Environmentalism: wilderness, wasteland, or garden?
A recent book by E. Calvin Beisner entitled Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate gave me the idea for this post (you can hear Beisner talk on the environment here and here).
There are at least three possible views when it comes to how we view environmentalism – the leftist ‘Wilderness’ view, the rightist ‘Wasteland’ view, and the more balanced ‘Garden’ view. The extremes are lack of concern for the environment, or virtual worship of the environment, while the Garden view is one possibility between the extremes. Which camp do you lean towards?
How to ignore evidence contrary to your scientific position
In discussing Global Warming Alarmism (GWA), I have begun to see a pattern of evasion emerge among GWA proponents. It is an alarming (pun intended) anti-reason, anti-intellectual tactic that is often engaged in by those in the majority position of an argument. These tools for evading reasoned discussion are the logical fallacies of fait accompli and false analogy.
1. Fait accompli
This French phrase is used to represent “an accomplished, presumably irreversible deed or fact.” The way this is used as a logical fallacy is to say that everyone who matters agrees on one position – “it’s already settled among smart people” goes the rhetoric.
Any significant objection from people who obviously DO matter (like fellow scientists, or those who formerly held the favored position) is rejected as spurious and marginal. Any new or controversial data coming from dissenters is not addressed directly, but rejected out of hand as from insignificant sources with personal axes to grind (another typical evasion , ad hominem)
2. False Analogy
The second fallacy commonly used by the arrogant, unreasoning majority is a specious comparison to something that really is established – phrases such as “evolution is as proven as gravity” are often used. Or in the case of global warming, “the link between human CO2 and global warming is as sure as the link between smoking and lung cancer.”
When the majority refuses to engage in reasoned discussion when its talking points are threatened by new or contradictory data, it is now involved in the political battle to maintain the status quo, rather than science and reason. If it spews out canned answers which have been countered, and it refuses to address the counter arguments, it has ceased being responsible and reasonable. It has become committed to a specific ideology, not reason, science, and truth.
Both of these logical fallacies could be considered an appeal to authority rather than reason, just like the religionist who says “the inerrant bible says so” – GWA’s say “the inerrant scientific consensus says so” – even while the consensus is being challenged by many well-credentialed scientists who USED to be GWAs – they didn’t change for personal gain, but often at significant personal loss, because they were scientists who looked at the data without the bias of eco-fear alarmism.
Welcome to modern eco-politics. It’s going to be a long, hot summer. But GWAs already knew that ;)
Global Warming: threat, deception, or cloak for the antichrist?
Many evangelicals have joined the chorus in support of reducing greenhouse emissions, but I am still on the fence about global warming. Like Bill O’Reilly, think we should get off of fossil fuels for both environmental and economic/political reasons, but I have not bought into the Global Warming Panic (GWP).
As Aaron recently noted, this past year’s hurricane season failed to meet the dire predictions of the GWP lobby – and while that may be too small a sample to be conclusive, it does show the speculative nature of the whole apocalyptic approach of the GWPers.
We’ve argued whether or not GW is a threat, or a hoax perpetrated by misinformed environmentalists. But there’s one more unusual perspective – that global warming, whether man-made or not, will be the worldwide catastrophe that unites the world in one cause, and under one world leader – the antichrist.
The 7 steps to suppressing opponents’ ideas
Today on Truths that Transform, Dr. Frank Wright, President and CEO of the National Religious Broadcasters, gave a simple and straightforward, if not simplistic speech about how truth is resisted and suppressed, or what he calls “the politics of opposition.” I’ve summarized below.
Why the right opposes global warming
There are a mix of noble and ignoble reasons why conservatives oppose the global warming initiatives. Of course, the ignoble one is that many are more concerned for short term economic prosperity and holding on to power and the status quo than long term environmental safety. However, there are the more ‘noble’ reasons why conservatives oppose the modern panic over global warming:
- Unsubstantiated Claims of Certainty: Conservatives [believe they] can smell pseudoscience and unsubstantiated claims built on faulty assumptions a mile away. The same overreaching overconfidence that we see in the evolutionist camp plagues the environmentalists. No matter how much they protest that their science is definitive, it is clearly incomplete. They just haven’t made their case well enough even if they are right. They appear to be jumping the gun for ideological, rather than scientific reasons.
Oregonians chant: “Al Gore’s a liar!”
Perhaps the argument is over, the science is in – global warming is a hoax? Not yet, but here's some footage you won't see on MSNBC – Oregonians unwelcoming Al Gore to Portland. I hope people are waking up the the climate change hoax.
Oh, and don't miss Al Gore is a big fat lying weenie and wrong about climate change.
Al Gore is a big fat lying weenie and wrong about climate change
I couldn't think of a good title for this great illustration, found on iMaksim's blog. So I went obnoxious – but also, it turns out that the infamous and debunked CO2/temperature graph from Al's movie was not only wrong, it may have been done ON PURPOSE (i.e. 'they lied.'). Happy Holidays. I hope the health care bill fails. Really, it's bad on so many levels, it will doom our economy and our healthcare. It's lunacy. Moonbattery. Stupidity in hope's clothing.
Global Warming: Not Evil, Just Wrong
In less than a week, a new film critiquing the many mistakes of Al Gore’s global warming alarm movie An Inconvenient Truth, will be released. Not Evil, Just Wrong discusses the impact, not of global warming, but of global warming alarmism, and the shaky facts that this political abuse of science is causing. Enjoy the trailer after the jump.
