Category Archives: catastrophism

(Blurred) Visions of a Sustainable UN

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Following up on a side note on WUWT…this is what the UN means by “sustainability”. To be kept in mind as Rio+20 approaches.

VISIONS OF A SUSTAINABLE UN

If you fancy yourself as a photographer and believe in the power of images to change the way we think and feel, then why not try your hand at capturing an image which describes a sustainable UN? [...] All entries must speak to the theme, Visions of a Sustainable UN.

PHOTO COMPETITION WINNERS ANNOUNCED

SUN, 05/06/11

A team from Cyprus have been announced as the winners of 2011 Greening the Blue Photo Competition which has been run in collaboration with the UN Photographic Society to celebrate World Environment Day 2011.

Here’s the winner: “The judges felt the winning entry managed to capture several important elements of how the UN can become a more sustainable organisation” such as recycling itself and the fears it keeps spreading presumably

Recycling the UN

 

Runner-up: “…on a technology that is truly sustainable“, i.e. somebody is dreaming we all get on our bikes really, no matter if it’s the middle of the winter and there’s no baobab trees around

Biking around your baobab

Runner-up: “…bringing your own mug…” right before not flushing the toilet I suspect

Sustainable mugging

Runner-up: “sustainability is a part of UN’s key mandates in many ways: food, youth, and the environment in the developing world” starting from making sure it remains developING forever.

Make sure she never sees a book

In summary, if we all felt like rubbish and pedalled with our own mug to work by tilling the soil somewhere, the UN will have reached its goal by making our lives unsustainable.

Two Matters Of Logic (And Timewasting Avoidance)

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A couple of timewasting avoidance schemes when dealing with anti-skeptic Defenders of the Faith in Science:

(1) The Congealed Minds

Some people pop up in skeptic blogs commenting in a way similar to swashbuckling (or marauding), making statements such as “I believe the scientists doing the research are a much better judge of that than you are“.

That’s a very good sign that we’re dealing with people who:

  • Worship mainstream scientific literature
  • Are willing mouthpieces of somebody else
  • Routinely misrepresent science as an organically growing process where past interpretations are cast in stone
  • Act like those philosophers who would reply to Galileo continuously quoting Aristotle and the Aristotelians, rather than accept to reason by themselves

The only question to ask them is: Is there anything anybody could ever say, show, write, demonstrate, ask or explain in a blog or comment to a blog, that will make you change your mind?

The answer will of course be “No”. Therefore there is no point debating with them.

(2) The Deferrers

Another common anti-skeptic tactic is to invoke some Higher Authority, eg: “I won’t presume to substitute my non-professional judgment for that of someone who’s dedicated his career to a pursuit of unbiased scientific knowledge, just as I wouldn’t substitute my judgment for that of an oncologist or a neurologist treating myself or someone close to me“.

That’s a completely meaningless statement, because it is supremely illogical. If a person defers judgment to somebody else, obviously what that person writes has no value at all: we should always be looking for the opinion of “somebody else”. Anybody arguing “don’t listen to me, listen to somebody else” is a prisoner of twisted logic, as the first part of that sentence negates the second one. Therefore there is no point debating with them.

Here's Why Mann Is So Bothered About His "Enemies"

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“Much of the contents of [Mann's] book is old news“, according to Peter Gleick. In fact, an entire day spent at a website owned by somebody who interviewed the Man, has turned out nothing more than statements accompanied by “that’s nothing new” and “for those buried in the intellectual wastes of the Murdoch media – it will be brand new territory“.

IOW the general consensus appears to be that there is nothing in Mann’s book that has not already been mentioned, described or referred to somewhere on the web (and, I suspect, in the Climategate emails). Somebody tried to make the point that, according to agiographers, Mann’s book contains enough “to spark a dozen Master’s theses“. But that is not the point.

The point is, what would one find in Mann’s book that is nowhere else? Who knows…an insight, a revealing detail, whatever, anything as long as it is new. There has to be a reason to buy and then read the book, right?

According to Mann’s own supporters, the answers to those questions are still “nothing” and “none”. Well, no wonder Mann is ever so bothered about his enemies…with friends like Mann’s, no one needs enemies!