8 ms·
"Climate Change Denier" is a term coined by radical environmentalists in an attempt to paint their opponents as crazy and stupid. Most rational people don't de
by downandout 13y ago
"Climate Change Denier" is a term coined by radical environmentalists in an attempt to paint their opponents as crazy and stupid. Most rational people don't deny that climate change is occurring. Many people simply side with scientists that have examined the facts and determined that human attempts at trying to control climate change are about as effective as Indian rain dances.
That said, Tim Cook's response was correct. The measure this group proposed was actually very broad. They wanted the company to base all decisions on ROI only. Had it been adopted by the board, it would have instantly opened the company up to a flood of shareholder lawsuits over any number of expenditures that don't directly generate profits.
- Johnie 13y ago> They simply side with scientists that... Which scientists?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jpgvm 13y agoAny scientist worth the oxygen they breathe all seem to be in agreement of 3 things. a) Climate change is real and happening. b) It's most definitely the impact of our utilisation of natural resources. c) That we can take measures to minimise it's effects.
- ry0ohki 13y agoAll true, but I think there is a misconception that if we all just recycle more and drive hybrids that climate change will stop. We are accelerating climate change, but even if we stopped all carbon now Bangladesh will still be under water in 150 years or less.
- wpietri 13y agoNo serious environmentalist I've read believes that misconception. In my view, that's another form of denial. Not the organized PR-flack fraud in the style originated by the tobacco industry, but just the normal human kind of wanting to ignore anything personally inconvenient.
- kzrdude 13y agoI absolutely do not want to put off anyone from environmental work or a global call to change and stop of pollution and other unsustainable activities. But the fact remains that enough damage has been done that the consequences will be felt for a century, even if we turn around this ship tomorrow.
- wpietri 13y agoSure. Today we're dealing with the environmental consequences of decisions made a century ago. E.g., water policy, urban planning, transport policy, effects of industry. Nature of the beast, really.
- Narkov 13y ago[Citation Needed]
- snom380 13y ago[Trivial Googling needed]
- codeka 13y agoNo, NCPPR categorically are crazy and stupid. No need to coin terms to paint them as such when their own words do a perfectly good job of it on their own.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nailer 13y agoIncluding the founder of Greenpeace http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/greenpeace-cofounder-patrick-moore-tells-us-senate-there-is-no-proof-humans-cause-climate-change-9159627.html http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/gree...
- downandout 13y agoInteresting..."There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth's atmosphere over the past 100 years," he told a US Senate Committee "If there were such a proof, it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists."
- ghouse 13y agoScience is a process. Proofs exist in math.
- Retric 13y agoYou find crazy on both sides of any major issue. NCPPR and Greenpeace are both nut-job organisations which are best ignored. Not because nothing they say is true, but rather the fact they said something has little to do with how true it is. Think of it like a horoscope sound and bluster, signifying nothing.
- vacri 13y agoRather amusingly, that article quotes Moore as chewing someone out for using weasel-words, yet he's using plenty of them himself.
- epistasis 13y ago> No one, including this group, denies that climate change is occurring. I'm sorry, what planet are you living on? This is regularly argued an national cable news all the time. You can't be taken the least bit seriously when you put such an obvious falsehood as the first argument supporting your ridiculous claim.
- jjoonathan 13y ago> this group [does not deny] that climate change is occurring But their press release says > Apple is wasting untold amounts of shareholder money to combat so-called climate change. which sounds like denial to me. Would you prefer to call them "Climate Change Skeptics," the term coined by radical conservatives to attempt to paint themselves as not crazy and anti-scientific? Everyone plays the "name yourself according to something non-controversial, name your opponent according to something controversial" game. I wouldn't get too upset about it.
- downandout 13y ago"Climate change" used to be "global warming" until that term became so strongly associated with extremists that it instantly damaged the credibility of anyone that used it. "Climate Change Skeptics" communicates the same thing as "deniers". You are missing the point. Most people agree that climate change (aka global warming) is occurring. The argument is over whether we can cause it or stop it.
