Climate Change Denial Redux

I love the graphic, above. It’s entitled, Politicians Debating Climate Change.

Someone I’ve admired for a while posted the following piece online:

Those 11,000 “scientists” warning about an impending “climate emergency” are just “11,000 random people,” investigation reveals.

In truth, these 11,000 “scientists” are actually just 11,000 ordinary people who were duped into believing that cow farts are destroying the planet, and subsequently responded by signing their names on some website.

It wasn’t 11,000 scientists; it was 11,000 random people who put their names on a website. This was a total managed lie. There was no study. There were no scientists.

On the other hand, 31,500 climate and related fields scientists wrote and SIGNED their names to THEIR climate report to the UN’s IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change], which REFUTED the IPCC and AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming] fanatics.

There’s actually a scientific consensus against the notion of man-made climate change.

The 11, 000 scientists (note his quotations; they would be “air quotes” were he speaking) are those referenced in the image below from Google News:

I’m sure you’ve all heard of “arguing semantics.” You’ve probably heard the phrase that goes something like, “Well now you’re just arguing semantics.”

A semantic dispute is an argument over the meaning of words. I remember being told by someone that he’d megadosed vitamin C for his cold. Then I found out that he’d taken a thousand milligrams. I had to remind him that words have meanings and that a megadose of vitamin C starts around 10,000 milligrams, and is usually even greater, between 20,000 and 40,000 milligrams, and can be as high as 300,000 milligrams.

Words have meanings, and the first word this guy (who we quoted above) has problems with is scientist.

When we hear the word scientist, most of us internally think “research scientist.” The thing is, we’ve added that word research to get to that assumption. And that’s why we have the term research scientist. It exists for a reason.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines scientist thus:

a person learned in science and especially natural science : a scientific investigator

No matter what dictionary you look at, there is a distinction between a scientist and a research scientist (scientific investigator).

Thus first of all, a scientist is someone who has been trained in science.

Why would an article tell us about 11,000 scientists signing onto something? Why would it be important to point out they are scientists?

People who are trained in science, understand science, the scientific method, and have a basic grasp of statistics (although the study of statistics can kill the average college student; be afraid — be very afraid).

Thus our friend puts the quotations around the word scientist, and later calls them random people, showing us he knows neither the definition of scientist nor the definition of random.

Turning back to Merriam-Webster, we find random to be an adjective meaning:

• lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern
• made, done, or chosen at random

Obviously they had a definite plan and purpose in warning us about the dangers of climate change, but as to be chosen at random, well, that’s ridiculous. There was never a choice in who signed onto this warning.

” . . . duped into believing that cow farts are destroying the planet.”

This is called mockery. It gathers one’s base together to laugh at the “other side,” while not actually contributing to the argument at all because this is another “straw dog argument.”

Scientists know that cow farts are not destroying the planet. In fact, it’s cow burps that are producing more green house gasses than their farts, but that this is only a minor. Scientists know that cow gasses contribute only about 5.5% of green house gasses contributed to human activity. [Ref]

Now that’s what scientists do. They measure, they remeasure, and then they do the math. And other scientists (people trained in science) know this.

So he calls them ordinary people. I then scoured the Internet to find out where he got this and I found this clown. He’s a lot of fun.

On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, we took a close look at the Canadians signing off on the latest media scare claiming that 11,000 scientists agree that we face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless things change fast. Spoiler alert: There are a lot of non-scientists here, and one name really made me laugh.

Are there even 11,000 climate scientists in the world? Maybe, because it’s a great way to apply for government grants.

So let’s get into these highly credentialed names who want us saddled with carbon taxes, veganism and a reduction in population!

https://www.rebelnews.com/who_were_the_11_000_scientists_warning_of_untold_suffering_from_climate_change

Ezra Levant is no scientist. He’s a skeptic. And he’s a master of fallacious arguments.

He kicks it all off by creating two straw dogs.

---

For those of you who don’t know what a “straw dog argument” is, first you should know it goes by another name, the “straw man” fallacy, or unsound argument.

