It ends with:
The corporations that have funded the sowing of doubt on this issue are clearly doing this because they see greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies as adversely affecting their financial interests.
This might be understood as a new type of crime against humanity. Scepticism in science is not bad, but sceptics must play by the rules of science including publishing their conclusions in peer-reviewed scientific journals and not make claims that are not substantiated by the peer-reviewed literature. The need for responsible scepticism is particularly urgent if misinformation from sceptics could lead to great harm.
We not have a word for this type of crime yet, but the international community should find a way of classifying extraordinarily irresponsible scientific claims that could lead to mass suffering as some type of crime against humanity.
I can see certain problems with the concept, but then again it could mean most participants at the Catallaxy blog in a Gulag while me and my side take a year or so to decide whether prosecutions are sustainable. I therefore see a certain merit.
16 comments:
Surely at this point Steve, you see where this line of thinking goes. Surely, you start to see what this is really about.
I get it, the gulag was a joke on your part. But the Guardian article is advocating a similar policy, and unlike you, they're not joking.
Look, there are sceptics for just about any idea you care to name. Call it 'freedom of thought' or whatever. But prosecuting people for their beliefs...
I hope I don't need to finish that sentence for you. I hope and trust we are in agreement.
There's freedom of thought in that I am allowed to believe anything I like if I'm not harming anyone but myself and then there is deliberate misinformation for profit by corporations.
Cigarette companies are no longer allowed to spread the lie that their product is good for you but I don't think we should lock up the people who refuse to believe that their smoking will harm them.
I think a similar point is being pushed here.
What daddy dave said. Except I'm onside with climate change and would love to have a big wet fish to slap at deniers who are only doing it for short term economic interests. Dialogue and debate, however frustrating, are morally superior to shutting down the misinformed, misguided and misprisioning by tagging them with the crime-against-humanity badge.
Having said all that, the Graun piece is badly written, or badly edited. I loathe the Graun commenters on the whole but occasionally someone from the dark side gets it right: If ever there were a sign that the Guardian knows it has lost the argument it is this: it wants to throw anybody who disagrees into jail.
OK, guys, try harder.
"deliberate misinformation for profit by corporations"
I'm against false advertising for commercial products too. (although pretty much every ad on TV is false advertising to some degree!)
But that's not what is going on here. There's no advertisement on TV for a product, falsely claiming that global warming won't be as bad as the IPCC says it will. Indeed all the advertising runs the other way, hence 'greenwashing'. Priuses, solar heating, green detergent, you name it.
The skeptics are almost entirely individuals or small groups of individuals, mounting skeptical arguments. The fact that the vast global warming industry can't effectively counter these arguments shows they need to come up with better arguments, not start arresting people.
Dave, do you have a problem with Priuses, solar heating, green detergent? Maybe you don't think they do what it says on the tin? Are they taking candy off babies who like polar bears? Or they're just pissing in the wind?
Anyway, I take issue with your notion of "the vast global warming industry". Lord, I wish we had the opposite of that.
"Dave, do you have a problem with Priuses, solar heating, green detergent?"
That was an aside, really, in response to the false advertising thing. I was noting that where the environment plays a role in advertising, typically the threat of global warming is used to sell something - skepticism is not.
But since you ask, yes I do have a problem with green products that are marketed as stopping a non-existent problem.
The fact that someone has made the suggestion seriously is a reflection of frustration with the current impasse on a scientific/political issue which, if the direst predictions are true, does mean a global catastrophe for our descendants. It's therefore not really surprising that it's been made.
But if you want to avoid promoting skeptic conspiracy belief that it's all a socialist plot to take over the world, it's probably best not to even suggest that people may be locked up for their beliefs.
If the writer was wanting to promote laws about "truth in advertising" on the topic, then he shouldn't have talked about it in terms of "crime against humanity."
"I take issue with your notion of the vast global warming industry".
I was stirring the pot with that phrase, particularly the word "vast". But consider the following large, interlocked, industries:
* clean energy
* environmental advocacy
* carbon trading
* green products
Lots of money to be made. Take issue all you like, but there's gold in thum thar hills.
"if the direst predictions are true, does mean a global catastrophe for our descendants"
But the direst predictions are not true.
Let's go with likely outcomes, not extremes.
"But the direst predictions are not true."
Well, Hansen a couple of decades ago was certainly too pessimistic as to how fast it could happen, but whether the higher end of the range of possible increases can yet happen - the jury's still out.
"I take issue with your notion of the vast global warming industry".
I was stirring the pot with that phrase, particularly the word "vast". But consider the following large, interlocked, industries:
* clean energy
* environmental advocacy
* carbon trading
* green products
Lots of money to be made. Take issue all you like, but there's gold in thum thar hills.
Oh, I see. There was I thinking you knew something about climate stuff.
There was I thinking you knew something about climate stuff.
Nobody's making money from clean energy subsidies? You're right. If I'm wrong about that then I really know less than I thought.
Hansen a couple of decades ago was certainly too pessimistic as to how fast it could happen
how fast what could happen? This amorphous catastrophising is woolly thinking at its worst. The effects on the developed world, if any, will be minimal.
"This amorphous catastrophising is woolly thinking at its worst."
Dd, the "upper bound" prediction for ocean rises by the end of this century is about 2 m. I can't see the developed world coping well with that aspect alone of global warming.
That said, I generally don't dwell on sea level rise, as it is a longer term prospect than other things I think are likely to cause enough problems ahead of it (long term changes to rainfall patterns and effect on food production being one of them). It's also true that there has been many premature claims by Pacific Islands that they are already going under due to CO2.
But still, if you want to look at the worst aspects of climate change, then 2 plus m sea rise by 2100, or even within the next few decades after that, is a major one.
What rubbish, it's not as if defenders of AGW have to be peer reviewed. Can you imagine if Catherine Deveney/Guy Rundle/any other of the AGW hordes in the mainstream media had to get peer reviewed?
And surely any damage that AGW skepticism does to society has to be weighed up against the damage that unthinking credulity towards emissions trading/sustainable energy schemes does to society. (It'll be more than some people think).
I'm afraid you're going to be caught up in my gulag round up too, Tim. I figure that you can be entertainment director and write short plays to be performed in an attempt to stop the Catallaxy guys descending into a Lord of the Flies scenario.
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