?

    However, when you wrote: “Danny, It appears no one is grasping your message.” — NOW that is a good point, and your right. Nobody IS grasping my message, good point. Maybe I should take some Ambien and start sleepwalking again? SMILE. Anyway, I appreciate a good discussion, civil, no name-calling, and let’s continue.

    Danny, friend to denialists too……we are all in this together, Lucia, and I have no agenda, other than try to predict the future and get people to wake up before it is too late. OOPS, it is too late already, my chief teacher James Lovelock informs me again today. OOPS. But we have time, Lucia, 500 more years before the human species is done for. Let’s enjoy 2009 and 2010. Yes.

  54. Danny–
    Do you not know the meaning of the word “allusion”? The word “allusion” does not mean “calling people names”. Here’s the definition:

    An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, myth, or work of art, either directly or by implication.

    Your speech above makes reference events related to Nazi’s, their death camps etc. So, you were making Nazi allusions.

    In the last bit… are you suggesting I am a denialist?
    You also didn’t answer my earlier question: What do you think I have my mind made up about?

  55. Lucia, I plead guilty on all counts, my bad. I didn’t understand allusion, and you are right, thanks for waking me up to this definition. I misunderstood you, I apologize. In that sense, yes, you are right, i WAS making nazi allusions. Maybe not such a good idea, you are right, especilly if I want to communicate with people and not just shout at them. thanks, Lucia, for reminding me of this.

    Are you a denialist? I don’t know. We have never met before. But I like you already. Maybe you are a skeptic? Or an alarmist? Or what? Tell me. I really have no idea who you are or what your position is vis a vis climate change. You seem like a very nice and well-informed person. Teach me more. I am all EARS.

  56. I think much of recent warming is caused by ghgs, but I also think models and predictions require testing against empirical data. I think some of the IPCC projections related to surface warming have turned out to be higher than later observed. I think we should take some actions, and in particular advocate encouraging nuclear baseload in addition to other lower carbon sources of energy.

    Does that answer your question?

  57. Does that answer my question? YES! I like you more and more, Lucia, with each and every comment! AND I am listening to you, you are a good teacher. Thanks for this new information. I am not a scientist, I don’t even have a PHD. I just a guy who lives in a cave and comes out everyone once and a while and yawns. Do not take me too seriously. But please know that I mean well. I am on your side.

  58. Danny,

    Let’s say you get your way.
    Let’s politicians impose punative anti-carbon laws which lead to wide spread unemployment, poverty and suffering.
    Let’s say the skeptics are right and the planet warms a bit but not enough to cause any problems and the anti-carbon measures were unnecessary.
    What will you say to the lost generation of people harmed by the policies that you advocate today?
    That you were making decisions with the best information that you had at the time?
    You will find that a large number of the skeptics such as myself who lurk around blogs like Lucia’s and CA are lukewarmers and are not opposed to some action on carbon provided it is prudent and effective.

  59. Danny

    You wrote:

    “I am just saying that they are in denial, the way many people during WWII were about the fate of the Jews in Europe. ”

    The problem with this sort of comparison or simile is that it does
    one of two things. It either….

    1. ADDS NOTHING to the concept of denial which we already understand OR

    2. ADDS something offensive to the action of denying climate science.

    One way to get at this is to do some other comparisons.

    I am just saying that they are in denial, the way many people were in denial about the faking of the piltdown man. ”

    I am just saying that they are in denial, the way many people are in denial about Ronald reagans greatness

    I am just saying that they are in denial, the way many people were in denial about plate tectonics.

    I am just saying that they are in denial, the way many people were in denial about a sun centered solar system.

    I am just saying that they are in denial, the way many people are in denial about Tamino’s pigheadedness.

    Whether we want to call it argument by analogy or metaphor or similie or allusion or connotation, one thing is clear. the arguments never really advance understanding or closure. You think that your comparison clarifies something. It doesn’t.

    I’ll add this. When Anthony took pictures of the bad sites, WHO denied the importance of photographic evidence? not the climate skeptics.

    I’m a luke warmer. There is only one form of denial that I find troublesome. When someone knows something to be true and denies it . Like knowing you are wrong ( as Tamino surely knows he is wrong) and continuing to deny it. We call this a lie. Most climate sceptics who deny certain well established scientific theories are simply ignorant. They are not willfully ignorant. As a believer in AGW the only people who I see who are willfully ignorant ( ignorant of certain statistical issues) are the believers in AGW.

  60. Raven, RE: “Let’s say the skeptics are right and the planet warms a bit but not enough to cause any problems and the anti-carbon measures were unnecessary. OKAY, LET’S SAY.
    What will you say to the lost generation of people harmed by the policies that you advocate today? ANSWER: ”SORRY. I WAS WRONG.”
    That you were making decisions with the best information that you had at the time? ANSWER: ”YES.”
    You will find that a large number of the skeptics such as myself who lurk around blogs like Lucia’s and CA are lukewarmers and are not opposed to some action on carbon provided it is prudent and effective. ANSWER: “I LIKE YOUR POV, RAVEN. I LIKE THAT WORD: LUKEWARMER. IT IS PRUDENT YET QUESTIONING. GOOD.

