Posted by Surly on December 21, 2019
cassandralegacy.blogspot.com - Years ago, one of my acquaintances told me of when he ended up in jail accused of various financial crimes (but it was a political trap - I'm sure). He told me that he had a very interesting experien…
Good article. I got a gallows humor chuckle from this line:
I think it can be seen as an illustration of something that Benito Mussolini said long ago, "Many enemies, much honor" (molti nemici, molto onore). In English, you might say: "it is good to be surrounded, now we can hit them in all directions!"
As an old hand at dealing with deniers, I understand where Ugo Bardi is coming from. However, Ugo is neglecting the fact that it really doesn't matter what sort of (bought and paid for) legerdemain the deniers come with. To assume that ANY of them are being honest is a mistake, especially in the light of the correct assumption from Ugo that the best debater he sparred with is intelligent. They know exactly what they are LYING about, and why. To entertain the notion that they are being sincere is a big, big, mistake that will result in that
'horror movie' like experience Ugo mentioned in the article. Any intelligence the deniers have is used for the purpose of deception, PERIOD. 😠 Unless you are a masochist, it is a waste of time to engage deniers in serious debate.
For example, the issue of whether Carbon Dioxide heats the atmosphere or not has ALWAYS been a non-issue. I have always shot the deniers down on that one by calmly explaining how a Carbon Dioxide detecting meter, the one most homes have (yes the have Carbon MONoxide detecting meters too), works.
They simply CANNOT argue around that. Of course they try to change the subject or claim that, because the percentage of CO
2 in the atmosphere is quite small relative to other atmospheric gases, the CO
2 heating impact on the overall atmosphere "can't possibly be that great"
, but then they are into straw grasping territory and have basically lost the debate on whether or not CO
2 TRAPS HEAT. It does.
That's how those CO
2 detecting meters work. They detect any interruption of infrared rays. The more interruption of those generated rays across a tiny space inside the CO
2 meter, because CO
2 absorbs
infrared (i.e. HEAT) rays, the more CO
2 is computed to be present. At a certain threshold, the alarm goes off to tell you there is too much CO
2 from a fire or some other cause, so you have to beat feet pronto.
The point is that Catastrophic climate Change is here, and it will just get worse. The deniers can stand on their heads and
wooden beebees for all I care. They really are irrelevant to reality at this point in time.
While it is true that the propaganda machine of the fossil fuelers should be countered, the way to do that is to mock the deniers, not to attempt to argue science with them. Every single fossil fuel corporation and every single politician out there knows Catastrophic Climate Change is baked in. They are just too CAPITALIST to care.
However, as you will soon see in places like Australia, the bought and paid for fossil fuel fostering politicians will soon be paying a very, very steep price for their denier pretense.
I say mock the CRAP out of the online denier trolls. Thumb them down, but don't feed them.