Update: See further down in the updated WUWT archive for more insight into the mind of the extremists at WUWT. I was going to post some of the WUWT comments here, but they were too over-the-top for HotWhopper. If you thought the survey came up with unusual results (I don't think so, myself), then you'll think that WUWT brought out off-the-charts unusual. A veritable DuKE of Right Wing Authoritarians protecting their turf. (The reactions here and at WUWT would themselves make an interesting study.)
DuKE: Dunning Kruger Effect (used as a collective noun)
Anyway, I wonder how Anthony and his followers feel about anti-activists such as Jay who says, with double full stops (archived here - latest update here):
September 29, 2013 at 9:00 am
If you have a keen eye and half a mind its pretty easy to see that environmentalism & Feminism are both hate based movements,, Ugly small minded jerks who think their ability to clear a room somehow makes them right..
Then the media & government highlight these cultist freaks, like they’re some sort of role model..
Which seeds anti media / government feelings, right into class warfare because the believers all have University degrees..
The lines are drawn and no amount of comment or follow the leader propaganda will change the fact that environmentalists / Feminists are either ignored or detested by the general public..
A socially elite group $$$ decide to bring suffering to everybody except themselves.. These swine have to coin a study to dance around their ever present hate..
There is no hope for the hopeless..
Anthony does have a knack for bringing out the ugly from the weirder of his followers. Does he do it on purpose do you think? (There is more where that came from.)
Update: Interesting. More self-confessed misogynists are popping out of the woodwork.
“Unfortunately,” they write, “the very nature of activism leads to negative stereotyping. By aggressively promoting change and advocating unconventional practices, activists become associated with hostile militancy and unconventionality or eccentricity.”
ReplyDeleteIt is a pity the study did not investigate it explicitly, but it sounds as if their line of argumentation includes the anti-science activists at WUWT.
IMO it's fair to say that there are extremes of activism as well as more moderate activists. To my way of thinking society needs the more aggressive activism in areas where change is important but difficult. Or where the general public isn't strongly engaged in the issue.
DeleteWe'd not have had forest agreements here but for the aggressive activists who chained themselves to trees, for example. So our forests would be even more depleted than they are.
On the other hand, I don't think there were any activists involved in the land clearing legislation that went through most Australian states in the 1980s (preventing farmers from clear-felling bushland).
Women's rights wouldn't have happened if not for activism by men and women. Workers' rights similarly wouldn't have happened but for the activism of trade unions.
As for the WUWT extremists who are engaged in activism to oppose policies that are in the best interest of the environment and humankind, one commenter at WUWT said there was a lesson there for "skeptics" too. So you could be right on that point, Victor.
Land clearing / agricultural practice reform was championed by the Australian Conservation Foundation. Activism was indeed involved. 1989 was a key date with the teaming of the NFF and the ACF on landcare, but it's been back and forth in terms of success, and the 'alliance' is fluid.
DeleteYou're right Nick. I forgot about the ACF. That was a very different type of activism IIRC. The ACF and farmer organisations have joined forces on other issues too.
DeleteLandcare itself was grassroots farmer led wasn't it? Maybe the ACF was there in the background?
I'd need to read the paper, but on the face of it there may be a confusion as to the direction of causality. I.e. it may be that the reaction to activists is rooted in the attachment to the thing the activists are pushing to change, and isn't actually enhanced (other than rhetorically) by the efforts of the activist. Put another way, you can politely ask someone to change and they'll like you better than if you were pushy, even while they fail to change. The whole thing sounds a bit like the "deficit model" strawman.
ReplyDeletebasically it is anti green propaganda
ReplyDeletehere in QLD the farmers and greens have joined forces to bring the CSG industry to account.
newspaper reports paint the farmers as protecting their
livelihoods while the greens are painted as radicals with an agenda to shut down economic advancement.
people buy that because of their own ideological bias
Sample numbers in the survey are very small, [possibly as small as the WUWT commentariat].
ReplyDeleteYour observations about the social gains from activism cannot be made often enough. There is a general lack of awareness of how much in-your-face and behind the scenes activism has contributed to the existence of society. One of the unfortunate byproducts of generations of unacknowledged, unseen social activism has been that people like the complacent donkeys at WUWT can take it all for granted, and engage in an endless rhetorical struggle against their own interests.
There are concern trolls in real life as well as in cyberspace, aren't there Nick. Like "I would have recycled if they weren't so nasty about making us do it".
Delete