All teams? I guess I just don't view censorship as something worth vilifying on one side, and promoting on one own's side. I guess I just view censorship as bad, not a tool for bad or good?


But yeah... my beloved Trump administration, and congrats Hoya for your brave act of resistance, you'll probably get a like soon enough.

Scientists disagreeing with you isn't censorship.

Wookie,

Let me try to put this in another way:


Claiming total certainty about the science traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong. Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. Censoriously asserting one’s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.

None of this is to deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences. But ordinary citizens also have a right to be skeptical of an overweening scientism. They know — as all environmentalists should — that history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power.

Any science that tries to model future conditions is going to have a level of uncertainty built in. Your argument seems to be that this means we should never try to model future conditions or take any actions to prevent likely catastrophe.

No, that's what your made up argument to argue against is based upon your own self-made conclusion of someone else's position...

Thayer,

Let me put this another way: lol @ you.

No scientist is claiming absolute certainty. It's a straw man. Neither are scientists censoring anyone.

Dude you just said this minutes ago: "None of this is to deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences. But ordinary citizens also have a right to be skeptical of an overweening scientism. They know — as all environmentalists should — that history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power."

So you're not denying the science - but focusing instead on the uncertainty. Then it's pointed out to you that no one is denying climate science has some uncertainty baked in. And naturally your response is basically "I didn't say that, you're mischaracterizing my argument which I will not expound on or defend." Somewhere ikestoys just got a boner.

suzzer, you realize that's verbatim from the article, right?

Hey only 10% chance of the end of civilization. Party time!

Whew we sure dodged a bullet of not trashing the environment, not poisoning our ground water, not dumping coal smoke into the air, not ripping up tar sands and getting set up for the future with renewable energy. Thank goodness for that plucky band of industry-funded shills and their mouthpieces like Bret Stephens to save us from that disaster.

Yes.

No scientist is being prevented from showing their work on climate change. The reason climate change deniers are being LOLd at is because they have people like Bjorn Lomborg championing their case.

More heroes out there protecting us from sciencism: http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/01/politi...ion/index.html

Uncertainty!

Thayer, what is your point? Do you even have one?

If the consensus is that taking action against climate change is the proper thing to do given our current understanding and probabilities and XYZ, then why shouldn't they present that with certainty? People are ****ing stupid, and millions of them will ignore every piece of evidence in favor of action if they think there is the tiniest chance that global warming isn't happening. People. Are. ****ing. Stupid. Scientists don't need to give the idiots any more ammo by actually introducing math and probabilities, because people are bad at math and probabilities because PEOPLE ARE ****ING STUPID.

I do feel like a rusting, falling apart amoeba sometimes...

Lol what a whiny snowflake douche.

How is this not a strawman?

Again - what's your point? That there is uncertainty in a predictive science which openly admits to levels of uncertainty. GAME CHANGER

That the behavior and method of the political movement is something worth assessing, particularly if you want better results in the future.

Thayer's entire point, which is his demonstrated habitual response to life, just like so many things during the primaries, then the election, and now, is exactly the same as the essential CDLBot™ point, which is that we shouldn't ever do things unless we have literal certitude about things, and as an epistemological point we cannot, so we should never do things and are disallowed from being intolerant of moronic positions and arguments because we, too, cannot "know we're right."

He will retort that I am lol for making that observation about his reliable position on everything, and say I am misrepresenting his thoughts and positions, and then he will continue in this precise way tomorrow.

It's the same gambit that Bret Stephens has made a career out of. Thayer and Stephens feign patience and understanding colored by "reasonable skepticism," which skepticism is actually designed retaliation against reality and is therefore deeply unreasonable, and chastise those who don't agree with their "correct" but simultaneously worthless position that "A + B = C 99% of the time, but 1% of the time you're wrong and this might be that time!" Then Thayer and Stephens build to a new, utterly irrational but tantalizing to ****ing morons position as follows: "both positions have equal merit because there is room for debate and my skepticism has greater justification than your certitude!" Even though certitude has never been expressed, and even though both Thayer and Stephens are fundamentally intelligent people who know with certitude that they are mangling reason and aggressively lying about their own thoughts and the justifications therefor.

That's why The New York Times has waived its "paper of record" position. It knows this, and now plays the Thayer / Stephens / Bot game. So **** The New York Times for promulgating even more of the same alternative reality world that brought us the problem The New York Times promised to fight against in the first place.

"The science is this. Shut up and listen to me and my political agenda, I promise I have your best interests in heart" is not going to be very productive, and hard for many people to blindly follow, especially when you consider the State-Science relationship throughout history.

here is my retort

If you stop presenting scientific evidence with such certainty then people might start to believe it!

Just like if you ease off on the racism slurs, people might stop voting for white supremacists.

Please explain in as much detail as possible what you mean by this, and how climate change is "State-Science" rather than what you would consider real life big boy science?

Thayer; fill in the blank for me:

"I know what all the scientists think, but I just bet they're wrong because ______."

So now we are disputing whether or not state powers have used Science to promote nefarious agendas?

I didn't even realize this part was up for debate:

It's not about climate change being RealScience or FakeScience, it's about people using it as a political tool and whether or not people should use better persuasion techniques than lol ur dumb, you're too stupid to even understand so just listen to me you moron, I can't believe you think Climate Change is Fake you idiot, lol you