UD bloggers tend not to automatically follow the experts or the party line.
Check out this MSNBC debate between two US Congressmen on whether Global Warming was caused by CO2. When the “denier” started to look as if he was winning on the science, the debate moderator inferred he was a creationist and anti-science. He then forced both men to profess their belief in EVOLUTION. Watch in fear!
SORRY THE VIDEO HAS BEEN TAKEN DOWN. TOO UNCOMFORTABLE FOR THEM?
A transcript is available here.
Anyone who finds the video again please let us know.
Here is another one like the other one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Another is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Watching Chris Matthews has been clinically proven to be deleterious to IQ–viewer beware.
Unbelievable. Chris Matthews is such an idiot. “Rasmussen is a Republican poll, we don’t quote that here.”
How does Matthews deal with the fact that Rasmussen has been the most accurate poll for the last two presidential election cycles? I guess accuracy is a Republican thing that liberals don’t care about? Obviously.
And can you believe that Democratic congressmen from Virginia? “Hundreds of millions of people live near the ocean and their lives are in danger.” What? That is science?
AGW is going to be the waterloo for these arrogant consensus=science morons.
You should do some posts about how Obama’s science czar was promoting forced sterilization in the ’70’s as a way to avoid overpopulation.
“You should do some posts about how Obama’s science czar was promoting forced sterilization in the ’70’s as a way to avoid overpopulation.”
They did a couple of weeks ago.
Thanks for posting this. It’s hard to believe that this is the same Chris Matthews who used to substitute for Rush Limbaugh (back in the 90s). Until the last election, my wife and I would watch Hardball. But during the election it got so biased that we couldn’t bear to watch it anymore.
My opinion of Chris Matthews dropped drastically after watching this exchange.
I happened to be in a bookstore this morning which had a copy of the August 2009 edition of Scientific American . Perusing it briefly, I cam across an article by Michael Shermer, entitled, “Skeptic’s Take on the Life and Argued Works of Shakespeare” at http://www.scientificamerican......n-the-life . I was struck by a remark in the article by Shermer, which I think explains many people’s attitudes towards the issues of ID and global warming.
A few comments:
1. By itself, the principle does not tell us what should be accepted as a theory in the first place, rather than merely a bold speculative hypothesis. The hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming is cetainly a theory; the hypothesis that some one-celled creatures evolved into Chris Matthews over the span of one billion years is not a theory, in my opinion. Intermediate forms need to be specified, and a viable pathway as well.
2. Fortunately, the tide is turning in the global warming debate. In a recent article entitled, Resisting Climate Hysteria , climatologist Richard Lindzen writes:
3. What would it take to undermine people’s trust in evolution, which (on a very large scale) cannot even be called a proper scientific theory, yet? Any thoughts from ex-believers?
Mr. Chris “Obama makes my leg Tingle” Matthews?
LOL… no bias there.
Jehu, good catch on “lives in danger” it was the first thing I was going to post on.
Can’t wait to see how Diffaxial will talk about hyperbole on this one.
People on the coast – Your lives are in Danger! Run, Run! The Government knows you’ll all be dead shortly if you don’t Tax every single American company, car and cigar. By the way, you better stop making brewskis for the President to drink as well since that ultimately contributes to the dangerous CO2 gas.
And as a nation we should all come together, hold our breath, and kill all our pets because we create CO2 with every breath we take. PETA will morn, but we must survive, we must save lives!
LOL… I turned off the GE owned MSNBC long ago. If there should be any new law on the books today. It should be seperation of Media from Corporations with an agenda. The day we allowed corporations to buy out news media is the day we lost any sanity in press coverage.
Back to subject of climate. The Republican I think was under-estimating the last 7yrs, but I need to verify trends.
But I did catch Mr. Moran saying glaciers in Alaska are shrinking?
Well, some, at least one is also growing, at rate of 7ft/day.
Alaskan Hubbard Glacier Growing… since 1895 keeps advancing – maybe endangering town
Link above has many other links, but click on link first link to an Alaskan EDU site that is tracking the growth of the Glacier since 2002.
FearMongoring Mr Matthews? No, say it aint so. Hyperbole much Mr. Moran? Nah…
People run for your lives!
A Glacier is going to engulf your town!
Hurry Chris, hurry, put aside your tingling sensations for teh one and warn the Alaskan people of Glacier Growth!
I guess the global warming zealots are right about the water rising, but they forgot to say it would be in the form of ICE ICE baby.
