Whac-A-Troll: Where climate change deniers are escorted back to their caves.
Man-made climate change is real, and the most urgent, known threat to our civilization. Mountains of scientific evidence say as much, and I have never seen a convincing argument to the contrary. Not one.
What makes me an authority? Nothing. I'm just an average Joe without an advanced degree (BS Comp. Sci.). However, here's what distinguishes me from denier trolls: I trust and understand scientific consensus. That's my big secret ;).
G'head, trolls, try to prove me wrong. And good luck.
Go ahead and click on that link above and read it, if you feel like having your brains leak out your ears. The blog whyevolutionistrue rightfully speculates on whether or not this is another Sokal-esque hoax. The Far or Regressive Left's political agenda has so thoroughly infiltrated academia, it is nearly impossible to distinguish reality from parody anymore, so who the hell knows? Poe's law strikes again.
If real, Thunderf00t can add another item to the list of things that feminism poisons.
And, yes, poison is exactly word I meant to use as well. Just read this troubling statement from the paper's conclusion:
Analysts and practitioners must recognize the ways in which more-than-scientific, non-Western, non-masculinist modes of knowledge, thinking, and action are marginalized.
Yeah, there's a great idea! When the cold, hard facts, and a consensus of thousands of scientists meets with furious resistance from climate change deniers, what you want to do is throw some "extra-scientific" nonsense like reading tea leaves, pap about female intuition, smoke tent visions, Orwellian feminist "Listen and Believe" propaganda, and who knows what else into the global warming advocacy works. Because that won't completely backfire or anything. I mean, it's just so hard to envision the usual suspects (Watts, Goddard, Limbaugh, etc.) jumping for joy at the chance to knock a few of those soft tosses out of Denier Park. They wouldn't at all seize on the opportunity to wave such studies around as examples of flawed, biased research. Nope, wouldn't happen. /sarcasm
Hoax or not, file this study with this curious pile of academic hogwash on "Carbon Fibre Masculinity".
FOR PREVENTING THE LESS IMPORTANT PEOPLE OF THE WORLD
FROM BECOMING A BURDEN ON THEIR LEADERS IN PARIS,
AND FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL TO POLICY
IT IS A MELANCHOLY OBJECT to those who travel this wondrous globe, when they see streets, buildings, and towns devastated by extreme weather events, crowded with families that include three, four, or six children, all in the same rags they wore before evacuation and importuning every passerby and news crew for rebuilding funds and assistance.
I think it is agreed by all parties that the prodigious number of climate change victims is in the present deplorable state of the global economy a very great additional grievance to our gravely concerned leaders in Paris; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making them sound and useful for the purposes of agreed policy, and to whatever indiscernible ends it is intended to serve, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the planet.
But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for those left homeless by devastating events; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the entirety of human breeders and consumers causing an ever-increasing challenge to the Earth's capacity to support them.
As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by the burning of fossil fuels for a, please excuse the term, solar year, with little other energy input; at most not above the value of average adult consumption or 20 barrels of oil annually, but it is while they are still minors that I propose to provide for them and the parents, who have chosen to burden the environs with their birth and rearing, in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon society, or wanting electricity and power for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the generation of same for many happy millions.
Fortunately, I need not delve into a lengthy elaboration of my numbers and calculations in order to defend my proposal, as others have already done the hard work and hammered out the logistics for us. We need only summon the moral fortitude necessary to conduct a lottery to determine who will or will not serve the greater good, and then put the, by now, well-known plan below into action.
Finally! An energy supply all of our leaders can get behind, and work into effective zero-emission policy without reservation or hesitation! One which simultaneously cuts and meets demands. And, surely, one that can still be provided at a handsome price to the rest of us free rangers lucky enough to have been exempted by the lottery, thereby satisfying the interests those who gathered in Paris recently always keep foremost in their thoughts.
Now, please note that if providing people with a familiar dreamland they can enjoy while powering our society contrasts with idealistic notions of fairness and humanity you hold dear, and maybe even triggers your moral outrage, I do have a fallback suggestion which provides a much simpler and—ahem—swifter resolution.
We toss the least productive society members into furnaces that generate electricity for the rest of us. Start with the deceased, then move on to prisoners, and ultimately make our way up to art history majors (thank you, Click and Clack). Now, it can be argued that the incineration of children and grown adults, alike, having required both above and below-ground energy inputs to reach their individual states of maturation, will still initially contribute to the imbalancing of the carbon cycle, but surely the benefits of reducing population in the long run will far outweigh the production of emissions in the short term.
