The “Climategate” story
Told in all its glory
Of scientists’ conspiracy
To roast our democracy
But ask the tellers, ‘Proved it?’
And they say ‘We moved it’
While journos strive for on-site
A substitute for insight
Important note: This blog has now been supplanted by the Decoding SwiftHack blog. Check it out!
[cite as: S. Stepanovich. 2010. Lambert-Monckton debate: we were wrong. Intl. J. Inact., 3:8]
As you may know by now, Deltoid blogger Tim Lambert had a debate on global warming with climate inactivist Christopher Monckton. Since Lambert accepted Monckton’s debate invitation unconditionally, and since the debate was widely publicized — for example, by the Australian Climate ‘Science’ Coalition and Joanne Nova’s blog — thus according to our global warming debate flowchart, inactivists should either proclaim victory for themselves, or throw a hissy fit and then proclaim victory for themselves. According to the flowchart, they might keep quiet about the outcome of a debate, but only if the debate wasn’t publicized widely in the first place.
However, we were wrong. Both the AC’S'C and Joanne Nova did keep quiet about the debate outcome, even though they’d widely announced the debate beforehand. We apologize for the error.
[cite as: S. Stepanovich. 2010. Understanding the inactivist mind -- beyond seeking "common ground". Intl. J. Inact., 3:6--7]
Michael Tobis brings our attention to a bunch of wingnut comments on a certain blog. Robert Grumbine proposes this exercise:
Take any one of those comments. Preferably work your way through all of them. Rule out cheap answers like ‘they’re just delusional/ignorant/irrational/…’ as explanations. Presume that the commenters are honest and rational by their lights and in their frame of reference. What is that frame of reference? What premises are they working from?
Ian says:
The hard part is establishing any sort of common ground, because each “side” of the conversation feels as if the other is disconnected from reality.
Au contraire, I think it’s precisely the part that’s not “common ground” that’s interesting. After all, Sun Tzu said “Know thy enemy”; he didn’t say “Know just the traits of thy enemy that are similar to thy own”. If we are to have any hope of engaging the inactivists, or even countering their noise campaigns, we should really try to get to know everything we can about them, not just the aspects which are “common ground”.
So, I’ll try out Grumbine’s exercise. Take this comment:
The fact that political agenda can so sway “scientific data” as to cause a near hysterical movement ought to give all those who value truth severe pause.
Those against the concept of man-made global warming we demonized- my own flesh and blood brother called me a “flat-earther”. Any deviation from the mantra was ridiculed, and the idea of questioning authority was squelched.
This I find more frightening than any carbon capping legislation that has been talked about.
Wow, that was a load of fact-free drivel. But if we try to discern the ‘logic’ underlying this drivel, it’s easy to see that (more…)
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