If the future is junk science-based-totalitarianism, you can maybe understand our concerns.
“Over the years, four broad strategies have been pursued by green groups and environmentalists: polite engagement, bemused mockery, refusal to engage, and all-out attack. All four strategies have been tried and tested to near-destruction with varying degrees of success”… the most important question for businesses to ask of climate sceptics, what makes you hate the future so much? [BusinessGreen.com]
Tyndall, Arrhenius, Plass, Callendar, others, all promoted AGW but were debunked by “establishment” science.
This junk science took on a new dimension (or a Zombie like afterlife impossible to kill because it was already dead) as a Liberal Democrat platform.
There is nothing to “debunk” anymore, but how can a “liberal party platform” be eliminated? It can’t, there is nothing anybody can do
Thank you. It’s definitely a sore nerve at this point. I’ll try and tone it down in the future.
My apologies for touching what is obviously a sore nerve. The intended thrust of my comment was to agree with you while pointing out that their primary motive/belief has nothing whatsoever to do with climate (or any other) science.
Your response is well taken, and I agree that semantics are the ultimate in useless discussion. I thought only to get to the heart of that group’s motivations, not to limit your ability to discuss them in terms you thought appropriate.
Good point.
Back to the semantics: We fear there will be a totalitarian future living in the stone age we image those saving the planet from us evil human beings (themselves excluded) will create if we, those who are correct in our belief and have no political motivations, can not stop, thus allowing those of use on this side of the issue to create our own utopian (or not half bad) future in place of the dark one we imagine we will get.
(apologies to caryboyce for the rant–your comment was really good.)
I am really tired of trying “not to give anyone credence” by the name I call something. I am very tired of typing in “the people who follow the doctrine originally put forth as theory by Carl Sagan, usurped by James Hansen, risen to life by Al Gore and kept alive by the current politically motived populace”. Unless we are going to start using numbers to designate positions, and that has it’s problems with order because some will call one the best number, some ten etc. I suppose I could create a computer key that types in the “correct” description, but then someone will argue with the timeline or the terms. There is a point at which semantics is just meaningless quibbling and we have to give up. Also, I should not call “skeptics” skeptics because they are really just doing what scientists do and calling them skeptics gives the “people who follow….” an advantage. I do enough of this avoiding language blog owners snip or moderate out, and we are not talking profanity. (It is frustrating on some blogs trying to discuss anything of substance when you can’t use the “d” word, the “k” word, the “g” word, etc, etc…….
Calling them “Warmists” gives them credence they do not deserve, by implying that they sit on one side of a debateable issue; if they feel they can gain power by being “Coldists” they will swap names in a heartbeat (as they have before), then trumpet their “New Position” to the four corners of creation.
And yes. I for one am highly concerned about a future molded in their image.
I’m not sure I really hate the future since I’ve never meet it.
Skeptics fear the future only if Warmists are not stopped.
I deny the cost/benefit analysis of any form of ‘green’ energy is positive. There i said it. I am a denier.
The ninth paragraph begins with this sentence, “Significantly, having realised that they cannot win the central argument on whether manmade climate change is happening (after all people can see the evidence of their own eyes, even if they are uncertain about the precise cause of changing climatic patterns), they have developed a more sophisticated position centred on the twin arguments that climate change impacts can be adapted to and that technologies designed to reduce emissions are either ineffective or too expensive.”
That sentence tells me that there is no reason to read the rest of the article, because he has dismissed the primary point of contention, that there is no evidence that carbon dioxide drives climate, from the discussion. The remainder of the article discusses and purports to find fault with arguments on the periphery of the debate, such as the ultimate usefulness of windmills and solar power. Those arguments are not part of the climate change debate, they are a separate subject that should be debated independently of the climate issues.
In effect, Murray has refused to discuss the primary issue and has set up a list of straw men and superficial arguments that he attributes to deniers.
Climate skeptics — we love the future. We believe weather and climate will be about normal, that cheap energy is a key to relieving poverty, and that exposing the falseness of so much of the “environmental” movement may help defeat it.
Who shows a hatred of the future? How about those whose plans will make that future bleak?
I think Delingpole handed it to them in a gift box with ribbons.
http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Obamaland-Have-Future-Doesnt/dp/1596985887
‘Hating the future’ is the new catchphrase for people who’ve noticed that ‘anti-science’ is senseless and over-used.