Monday, November 24, 2014

Black's Lament

Eli, having grown up in a neighborhood where certain words were used as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs as well as conjunctions and pronouns, often in a single sentence, was not quite as observant about Louis Black's rant on Republican not climate scientists.

The bunny was quite surprised by the response.

So to show you what Eli hears, here is Louis Black on climate change again (maybe the last couple of minutes tomorrow).  There is a rhythm to it.
Republicans who aren't scientists when it comes to climate
I love the fact that they say that “I am not a scientist”
Well, I'm not a doctor.
That's why we have scientists 
As soon as you say that "I am not a scientist, but . ."
That's why we have them
You don't have to do it
We don't expect you to do it 
What I do expect leadership to do is to listen to the scientists
I expect that because they, like us, went through an education process
And then we got to chemistry, like I did
And I said I can't do this 
I burned my hand on a Bunsen burner
Titrate?  What's titrate? 
They're scientists.
I hear this time and again and I am tired of it
It's an argument that comes up time and time again 
96% of the world's scientists agree there is climate change
That, whether you like it or not
It's a fact 
I have spent way to much time researching this
It is exhausting as a comedian when I have to look this stuff up 
Forty times to get forty things
And then people tell me that it is not true
And you tell me your 4% is right 
Look it's scientists, not a coven of witches
They are not back there double double toil and trouble
Newt of eye, you fool 
You know what they know how to do
They know how to do the metric system
Something you could learn. 
There is climate change
I don't argue it anymore
I don't discuss it anymore 
When I watch the chunk of one of the poles just drop off and float away
And didn't even  say goodbye
Greenland is down by 20%
Greenland icy Greenland cold Greenland 
Even if they are wrong
Even if they are wrong.

One of the things we might want to do as a people is to treat the planet
In a fashion that we care for it 
I don't know about these people
I know that I read the Bible
And the Bible told me 
And even though I might not believe in a lot of it
One of the common sense things is that 
This is a garden that we were given to care take
But if you need a profit
If you need to get that profit
Just barrel through 
Don't worry about your children
Or your children's children 
Worry about how much money they are going to have
Because they are going to need that money to pay for the damage
That we're doing now 
The effects of human induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States
With water growing scarcer in dry regions
Torrential rains increasing in wet regions
Heat waves becoming more common and more severe
Wild fires growing worse
And forests, forests dying under the assault of heat loving insects 
That's the one that worries me
I do not know that insects experienced the emotion of love
How scary is that
And not even for another insect
For heat

24 comments:

Victor Venema said...

In a way, you could appreciate the Republicans. They stand to their political ideals. And they are willing to make complete fools of themselves to defend them.

...and Then There's Physics said...

I would have more respect for people who were willing to make complete fools of themselves because of their political ideals, if they didn't whine when you pointed out that this is what they were doing. They should be willing to own their foolishness :-)

Victor Venema said...

A fool who admits just playing a fool is no fool. :-)

Victor Venema said...

And it is a sign of the strong position in science, even in the USA, that they feel the need to act as if they are defending science, that their "science" is better.

A few centuries ago, people would have just dismissed it appealing to common sense.

Everyone knows that the Almighty has made the climate stable and the economy fragile. Or something like that.

Anonymous said...

The recent election is proof that your tactics do not work as they are a mirror of the tactics the Democrat Party used this cycle and for the past two years.


Have fun in your cone of idiocy.

1

Victor Venema said...

Proof? :-)

You guys can be so cute.

At least the ones not obsessed with Mein Kampf.

Hank Roberts said...

Op. cit., "But would it have mattered if economists had behaved better?"

Tom Curtis said...

Anonymous gloats that the tactic of doing good science, seeing what it says, and then explaining that to people in the hope that they will make rational decisions is not working. There is something he does not understand. It is not a tactic. It is a principle. It is a firm belief that we find out about the world by actually looking at it - not by imagining how it must be for our favourite political or economic ideology to make sense and then believing that. It is also a firm belief that because people are autonomous moral agents, attempts to persuade them must be grounded in reason. Attempts to con them (as the Republican's and climate change deniers are doing) are fundamentally immoral because they attempt to circumvent the right of people to make rational choices by gumming up the decision making process with lies.

So, if that principled approach is not working because the climate change deniers and their allies have turned out to be skillful liars, that is an indictment of the deniers and their allies. That anonymous, therefore, boasts only that his (and his fellow travelers) chicanery has been effective. He knows no shame.

Everett F Sargent said...

Victor,

Yes "it" is indeed obsessed with Mein Kampf.

(1) The cited quote leaves out this: "But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice."