Hahaha… man Obama genetic robots o’man. What will we do with these selfish genes?
We’re going to save the world by making it colder! LOL.
That should make this small Alaskan village greatful. I guess they’ll rename their town after Obama or Moran or the Glacier Hubbard.
There are many more growing glaciers all around the world as well it seems Antartica.
Ah… found quick story from 2008 on the same link. I was right, global cooling – why? Normal Sun cycle.
Hmmm… scientific models did not predict actual reality. Where have I heard that before? Oh yes, in evolutionary models.
Uhhhhh… Mr. Chris “tingle tingle” Matthews, we have something you should report to the public. That is, if you’re not a demagogue point man for the democrat party.
Oops. We overlooked 193,000 square miles of ice
Yep, like Al Gore, their prediction is running on Thick ice.
Fail –
“In May, 2008, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) predicted that the North Pole would be ice-free during the 2008 melt season because of ‘global warming.’”
Did Mr. “Tingle” mention this failure?
Talk about your waterloo-sers.
Maybe we should do something smart, like work with China and India for clean coal technology to capture and reuse the CO2.
Any old messiah can do that.
UDers, the point of this post is not really about global warming, but about the tactics used by media to portray AGW deniers along side IDers and Creationists as a bunch of idiots.
Forcing these two gentlemen to confess their faith in evolution to make their ideas legiitimate is really silly. In the end, they both agreed that evolution has occurred so where does that leave the debate they just had? If one or other had spoken in support of ID you can bet he would have been laughed out of town.
With this sort of pressure, there is no level playing field. But in the end these inquisition tactics will prove counter productive.
Matthews is merely playing his appointed (annointed?) role as Media Inquisitor. The Mortal Sin his ilk are trying to root out these days isn’t heresy, but what they’ve dubbed denialism…
Repent, oh ye sinners!
DATGC @ 7:
Nice to be remembered.
“Hyperbole” may be an understatement. DATGC elsewhere:
Please, don’t stop.
What makes this fun is that I’ve posted not one word on global warming on this or any other board. Nor have I commented on DATGC’s measured, thoughtful remarks on same.
Rather, “hyperbole” describes overheated, personal comments such as the above.
“Other scientific facts and theories underpinning vaccination,climate change,[and evolution, have also been subject to attacks by people who deny the the validity of the underlying science.”
A couple interesting things.
Global warming and evolution are right up there with The Holocaust and HIV according to Wikipedia in terms of denial. Maybe we could put up on Wikipedia a new form of denial, health care reform denialism. Those that deny we need overall health care reform are in denial. Or to be an all purpose offender we could have terrorism denial or those who deny there is really a terrorism problem. Anything that the runs against the grain of a political movement is now a denial.
I am certainly less passionate about global warming as about evolution. Mainly because I understand the evolution debate while I haven’t spent the time to understand the technical data for global warming. But I do find the rhetoric similar and wonder just how this new study will be accepted that showed that periodic changes in Pacific currents explain nearly all the recent temperature changes. So like evolution, there was a warming but the mechanism was not due to the conventional wisdom. I am sure these guy from New Zealand and Australia will soon be ostracized from all important cocktail parties and might see their funding dry up.
The Republican congressman did a nice job staying with science. What is needed is to be even better at speaking about science and defending truth. They can do this and should do this without loosing there sense of love for the people. What type of radiation is given off by the sun and how does the sun fluctuate? Does the sun fluctuate from year to year? This need for truth is important in all areas of science. The most important reason is not just to win an argument, but the constant need to educate the general population.
Also, I find it very interesting that someone from Australia should recognize the absurdity of Chris Matthews. I have friends who went to the same high school as Chris in Philadelphia and once thought he was a decent guy till he drank the kool aid about 10 years ago and now often acts as if he is part of looney brigade. This is twice that Chris Matthews has interjected himself into the evolution debate, something he knows nothing about.
Jerry @ 13:
I tried editing the Wikipedia “denialism” article months ago, in an attempt to nudge it toward some semblance of a “Neutral Point of View,” which is supposed to be the Wikipedia standard. I found out that it wasn’t worth the grief from the politically correct editors there, who guard their turf on the site like trolls under a bridge in Middle Earth.
Today, however, I made the following comment on the article’s discussion page, directed to the editor who added the current revision’s first sentence (same as the 1st sentence I cite @ 11). He wrote:
I replied:
If we could only get the following graph published widely, everyone would understand better what is really happening:
Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change
See how we’ve been cooling since 1998? OK. Except for 2005, which looks to be an outlier. Bob Carter, one of the authors of that paper everyone’s talking about, predicted this cooling trend and expects it to continue for at least another couple of decades. He suggests that we might even see serious crop failures and 2m of ice on the Thames. I’ll predict now that all this will be touted as evidence in favor of global warming, according to the POMC!
