New Post at HotWhopper. Sou expresses her displeasure with the language of a commonly used disclaimer and the timing of it.
WattsUpWithThat post: People Starting To Ask About Motive For Massive IPCC Deception
HotWhopper Reply from Wednesday, November 26, 2014 [archived]: Anthony Watts tries for one foot in the Hitler camp and one foot out
The comments are open…there’s no moderation, except for comments with 3 or more links. There is a new moderation policy in place.
Please refrain from ad hominem comments. I realize that will be difficult for many people, especially if you’ve just returned from Hot Whopper. But try; ad homs hurt your arguments.
More On Miriam O'Brien's HotWhopper 
Sou’s post includes: “Most certainly he [Anthony] doesn’t think it’s necessary to remove the article.”
Imagine her uproar if Anthony had removed the article.
[When reading comments on this thread by wuwt.fan.4.6.years, keep in mind my post My Temporary Pseudonym wuwt.fan.4.6.years – A Little Deception Went a Long Way.]
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And Sou complains about the time (3 hours) it took Anthony to add the disclaimer. Apparently she has forgotten that Anthony has a business to run…and that he has a life outside of blogging.
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One more detail: If Miriam was so offended by Tim Ball’s opinion, why did she wait for 2 days to write a post about it? She doesn’t wait to express her opinion.
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wuwt.fan.4.6yrs, referring to your first and third comments, one might suspect that Miriam waited to see what Anthony would do before she expressed her displeasure either way.
BTW, I thoroughly enjoy how so much of Miriam’s posts and comments are filled with her speculations about the intentions of others, when in reality she has no idea why people do what they do. Miriam O’Brien has misinformed herself for so long, even Miriam believes Miriam’s misinformation.
I often imagine her saying, “Yeah, that’s the ticket,” recalling SNL character Tommy Flanagan:
https://screen.yahoo.com/jon-lovitz-tommy-flanagan-oliver-000000619.html
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Hey, this is great. Ball was always a bozo, but this one is superb: tricking Watts into Godwinning himself and making Watts look an even bigger bozo. And the way it trolls out the ranters in the WUWT comments is even better.
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“His audience these days are more like Tim Ball than your average lukewarmer. Anthony can’t afford to alienate them.”
I appreciated being compared to Dr. Tim Ball. It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling that I’m probably on the right track. Dr. Ball’s commentary on the “big lie” is perfect for illustration.
George Orwell did likewise in “1984”, where the Big Lie was a (probably) fictional person named Goldstein about whom is a daily Two Minute Hate; and “animal farm”, about which the Big Lie was “equality” when in fact the pigs were “more equal”.
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William Connolley, you’re correct about one thing. This is great stuff because it allows us to resurrect the boys at SkepticalScience portraying themselves as Nazis. Remember these?
Dana Nuccitelli as HerrTankBoy?
Dana Nuccitelli as HerrTankBoy2?
Dana Nuccitelli as Herr Sccoter Boy
Dana Nuccitelli as Herr Sccoter Boy 2
And John Cook as Herr Cook:
Thanks for stopping by, William. I’ve been waiting for an excuse and you provided it.
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Connolley,
Is it a Godwin if the conversation starts by invoking Hitler?
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Tim Ball is spot on. Our supreme leader, Obama, is now influencing foreign scientists with is propaganda: http://tonyhellerakastevengoddardisnotasociopath.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/canadian-scientists-now-under-the-influence-of-obama/
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tonyhellerexposed, I laugh every time I see one of your comments at HotWhopper. If Sou only knew.
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This was a great effort by our favourite internet coward-bully, Anthony Watts.
Hitler, how original!
And the comments!. Just priceless.
‘Skepticism’ in all its glory.
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All — I am not “Michael”.
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Michael 2, we understand.
Cheers.
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Tim Ball affirmatively quotes Adolf Hitler. He thinks what Hitler wrote about Jewish bankers was true for the alleged large-scale conspiracy behind “The Big Lie”, in this case supposedly AGW.
