George Will exemplifies Godwin's Law, automatically loses climate change debate by saying scientists agreeing is like Nazi propaganda.
Newspapers giving distributors of misinformation like Will half a page each week further reinforces their increasing irrelevance.
It's almost saddening to watch George Will, with whom I seldom ever agreed, but at least respected to a small degree. Now, his writing itself is without power and he's become a mere tool, no longer shaping opinion, but paraphrasing the talking points of others.
ReplyDeleteand you have given him a window on g+
ReplyDeleteWow. What unbelievable and shameful and stoopid comparison.
ReplyDeleteMark Thomas I agree. George Will used to reflect the intellectual side of conservatism, but he's just a caricature now. He should have retired years ago.
ReplyDeleteAdam Black I know. I was torn between commentary and ignoring it, but there are many who (used to) consider Will an "intellectual" and this helps debunk that.
ReplyDeleteTim Elkins
ReplyDeleteThere's a intellectual side of political conservatism? I've never seen any proof of that ... matter of fact all proof available shows exactly the opposite ... every conservative movement through out history has been shown to be wrong: racism, sexism, anti-democracy, tough on crime, drug war, ... and the conservative list goes on (and don't confuse conservationism with party politics, for example, both Dems and Repubs have been on both progressive and conservative sides of the political spectrum at times.)
Will is just the latest incarnation of the ignorant trying to rationalize hate and greed.
While we're on the subject of George Will, the intellectual ...
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/110097167949323324728/posts/YAfmbRr81pF
I agree. He's been reduced to a mouthpiece for the teahadists that have hijacked the GOP. Write him off.
Well thank heavens that liberals and environmentalists never resorts to name calling, threats of violence, or hysteria. It would be nice if everybody tried to be civil especially on important matters.
ReplyDeleteRon Lewenberg I don't think anybody is accusing George Will (or any other conservatives) of name calling, threatening violence, or hysteria... but thanks for bringing the straw man to the discussion.
ReplyDeleteThe discussion here is that George Will has made an absurd false equivalence, likening the climate science community to those who kowtowed to the Nazi regime in Germany, during the 1930's and 40's.
Nate McD +1M
ReplyDeleteThe difference being this: The 100 Authors were refuting Einstein not by doing the science (experiments to either prove or disprove the hypothesis) but by attacking with incredulity. When scientific experiments and observations were finally conducted to test his hypothesis (examining the bending of stars light around an eclipse), most of that same community came around.
ReplyDeleteThe opponents of climate science's established human contributions to climate change are rarely attacking using science, and when they do, they fail to use a complete set of data (isolated metrics), establishing false trends, or refuse to draw conclusions sighting insufficient evidence.
Most climate change deniers who have arguable scientific credential are entirely outside of the climate science field, or are so rudimentarily attached to make their comprehension questionable. None have proposed valid tests to disprove the science.
The rather famous case of the physicist who was a denier, and then recieved healthy grant money from various right-wing groups to debunk the science, only to come back after doing the proper research and concluding that not only was the climate science valid, but the levels of human contribution were generally underrepresented by the scientific community. http://goo.gl/gEPlTL
Meteorologists are often climate change deniers as well, but the relative level of scientific knowledge most have make this comparison apropo: Meteorologist is to Climatologist as Dental Hygienist is to Dental Surgeon. Not to say they are not smart people, but most schools meteorology programs are structured more like trade school programs; with specific training in basic equipment use, analysis of localized data for short term predictive purposes, and in many cases journalism training.
A better comparison of the Hundred Authors would be this:
ReplyDeletehttp://goo.gl/9QR2pC
This list has the charm of having the best qualified dissenters, but most of the better qualified ones are only fence sitters. When you get into the abject denialists, most are thoroughly discredited by their lack of scientific diligence and professional interests.
Nate McD Thanks for that link.
ReplyDeleteNate McD Yep, I recommend your link too!
ReplyDeleteNate McD actually, I was being ironic as leftists have done s 'll of the above. Beck in the last two weeks, the NY Times ran a cartoon giving suggestions of things to do with icicles, one of these being to kill climate change deniers. I don't approve of Will's comments any more than those by hysterically leftists.
ReplyDeleteRod Thorell If I point out that one of the reasons why I oppose gun control is that my father was a Jewish partisan, I may have proven Goodwin rule, but I haven't compared anyone to Nazis.
Ron Lewenberg The irony didn't serve the topic, it detracted, but now that you have made your position clear...
ReplyDeleteVitriol is occasionally spilled on the left. There really is no defense of it, but the margins between a political cartoon (obviously a humor piece and the most graphic example of a left-wing call for violence) and a notable gun-rights advocate and noted public persona calling our president a subhuman mongrel and making other veiled pleas for assassination are slightly different things, and I don't consider the two to be in even remotely the same league.
Your father, a Jewish partisan, is probably aware that the first step in acclimating germans to the idea of inhumane treatment and ultimate genocide of the european jews was calling them subhuman and using other terms that compared them to vermin or nuisance animals. With or without a gun, had German society considered Jews humans and not subhuman mongrels, the holocaust wouldn't have happened.
Bringing it back around, George Will invoking a Nazi comparison with climate scientists was a similar act:
Generally speaking, in our modern society, repeatedly calling a group Nazi's compares them to a universally acknowledged evil that cannot be tolerated in society. Whenever one likens a group to Nazi's, one strips away a bit of their humanity, and justifies dismissal of them and their ideas out off hand without regard for their validity. At the most extreme, it serves the same end as calling a person or group sub-human mongrels: it justifies violence against them.
The irony is calling one's opponents Nazis serves the same sort of dehumanizing agenda that the Nazi's made famous as they wiped out 16 million Europeans, about half of whom were Jews.