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Beneath Contempt, or a sad lack in the sense of humour department

You lot just have no sense of humour at all!

It may not be a good idea on many levels but its funny to me especially in the rancour being exhibited here. It won’t change a single mind when it comes down to it, those who believe on AGW will just be outraged at being reminded that theirs is a faith based argument and those who doubt the AGW hypothesis will be unmoved because they think that the Warministas are all bonkers anyway. I suspect that Tanimo is outraged because this sort of thing is not amenable to obtuse statistical arguments and obfuscation.
Any way I will watch with joyous amusement as all here rage against the storm ………………
Cheers Comrades

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UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

The so-called “Heartland Institute” has not only decided to end their offensive billboard campaign, they now claim that it was just an “experiment” all along.

This provocative billboard was always intended to be an experiment. And after just 24 hours the results are in: It got people’s attention

Then they indulge in blaming the victim of their smear tactic.

In my opinion, their claim that it was always intended to be an experiment is a lie. In my opinion, their claims that global warming activists have sunk as low as they did, is a lie. In my opinion, they showed their true colors, which were so despicable even their own allies couldn’t stomach it.

In my opinion, the so-called “Heartland Institute” would have to elevate themselves by about a million light-years before they could even rise to the level of “beneath…

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By in AGW and climate change, AGW true believers, Bizzare stuff, Green Hypocrites, Humour, Media Matters, Popular Culture, The Green religion on .

13 Comments

  1. alan says:
    May 5, 2012 at 9:14 AM

    “Those who believe on AGW will just be outraged at being reminded that theirs is a faith based argument”

    More nonsense, perhaps you should rename the site from Sandpit to Palpable Nonsense.

    I have no opinion, because although I know I should, I can’t be stuffed doing the reading and whatever else is required to form that opinion.
    It’s pretty obvious though that something is not right.

    Anyway, it’s blatantly obvious that a good proportion(or more likely most of them) of the Nay Sayers are from the religious right.
    So they will be of the opinion that ‘god’ will take care of us regardless, so it’s not something we need worry about.
    Pell, Abbott, Minchin, Andrews, Abetz, etc, etc, etc
    Fruit cakes one and all.
    Is that not ‘faith based’?

    I am only referring to your comment about ‘faith based’, and nothing else.
    So tell me a bit more twaddle about believers and ‘faith based’; can’t wait!

  2. Iain Hall says:
    May 5, 2012 at 10:13 AM

    Alan

    I have no opinion, because although I know I should, I can’t be stuffed doing the reading and whatever else is required to form that opinion. It’s pretty obvious though that something is not right.

    If you have no opinion then how can you possibly denounce my opinion that the proponents of AGW argue from a faith based position? Its clear that you do have an opinion (namely you believe the millenarian predictions about the culpability of humanity for the perceived and predicted changes in the climate)You are just totally lacking in the ability to produce a sound argument as to why you believe what you believe.

    Anyway, it’s blatantly obvious that a good proportion(or more likely most of them) of the Nay Sayers are from the religious right.So they will be of the opinion that ‘god’ will take care of us regardless, so it’s not something we need worry about.

    That is utter cods-wallop Alan many naysayers as you call them are in fact atheist or agnostic and even those who are believers in God don’t invoke the deity to support their arguments about Climate.

  3. alan says:
    May 5, 2012 at 10:44 AM

    I am not trying to produce an argument on anything, I am just showing your commentary for what it is…..biased nonsense.

    you are allocating ‘faith based’ to one side only.
    where it is more than obvious the other side of the coin has many more people whose opinion on the subject is formed by ‘faith’, rather than anything palpable.