  61. Steve Mosher, above: “Very very good comment, and I appreciate all you said. Good points all around. As for: “You think that your comparison clarifies something. It doesn’t. ”

    My World War II “What did they know and when did they know it and why didn’t the free governments of the world doing anything even though they knew it?” blog post, which started all of this off, first picked up by Morano and then censored by Morano and taken down by Morano after first putting it up himself with a very tabloidish headline which i didn’t write, Dear Marc wrote it, he is great at headlines, by the way…….Steve, my comparison blog post was not MEANT to clarify anything. It was MEANT to shake people up. It served its purpose. It did shake alot of people up. Did it wake up anymore who was sleepwalking? No, it did not wake anyone up. That was not my intent. My intent was not to clarify. My intent was to shake shake shake people up. That is all can do until…….the mother of all climate events occurs, circa year 2323, and then it’s all over. I assume, Steve, that you do not CARE about the future, that far ahead. Right? You could care less about the future fate of the human species. You are only concerned about NOW. That is all well and good. We are on the same page. But I am reading a different book, sir. Ask my the name of it.

    As for this term LUKEWARMER, I like it. Count me in.

  62. Danny–
    I didn’t run across your quote at Morano’s. I ran across it at RogerPielke’s where you seem to have posted it in comments. I later saw it at what appears to be your blog and in comments at Revkins.

    So Marc doesn’t seem to have censored you. I don’t think he could if he tried.

    But I am reading a different book, sir. Ask my the name of it.

    Given your inclination toward Nazi allusions, I’ll guess “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” or “Mein Kampf”. Was I close?

  63. As a Denier myself, I prefer the term ‘Denier’ to describe me. I do not like the term ‘Denialist’ because it implies I have some kind of developed denying skill or something. It takes little or no skill to deny something like AGW, which has not been shown to exist anywhere.

    However, it does take a lot of visualization skill and determination to contrive and believe in an idea like AGW. Maybe we can call a person who practices this an AGW Imaginist. 😉

    Andrew

  64. Danny Bloom (Comment#20335)
    September 19th, 2009 at 6:23 am said “That is all can do until…….the mother of all climate events occurs, circa year 2323, and then it’s all over.”

    This is an apocolyptic prophecy. I give you credit for putting in so far in the future. Most prophets have it right around the corner such that they profit from it.

    But unless you can demonstrate your clairvoyance, giving a date just shows you have a specific/general cognitive problem. In specific, even the worst of the alarmists express general scenarios, such as 1.5 to 4.5C for CO2 doubling. Even the predictions of loss of precipitation for some regions are vague, for good reason. No one knows the specifics that well.

    Your argument of a specific date is unsupportable for many reasons and many possibilities. An example is that life on earth actually will end in 2012 from a supernova in our immediate region of the galaxy. This underscores the fallacy of what you alluding to in your conversation: the precationary principle.

    On a humorous note, one must use a principled approach to use the precautionary principle. Many such as Anthony Watts, and myself have indicated that they have concluded that AGW alarmism is not principled. We conclude or concur with SMosher’s point of known statistical problems, known data problems, and the apparent intellectual dishonesty of the AGW alarmists not to address these issues.

    Not that these problems’ solutions will make a difference to the final best estimate. Whether they will or not is unknown. However, one cannot take a stand on principle when the basis is rotten to the core. “Free the data. Free the code.” Also, explain where authors of sections of the IPCC can agree to statements in the WG that contradict their own publications, yet do not have to justify it, nor respond to critics as was SUPPOSED to happen according to the IPCC itself. “Get rid of Rule 10!” needs to be added to “Free the data. Free the code.”

  65. This is not WWII, it is not your neighbor’s house on fire, it is not gramma needing surgery in the hospital. Those are just bad analogies.

    It is about the climate.

    And it is about whether a well-developed (and not so well-developed at the same time) theory about global warming is fully correct or not.

    There is a big difference between denying a fact, and asking whether evidence supports a theory, especially when that theory is about something as complex as the climate.

    We are talking about trillions upon trillions of photons interacting with trillions of molecules every second at (nearly) the speed of light. Why would anyone say that a theory/simulation of all those trillions is “a fact” and it cannot be debated. Shouldn’t we at least partially measure those trillions a few times before we say it is a fact. What if the measurements don’t fully support the theory. What if the measurements support only half of the impact predicted by the theory.

  66. Talk Like A Pirate Day Haiku:

    Fetch the rum
    Or I’ll see ye walk the plank
    Scurvy Spiders!

    Andrew

  67. Danny Bloom,

    Your exchanges with Lucia at least suggest that you will listen to reason. So I offer you a few comments that I hope you will consider.

