This past winter and spring I spent a good deal of time dissecting Jim Steele’s malicious game of deliberate deception in his Pacifica Tribune’s “What’s Natural?’ column and it was taking its toll.
On the one hand, I like the work of studying others’ writings - investigating and searching out new information, double checking my own assertions and recollections, learning, relearning and taking the time to examine, recognize and expose the ‘mechanics of deception’ in action. In that way it’s my classroom and a positive exercise.
On the other hand, it’s profoundly depressing coming face to face with these real life intellectual zombies that never ever seem to change. They pompously cry for debate, yet try having a serious constructive dialogue with them. First comes the attitudes of superiority, then the dismissal, then avoidance, then insults and derision, then they run and hide, but never an adult discussion.
And no one seems to care much! Free pass for all. So they get away with it, over and over like a spreading pathogen, and no one seems capable of doing anything about it.
And no one seems to care much! Free pass for all. So they get away with it, over and over like a spreading pathogen, and no one seems capable of doing anything about it.
Ask questions, make challenges, explain the simple and well understood science of Earth’s climate. Write and rewrite, present evidence, teach, reason, strive till you're blue. Yet not a word is heard, not a lesson is absorbed. Absolutely nothing gets incorporated into their understanding. Utter hopelessness.
Contrarian arguments today are exactly the same as they were ten, twenty and more years ago. It’s like the immortal words of Homer Simpson: “No Marge, I didn’t learn a thing.”
