Over the last few years I've spent some time on JWN 'debating' climate change, global warming etc with the usual suspects.
It's consistently frustrating and worthwhile. I feel that the larger audience is worth the time for an educated response to denier nonsense. But the deniers employ boringly obvious and vampire-like methods that just won't die.
Their method of operation is to paste zombie talking points, and then hit the exits when you shine a light on their nonsense or evasion techniques
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/members/politics/186180/3/The-bottome-line-climate-change - JWoods - GUILTY
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/members/politics/185155/19/Climate-Change-The-New-Catalyst-For-Globalists-Communist-Utopia B-Rock - GUILTY
They refuse to answer simple questions, for example
Question - Are you writing off the whole climate science field as a scam?
Answer - Real science will eventually trump all fictions.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/186270/6/Climate-Change-nee-Global-Warming-Strkes-Again BTS - GUILTY
They refuse to acknowledge the difference between local weather events and global climate. Or the difference between climate change and global warming.
They repeat as gospel half truths and misinformation that has been debunked and proven nonsense many times and many years before.
They continue the tactics and techniques used by the tobacco lobby in the 1980's. Google 'Fred Singer tobacco' and see how even the same people are involved.
They focus on building controversy rather than advancing science. They refuse to discuss the big picture and prefer to focus on the minutiae of cherrypicked datapoints. They paste, but don't have an original thought worth 0.02. Note how much of their 'content' is pasted from somewhere else.
And so they unwittingly (best case) serve as an echo chamber for the interests of the carbon lobby, and in this they have been very successful. The scientific community have been in agreement since the 1970's that AGW is a real and present danger and yet the majority of American adults disagree. Paid lobbyists, 'experts for hire' and misinformed journalists are infinitely better at professionally spreading myth than scientists have been at getting the science understood.
Worst of all (IMHO) they are ball-achingly unoriginal - I told B-Rock for all the above reasons (mainly his refusal to engage on specifics) that he was on my IGNORE list, and guess what - his next post to me tells me I'm on his IGNORE list. Priceless and pathetic all in one hit.
And so for all the above reasons I will be posting a lot less on climate threads in 2010.
Happy New Year to Deniers and Alarmists alike.