{"id":2653,"date":"2011-01-30T19:01:25","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T23:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/?p=2653"},"modified":"2011-01-30T19:01:25","modified_gmt":"2011-01-30T23:01:25","slug":"year-2-month-1-day-31-a-taxonomy-of-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/year-2-month-1-day-31-a-taxonomy-of-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 2, Month 1, Day 31: A Taxonomy of Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the Missourian, David Rosman takes on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.columbiamissourian.com\/stories\/2011\/01\/26\/david-rosman-dont-all-cold-blame-global-warming\/\">the people who hold up recent heavy snowfalls as proof that climate change is nonexistent<\/a>.  It&#8217;s a good piece, and triggered a somewhat longer response than usual.  As far as I could make out, the paper has no length limits on LTEs, so I&#8217;m up around 200 or so.  This was a fun piece to write.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Climate change deniers have many fascinating ways to avoid confronting reality.    A few hew to a form of Biblical literalism in which humans can&#8217;t possibly affect our global environment because \u2014 well, because God won&#8217;t allow it.   Others make the argument from personal incredulity: &#8220;global warming isn&#8217;t happening because I don&#8217;t understand how it works.&#8221;  A closely related approach is the argument from apparent contradiction: if it&#8217;s snowing in your neighborhood, then global warming is disproved.  While the latter two arguments may be consistent intellectual stances, ignorance, as Scott Adams&#8217; &#8220;Dilbert&#8221; once said, is not a point of view.  And then there are the truly convoluted theories \u2014 avaricious scientists forming a worldwide conspiracy headed by Al Gore (or, as Limbaugh&#8217;s minions prefer, &#8220;algore&#8221;) in which every bike path, public transport system and solar panel is a step on the road to a Socialist New World Order.  Next up? Compulsory Carbon Footprint Re-Education Camps for SUV drivers!<\/p>\n<p>These notions fail Occam&#8217;s Razor, of course.  The simpler explanation is the correct one: industrial civilizations burn a lot of carbon, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, and it&#8217;s warming the planet.  A lot.<\/p>\n<p>But since doing something about it would require adjusting our habits and reducing the profit margins of big oil companies, it&#8217;s easier to stay ignorant.<\/p>\n<p>Our descendants won&#8217;t have that luxury.<\/p>\n<p>Warren Senders<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Missourian, David Rosman takes on the people who hold up recent heavy snowfalls as proof that climate change is nonexistent. It&#8217;s a good piece, and triggered a somewhat longer response than usual. As far as I could make out, the paper has no length limits on LTEs, so I&#8217;m up around 200 or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[467,253,207,769],"class_list":["post-2653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-assholes","tag-denialists","tag-idiots","tag-occams-razor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2653"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2680,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions\/2680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}