Watermelons
And the Pope is Catholic. Now tell us something we didn’t know.
It’s unfortunately true that most environmentalists hail from the Left of the political spectrum – that’s simply a fact. Why else are climate protests peppered with banners from the Socialist Workers’ Party and other extreme left organisations, that the Greens are a party of the left and there is a publication entitled Green Left Weekly?
Environmentalism and socialism go together like… windmills and solar panels.
It is a widely held belief, based on plenty of supporting evidence, that environmentalists are using a green agenda as a Trojan Horse to achieve the political goals of more regulation, higher taxes, wealth distribution and global government.
As News.com.au reports:
MANY climate sceptics do not trust environmentalists because they consider them “borderline communists” who want to curtail people’s freedom, a leading US social scientist says.
Speaking on Wednesday night, the University of Michigan’s Andy Hoffman said US global warming sceptics had “a serious distrust of the political ideology behind its proponents”.
“The fear is that environmentalists are left-leaning, they are socialist, borderline communists, and they are using the government to try to control your freedom,” Prof Hoffman said in the Sydney Ideas lecture at the University of Sydney.
“The expression for environmentalists is watermelons, they’re green on the outside, but they’re red on the inside. That really represents their feeling.”
Mr Hoffman said a scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change had failed to lead to action on the issue because it was really a “debate over values”.
He said despite compelling science, just 40 per cent of Australians believed humans contributed to a hotter planet.
Who can disagree so far? But then it goes downhill, with Hoffman then claiming that it is because of the sceptics “values” that they are sceptical:
“It’s not about CO2, it’s not about climate models, it’s about values, it’s about world views,” the business and environment academic said.
“It’s because deeply held beliefs that they hold dear are under threat.”
Climate change was such a “thorny issue” because it represented “an existential challenge to our world views”, he said.
In that context, he said giving climate deniers [red card for that – Ed] more scientific evidence was like “finding yourself talking to a wall, they’re not going to hear it”.
Professor Hoffman said a “social consensus” to fight climate change needed to be built, similar to that created in the past to combat smoking and slavery.
Hoffman has flipped the argument 180 degrees. Sceptics doubt the pronouncements of environmentalists and climate change activists because of their political leanings AND because they fudge data, massage results, “offer up scary scenarios” as Stephen Schneider once said, delete emails (ClimateGate) and avoid FOI requests.
If the science were genuinely impartial and beyond reproach, then “sceptics” wouldn’t need to search for ulterior motives to explain the environmentalists’ desire to railroad through their agenda.
As it is, however, they are their own worst enemy.
“One of the most important first steps in engaging the debate is not to blame or mock or ridicule,” he said.
You could start by acknowledging the true reasons for climate scepticism.
Australian Climate Madness 
Fools rush in …
Interesting that most of the most vocal supporters of AGW are sociologists and psychs like Lewandowski and Hoffman. It seems that anyone with an ounce of quantitative science behind them has spotted that all is not well on the good ship CAGW and are already looking for opportunities to melt away.
After the science has collapsed only the religious extremists will remain.
Comrade Hoffmann is certainly doing his utmost to obfuscate the issue of blatant left wing propaganda, twisting and hiding of data so that it supports the flawed warmologist models. Finaly, as he is yet another parasite on the public purse, no one should be suprised about his views which are being well rewarded by all that taxpayer money being sucked by the Green Leeches.
Hoffmann is trying to destroy the Scientific Method and that even more alarming than than fudging the data on one issue.
Dr Hoffman is a social scientist, with no apparent pretensions to expertise in climate science. Yet he dogmatically assures us that some relevant (but unstated) aspects of that discipline are “compelling”.
Why is he so sure of that? Because somebody else told him so? Or because it accords with his own very personal worldview, or values?
Environmentalists detest evolution, natural selection is seen as their biggest threat.
They want to control population through artificial selection. They want complicit, unintelligent offspring that make great followers.
Environmentalists desire the North Korea model of democracy. Afterall, Kim Jong Un and James Hansen are virtually identical, they do everything for the sake of the kids and the grand kids.
I totally agree.
What do you expect from a social scientist? The term is an oxymoron. The reason that social scientists swallow the AGW scare is that they don’t remember a thing about high school science, that’s assuming they even studied science at high school. People are sceptical because climate science is riddled with assumptions which are treated as gospel truth and fed into computer models. I’m sceptical not because I have a particular world view. I used to vote for the ALP, but the ALP is moribund in its present form – GALP – Green ALP. The science is not settled. Government policy should not be based on unproven theories. The politics is simple – the unproven theory has credence only because it resonates with the Green world view.
The world is warming and the CO2 tax won’t do a damn thing to stop this natural trend which might or might not be influenced by CO2 emissions. Disasters happen. The Gold Coast will be struck by a cyclone like that of 1954, maybe next month, next year or in a hundred years. Mother Nature takes no notice of politicians. Future generations will scratch their heads about this: Why did previous governments increase taxes but do absolutely nothing practical to save low-lying housing from storm surges? Election results are determined not by the donkey vote but by the thinking vote. Thinking voters do not swallow the AGW propaganda. GALP will be annihilated if JG remains in charge. With a change of leadership they will still lose, but not by as much and will have a fighting chance next time – but only if it repudiates – for all time – its alliance with the Greens. GALP will have to re-incarnate itself as the ALP of old.
Professor Andy Hoffman wants to know, “Can the social sciences like psychology, sociology, anthropology and political science, offer a clear and concise framework for understanding why people reject the scientific consensus?”
Simple … start with the truth about why science and politics have become so completely intertwined so far as climate change is concerned.
