Articles Tagged "Russell Cook"

Is there any issue more dependent on widespread lapses in critical thinking than the idea of man-caused global warming?

Nothing wrecks an argument faster than a question revealing a gaping hole in that argument's fundamental premise. Notice the abundantly obvious derailment in this example:

"We need to do something about the proliferation of ghosts causing an unprecedented number of people to have nightmares lately. This problem leads to widespread sleeplessness, which in turn leads to a downturn in work productivity and overall economic hardship, and you are a cold-hearted capitalist pig if you deny the need for workers to be healthy."

Any critical thinker will yell, "What?! Prove ghosts exist before you start calling me names!"

Propagandists behind the idea of man-caused global warming continually frame it as a problem to be solved, not questioned. For the briefest time earlier this spring, they must have been proud to see it portrayed as settled science during a major league baseball game, when announcer Tim McCarver said he believed climactic changes result in thinner air, thus “balls are carrying much better now than I remember.”

McCarver’s outlandish claim quickly blew up because baseball stats can be checked so easily. Home run totals have declined since 2000.

The mainstream media gets away with many other tougher-to-see faults because most people don’t know much about climate science. Smart-sounding scientists and reporters are saying our CO2 emissions are worsening the climate, who are we to question them?

That is precisely what the propagandists fear the most: the public must never see crippling faults in narratives about any facet of the issue. If doubt gets out of control, it’s no less deadly than the loss of confidence that implodes any ponzi scheme. Here, the issue is kept afloat not by infusions of cash, but with ceaseless unquestioned media reports supporting the issue and about allegedly corrupt skeptic scientists.

Ocean acidification caused by CO2 absorption? A melting Arctic, drowning polar bears? Unprecedented extreme weather? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is beyond reproach?

For those who missed this explosive mini-controversy from last week, the Heartland Institute, a think tank publishing lengthy reports contradicting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about man-caused global warming, paid for the placement of an electronic billboard in Chicago that repeated a notorious criminal's belief in global warming. A huge outpouring of criticism about the billboard prompted Heartland to pull it.

It was illustrating absurdity with absurdity that backfired because global warming alarmists weren't put into a defensive position of explaining why the issue is on the verge of total collapse. As Rush Limbaugh noted recently, "you never descend to the level of your opponent or they win."

The billboard clearly did not advance the skeptic position, but it at least illustrates how the best defense is to go on the offense. As this opportunity was widely grabbed by alarmists to portray Heartland as daffy, corrupt, and politically motivated, it serves as one more example of how alarmists rely on shell games keep the public from fully comprehending the enormous faults in the idea of man-caused global warming.

Most of the news about the Heartland Institute "Fakegate" controversy centers around stolen documents and the warmist scientist who confessed to his role in the matter. But the scandal also opens a door to the curious history of the charge that skeptics are merely in the pay of fossil fuel interests, a recurring theme once again picked up in the Fakegate affair.

It is worthwhile remembering that the usage of "-gate" in such scandals is derived from the initial 1972 story of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. The story started out small, but it widened when questions about the burglary and its apparent motives were more thoroughly investigated.

Fakegate may offer a similar doorway into an elaborate scheme, more complex and nefarious than mere identity theft and fabrication of false documents.

In this case, the Wall Street Journal's 2/21/12 "Not-So-Vast Conspiracy" editorial opened the door ever so slightly about an otherwise unexplored older and bigger problem surrounding the entire global warming issue. Facts not mentioned in the editorial open it further.

Digging deeper into the smear of skeptic climate scientists.

Forget about the science of man-caused global warming for just a bit (it’s settled anyway). Skeptic scientists are corrupt. Don’t listen to them. Oh, for you reporters out there, no need to listen to them since they are corrupt, and the science is settled. Plus, dumber reporters already gave them too much equal time in the name of “journalistic balance”, a concept only applicable to situations where reasonable questions exist.

One more critical detail: Do not, under any circumstances, question anything in the prior paragraph. Nothing to see, move along, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

And there you have it, all of the books, movies, articles, and blogs pushing the idea of man-caused global warming are just extreme overkill on those three basic talking points: settled science / corrupt skeptics / media telling us only one side of the issue because there is no other legitimate side.

There is not one thing new about DeSmogBlog’s attack on the Heartland Institute; in fact, elements of it go all the way back to at least 1992, and one person has been involved in this throughout that entire stretch of time: anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan.

I don’t mean promoters of the issue comically spinning failed predictions for more frequent hurricanes and warmer snow-less winters into covering any hot/cold/wet/dry extremes. Or Al Gore’s Texas-sized carbon footprint undermining demands for ours to to be minuscule. Sure, the IPCC also has appearance problems as a supposedly ‘unbiased’ organization, caught red-handed with assessments authored by people in environmentalist groups, and its own “ClimateGate” scientists behaving badly doesn’t help, either.

We have an arguably more far reaching problem – one that imperils the issue itself, and the mainstream media’s basic integrity.

This plain-sight problem is invisible when anyone accepts the issue as settled science. No hint of the problem is seen when the media moans about extreme weather and melting icecaps, while offering advice for sustainable lifestyles that use carbon-free renewable energy. Of course, no hint whatsoever is seen when armchair psychoanalysis is offered about public opinion, like when the NY Times’ David Brooks said, “..we have had a lot of information about global warming from Al Gore and many others. And, yet… support for a response to global warming has gone down”,

Remember when Governor Rick Perry burst into the presidential race? Arguably one of the things that made him quickly rise to the top was the answer he gave to a question about global warming at an August 17th event: "I think we're seeing almost weekly or even daily scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change."

Just a day later, the Washington Post described what Perry's campaign sent them as proof to back his statement:

... a link to something called the [Oregon] Petition Project, which claims to have collected the signatures of 31,487 "American scientists" on a petition that says there is "no convincing scientific evidence" that human release of greenhouse gasses will "cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the earth's climate".

Ordinary ponzi schemes pretending to be worthwhile investments collapse if they aren’t constantly infused with new money, and when anyone starts asking tough accounting questions. The theory of man-caused global warming is kept afloat only because a sizable portion of the public believes the issue is settled, and that our efforts to reduce greenhouse gases will stabilize the climate. Faith in the issue is continually propped up with new stories that no ‘legitimate’ critics exist. But what happens when the IPCC / Al Gore side can’t answer questions any better than Bernie Madoff?

Near the end of my first RedState piece on the smear of skeptic scientists, I noted how a Society of Environmental Journalists board director couldn’t be bothered to tell me which other journalists corroborated book author Ross Gelbspan’s accusation that skeptic climate scientists were being paid to deliberately mislead the public.

I’m still searching the internet to find anyone who independently corroborates that lone accusation. Hard scrutiny reveals the different accusations virtually all spiral right back to a small group of people associated with the enviro-activist group Ozone Action and Ross Gelbspan, circa early 1996. A scant few point back to a period of time in 1991, and I first detailed the enormous problems with those at Marc Morano’s Climate Depot, then here at RedState. Long story short: Gore praised Gelbspan for discovering 1991-era coal industry PR campaign memos supposedly proving the corruption accusation, but Gore had the memos in his Senate office years before Gelbspan. Houston, we have a problem….

Click source to read FULL report from Russell Cook

Click source to read FULL report from Russell Cook