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OT: Skeptics vs Alarmist Cage Match unSpectacular!


billk

16-Dec-2009
3:06:34 PM

http://www.abc.net.au/bestof/#s2773123


evanbb

16-Dec-2009
3:31:32 PM

Gah! I just listened to the interview. Plimer is an absolute joke. I can't believe people keep talking to him. He did not answer one direct question in 24 minutes. It seems very clear to me he's a paid hack; he talks like a politician. Attacks the messenger, avoids questions and answers questions with questions. I can not believe anyone with any understanding of science can listen to the shiit that comes out of him and be filled with doubt.


IdratherbeclimbingM9

16-Dec-2009
3:36:13 PM

On 16/12/2009 evanbb wrote:
>Gah! I just listened to the interview. (snip) 24 minutes.

Like me, that is 24 minutes of your life that you won't get back.
;-)
The only thing it helped me with was identifying who not to listen to (re global warming), in the future!


billk

16-Dec-2009
3:51:25 PM

Ian Plimer is a geologist - a very good one by reputation - who got a second string to his bow by becoming an all-purpose defender of "sound science."

Creationists used to be his main targets.

He got quite into being a deliverer of soundbites in his battles with the creationists and perhaps that took over from make considered arguments against their positions. He is very much into the sound bite approach to attacking the climate change "conspirators."

Strange that many of his staunchest allies currently are probably creationists. Steven Fielding for one.


billk

16-Dec-2009
4:17:48 PM

Swine of the Times and TonyB where are you?


GravityHound

16-Dec-2009
5:56:26 PM

wow - just watched it. I know Plimer's reputation as a geologist precedes him but i reckon it is going only one way now in the scientific community. fail to understand how someone with his knowledge can carry on with so much crap. quite disappointing. just a frickin tool hogging the limelight.

Wendy

16-Dec-2009
9:22:43 PM

On 16/12/2009 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>On 16/12/2009 evanbb wrote:
>>Gah! I just listened to the interview. (snip) 24 minutes.
>
>Like me, that is 24 minutes of your life that you won't get back.
>;-)
>

Actually, I thought that was quite good entertainment for 24 minutes of my life. I laughed so hard I scared the cat off the couch.


IdratherbeclimbingM9

16-Dec-2009
9:25:40 PM

I could have done with a scare. Instead I found myself dozing off!

Wendy

17-Dec-2009
7:36:25 AM

Really? I nearly fell off the couch at the first "height of bad manners", then again at poor George calmly trying to talk rationally without have an apopleptic fit, and what was that classic line at the end, calling George a rude ignorant young man of some sort? Ian was all class!


evanbb

17-Dec-2009
8:14:04 AM

On 17/12/2009 Wendy wrote:
>Really? I nearly fell off the couch at the first "height of bad manners",
>then again at poor George calmly trying to talk rationally without have
>an apopleptic fit, and what was that classic line at the end, calling George
>a rude ignorant young man of some sort? Ian was all class!

It was 'For God's sake get some manners young man'. I was taking notes.


ambyeok

17-Dec-2009
11:28:57 AM

My hat goes off to Plimer, he is a genius. To claim the earth is flat, write a book about it, explain that photos from space prove the earth is flat, then withstand 24 minutes of questions without cracking... pure brilliance.

spicelab

17-Dec-2009
1:24:17 PM

It was good to hear George dissecting one of the skeptics (and obviously Plimer's) faves - the big government taxing conspiracy angle.

It's really disappointing that decent commentators and journalists etc don't get on the front foot more and trash these and other pathetic arguments, high-school conspiracy theories and the upside-down psychology peddled by the skeptics.

Because of this failure the skeptics have gotten to the point where much of their terminology (eg "alarmists", "doomsayers", "zealots" and the whole suite of religion analogies) goes by unchallenged when it is absolutely BEGGING to be deconstructed.

Considering their jargon is absolutely fundamental to their communication strategy and 'arguments' (without it, Swine and TonyB couldn't even string a sentence together and this thread would have stopped after one page) this failure is all the more galling.

Btw Evan - great blog piece, really incisive.


billk

17-Dec-2009
5:53:54 PM

More on Ian Plimer and the standard of his arguments and evidence:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/14/climate-change-sceptic-ian-plimer


billk

2-Feb-2010
12:02:48 PM

This would be hilarious, if it wasn't for the amount od traction nutters like this are getting:

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-sceptic-clouds-the-weather-issue-20100201-n8y3.html

"A NASA satellite that would have measured atmospheric carbon dioxide with unprecedented accuracy fell into the Indian Ocean in February last year.

