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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (909938)	12/21/2015 1:00:10 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Recommended By TideGlider Respond to of 1572987

Not a Conspiracy Someone on the FaceBook Climate Change group asked a reasonable question: I'm trying to understand this big conspiracy everyone keeps hinting at, but never explains, now lets say AGW is a complete Hoax and Obama has somehow tricked the world to help him to trick americans to pay more taxes and put solar panels on their roof, now can someone explain how this evil conspiracy works, like who wins,who profits from this con, , what is the end game...? I thought my response might be of interest to readers here: "Conspiracy" is too simple. There are a variety of reasons why different people wildly exaggerate the implications of AGW. They include: Politicians in poor countries who want to use claims of harm to their countries to get rich governments to give them money. Politicians in rich countries who want arguments for subsidizing firms run by their supporters, passing regulations that give them power, collecting taxes, and a variety of other things. News media that want to get readers. "Global warming is going to flood New York City" is a better story than "Global warming has raised sea levels by eight inches over the past century and might raise them by another couple of feet by the end of this century." People who want to pretend to themselves and others that they are part of the intellectual elite, know important things that others deny. People who like imagining catastrophe. You see the same pattern on the other side of the political spectrum with survivalists, and more generally with collapse of civilization science fiction. The combined effect has been to convert positions on global warming from a scientific dispute to an identity marker for ideology. You can see the effect reading this group--people keep wandering away from climate questions to gun control or whether Obama is good or bad or other things linked to ideology. Once you have that linkage, there is strong pressure on either side to take more extreme positions. Believing that global warming is a problem marks you as a loyal member of the blue tribe. So believing that it is a really big problem marks you as a very loyal member, whereas suggesting that it might be a minor problem marks you as a possible traitor to tribal loyalty. Similarly on the other side. Doubting the catastrophic story is all very well--but it's a stronger signal of red tribe loyalty to claim that warming is a fraud due to doctored figures, or that you have a scientific proof that AGW is wrong, or ... . daviddfriedman.blogspot.com At 3:50 PM, December 17, 2015, Tibor said... Bravin: It is nigh impossible to argue with someone who is convinced that you have ulterior motives behind your arguments and so your arguments do not matter. But let's suppose that indeed David or other people arguing for the same position indeed do have ulterior motives...well, what does it change, really? If Mao or Hitler proved the Riemann's hypothesis it would still be a valid proof, the virtuousness or vileness of the author is irrelevant. One should address the arguments, show where they are wrong instead of playing psychologist. Now, it is true that if someone who has an axe to grind presents you with some data or something he claims to be a fact then you might want to double-check that. But an argument either works or does not, you can see it in its fullness and as long as it does not stand on data or stands on data which can be easily checked to be true or false, then there is no point in analysing the personality of the author (except for when you want to avoid addressing the arguments). I wonder where you get the "AGW-deniers" from - David's position is more or less "AGW is very likely real, probably not as big a problem as a lot of people make it and there is a chance it is not even on net negative". It is also clear that this is his opinion from all his posts about global warming. How is that "AGW-denial" unless you simply read what you want to read? daviddfriedman.blogspot.com