Sunday 27 December 2009

The Weight of Their Lies.

Having argued with lefties, or lefty liberals on message boards for years, one thing has become utterly plain: no matter the intelligence, experience, training or vocation of these people, ideology and dogma come first. Truth, just as in Lamarckism, comes second place to dogma. A simple truth like, “If you hang a murderer he will never murder again” is immediately attacked. The point itself isn’t attacked but all its implications are and ridiculous statements are issued: “Hanging is not a deterrent” which is like saying hitting the ground at 125 miles per hour is not a deterrent to jumping off a cliff. From this point on their arguments get increasingly complex and confusing as amidst the ad hominems they set up straw men to attack, thus drawing the focus away from the central argument. Common sense itself is something they deride. People who use it are not, apparently, addressing the complexities of the ‘issue’, which they will list and debate on in endless detail, and, of course, every ‘issue’ is complex. A great haze of half-truths, denials and just plain abuse arises, but one thing never changes: their ideology remains unquestioned, written in stone. These people do not argue honestly nor are they honest about what they are arguing. Truth is alien to them.

So, when I increasingly discovered it was these people joining the AGW bandwagon, hysterically declaiming the coming catastrophe and immediately attacking anyone who raised doubts, that immediately raised doubts in me. These people were already impeached witnesses, already proven liars, so should I believe them? No, not a chance.

I started checking up on available evidence, I checked some of the mathematics in articles produced by the liberal-arts graduates in the media, and I started to find the holes. ‘Twenty Metre Sea-level Rise!’ an article would declaim, but when I checked the small print and did a few simple sums I discovered that yes, if you carried the already faulty projection through, that’s what you’d get, in about 15,000 years. ‘Polar Bears Dying!’ another would declaim, but a short search revealed Wildlife and Fisheries figures showing the population on the increase. ‘Polar Bears Drowning!’ the shout would ensue, only I discovered that this land-based mammal can swim hundreds of miles without a problem, and survived the Holocene Climate Optimum, and other subsequent warmings. ‘Greenland is Melting!’ and you discover that yes, some of the ice is, revealing the ruins of farms that were there when it got its name. Then, of course, we had the hockey stick, the disappearance of the Medieval Warm Period … and on it went.

It is in the end, not the weight of contrary evidence that has turned me against the warmists (though that is substantial), but the weight of their lies.

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