The Swamp Page 2

“If you get bogged down in the Swamp you will drown.

If you are not armed the ‘gators’ will get you.“

The Different Facets of Swamp Issues

We read about the three most popular swamp issues in “The Swamp – Page 1”.  In this second page, we need to focus on the generic attributes of swamp issues and how to deal with them.  These are;

• Most if not all swamp issues are illogically put forward as proof that Man is causing catastrophic global warming.
• However not one of them will reverse all the failed predictions and un-falsify the theory, or somehow have global temperatures and CO₂ concentrations moving in lockstep. Without correlation there cannot be causation.
• Nearly half of the swamp issues we read are just wrong.  For example; on page 1, we now know that melting Arctic ice will not cause any sea level rises.  Similarly, we now know that “all the scientists agree” is a fallacious statement as there are hundreds of thousands of sceptical scientists that don’t agree.
• The other half of the swamp issues are looking at something normal or natural but asserting that it is different, and Man is causing it.  We have to know what ‘normal’ is – before we can identify ‘abnormal’. For example; having failed to show any abnormal change in the 1970-2000 temperature rises on The Swamp page 1, Green scientists are now claiming that normal events are man-made catastrophic events.
• The very small number of remaining swamp issues do describe something abnormal that is happening and then, some illogically jump to the conclusion that Man is causing it.  Having read “The Crux” material, we know Man and his CO₂ are not causing it, and we need to look elsewhere to find an explanation.
• Finally, there is a never ending supply of swamp issues that keep distracting us from looking at the crux of the issue.  When a swamp issue is discredited, its carcass remains festering in the swamp.  Meanwhile two new swamp issues are thrown into the swamp to replace it.  We will never be able to empty the swamp, and are likely to drown trying.

Unfortunately, there is another unsavoury facet to the swamp issues.  The more we read into the global warming issue, the more we realise that there are a significant number of organisations and individuals who are deliberately trying to mislead and deceive us.

 It is just not the naïve who are unintentionally deceiving us that we need to watch out for.  There are large numbers of well funded professional people who will not hesitate to lie, deceive and mislead us.  Page 1 only showed us the tip of this ‘iceberg’.

For example, in 1980 when the first scientist stated melting Arctic ice would cause catastrophic sea level rises, we might have assumed that he had made a mistake which was pointed out to him by dozens of other scientists after the event.  However, when the same scientist and dozens of others repeat this claim for forty years, we know with certainty they are lying to us.

More alarming is that thousands of Green scientists not only do not challenge or distance themselves from the lie, but remain silent.  Their silence is then interpreted by most as an agreement with the lie.

Just as alarming, we have organisations that we would normally trust refusing to uncover the lie for over forty years.  Especially the Media, who have a bad habit of repeatedly telling us that they only bring us the truth, and no one else can be trusted.

Arming Ourselves to Detect Deception and Misdirection

We are all a lot more uninformed than we are informed.  On reading a small part of an encyclopedia we realise how much we do not know.  Those who wish to deceive us will take advantage of this ignorance.

Unfortunately for us, these people also have a myriad of deception tools to lead us astray.

Starting with this page, there will be readings to improve our general knowledge about this issue and other readings that describe just some of the deception tools used to mislead us.

Persevere with these readings as the alternative is not nice.  We will be easily misled.  Those deceiving us will eat us up and spit us out – just like an alligator in the swamp.

 Look upon these readings as arming ourselves to survive in the swamp.  Of course, if it all becomes too hard, we might remind ourselves that there is no need to swim in the swamp.  We only need to understand “The Crux” readings to know that Man cannot cause catastrophic global warming. 

Some General Knowledge About this Issue

Reading 3.2.1. Since we fear climate change and we believe that this change will be catastrophic, we should first identify what is ‘normal climate change’ so we don’t confuse ‘normal’ with ‘abnormal’. If we did not read Reading 2.2 on The Crux Page 1, we should do so now as Reading 3.2.1.

This is very important because, right from the start of this campaign, the Green Machine told the World that the climate had been in a state of benign stability for thousands of years and now “Wicked Man” (their words) had upset this stability resulting in catastrophic global warming. This was another lie.

