The Warmist hate is really boiling at Salon

The "Salon" writer, Paul Rosenberg is a shrill critic of everything and everyone on the conservative side of American politics so his rant excerpted below is not unexpected.  The poor fellow is just full of hate. He never runs out of it.  So his denunciation of climate critics as worse than Hitler seems deranged but was to be expected.

But he is not insane.  Given his assumptions, climate critics are indeed a bad lot.  Rosenberg has drunken every drop of the Warmist Kool-Aid so really seems to believe that a "Climate holocaust" will soon happen.  So his whole rant is an excellent  example of a basic precept in logic:  "If your premises are wrong, your conclusions from them will also be wrong".  Rosenberg shows not the slightest awareness of any of the scientific facts about CO2 and climate so has violated that basic rule of logic.

He has not bothered himself to find out what the climate facts are. He knows what his fellow Leftists say and that is good enough for him.  He lives in a little bubble of self-congratulatory Leftist  illusions.  What his fellow Leftists say is Fact to him.  He is a credulous ignoramus basically. He seems to have no power of independent or critical thought. One has to feel rather sorry that such an eloquent man is so cut off from reality.  He has talents but is using them futilely

And his credulity gets quite amusing at times: His reverence for  "a 128-page report" from the corrupt World Health Organization, for instance.  That credulity is behind his rage is also suggested by the fact that he is a mere journalist.  As a journalist he is presumably only modestly paid for his rants. The people who get the gravy from the warming scare are the academics who keep the whole hoax going.  In the form of research grants, they get showered with gold for their efforts.  Can do better, Herr Rosenberg.  Is being a cog in a fraud machine the best you can do?   -- JR

AP took a big step forward by deciding to stop using the term “climate change skeptic”, following concerted pressure from scientists and activists. But they also took a big step backward by deciding to not use the term “climate change denier” instead, and to actively nix it as well. “Climate change denier” sounded too much like “Holocaust denier,” AP explained, so it was out, too. They added the following to their style guide (which many journalists outside AP use as well):

Our guidance is to use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science and to avoid the use of skeptics or deniers. This is, quite simply, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

You can tell it’s wrong because of just how pleased the deniers are with AP’s decision, as Science magazine reported:

Meanwhile, some traditionally associated with the “skeptic” or “denier” side are claiming victory. Marc Morano, who runs the contrarian site Climate Depot, told National Journal that he preferred the term “skeptic,” but that “doubter” still suggests there’s room for debate. By ditching “denier,” AP is “entering the realm of objectivity,” Morano said. Meanwhile, Anthony Watts, a former TV meteorologist who runs the popular contrarian blog Watts Up With That?,also praised AP’s decision as a “positive and long and overdue change” to ditch the “ugly climate term ‘denier.’”

This wasn’t just a one-time error in judgement. It’s an ongoing journalistic sin we’re talking about, a sin of commission, a continuing misrepresentation of reality, something that no journalistic entity worth its salt ought to be a party to.

AP’s new style guidance clearly resulted from a letter to the media last December asking journalists to “stop using the word ‘skeptic’ to describe deniers.” [letter/press release] It came from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and was signed by 48 of its fellows, including Nobel laureate Sir Harold Kroto and philosopher Daniel Dennett. AP referred to them specifically (though a bit inaccurately) in its announcement:

Scientists who consider themselves real skeptics – who debunk mysticism, ESP and other pseudoscience, such as those who are part of the Center [sic] for Skeptical Inquiry – complain that non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science have usurped the phrase skeptic. They say they aren’t skeptics because “proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.” That group prefers the phrase “climate change deniers” for those who reject accepted global warming data and theory.

But it’s more than a preference. It’s a matter of accuracy, something that science and journalism are supposed to have in common. And it’s downright inaccurate for AP to pretend it’s simply a matter of preference. Having diminished CSI’s objection, AP then elevated the deniers:

But those who reject climate science say the phrase denier has the pejorative ring of Holocaust denier so The Associated Press prefers climate change doubter or someone who rejects mainstream science.

This is a classic example of false balance on AP’s part, with multiple problems on both sides of the scale and one big thing wrong at the middle: “doubt” is not mid-way between “skepticism” and “denial” . It far closer to the former than to the latter, which is why the deniers were so pleased with it.

Joe Romm cited three problems with AP’s reason: First, that AP had an easy alternative, pointed out by Justin Gillis in the NY Times in February: “others have started using the slightly softer word ‘denialist’ to make the same point without stirring complaints about evoking the Holocaust.” Second, that the most prominent deniers, like James Inhofe “knowingly use phony arguments to stop the world from acting in time…. Since when should anyone care about the phony concerns of such self-destructive anti-scientific people?” Third, Romm noted that many deniers actually like the term. If they don’t have a problem with it, why should we?

All that is true, but there’s a further point worth making: climate change denial is actually much worse than Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial deals with the deaths of millions in the past, which it did nothing to cause, however morally odious it surely is. Global warming denial deals with the deaths of millions in the future, which it helps to cause, by crippling efforts to prevent them. And that’s something much worse, as is reflected in law: It’s not a crime to lie about murders in the past, except to hinder a police investigation, or prosecution; but it is a crime to tell enabling lies about future murders—it’s called conspiracy to commit murder.

The most recent estimate (2014) from the World Health Organization (a 128-page report) projects that “Under a base case socioeconomic scenario, we estimate approximately 250,000 additional deaths due to climate change per year between 2030 and 2050.” That’s 5 million deaths over just that 20 year window. Major impacts will come via diarrhea, malaria, childhood undernutrition, and heat exposure in elderly people. But the total will undoubtedly be significantly higher:

AP says we shouldn’t use the term “denier”, because it has a “pejorative ring.” Which begs the question: isn’t a pejorative ring precisely what’s called for? Isn’t it both morally necessary and empirically accurate? The problem isn’t that “denier” has a “pejorative ring,” it’s that it’s not nearly pejorative enough. “Climate holocaust co-conspirator” would be more apt.

You either align yourself more or less with the climate deniers—consciously or unconsciously—or you align yourself against them. There is no “neutral” ground outside of or above the debate, however much one might wish for it.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).