While I’m here, I thought I would also post the following link in which a global warmer accidentally made a falsifiable prediction:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/20.....g-records/
When confronted with the fact that the earth’s climate has been cooling since 1998, global warmers will usually mumble something about El Niño and abruptly end the conversation. Referring to the HadCRUT3v data set, Tamino concedes that:
So here we have an AGW alarmist admitting that if the HadCRUT3v record from 1998 is not broken by 2012, their entire case falls apart. We’ll see what happens …
In Climate Change Reconsidered, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) presents the scientific data which demonstrates the global warming alarmists are the modern era’s version of “chicken little”.
For a source of information pertaining to “climate change” (ie global warming) please see:
The Global Warming Hoax
And also do some research into HAARP
idnet.com.au: “UDers, the point of this post is not really about global warming, but about the tactics used by media to portray AGW deniers along side IDers and Creationists as a bunch of idiots.”
It seems to me that Chris Matthews is an either/or kindof guy; you are either this way (“my way”) or you are that way (evil). There is no inbetween. He’s not like a Charley Rose or a Larry King, who like to delve into the subtle nuances of a person’s POV. He wants it black and white, and if he can’t get it from you voluntarily, he’ll force it out of you through manipulative insinuation. He’s an anti-intellectual ideologue. There are commentators on the right who do this as well. I won’t name names here.
The question is – why does anybody bother going on Matthews’ show if they know they are going to be manipulated? Whey don’t a bunch of people (politicians, authors, scientists, educators, etc..) simply boycott his show, and anybody else’s show who isn’t interested in serious intellectual dialogue. I would bet that Larry King or Charley Rose, or Tavis Smiley will give more thoughtful time to the issue of global warming on both sides.
I think another problem is that a lot of politicians go on shows like O’Reilly and Hardball because it’s easy – it doesn’t take a lot of time, and can be done via phone, or from a satellite station; Whereas Rose, Smiley and King tend to take more time with a sit-down discussion from their studios, which is their usual format.
Cheap soundbite television from any perspective – FoxNews or MSNBC are going to give us cheap results. Matthews is a master of the liberal soundbite, and that’s all.
The proper answer to the “moderator’s” ad hominem against the AGW opponent is: “You are the moderator, right? You are supposed to be neutral, right? Why are you attacking me?”
This may seem as an ad hominem in turn, but I can live with that.
JS:
Let’s zoom in a bit closer and do a little “deconstruction” on that opening statement/”definition” in the Wiki article:
______________
Denialism “is the refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality. It is an essentially irrational action that withholds validation of an historical experience or event.”[1]
Individuals, or groups who reject propositions on which a scientific or scholarly consensus exists are said to be engaging in denialism when they seek to influence policy processes and outcomes by using rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none.[citation needed][2][3]
______________
1] Denialism “is the — refusal to accept — an |empirically |verifiable | reality.
Notice the cluster of key terms and concepts: Empirically verifiABLE “reality” is not the same thing as “empirically veriFIED rality.”
In short, claimed consensus of “scholarship” or “science” — i.e. today’s MAGISTERIUM — is being substituted for TRUTH, and that in a context where since scientific theories are inherently inferences to best explanation on provisional and cumulative, correctable empirical findings, they cannot be properly confused with proved REALITY.
In short we have an institutional bait and switch going on here: TRUTH — that which says of what is,t ha tit is, and of what is not,t hat it is not — has been subtly substituted for by “consensus” of a self-reinforcing circle of alleged experts: the high priesthood of institutional science and/or scholarship.
And these are the same “postmoderns” who are so quick to spot alleged “totalising metanarratives” and expose the hidden power agendas and want of grounding in reality lurking in them?
2] It is an essentially irrational action that withholds validation of an historical experience or event
Now, history is of course in one sense the reality of the past. In the other sense, it is a plausible reconstruction thereof, informed by selected and claimed representative evidence, especially documents.
In many cases we do find ourselves able to come to a well-grounded consensus, but on issues where “denialism” is most likely to be raised as a challenge — apart from something like holocaust denial — the issue is that here is a question of a rush to conclusive judgement on the part of the magisterium, a conclusion that serves its agendas.