    You say that you are not technically trained, but most people who you classify as “denialists” or even “lukwarmers” (like Lucia, I, and many others who comment at The Blackboard) ARE technically trained. I have spend most of my 59 years thinking about, worrying about, and working to understand how the world works. Based on my training and experience, I understand that increases in greenhouse gases like CO2 must warm the surface of the planet. I think you will find, if you take the time to research it, that even many people you describe as “deniers”, like Anthony Watts (who BTW seems to me a very decent person based on my email exchanges with him), are fully aware that greenhouse gases must increase the surface temperature of the Earth. This really is “settled science”, as the AGW alarmists like to say.

    The key scientific issues being debated are 1) the magnitude of warming (plus the magnitude of resulting secondary effects) that GHG increases will cause, and 2) the period over which such warming will take place. My personal experience and my understanding of the way the world works, in a purely technical sense, is contrary to the extreme warming predictions made by AGW alarmists. This discrepancy, along with the enormous negative economic impact of proposed draconian controls on carbon emissions, motivates me to evaluate the technical merit of published work in the climate field. My honest evaluation is that much of the work in this field is poor in quality, the proposed processes/mechanisms are often not physically realistic, and the conclusions drawn are often not supported by the data. I do not think the people working in climate research are evil, but I DO think that most are mistaken in their understanding of the Earth’s climate, and terribly wrong in their predictions of extreme warming. I also think that extreme warming predictions (which I believe are too high by a factor of 2 or more) can and will do substantial economic damage, especially to the poorest of people, when these predictions lead to misguided public policies on energy production and use.

    There are lots of good reasons to shift to non-CO2 emitting energy sources that are economically viable (like nuclear power), including the fact that increases in CO2 will cause some level of warming. But there is no justification for forcing drastic reductions in CO2 emissions without considering the cost of those reductions and levels of confidence we have in the predicted magnitude of future warming and in the size of secondary effects due to that warming (IMO, both very low).

    I have many times observed scientists and engineers who have their technical work challenged; it is often not a pretty sight. I suggest you take the time to read Lucia’s recent exchange with climate scientist Tamino at his blog (strangely called “Open Mind”). Before Tamino banned Lucia from further postings at his blog, he reacted just horribly to Lucia’s questions. Danny, scientist are just human beings, and the more time and effort they have invested in their work, the more difficult it is for them to accept that their work might be mistaken. Scientists are not like artists or writers, who’s work is inherently subjective. Scientists’ work is either right or wrong as judged against objective reality, and if proven to be wrong, may be completely without value. So scientists need their work to be absolutely concordant with a non-subjective standard (AKA physical reality); any suggestion that their work is not so concordant is distinctly uncomfortable. Scientists are therefore subject to expectation bias and confirmation bias, which help keep them in their “comfort zone”, but which blind them to discrepancies between their work and reality. I believe this is the situation with many well known climate scientists today.

    Non-technical folks like you should understand that much of the hysteria and abusive attacks on “deniers” you see in the media by climate scientists is a reaction to having their work questioned. You should take their personal vested interests (who’s ox is being gored, if you will) into account when you evaluate what they say and do. The non-scientific hangers-on and drum beaters like Al Gore, who benefit enormously (financially/politically) from AGW hysteria, contribute absolutely nothing to the debate and should just be ignored.

  68. Danny-

    You are a natural worrier. Your kind of thinking has a long history. Here is an excerpt from Gullivers Travels written around 1730. This is from a lesser known story about the Laputans who clearly had similar anxieties.

    “These People are under continual Disquietudes, never enjoying a Minute’s Peace of Mind; and their Disturbances proceed from Causes which very little affect the rest of Mortals. Their Apprehensions arise from several Changes they dread in the Celestial Bodies. For Instance; that the Earth by the continual Approaches of the Sun towards it, must in Course of Time be absorbed or swallowed up. That the Face of the Sun will by Degrees be encrusted with its own Effluvia, and give no more Light to the World. That, the Earth very narrowly escaped a Brush from the Tail of the last Comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to Ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for One and Thirty Years hence, will probably destroy us. For, if in its Perihelion it should approach within a certain Degree of the Sun, (as by their Calculations they have Reason to dread) it will conceive a Degree of Heat ten Thousand Times more intense than that of red hot glowing Iron; and in its Absence from the Sun, carry a blazing Tail Ten Hundred Thousand and Fourteen Miles long; through which if the Earth should pass at the Distance of one Hundred Thousand Miles from the Nucleus or main Body of the Comet, it must in its Passage be set on Fire, and reduced to Ashes. That the Sun daily spending its Rays without any Nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with the Destruction of this Earth, and of all the Planets that receive their Light from it.

    They are so perpetually alarmed with the Apprehensions of these and the like impending Dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their Beds, nor have any Relish for the common Pleasures or Amusements of Life. When they meet an Acquaintance in the Morning, the first Question is about the Sun’s Health; how he looked at his Setting and Rising, and what Hopes they have to avoid the Stroak of the approaching Comet. This conversation they are apt to run into with the same Temper that boys discover, in delighting to hear terrible Stories of Sprites and Hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to Bed for fear.”

