“We Only Have 500 Days Left to Avoid Climate Chaos!”

Cool!

I started a kerfuffle without really trying when I posted a random quip on Facebook.

If you distrust what the Administration told you about the military, why do you trust what they say about global warming?

There’s nothing particularly profound about tossing out a query that rotated into my email signature file. On the other hand, it does ask a profound question.

You can read the more than 100 comments here but I’ll summarize the discussion:

“Because they said so!”
“Oh no they didn’t and besides, they’re wrong!”
“Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

That’s the usual take on social media these days when a person who studied materials science, a cartoonist, an international banker, a retired chemist, and a couple of writers set themselves up as the experts on climate science. Or any other hot button issue.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
–Mark Twain

The solar deniers in this argument are quick to blame “the Internet” or “Faux News” or the “Koch Brothers” for any data that contradicts them. The irony that their proofs come from “the Internet” or “MSNBC” or “Tom Steyer” or the totally political IPCC aggregation committee apparently eludes them.

Once upon a time, I thought that nothing rivaled the misinformation spewed by global warming true believers and spinmeisters. Then I reported on the anti-GMO campaign. The way the Far Green consortium has distorted science makes Dr. Murari Lal look pure.

“We thought that if we can highlight [the fake ice melt data], it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action,” Dr. Lal told the Daily Mail.

In both cases, the purpose is to convince you, Dear Reader, to take up arms in the cause.

In both cases, the purpose is to keep the Green flowing. The green research dollars. The green investment dollars. The green tax dollars.

Science is not a Harris poll. It doesn’t matter a whit whether you believe in cold fusion or phrenology or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. It doesn’t matter if 71% or 51% or 0% of all mankind believe in global warming. 100% of scientists believed Aristotle who told them a heavy body falls to earth faster than a light one. One man didn’t. The Church later found him “vehemently suspect of heresy” for saying the sun didn’t rotate around the earth. He spent the last years of his life under house arrest.

The trouble with our liberal friends
is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just
that they know so much that isn’t so.
And they would force us to go along.
–Dick Harper paraphrasing Ronald Reagan paraphrasing Mark Twain

Want to to know why I distrust our liberal friends?

Because they deride faith but put their faith in all the fads their polls tell them to believe. Because they adhere to vaccination denials but don’t accept the things Galileo (and others) showed them data to support.

And because everyone jumped to defend their faith in the “settled science” in this thread but not one of them answered the original question.