Leading Global Warming Skeptic changes mind after watching Al Gore Speak

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Wow, I feel really bad to be the one responsible for bringing the intellectual caliber of this forum so far down. Suppose I should just let you and your egghead conservative science critic buddies get back to jokes about the weather and asserting that global warming can't exist because Al Gore's electric bill is so high and other real science. And I would like to apologize unreservedly for stooping to the sensationalist bullshit of maintaining that data pertaining to the consequences of global warming are inconclusive.

I usually go elsewhere for an intelligent discussion myself. It's not just easier to do when people don't assume that your skepticism is politically driven, it's possible.

[Nicobie]

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

I would like to apologize unreservedly for stooping to the sensationalist bullshit of maintaining that data pertaining to the consequences of global warming are inconclusive.

Well, even though I never expected it, that's big of you and probably right too.

[Mazer]

I forgive you, Ramona.

[albed]

I'd like to think Ramona learned something from this thread, but I'd just be kidding myself.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Well, clearly I already knew that some are so preoccupied with their fanatical aversion to any and every idea which alludes to anything occurring on a "global" scale that this argument would be completely futile for their sake. I also pretty much already guessed that the concept of inconclusiveness would be entirely alien to those who choose to dwell exclusively in one half of a world which is defined primarily by an inexorable political polarity.

I think I did however learn that one should always use the :sarcasm: tag around here, even when you're sure no one will miss it.

And I would like to apologize unreservedly for stooping to the sensationalist bullshit of maintaining that data pertaining to the consequences of global warming are inconclusive.

.

[Mazer]

Oh, your sarcasm came through loud and clear. I just thought I should offer my forgiveness on the off chance that you actually cared whether you were steamrolling my opinions with your high and mighty intellectual smugness, and that offer still stands.

Nice PSA, by the way. One hopes that in thirty years that little girl will have figured out that it's safer to ride the train than to stand in front of it. But if you were trying to use the speeding freight train as a metaphor for inconclusiveness, you failed miserably.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Originally Posted by Mazer

...just thought I should offer my forgiveness on the off chance that you actually cared whether you were steamrolling my opinions with your high and mighty intellectual smugness...

First of all, that's a bit like a fish complaining that the water is wet, but the queer thing about high and mighty intellectual smugness is that I would characterize the gist of my participation in this thread as a response to precisely that, considering anyone ready to dismiss out of hand a potential threat to the medium of our collective existence on the bases being offered here to be the epitome of it.

Let's review:
• global warming doesn't exist because Al Gore made a movie about it and he owns a big house.
• global warming doesn't exist because it's cold outside where I live right now.
• global warming doesn't exist because it's a theory and theories are just ideas and shouldn't be taken seriously.
• global warming doesn't exist because the lack of conclusive evidence for it can be transformed into a conclusive case against it.
• global warming doesn't exist because the lack of conclusive evidence for it can be transformed into soundbytes such as "not supported by science at all" and this makes you sound cutting edge and informed.
• global warming doesn't exist because some scientist's inconclusive theories about it predict preposterous disasters and contradictory effects that could just never happen.
• global warming doesn't exist because some other scientist's inconclusive theories about it suggest that even if it did exist the effects might be mild and regional.
• global warming doesn't exist because it's just a liberal conspiracy to turn us into overtaxed zombie drones and take away our freedom.
• global warming doesn't exist because goddamned liberals are always wrong about everything.

In light of the fact that my own endlessly repeated opinion is that we simply don't know if it's occurring or not but that it might behoove us to acknowledge our affect on the environment and seek to protect and conserve it anyway, I'm not really sure what you feel the need to 'forgive'--the fact that I've got a good basic common sense argument? Or perhaps, more hopefully, you're forgiving me for simply feeling the need to make this argument over and over in response to incessant denials which seem to be based on sheer hostility as opposed to reason.

Originally Posted by Mazer

One hopes that in thirty years that little girl will have figured out that it's safer to ride the train than to stand in front of it. But if you were trying to use the speeding freight train as a metaphor for inconclusiveness, you failed miserably.

"Cute, but you know I didn't mean it that way. You've either misread me or you're just being obtuse." The only 'metaphor I was using' or thought was appropriate in this context (I didn't make the commercial), was of the man who doesn't give a fuck one way or the other because he knows it will not affect him personally.

People have a lot of excuses for not giving a fuck by which they can pretend to exalt themselves. Sheer derision, intellectual smugness, claiming to be more informed than it's even possible to be, irrelevant political hostility, plain old entitlement. But however you boil it down it still stinks.