The new environmental activist tactic - censorship

[mlyonsd]

Heating up: Climate change advocates try to silence Krauthammer

By Howard Kurtz
Published February 24, 2014FoxNews.com

Charles Krauthammer says it right up front in his Washington Post column: “I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier.”

He does, however, challenge the notion that the science on climate change is settled and says those who insist otherwise are engaged in “a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.”

How ironic, then, that some environmental activists launched a petition urging the Post not to publish Krauthammer’s column on Friday.

Their response to opinions they disagree with is to suppress the speech.

Brad Johnson (@ClimateBrad), the editor of HillHeat.com and a former Think Progress staffer, boasted on Twitter that 110,000 people had urged the newspaper “to stop publishing climate lies” like the Krauthammer piece.

I understand that many people are passionate about global warming and consider skeptics to be flat-earthers. Those who don’t like the arguments by Krauthammer, a Fox News contributor, should by all means criticize, dispute, denounce and otherwise go at him. That’s how debate takes place in a country with a vibrant media culture.

Instead, these folks believe that censorship is preferable. Why engage Krauthammer when they might just be able to employ pressure tactics to silence him? And what’s the difference between this and shouting down a speaker at a town hall?

Krauthammer told me the petition-signers “showed up just in time to make precisely the point I made in the column.”

When it comes to free speech, he says, “they don’t even hide it anymore. Now they proudly want certain arguments banished from discourse. The next step is book burning. So the question of the day is: Can you light a Kindle?

“Is there anything more anti-scientific than scientific truths being determined by petition and demonstration?”

Maybe this reflects a broader trend in which people want to wall themselves off from contrary information — and wall off others as well. Debating a complicated subject like climate change — and, equally important, what to do about it — is difficult. Attempting to silence the other side is the easy way out.

Of course, most climate-change proponents are perfectly willing to argue their case on the merits. Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to everyone.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...e-krauthammer/

[mlyonsd]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

What facts? You haven't done any research for 50 years. Brilliant.

Recording climate temperatures for 50 years doesn't require government dollars. Or are you already at the point where the government does everything for you?

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by mlyonsd

Recording climate temperatures for 50 years doesn't require government dollars. Or are you already at the point where the government does everything for you?

I think it's obvious what the answer is to this.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by mlyonsd

Recording climate temperatures for 50 years doesn't require government dollars.

Yeah, but the climate scientists that are alarmists and or the activists, place thermometers in heat sinks or near them. Must be govt scientists doing that to create job stability for themselves.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by mlyonsd

Recording climate temperatures for 50 years doesn't require government dollars. Or are you already at the point where the government does everything for you?

One seldom sees ignorance of this magnitude.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

One seldom sees ignorance of this magnitude.

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea

Yeah, but the climate scientists that are alarmists and or the activists, place thermometers in heat sinks or near them. Must be govt scientists doing that to create job stability for themselves.

Well, almost never sees ignorance of that magnitude.

[mlyonsd]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

One seldom sees ignorance of this magnitude.

Well if that's the case you, BEP, and I are in the same boat after watching your laughable definition of the word 'censorship'. All in the same thread.

Grab a oar you idiot.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by mlyonsd

Recording climate temperatures for 50 years doesn't require government dollars. Or are you already at the point where the government does everything for you?

Thanks to government collected weather data, I can already look at 50 years of weather data. Guess what? The temperature is going up.

[mlyonsd]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Thanks to government collected weather data, I can already look at 50 years of weather data. Guess what? The temperature is going up.

Could you collect that same data without government funding?

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by mlyonsd

Could you collect that same data without government funding?

Could they have? I suppose so.

Did they? Why not?

[mlyonsd]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Could they have? I suppose so.

Did they? Why not?