Once we believed this lie, the Green Machine could point to any change in the climate, which was normal, and assert that it was dangerous and Man-made. Because of our increasing irrationality, we would unquestioningly believe this second lie.

To keep this lie ‘alive’ we will read later that Green scientists working for the IPCC would gather together to “do science” (their words) and rewrite climate history to blot out any past periods of major climate changes – such as the Medieval Warming Period. Welcome to scientific deceit.

Reading 3.2.2 and 3.2.3 discusses carbon dioxide. Although water vapour is up to 300 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO₂, the Greens have decided to vilify CO₂ because of its connection with industrialization – something that they want to reverse. As the chief villain we need to know more about CO₂.

Note that as the CO₂ concentrations continue to rise, Man’s contribution of 2.4% shown in the table in Reading 3.2.2 might rise to 5-6% by the year 2050 before Man’s contribution levels off.

Just Some of the Deception Tools Used Against Us.

Liars use lies to deceive and mislead us. Because a lie is one of the bluntest ways of deceiving us we don’t hesitate to sanction liars – while over focusing on the lie. Instead, we should focus on the aim of the liar and sanction any person who uses any tool to mislead and deceive us. It does not make sense to punish liars more harshly than others who are achieving the same goal with more subtle tools of deception.

There are a myriad of tools that are used to deceive us, and the readings in this section reminds us of just some of the most commonly used deceit tools. Examples are not confined to the global warming issue and include examples from other emotionally driven topics.

Reading 3.2.4 focuses on how our language can be twisted to deceive and mislead us. Unfortunately, in today’s climate of irrationality, we must critically look at every word , phrase and sentence for any hint of deception. Language deception can be blunt – for example the overuse of the word “catastrophe”.

More subtle deceit can be seen in the use of the word “the” when we are told that “The theory on global warming shows us……” as it implies there is only one theory (the Greenhouse Theory) instead of more than forty theories about global warming. The Greens will say “the scientists say” or “the science states” implying that all the scientists agree or there is only one source of science.

You will never hear the Green PR machine say “A theory” or “One theory”, or this scientist, or these scientists or this scientific work. And so the deceit goes on.

The reading looks at deception by;

• Stirring our imagination,
• Power of Suggestion,
• Redefinition of words,
• Loose language, and
• “Weaponised” words.

After reading 3.2.4 you might appreciate the following quote that is attributed to Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln asked an advisor “How many legs would a calf have if we called his tail a leg? The advisor replied “Five of course”. Lincoln responded “No you are wrong, there are only four. Calling a calf’s tail a leg – doesn’t make it a leg.”

Reading 3.2.5 Focuses on only 26 illogical arguments. Of these, four are regularly used in day to day conversations and in the global warming debate. These are;

Argumentum ad Hominem. Where the person proposing an idea is denigrated and attacked instead of his views being examined. Without looking at the arguments put forward by a “denier”, the mere label of “denier” is enough to discredit his ideas

Argumentum ad Populum. Once again we see the issue being ignored, while a claim that “Everyone agrees so it must be right” is used instead. Everyone agreed that the Y2K problem was a major problem deserving billions of taxpayers’ dollars to be spent on it – yet it turned out to be a minor problem.

Argumentum ad Acturiate. This argument uses the status or the authority of a person making a claim to be enough for it to be considered true. If a scientists says it is true there is no need to look at the science – “She must be right”. Many scientists said that if floating Arctic ice melted it would cause catastrophic sea level rises. All those scientists were wrong and we should have looked at the buoyancy laws.

Illogical Argument of Composition. If the characteristics of one part of a total population is identified then it is illogically assumed that all of the population has the same characteristics. “I met a Scotsman who was 2.5 metres tall, therefore all Scotsmen must be just as tall.”

Reading 3.2.6 Focuses on several other tools of deception used in Western societies today. Most of the deception tools discussed above do not discuss the issue. When forced to discuss the issue, just some of the deception tools used are discussed in Reading 3.2.6.