In that same chapter, Hitler accused "the Jews" of what he claimed was their use of the Big Lie.[1]

[1] "Project Gutenberg of Australia - Mein Kampf tr. James Murphy". Archived from the original on 24 July 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-23.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories#Antisemitic_conspiracy_theories

"It" then goes on to show just ONE of the THREE Non Sequiter comic strips on "preconceptual science":

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/08/preconceptual-science.html

"Well ... We don't come with theories. We just dismiss existing science that gets in your way"

If that isn't a ding on creationists/climate deniers/vaccine deniers/GMO deniers, then I don't know what is.

Finally, "its" flow chart appears/seems to suggest a timeline for the IPCC suggesting that "Rio 1992" preceded AR1.

Methinks 1988 predates 1992. D'oh!

http://www.ipcc.ch/news_and_events/docs/factsheets/FS_timeline.pdf

Everett F Sargent said...

To continue on in Godwinizing this thread:

(4) The "big lie" is itself a conspiracy theory, that you know who then proceeded to use/project onto himself and governance over the next ~20+ years.

(5) "It" then presents "its" own conspiracy theory as to what can only be describes as a very feeble attempt at "big lie: part deux".

The projection, the irony, the stupid, is just killink me.

Anonymous said...

"Anonymous gloats that the tactic of doing good science, seeing what it says, and then explaining that to people in the hope that they will make rational decisions is not working. There is something he does not understand."

Tom you are delusional. If only what you state was actually done. Nope, more Lewis Black rants is what really happens.

It always someone else's fault with the left, not a single one will ever say "I/we could do this or that better, my/our fault on this one."

Please keep traveling down the same path of ineffectiveness mixed in with hubris and blindness.


1

Tim said...

There is sure something the left can do better.

The left tries to convince people that climate change is a problem by pointing out that the poor and vulnerable will suffer most. The left seems to be unable to understand that a considerable part of the population could not care less and that there is even a part of the populations whose heart jumps with joy.

Rather than telling how many people will die in Africa, it could be more convincing to say that the added uncertainty whether your children will survive to care for you in old age will result in higher reproduction rates and will only result in more black Africans.

It could be more convincing to tell that many of these people will try to come to the West. And that those terrible liberals will not be willing to kill them all to prevent that.

It could more convincing to express the losses in absolute terms, rather than in percent as the liberals like to do because that treats everyone equally. The rich countries have expensive infrastructure, that costs a lot of money to build up again after a catastrophe and without which the economy will suffer. The power of the rich countries is based on that infrastructure. We are only a small part of the world population and have most to lose.

That is what you should tell those people at WUWT, rather than the stuff liberals find terrible.

Tim said...

Everett F Sargent: 'Yes "it" is indeed obsessed with Mein Kampf.
... The cited quote leaves out this ...In that same chapter, Hitler accused "the Jews" of what he claimed was their use of the Big Lie.'

I will stop here, do not want to spoil this tread further.

Thus the climate scientists are the Jewish bankers and WUWT are the ...

Also last time "WUWT" accused the others of a conspiracy.

As the libertarians say: look at what they do, not at what they say. We will not convince them with science, if they only claim not to believe the science but actually love the suffering of the others.

Mal Adapted said...

OP: "Eli, having grown up in a neighborhood where certain words were used as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverb as well as conjunctions and pronouns, often in a single sentence"

Ah, you grew up in Brooklyn, then.

Thomas Lee Elifritz said...

Please keep traveling down the same path of ineffectiveness mixed in with hubris and blindness.

What's 'the left'? That's how fucking stupid you are. Express it in SI units only for me, thanks.

Please keep traveling down the same path of ineffectiveness

Most people who do science, like science and follow science, don't care if their own communication of it is ineffective. They're in it for the sheer joy of it, and they're in it for their own personal enlightenment. You lack that. Nature will sort you out.

Anonymous said...

TLEE,

Please extend your hands over your head to catch the points people make, they elude you often.

1

Fernando Leanme said...

Quoting from TLE

"Nature will sort you out."

Any bets as to who will be in charge in 100 years?

EliRabett said...

Not you, not Eli.

Anonymous said...

Thomas obviously believes that he is immune to the sorting of Nature.

That's why he says "Nature will sort you out."

Thomas needs to take a basic biology course because Nature does not sort based on things like "enlightenment" but does sort based on communication.

EliRabett said...

Mal: East New York

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Black deserves nomination as the first stand-up fossil of the Anthopocene epoch.

Mal Adapted said...

Eli: "Mal: East New York"

Close enough - it's also called the New York Alphabet

Thomas Lee Elifritz said...

Thomas needs to take a basic biology course because Nature does not sort based on things like "enlightenment" but does sort based on communication.

And here all this time I thought it had something to do with physics.

Silly me. I need to get with the program. And then there were doofuses.

EliRabett said...

Nope, not Alphabet City, a much nicer place:)

Eli