- wlesieutre 13y agoNCPPR's page on the subject does still call it "Global Warming" though. http://www.nationalcenter.org/Kyoto.html http://www.nationalcenter.org/Kyoto.html Among their headlines: - Get a Clue, White House: The Planet Isn't Warming - Do 97% of All Climate Scientists Really Believe Mankind is Causing Catastrophic Global Warming? - Planet Hasn't Warmed Since 1997, Yet Senators Fret the News Media is Covering Actual Crises Instead of Climate Change Based on those, I'd say NCPPR is denying that it's happening.
- jjoonathan 13y ago> "The Planet Isn't Warming" Wow, and here I thought "so-called" was clinching evidence. That's the value of doing your homework!
- nl 13y agoGlobal warming dropped from use because it is inaccurate (or more precicly is too broad to be useful). While the global temperature is increasing, there are places that see a decrease. Usually this is due to either changing rainfall patterns (ie, former deserts that now get rain) or changes in ocean currents (eg the potential movement in the current that keeps the UK warm). Climate change is more accurate for people in those areas. Semantics aside, you seem to have missed the point. This group seems to doubt it is happening at all ("so called" in this case doesn't mean they disagree with the terminology - instead they seem to doubt it is occurring)
- pyrrhotech 13y agoyou should try living in the south, where TC is from. There are a lot of climate change deniers. I mean, 60% of the state believes the world is less than 10,000 years old
- kzrdude 13y agoThis is a failure of education.
- Steko 13y ago"No one, including this group, denies that climate change is occurring" This is absolutely false. There are denialists that deny the earth is warming, there are more that deny humans have anything to do with it and then more that deny that carbon emissions are worth it and then more still that deny it's a bad thing. Many of them contend all of these points in a throw everything at the wall strategy.
- phillmv 13y ago>They simply side with scientists that have examined the facts and determined that human attempts at trying to control climate change are about as effective as Indian rain dances. To say this is to deny the established causes behind climate change - excess carbon emissions. I doubt the relationship is linear, but the solution is to emit less carbon emissions. This should no longer be controversial.
- ww520 13y agoFrom NCPPR's release statements, Climate Change Denier is a fair description of them. Based on pure ROI is pure crazy.
- peterwoo 13y agoWrong. Look at the Environment section of their website. Read the PRs and the blog posts they link to. http://www.nationalcenter.org/eptf.html http://www.nationalcenter.org/eptf.html > "Here's the bottom line: Apple is as obsessed with the theory of so-called climate change as its board member Al Gore is," > After today's meeting, investors can be certain that Apple is wasting untold amounts of shareholder money to combat so-called climate change. ... etc Every single mention of climate change is prefixed with "so-called", in this PR and every other one. If you read through these articles you'll find that they believe climate change stopped in 1997.
- Aloha 13y agoI agree! A focus on sustainability is a good one, carbon sequestration sounds like a great way to spend untold amounts of money. That said, I'm pretty sure climate change is happening - but I'm not really certain its anthropogenic, and even if it is, I don't think the genie can be put back in the bottle anyhow. I think focusing on carbon seemingly alone is a distraction, Using less resources to do a thing is a good thing anyhow, its cheaper in the long run, carbon alone doesn't get us there.
- mrtron 13y agoAttempts to control climate change? Most environmentalists aim to reduce known human impacts on climate change. This is actually closer to reducing human control on climate change than doing nothing.
- singingfish 13y agoSorry, climate change deniers are stupid and crazy and/or evil. I prefer to call them climate delusionals. Right now we have a choice to either try to ameliorate climate change, or ignore it and watch civilisation collapse over the next century or so. It's a hard problem scientifically and politically, and the delusionals and their loby groups should receive nothing but contempt and derision.