We now know we are dealing with liars and, if not liars, those who want to deceive us. So let us look at the problem they have in deceiving us.

In the real World, CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere are at the lowest level seen in billions of years. After twenty years of misleading us, we now have enough failed predictions to falsify their theory and also show that there is no correlation between CO₂ concentrations and global temperatures. Without correlation there cannot be causation.

Consequently, rising CO₂ is not causing rapid and accelerating rising temperatures measured in degrees over several decades. However, in the current natural multi-century warming period, temperatures are rising but at a very slow rate – tenths of one degree per century.

So the snake oil salesmen have the difficult task of selling us a different reality – one where quantities of CO₂ are vast and rising rapidly which is driving large increases in temperatures which are accelerating. Once convinced we will panic and do anything that they want us to do, thinking we are saving the planet.

Finally, relying on our ignorance, they will do their best to stop us finding out what is happening in the real/natural World. Remember, we must always identify what is “normal’, before we claim something is “abnormal”.

Some of the tools they use to convince us are; statistics, numbers, graphs and records. Reading 3.2.6 looks at these tools as well as unbalanced views.

“Statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics”

• Large numbers,
• Graphs,
• Visual deceit
• Records,
• Statistics,
• Unbalanced Views,

If we think our critical thinking is getting better as we focus and read more about just some of the traps, we could undertake a larger challenge.

After a father took the UK education system to court for brainwashing his son by compelling him to view Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth”, the court found there were close to a dozen major scientific flaws and several minor scientific flaws in the film. Other critics identified over 100 factual errors and deceptions used in the film.

The film lasts 96 minutes so, on average, there is an error or deception every minute in the film. We could test our skills by finding 100 examples of this in the film, rather than completing the very simple tests used on this website.

This film is another example of our growing irrationality. Millions of Western citizens watched this film believing it was a documentary, not realising that they were being deceived every minute. It could be more correctly identified as a propaganda film rather than a documentary. In some parts of America, young school students were forced to watch this film more than five times.

Remember, the educators are meant to be teaching their students how to detect facts from fiction, and how to think rationally rather than emotively and illogically. These teachers also did not detect the errors and deceptions that occurred every minute in this film.

Is this a case of the blind leading the blind?

Testing Our Ability to Identify Illogical Arguments

There is a growing trend in Western citizens of not discussing issues at much depth at all, but relying on labels and personalities instead. When any issue arises, we choose a side and immediately identify a person who we will either laud or denigrate. To laud or denigrate we use labels we keep nearby to throw into the discussion to show where we stand.

Only a shallow and token effort is made to discuss the issue itself.

This response is unhealthy, and very quickly has us emotionally involved in something we know little about. As soon as our emotions arise, we hear the thundering hooves of the horses that have come to deliver all the fallacies and irrational arguments that we need to defend our reasons for making some very dumb decisions.

So “turning the coin over” we can use this response to identify many of the illogical arguments used today. If you look closely at the illogical arguments described in the Readings above, you will note that most studiously avoid discussing the issue – in some the issue does not appear at all. For instance; Argumentum ad Hominem denigrates the person and neither his or other views on the issue are discussed. Similarly, Argumentum ad Populum points to a vast number of people who happen to agree with us so it “must be right”. Once again our views on the issue are not tested or discussed.

This tendency to lazily rely on personalities and labels to argue our case, further support the website’s assertion that Western citizens are becoming increasingly irrational. We no longer discuss an issue in depth.

A Test

It is easy to read all the fallacies and illogical arguments, nearly understand them, and then yawn. It is much harder in the real World to identify them as they are used in a conversation. Here are two “conversations”. Our task is to identify the irrational arguments used.

• A commentator in the newspaper tells our government they will a laughing stock if they present their climate policies to the Climate Conference in Glasgow. Sure enough at the conference the government policies are laughed at when they are presented.
• On an ABC panel we are told we can’t believe that “dickhead” Abbot on any climate issue, because we all know he is wrong and, as a denier, he can harm the country.

The answers are given at the bottom of the next page; The Swamp Page 3.

A Moment for Reflection