Hard News: Stupidity and ignorance have been raised to virtues
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Rob S, in reply to
Nah, we’ve been through this before:
Yeah I know it was just the perfection of the anagram that iced my cake.
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I dont think stupid and ignorant will ever be considered virtues. And other world leaders have displayed these qualities before, remember The Decider.
But it is becoming a norm to display said qualities without shame. Oh well.If I can steal a Jordan Peterson analogy,
These qualities have to live somewhere so they get boxed up with one's assumptions and that makes it OK, if there are a lot of people like that around who will follow another's lead.
Is that a slippery slope I see before them! -
Neil,
FiveThirtyEight has a sobering analysis of one of the main features of 2016 which has been somewhat overlooked.
Between 2012 and 2016 the number of US voters living and voting in what are essentially Dem or Rep enclaves jumped by 10% - as much in just 4 years as in the 20 years from 1992 to 2012. That's a dramatic demographic change which would have certainly made a difference to how Obama did in 2012 vs Hillary in 2016.
It also perhaps explains why the Republicans have stuck with Trump. They have locked in support in critical counties - critical in terms of the electoral college.
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Stamper Stamp, in reply to
No - just trying to shed a little light on the reality of "Global Warming". Here is a bit more for your information...... enjoy.
““…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”- IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer (2010)
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” — Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues and U.S. Senate Chamber temperature adjuster
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reality
Now there's a much abused word. Some use it to describe the world in which we all live. Others use it to describe what is going on inside their head. It gives undeserved legitimacy to one of those.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
The February 23, 2017 Petition sent to President Trump signed by Dr. Richard Lindzen and more than 300 eminent scientists, engineers and other qualified and knowledgeable experts requesting that the U.S. withdraw from the UNFCCC reflects yet another significant effort by hundreds of scientists and other experts to expose to our Government leadership and public the deeply flawed scientific foundation underlying the politics of global government driven climate alarmism.
Oh please. Perhaps you could read this.
So who is on the list? Who are these “qualified individuals” and “eminent scientists” who have suddenly scrambled to make their voices heard?
There are medical doctors, mystery men, coal executives, petroleum engineers, economists, and think tank members. Only a small handful could be considered even remotely “qualified” or “eminent” — but not in the field of climate science.
According to the list, there are people who are “interested in climate” and one resident of Sweden who is identified only as an “emailer who wished to sign the petition” which, judging by the quality of the rest of the list, is totally good enough.
Some signers have no affiliation or address whatsoever (please step forward, Roger Bee, Barry Beetham, Geoffrey Billard, David Boothby, Claude Brasseur, Simon Breeze, Ray Cullen, Joan Gorner, Kurt Granberg and at least a dozen other mystery people, whoever you are).
Dozens of people on Lindzen’s list seem to act like central casting for these PR stunts, lending their names to many “open letters” and petitions over the years.
You're not being a bold, independent thinker by repeating this tosh – you're just being a dupe who can't even google.
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John Farrell, in reply to
So - which fake news blog did you get your quote from? Here is the original:
https://www.nzz.ch/klimapolitik_verteilt_das_weltvermoegen_neu-1.8373227
Google will translate it for you.
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Hiya Stamper. Can you show us the source for these quotes? I'm assuming you picked them up from the same source, but sources if you've done more than parrot-work.
Try applying these principles and get back to us. -
Russell Brown, in reply to
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
Okay, I'll start. This is part of a bunch of "quotes" that regularly appear on climate denial sites, sometimes attributed to Stewart speaking to the editorial board of the Calgary Herald in 1998. Best guess seems to be that the second part of the quote was uttered separately to the first part.
This column from the Financial Post at the time treats the two as separate statements
'No matter if the science is all phony,' she said, 'there are collateral environmental benefits.'
She did not believe the science was "phony", but pointed out there were other benefits to addressing the issue. Which is true.
But what bearing does a manipulated quote from a briefing given by a former minister nearly 20 years ago have anyway? Answer: none. The quote's endless repetition is purely in service of a conspiracy theory.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
““…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”- IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer (2010)
This one is a translation from an interview Edenhofer gave in German, roughly translated here by Google:
The new thing about your proposal for a global deal is the emphasis on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid for development aid at alms.
This will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If the per capita of the population happens, then Africa is the big winner, and a lot of money goes there. This has enormous implications for development policy. And the question as to how these countries can deal with so much money at all makes sense.
All this no longer sounds like the climate policy we know.
Basically, it is a big mistake to discuss climate politics separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancún at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conventions since the Second World War. Why? Because we still have 11,000 gigatonnes of carbon in our coal reserves - and we can only deposit 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree goal. 11,000 to 400 - there is no way around that a large part of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.
In fact, this is an expropriation of the countries with the mineral resources. This leads to a completely different development from that which has hitherto been initiated with development policy.
First of all, we have expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one has to say clearly: We are de facto distributing world wealth through climate policy. That the owners of coal and oil are not enthusiastic about it, is obvious. One has to make the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy, with problems like forest extinction or ozone hole.
He's basically saying (in 2010) that you can't neatly cordon off climate change action, because it has economic development implications. It's an interesting point, but hardly proves Stamper's conspiracy theory.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” — Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues and U.S. Senate Chamber temperature adjuster
Another one from the silly Forbes column that these guys endlessly cut and paste.
Full quote (it’s interesting to see what words were culled from it) from Wirth, speaking in 1993, as far as I can tell, and quoted in the book Science Under Siege:
"What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the
global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental
policy."Perfectly sound point: energy efficiency is just the right thing to do anyway – not least in an economic sense. Wirth was chairman of the Alliance to Save Energy at the time. Of course, we know a lot more about climate change than we did in 1993.
The idea that all the people quoted above inadvertently blurted out some secret truth about the real climate change agenda is just bollocks.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
just trying to shed a little light on the reality of "Global Warming".
Personally, when I want a little light shed on the reality of global waming, I ask a climate scientist. I'm afraid I don't really expect huge amounts of illumination from an anonymous commentator on publicaddress.
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A Google search for "I merely want to shed light on" will provide little genuine illumination. It is worth remembering that shed light (on) can be read in the sense of ‘remove illumination’ as well as the usual interpretation of ‘provide illumination’ on a topic. It all depends on your perspective.
Similarly, casting (a) light (on) can refer to ‘projecting a bias’. -
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
“Shedding light” is another phrase that is its own opposite.
I'm not convinced that it is that oxymoronic...
The use of 'shedding' in this context is (I think) more about 'throwing' or 'casting'...
...ie: where the light falls, not fails...But of course not everyone will 'cleave' to this!
:- ) -
Light banter
not that oxymoronic
True; I have corrected that overstatement accordingly.
But there’s similar play in most of the metaphors we use for light.
Compare a “shed load” = a load left behind – whether on the road by accident, or in a large purpose-built storage facility (for an absolute shedload of stuff).
A “thrown shoe” or “cast shoe” similarly is one lost (though possibly also one freshly made, depending whether we're working with clay or metal). And of course “cast” can also be a particular shade, or viewed in light of a certain colour, hence the “bias” reading. -
She'd be right, mate...
English, who'd want to learn it, eh?
;- ) -
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