Lubos Motl
From HERE
Quote:Luboš Motl:
April 24th, 2010 at 2:50 am
Nice stories. Of course, the dangerous global warming meme may be visualized as a kind of infection – it is an infection – but the society also has an immunity system. Now, the infection is trying to take over the society.
So the cells of infection try to reproduce and infect weak cells of the society, but by doing so and revealing their aggressiveness unmatched by the knowledge, logic, and facts, they also become visible to the healthy cells in the society, which may start to realize the threat and conspire to protect the society as a whole.
Still, the outcome remains somewhat uncertain.
I’ve had lots of fun conversations with people who are not really interested in the topic. Of course, some true laymen often have some of these pretty simple attitudes. Men can’t make the difference because they’re too small, the ice age is coming and it’s the real danger, etc. Still, those simple reactions are based on some kind of common sense, even though not a terribly scientifically advanced one.
It’s the more educated people – who have nevertheless failed to study the actual content of the climate – who have become the main passive carriers of the infection. They heard other educated people saying that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant, and so on, so they repeat it. When you trace it, this meme was really started by some stupid environmental whackos, but because the educated people have already heard it from other educated people, they trust it and find themselves important in trusting it.
So while I agree that the true zealots are thankfully doing a disservice to the AGW movement, I think that the real threat is among the people who are not zealots but who just uncritically parrot these memes because they’ve heard their peers doing the same. Politicians and other key jobs often come from this environment so of course, I think that the dynamics of the infection within this community is the most important question that will decide about the fate of this hysteria.
A fascinating comment that describes the spread of climate baloney among people who do not really study what they heard.They just believe it and become part of the herd of ignorant climate change fanatics.
That is why most AGW believers (most fail to know what that is) give me abysmal replies to my rational comments.They are often so stupidly ignorant that they do not even realize they are that way.
It is sad to meet such people.
It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.
–William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1952
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Lubos Motl
