Speaker: There's a word for that ...
100 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 Newer→ Last
-
Let's fix it.
You know we actually can fix it. We'll probably get kinda grubby in the process but most jobs that are worth doing get you covered in muck at some point.
And after you've showered and got yourself clean, the glass of wine tastes all that much better for having done a good job
-
Meanwhile, Poneke can't contrive a sensible response to the news that this year is likely to be the fifth warmest on record and the first decade of this century the hottest since records began.
So he blogs that:
They just make this stuff up and expect the gullible to believe them.
That really is tragic. More so from a man who still likes to lecture others about the primacy of science.
-
Well put, better put than the rant I trot out from time to time. The sad truth is I don't think they care what we think, they know they're "right". The 'new' front bench of the Aussie Liberal party is a horrible example: deniers or don't cares to a man (well almost entirely men -Abbott's not really into promoting women). Somehow they've made a decision that this approach is 'best for us' and they will win an election on Climate Change and then tell us all what to do. It's hard not to really really hate them. They are so WRONG in every sense.
-
Somehow they've made a decision that this approach is 'best for us' and they will win an election on Climate Change and then tell us all what to do. It's hard not to really really hate them. They are so WRONG in every sense.
Yes, we have a bunch of those too. Sad al'right. I am liking this, (what is this?) oh yes, psychopaths.
-
In the case of a lot of deniers, I don't think it's so much "they know they're right" as "they don't care if they're wrong".
-
Via Close Up
Who do you believe?
Ian Wishart - 77%
Gareth Morgan - 23%I didn't know we were allowed to vote on science now? Y'know I've always thought that whole "electricity" thing was a bit of a have, let's take a poll!
-
I think it's more about fear. It is much easier to deny something than take responsibility for the problem and therefore also for fixing it. So much easier to deny climate change or blame something or someone else, than to face up to the huge changes to our habits, lifestyles and government policies that are required urgently to save the planet.
-
One of the dubious benefits of my partner and I deciding not to have kids is that we'll never have to try and explain to them why the majority of earth's population just didn't give enough of a fuck.
-
... and just an aside on the subject of smoking:
Let me tell you a little story about a bloke I met in Singapore once.
To set the scene: this was 1999, I was there on some IT business and we were in an expensive bar with a business colleague of mine, who is an ex-pat Pom. He’d lived in Singapore for about ten years at that point, and he introduced me to an old public school chum of his who was passing through Singapore on holiday.
Said chum was a very senior person at Dunhill, a rabid Tory supporter, an archetypical public school bigot, a Lloyds name, and had about the same net worth as God – my colleague said his current value was “in excess of 200 million pounds”, a pretty big slice of which had come from Dunhill, where he’d worked since leaving Uni. He’d just had his 41st birthday.
He was a non-smoker.
After a few drinks he was happy to admit that smoking killed people, but he had absolutely no moral qualms about that at all. As he described it, smoking was a “stupidity tax”, and he had the view that it really didn’t matter what governments did, around 20-25% of the population would continue to smoke – even knowing that they would die an agonising death as a result. He seemed to think that it was practically his moral duty to make money out of morons. Lots of money.
He said that the rest of the Dunhill empire – fashion and the like – was just as way of legitimising the brand, and that the other areas of business were simply a way of clouding the “obscene” amount of money they were making out of cigarettes.
Apparently no-one in his family smoked, and he had threatened to disinherit his two daughters if either of them ever took up the habit. He was in Singapore because the family were on the way back from Thailand, where they’d just bought a holiday place – to go with the place in Italy, and the apartments in London and Paris. He wasn’t that keen on Thailand because it was out of range of casual use of the Dunhill corporate jet, and so he was forced to travel first class on a regular plane, but his wife and daughters liked Thailand so he was happy to make the compromise and drop his normal travel standards.
He was probably the most vile and contemptible individual I have ever met.
-
It disgusts me.
Deniers disgust me too, but they're a minor annoyance and easily dealt with by presenting evidence to the general public.
And now these old bastards are trying to do it to us again:
Some rich old bastards are trying to do something, some psychotics would use climate change to profit off.
Take the G20s (and NZs) "solution" to climate change the global ETS, how it works:
- a worldwide flat tax on the planet (or if the Danish Memo is to be believed tax poor people twice as high as the rich).
- use this to force adoption of higher tech solutions (costed to the poor world by the UN at $500 billion per year) whilst providing the poor world with $40 billion in oh-so-generous aid to assist. Thus ensuring a $440 billion market for rich world high tech industrial design.
- set up a carbon futures market, to be run in the rich world.
- reward industries that out-source production, like the rich world industries have been doing for 30 years.If adopted such a solution could indeed save the planet from climate change, however it would make the rich world richer and the poor world poorer. Compared to exploitative opportunists like these (our government included), denialists are positiviely sainted.
-
George Monbiot's article about death denial makes for interesting reading when pointing the finger at some deniers
-
Thank you, Slarty -- I've been nervously watching from the sidelines, a bit stunned at the violence, but your post is the first I've read that makes me angry enough to actually get off my arse and do something about it, and maybe even start to do it myself at home instead of signing more petitions. I might start by making a list: riding to work 3x a week, instead of driving myself in the Rav. Swapping out the bulbs. That sort of thing. And then figuring out why the F^&%^CK the giant recycling bin I put out this morning was 3/4 full. What the hell WAS all that goddamned plastic stuff? And why?! And then... reconsidering my job. Argh. But that will be easier than the conversation I'd otherwise have to have with my daughter in ten years.
