Refuting a climate Marxist’s bogus climate change shtick
Posted by John T. Reed on
Here is a Facebook comment I recently received when I expressed some routine skepticism about the sea level rising multiple feet because of Republicans burning fossil fuels. The commenter is Larry Best, a West Point graduate. We both “majored” in Russian, although after reading his comment I suspect he had a different reason. The numbers refer to my list of intellectually-dishonest debate tactics
| Larry Best said | John T. Reed response |
| I suspect, John T. Reed, that you will come to regret sending me a friend request. | Let the readers decide. |
| Harbor facilities are by definition at sea level. | #20 Straw man refutes an argument that no one has made. |
| Can a city with submerged harbor facilities really be called a "port?" | #20 Straw man refutes an argument that no one has made. Has any city since, say, 1800, had submerged harbor facilities? If not, why are we talking about it? |
| I spend a good amount of time in my class on Golden Oldie | #1Name calling: debater tries to diminish the argument of his opponent by calling the opponent a name that is
subjective and unattractive. We can guess that the phrase Golden Oldie refers to songs from the 50s and 60s and the Baby Boomer generation who were of music buying age then. #4. Irrelevant |
| Denier | #1 subjective and unattractive name calling— Denier refers to a small group of Muslims and Nazis who deny that the Nazi Holocaust occurred in Nazi occupied territory in the 1940s in spite of millions of witnesses who were both victims and perpetrators, film, capture of concentration camps, captured documents, and thousands of survivors of the camps. The climate change debate is not even about the past. It is about predictions made by computer models. |
| Memes. | #1 subjective and unattractive name calling A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation. Opponents of climate change alarmism may have drawn their own conclusions or agreed with those that originated with others. It does not matter. All that matters is that the conclusions drawn by the persons in question are correct. Climate activists like Best need to prove that their opponents’ conclusion have some error or omission in fact or logic, not that more than one person agrees with opposing climate activists. Memeness is #4 irrelevant. |
| I'm detecting several in your post. | Repeats #1 name calling and #4 irrelevant. |
| For example, I'm seeing the King of Denier Memes, | #1 name calling and #4 irrelevant. Best claims to have been in the top 5% of his class at West Point. One would expect such a person trying to deceive would eventually depart from elementary school dishonest debate tactics like name calling and irrelevance and move on to something more sophisticated. |
| "climate is always changing." | It is. To defeat me in this debate, he needs to point to errors or omissions in my facts or logic. |
| It can be restated as "climate changes without man, therefore man can't change climate." | Ah, the Adam Schiff “make up things your opponent did not say” approach. I did not say it and do not believe it. That is just a blatant lie. It does not have a name as a debate tactic. Earth’s climate is monstrously large and complex. Humans are puny. I have a question for Best: Our first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million years ago. When during that period did humans change climate? In fact, climate changed continuously before and after humans appeared. All that has changed is people like Best have blamed the recent change on humans. That does not mean we are guilty. People like Best are hard core Marxists who seek totalitarian government take over of all human activity and “climate change” is suspiciously and totally congruent with the Marxist political agenda. Science does not care about politics. |
| It's fully as nonsensical | 55. Conclusory statements. You don’t prove a defendant is guilty by merely saying he’s guilty. |
| as "forest fires start without man, therefore man can't start forest fires." | #20 straw man. I did not say that and it is false. It is a plain lie to suggest that I did. This is an invalid analogy. Forest fires that start without man are caused by lightning, an extremely power natural phenomenon that humans could only create in the last century. But lightning is not the only way to start a forest fire. It can easily be done with the individual human act of discarding a lit cigarette or failure to fully extinguish a fire started with a match or a lighter or a magnifying glass. Weather is caused by the massive, far beyond human capabilities nuclear explosions of the sun. Sun heat causes wind and rain. All over the earth. At times, smaller phenomena like a volcano eruption can affect a smaller climate region. Even volcanoes exceed any explosion ever created by humans. Humans have been trying to affect weather—make it rain—for hundreds of years, with NO success. You can start a fire with match. But there is no such easy human action that changes climate. |
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Climate change activists now point to human burning of fossil fuels producing carbon dioxide that not only changes weather, it changes it horribly.
