Believers in man-made-catastrophe can’t win over skeptics with evidence and reason. Instead the peak “believers” intellectual strategy is to hope the oldies might die off in time to save the planet: Death isn’t an option: climate change activists aren’t waiting for deniers to die.

It’s sexist, ageist, intolerant and illogical: just what we’ve come to expect from “progressives”, eh?

Oh the hubris and arrogance of the terminally immature

Take their conclusion that because skeptics are older, they are less educated, more selfish, and more easily fooled. Doesn’t the alternative sound more likely? Could it be that believers are younger and so more naive, less worldly wise, and throughout history, more likely to be the gullible rollovers — the mere tools of the powers at large? It’s not just that it’s happened before, its a standard repeat theme throughout history.

But hey, it’s not their fault they are young and badly taught. When we don’t teach logic and reason at school anymore, we can’t expect them to recognize that con-men and crooks always pretend to be “helpful” at the start of a scam, and that people who attack the messenger are the one who are losing the debate. Besides, everyone knows that educational standards have slipped badly in the last 20  – 30 years, and that today’s students are given more self esteem and less, you know, facts and logic.

Whatever – – none of it tells us anything about the planetary atmosphere. Not that you can explain that to the starry-eyed fan of Gaia who keeps believing the witchdoctors even though their predictions of droughts, warm winters, hot summers, dead reefs, and wild cyclones were all wrong. And they don’t seem to care that their witchdoctors are helping themselves to buckets of taxpayer’s cash…

The immature believers struggle with numbers:

Mathew Wright, executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions and the 2010 winner of the federal environment minister’s Young Environmentalist of the Year, says: things are moving faster than they ever have before, and the fact that solar didn’t work 20 years ago but works now is a problem that for some people is hard to face and admit to.”

So what does “works” mean? Not something you can measure with money or kilowatts. Coal fired electricity costs 3c a kilowatt wholesale, and the government is paying up to 60c a KWH for solar electricity. The Victoria Auditor General showed large scale solar costs about 5.5 times as much as coal, and at best, rooftop solar costs at least 9 times as much.

So Wright thinks something “works” when taxpayers have to fork out  5- 20 times as much for the same electricity?

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Hand back your science degrees Trenberth et al.

Thirty eight of the worlds top, most consequential climate scientists sought to slap down the Nobel prize winner, astronaut and glitterati of science, and all they could come up with was a logical fallacy and a single paragraph of incohate, innumerate, and improbable evidence. It’s hand-waving on stilts.

Is that the best they can do?

Trenberth and co try to rebut No Need to Panic About Global Warming, but those 16 eminent scientists quoted evidence and pointed out major flaws in the assumptions of the theory. They described forms of scientific malpractice, and called for open debate. In comparison, the 38 climate “scientists” offered hardly more than argument from authority, “Trust Us: We’re Experts” they said as if the lesser beings, who were mere Professors of Astrophysics, Meteorology, and Physics, were too stupid to know the difference between a doctor and a dentist. I mean, sure the 16 skeptics could be wrong, but if the evidence is so overwhelming, why can’t the 38 experts find it?

Q: What kind of doctor is a scientist who can’t reason?

 A witchdoctor.

First — the Fallacy

1. “Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition?”

If my dentist tells me that my heart surgeon was caught emailing other surgeons about how to use tricks to hide declines, that he broke laws of reason, that his predictions are basically all wrong, or that his model of understanding is demonstrably wrong, then I’m listening to the dentist.

Try this out: My dentist has no vested interest, but has provided years of trusted service and medical training — and he warns me there are doubts about my heart surgeon and I need to get a second opinion (say from a Dr Lindzen, Dr Christie, or Dr Spencer*). So I tell him to “go jump”, “what would he know”, and keep returning to the same heart surgeon even though my blood pressure doesn’t change and the pills cost $3 billion a month. Sure.

Eight reasons to dump your doctor:

1. His predictions fail.

2. He uses fallacies to reason — like “argument from authority” instead of empirical evidence.

3. He’s been caught cheating “hiding declines”, trying to get dissenting doctors banned from publishing their work, and worrying what will happen if his patients realize how little he knows: “They’ll kill me probably.”

4. He refuses to debate his radical treatments publicly. “It’s beyond debate”.

5. He calls people names — “denier”

6. He doesn’t appear to understand the scientific method – when data disagrees with his theory, he throws out the data and keeps the theory.

7. When you ask him for evidence that the treatment works he keeps saying “Trust me, I’m an expert”.

8. The numbers don’t add up. Where’s the cost-benefit sums? (Like this or this?) His treatment plan means the nation needs to lower it’s quality of life now, … so … our children’s children will live ten minutes longer in 2100?

Second – the hand waving attempt at evidence

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Put those “other comments” and news here. Thanks!

Jo