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[bzipitidoo:] Then there's all the ruckus over Global Warming. An awful lot of people would rather suck up Big Oil propaganda than listen to climate scientists. Why? For most of them, there's no gain in adhering to climate change denial, but they stick to it anyway, and have no scruples against using 3rd degree methods to suppress and silence climate science, stuff such as cutting funding and threatening their jobs and even their freedom.
[PartTimeZombie:] The problem is that "your team" is wrong about climate change, and are being manipulated by people who directly gain from fossil fuels, but at least your team get to win right?
Stupid way to run a country if you ask me.
[khallow:]“And yet the environmental guys are way outspending the other side. Somethings not quite right with the narrative.”
[AC:] Addressing this separately. To me this makes sense.
The companies get to hide behind “nothing is wrong” and that is cheap compared to the independent attempts to show that there is something going wrong in the environment.
[AC:]You do realize that if it is true that big oil hid the negative effects of their and related industries concerning global warming that it is a huge savings?
A contrary viewpoint:
[AthanasiusKircher:] Other industries manage to employ paid scientists to "shill" for them all the time. Big pharma, food additives and nutritional research -- we all know that where ambiguous data CAN be exploited, industry can and has often hired researchers or financed research to help support its position. (And to be fair, I think many research scientists in these industry positions actually believe in the work they do.)
With the pockets of Big Oil and dozens of other related industries that would suffer from increased pro-environmental regulation to combat climate change, where is this army of paid scientists? And don't argue that it has something to do with tenure requirements or whatever, because Big Pharma, the big chemical companies, and the Food Industry has no problem finding scientists with graduate degrees whom they can EMPLOY and finance directly to publish research. If the data is really that open to interpretation, it should be easy to employ a bunch of debunking scientists. (And they probably wouldn't even lost a lot of money doing so, since they could probably charge huge speaking fees on the conservative circuit for these people.)
That's always the most confusing aspect of those who claim a massive conspiracy -- every other industry manages to find a significant number of scientists to shill for them when needed, despite the fact that such scientists are often bucking the research funded by non-industry groups and the government. Yet for some weird reason, it's claimed here on this issue that exactly the opposite happens: industry with big pockets is powerless to recruit an army of shills, and instead all the scientists are jockeying for the much smaller pockets of NSF money. If this is so easy for the government to do, how come it's so hard for them to achieve similar levels of consensus around problematic drugs or chemicals or food additives or whatever?
To all those people who think there's a massive, well-funded (that is, well-funded for an industry that has trillions of dollars in revenue!) Big Oil/fossil fuel campaign to sabotage humanity's efforts to combat climate change, I have this simple challenge. There's plenty of analysis of the few groups that allegedly support climate denialism and such.
Now, do the same for the pro-mitigation side. Include the big non profits like Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund, government/intergovernment agencies like the UK's MET, NASA's GISS, and the IPCC, and the many businesses that support pro-mitigation. Use the same metric for each side. Who spends more on propaganda?
Protip: if you get that climate denialists are spending within an order of magnitude of the other side, then you're missing something big.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by mrpg on Friday February 08 2019, @05:07AM (21 children)
Si dos mujeres tienen relaciones, ¿tienen el doble de probabilidad de quedar embarazadas?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 08 2019, @05:10AM (17 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @05:37AM
And your journal entry is an exercise in what then?? lawl
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday February 08 2019, @06:18AM
Газпром не продается!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 08 2019, @07:24PM (14 children)
You must be new here. Now, where is my hairbrush...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @07:35PM (13 children)
After all the effort multiple users have gone through for YEARS now we still have khallow pushing this garbage, right along with an uptick of posts regarding the 2020 presidential race. I've noticed the trend on a few popular sites.
You should really entertain the idea that this site is a valid target for "grassroots" propaganda.
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 08 2019, @07:47PM (8 children)
We already have a system in place for that. Every day, every registered member who's been here a month or more gets to mod down up to ten comments for any reason they choose. I assume by your question though that this is not to your liking. Which current staff member would you prefer be the one to judge what is and what is not propaganda?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Saturday February 09 2019, @01:18AM (3 children)
Watch your step, that slope is slippery.
He simply asked that you entertain an idea...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 09 2019, @01:45AM
And TMB provided the entertainment as such. What is the problem supposed to be here?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 09 2019, @04:04AM
The slipperiness is what I was pointing out, yes. I mean would you really want me deciding what is or isn't approved speech? I wouldn't either and I am me.
See, this is part of why I make a point of not acting all "Oooh, I am so much more important and professional than the rest of you because I'm an admin/codemonkey!" even though a portion of folks get unhappy that I don't. I don't just not want you lot looking at me like something I know I'm not, I don't want me falling into that trap and believing it either. Us staff types do our best but we're all ordinary old human beings. We have blind spots and off days just like anyone and we know it, so we don't want any more authority than we're required to assume by necessity. What you don't have, you can't abuse.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 09 2019, @01:02PM
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Saturday February 09 2019, @08:15PM (3 children)
That's not strictly true, is it? Isn't there a limit for each member of 4 downmods against another member per day?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 10 2019, @05:09AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday February 10 2019, @04:20PM (1 child)
So you are saying that I I downmod you 10 times in 24 hours, there are no consequences?
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday February 10 2019, @05:03PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 09 2019, @01:04AM (3 children)
To do what? Spout idiotic conspiracy theories about the Big Oilz? It's remarkable how unsubstantiated these accusations have been for YEARS. It's like it doesn't matter whether such things are true or not. The narrative is all.
Why do you consider it garbage? Would be nice for the critics to come up with substantive arguments for once.
Given all the snobs vapidly speculating about my Koch connections, it was only a matter of time before someone seriously tried to turn it into a conspiracy theory. After all, it must be a vast evil conspiracy that the whole world doesn't march in lockstep with your every whim.
As to the "uptick", you do realize that 2020 is only 11 months away? We'll probably start seeing candidates announce their campaigns in the latter half of the summer as well as massive speculation leading up to that which will uptick the thing a bunch more. By this time next year, we'll be about a third to halfway through the two major party nomination processes.
Or maybe you're not used to thinking about things more than a quarter away? I hear that's a problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09 2019, @02:53AM (2 children)
My score for the parent is 2 khallows!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 09 2019, @01:03PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09 2019, @08:11PM
THREE khallows!!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @06:12PM (2 children)
Banning yuri will solve overpopulation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @06:35PM
Or you can keep your yuri, but only if you get one government mandated vaginal creampie every week.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09 2019, @12:23AM
yuri? the trainer who trains?