I keep trying to read the Huffington Post...

... but to see things from their point of view, I'd have to have my head pretty far up my ass.


You see, I don't live in an ideological/political echo chamber.  I try to watch Keith Olbermann.  I try to read the Huffington Post.  When liberal commenters leave their "home" blog URL as part of their comments on a conservative blog post I read, I visit the site to see if there's an insight, a new, rational viewpoint.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, what do I see?  Conservatives are evil.  Republicans are stupid.  Rethuglicans.  Silly Bible-thumpers who reject science.  Global warming deniers who'll look to their imaginary friend in the sky to protect them.  Crooked Wall Street types.  They only care about money!

Seriously?  Do these people live in Fantasy Land?  In my experience, nobody is that one-dimensional.  Except, of course, the conservative Christians whom are often cast as heinous villians or dunder-headed comic relief.  I've concluded that the people who leave such comments are the type who'd say they don't have any conservative friends.

That could be true in the following ways:

• Their conservative friends decline to reveal their political leanings because they do not wish to expend energy defending themselves from juvenile attacks.
• Their conservative friends wish to keep their political leanings secret out of the interest of preserving their friendships.
• These people are living in an environment hostile to the very notion of dissent and non-conformity of thought.  Certain districts of San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland spring to mind.
• Some combination of the above.

I know I've kept my religious beliefs and political leanings to myself because of the above.  I've got a friend who's hardly spoken me since he learned I didn't buy into the global warming alarmism.  My friend is a civil engineer who did his grad work at MIT, yet he called me a denier instead of a skeptic.  I blame his chip-on-her-shoulder wife.  I've got another friend who ripped on Catholics just the other night.  She's ripped on Republicans and people with small-town values (often one in the same) in the past, characterizing them as unintelligent, close-minded, etc.  She has since learned I am one of those people she has belittled and continues to belittle.  Curious how she has reconciled the contradiction.

Anonymous slander as a debate tactic

I don't know why I bothered:  Reading a newspaper, is, to me at least, a waste of my time.  The "news" is so often filtered through a columnist, copy writer, editor, executive editor, to the point where it's quite the work-out to go through and pick out facts from the writers' perception of the facts.

Case in point.  Anthropogenic climate change (ACC).  The notion that the global climate is changing, and that we're responsible.  To some degree.  Is it possible there could be debate on how responsible we are, or how much the climate is changing?


Subscribers to the ACC theory (in Sam Kinison mode):  NO!!!!!!!  HERETICS!!!!!!!!  THE DEBATE IS OVER, YOU WORTHLESS BITCH!!!!!!!





So, I browsed the on-line version of the Minneapolis Star & Sickle-- er, Star-Tribune.  It had a story discussing how some people are no longer debating if ACC is significant, but how to adapt to it.

That was what the story was about.  But commentators from both sides of the political spectrum chimed in.

Then I saw what one comment said:

The Joy of Ignorance

The gist of what several commenters to this story have to say so far is: "We don't need no stinkin' science!" Yes, I'm sure that despite the fact that researchers across the globe are taking careful measurements of weather, sea levels, core ice layers, receding glaciers, deep ocean temperatures, and the changing plant and animal ecology--the climate change deniers know better. The deniers probably come from a long line of 'intellectuals' stretching back to the Flat Earthers. Changes to one's life is fearful for many. For the rest of us, it's prudent to study what's happening with the earth's climate and to understand how humans are influencing it. I'm glad that scientists are meeting--both to discuss prevention of climate change late in the game---as well as how to adapt to it.

posted by inlandsea on Sep. 15, 10 at 11:46 PM | 

53 of 83 people liked this comment.

Nothing turns me off to debate like a term like "denier".  My best friend, a very intelligent man whom got his Master's from MIT, referred to me as a denier in the course of what until that point had been a cordial debate.  To me, calling some one a climate-change "denier" is the debate equivalent of calling them a "Nazi".  With such an emotionally-charged label, you've just forfeited the debate.

Calling someone a denier actually shows the inflexibility of your own position.  Very few things in science are actual universal laws.  Most things in science, especially life sciences, are theoretical in some part.  So when someone expresses skepticism over something like ACC because of an incomplete or corrupted set of temperature data, or the tarnished reputations of some of its leading adherents to the theory, and they are labeled a "denier", as opposed to the less-emotional, more factual term "skeptic", it betrays the ACC theory adherents' rigid and uncompromising beliefs.  How many times have they told us The debate is over?

The comment by inlandsea shows what too many on the other side think of dissent.  Deniers, flat-Earthers.  Then ascribe a psychological reason for the dissent.  Disregard things like temperature monitoring stations operating next to an A/C exhaust fan adjacent to an asphalt parking lot in July.  Disregard e-mails speaking of massaging data to get the desired results, or seeking to discredit or silence people with data that does not support your theories.  Disregard scientists who publish an infamous "hockey stick" graph that has become the Gadsen Flag for the ACC advocates and refuse to share their flawed data model for years, even though the research was publically funded.  Sadly, inlandsea is not alone in his/her thinking:  64% were OK with an analysis that demeans and then attempts to psycho-analyze someone who looks at a set of data and just doesn't draw the same conclusion from it.

I'm reminded of a recent episode of Ice Road Truckers that I was watching:  One of the truckers, Hugh Rowland, was trying to climb an icy pass and momentarily went into the opposing lane to get the needed traction, causing an oncoming truck to go into the wrong lane in turn.  The other trucker unleashed a litany of crap at Rowland over the radio.  To be fair, Rowland should have said he was going into the oncoming lane to get traction.  But the other trucker didn't even think this might be a reason.  He just started cursing Rowland out over the radio.  Rowland, of course, is brash and unapologetic, simply saying, "You're a real tough guy on the radio, but meet in the parking lot and I'll knock your teeth in."

Commenters like inlandsea are the same way:  In possession of the courage of lions when safely behind a keyboard and the anonymity of a handle.