Nasa says “
The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is currently at nearly 412 parts per million (ppm) and rising. This represents a 47 percent increase since the beginning of the Industrial Age, when the concentration was near 280 ppm, and an 11 percent increase since 2000, when it was near 370 ppm.” Activists say CO2 is a “greenhouse gas.” So is water vapor. Water vapor varies by volume in the atmosphere from a trace to about 4%. Therefore, on average, only about 2 to 3% of the molecules in the air are water vapor molecules. If you convert the CO2 ppm to % you get 412/1000000 = .000412 or .0412%. That means water vapor is .03 ÷ .000412 = seven times as much water vapor as CO2. So why are activists focusing on the tiny amount of CO2 and ignoring the far greater amount of water vapor? Because they are Marxists, not scientists. In the last year, I believe, a top Democrat campaign aide admitted climate change is about seizing political power, not science. They are not interested in water vapor because it provides no pretext to take money from business and seize control of their assets. |
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| Climate does indeed change naturally, and VERY slowly, for reasons of astronomy and geology. | Yup. Who are you refuting? I never said anything other than this. |
| And now mankind has invented artificial climate change, | False statement. Other than failed efforts to make it rain, mankind never had any such interest. This is an attempt to overlay childrens’ story book villainy on innocent human activity, |
| which occurs MUCH faster. | I have been alive for much of the time period in question. My parents were alive for most of it. I have not noticed any climate change. Nor did they ever mention any. It is so subtle we are told that you need ultrasensitive scientific instruments to detect it. Like the microscopes the same people use to detect “microaggressions” or the audio instruments they use to detect “dog whistles.” Or the highly trained imaginations they use to detect “code words.” In fact, what we have here are a bunch of political malcontents who desperately want things to bitch about and will imagine them if they have to. All living animals exhale CO2. All plants “inhale” CO2. The Clean Air Act of 1970, did not list CO2 as a pollutant. Obama later tried claim that law regulates CO2 in spite of no mention of it in the law or in the creation of that law. |
| It's happening faster than the biosphere can adapt, | #55 conclusory statement |
| which is why extinctions are spiking. | #55 conclusory statement These experts calculate that between 0.01 and 0.1% of all species will become extinct each year. If the low estimate of the number of species out there is true - i.e. that there are around 2 million different species on our planet** - then that means between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year. There is no reliable census of extinctions. |
| Indeed, the five Great Extinctions all occurred because of rapid changes to climate, and mankind is replicating the conditions behind the greatest, the Permian. |
#55 conclusory statement Also, I thought he said above that only man-made climate change was fast. Make up your mind. I doubt the Permian extinction was caused by internal combustion engine SUVs considering it occurred 252 million years. But Larry Best spouting all that academic bafflegab almost had you going didn’t it? |
| I'm also seeing "warming is good." | 20 straw man I did not say anything about that in the post Best is commenting on. So that is a lie. Now that he brings it up, different temperatures are optimal for different activities. The optimal temperature for the entire planet earth may be higher or lower than the current temperature or the 1880 or whatever past one. Also, the optimal temperature probably changes over time with technology and human migration patterns. And if I ever decide I want some humans to determine the earth’s temperature, the political people most associated with mass murder of their citizens will not be my choice, |
| As I noted above, the absolute average surface temperature isn't the danger so much as rate of change. |
He did not note that above. Not only is that a #55 conclusory statement, it makes no sense and he offers no explanation or proof.
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| In addition, raising the temperature of the entire surface of the Earth by a measurable amount represents a stupendous amount of energy, |
As I explained above, weather on earth is mainly caused by continuous fusion nuclear explosions. The Sun releases an estimated 384.6 yotta watts (3.846×1026 watts) of energy in the form of light and other forms of radiation. And that is the way it has been for millions of years. Good thing we are 93 million miles away. #4. Irrelevant in that it has not changed. |
| and it's not gently distributed. |
meaningless babble. The sun’s energy is distributed the same as it has been for millions of years. It is quite gentle on a warm spring or Indian spring day. |
| Much of it is found in the hundred year storms Earth is experiencing every year. |
More meaningless babble. The earth has experienced storms since time immemorial. This is supposed to be refuting me. WTF? |
| Measures of CO2 show it is spiking at a rate not seen outside of the Great Extinctions. |
And who from 252 million years ago told Larry Best that? Exactly what 252 million-year-old data confirms this? |
| The spike is entirely based on |
#55 conclusory statement |
| overuse |
#63 assumes facts not in evidence, Who determines what use is too much use? Is Larry Best really telling us we have a dire emergency in 2020 because someone built a campfire in the Italian alps in 1831? |
| of 19th Century energy technology. |
#1 name calling And most 19th century energy technology—candles, whale oil, fire wood, coal, water mills—is long gone. What the heck is he talking about? |
| It should be a natural process to replace obsolete tech with 21st Century green tech, which is now in fact more cost-effective. |
Ah, so after all this Larry Best reveals that he agrees 100% with me: All government energy policy should be ended including mandates, subsidies, energy price controls, restrictions on drilling, fracking, construction of pipelines and shipping terminals. The free market will use the technology with the lowest payback period. If that is solar panels or windmills they will win the competition in many cases. May the lowest-cost producer win. |
| Unfortunately, billionaires who profit enormously from use of Earth's atmosphere as a free dump for their industrial waste greenhouse gasses |
Name these billionaires. What is your data base for the statement “profit enormously?” Is “dump[ing] industrial waste greenhouse gases” what you do every time you exhale? You say gases plural. What industrial waste greenhouse gasses other than CO2? Sounds like you are foaming at the mouth and have fallen into your Bernie Sanders demagoguery talking points and became unmoored from any facts and logic. |
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Name the buyer, seller, price, and where we can find that deed or bill of sale that you are referring to. Are you referring to Trump who spent less than than any other modern presidential candidate? Or are you saying the woman who spent more than any other presidential candidate—Hillary—purchased a political party? |
| and a fake "research" industry | Name the researchers and their affiliations and the evidence that they are “fake.” |
| to hamstring necessary action. | List the “necessary action” |
| That's why the ultimate solution is a political one - sweeping the party of denial out of power. | This started out about science. You finish by coming out of the Fabian socialist closet and reveal that you are a watermelon: green on the outside and red on the inside. |
| You say to taught this recently. | To whom? Where? |
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