NASA said the crash was ''extremely disappointing''. Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, dubbed the ''high priest of climate sceptics'', doubts the space agency meant it.

''Not greatly to my surprise - indeed I predicted it - the satellite crashed on take-off because the last thing they want is real world hard data,'' he told a climate sceptics' lunch in South Yarra yesterday.

NASA understood that getting the satellite into orbit would have demonstrated ''the whole darn thing'' - climate-change science - ''is nonsense''.

Bold claims are stock-in-trade for Lord Monckton, a hereditary peer and one-time adviser to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher who swung through Melbourne yesterday as part of a two-week national speaking tour.

He said he was the first to explain the theory of global warming on British television in the late 1980s; that the United Nations wanted to use climate change policy to create a world government; that today's environmentalists were just yesterday's communists in different clothing.

His biggest laugh at the first of his two Melbourne speeches came when he said describing environmentalists as ''green'' was a misnomer. ''I tend to call them the traffic-light tendency - greens too yellow to admit they're really red.''

His interests stretch beyond climate change. He makes the extraordinary claim, one that he admits sounds ''bonkers'', that he has also manufactured a cure to a long-term illness that attacked his endocrine system and patented the cure in conjunction with a British surgeon.

Though stressing it was in its early stages, he said the drug had had positive results treating HIV and multiple sclerosis. ''It also has been used to cure cases of colds, flu,'' he said."

TonyB

3-Feb-2010
11:03:48 AM

The fearless leader of the alarmists is in the news again. ClimateGate showed how the bunch of scammers at the CRU/IPCC operate. Now Pachauri, the railway engineer who heads up the IPCC, who has lied in court, has now lied about melting Himalyan glaciers to obtain a grant for his private company ( google "GlacierGate" ). He has also been very busy getting of late, getting his sex novel published ( no, I'm not kidding ).

IPCC's so called "peer reviewed" "science" has now been shown to include an article in a climbing mag, newspaper articles, and greenpeace alarmist rubbish. Funny how the alarmist "science" still hasn't been able to produce a single scap of evidence for AGW !

Who in their right mind would believe this bunch ?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/glaciergate-threatens-a-climate-change/story-e6frg6zo-1225822681922

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/30/gate-du-jour-un-climate-change-panel-based-claims-on-student-dissertation-and-magazine-article/#more-15858


evanbb

3-Feb-2010
11:09:38 AM

On 3/02/2010 TonyB wrote:
>The fearless leader of the alarmists is in the news again.

Oh how I laughed when I saw another contribution from TonyB here. Thanks for brightening a busy morning Tony.

Just a quicky. The CIA and the Insurance Industry both released reports this week on likely future impacts of climate change. Have you called them to let them know they're greviously mistaken? Maybe send a little pic of a submarine to help them along.

I also love the comments about 'so-called peer-review', followed up by a link to the Oz and a link to Watts Up with that? Just let me know if irony ever comes calling.


ajfclark

3-Feb-2010
11:18:48 AM

Speaking of conspiracies and such: The Lancet 'fully retracts' 1998 publication of study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease


billk

3-Feb-2010
2:33:41 PM

On 3/02/2010 ajfclark wrote:
>Speaking of conspiracies and such: The
>Lancet 'fully retracts' 1998 publication of study linking the measles,
>mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease

That was a genuine example of bad science which had an adverse effect on people's decisions about whether or not to immunize their kids. That research was scrutinized and shown to be unreliable. It's an example of the system working in the longer run.


ajfclark

3-Feb-2010
2:39:52 PM

On 3/02/2010 billk wrote:
>It's an example of the system working in the longer run.

I think it'll just set some of them off even more... *Dons his sceptic hat*

The co-authors and then the journal itself were pressured into recanting their research by big pharma. Look, they've destroyed the author totally! He can no longer practice medicine! etc

[Edit: I'm pretending to be a sceptic, the above paragraph has no basis in reality]


billk

3-Feb-2010
3:41:34 PM

On 3/02/2010 ajfclark wrote:
>On 3/02/2010 billk wrote:
>>It's an example of the system working in the longer run.
>
>I think it'll just set some of them off even more... *Dons his sceptic
>hat*
>
>The co-authors and then the journal itself were pressured into recanting
>their research by big pharma. Look, they've destroyed the author totally!
> He can no longer practice medicine! etc

OK I will retract my last claim and go and take a closer look at this.

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