- lukifer 13y agoI recently ran into a NOAA [1] scientist and talked to him briefly on the subject. He claimed that was there was effectively no one in the field that had any doubt about anthropogenic climate change, although there were many disputes about details. The few who do argue against it (he knew them by name) are very respected and intelligent, but have contrarian personalities, and tend to dispute specific models and argue in favor of uncertainty, rather than arguing that human behavior is definitively unrelated. Scientific communities are far from immune to taboos and group-think, and I think every idea deserves scrutiny and (true) skepticism, no matter how "settled". But while the science continues to iterate and refine, policy decisions should be based on weight of evidence, which is vastly in favor of human-caused climate change. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Oceanic_and_Atmospheric_Administration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Oceanic_and_Atmospheri...
- singingfish 13y agoThe simple fact of the matter is that something would have to be badly wrong with the laws of thermodynamics and the theory of chemical bonds in order for our understanding of human climate change to be sufficiently defective that the delusionals point of view was somehow more correct than the consensus view. Our understanding of the laws of thermodynamics and the theory of chemical bonds are basically what enable civilisation as we know it.
- rayiner 13y agoIt has always struck me as rather ridiculous to make a big deal about the distinction between anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic climate change. Whether or not climate change is anthropogenic, it is going to require a response. The argument might be that efforts should be directed at mitigating the negative effects of climate change, because it is futile to try and avert it, but climate change deniers aren't making that argument either. Indeed, if they really did concede that climate change is happening, but believed that it wasn't anthropogenic, then they should be even more worked up about it than the "radical environmentalists," because that would mean that Illinois is going to have the climate of Texas and there is nothing we can do about it other than figure out how to live with the resulting fallout.
- danielweber 13y agoAmong my conservative friends, quite a few say "well, it's happening, but we don't know humans are causing it." So they are already there. "Adaptation, not mitigation" is one of their sayings, and it gets the environmentalists really mad. FWIW, I agree with you that the cause matters less than the effects.
- rayiner 13y agoI know its widespread, but I find it irksome that climate change denial has become associated with conservatism. I want to avoid climate change because I'm worried about the ramifications of that change on our society and am worried that failure to mitigate or prepare for climate change could topple the U.S. from its position at the top of the global hierarchy. Changing climate and depletion of water resources in the heartland could make us tremendously vulnerable by making us dependent on other countries for food. Allowing a country like China or India to be the first to develop reliable, cheap, renewable energy would be a total game changer that could leave us as an also-ran country or vassal state. There's a mile long list of conservative reasons to be afraid of and want to address climate change and its potential impacts. To me its a no brainer to spend substantial, but predictable, resources to address what is potentially an existential risk.
- 13y ago
- rwallace 13y agoYou're getting a lot of disagreement with parts of your first paragraph, but I think it's worth dwelling for a moment on the good point you make your second paragraph. There are two claims the NCPPR are disputing: 1. Climate change is a big problem, if not for the present then at least for the near future, unless we do something about it. 2. Given that, we should all make an effort to do what we reasonably can about it, instead of caring about nothing whatsoever except money. If the NCPPR disagree with the first claim, then they should present their best case for that disagreement. I think they're mistaken, but if they have evidence for their position, then let's hear it. But instead of making that case, they mixed it in with disagreement with the second claim, which is a bad way to argue (mixing empirical questions and value judgments) and makes them come across like sociopaths to boot.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- redthrowaway 13y ago"Climate change denier" refers solely to those who deny the scientific fact of anthropogenic global warming. It's not used to describe those who accept the science but doubt the efficacy or wisdom of the proposed solutions. I'm actually with you on doubting the ability of public policy to deal with it. We aren't going to stop it, and we will suffer from it. Our only option is to figure out how to adapt to it.
- fit2rule 13y ago>human attempts at trying to control climate change are about as effective as Indian rain dances I suppose we shouldn't try, then. Not even a little bit.