I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal or financial interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my world, by enabling profits for the wealthy. I have no one by which I can propose to get a single penny by either farming their BTUs or selling them to a cogeneration facility; being unmarried, childless, and having every intention of staying just so.
A couple days ago, I left the following comment, which has yet to be approved, on a Suspicious0bservers video:
This is the graph image I linked to in the comment:
Now, there are only about 1,000 "sciency"-sounding, cherry-picked points in that video which have little or nothing to do with climate change, and certainly don't add up to the nonsensical conclusions that Ben Davidson, narrator and owner of the YouTube channel, draws. For instance, at this point in the video, he claims CO2 is NOT the main driver of the observed modern warming, and, instead, our planet's diminishing magnetosphere combined with high solar activity are the real climate change culprits, since, according to him, we had less protection from the Sun's radiation at the same time we witnessed temperatures rising after the Industrial Revolution. While it's true the magnetosphere has been and is weakening slightly, here's the problem with teaming it up with the Sun to make some new global warming dynamic supervillain duo: the magnetosphere prevents charged particles from reaching the Earth, not visible light and infrared energy—that is, the electromagnetic radiation which has interacted with greenhouse gases to cause the greenhouse effect historically and modern climate change more recently. In other words, a weakened magnetosphere may cause more intense auroras at the poles, or endanger satellites and electronics, but it won't let in more sunlight, brighten the daytime hours, and create a spike in the sunglasses industry. Is anyone anywhere complaining of global brightening? When the magnetosphere strengthens again, which it will, will days grow darker? NO!
Almost all of the Suspicious0bservers' videos are like this. A classic case of "Jaezuz, there's so much wrong here, where do I even begin?" So I thought I'd pick just one mistake, rather than frighten Ben into blocking a comment with a barrage of counterpoints (besides, my personal ethics are against flooding...yes, even when the target is a flood of misinformation), but it seems like Ben is a little too skittish to let even one strong challenge fly on his channel. Click on the link to the video above, toggle the comments filter to "Newest first", and I'm pretty sure you'll see my comment hasn't been approved yet.
I even went so far as to tweet at him yesterday to no avail:
I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that his opinion has...ahem...matured in three years, but he did tweet this as someone with an Atlantic City, NJ casino named for him immediately after Sandy wreaked its climate change-intensified havoc on the area.
Now, I'm a nobody, so of course he won't respond to me, but if enough people retweet it, who knows, maybe someone "important" (unlike yours truly) will have the guts to confront him about it. I have a feeling his response, whatever it might be, will be interesting. Even a typical politician-style dodge-and-weave evasion will tell us something about how the "Real Donald Trump", as his Twitter handle describes him, is or is not evolving as a candidate.
A few months back (over 5 to be more precise), a completely unnecessary bit of Twitter drama unfurled involving the cherry-picker in chief, Steven Goddard. Apparently, people complained that he was "abusing" or harassing climate scientists and his opponents via his tweets, and Twitter agreed, temporarily suspending his account. DailyKos derided Goddard's protests of the suspension here.
Now, all 3 of my blog readers know that I'm no fan of Goddard, and disagree with just about everything he says. That being said, you know what the WORST way to deal with deniers' scientific illiteracy is? To act like butthurt social justice warriors and claim that when they childishly call people "Nazis" and "fascists," it's abusive, harassing behavior worthy of censorship.
Yes, I just said "butthurt social justice warriors," and get used to it, because I'm beginning to believe the radical Left is becoming more of a threat to science than the usual suspects on the Right ever possibly could dream of being. Perhaps more on that in later posts.
Here's a snippet of the DailyKos' sarcastic take on Goddard's understandable reaction:
Goddard responded to Twitter's horrific injustice with a slew of posts, including one about "Green Shirt Fascists," where he begs readers to tell Twitter to "release" him as a "Political Prisoner at Twitmo," and another informing readers of his new URL (realclimatescience.com) because he expects "climate Nazis to get [him] blocked from Wordpress."
Which leads one to wonder, what does Goddard consider abuse, if not calling people fascists and Nazis? Apparently it's not though, since "The Nazis at Twitter" have since restored his account.
You know what's abusive, DailyKos? Censorship. How about we suspend your Twitter account for abusive support of censorship and mock you when you complain? Oh, it'll only be temporary, so buck up.
And, yes, as I've tweeted, I already understand that I'm way late in covering Twitter's draconian nonsense here.
