Climate disinformer Eric Worrall took a short quiz at the New York Times (on WUWT archived here). The quiz was a few simple questions about what decisions Donald Trump should take in regard to oil, gas and protecting the planet Earth and the people who live on it.Eric chose to tell Donald Trump to trash the planet, and then pretended to be deeply offended when he was told by the New York Times in response to his choices:
You did a very bad job protecting the environment and may have made many of the worst effects of climate change more likely. It could hardly have been worse.
On the upside for President Trump, Republicans in Congress and many of the people who voted for him will support most of your decisions. We guess it’s true what they say about dark clouds (something about silver linings?).
What does he expect? That anyone but his fellow planet wreckers would thank him for more floods, more drought, more heat waves, poorer crops, more wildfires, more skin cancer and faster global warming?
One other thing his short article shows is that Eric knows that deniers, disinformers and fake sceptics will avoid reading facts they don't like. They'd probably rather read nonsense at climate conspiracy blogs, fake news and white supremacist rants at Breitbart than have to face reality.
As you know, there is a large proportion of the US (and Australian) population who are opposed to education, knowledge and the advancement of humanity. That's not the case everywhere, thank goodness. An illiterati from the USA, Myron Ebell, was recently told where to get off by conservative politicians in the UK, Eric Worrall's home country. Ebell basically said - don't listen to experts. I don't know if he said just who he thinks the deplorables should listen to, though I doubt it was Eric Worrall. Anyway, the response was sharp, according to Desmog UK:
Lord Greg Barker publicly pleaded with Ebell to “please, please stop trashing experts. It is an incredibly dangerous thing to do”.
The former UK climate minister said: “The idea that climate deniers or the extreme sceptics represent anything other than a tiny disproportionate voice at the extreme of the argument is wrong. Mainstream Conservatives are pro-climate action.”
Michael Liebrich, chairman of the advisory board of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, likewise said he was “uncomfortable” about the comments Ebell made in his speech.
In his own keynote address, Liebrich said “we don’t have to reject the arguments and say we don’t believe in experts. We absolutely believe in experts. We cannot be in the business of rejecting science”.
EU climate chief, Jos Debelke, also rejected Ebell’s anti-expert posturing.
Thankfully, it's not yet the entire world who wants to promote dumb ignorance over the best, most knowledgeable information from the cleverest people in the world. What will Eric do when the food runs out? He'll probably just say "it's happened before, this is nothing unusual, it's nothing to worry about" as he totters through the floods and pouring rain, or drives his dirty unwashed car over his dead lawn in the next major drought.
By the way, the blurb you get back from the NY Times when you answer the questions (whatever you reply) is extremely polite. One could hardly take offense. Either Eric is very thin-skinned or he's just pretending to be offended to get page hits for Anthony Watts.
From the WUWT comments
It's not just that the conspiracy theorists are not ashamed of their appalling ignorance, it's that they gloat about how dim they are.
Latitude is afraid to even look at the NY Times. He's probably scared that someone will reach out through his monitor and nab him and put him in a FEMA concentration camp.
February 2, 2017 at 7:26 am
I’m not clicking that link…….
Mumbles McGuirck isn't alone in being proud of his illiterati status:
February 2, 2017 at 7:33 am
I took the George Mason University’s Center for Climate Communication’s quiz several years ago. I was rated as “Dissmissive” complete with a graphic of a gauge pegged out at zero. I was so proud of myself I used the graphic as my Facebook profile picture. Sadly, they no longer offer it, but it was the usual clap trap.
http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/
Albert Brand says he "could go on" and travel further into Dunning Kruger land.
February 2, 2017 at 7:42 am
I started to take the quiz but the choices are insufficient to make rational decisions. They equate pollution with CO2 and do not differentiate between real pollution such as smog, and aerosols. If you want to give a quiz it must be unbiased or it is useless. I could go on and on but will leave it there.
dmacleo is one sick dude. He or she claims to want to kill all life.
February 2, 2017 at 10:43 am
I am a bad person also.
I bet I will kill off all the coral reefs and annihilate oceanic life.
ah well its nice to have goals.
What fun! I didn't take that quiz, but it was attached to a terrific Justin Gillis article (he's one of the best). Gillis often doesn't have a comment section, which is wise. However, if you want awful with a cosmetic face, you might take a look at what is going on with Theresa May. She has egg on her face for helping Trump look legitimate in that press conference, but her actions are hardly any better than his. (It was immediately before his immigrant ban, which has caused broad chaos and at least one death.) It was a bit like the meeting with Al Gore, which was followed with the Pruitt announcement (don't know how much you follow our horribles, but he's certainly one of the many foxes in the henhouse). Trump has made a fine art out of these humiliations.
ReplyDeleteHere's the Gillis, you'll have to cut/paste as links don't seem to work here for me:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/science/climate-change-republicans.html
I'm taking the quiz now and will report back. Those answers were likely to be preset not personal, so Worrall was just as clueless as they said.
Those were no-brainer questions; Worrall had to be a flat out climate denier to fail on every question and get that reply. Here's what I got:
DeleteHow Did You Do?
You did a pretty good job protecting the environment and possibly avoiding some of the worst effects of climate change. But there was no way for you to stop climate change in its tracks with this set of policies.
On the downside for President Trump, Republicans in Congress and many of the people who voted for him may not be happy with most of your decisions.
(A conclusion with which I entirely agree. It's not enough, but way better than the alternatives.)
It didn't say "you are an ecocidal scumbag"?
ReplyDeleteMy rating on doing the quiz.
ReplyDeleteActually it was a pretty simple dumb quiz.
You did a pretty good job protecting the environment and possibly avoiding some of the worst effects of climate change. But there was no way for you to stop climate change in its tracks with this set of policies.
On the downside for President Trump, Republicans in Congress and many of the people who voted for him may not be happy with most of your decisions.
Considering the quiz did not ask one question about attitude but simple stuff no one should get any other outcome but mine.
I hope that some how or other people will actually wake up to the change happening to the world and realise we as in "humanity" can not continue on the course we are at present.
Yes I do realise this is just about impossible most of society to realise because they do not want to realise they are leaving a degraded world for their descendants.
Edit " impossible for most of society "
ReplyDeleteSou
ReplyDeleteAn illiterati from the USA, Myron Ebell, was recently told where to get off by conservative politicians in the UK, Eric Worrall's home country.
Things are going very badly here in the UK. There are, sadly, no grounds for optimism at all. There's an excellent (fairly short) piece in the Guardian that illustrates what has happened. This gives a flavour:
We have no hope of understanding what is coming until we understand how the dark money network operates. The remarkable story of a British member of parliament provides a unique insight into this network, on both sides of the Atlantic. His name is Liam Fox. Six years ago, his political career seemed to be over when he resigned as defence secretary after being caught mixing his private and official interests. But today he is back on the front bench, and with a crucial portfolio: secretary of state for international trade.
The role of the Daily Mail and the execrable Paul Dacre (chum of Lawson; mouthpiece of the GWPF) is also highlighted.
It's all bad news, no pun intended. The moderate right simply got stuffed six ways from Sunday. It can bleat at Ebell, but Ebell laughs back.
Diminishing trust in the press has been one of the hallmarks of the Trump campaign recently and the right wing of US politics for years. The formula is pretty simple, create distrust of the relevant expert communities and create distrust of the media that you don't control and you can get your base to believe anything you want them to believe.
ReplyDeleteMyron Ebell on Global Warming: People move to Phoenix because warm is good as long as we have air conditioning.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp-4XRGp9Eg
Back in the real world, the future of Phoenix is in doubt due to the threat climate change poses to its water supply.
Delete