Talking about
right-wing authoritarians: muddled thinking, double standards and compartmentalised brains, from WUWT today:
Middleton's Muddled Thinking
David Middleton accuses Dr Hansen of "electioneering" because he sent an email to a NY Times columnist and speaks out publicly about the impacts of CO2 emissions. Dr Hansen correctly warns us that human actions (burning fossil fuels) are leading to dangerous global warming, a topic that is the subject of Dr Hansens' decades of scientific research.
Middleton doesn't know what electioneering means. (I expect Middleton believes that he and Watts are entitled to continue to try to deceive the public about climate science for the very reason that it is
not a subject in which they can claim expertise.)
Willis' Double Standards
Willis Eschenbach is
still absolutely furious (five weeks down the track) that
Bora Zivkovic won't allow anti-science trolls, deliberate derailing of threads or spam adverts (eg Viagra) on his blog, which he hosts on Scientific American.
Meanwhile, Anthony continues to moderate comments on WUWT, eventually banning people who challenge his anti-science articles. But that's okay, isn't it.
Prediction
If there is merit to the "
authoritarian" framing then, as I understand# it, the high RWAs who frequent WUWT won't see the inconsistencies or double standards. We'll see.
Update 1
So far there have been 42 comments on Willis' complaint about moderation, most of which are of the type
'"they" are censoring science deniers so that proves climate science is a hoax'.
There are a small number of comments that point out that WUWT is moderated, eliciting four in-line responses from Watts justifying his own WUWT moderation. Watts even says he uses what Willis complains most about: "
Automatic Computer-model-based Censorship" (
sic) and none of his acolytes bats an eye.
Update 2
From Willis E, who didn't mean it in the way almost everyone else would take it (ie anyone but a right wing authoritarian climate science denier):
...Perhaps you could explain to us exactly how they are similar, and how your post is anything but a lame attempt to assert a false and repugnant moral equivalence between WUWT and ScAm.
I can't think of a soul who would assert any equivalence between the morally repugnant blog WUWT and Scientific American. (Scientific American might not be perfect, but fair suck o' the sauce bottle.)
#
My understanding is based on one speed-read of Altemeyer's book, The Authoritarians. Don't take my understanding as gospel!
Over the last few days it's become clear that Donald Trump's minders have been unsuccessful in reigning in his megalomania and malignant narcissism. In the one interview since becoming US President, all Trump could talk about was size, and he told multiple lies in doing so. Read the incredible transcript. It was an extraordinary interview. Trump shied away from discussing important matters of state. Instead, as reported in the Washington Post, he was "endlessly obsessed with his popularity".