    To some extent this madness has afflicted just about everyone that has taken an interest in climate change. It becomes an addiction where we need a daily dose of distress or comfort about whether something unprecedented may be happening in the world.

    http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/bk3/chap3-2.html

  69. Don’t know why you people waste your time responding to comments from someone who has the intellect of a 15 year old.

    Danny-
    “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

  70. Danny Bloom (Comment#20314)

    “‘ME! I am just a student of the much much smarter people than me. James Lovelock for example. Read him first.”

    Indeed we have.

    “Fear feeds ignorance” said James Lovelock in the Ages of Gaia,*and a great niche was opened for fear when science became incomprehensible to those who were not its practitioners”

    he attachment of a number to anything or anyone implies a significance that was missing from its physical description .A telephone number is valuable tool in comparison the observation that atmospheric abundance of perfluoromethyl cyclohexane is 5.6×10-15 ,or that whilst you have read this line of text a hundred thousand of the atoms in your body will have disintegrated.whilst interesting confer neither benefit or significance to your health.

    But once numbers are attached to say an environmental property the means will soon be made to justify their recording,and before long a data bank of information about the distribution of substance x or radioactive isotope y will exist.It is a small step to compare the different databanks ,and in the nature of statistical distributions there will be a correlation of the distribution of substance x and disease Z

    It is no exaggeration to observe that once some curious investigator pries open such a niche,it will be filled by the opportunistic growth of hungry professionals and their predators.A new subset of society will be occupied in the monitoring of substance x and disease Z as will as the makers of the instrumentation. Then there will be the lawyers who make the legislation for the beaurecrats to administer and so on.”

  71. Lucia wrote: “So Marc doesn’t seem to have censored you. I don’t think he could if he tried. ”

    Lucia, maybe you did not read my post earlier clearly enough. Marc Morano DID post my item about WWII deniers at the time of the Nazi crimes, he DID, since I sent it in to him, and he was nice enough to post it, yes, but he gave it a very misinformation kind of headline, which is of course his right as the webmaster there, he said something like “Climate activist compares climate denialists to Holocaust deniers…” AND I NEVER WROTE THAT AT ALL IN MY COMMENTARY, THAT WAS MARC’s headline. See? His right of course. AND, Lucia, he left the item (which was in red ink so it was very easy to spot, and that was good, but he left it up for less than a day, because he received so much hate mail on that piece that he had to take it down, in less than a day, when he usually leaves my pieces up on his site for 4-5 days, although they move down the list a bit, sure. But THIS TIME, he in fact, took it off the front page, in LESS THAN A DAY due to the heat he was receiving from his fellow denialists, he told me this himself, BUT bless his heart, Marc did keep the item in his archives and it can still be found there via a search on his site. If that is not censorship, what is? First, he posts it, fair enough, then he takes it down in less than a day, not very fair. What is he afraid of? If we cannot all talk about these things civilly and without censorship how can we discuss the future of humankind? Seems we cannot.

    I wrote to Marc: “Marc i cannot find that hOLoCAUST ITEM YOU POSTED? WAS TAKEN DOWN? WHY? DANNY.”

    Marc replied in Internet Time: “Yes, It is in my archive. I put it up long enough on the home page. It
    struck me as just trying to get attention. I left it up for almost a day.”

  72. Lucia, RE:

    But I am reading a different book, sir. Ask my the name of it.

    “Given your inclination toward Nazi allusions, I’ll guess “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” or “Mein Kampf”. Was I close? ”

    Lucia, that is nasty. Either that, or you were trying to be funny and make a joke. Bad joke, Lucia. Maybe you ARE nasty. I give you the benefit of the doubt, though, because sometimes I seem to lack a sense of humor, although most of the time I do have a good sense of humor.

    You didn’t get my allusion. It was that we were on the same page, but reading a different a book, in other words, he was talking about the present time, and I am talking about 500 years from now. Enough with your Hitler allusions, Lucia! [SMILE] — If i can dish it out, i guess i should be able to take it, too. I will try to rise above it all and give you the benefit of me doubts. You must be a good egg, otherwise you wouldn’t call yourself a lukewamer.

  73. John F. Pittman (Comment#20338) above, wrote: “Danny Bloom said in (Comment#20335) on September 19th, 2009 at 6:23 am in Internet Time said “That is all we can do until…….the mother of all climate events occurs, circa year 2323, and then it’s all over.”

    Mr Pittman noted: “Danny, This is an apocolyptic prophecy. I give you credit for putting [it] so far in the future. Most prophets have it right around the corner such that they profit from it.
    But unless you can demonstrate your clairvoyance, giving a date just shows you have a specific/general cognitive problem.”

