So, Gates claims he is giving away his fortune, that his kids won't inherit his billions. But the kids enjoy tremendous advantages provided by Gates now. I'm sure his daughter didn't incur loans to pay for medical school. They have enjoyed lavish weddings and live in opulent housing all on dad and Mom's(nice divorce$$) dimes. So much hypocrisy.
I don't believe a single word out of Gates' mouth. Not now, and not when he inevitably pushes his new mass-scam on the world. The scam to replace the "Climate Change" that he just denounced, because it will no longer work for his future power-needs.
10 years ago, I was working in an insurance brokerage that had a lot if high net worth people in the SFBay Area as customers. It was interesting to see how many people who had had "a liquidity event" insist they didn't want to make their kids rich. Except they weren't considering the fact they were raising them in an environment that was extremely rich. You can't expect a child who is taking private jets for a ski weekend in Aspen to automatically understand that.
The kids would be better off if you took them on a road trip to Tahoe, stayed in a motel on Highway 50 and got plastic sleds from Raleys to slide down the hill for 30 seconds only to hike back up the hill to do it over and over again and then get stuck in traffic on the way home. That was my childhood - and it was wonderful. Problem is, the parents want the other life.
As just pointed out last night in, of all places, “Jeopardy”, Gates is reserving 1% of his wealth for his kids, so the poor little lambs will only split up $1Billion.
I’m more worried about how the ex-wives of Gates and Bezos, as well as The baby moms of Elon will spend their dough
Why exactly do you care how much Gates' kids inherit? And how does their inheriting $1,000,000,000 cancel out the $99,000,000,000 earmarked for charity? It's like complaining that your friends set up dinner and drinks, and paid for it, but left paying for parking up to you. Actually, it's even stupider than that - Gates giving his kids any share of his money costs you nothing.
I was thinking you were a bot so I threw in some gobbledygook.
I stopped gratuitously insulting strangers when I got out of nursery school in the Kennedy administration but I guess that’s how you kids converse now.
"Denialism" is just our age's blasphemy/heresy charge delivered by our new priesthood of professors, dimwitted journalists and other moral entrepreneurs, who demand we bow down to their divine right, er, I mean, their "expertise" to tell us how to think, speak, live and what new sacred crusades we should devote our lives to if we want to get into Heaven, er, I mean be on the Right Side of History™.
Just as on one side of campus there are the Theorists who present their "critical consciousness" and devotion to egalitarianism as representing their right to rule, on the other side of campus are the STEMies who believe their degrees and their devotion to scientism provide THEIR right to rule.
The fun part of living in a secular age is watching how all the old patterns of religion repeat themselves, just in new clothes with new words. There are always many sheep and many others fighting to be proclaimed shepherd, where they get to be the first among equals. But nowadays the competition is so stiff that the only way to get ahead and get noticed is constant apocalyptic screeching, which repels as many as it attracts. And the kinds of people it attracts...it's not a coincidence that sad mad children like Greta Thunberg and Ella Emhoff look like Manson Girls or Puritan handmaidens. Nothing ever changes, except costumes and dogma.
Happy Halloween to Matt and all our fellow heretics, who keep getting (metaphorically) burned at the stake, only to be vindicated 5ish years later. It's dangerous to get too far out in front of the flock!
I agree with Michael Shermer, who describes humans as dominated by a believing brain. I will go further and say for most of us the need to believe is more important than the doctrine selected.
I guess constantly questioning is too uncomfortable. And also challenges another fundamental urge: tribalism.
I think we forget in our modern age of individualism that for the majority of human existence we were entirely dependent upon our tribe—being shunned or ostracized meant either loss of mating opportunities and/or ostracism, which essentially meant death.
It's very rare for someone to even consider an opposing viewpoint that the rest of our tribe considers dangerous (I'm 56 and just about all my friends are mostly smart, accomplished and educated and they pretty much regurgitate the NYT to me verbatim—seems to be a sign of the times.)
You have to be some kind of weirdo or an outcast by circumstance or choice to develop an independent mind (and spirit), which I think (like Shermer) is why many of our most incisive thinkers and critics have been Jews, the eternal outcasts.
I was criticized in grad school for "questioning EVERYTHING." This was said in a perplexed and somewhat accusatory tone, but it was helpful to learn that this was why I was targeted by so many of my peers. My side of the problem is that I can't understand why not everyone is like me. LOL!!
Okay, I've had enough of this... just because every other asshole in media pretends they know everything about everything doesn't mean I'm required to do the same thing.
