Bill Nye thinks science is about opinion polls — not about reason and evidence, and John Oliver (who’s he? A British/US comedian) thought they should take that fallacy and run with it.
Oliver couldn’t quite sort out his opinion polls from his facts. He seemed to think that when believers do key-word surveys of abstracts it’s “a fact”, but when 75 million Americans are skeptical of a theory (which only has key-word surveys to back it up) “who gives a s***?”
He goes on to say: “You don’t need people’s opinions on a fact”. Except the “fact” in question is just some other people’s opinions. Obviously what matters to him is not the number of people who believe something, but whether they are card carrying members of the right club. After all only 62 climate scientists actually reviewed the chapter that mattered in the 2007 IPCC report, but some 31,000 scientists, including 9,000 PhD’s, 49 NASA scientists and 4 Apollo astronauts, and 2 Nobel Physics Prize winners disagree. Other surveys show that skeptics are older, better with numbers and smarter. Two thirds of geoscientists and engineers are skeptics. The obvious conclusion (if you think surveys matter in science, which I don’t) is that the recent warming is more natural than man-made, and that the young and gullible are easily fooled. But John Oliver, comedian with a degree in English, obviously knows more than Ivar Giaevar or Robert Laughlin right?
My point is not that skeptics are right because they are wiser, smarter, better scientists — which they are, but that Olivers method for finding scientific truth fails by its own criteria. The truth about the climate comes from the observations, not the surveys. If surveys mattered, Oliver would be a skeptic.
As a comedian John Oliver probably likes to think of himself as being a bit counter culture and someone who tests political bounds. (Oh boy is he in for a surprize.) Instead he went for the safe impress-my-friends soft form of propaganda — the establishment comedian. Parody for the paradigm. He’s an obedient servant of the climate cult.
Truth actually matters quite a lot in comedy. It just isn’t that funny if its a comment on a fantasy. The art of satire as a political tool depends on the satirist understanding the topic.
Memo to John: great comedians skewer the state sanctioned litany — they don’t produce free advertising. Why don’t you do something really risky and interview Buzz Aldrin, or Harrison Schmidt or Ivar Giaevar — these guys are real scientists. Bill Nye the science guy is the go-to guy for climate propaganda for a reason. The real climate scientists who believe a tax-can-change-the-weather can’t afford to debate skeptics — they have a reputation that matters and public humiliation would blow the facade completely. When Bill Nye bombs, who cares? He’s disposable.
Bill-Nye-the-propaganda-guy abuses science every time he whips out “the consensus”.
And for the sake of any Oliver fans who trip over this page (and for Oliver himself, go on, can someone email him?), when Oliver reels off “the evidence”, look out, he hasn’t noticed the big black hole of “cause and effect”. Nothing he can name shows that CO2 causes the warming, everything he lists is either the survey fallacy, or the effect of anything that causes warming. The shocking truth is that natural warming also causes temperatures to warm, seas to rise, and glaciers to melt. Oliver says “There is a mountain of research ” (yes, $80b dollars buys a lot of research, and none of it shows the climate models work or CO2 caused the warming.) Science-by-Oliver runs “Global temps are rising” — true, but it started long before CO2, and slowed as we increased our emissions. “Heat waves are becoming more common”. Well they would, wouldn’t they, it’s been warming for 300 years.
And as for “97% of papers endorsed global warming.” For a guy who’s is good at English this one has everything except accuracy, meaning, and relevance. Papers don’t endorse things, people do. The keywords in the study don’t measure the climate but hey, they are a good proxy for the language in government grants. (The 97% depends on the definitions, and by John Cook’s own definitions it was really 0.3%, not 97% — but whose counting?) Plus every one agrees the globe is warming, the question that matters is what causes it?
h/t waxing Gibberish.