    John, thanks for a good post. And you are right, I have no desire or wish to profit at all from my prediction of climate chaos in the year 2323, not by financial profit to sell my latest book (I DO NOT write books, period) or my career promotion (I DO NOT HAVE A CAREER or an Academic SPONSOR or EVEN A BOSS who could promote me, since I do not even have a JOB) nor do I hope to on speaking tours or guest appear on TV shows for payment (as I live overseas and I do not FLY IN AIRPLANES anymore). So you are very very right, John, this is NOT about me, or profit. You are one of the first people on your side of the aisle to recognize that and appreciate that and I appreciate you saying this.

    As for ”demonstrating my clairvoyance”, first of all, I am NOT ”predicting” anything. I cannot see the future, nor do i have any clairvoyant powers. Zilch. Zero. Nada. I am just speaking out, from my heart, out of compassion for the future. I know that I will not be listened to, I know that nothing I say matters one bit. But I soldier on. Why? I must. I am coming at this John from my heart, not from my mind.

    As for my cognitive problems — specific and general — I probably do not pass muster on this gradient and I will plead guilty here for being more or less an ignoramous. But an ignoramous with a heart.

    Bury me on that note.

  74. Danny–
    Is English not your main language?

    Marc not posting your words on his blog is not the censorship. Censorship would be if he somehow prevented you from posing on your own blog, here in comments at my blog, or someplace other than on his own turf. People aren’t required to publish your words for you, and their exercising that choice is not “censorship”.

    Yes. I was making a joke about what book you were reading. That’s what you get for asking questions that are simultaneously rhetorical and methaphorical!

  75. SteveF (Comment#20348) noted — “Danny Bloom, Your exchanges with Lucia at least suggest that you will listen to reason. So I offer you a few comments that I hope you will consider.”

    SteveF, YOUR REPLY above was one of the BEST i have read and I you taught me a lot and thanks for learning me. I am not in anyone’s camp or in anyone’s pocket. I am still learning about all this, I really appreciate your taking the time to write all that above, and you know, sir, I agree with MUCH of what you wrote. THAT is what this is all about: LISTENING to each other. Thank you, sir!

  76. Jorge (Comment#20352) said: “Danny, You are a natural worrier. Your kind of thinking has a long history. Here is an excerpt from ‘Gullivers Travels’ written around 1730 Anno Deus. This is from a lesser-known story about the Laputans who clearly had similar anxieties.”

    Jorget, GREAT POST! and thanks for showing me that. I love Mr Swift and he is a big influence on my thinking, has been since high school. This was a great post, sir, and thanks. It’s true, I am a “Natural Born Worrier” and it’s not fun being a NBW and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. It’s just part of my DNA. I came out of my mother’s womb already worrying. The first thing I said to me mum, about ten seconds after delivery, was: “How do I get out of here alive?” I didn’t mean her womb, that was a great experience. I meant, life itself. See? It’s not easy being a NBW.

  77. Sleeper (Comment#20353) noted: “Don’t know why you people here on this board waste your time responding to comments from someone like Danny who has the intellect of a 15 year old.

    And to me, Sleeper adds: “Danny, here’s a good quote:“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

    TO WHICH DANNY REPLIES: “Sleeper, I am not running for any office here, and I am not trying to impress anyone with my intellect, nor I am trying to persuade anyone to listen to my POV, nor am I am trying to change anyone’s mind. I was born a fool and I will die a fool, you are quite right, Sleeper.”

    I am not concerned with what people think of me. This is not about me. This is about the future of humankind. Come back and let’s chat in 2323.

  78. Sleeper (Comment#20353) noted: “Don’t know why you people here on this
    board waste your time responding to comments from someone like Danny
    who has the intellect of a 15 year old.

    And to me, Sleeper adds: “Danny, here’s a good quote:“It is better to
    remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one’s mouth and remove
    all doubt.”

    TO WHICH DANNY REPLIES: “Sleeper, I am not running for any office
    here, and I am not trying to impress anyone with my intellect, nor I
    am trying to persuade anyone to listen to my POV, nor am I am trying
    to change anyone’s mind. I was born a fool and I will die a fool, you
    are quite right, Sleeper.”

    I am not concerned with what people think of me. This is not about me.
    This is about the future of humankind. Come back and let’s chat in
    2323.

  79. Danny you wrote.

    “My intent was to shake shake shake people up. That is all can do until…….the mother of all climate events occurs, circa year 2323, and then it’s all over. I assume, Steve, that you do not CARE about the future, that far ahead. Right? You could care less about the future fate of the human species. You are only concerned about NOW. That is all well and good. We are on the same page. But I am reading a different book, sir. Ask my the name of it.”

    Danny, several points. Your post seems to have put you on the defensive. The reason it has is because you used metaphorical language. I sympathize with your plight. Once I explained to people that the Piltdown incident bore striking similarities to the Mann construction of the hockeystick. People said I accused Mann of fraud. Even when I explicitly stated that it was not fraud. Such are the hazards of metaphorical language. As I stated above the issue is getting at the author’s INTENT. Now, intent is an unobservable. It’s underdetermined by the words on the page.

