Yes, all of these are a sign that the belief is religious, not scientific or rational.
13 thoughts on “How To Know If You Can Have A Conversation About Climate”
Comments are closed.
Yes, all of these are a sign that the belief is religious, not scientific or rational.
Comments are closed.
This article is either
a) a typical religious service, or
b) it is self-refuting, if you accept the premise that anything new & interesting worth reading about is also worth talking about.
The author says don’t talk to people if they don’t know five points about the climate [call them
A, B, C, D, and E] and then spends time explaining A through E.
Who is the intended audience for this article?
If someone already knows A – E, they won’t want to read it. Unless perhaps, it is a religious service, where you hear the same stuff you already heard many times before, but it is repeated for emphasis and comfort.
If someone doesn’t already know A – E, I’m sure they’ll find these arguments very interesting. I bet they’ll find them just the sort of thing that would be the subject of an interesting conversation. The author says “Don’t talk to people who find A – E novel”, so I can’t imagine why he thinks it is worth writing an article for them. I think he didn’t. I think he wrote the article so that he could preach to converted. Well, that’s nice if you are believer in climate religion.
Bob, quick question. What was the climate like during past interglacial periods?
Bob, and even quicker question — what is your general geographic locale? Where you live, what is an average monthly electric use, and you don’t have to disclose your own, what do you consider an electric use, before taking into account a solar panel, of a person who is serious about their carbon footprint?
Where I live, this information is readily available from our local power company, both community averages along with street-address look-up of individual household electric consumption.
Bob-1 writes:
“The author says don’t talk to people if they don’t know five points about the climate [call them
A, B, C, D, and E] and then spends time explaining A through E.”
I don’t think that’s what the author is saying. I think the author is saying:
“If the person gives THESE answers to A-E you can have a useful discussion/debate. But that if the person gives THOSE answers then don’t waste your time.”
> Who is the intended audience for this article?
People who want to have a rational discussion/debate about the notion that humans are massively changing the climate and/or if the earth “has a fever” (Gore).
It’s also for people who do not believe in human caused large climate change who finds themselves surrounded by people who believe in human caused climate change – and are proclaiming it – and are wondering if it’s worth getting involved in the discussion.
The author says don’t talk to people
No, he is just saying you aren’t likely to have a discussion with them.
If someone already knows A – E, they won’t want to read it. Unless perhaps, it is a religious service,
The list doesn’t embody any aspects of religion. The reason why people say AGW apocalypse believers follow a religion is because it has all the attributes that religions have and it functions like a religion.
Applying skeptical thought to prophets of doom claiming the end is neigh while we are living in the best climate humans have ever enjoyed while also having the highest standard of living isn’t religious, its called having a BS detector.
One way to know if you can have a conversation about climate:
If the person insists that it’s religion and not science.
Straw man.
Some statements about climate are scientific, some (“denier,” “denialist,” etc.) are religious. Climate itself is neither.
Andrew, go back and parse your comment. I really don’t think what you said is what you meant to say.
The article pretty much states that if not taking the most pessimistic estimates of the environmental harm of CO2 emissions along with the most optimistic projections of technology or social changes for reducing those emissions gets someone screaming at you, “Denier, denier, do you get your money from Big Oil?”, you can have a meaningful discussion about the CO2 problem.
I would not have replied “Straw man”; I would reply “Object lesson in what the article is claiming.”
Rand, I also know that you stated that the goings on at Tesla are of little interest to you, but the TSLA Analysis and News forum of Seeking Alpha is another object lesson in the boundary between (in the case of Seeking Alpha, finance and investment) and religion. There are a lot of serious people who look at the precarious financials of Tesla, the botched “ramp” of the Model 3, and the increasingly goofy Tweets from the CEO of a public stock corporation subject to investment, labor, highway safety and workplace safety laws and claim the stock is “way overvalued”, an opinion that is countered with “you shorts (persons who make investments counting on the stock going down in price) are going to get squeezed (lose your money by rapid increases in the stock price” and “what kind of world do you want to leave your grandchildren (utterly irrelevant to the financial condition of Tesla and the market valuation of its stock).”
Tesla is just one of many companies either making or about to make electric cars, the electric car is just one of many mitigation technologies or social changes related to CO2 emissions, and mitigation is just one aspect to the question of human-caused climate change, but it is certainly applicable to the subject of the article on how Tesla boosters act like members of a religious cult.
Another example is the Tesla Semi. If the lithium ion battery either has or is about to have through near-term improvements the wherewithal to make substituting grid power and batteries for #2 Diesel fuel economically advantageous, we have an economically viable solution in hand to solve much of the storage problem holding solar and wind to no more than 30 percent of electric use, at best. But is the Tesla Semi “a thing”, or is it more wishful thinking in terms of the cost and longevity of its battery?
I think Andrew_W means what he posted but is being snarky. I think what he is claiming that if after a struggle session, a “climate-change believer” confessed that their position is religion and not science, then and only then could you talk to them.
You know, the author of the article is correct and Andrew_W has the correct understanding of this.
A lot of people use science like a shield but behind the science are people and people act according to their nature. Very little of the AGW apocalypse movement has anything to do with actual science. Most of it has to do with people, politics, and belief structures. Those three things provide endless disagreements, which is why “science” is turned into a deity that you can not question.
Fear mongers need a way to shut people up and enforce conformity, not in “science” but in politics and belief structures. This is why the insult denier even exists. The origins of that are pretty horrible and tell you all you need to know about the ethics and dedication to “science” of the people that use the term.
The troubling aspect is the refusal to admit uncertainties of predictions, data, and even the future itself, especially when considering past predictions and the geologic history of the planet. There is nothing out of the ordinary for the temperature fluctuations we see today.
It really is a brilliant scam though. Seize on the evolutionary fear of an uncertain future and promise you can change the climate with this one simple trick.