Warmists Are Never Wrong, Even When Supporting Genocide

Brandon Shollenberger writes a follow up of the survey last week that was inspired by Stephen Lewandowsky’s work (thanks to all the people who helped fill it out). Note the footnote and the background reading, before commenting. 😉 – Jo

Global warming proponents support genocide. That may seem hard to believe, but remember, they’ve said it’d be right to blow up dams and burn cities to the ground:

Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage. If carried out willingly and on a sufficiently large scale, this process would require dismantling many of the key components of civilization; no person would be foolish enough to cut off their own limbs unless they were suffering from some kind of psychotic delusion, and no civilization would be willing to remove many of the pillars of its own existence. Looking from the outside, though, a civilization hacking off its own extremities would seem like exactly the right thing to do.

That view is not from some fringe element global warming proponents shun. James Hansen, arguably the most influential member of the cause, supported the book that was said in. Hansen has also suggested “coal trains will be death trains” and GHGs could “destroy much of the fabric of life.” Supporting genocide is incredibly extreme, but clearly some extremes are acceptable to them.

But supporting genocide? That’s hard to believe. I’d need some strong data to make me even consider the idea. That’s why I collected some. Using the approach of Lewandowsky et al, I created a survey (copy here) which got 5,697 responses (two of which I filtered out for being incomplete). Three items on the survey were:

You believe global warming is a [sic] real.
You believe global warming poses a serious threat.
You believe genocide is…

Respondents were asked to rate their level of disagreement/agreement (1-5) on the first two. For the third, they rated bad/good (1-5).

I found statistically significant correlations (at the 99.99% level) for all pairings of these items:

As you can see, people who say global warming is real but not a serious threat are more likely to oppose genocide. On the other hand, people who say global warming is a serious threat are more likely to support genocide. The effect isn’t large, but it is statistically significant. There’s more. The survey also included the item:

You have never been wrong.

The effect is small but statistically significant at the 99.99% level. Believing global warming is a serious threat correlates with believing one has never been wrong. Believing you are fallible correlates with merely believing global warming is real. Combine these two findings, and we get:

1. Believing global warming is a serious threat correlates with believing you are never wrong.
2. Believing global warming is a serious threat correlates with supporting genocide.

Therefore, global warming proponents believe they are never wrong, even when supporting genocide.

Quick note, Stephan Lewandowsky built upon correlation matrices like mine by using factor analysis and structural-equation modeling (SEM). These cannot change observed patterns; they can only tease out additional ones. I am not replicating those steps.

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 Jo Nova’s Footnote: The conclusions should be taken every bit as seriously as Stephan Lewandowsky’s finding that four potential unconfirmed skeptics (who responded to surveys on alarmist sites) say they believe the moon-landing was faked. Though Shollenberger’s study was five times the size, only used one version of the survey instead of two or three different ones, and makes no claim that 78,000 warmists saw the survey on a site which had no links to it. Plus when I asked for the data it was provided immediately. We look forward to further analysis 😉

Footnote #2: Filed under Satirical science.

Important background material:

• Stephen McIntyre: Anatomy of the Lewandowsky Scam
• Lewandowsky, Cook claim 78,000 skeptics could see conspiracy survey at Cooks site where there is no link
• 10 conspiracy theorists makes a moon landing paper for Stephan Lewandowsky (Part II) PLUS all 40 questions
• Lewandowsky hopes we meant “Conspiracy” but we mean “Incompetence”
• Lewandowsky gets $1.7m of taxpayer funds to denigrate people who disagree with him
• “Science” by taunts and attempted parody instead of answering questions
• Stephen McIntyre: More Deception in the Lewandowsky Data

All posts on Stephen Lewandowsky