Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Protect the children...or trapped in the denialist echo chamber


I see that a WUWT reader has written to Anthony Watts to thank him for his part in protecting his ten year old daughter from the truth about the warming world.  Children mature at different ages and some ten year olds may not be mature enough to handle the facts about global warming.  However it's one thing to not tell them about it, it's quite another to lie to them.

It's a sad indictment on society that her father isn't able to handle the truth and probably never will.  It would appear that he is one of the bottom 21%, either one of the 8% Dismissives or, more likely, one of the 13% Doubtfuls. Maybe his daughter will grow into a mature adult and maybe not.  If she does, I hope she acquires the wisdom, intellect and courage that her father lacks.

Reading the WUWT comments shows just what sort of echo chamber is WUWT.  Many of those commenting are complaining that their colleagues and/or children accept the science.  I didn't see a single comment that the person was open to the idea they could be wrong about their denial.  Only that all the world is wrong except WUWT deniers.

I couldn't see some of the comments because Anthony snipped any from people who accept the science, although some commenters copied and pasted them before they were snipped.  Here's an example of what Anthony censors, from Jai Mitchell as quoted by Michael Moon says:
July 23, 2013 at 5:42 pm  Jai Mitchell,
I have also witnessed daily assertions that global warming has stopped. This is, of course a complete fallacy as the ocean heat content and sea level (as well as land-based glacial melt) evidence has shown
The above statement would seem perfectly ordinary and non-controversial to anyone but a denier of science.  Anthony is getting more strict about keeping his blog for science denial purists.  This next one, in which Gunga Din quotes Jai Mitchell, is admonishing Anthony.  We all know Anthony can't take criticism and censors it.  Gunga Din quotes jai mitchell:
July 23, 2013 at 6:01 pm  jai mitchell says: July 23, 2013 at 3:19 pm
Anthony,
You should be ashamed of yourself.
The point of this thread is how one can use the information present here to indoctrinate their child to the fringe scientific view that global warming is a) not happening or b) stopped.
This is a fringe scientific view — not anywhere near the consensus of over 100 years of a scientific body of work performed by tens of thousands of accomplished scientists, over several millions of person-hours of work in the last 45 years.

Many WUWT comments are straight from the conspiracy theorists' handbook: "science is a left-wing plot". A large number advocate home-schooling so that young minds don't get polluted by "left-wing" nonsense. The following demonstrate the sort of weirdos who are the mainstay of WUWT and their paranoia:

Kiwi Sceptic thinks all the world is wrong except him and the WUWT echo chamber:
July 23, 2013 at 6:17 pm The alarmists are impervious to reason; impervious to empirical evidence that proves them wrong; impervious to the stink of Climategate. They simply don’t care how much evidence you throw at them, or how many times you prove them to be liars in blogs, newspapers and journals. They don’t care because the point of the exercise is to get this poisonous dogma drummed into the minds of children who, through innocence and naivety, are not equipped to challenge it, let alone ask important and searching questions.

Owen in GA says the same:
July 23, 2013 at 6:43 pm Wayne, It is always good to examine your arguments to make sure you are not just going through the motions and keeping the same old memes. This is what I enjoy in the rebuttals to folks like Jai Mitchell, those rebutting put forth arguments backed by data and we are all able to look and see that the misdirection and subterfuge used by CAGW believers is just that: misdirection and subterfuge. One day, we may have someone put the charts together to make a rebuttal and we all go “hmm, that doesn’t look right” and something new may come of it. Of course I understand your point about time wasting, life is short.

tango says:
July 23, 2013 at 2:16 pm I have 4 grand kids in Australia oldest 18 she is going to uni youngest 7 our school system is controlled by left wing unions and a lot of teachers are greenies so they are brain washing students in global warming it is sad but I keep telling them the truth, what you are being told is not true . every parent must try and stop this brain washing

Dennis York says education is child abuse:
July 23, 2013 at 2:24 pm  My biggest mistake as a parent was letting my children attend public schools. They can all read, write, add and subtract (of course I taught them that). In fact two are post-graduate engineers and one is a molecular biologist The problem is that they are members of the Church of Ecodruidism. They harbor guilt and are depressed for being normal humans with normal human desires.
Public education is child abuse. Save your kids! Get them out of public schools!


Eric Worrall doesn't say he's going to encourage his daughter to think for herself, he's going to teach his daughter how to lie so she is not discriminated against (paranoia plus):
July 23, 2013 at 2:26 pm  My little girl is 3.
Since they can’t convince enough thinking adults to believe their cr@p, plan B is to brainwash the kids.  Its going to be a battle – I’ve got to not only teach my little girl the truth, I’ve got to teach her to lie to her teachers, so she isn’t discriminated against.

3 comments:

  1. Wow. Just wow.
    Here in Germany (I'd guess) the topic is rather uncontroversial aside from fringe opinions – and of course the interests of several lobbies, say, the gas lobby arguing about "clean and easy energy" (compared to traditional coal etc.).

    Frankly, I read some posts on/by deniers rather out of weird fascination. Ok, even that could pass as professional interest, having studied linguistics and some media.

    That comment thread is incredible.
    Just Michael Moon's rant at 9:13 would be enough to start a multi-disciplinary project.
    "Jai Mitchell,
    Male or female? Not that it matters, but I would prefer to be able to address you with the proper pronoun:—"
    – and then he goes on a disparaging tour de force of misguided language tidbits, ending in:
    "If you have an employer, never let on that you post here, disastrous professionally,,,,,,"

    ReplyDelete
  2. It takes a special kind of determination to train one's self and one's children to be this stupid. It also takes a peculiar lack of self-awareness to enable such denialism to live in one's mind.

    Ironically my kids were watching Fireman Sam today and the episode was about a flood that came on a high tide (episode 83). In it the protagonist's mother blames the flood on "global cooking" so it's a thinly-veiled reference to sea level rise, and my first thought was of the conniptions that would be blossoming in the denialist homes that were tuned in, and their accusations of propaganda and brainwashing.

    It's hardly brainwashing though - a few weeks ago I explained to my five year old that the gas that comes out of the exhaust pipe warms the planet a little, and she immediately cottoned on to the fact that this would melt the ice and take away the polar bears habitat. I hadn't got around to teaching her that: she just extrapolated from watching various documentaries on the bear's ecology.

    Give a kid the basic scientific facts and they can work it out for themselves. It actually takes a determined effort to sprinkle the pixie dust of sky fairies over their learning in order to tie their understanding into the Gordian knots of cognitive scotoma.


    Bernard J.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

Instead of commenting as "Anonymous", please comment using "Name/URL" and your name, initials or pseudonym or whatever. You can leave the "URL" box blank. This isn't mandatory. You can also sign in using your Google ID, Wordpress ID etc as indicated. NOTE: Some Wordpress users are having trouble signing in. If that's you, try signing in using Name/URL. Details here.

Click here to read the HotWhopper comment policy.