    And now you argue that your purpose was to shake people up..
    Such a purpose could be achieved in many ways.

    Climate deniers are M**herF**Kers.
    Climate deniers are child molesters
    And so on.

    If your purpose is to shake people up, you could do it any number
    of ways. You choose one way. Probably not the best way. I give you a D for your rhetorical abilities. Then you claim that “shaking people up” is all you can do. Well, there are many other options.
    You can ask questions; you can educate yourself; you can join us when we do FOI requests; you can avoid destroying your own credibility. Your defense–this is the only thing u can do– is not a very good one. Grade for debate: D-. As for the mother of all climate events in 2323. I will only say that you got the date wrong. it’s 2525.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=645-i_3ZwHU

    Do I care
    about the future of the human species? Of course. I care about the next minute, next day, next month, next million years.
    There are these important questions: If I am going to act on that care I would like to understand the threat. I would like to see the best science performed. Free the data; free the code. I would like to see how the climate threat compares to other threats. And I would like to discuss intergeneration obligations. For example, “we know the sun will go out someday and life as we know it on earth will cease to exist. Colonization of other planets should be our number 1 priority. And we should spend every conceivable resource on that. ” ( psst that is a thought experiment for you to carry out) Do a threat assessment. How real is the threat, are there other threats, can the threat be averted? mitigated? at what cost? who shall pay? When you ask those questions you will be going down the right path.

  83. Zeke-given what great pains he goes to in the book to say that he is not saying liberals are actual fascists, I think not. But you’d have to read it to get that.

    In fact, the whole point is to expose the fact that saying that the Right (especially in the US) is “fascist” is ridiculously silly because if anything the fascist movement most resembled Progressivism. The title of the book is also not just provocateur, it refers to a specific quote by H G Wells, in which he literally called for a political movement of “Enlightened Nazism”-or “Liberal Fascism” Both, Wells’ terms.

    More over, Fascism and Nazism are most decidedly NOT isomorphic. This is in fact an important thing to remember because the American Left are certainly not white supremacists or anti-Semites (for the most part-President Carter comes to mind…) and neither were Mussolini or most of his followers. In fact, Jews were well represented in the Italian Fascist party. They weren’t even racial essentialists, though they believed in Italian supremacy. What they were could be called “Corporatists”. Which is an economic philosophy that is on the ascendancy these days.

    The whole point really is that the Left has been rewriting history about who the “fascists” were for quite some time and the record has to be set straight. If people think that Godwin’s law is getting invoked along the way, I have to wonder where they were when the argument got started. “Bush’s grandfather brought the Nazis to power”-Huh? Do they forget Joe Kennedy, whose sympathy for the Nazis is easily uncovered and much less black helicopter? Of course.

    Godwin’s law is not invoked by a defense against an invocation of Nazism or Fascism against one’s enemies. And in regards to “Hitler Obama” above:

    http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDJkYzFhOTQ0OGZjZTI3MDMzYzc2YTU5NDQ4NzkzYzI=

    “Also, in the current issue of NR I have a short item on the recent spate of “Obama as Hitler” epithets being thrown around by a few people on the Right (and a lot of idiot Larouchies). A link is unavailable but here’s the relevant passage:

    The simple truth is that I do not think it is in the cards for America to go down a Nazi path. I never said otherwise in Liberal Fascism, either….

    ….Indeed, while I don’t think it is remotely right or fair to call Obama
    Enhanced Coverage Linking Obama a crypto-Nazi (if by that you mean to say he’s a would-be Hitler), the real problem with all of this loose Nazi talk is that it slanders the American people. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen may have overstated his case in Hitler’s Willing Executioners, but he was certainly right that the German people were Hitler’s willing enablers. The overwhelming majority of the American people — in their history, culture, bones, hearts, souls, DNA, and carbon molecules — are not like that. That goes for American liberals and leftists too. The extent and depth of liberalism’s obtuseness on the subject of fascism (and much else) stews my bowels, but American liberals are still Americans, and Americans will not goose-step behind a Hitler, period.

    As I make clear in Liberal Fascism, the obvious and pressing threat is not from a Hitlerite-Orwellian dictatorship but from a Huxleyan namby-pamby mommy state. That sort of system could seduce Americans into becoming chestless subjects of the State in exchange for bottomless self-gratification and liberation from the necessity of adult decision-making. Yes, there’s a danger that such a society could then be susceptible to some darker vision that lionizes the lost manhood of a half-forgotten past. But, by that point, this would be America in name only, if even that (“U.N. District 12″ has a nice ring to it).”

  84. You, are like my neighbour. He heard my smoke alarm go off inside the house and ran to cal the fire brigade without checking if the house was actually on fire. He then gave the brigade directions so bad that they arrived an hour later. And the fire, that was a steam problem.

    Ie don’t shout the fire and you nazis can’t see it before you have checked the evidence.

    Incidently, this neighbour was a policeman !!!

