Google gives you enough room, more or less, to fully convey the purpose/intentions of your blog in the title and description fields, but I'd like to reinforce one perhaps not-so-obvious goal of Whac-A-Troll (I'm a poet and apparently I don't recognize my personal capacity for clever rhyming) that you may or may not have gleaned from those explanations, and that you may or may not have seen at other climate hawk sites: plain language.
Sure, many climate blogs do an excellent job of translating
fairly complex scientific and statistical techniques into layman's terms, but what
they don't do is appreciate why that alone is not winning the battle in the court of
public opinion, and why we have no meaningful emission-reduction policies yet. Wonderfully-informative sites like Tamino,
Skeptical Science, HotWhopper, RealClimate, and so on, do the hard work of translating the
findings and implications of climate research into words everyone can understand,
and the denier trolls come along and "reward" such well-intentioned
toil by simply derailing the discussion with the standard
intellectually-dishonest tactics of cherry picking, nitpicking, Gish-galloping,
straw-manning, character assassinations, spamming, goalpost-relocating, pretending they weren't
schooled/corrected, etc., without an ounce of second thought or shame, and these
sites continue to take the high road in the face of this insufferable nonsense. Some, like the science subreddit, have begun
to ban them, to be sure, but that merely kicks the brimming can of denial down
the road to another site, if the trolls don't merely change their user names
and/or IPs and hang around the same place pulling the same crap. No matter what, these trolls manage to pop up
somewhere and repeat the spineless
process again, and again, and again.
I say the best strategy is to come down from the Ivory Tower,
and give them a dose of their own medicine, because, in a sense, they are the
glorious gift that keeps on giving, an intellectual punching bag that got
delivered to your doorstep for free. Why squander it, or throw it away (i.e.: ban
it)? Virtually
beat the living daylights out of it.
And don't be nice about it. Grab
them by the virtual throat and wring every last drop of stupid out of them. Call them idiots when they are being idiots,
while explaining to sensible people why
they are idiots (trust me, I at least understand how essential that last part
is :)...I'm not trying to be purely vindictive here). What else is there to do with people who are
obviously mentally-unhinged, or paid shills, or both? This is the approach that I believe will
shatter the public impression that there is still a scientific debate going on
over man-made climate change. And the
approach that has gotten me banned at more than a few climate hawk sites. Yup, you got it, torching denier trolls in
plain (and sometimes colorful) language has gotten me banned at pro-AGW
sites. This is how frustratingly namby-pamby
the defense of an undeniable scientific consensus over the most urgent issue
facing mankind can be at times.
And we wonder why we are losing the fight in the eyes of the
public. Gosh, maybe if we're nicer to shameless
trolls, or wish them away, their
behavior will improve, or they'll just up and decide to vanish from the countless sites available to them on the Internet on their own, right?
Ridiculous.
That's what I mean when I say "plain language." Not just simplifying the science and then taking the high road; the BS needs to get
jammed right back down denier throats with a few extra hot coals of reality
added in for good measure and to help improve failing memories.
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