The straw dog (or man) is established by one side of a debate that they purposely set up to attack, while pretending that this is the argument of their opponent. In other words, their opponent makes a claim, but instead of attacking that claim, they create a really poor analogy that is easily attacked and ridiculed.

One side makes a claim, and the other side attacks a claim that they themselves created, rather than countering the original claim.

---

Straw dog 1: He refers to the scientists as climate scientists. The articles referred to never say they are climate scientists (and there’s a darn good reason for this that you’ll see later, near the bottom).

Straw dog 2: He says they want to saddle us with veganism and a reduction in population (which nobody has called for; hence they are straw dogs).

Then he talks about government grants. We’ll handle that one later on also.

I watched his video at that site for a bit and realized where he was going. Most of the people on the list were “trained in science” but were not “research scientists” although he kept focusing on the fact that they were not “climate scientists.”

These arguments are more juvenile than fallacious. They were made to get climate deniers to laugh at the science and build an even larger movement of morons against science. Again with the mockery.

So let’s get back to our original friend who claimed: “This was a total managed lie. There was no study. There were no scientists.”

They were all trained in science and there have been hundreds of studies, the bulk of which were signed onto by NASA, the leading organization warning us of the dangers of climate change (even the Pentagon has warned that climate change is our largest existential threat right now, and that wars will be set off because of it).

Now comes my favorite part.

“On the other hand, 31,500 climate and related fields scientists . . . . “

I really love this. “31,500 climate scientists” is what he’s implying.

That number is nearly a factor of 10 times greater than the number of actual climate scientists, living and dead.

The number is so small that Wikipedia lists them out. I counted them. There are 363 listed, living and dead. Wikipedia even lists out those who disagree with the current ideas in climate change, but don’t disagree entirely. Science is always open to discussion, disagreement, and debate.

But bullshit is bullshit and there are not 31,500 scientists who “SIGNED their names to THEIR climate report to the UN’s IPCC, which REFUTED the IPCC and AGW fanatics.”

And the ultimate bullshit (The Big Lie) is this: “There’s actually a scientific consensus against the notion of man-made climate change.”

This guy got it all, if you’ll excuse a phrase I learned in the army, backasswards.

However, this is what happens when you send a civilian to do a scientist’s job. Scientists check, and recheck, quantify, and report. And then to take it one step further (remember being taught how to check your answer in math?) they compare their findings to the findings of others.

They don’t cling to things simply because they’re easier to believe.

I’m not about to waste any more time on this nonsense. I’ll gladly send you to Snopes who did their homework on this exact subject: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/30000-scientists-reject-climate-change/.

This is a very political issue. After writing our article on climate change, I was called a libtard. Then on Twitter, I was trolled and here is how it went:

Since only people on the left understand science, I have been trying to get opinions on a couple of subjects. What are your views on vaccines or being born xx or xy? I’m curious what the side that believes in science has to say.

My response:

1. Science is apolitical; there is no left or right.
2. There is no “belief” in science, only evidence.
3. xx or xy has nothing to do with “view,” but statistics.
4. vaccines work.

To understand science requires an education, not a political affiliation.

Then along came another troll:

“And huge government grants…forgot that.”

I reminded her that the word huge is relative, and then I gave her the facts.

Last year, science grants were .6% of the federal budget, whereas the recent tax giveaway was 2.18% of the federal budget.

In other words, that last tax break could have paid for three and a half years of all science grants.

Climate change denial has a political foundation, not a scientific foundation.

It’s that simple.

Follow-Up

The original posting from my friend that we highlighted at the beginning of this article was posted on Facebook. Facebook has a new policy of taking down things that are not factual. They have bots that fact check, and they are taking things down while reminding the user that they’ve been bad, very bad.

Now at first glance this would appear to be a good thing, except that organizations like ours are educational, and we often post things that are horribly wrong (like the posting at the beginning of this page) to give people an example of unscientific or purely fictional concepts by which people have been taken in. We have done this quite often, but the Facebook bot doesn’t care that we are using these examples to teach people what bullshit looks like; the Facebook bot knows only we’ve posted “fake news.”

And Facebook has punished us by taking away our ability to collect donations on Facebook.

We’ve posted the following open letter both on Facebook and on Twitter.