Even better, you can host a Not Evil, Just Wrong premier party next week by ordering a party kit from the link in the right column. You can also read an interview with the filmmakers over at Big Hollywood – here’s an interesting snippet:
“It’s a liberal, socialist film. It’s about poor people in Africa and America,” McAleer says. “We’re not interested in insulting anyone or winning political points,” McAleer continues. “I don’t care about your politics and I’m not going to demonize you.”
The dog ate my global warming data
Ever wonder how the whole global warming scare all came about? As it turns out, the original data used to get us all alarmed is MISSING, and the scientists that first massaged it to 'prove' global warming don't have the original data anymore. What a convenient loss of truth!
You can read the entire story in The Dog Ate Global Warming, written by Patrick J. Michaels, author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know. Here's a money quote from the article:
Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong….
Roger Pielke Jr., an
esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of
Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:Since the 1980s, we
have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new
ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular
country or if all of an individual record should be freely available.
Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to
keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after
adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the
original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled
and homogenized) data.
Global Warming Alarmism is just one of the manufactured crises of modern day liberal politics. What about the 4000 unborn children killed daily? What about the fact that half of all black American pregnancies end in abortion? Not a crisis?
Obama’s Liberal Socialism – stupidity, fear, greed, or conspiracy of evil intellectuals?
The American Thinker has published a very interesting article entitled Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis, in which the author examines what amounts to a liberal socialist conspiracy started by radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
This strategy, now known as The Cloward-Piven Strategy, is what The American Thinker is accusing Obama of being a pawn of, and perhaps to some extent, a pawn that knows what he is doing.
As the image to the right outlines, the links between Cloward and Piven, the many modern socialist thinkers, the founders and activities of corrupt organizations like Acorn, and Obama are too numerous to ignore. This is not just some kookie conspiracy theory, this is how the power of ideas corrupts higher education and government, and can lead to a nation's downfall.
And to me, it in part explains why liberals can so enthusiastically buy into the social and scientific negligence of Global Warming Panic and the absurdity of the astronomical debt of Obamanomics. It is an exercise in mass brainwashing, and like watching the Communist revolution all over again as if we never saw it happen before.
Evidence continues to support global non-warming
Just a short note to show that (a) the ice caps are not melting, (b) the media is lying and recycling and continuing to misrepresent global 'warming' photos, and (c) ocean temps other temp data show no change. NO change.
Basically, liberals need a cause that they can leverage to take our money for centralized government, and the environment is their trump card. And they need causes to which they can devote themselves, so their eco-religion makes them totally sold on the Global Warming Panic. I have a feeling that they should, but won't hide their faces in shame when they find out they've been duped like sheep. Thanks for nothing, Al.
Princeton Physicist testifies before the Senate – CO2 has little effect on warming
Wintery Knight Blog has an exclusive 11 page transcript of the official testimony of William Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics at Princeton University. This testimony was given on February 25, 2009 to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Democrat Barbara Boxer.
This is for you types who are certain that spending money and harming the economy is warranted because of the 'inconvenient truth' of man-made global warming via CO2. Your panic is unwarranted, anti-intellectual, and hurts society.
Sure as death, taxes & snow at a global warming event
There seems to me to be a simple cure that can appease everyone in the global warming debate – schedule a global warming protest or event of some kind and watch the temperatures and snowflakes drop.
Last December, an NRO blogger posted an email announcing the Capitol Climate Action day in Washington DC scheduled for March 2. He introduced the announcement by joking, "Anyone want to bet on a snowstorm hitting D.C. on March 2, 2009?"
Well…
70% of climate change due to El Nino/La Nina
At least that’s what a NASA scientist told Congress Tuesday.
Congressman Rohrabacher slams global warming alarmism (GWA)
On May 14 of this year, California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher gave a speech on the floor of the House on the problem of global warming – er, I mean, global warming ALARMISM. He hit many of the points that critics of the "closed case" of global warming keep saying. I hope people listen up instead of closing their minds to science out of panic and fear. It’s worth a read, but I’ve excerpted some good stuff below.
Global Climate Change: Probable, not human-caused, and good
Jay W. Richards, Director of Acton Media and a Research Fellow at the Acton Institute, recently gave an excellent lecture entitled Is it Hot In Here? What Should Christ
ians Think About Global Warming? It is well worth a listen, but I would like to quickly summarize. He asked and answered five questions about GW:
- Is the earth warming?
- Are humans primarily responsible?
- Is global warming bad or good?
- Are the proposed corrective policies worth pursuing?
- How do you know when you are resisting established science rather than political orthodoxy in science?
Global warming, political correctness, and wikipedia
Many of us rely on wikipedia as a quick and dirty source of information in a hurry. And while some attack it as unreliable, it has shown to be fairly reliable in comparison with the Encyclopedia Britannica.
But on controversial subjects like global warming, DON’T expect wikipedia to be objective. As Lawrence Solomon of the National Post reports, Wikipedia’s zealots may be removing information that is not politically correct, or of the minority opinion.
For the last 18 months I have been profiling scientists who disagree
with the UN panel’s position. My Deniers series, which now runs to some
40 columns, describes many of the world’s most prominent scientists.
They include authors or reviewers for the UN panel (before they quit in
disgust). They even include the scientist known as the father of
scientific climatology, who is recognized as being the most cited
climatologist in the world….I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have,
corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so. Peiser wrote back saying he couldn’t see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. Had I neglected to save them after
editing them, I wondered? I made the changes again, and this time
confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they
were gone again! I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared
shortly after they were made.
Cooking the global warming numbers
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting opinion piece today entitled Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess. In it, the author talks about how the global temperature data has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming, by the IPCC and others. Scientists or politicians?
