In Episode 13, season 1 of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! they try to prove the global warming crisis, among other things, was created by the out of control imagination of hysterical hippies and environmentalists. This is why the episode is titled "Environmental Hysteria". We would just like to point out that Penn Jillette is a research fellow of the ExxonMobil and Industry funded CATO institute which has strong minarchist leanings. This gives Penn Jillete a conflict of interest when it comes to any topic that might require government regulation. During the show he puts Tobacco and Oil funded lobbyists against hippie college protesters.The man is a bought and paid for global warming denier. Not "agnostic", not someone who "doesn't know", he's a guy who's out there misleading people about what's going on, claiming that it's a conspiracy of of scientists, etc. Fuck him.
penn jillette happens to be a little 'randy', fyiJillette is married to Emily Zolten and has a daughter Moxie CrimeFighter and a son Zolten Penn.
Maher responded to the criticism, noting, "What I've read about what they think I'm saying is not what I've said. I'm not a germ theory denier. I believe vaccinations can work. Polio is a good example. Do I think in certain situations that inoculating Third World children against malaria or diphtheria, or whatever, is right? Of course. In a situation like that, the benefits outweigh costs. But to me living in Los Angeles? To get a flu shot? No."[59] (see Vaccine controversy)posted by Chuckles at 11:07 PM on December 4, 2011
But you know, sure. Whatever. Let's just snark. Ok.The problem is people were downplaying his denialism, cherry-picking reasonable sounding quotes to make it sound like he thinks global warming is a reasonable idea and he's just not a scientist so he won't personally make a declaration, when in fact he's basically carrying the denial banner, slandering scientists, and producing essentially right-wing think-tank denialist propaganda.
Dawkins thought "meme" was a nifty idea.
It's the same with Maher. And so we have two of America's most public voices against religion espousing a political philosophy that is unproven, ahistoric, and relies entirely on faith to support. Bravo.Maher is an Objectivist? That seems kind of hard to buy given the fact he's a hard-core liberal. I catch his show every once in a while and he's expressed admiration for euro-style socialism. Hardly something Rand would appreciate.
Why does climate science get special treatment for being so hard? By his standard, since he's not a historian, how can he assess if David Irving isn't really the one who's right about the Holocaust?Well, I'm sure historians will complain about this but do you really need that much special training to understand history? Obviously real historians go back and look at primary source material, but other then that it's just reading.
"Western Europe has US bases on their land, so they don't need to spend as much on the military, which means they can afford to have health care because they're not spending it on defense like we are..." (and of course included in that is a lot of dog-whistle politics including "welfare" and "lazy" and "we're the daddy of the world"/macho tough guy bullshit)The problem with this argument is that, if it were true, then U.S taxpayers are actually subsidizing all those eurozone perks. In which case the question is why are we doing that? Why should Americans suffer and die due to a lack of healthcare while we make it possible for European and Canadian allies blow cash on social welfare?
This assumes he denies that global warming exists. He doesn't.He says the same thing about Global Warming that Rick Perry says about Evolution.
Part of the problem with saying "I don't know" is, you know why don't you get educated? I don't know much about Hungarian folk music, but I don't go around talking about how I don't know, I don't have people criticizing me for (supposedly) not knowing and I'm not constantly talking about how I don't know anything about it year after year. Why is there such a strident need to defend ignorance. If it's such an important issue, why not not actually look into it?
That isn't the way I read it. I take it that he simply doesn't care one way or the other.
He's NOT DENYING THAT IT'S HAPPENING. For fuck's sake.Sure, but he does seem to be denying the fact that most scientists believe it's happening, that the scientific evidence, given our current understanding is pretty conclusive. The problem is you can be pretty weasel-y with words and if you put together 30 minutes calling global warming "bullshit" you can do it without directly stating it. The problem is that Penn is creating a false impression that it's unlikely global warming is happening compared with the reality that scientific consensus supports it.
He's saying there is more than one topic involved in the issue. Is it happening? Did we cause it? Can we stop it? How do we stop it?
Because he's not QUALIFIED. And neither are you. The only thing any of us laypeople can do is defer to scientific consensus. Show me where Penn Jillette doesn't defer to scientific consensus.Doing a 30 minute TV show calling scientists liars is not "differing to the scientific consensus. If he doesn't know anything about global warming why is he talking about it as a public figure? Why is he deliberately spreading doubt about something he's not qualified to talk about? Like I said, I don't know anything about Hungarian folk music and therefore am not talking about it at conferences and producing propaganda shows about it.
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posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 10:03 PM on December 4, 2011 [1 favorite]