Say Anything Blog

Grand Forks Herald reporter and Blogger Tu Uyen Tran had a post last night about fearmongering in the public debate. While some of the examples he mentions may be valid, the part on global warming really set me off.

The most powerful argument against global warming is not the counter-facts. It’s the name-calling. The first thing the global-warming deniers point to about “An Inconvenient Truth” is it stars that liberal scumbag Al Gore. The right-wing pundits call global warming a liberal hoax.

What’s ironic is, all through the show, there were these commercials from We Can Solve It, a group fighting climate change. Sitting side by side were Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi and Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson telling you it’s not about politics. Finally.

Why is it that it’s taken so long for everyone to agree that we need to do something about climate change? Because the name-calling has been so effective. The appeal to hate is one of the most powerful argument there is.

Earlier in the piece he talked about how this fearmongering and name calling allowed people to ignore the facts that don’t support your position.  I find it incredible to hear this coming from a proponent that we all have to change to combat “global warming.”

How many facts are the global warming ignoring?

First of all they’re ignoring the fact that we’ve been warming in the past and the current trend looks much like the long term trend.  This graph in itself pretty much shows that we aren’t seeing unprecedented global warming. 

You can see that it’s been warmer in the past and we are only on a warming trend correcting for the little ice age.  Usually the global warming activists will show us a graph from 1850, the end of the cold spell until 1998.  Why?  Because we haven’t been warming since 1998?

The activists ignore the fact that the Goddard Institute for Space Studies has misplaced their ground based thermometers, such as above air conditioning exhausts or black top parking lots in order to distort the picture. 

We’re told we must adopt Kyoto when it will do little or nothing to solve the problem.  After all, the worlds biggest emitter of carbon dioxide can’t be expected to live under the same rules the United States does.

To listen to Tu Uyen you have to think that somehow Al Gore is off limits even though he’s the public face of the movement.  So we’re supposed to ignore that Al Gore is flitting around in a private jet or is using 20 times more energy for his home than the average person does in Tennessee.  While skeptical scientists are accused of being supported by the oil industry Al Gore has made nearly an hundred million dollars off of the global warming issue.  But for some reason we can’t bring THAT up.

Don’t you think that if Al Gore really believed in man made Global Warming he’d be living a lifestyle that didn’t make it worse?  Rather than living the lifestyle he’s out calling skeptics names like global warming deniers and akin to flat Earthers.  Others are saying that skeptics of the global warming crisis are as bad as the Nazis.

So what tactics are the global warming activists using to avoid these inconvenient truths?  Why fearmongering and Hyperbole.

We’re told that the only way humans will survive is if a few people can eke out a living in underground cities in the arctic. 

We’re told that the polar bears are going to die, even shown fake pictures of polar bears stuck on a melting mini ice berg.  Turns out the ice was melting because it was summer and the polar bears swam out there and were never in danger.  Meanwhile if it was warmer during the medieval warm period how are the polar bears still around?  If they’re that fragile they wouldn’t be alive today.

The activists are claiming the oceans will rise as much as twenty feet and the south pole is melting.  In fact one small area of Antarctica is melting while the ice is getting deeper in the rest.  In fact the south pole is very cold and is unlikely to melt at all.  On the other hand higher temperatures could actually lead to more snowfall and more glaciers.  The current estimates even given the warming that may not happen is more likely a foot and a half.  (Let’s not forget that right now it looks like it hasn’t been warming in the last twelve years and that undersea probes have found no warming at all.

I find it amusing that Tu Uyen admits that pictures of Florida sinking under the ocean scare the beejesus out of him along with more Hurricanes and the like.  The theory that this will happen under global warming has been pretty thoroughly debunked but the author is scared by them.  That I guess excuses him for accusing the other side of what his side is doing. 

We’re told that global warming will cause more disease, but the facts are the warmer it is the more healthier it is for humans. 

If ever there’s been a case of fearmongering and name calling used to advance a political goal it’s been by the global warming activists.  Saying that the skeptics are engaging in that behavior and ignoring the much worse behavior by the activists is absolutely 180 degrees bass ackward.