Facts? Who Cares About Facts?

SilverEagle · February 23, 2010

A perfect article for this forum

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6880139.html

hickoryhouse · February 23, 2010

Great article with a very compelling premise. We can't seem to agree with each other politically so we don't believe the "facts" that the other side proposes. I liked his followup to a particularly poignant paragraph...

If you and I had an argument and I produced facts from an authoritative source to back me up, you couldn't just blow that off. You might try to undermine my facts, might counter with facts of your own, but you couldn't just pretend my facts had no weight or meaning.

But that's the intellectual state of the union these days, as evidenced by all the people who still don't believe the president was born in Hawaii or that the planet is warming. And by Thompson, who doesn't believe Henry Johnson did what he did.

He is right in his assertion that we are breaking down what should be logical discussions into partisan politics void of critical thought. However he is showing his own partisanship in his choice of examples. By comparing Global Warming to the 'Birthers' he contradicts his own point, as if to say,

"see, look at all the facts associated with the global warming thing and no one can come up with anything to counter them. See, we global warming proponents were right all along and anyone reading this who disagrees with us is holding up progress!!!!!!"

As we have seen here on this very board many times there are facts both for and against the occurrence of global warming and this individuals choice of examples in his otherwise, IMO, coherent piece, illustrates his contempt for those who wish to indulge in an open debate of the subject thanks to the volumes of "facts" out there that counter his view.

The article is god in concept but the delivery, IMO, is just as partisan as the negative subject that he writes about.

UNT90 · February 24, 2010

A perfect article for this forum

http://www.chron.com...ok/6880139.html

hahahahahahahaha....

Leonard Pitts?

hahahahahahahaha...

So what he is saying is he wants you to believe what he believes are facts, not what necessarily are real facts.

And round and round we go.

I would put a lot more faith in an article like this if it were written by John Stosell.

UNTflyer · February 24, 2010

But that's the intellectual state of the union these days, as evidenced by all the people who still don't believe the president was born in Hawaii or that the planet is warming. And by Thompson, who doesn't believe Henry Johnson did what he did.

Clearly he doesn't care about the FACT that the IPCC has admitted the Himalayan glacier claim was bogus and they knew it, that they kept it in the report for political reasons. Or that they intentionally omitted the dissenting opinions of scientists on the IPCC.

Hmm, kind of like their admission that the WHO overstated the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s in order to get nations to act. Can we believe ANYTHING the U.N. or their team of scientists tell us anymore?

Edited February 24, 2010 by UNTflyer

yyz28 · February 24, 2010

Great article with a very compelling premise. We can't seem to agree with each other politically so we don't believe the "facts" that the other side proposes. I liked his followup to a particularly poignant paragraph...

He is right in his assertion that we are breaking down what should be logical discussions into partisan politics void of critical thought. However he is showing his own partisanship in his choice of examples. By comparing Global Warming to the 'Birthers' he contradicts his own point, as if to say,

"see, look at all the facts associated with the global warming thing and no one can come up with anything to counter them. See, we global warming proponents were right all along and anyone reading this who disagrees with us is holding up progress!!!!!!"

As we have seen here on this very board many times there are facts both for and against the occurrence of global warming and this individuals choice of examples in his otherwise, IMO, coherent piece, illustrates his contempt for those who wish to indulge in an open debate of the subject thanks to the volumes of "facts" out there that counter his view.

The article is god in concept but the delivery, IMO, is just as partisan as the negative subject that he writes about.

This. +1.

bigrobdsp · February 24, 2010

This. +1.

Apparently none of you can read. He never once mentiones "Man Made Global Warming". he just states the FACT that the temperature is higher right now than it was at another time in history. I personaly dont think humans have any effect on the temperature of the earth, but the author has not expressed any opinions on that subject. You are all proving his point

yyz28 · February 24, 2010

Rob -

The conclusion that the temperature is higher not a fact, which is the whole point of this article. The author states:

"But that's the intellectual state of the union these days, as evidenced by all the people who still don't believe the president was born in Hawaii or that the planet is warming"

...the evidence that points to the planet getting warmer, which has been debated in other threads and really doesn't need to be rehashed in this one, can be countered by reasonable doubt as to why much of the evidence points that direction, and further is contradicted by evidence that parts of the planet are actually cooling. The actual numbers that track global temps during the period of time that we have been tracking such statistics is very much in doubt.

So even in this thread, here's you stating something is a fact that can be debated, and here's me debating it. We can all agree the climate is changing (because that's what it does - and it did it for millinia (sp?) before we showed up 'round here - but to conclude its doing any one thing based on the evidence available today is a bit short sighted. ...in my OPINION.

hickoryhouse · February 25, 2010

Apparently none of you can read. He never once mentiones "Man Made Global Warming". he just states the FACT that the temperature is higher right now than it was at another time in history. I personaly dont think humans have any effect on the temperature of the earth, but the author has not expressed any opinions on that subject. You are all proving his point

Just for a bit of perspective in relationship to the author and his views.

Leonard Pitts Jr. July 7th 2006 - Pittsburg Post - Gazette

Perhaps he didn't use the term "man made" but in todays climate and the current vernacular that is thrown about from day to day, he doesn't have to. In fact he doesn't ay it in this article either, but he does speak about Al Gore's movie and uses it as a reference to describe the events of the day. We all know what kind of Global Warming Al Gore speaks of.

Sometimes tone and current events leave words out that can be easily assumed, the placement of the statement in the article says volumes as well; "Birthers" and then "Global Warming" the item that he mentioned first was there to strike a tone or to make an impact in the same way that the item that he mentioned second was. You are right when you say that perhaps he was taken out of context, that he never once mentioned man made global warming... however a 3 minute Google search on his work shows that his opinions are more in line with what I read in his words, than what you did.

Edited February 25, 2010 by hickoryhouse

UNTflyer · February 25, 2010

Apparently none of you can read. He never once mentiones "Man Made Global Warming". he just states the FACT that the temperature is higher right now than it was at another time in history.

We do not know this to be a fact... on the contrary, there is evidence that shows we are entering a natural cooling cycle.