  4. Iain Hall says:
    May 5, 2012 at 1:05 PM

    Alan

    It has long been my argument that many of the believers in AGW do so on a misanthropic and millenarian basis, the fact that they dress this up in the vestments of science and I have exhaustively explained why in may many posts on the topic over the last seven years that I have been blogging. If you want more detail then check through my archive

  5. alan says:
    May 5, 2012 at 1:15 PM

    not interested in detail, …….I am only demonstrating that you speak nonsense.
    you said what you said, and reading anything from the past can’t change that.

    and i’ll leave you with a statement form a guy i admire……….
    “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” – Albert Einstein

  6. Iain Hall says:
    May 5, 2012 at 2:18 PM

    Alan
    without the detail you actaully fail to demonstrate anything at all even Einstein would agree with that.

  7. alan says:
    May 5, 2012 at 6:08 PM

    I think it was it was a perfect demo of bias.
    Somehow I doubt Einstein agrees with anything at the moment.
    Anyway, you need to do better than that retort.

  8. Iain Hall says:
    May 5, 2012 at 6:21 PM

    Alan
    Who are you saying is biased?
    Moi?

  9. GD says:
    May 6, 2012 at 2:05 AM

    It may not be a good idea on many levels

    You’ve got that right, Iain. I don’t think that Heartland should get down and dirty with the alarmists. However, I do understand their motives.

    Heartland has spent millions of dollars contributing to the real debate over climate change, and $200 for a one-day digital billboard. In return, we’ve been subjected to the most uncivil name-calling and disparagement you can possibly imagine from climate alarmists. The other side of the climate debate seems to be playing by different rules. This experiment produced further proof of that.

    Similarly, Bob Carter, a professor at James Cook Uni, has been attacked for receiving, wait for it, $1,550 from Heartland for his work in countering the AGW hypothesis. It’s hard to equate that modest sum with the $180,000 a year that Tim Flannery is paid by the government to do, well, nothing it would seem, other than make bogus failed predictions.

    Other government departments are allocated millions in the ridiculous belief that taxes can save the climate. Yet the maniacal Left attack a billboard that was on display for 24 hours.
    As Heartland says, ‘it’s one rule for the alarmists, and another for the sceptics’.

    At the risk of going cross-topic, here in Australia this leftist behaviour is all too evident with the Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper debacles. Both are under parliamentary and legal scrutiny. However, both Slipper and Thomson have been hoist on Labor’s petard thanks to Joolia.

    In her previous incarnation as Deputy PM, she was instrumental in drafting the Fair Work Act. It seems that according to her article 361 both these fellows are guilty until proven innocent.

    Yet still, the rusted-on laborites would rather pursue suggestions that Christopher Pyne and Mal Brough talked with Slipper’s boyfriend.

    Ignore the elephant in the room and attack the mouse.

  10. PKD says:
    May 7, 2012 at 9:33 PM

    “Those who believe on AGW will just be outraged at being reminded that theirs is a faith based argument”

    Iain, good to see you going for this years blogging hypocrisy award! I have to applaud your barefaced cheek at least!

    Alan, Iain is a long standing and indeed faith- based denialist. No amount of reasoning and science will convince him otherwise…much like the Heartland institute. Feel free to look through the history of Iain Halls ‘armpit’ (it sounds better than palpable nonsense, no? And a darn site more accurate when it comes to his AGW posts) if you want to see what I mean…

  11. Iain Hall says:
    May 8, 2012 at 6:16 AM

    Oh ye of little faith PKD 😉

    Alan, Iain is a long standing and indeed faith- based denialist. No amount of reasoning and science will convince him otherwise…much like the Heartland institute. Feel free to look through the history of Iain Halls ‘armpit’ (it sounds better than palpable nonsense, no? And a darn site more accurate when it comes to his AGW posts) if you want to see what I mean…

    How many times when discussing this topic have you said words to the effect that it is the consensus of climate scientists that convince you that the AGW theory is true?
    Your continuing instance that you don’t really understand the science so defer to those who are qualified in climate science, actaully proves my point you along with so many other “true believers” don’t understand any of the science all you do is cite your faith in those men in white coats . I may well be wrong in the way that I argue my case but I do at least go back to first principles by suggesting that a theory is not fact if it can’t be tested by the scientific method and making it clear that I unlike you know the difference between coincidence and causality.