  85. SteveMosher, “And now you argue that your purpose was to shake people up..”

    I am not trying to shake up the denialists. They are beyond hope. They are in denial. I am trying to shake up people in the middle of the road. The alarmists don’t need my help. The denialists won’t listen to me even if they had ears. So I reaching out to the middle of the road. That’s all. I am not trying to change anyone’s mind. They must change by themselves.

  86. Steven Mosher, said: “Colonization of other planets should be our number 1 priority. And we should spend every conceivable resource on that. ” ( psst that is a thought experiment for you to carry out) “.

    Nah, Steven, waste of time. I think what you do not understand about my work, since I never said this before, is I am mainly focussed — some might say obsessed — with POLAR CITIES. google that and then you will understand the backstory here. I believe we will need polar cities in the year 2500, maybe 2323, just a feeling, not a prediction. go look.

    http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

  87. I should have prefaced ALL my earlier comments above with this link to “polar cities”. GOOGLE IT. That is my main work now for the rest of my life. I am slated to pass on in 2032. That gives me a few more years to push this polar cities concept to those who might listen and take it even further. No need to worry about climate chaos now. Today, all is well on planet Earth. SIGH.

    http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

  88. By the way, all I ever wanted to talk about is “polar cities”. That is what my life’s work is about now. I am not trying to change anyone’s mind or to persuade anyone of anything. I am creating the first model polar city for climate chaos survivors which will be ready for a test run summer of 2012. College students will run the station. See: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

  89. “I am not trying to shake up the denialists. They are beyond hope. They are in denial.”

    It was called petitio principe a couple thousand years ago, begging the question. We cannot tell if there are any denialists until we have found out whether the hypothesis is true, so to call skeptics denialists assumes what is in question. A logical fallacy that has been known for thousands of years. Remind you of anything, that last remark?

    After all, if they are right, and if there is no convincing evidence for the hypothesis, it is not skeptics but advocates who are denialists.

    An instructive recent case has come up, which shows the possible disastrous consequences of this style of argument. You will have read about the case of the woman runner Caster Semenya? She appears to be genetically male, but with androgen insensitivity syndrome, which has led her to develop as in many respects female, though with undeveloped internal testes and a high testosterone level.

    Her physique, unusually muscular for a woman, and her voice, unusually deep, and her effortless track victories against women, led some to suggest that gender testing and verification was in order. In a tactic very recognizable from the Climate Wars, those people were labeled racists. It could only be racism that would lead mainly white observers to question the gender of a black woman. They must be doing it because they were white. They were in denial. The thing they were in denial about was that black women athletes could be so exceptionally gifted.

    In the same way, we know it is warming, and only denialism could lead any to question it.

    In the end however, as it usually does, the truth came out, the poor girl is genetically male, those who accused questioners of racism had access all along to tests which showed it, but concealed the data. The attempt to assume that she was female and transfer the argument onto whether questioners were racist, and so discredit their questions, failed decisively. The poor girl now has her biology all over the front pages of her own country and many others too.

    It simply does not work. Danny has to get into his head that in science, the hypothesis and the evidence for it is the thing. It does not matter how terrible it will be if it is true. It does not matter what people’s motives are for wanting it to be true. It does not matter who pays various participants in the debate, what religion or nationality or political party they are. None of this is of any importance. There is no point ‘shaking up’ people with wild emotional tirades about the possible consequences of hypotheses which may have no valid evidence behind them. Or by going on and on about the wickedness of refusing to believe things which are questionable on quite rational grounds.

    The problem is, as we keep seeing, that the studies, where we can get at the data behind them, are shaky. The latest one that Steve M has just investigated is Kaufman. It turns out that the difference between catastrophe and ho-hum is in the choice of three or four different proxies from similar locations, out of 20+ total. If you read Jeff Id’s recent pages on the hockey stick, you see that we have a mathematical technique employed to generate the impression of disaster, which shows no such thing, and is manipulable in the same way that the team manipulated it to show a Hockey Stick, to show anything at all in the data. If you look at the recent forensic investigation of Steig, well, the data just does not show what it was alleged to show.

    What Danny needs to get his head around is simple: what is the evidence that there are any denialists? There may be just a bunch of people who, having looked at what evidence they have found, have concluded that there is no case to answer. Before you call them denialists, there is a lot of work to do, you still have to prove them wrong. That’s the hard part. Just as the South African sports establishment, after they had levelled all the racism charges, were still confronted with the impossible task of proving that poor Caster Semenya was genetically female. And alas, she is not, and calling the critics racist did not make her any more so. Or silence the debate.

  90. michel (Comment#20413) September 21st, 2009 at 2:20 am

    Great prose. If you do not write for a living, then you have a second career waiting.

  91. michel (Comment#20413)-Speaking of…I have it on good authority from a White South African friend that hermaphroditism is rather common in Africa.

    Naturally as both a White African and (gasp!) a Republican, this must make him a racist.