-
Somehow they've made a decision that this approach is 'best for us' and they will win an election on Climate Change and then tell us all what to do. It's hard not to really really hate them. They are so WRONG in every sense.
Often what it comes down to with Australian politicians is protecting the jobs of workers in their electorates / States. Keeping people gainfully employed seems to take on a far higher importance in Australia than it does here where on the whole politicians don't seem to be too fussed either way. While to some extent this is admirable, in Australia's case many of these jobs are in environmentally unfriendly activities. This is why the coal industry continues to hold such an influence in Australia and leads to things like the Hazelwood Power Station getting a 25 year extension on their operating license. Though closing and replacing Hazelwood (and others like it) with something less environmentally hideous would seem to be the blindingly obvious thing to do, these stations (and their associated mines) tend to be located in areas where there are bugger-all other employment opportunities. Whenever the closure of a heavy-industrial plant is mooted in Australia, the "what about the jobs?" question is immediately raised by politicians who want to keep their jobs. There are other factors involved for sure, but the whole employment thing is often the first thing mentioned.
-
Why can they not just say "we didn't know?"
Because that would go against the grain of self aggrandising arrogance which their quali'y edjamacation bestowed upon them. Actually, human ego, funny thing, even without the posh schooling.
Good ideas are first: flatly denied, second: ridiculed, and third: accepted as common sense. But the bugger's'll never just say "yeah, you were right all along."
-
How would the denialists handle a worst case scenario of Copenhagen? I suspect they'd do a lot more than just whinge from the sidelines.
-
I'm not surprised Australian politics steers away from sustainability. Most of their economy is founded on mining. It's like expecting the oil rich nations of the Middle East to advocate cutting back on oil consumption.
-
Anyone else feeling a little, for want of a better description, "beseiged by idiocy" over climate change?
I've recently had a number of friends and co-workers tell me that climate change is either not happening, or not man-made, and basically infer that anyone with a brain knows that it's all a hoax. One of the more annoying memes is the reverse-consensus thing. Had someone tell me the that there are, and I quote: "only about 500 scientists who think global warming is man-made, and about 32,000 who know that it isn't".
Where are people getting this stuff? And how do you counter it? So far I've just been disengaging from the discussion, and mentally shaking my head when someone starts spouting this stuff. Can anyone suggest some good web links with (fairly) un-deniable authority, to which people can be pointed? Or any other strategy?
I don't so much care about winning arguments as such, it's just that I hate when misinformation seems to be so widespread. -
Where are people getting this stuff?
-
Access to tobacco is a right under International Human Rights law.
Just sayin' =)
ref: Articles 26 and 28 of the Third Geneva Convention
Do you want ordinary law-abiding non-violent people subject to less rights than Prisoners of War?
Shame, hiss, booo, etc.
=)
-
And how do you counter it?
Metafilter linked to this recently, which might help.
-
Monboit cites a Pew report, "Such beliefs seem to be strongly influenced by age."
is it guilt, embarrassment, or what?
-
Thanks Paul. I've read a number of Monbiots articles, but I hadn't seen that one. Very interesting indeed.
Thanks Danielle. I had actually found that page at some point previously too. It's just that people with denialist-fever don't seem to recognise the difference between a smart science website like scepticalscience, and the "other" kind of information (you know - bollocks). I guess any hope that denial types will give credence to any source which is actually reliable, even the most well-recognised bodies like IPCC, or NASA is probably in vain anyway.
Why is it that conspiracy types always find it much easier to believe the least-likely explanations? Are their brains wired backwards?Dunno bout you guys, but this kind of stuff drives me crazy. I'm doubtless far from the first to note that it is very much like dealing with fundy creationist ID types. They have this absolutely diabolical ability to obfuscate and deny and just generally mangle the science. And they always do it at moments when it's not convenient to bring up a webpage showing the actual facts, so I'm left um'ing and ah'ing, and desperately trying to remember names and numbers. Aargh.
-
I guess any hope that denial types will give credence to any source which is actually reliable, even the most well-recognised bodies like IPCC, or NASA is probably in vain anyway.
I have a Very Republican Cousin in the USA who forwards me thousands of ridiculous emails containing the talking points of the week - all the Obama birther conspiracy theories, yadda yadda, you know the drill. I'll always Snopes him, and he got so annoyed by this that he actually tried to argue that Snopes was founded to 'make money' and so it therefore had a 'secret agenda' to be pro-liberal. Or something.
In other words, my theory is that you won't be thanked for showing denial types anything which uses Actual Facts to construct Actual Arguments. Most people really resent it, but I can't work out quite why...
-
LOL. Ah well, nice to know it's not just me. Nice also to have oasis's (oasii?) like PA where sense is actually spoken more often than not. Such forums seem to be few and far between these days.
You're right of course - showing people where they are wrong has never been popular.My problem is that I have trouble letting bullshit go by without calling it. Maybe I should just let go, and drift into a warm, calming haze of conspiracy theories, junk science, and right-wing politics.
Hey - maybe then my calls would be welcome on talkback radio!Maybe the trend for denial will come full circle, and we'll start seeing a fashion for "denier denial" becoming popular. Kind of a "too smart to be a denier type of thing."
Too much to hope for? -
You're right of course - showing people where they are wrong has never been popular.
Witness the vicious responses to Giovanni's blog post about Richard Gage and the 9/11 truthers.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.