So, to in that context label those who question as “irrational” is to beg serious questions and to threaten to resolve an unsettled issue not by patient reason guided by evidence, but by force, first of manipulative rhetoric, then of power-based sanctions.
in this context, for instance, it bears onoting that [i] climate trends are projections based on limited data and computer models that still keep on getting into hiccups, and [ii] the claimed history and driving mechanisms of macroevolution from origin of life through origin of major body plans and onwards to origin of man, are replete with explanatory gaps and are on matters that are inherently unobservable and without record sufficient to establish the dynamics at work. For instance, the fossil record is one of gaps and stasis followed by disappearances, on an overwhelming basis. And — without jumping into broad-brush dismissal of such dates as a whole — the dating of the geological column is subject to embarrassing questions on circularities and inconsistencies across e.g. radiodating techniques. Not even isochrons are without fault.
3] Individuals, or groups who reject propositions on which a scientific or scholarly consensus exists are said to be engaging in denialism when they seek to influence policy processes and outcomes by using rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none
And, appeal to a hasty, forced “consensus” of alleged experts is not a rhetorical device that seeks to foreclose legitimate questions and discussion of strengths, weaknesses and limitations of claims?
Should policy be shaped by magisterial panels of experts from effectively closed classes, or should issues that affect us all be open to inputs from us all?
In short, the REAL underlying issue is that the framework for self-government of and by and informed, fearlessly free people is being undermined by today’s magisterium and agendas that play the red herring led out to strawmen soaked in oily ad hominems and ignited to cloud, confuse, choke and polarise the atmosphere: divide and rule.
Let us therefore express the core idea of democratic, publicly deliberative self-government: the majority should rule (directly and/or though their FREELY chosen representatives), while the minority, down to the individual should be civilly heard out and protected.
+++++++++++
See why I am pessimistic about our civilisation?
GEM of TKI
JS,
I agree that “denialism” is essentially a rhetorical term used to dismiss the view of an intellectual opponent, and as such has extremely limited value. While clearly there are people who deny well-established realities, I’m not sure lumping them all together into a single term is a good idea, especially in the sciences. Over time, almost all scientific theories are eventually overturned or at least modified; referring to dissent as “denialism” essentially moves scientific theories into the realm of dogma. For example, we would have had to classify Albert Einstein as a “denialist” when he questioned the empirically verifiable reality that was Newtonian mechanics. How useful, then, can this term really be?
We occasionally use the term denial to refer to the Darwinist here who use blind faith when they ascribe to a theory with no empirical backing. We do it to irk them because they believe that those who support ID are the ones in denial. It is a tit for tat. However, it must really irk them when it is the pro ID people who use science and the anti ID who use the religious arguments.
Jerry,
I like to tell them that denial is not a river in Africa…
Since this is Off Topic, there’s an interesting local thing down here that serves a world-wide cause: the measuring of sea-levels since 1841. Go here to see:
http://soer.justice.tas.gov.au...../index.php
So, has there been much change since then? I wonder if there has been any sinkage in the wall in the intervening time?
Anyway, this sentence intrigues: “Global predictions are for the rate of change to increase, such that by 2100 sea-level will be between 9 and 88 cm above the 1990 global average sea-level.” That is if things aren’t cyclical, then predictions are made upon world-views and not data alone …
Whatever the results, Port Arthur is a top place to visit!
Watch this space!?
The YouTube links that you’ve provided lead to a page that says “Invalid arguments”, which are—unsurprisingly—what are on display in anthropogenic climate change denialism as well as the IDC movement.
Perhaps Google has figured out how to detect your particular brands of anti-scientific rubbish.
Tajimas,
What are the material properties of thymine, adenine, and gaunine that indicate the termination of gene expression?
Upright,
Don’t be too harsh with Tajimas D … on the point he provides of Google ‘figuring things out’ to detect so-called anti scientific findings, it was able to do so without any intelligently designed system. It just happened: time and chance was all that was required.
That’s all you need.
That’s all you need.
I wonder if Google left any half-way forms in the ‘sediment’ whilst discovering this pathway that we might one day discover?
Tajimas D,
“IDC” only exists in the minds of the willfully ignorant.
As for “anti-scientific rubbish”- it is very telling that no one can produce a testable hypothesis for your (anti-ID/ non-telic) position.
“I wonder if Google left any half-way forms in the ’sediment’ whilst discovering this pathway that we might one day discover?”
Ha! too funny
Isn’t that what the testable theory of evolution is about? Seems to me a proper complement might be a testable theory of design.