(link)
The whole statement by Hoffman reads like it applies to alarmists, rather than skeptics. Every principle in his argument can be applied to them.
For them it’s not about models, since they fail. Their beliefs are under threat because observations aren’t matching them. Their existential view that humans are evil, is being challenged. Giving them evidence that humans are not adversely affecting climate is like “finding yourself talking to a wall, they’re not going to hear it”.
“Social consenus”? I’m sure we could find a “social consensus” that everyone should be rich, or able to travel to other galaxies. And he thinks that reality is taking a back seat with skeptics? Hoffman has too much irony in his diet.
So he is really a closet Watermelon by the looks of things.
Have any of you even tried to debate with a $CAGW$ warmist..???
They dont know the science..so thats out.
They dont know the weakness/problems and games within the science(see above)..
They get this glazed look on their faces,,and mumble slogans..beyond ^%$# belief.. 🙂
Yeah when I first read this, I could add that there is another thing Professor Hoffman failed to mention that, besides distrust of those from the left, skeptics think that alarmists seem totally unable to see the inherent WEAKNESSES in their arguments, much the same as communists once did, or for that matter religious people.
Communists were so sure of their cause that they were willing to bankrupt and destroy their own countries in order to promote communism, which was never based on any understanding of economics or human culture to begin with, and religious people are so sure of themselves that they…well where does one start. The point is, in which Professor Hoffman seems totally unable to understand, is that the science is NOT at all clear that anything about c02 emissions needs to be curtailed or changed. Variations in climate to date may be almost entirely natural (and mostly caused by changes in the sun since the Little Ice Age, including multi-decadal oceanic and heat lag effects), something that most alarmists fail to see as even a possibility.
And until their science is less muddled, less politicised, and more in accord with observations, such as the current pause in warming coinciding with lower solar output since the late 20th century, and also with the fact that the Pacific Ocean has now gone into a negative cooler phase, which are both natural and entirely consistent with observations, whereas the alarmists models which emphasise human activities are NOT consistent with observations, and have failed to predict the current temperature standstill; as long as these sort of empirical and verifiable observations are not in accord with alarmist climate models, the skeptics of human caused climate catastrope will remain skeptical of the degree of dangerous human influence on climate, for entirely good and scientific reasons.
Funnily enough it has been the whole AGW issue that made me review my political support. I was fiercely labor until I looked deeper at the whole AGW debate. I have now gone a whole 180 degrees. When I hear progressives go on & on like they have some sort of moral superiority because they care about the future of the planet, I remember how I used to be. I can’t believe I was so gullible. Thankfully my eyes are wide open now.
This is why I think that in the end AGW has been a gift. By embracing this idiotic nonsense, the Left has revealed its essential stupidity and falseness – once and for all.
I think you are not alone. A lot of people are waking up to what is going on and what the real agenda is.
The extreme socialist / envrironmental standpoint that labor has taken over the past 20 years is probably the reason why the primary vote is now only 30%. It was always hovering around the 45%-50% mark when I was growing up. I guess they dont support working people like they used to, and now it is run by a group of elitists who keep 6 million Australians dependant on on support for the Govt via handouts. Oddly enough that is close to 30% of the population. Some correlation there between the support for the Labor party and the amount of people on handouts…….hmmmmm…
You’ve got that right!
I was never devout to one side or the other, but it did seem to me that Labor always gave to the people, while the other side tightened up the economy afterwards and put things back in order. So, there’d be “getting business back on track and Australia out of debt”, etc., then time for Labor to come in and spend, spend, spend, handing out lots of goodies to the people to win their trust, their vote and their general support. A bit like the weekend after a heavy week, the fun time because we have been “good”.
This is the first time I’ve known Labor to come in and just thrash everyone. It hasn’t let up, either, rich, poor, in between, it doesn’t matter – everyone’s copping it. Frankly, I think that shocked the heck out of millions of Labor supporters expecting money to be spent on them. Instead of spend, spend, spend, it’s tax, tax, tax. Sorry, let’s get that right – it’s tax, Tax, TAX – getting bigger and more harsh all the time.
We’re complaining that the carbon tax started off at $23 per tonne – it’s already gone up (yet continues to be referred to at $23) – yet Gillard wants it all the way to $350 per tonne. That’s the original carbon tax multiplied by 14.
Now everyone sees that socialism is for the elite – the dictators – and not “for the people” at all. Not even an inch. They want us silenced and enslaved and deep – deep – in poverty. If they could get rid of democracy, they would. And let’s not even get started on the destruction of industry and knocking us back to the Stone Age!
Sheesh!
By the way, Hi. 🙂
Marxists had the belief that they were in possession of the scientific truth. That is something in common with many other people. But they went further. Not only did this “scientific truth” come prior to all other standards of interpretation, it also came prior to evidence and moral interpretations as well. Their were no facts or moral standards that could contradict this scientific truth. Those who disputed Marxism were either deluded, or paid to lie by the minority who would lose out by the revolution.
A precursor of the establishment of the communist states was the elimination of any public outlets of thought other than the official party line. This precursor has its modern parallel in the efforts to shut down dissent on global warming.
Marxism cultural climate science?
“The Western World is going to stink” Or in other words, “We have take away the Western World culture to pave the way for Marxism”
?
This post and the comments here represent one of the most bizarre self-enclosed reality tunnels I’ve ever come across. It’s like visiting a Christian fundie site describing the End Times.
I think you’ll find that’s RealClimate you’re thinking of. Thanks for the laugh, anyway.
The real Benjamin David Steele exposed as a troll … “Global Warming denialism is a favorite hobby on the right. And a favorite hobby of mine is countering such ignorance.”