    Oh and you still have not produced that guest post that you have so often promised about why you believe in AGW with such certainty.

  12. PKD says:
    May 8, 2012 at 6:48 PM

    “Oh ye of little faith PKD”

    Heh, yeah I have little faith, that’s because I base my view on the available scientific evidence and peer-reviewed conclusions of the evidence. What do you base your faith on Iain, a few quacks like Monckton and Plimer who haven’t passed peer review or something else?

    Or perhaps the Heartland Institute, funded by the fossil fuel lobby, whose opinion you’ve slavishly deferred by your support in this post.

    “Oh and you still have not produced that guest post that you have so often promised about why you believe in AGW with such certainty.”

    And I already explained to you just last week I have little further to put into a post that I haven’t already explained repeatedly to you over time in comments. Let alone the time.

    Now is it any wonder at all you don’t recall those discussions when you cant even remember an exchange we had just one week ago???

    Either way, try and let it stick this time and stop harping on about it like a broken record. Your evasiveness on the topic via that line is rather tiresome…

  13. Iain Hall says:
    May 9, 2012 at 6:10 AM

    PKD

    Here is a piece from the Guardian and I invite you to explain to us all just what scientific argument is used to make its case:

    The Williams river was so languid and lovely last Saturday morning that it was almost impossible to imagine the violence with which it must have been running on 28 August 2011. Yet the evidence was all around: sand piled high on its banks, trees still scattered as if by a giant’s fist, and most obvious of all, a utilitarian temporary bridge where, for 140 years, a graceful covered bridge had spanned the water.

    The YouTube video of that bridge crashing into the raging river was Vermont’s iconic image from its worst disaster in memory, the record flooding that followed Hurricane Irene’s rampage through the state in August 2011. It claimed dozens of lives, as it cut a more than $1bn swath of destruction across the eastern US.

    I watched it on TV in Washington, DC, just after emerging from jail, having been arrested at the White House during mass protests of the Keystone XL pipeline. Since Vermont is my home, it took the theoretical – the ever more turbulent, erratic, and dangerous weather that the tar sands pipeline from Canada would help ensure – and made it all too concrete. It shook me bad.

    And I am not the only one.

    New data (pdf) released last month by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities show that a lot of Americans are growing far more concerned about climate change, precisely because they are drawing the links between freaky weather, a climate kicked off-kilter by a fossil-fuel guzzling civilization, and their own lives. After a year with a record number of multibillion dollar weather disasters, seven in ten Americans now believe that “global warming is affecting the weather.”

    No less striking, 35% of the respondents reported that extreme weather had affected them personally in 2011. As Yale’s Anthony Laiserowitz told the New York Times, “People are starting to connect the dots.”

    Which is what we must do. As long as this remains one abstract problem in the long list of problems, we will never get to it. There will always be something going on each day that is more important, including, if you are facing flood or drought, the immediate danger.

    But in reality, climate change is actually the biggest thing that is going on every single day. If we could only see that pattern, we would have a fighting chance. It is like one of those trompe l’oeil puzzles where you can only catch sight of the real picture by holding it a certain way.

    So, this weekend, we will be doing our best to hold our planet a certain way so that the most essential pattern is evident. At 350.org, we are organizing a global day of action that is all about dot-connecting; in fact, you can follow the action at climatedots.org.

    The day will begin in the Marshall Islands of the far Pacific, where the sun first rises on our planet, and where locals will hold a daybreak underwater demonstration on their coral reef already threatened by rising seas. They will hold, in essence, a giant dot – and so will our friends in Bujumbura, Burundi, where March flooding destroyed 500 homes. In Dakar, Senegal, they’ll mark the tidal margins of recent storm surges. In Adelaide, Australia, activists will host a “dry creek regatta” to highlight the spreading drought down under.