My point is/was real science will resolve itself only when government funding for political purposes is eliminated from the equation. I have no problem with funding government funded measurements of temperature but we really shouldn't think to act on them for at least 50 years from now. At a minimum.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by cdcox

So would you agree with any of the following:

1) anthropogenic climate change is occurring and those that argue that it is not are doing so from a position that is unsupported by scientific evidence

I think man has an impact. I don't know how much impact. I don't know how well science has bracketed that impact.

Originally Posted by cdcox

2) the projected risks that are classified as "likely to occur" are significant and it not be prudent to ignore them

I don't know how significant, but I don't think it would be prudent to ignore them.

Originally Posted by cdcox

3) using the atmosphere to dump emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has a real economic cost associated with it

There are costs and benefits. I don't know how to evaluate them and I don't know how capable scientists are of evaluating them.

Originally Posted by cdcox

4) the most extreme solutions that have been proposed are unfeasible and are non-starters

I assume this is probably true, but I'm not sure I know what the most extreme solutions are.

Originally Posted by cdcox

5) reasonable action to accelerate development of economical sources of renewable energy should be pursued at a multi-national level even if doing so places a slight drag on current economic growth.

It's hard to argue with "reasonable" and "slight", but I guess the devil is in the details.

Originally Posted by cdcox

6) the learning curve principal (known as Moore's law in computing) demonstrates that actual implementation of a technology can be a powerful force for technological advancement; therefore, an important component of point 5) is to deploy significant quantities of renewable energy even if it seems uneconomical when the costs listed in 3) are ignored

7) strategies to make communities and societies more resilient to impending climate change should be developed in the near future and implemented as the costs of their deployment are economically justified by climate events

These are where the lack of settled science make the cost benefit calculations nearly impossible, afaict.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

I was going with the typical usage of the term. You wanted to play semantics, so I joined in. Based on that, the thread title and Kurtz's column is complete bullshit.

No, you were confused by the difference between US free speech concepts (related to government censorship) and censorship (not focused exclusively on government) and now you can't admit you were wrong.

When you initiate an exchange by saying someone doesn't know what a word means, the actual meaning of the word is more than a semantic issue.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by patteeu

No, you were confused by the difference between US free speech concepts (related to government censorship) and censorship (not focused exclusively on government) and now you can't admit you were wrong.

When you initiate an exchange by saying someone doesn't know what a word means, the actual meaning of the word is more than a semantic issue.

There was no confusion. It generally refers to govt action.
Anyway, you both must not even grasp the broader definition since you appear to think the activists had the ability to censor anything.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by patteeu

I think man has an impact. I don't know how much impact. I don't know how well science has bracketed that impact.

I don't know how significant, but I don't think it would be prudent to ignore them.

There are costs and benefits. I don't know how to evaluate them and I don't know how capable scientists are of evaluating them.

I assume this is probably true, but I'm not sure I know what the most extreme solutions are.

It's hard to argue with "reasonable" and "slight", but I guess the devil is in the details.

These are where the lack of settled science make the cost benefit calculations nearly impossible, afaict.

This is my point. Once you get past the denial stage, and ignore the most extreme proposals, reasonable people can talk about moderate steps that could be taken to address the situation. But we can't do that because we can't move past the denial stage.

Number 7 doesn't really require that much projecting of cost/benefits. For example, a seawall to protect NYC is projected at $20B. Sandy cost NYC $19B in lost economic activity and 43 lives. If you get another Sandy type storm in the next 10 years, it is pretty clear evidence that the cost benefit favors building the seawall.

But you don't spend billions, on a projection of something that might happen. In other words, if Sandy had not yet occurred, and someone were advocating a seawall for NYC based on predicted potential storms that would crash the city, I'd say let's wait and see.

But the planning for these types of hardened infrastructure takes time, and often times multiple iterations, so we should begin that planning process now.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

There was no confusion. It generally refers to govt action.
Anyway, you both must not even grasp the broader definition since you appear to think the activists had the ability to censor anything.

Pretty pathetic. Next time, consult me before you lay down definition snark. I know how to use a dictionary and I'd be glad to help you.