5 ms·

Your screed is a tad repulsive, and does little to advance your argument. I wasn't aware that because I don't buy into the AGW religion that I was a Joe Rednec

Your screed is a tad repulsive, and does little to advance your argument. I wasn't aware that because I don't buy into the AGW religion that I was a Joe Redneck from the Bible Belt. I guess I will have to go to the local Philly area DMV to get the address on my driver's license change, will have to choose a state that is south of the Mason-Dixon line ... is South Carolina OK with you, or should I choose Georgia? And on Monday I will stop in at the local Ford dealership and trade in my Toyota for an F150.

ubernostrum 17y ago
Your own screed doesn't do you much credit, either. Like it or not, most people who argue about climate change, evolutionary theory and other accepted-by-the-huge-majority-of-scientists-but-still-"debated" issues will never, ever consider actually sitting down and going through the evidence. And most of those people are, like it or not, rural and/or southern white Republicans with strong religious beliefs. So, much as you'd apparently like to get your dander up, you've presented yourself as nothing more than an anecdote, and tried to imply that we should generalize from your case to the general case, a generalization not supported by the actual facts.
- patrickgzill 17y ago
  Please quote your source for your assertion stated as fact that "most people who argue about climate change ... are rural and/or southern white Republicans with strong religious beliefs" .
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    You seem to have begun by asserting yourself as an exception and implying a generalization; please quote your source for suggesting that the majority of people who argue about climate change have conducted thorough and extensive research on the topic and come to their positions as a result of careful reasoning and weighing of evidence.
  - camccann 17y ago
    Well, for views on climate change by political affiliation in the USA: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1550 http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1550 For choices of "human-caused warming", "warming for natural reasons", and "not warming", opinions are split 30%/43%/24% for Republicans, 64%/29%/4% for Democrats, and 49%/38%/9% for independents. Assuming that party identification is roughly equally split three ways, that means that if all you know about a person is that they think the planet isn't getting warmer, you have 2-to-1 odds of that person being a Republican. Not a sure thing, but probably qualifies as "most". If you really need a source for people in rural areas and southern states, white people, and strongly religious people being disproportionately Republican I could probably find one, but c'mon. So, sure, he was probably overgeneralizing a bit but the statistical tendency is there and not exactly subtle. I'm sorry if you're offended by demographics, but that's the way things are. Outside the USA, of course, I doubt views on climate change correlate much at all with membership in US political parties, but I don't think that's what you meant.
    - jacoblyles 17y ago
      Of course, the most visible educated critic happens to be an urban Canadian liberal who favored Obama in the last US election. The Republican/Democrat thing is just more stupid tribalism. It doesn't matter how good of an idea a Republican has, you'll never see an urban educated middle-class young person agreeing with them on the merits because the idea is from the wrong tribe. So, I'm not really sure what you're trying to prove, other than to whip up tribal sentiments in favor of the misbehaving scientists (silicon valley is VERY blue country).
      - camccann 17y ago
        Okay. Yes? The statistics I mentioned basically support your point about tribalism, which I happen to agree with. Pointing out a prominent exception doesn't really disprove the demographics involved; if you know a person has a characteristic of one tribe you can usually confidently guess that they're substantially more likely to share other, apparently unrelated characteristics of that tribe, precisely because many people take political positions as a way to announce group identity, not because they've actually thought things through in any rational manner. I've no particular interest in defending the scientists involved in this nonsense (even under the most charitable interpretation of events, they've embarrassed themselves and their colleagues and undermined the credibility of their field) and I don't really like or identify with any of the popular political tribes. I just thought the person I replied to was being silly for apparently denying that the political tribe he seems to belong to has certain demographic tendencies.
- laut 17y ago
  There are people that don't live in America and argue about climate change.

ubernostrum 17y ago

Your own screed doesn't do you much credit, either. Like it or not, most people who argue about climate change, evolutionary theory and other accepted-by-the-huge-majority-of-scientists-but-still-"debated" issues will never, ever consider actually sitting down and going through the evidence. And most of those people are, like it or not, rural and/or southern white Republicans with strong religious beliefs. So, much as you'd apparently like to get your dander up, you've presented yourself as nothing more than an anecdote, and tried to imply that we should generalize from your case to the general case, a generalization not supported by the actual facts.

patrickgzill 17y ago
Please quote your source for your assertion stated as fact that "most people who argue about climate change ... are rural and/or southern white Republicans with strong religious beliefs" .
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  You seem to have begun by asserting yourself as an exception and implying a generalization; please quote your source for suggesting that the majority of people who argue about climate change have conducted thorough and extensive research on the topic and come to their positions as a result of careful reasoning and weighing of evidence.
- camccann 17y ago
  Well, for views on climate change by political affiliation in the USA: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1550 http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1550 For choices of "human-caused warming", "warming for natural reasons", and "not warming", opinions are split 30%/43%/24% for Republicans, 64%/29%/4% for Democrats, and 49%/38%/9% for independents. Assuming that party identification is roughly equally split three ways, that means that if all you know about a person is that they think the planet isn't getting warmer, you have 2-to-1 odds of that person being a Republican. Not a sure thing, but probably qualifies as "most". If you really need a source for people in rural areas and southern states, white people, and strongly religious people being disproportionately Republican I could probably find one, but c'mon. So, sure, he was probably overgeneralizing a bit but the statistical tendency is there and not exactly subtle. I'm sorry if you're offended by demographics, but that's the way things are. Outside the USA, of course, I doubt views on climate change correlate much at all with membership in US political parties, but I don't think that's what you meant.
  - jacoblyles 17y ago
    Of course, the most visible educated critic happens to be an urban Canadian liberal who favored Obama in the last US election. The Republican/Democrat thing is just more stupid tribalism. It doesn't matter how good of an idea a Republican has, you'll never see an urban educated middle-class young person agreeing with them on the merits because the idea is from the wrong tribe. So, I'm not really sure what you're trying to prove, other than to whip up tribal sentiments in favor of the misbehaving scientists (silicon valley is VERY blue country).
    - camccann 17y ago
      Okay. Yes? The statistics I mentioned basically support your point about tribalism, which I happen to agree with. Pointing out a prominent exception doesn't really disprove the demographics involved; if you know a person has a characteristic of one tribe you can usually confidently guess that they're substantially more likely to share other, apparently unrelated characteristics of that tribe, precisely because many people take political positions as a way to announce group identity, not because they've actually thought things through in any rational manner. I've no particular interest in defending the scientists involved in this nonsense (even under the most charitable interpretation of events, they've embarrassed themselves and their colleagues and undermined the credibility of their field) and I don't really like or identify with any of the popular political tribes. I just thought the person I replied to was being silly for apparently denying that the political tribe he seems to belong to has certain demographic tendencies.
laut 17y ago
There are people that don't live in America and argue about climate change.