Gib Bogle wrote:
On 3/12/2011 2:58 a.m., The Natural Philosopher wrote:
...
Despite Martins personal insinuations, I am very much balanced on the
fence. Although playing devils advocate is a good technique to expose
warmist trolls.


In short the only thing I am sure of is that there is very little
certainty in the predictions of ANYONE.

Failure to admit this, makes me suspicious at a human level, of those
who want to close all controversy and announce that the science is
settled.


That is deeply disturbing,: Irrespective of whether AGW is wrong,
slightly right or a complete and accurate picture, the way its being
handled is an utter disgrace and has put science back years in terms of
public opinion.

I have always preserved what I regard as a healthy level of scepticism
about global warming, especially on the issue of our ability to do
anything constructive about it. The stories in the press are often
extremely superficial and scare-mongering - about what I've come to
expect where scientific matters are concerned. But when I see the
amount of misinformation and pro-business propaganda being pumped out by
right-wingers in the US, much of it through Murdoch's channels, I
develop sympathy for the climate scientists who are being attacked for
reasons that have much more to do with politics than with science.

How is it that denial of human-influenced climate-change, of the need to
regulate industry to limit pollution (unrelated to greenhouse effect),
and of the reality of evolution have all become articles of faith for
the right wing?

I don't think that is, in fact true. You will find no denial from me
about those things, although I am not sure whether I am somewhere to the
left of Karl Marx or the right of Ghengis Khan. I find those laboles
'unhelpful'



My take is that in the first two cases there is an
obvious financial benefit to some very powerful corporations (important
sources of campaign funds), while the third is a way of mobilising the
know-nothing segment of society. In other words, intellectual
dishonesty rules.


Welcome to marketing especially the marketing of political ideas.

You blame the climate scientists for the way the issue is being handled.
I see the completely cynical politicisation of the issue by so-called
conservatives as more responsible.

huh? I don't like EITHER of them. This ought to be a Phd's at dawn pure
academic spat where ideas compete in a narrow arena well sheltered from
the realities of the sordid commercial world, but its been used to form
policies and direct enormous sums of money towards various recipients:
They wont ALLOW it to be that.

In 1935 we had German Rearmament and Our Empire Under Threat.

IN 1955 We had The Red Menace, The Cold War and The Iron Curtain, and
Global Communism.

By 1965, we were fighting a ghastly muddled war of attrition based on
the premise that if we didnt knock the N vietnamese and the chinese back
to Beijing, Chairman Mao would be sending us all on a long march of
starvation.

By 1975, we got bored with that, and it was time to out spend the
Russkies on Star Wars technology.

By 1985, Russia was on the brink of collapse, and we ran out of enemies
apart from Arthur Scargill, and martin McGuiness and singluarly, we
didn't spend a whole amount of money on A Global Threat.

By 1995, this was duly noted and like the answer to a maidens prayer we
had The Waron UnFair Stuff, as a fresh excuse to spend a lot of
taxpayers money on useless causes..but taht want veru comnvomncing, and
most people just ignored iot

By 2005 we had a War on Terror, and when that turned into a damp squib
in Iraq, we needed another global threat to justify more tax dollars
being spent on things no one in their right minds would ever vote form
and there was a ready made Cause in Global Warming, the ultimate threat,
not to democracy, or the West, or the the Freedom to Get Drunk And Have
Fun, but to the Whole ****ing Planet!

A marketing man's wet dream. The scare to end all scares. You could sell
ANY utter ****e if you gave it a coat of greenwash. The ultimate
pinnacle of marketing, to extract the last ounce of wealth from the
citizens by scaring them so that if indeed the worsest financial
crisis didn't scare them into parting with trillions, in case their
credit cards stopped working, tens of trillions of their money could be
poured into wind follies and Shiny New Things that Made It all Better*

It has long ceased to be important whether AGW is real, or not. What
matters is that people BELIEVE its real, because Siemens is cleaning up
on it.

It wont make a blind bit of difference anyway, because China and India
are both nuclear powers as well as becoming the biggest planetary
polluters, and we no longer CAN nuke the back to the stone age with
impunity, and if they do nothing we are ****ed anyway if you believe AGW.


A rational person would build nuclear power stations get ready for
climate change and forget green politics. IF they believed in AGW.

If on the other had they didn't really believe in it beyond it being a
marvellous way for poor people to have even more money ripped off them
by centralised and globalised institutions, then they might very well
decide on a renewable energy policy. And a huge 'war on Climate change'
with an accompanying deeply emotional narrative of the sort not seen
since Hitler's crusade against Jewdom.

And look at what we got folks.



* one defers to the Daily Mash for that particular concept..