    Pakistani farmers – some of the millions driven from their homes by unprecedented flooding over the last two years – will mark the day on the banks of the Indus; in Ayuthaya, Thailand, Buddhist monks will protest next to a temple destroyed by December’s epic deluges that also left the capital, Bangkok, awash.

    Activists in Ulanbataar will focus on the ongoing effects of drought in Mongolia. In Daegu, South Korea, students will gather with bags of rice and umbrellas to connect the dots between climate change, heavy rains, and the damage caused to South Korea’s rice crop in recent years. In Amman, Jordan, Friends of the Earth Middle East will be forming a climate dot on the shores of the Dead Sea to draw attention to how climate change-induced drought has been shrinking that sea.

    In Herzliya, Israel, people will form a dot on the beach to stand in solidarity with island nations and coastal communities around the world that are feeling the impact of climate change. In newly-freed Libya, students will hold a teach-in. In Oman, elders will explain how the weather along the Persian Gulf has shifted in their lifetimes.

    There will be actions in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, and in the highlands of Peru where drought has wrecked the lives of local farmers. In Monterrey, Mexico, they’ll recall last year’s floods that did nearly $2bn in damage. In Chamonix, France, climbers will put a giant red dot on the melting glaciers of the Alps.

    And across North America, as the sun moves westward, activists in Halifax, Canada, will “swim for survival” across its bay to highlight rising sea levels, while high school students in Nashville, Tennessee will gather on a football field inundated by 2011’s historic killer floods.

    In Portland, Oregon, city dwellers will hold an umbrella-decorating party to commemorate March’s record rains. In Bandelier, New Mexico, firefighters in full uniform will remember last year’s record forest fires and unveil the new solar panels on their fire station. In Miami, Manhattan, and Maui, citizens will line streets that scientists say will eventually be underwater. In the high Sierra, on one of the glaciers steadily melting away, protesters will unveil a giant banner with just two words, a quote from that classic of western children’s literature, The Wizard of Oz: “I’m melting” it will say, in letters three-stories high.

    This is a full-on fight between information and disinformation, between the urge to witness and the urge to cover up. The fossil fuel industry has funded endless efforts to confuse people, to leave an impression that nothing much is going on. But as with the tobacco industry before them, the evidence has simply gotten too strong. Once you saw enough people die of lung cancer, you made the connection.

    The situation is the same today. Now, it is not just the scientists and the insurance industry; it is your neighbors. Even pleasant weather starts to seem weird. Fifteen thousand US temperature records were broken, mainly in the east and midwest, in the month of March alone, as a completely unprecedented heat wave moved across the continent. Most people I met enjoyed the rare experience of wearing shorts in winter, but they were still shaking their heads. Something was clearly wrong and they knew it.

    The one institution in our society that is not likely to be much help in spreading the news is … the news. Studies show our newspapers and TV channels paying ever less attention to our shifting climate. In fact, in 2011, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox spent twice as much time discussing Donald Trump as climate change. Do not expect representatives from Saturday’s Connect the Dots day to show up on Sunday’s talk shows. Over the last three years, those inside-the-Beltway extravaganzas have devoted 98 minutes total to the planet’s biggest challenge. Last year, in fact, all the Sunday talk shows spent exactly nine minutes of Sunday talking time on climate change – and here is a shock: all of it was given over to Republican politicians in the great denial sweepstakes.

    So, here’s a prediction: next Sunday, no matter how big and beautiful the demonstrations may be that we’re mounting across the world, “Face the Nation” and “Meet the Press” won’t be connecting the dots. They will be gassing along about Newt Gingrich’s retirement from the presidential race or Mitt Romney’s coming nomination, and many of the commercials will come from oil companies lying about their environmental efforts.

    If we are going to tell this story – and it is the most important story of our time – we are going to have to tell it ourselves

    😉

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