  92. Danny Bloom (Comment#20406) September 20th, 2009 at 10:53 pm

    “I am not trying to shake up the denialists. They are beyond hope. They are in denial. I am trying to shake up people in the middle of the road. The alarmists don’t need my help. The denialists won’t listen to me even if they had ears. So I reaching out to the middle of the road. That’s all. I am not trying to change anyone’s mind. They must change by themselves.”

    Well Danny now you get an F for rhetoric. If your audience is people in the middle ( lukewarmers and others) then you have to know your audience. And you have to target your audience.
    And you have to target them with devices that achieve your purpose. As you now state your purpose was to “shake up”
    people in the middle of the road. Sorry, we don’t get rattled
    by words.

    In your little exercise you didn’t make this clear. I would hazard this. Anyone who was a denialist is now MORE LIKELY to remain one. You didn’t shake them up, you just gave them a reassurence that those on the AGW side have lost their marbles.
    For alarmists, you didn’t shake them up. You didn’t intend to. For people in the middle of the road, let’s see how you did. The people in the middle of the road that I’ve been talking to for the last 2-3 years are.

    1. Highly educated
    2. Professionals or retired professionals
    3. Engineers or researchers.
    4. Skilled in math, statistics, data analysis.

    I don’t think this is by chance. You have to think about what it takes to be a middle of the roader. First, they have to understand science ( deniers just deny or wave their arms as do alarmist ), Second they have to have a tendency to not follow the crowd ( Consensus? there is no consensus in science, there is confirmation and disconfirmation) Third, they can probably tell you what it will take to convince them.

    To get an A in rhetoric you need to know your audience. You need to know where they read, how they think, what kind of things they respond to and how they will respond. So basically,
    A middle of the roader like me is not going to be “shaken up”
    by a nazi allusion. Someone like me and the other middle of the roaders is going to laugh, point out the historical flaws in your writing, and give you a grade for your feeble effort. Words don’t shake us up. We are not asleep. let me put it another way. The only audience that is “shaken up” is an audience with a strong emotional belief system. People alarmed at climate change ( emotional ) got bent out of shape when I compared the “precautionary principle” to Pascal’s wager. ( positively unhinged they were ). People who are emotional about their denial of climate change (it’s a socialist plot) will get unhinged about your nazi allusions. But people in the middle or any person who has beliefs that are not emotionally based, will NOT be “shaken up”
    by your words. They are, after all, an emotional appeal. And we just shrug, see those words for what they are and get back to the facts.

    If you are rational and open minded and teachable you can get some measure of respect here by admitting your mistake, taking your seat in the classroom, raise your hand politely and ask questions that are on topic. Or post Haiku’s that’s a good thing for a newcomer.

  93. steven mosher in (Comment#20421) on September 21, 4009 A.D. at 11:56 am told Danny, among other good points he made: “Danny, if you are rational and open-minded and teachable you can get some measure of respect here by admitting your mistake, taking your seat in the classroom, raise your hand politely and ask questions that are on topic. Or post Haiku’s that’s a good thing for a newcomer.”

    Steven, I quite agree. Since I am rational and openminded and emintently teachable (or is that imminently teachable?) I hereby:
    1. admit my mistakes above (really)
    2. am now taking my seat in the classroom (a good place to be)
    3. will in future raise my hand politely when I have a question to ask that is ON topic
    4. but will not post any ”hai-ku” here, not very good at that, despite living in Japan for five years in early 1990s

    What I really am ABOUT, Steven, if you want to know, is “polar cities”. Google the term and see the images we have created for now. I am suggesting, merely suggesting, that in 500 years the mass of humankind will have died off from starvation and climate chaos, with about 200,000 souls having moved north to Alaska and Canada and Russia, and also south to NZ and Tasmania and Antartica, and there to take refuge in climate refuges, what I have dubbed “polar cities” — although they will not be at the poles per se, nor will they be cities. It will be more like Mad Max meets The Road (by Cormac McCarthy). I am NOT saying this will happen, I am just saying WE SHOULD PREPARE for worst case scenarios, even as we work hard NOW to understand the situation better. You can see images and background info about polar cities here: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

    — Danny Bloom (1949 – 2032)

  94. Danny Bloom
    If that is the future you envision, how should we be preparing? I don’t plan on living for another 500 years, so, apart from willing my guns to my children and grandchildren in perpetuity, in the words of a 20th century icon “What me, worry?”

  95. Tamara in (Comment#20522) on September 24th wrote: “Danny, …If that is the future you envision, how should we be preparing? I don’t plan on living for another 500 years, so, apart from willing my guns to my children and grandchildren in perpetuity, in the words of a 20th century icon “What me, worry?”

    TAMARA, that is exactly the problem! You do not care about the world much past your grandchildren’s time. I understand. But we MUST start caring in much longer time frame. MUST!

    A good interview with a psychiartist on all this is here:

    http://northwardho.blogspot.com/2009/09/interview-with-dr-steven-moffic.html

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