Philip Winestone replied to me privately and, amid his assertions of his own
objectivity, he wrote
<<First, I don't harbour "beliefs" or buy anything "wholesale". This is your
arrogance speaking; you are the only person on earth who thinks straight; the
rest of the peasants harbour black belief systems. This is your fantasy>>
Hardly, Mr W - the first sentence of your initial email started <<When the
rational minds at Vortex start to buy into the mythology/religion of man-made
global warming, we're in deep trouble>> Deconstructing this, it is plain that,
if you were truly trying to accurately communicate your ideas, you believe that
man made global warming is "mythology/religion" I say this BECAUSE YOU STATED
IT and it therefore follows that you have bought wholesale the so-called
arguments (I can hardly bring myself to dignify them with that description) of
the "denier" lobby because no rational person, acquainted with the whole
picture, could accept your demonstrated beliefs as rational - furthermore, when
you state that when the <<rational minds at Vortex start to buy into...>> it is
clear that you are suggesting that the less rational minds of the
non-Vortexians have already bought into the "mythology/religion" and been
already fooled about climate change and simultaneously that you haven't and
that, in your minds eye, validates your claimed position as not "harbour(ing)
beliefs or buy(ing) anything wholesale. You plainly believe that you are
remain smarter than the fooled rest (even the "rational minds at Vortex") and
can see through the fog that is clouding the minds of all the rest of us. As it
is your ideas that are clouded and fooled - I previously offered to show you
how - it is clear that therefore you harbour beliefs, and have bought
wholesale, the arguments of the climate change deniers. Q.E.D.
I do admit to arrogance but it is justified arrogance because I have been
demolishing counter "arguments" against the reality of the man made climate
change hypothesis since the late 80's. I just wish you people would
occasionally stop and analyse the potential consequences of your unjustified
arrogance and beliefs. I have seen the same stupid type of arguments come up
time and time again. I see that you differentiate in your words between <<the
word "stupidity" and the words "lack of intelligence" ... one can be
intelligent and stupid at the same time">> Quite - I have always found the
intelligent-but-stupid the hardest to deal with...
<<You obviously didn't read the article in yesterday's National Post, where the
writer wrote (from a scientific standpoint) that that glowing orb above us, may
have something to do with the earth's warming and cooling cycle>>
No, I didn't. What would be the point? Neither do I make any attempt to listen
to the speakers on coast to coast AM radio saying similar things (that Thomas
Malloy keeps bringing to our attention). Your apparent belief in the value of
this article is an example of how you are fooling yourself with the propaganda.
Deconstructing your statement above, you imply that, because the writer
(elsewhere, you describe them as a physicist) writes "from a scientific
standpoint", that others who put forward the
man-made-contribution-to-climate-change hypothesis are not scientists, or at
least are lesser scientists than the one you give credit too. Guys like this
one are mavericks and not in a good sense. OF COURSE the sun has something to
do with the warming and cooling cycles. That is transparently obvious and
totally irrelevant to whether humans are influencing the climate. Do you think
that the multitudinous real experts in climate science (1000's to one against
the deniers) do not know, or have not considered, this factor in their
deliberations? Ludicrous! I do not know which of the solar radiation arguments
this "scientist" came out with - there are deniers who claim that we are in a
natural warming cycle due to increasing solar radiation and others (even fewer)
who claim the opposite for different reasons such as ice age cycles, planetary
tilt and God knows what else. The latest but one red herring I heard was that
because Mars is currently undergoing a warming trend that this proves that
measured warming on Earth is therefore purely natural - pathetic and desperate
it may be but nevertheless the denier lobby has been parading this so called
argument hither and yon! The fact that Mars climate scientists immediately came
out and demolished the faulty asssumptions and logic of the deniers received
much less publicity. The very latest red herring is the "Holocene and Fred
Flintstone" piece of poison. Have a look at this article
http://www.newstatesman.com/200705210083#reader-comments and the reader
comments afterwards which adequately shoot down the raw idiocy expressed by
Ruth Lea (Director of the Centre for Policy Studies and of Global Vision. She
is a governor of the London School of Economics and a non-executive director of
Arbuthnot Banking Group plc). Another clear case of vanity gone mad.
This "it's all the fault of natural warming cycles argument" is a very common
one amongst the deniers now they find it very hard to deny that Earth actually
is warming (N.B. they used to deny this too! Remember the "heat island" and
satellite temperature measurement misdirections?) The idea that the deniers
have spotted something that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists
have forgotten or ignored and that ordinary lay people reading the Canadian
National Post or listening to Coast to Coast AM will see though the stupid
scientists ideas is just too arrogant and mindboggling to be credited... but
sadly this what we have to deal with as the entrenched forces continue to fight
back by encouraging and investing in this philosophical sleight-of-hand.
I say if we are in a natural warming cycle and we are increasingly skewing
the balance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by extracting sequestered
carbon from fossil fuels then this is just throwing petrol onto the fire and is
therefore even madder - it follows that anyone who uses any of the natural
warming mechanisms as a rhetorical device to fool the reader/listener that all
warming is natural and that humans have no exacerbating effect on it is
therefore a "denier" and is therefore also utterly mad, not to mention
extremely dangerous.
I wrote in my email to you << You do not appear to realise that the
"deniers" have been coming out with one carefully crafted excuse after another
at short intevals for at least TWENTY YEARS now>> This solar radiation thingy
is one of those excuses - it has been muddying the waters for ages now and has
been shot down over and over and over again. Every few months some alleged
scientist comes out with it (or one of the other red herring arguments) and
gets airtime, or journalistic coverage, and bingo! another horde of gullible
people are fooled. Did you not understand my mention of the legendary Greek
monster, the Hydra? All the aforementioned red herring arguments are endlessly
recycled on the "denier" websites and the gullible are constantly stumbling
upon these and feel empowered that all of a sudden they are in the know and
everyone else has been fooled. Human vanity is expoited yet again to cloud
minds.
I note that you did not take me up when I challenged you with:-
<< Whatever the ideas/arguments that you have bought wholesale from the,
frankly evil (because of their effect), climate change deniers I will show you
where they are either a) lies b) logically wrong c) crude rhetoric designed to
fool people so they defer to the selfish special interest groups (i.e, big
Oil/Coal) who have been throwing money at groups to generate this poisonous
rubbish for decades) or d) all three. Bring on whatever you have got - I will
try to demolish it>>
Finally, in a reply to John Berry you wrote:-
<< Don't make the unjustified assumption that I "believe" anyone, including
myself>> People who argue like you do often come out with this defense after
their rhetoric has been challenged - I imagine they believe it makes them look
all philosophical and rational and objective - really, the outside world tends
to judge language like this as that of someone wriggling out of a spot...
Nick Palmer