Tim Ball agrees with Hitler’s “explanations”, and the vast majority of the commenters replying to the article at WUWT agrees with Tim Ball.
What does Ball’s article and the response of the “skeptic” crowd to it tell us? Anything about AGW, climate science or climate scientists? Or something else?
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To quote Ball:
“. First, you have to explain the scientific method and the hypothesis they tried to prove, instead of the proper method of disproving it. Then you must identify the fundamental scientific flaws, in a way people understand. Third, you must anticipate the next question, because, as people grasp what is wrong and what was done, by understanding the first two stages, they inevitably ask the basic question skeptics have not answered effectively. Who did it and what was the motive?”
In Ball’s case we can actually go and read his attempt to do all of those things in the Slaying the Sky Dragon book which he helped publish and edit. What do we find? Science? Facts? Compelling reasoned arguments? No.
What we find is stuff so off the charts that even on WUWT it is used as a benchmark of nonesense.
So where is the ‘Big Lie’? The nature of the Big Lie is that it is necessarily easy to show that it is false. The strategy of the Big Lie doesn’t rest on proof or evidence (and certainly not on IPCC style documents). The Big Lie is something that is manifestly false which it is nevertheless difficult to persuade people that it is false. The Big Lie rests on social pressure. The Big Lie rests on bullying. In 1984 Orwell demonstrates it with 2+2=5.
So what is the Big Lie in the climate change debate?
It comes in three parts:
* The lie that CO2 is NOT a greenhouse gas
* The lie that human industrial activity has NOT led to a significant rise in CO2
* The lie that continued increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gas do NOT pose an economic and social risk to our societies
Ball’s Sky Dragon book is a clear example of the Big Lie. Pretend the Sun is made of Iron or that thermodynamics is wrong or some variation on government conspiracy theories.
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Actually, Tim Balls doesn’t quote from a rant Hitlers against Jewish bankers. He affirmatively quotes from a rant against “The Jews” in general. I just have double checked it. Regardless, it’s an openly anti-semitic quote, which is used by Ball.
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Jan Perlwitz says “What does Ball’s article and the response of the skeptic crowd to it tell us?”
It depends on how many of you are in there. Your question is strange. You cannot know what it tells anyone else; you can know only what it tells you. But you do not seem to know what it tells you and so you seek to know what everyone else is told by it.
But there is no “us”.
What this article tells me is Dr. Ball believes, or is exploring the idea of, an actual conspiracy, a “big lie”, hidden or cloaked by many small lies. I can spend days and years peeling back the little lies which slow down the process of finding truth. Truth isusually found out, but all that is needed is to slow the process.
That seems to be what the article is suggesting. It differs slightly from my own beliefs; which are that several unrelated agendas are overlapped and find common ground in AGW advocacy. Earth Firsters get to return to pre-industrial society. Communists get to destroy capitalism. Warmists get to cool the earth. So, for a while, they will march hand-in-hand.
Skeptics, meanwhile, are an extremely diverse lot ranging from outright “deniers” to cautious, scientifically literate persons that are simply not going to leap off a cliff because you said it was the smart thing to do, to libertarians that probably agree with AGW theories but are unwilling to enslave themselves to a world government that already exists but is a bit underpowered right now.
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Folks over on ATTP don’t understand, believing I am the one writing offensive commentary about the namesake of this blog. I am civil and try to understand others, although once I believe I understand someone’s motivation and conclude there is no hope of friendly conversation I will still not be uncivil but rather minimize interactions with that someone.
A religious parallel is if I am having an argument with a Catholic or Seventh Day Adventist — we can argue pretty much anything with small but real possibility of making small adjustments in understanding. But if I argued with the Pope, there is not and cannot be any adjustment in his point of view. He is the standard bearer for a religious philosophy.
The situation is not symmetrical. Warmists have “cast a die”, staked out a position; skeptics by definition have not staked out a position (not, that is, collectively) and are merely “skeptical” of claims.
