Pirate's Cove

NY Times opinion writer/Warmist Anna North is very upset that people might be mislead by Skeptics, and inadvertently highlights that she, and other Cult of Climastrology members, have no problems lying, despite the headline

Why Misleading Americans About Climate Change Is Dangerous

Even as the Pope and some conservatives call for action on climate change, it remains common among Republican politicians to claim that the science on the issue is murky or inconclusive. The latest to take this position is Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.

As Josh Israel notes at ThinkProgress, Governor Kasich has been lauded by some for his relatively moderate comments in last week’s presidential debate — and in a TV appearance on Sunday, the governor acknowledged that “man absolutely affects the environment,” and pointed to reduced emissions and alternative-energy efforts in Ohio. However, he also said that the impact of humans on the climate was a matter of “legitimate debate,” and that “we don’t want to destroy people’s jobs, based on some theory that’s not proven.”

In fact the overwhelming majority of research supports the reality of climate change — a 2013 review of nearly 12,000 scientific articles published between 1991 and 2011 found that of those that took a position on the issue, 97.1 percent endorsed the idea that climate change was real and human-caused. The study concluded that papers disputing climate change were “a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.”

Citing a completely debunked paper (this is the John Cook one being cited), one which has even been debunked by people the paper cites as supporting a postion that Mankind is responsible for 50% or greater of the current warm period, is not a particularly strong position. Furthermore, the vast majority of the papers in that survey did not take a position/held that Mankind was not mostly/solely responsible.

Making Americans aware of this fact can have real effects. A study published earlier this year found that informing people of the scientific consensus on climate change “causes a significant increase in the belief that climate change is (a) happening, (b) human-caused and (c) a worrisome problem. In turn, changes in these key beliefs lead to increased support for public action.”

“Even a single, simple description of the scientific consensus significantly shifted public perceptions of the consensus and subsequent climate change beliefs and desire for action,” write the study’s authors. “A concerted campaign to inform the public about the scientific consensus would ideally involve numerous exposures to the key message, conveyed by a variety of trusted messengers.”

And, boom, right there, Ms. North, and, by extension, the NY Times, are advocating that people should be misled on the subject in order to get them to change their minds. Well, really, they are advocating straight up lying to people.

Unfortunately, climate change deniers are doing the exact opposite — repeatedly misinforming the public by painting climate change as scientifically controversial, when in fact it’s anything but.

The problem here, of course, is that throwing out a one-liner about the 97% consensus is much easier than explaining why the study is a complete pant load, a work of fiction. Short talking points repeated ad nauseum are easier to believe than complicated rebuttals. And that’s the way they want it.

But, Warmists don’t want it enough to change their own lives. Just Other People’s lives.