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Sunday, July 15, 2007

Those damned whales

What's Mallard raving about today?

Arctic Ice, Gray Whales, Global Warming Activists.

How stupid! For Christ's sake the Gray Whale couldn't pass a human through their baleen bristles!

Beyond that, it's probably worth mentioning that "this AP article" turns out to actually be an article from San Luis Obispo quoting a single person's opinion, parts of which later got posted to Free Republic with a link to "AP - Bakersfield"...a link which is broken.

That Free Republic article somehow manages to stop quoting before getting to this: "Perryman predicted the count would go back up in 2008. He said that the ice covering Arctic waters is reported to be thinner and is receding earlier and faster."

Not to mention the fact that this argument is roughly equivalent in intellectual laziness and dishonesty to the argument: "Man it's cold today, Global Warming must be fake."

7 comments:

BillyWitchDoctor said...

Not to mention the fact that this argument roughly equivalent in intellectual laziness and dishonesty to the argument: "Man it's cold today, Global Warming must be fake."

Before Evil Sun and the Grand Cowfart Theory were concocted, that was a willfully-ignorant contrarian's sole argument in denial of climate change, one which still pops up in Letters To The Editor columns even now.

As for the strip: never before has there been a more perfect example of the depths to which Tinny will crawl to cherry-pick his "facts" to maintain his fever-dream belief system. There must be at least a hundred stories about the thinning and loss of Arctic ice and the danger it poses to wildlife and humanity, but Tinny slogged around until he found a fairy tale he could "cite" to claim otherwise.

I notice there's no asterisk this time, though. Whatsamatta, Tinny? Afraid someone will check your source? ...Aw, looks like someone DID.

I'm grateful to you, DaveyK, for wading around in the FreeRepublic sewer to research this particular turd. I haven't the stomach for such work. Bless you.

Anonymous said...

So does Tinshley get all his "facts" in freeperland? Is there a user there called drunkenhack? Whiskeyfowl? JewsmademegetaDUI?

Ryan said...

Another fun fact about water. Colder ice crystals lay flat, whereas warmer crystals are larger in 3 dimensions, you know, thicker. So, does BT mention anything about the density of the ice? I suspect its much lower.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, many (no doubt well-intentioned) global warming advocates use a few warm summer days as "proof" of global warming, in just the same manner. It's just not that simple.

BillyWitchDoctor said...

Uh...I've never met or read a single person who claimed climate change was fact solely on the basis of a hot summer day. Long-term weather patterns, sure...but never, "Whoa, summer is hot! Global warming!"

However, I have read and heard more than one instance of: "It snowed in Chicago in January! You stupid liberals are wrong AGAIN!" Last summer's popular variant was: "Hurricane season was mild (in the, uh, Southern USA, but that's all that counts, right?)! WRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYY"

Anonymous said...

billywitchdoctor;
Come on, every 3 day hot spell brings out an Al Gore wannabe solemnly opining, "See, it's global warming." That and the growing temptation to blame absolutely everything, including the supposed increased itchiness of poison ivy on global warming, makes the whole issue ripe for Mallard-like ridicule.
It's too important an issue to be the subject of glib summaries by blow-dried TV weather people and politicians who don't know an ocluded front from a CME.

Anonymous said...

I'd stipulate to the fact that there are individuals making the same essentially stupid argument from both sides.

That said, most of the argument saying that Global Warming is a fact comes from the scientific community, among which there is consensus. The voices saying "Man it's hot; Global Warming is a bitch" are the outliers.

The majority of the argument that Global Warming is fake comes from people exhibiting this level of intellectual dishonesty. They nitpick some minor detail or reference anecdotal evidence and then desire to throw the entire theory out as a result.

There's a world of difference between those two.