The implication, in this context, is that a skeptics can and will argue freely and might well change his understanding of things. I certainly have changed some important ideas in the past couple of days playing around with an infrared remote-reading thermometer.
Of course, deniers do exist, the same kind of thing as a warmist but opposite polarity.
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Michael 2 wrote:
So, you say that the interpretation of the content of Ball’s article (or of any written text or statement?) was totally arbitrary. All interpretations and their opposite were equally valid. Consequently, there aren’t any true or false statements then, anyone could ever make.
Non sequitur. It was a rhetorical question. I know what Ball’s affirmative quotation from an openly anti-Semitic rant by Hitler against “The Jews”, because Ball believes it provided a valid explanation for the workings of the supposed “Big Lie” AGW, and the strong agreement of the “skeptic” crowd with this “explanation” tells me about the state of mind of Ball, Watts, and the “skeptic” crowd that commented and voted up the article over there at Watts’ blog.
Certainly not between you and me. As much is already clear.
I see. A disagreement with Ball regarding some nuances.
It’s still an “explanation” that is governed by delusion, paranoia, and conspiracy ideation.
Political or ideological arguments can’t refute what has been found by science.
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Jan Perlwitz writes:
“So, you say that the interpretation of the content of Ball’s article (or of any written text or statement?) was totally arbitrary.”
About 70 percent arbitrary, but even that is an arbitrary guess. Accuracy is increased where culture and gender are shared, decreasing to almost zero when cultural references are not shared. It is still English but communication is almost nonexistent. An interesting book on this topic is “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” But the ideas pertain also to the 16 types of the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator. An ESFJ has essentially no hope of communicating with an INTP, his exact opposite in all four categories. The reference points are not shared. Motivations are not shared. Feelings are not shared. Thoughts are not shared.
Warmists are generally “F” on the Myers-Brigg, skeptics usually a “T” (IMO, naturally). It is doomed from the very beginning. “T” types don’t care what you feel about a thing because they don’t know or care what they feel themselves. F types care a lot, but are sloppy with facts, claims and projections — all of which sabotage their credibility with “T” types for whom facts are a religion. You may *think* you have facts, but that is an illusion created by the weaker “T” of an “F” personality type. If you didn’t personally measure it, you have faith in whoever did measure it, and how is that any different than my faith or beliefs?
Accuracy is also increased by using diverse ways of presenting the same idea.
“All interpretations and their opposite were equally valid.”
Of course. To make any interpretation invalid requires a judge, and only the author knows for sure what he meant.
“Consequently, there aren’t any true or false statements then, anyone could ever make.”
That is essentially correct here on the internet. All you can make are claims, and everyone else will believe or disbelieve your claims. It is a strange phenomenon that the “consensus” exists at all, millions of people (or so I am told) believe on mere assertion and willing to spend billions of dollars without a shred of personal proof of any claim.
“It was a rhetorical question”
I answer them anyway. Use rhetorical questions sparingly around me.
“(me) But there is no “us”. (you) Certainly not between you and me. As much is already clear.”
That’s progress! Opinions about which you are willing to take personal responsibility. Your opinions, my opinions, no “we, no “us”.
“It’s still an explanation that is governed by delusion, paranoia, and conspiracy ideation.”
Like all denialism is funded by Koch Brothers. Plenty of that paint to brush on everyone.
“Political or ideological arguments can’t refute what has been found by science.”
Strawman argument. Science is not refuted, but not much science has been presented. Himalayan glaciers melted gone by 2035 is not science, it is a CLAIM. Claims can be refuted.
A fact would be something like “carbon dioxide at a partial pressure of 0.05 atmosphere will absorb infrared radiation primarily in the wavelengths from 4 to 6 micron, converting it to heat energy which is subsequently imparted to adjacent molecules or re-radiated as another infrared photon.” This could be quantified with mean path length of a photon before it is intercepted again, which is relevant because at 1 atmosphere collisions dominate,not re-radiation, but at top of atmosphere radiation dominates.
So you see, I know quite a bit about “the science” and I am still not willing to turn off all automobiles and power plants.
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