I obviously have opinions about everything. If we were somehow at the same dinner I might say all sorts of things. But I don't put things in print until I'm 100% sure, not just so I don't have to spend my life apologizing for things I got wrong 20 years ago, but also so that my readers don't have to. You can infer from these articles that I think it was wrong to scare the crap out of people about this issue, and that Bill Gates sucks. I guess if you want me to, I can start writing columns about areas of non-knowledge. How about the Thai-Cambodian conflict? New treatments for autoimmune diseases? Australian rules football? Are there other subjects I haven't covered you'd like me to blather about?
Matt, the thing that makes you real is that you strive to be a journalist, not an op-ed talking head. Sure we all have opinions, but when the chips are down I trust you to offer a transparent view of the facts, reserving judgement until you have turned the last stone. Exhibit A for me was the beating you took from the Main Stream press for not falling in line behind the DNC propaganda like the rest of the ducklings. Chuck Todd couldn’t do it, he caved and still paid for being late to the party. The wannabes are just mad at you for having the balls to stand up for real journalism and succeed in spite of all the hate. Keep it real. You have a terrific win/loss record, not because you see the future, but because you can objectively and diligently unwind current events. Don’t let the bastards wear you down.
"...just because every other asshole in media pretends they know everything about everything doesn't mean I'm required to do the same thing." You mean like Walter Kirn?
imagine making this complaint when your podcast partner spends every episode pretending to be a Gypsy-blooded soothsayer who constantly brings up unnamed and unspecified “sources” that talk to him about inside baseball, info only he has.
And Matt just sits there like a drooling moron and never challenges or questions any of it, just nodding along like he’s recording the word of god on livestream.
And then they have the nerve to criticize mainstream media for their practice of citing unnamed sources.
Alright Matt, since you picked up the gauntlet, let’s go.
You have already beaten me to the punch by walking back your use of the term “optimism”, which is great, since you really worked overtime to ignore this portion of Gates “good news”:
“Even with these innovations, though, the cumulative emissions will cause warming and many people will be affected...Iowa will start to feel more like Texas. Texas will start to feel more like northern Mexico. ...most people in countries near the equator won’t be able to relocate—they will experience more heat waves, stronger storms, and bigger fires.”
That’s the rosy outlook that got you bubbling with excitement? The Global South will burn to a crisp while Iowa will soon only be hotter than Dallas in July??
Summers in upstate New York (where I live) have already turned oppressively humid over the past five years, and our famous white winters are increasingly brown and preceded by Autumn heat waves that I have never experienced in 54 years of living in this region, yet you still think the jury is out on this issue, and that the real problem is (of course) media sloppiness in not both-sides’ing this urgent topic with your level of equanimity.
Well, I’ve also “had enough of this”. Hop off your goddamn ivory fence and pick a side already. It is as though you have been handed a report on the severity of Climate Change and you can’t get past the fact that it wasn’t printed on recycled paper. (“Um, hello? Environmental Movement? When are you done putting Greta Thunberg down for her nap could you please take a moment to get your messaging straight? The crypto-bro contingent of my audience is giggling at you. How do you expect me to get them to accept .01% tax on Bitcoin mining of you aren’t really serious about saving the planet?”)
"Summers in upstate New York (where I live) have already turned oppressively humid over the past five years," You caugbt my eye with this since I grew up in upstate NY and my recollection is that summers were always oppressively humid, going back to the 1970s. Are you telling me (and others) you only noticed this in the last 5 years?
Your mileage may vary. I have lived in my current location for 5 years, and in another area of upstate for another 30. Ain’t seen weather like we’ve been having for most of that time.
I know it’s seemingly impossible to comprehend but weather varies in cycles completely independently of human life. You think weather gives a fuck what you remember from 30 years ago?
JFC you are completely clueless about what journalism is. You're one of the clueless droolers who like their opinions supported and their world view certified. A pround member of the punditocracy crowd where someone packages ‘the news’ for you.You expect your favorite hot topics to be covered and curse any who don't mirror your priorities. Please, just F-CAW-F.
Most of what Matt does these days is infotainment, not journalism. He shucks out red meat to partisan fools who watch Greg Gutfeld religiously at night.
The only reason I support his work is his looks into Russiagate. Beyond that he’s not a journalist but a partisan shill with a podcast.
Maybe it’s semantics on my part but i think we lessen our argument when we say “it’s all about money.” It’s about what money can buy and I’m not talking about luxuries. It’s all about Power.
Absolutely, nail on the head correct. Making more money can’t give Gates something he doesn’t have today, he already has access to all of the luxuries. Power is the fuel that needs to be injected into his soulless carcass as he approaches the end of his life.
It’s telling that Matt thinks the greatest sin regarding Global Warming would be to alarm people over it. I’d love to be in a room with this guy when a smoke detector goes off.
“1 out of 10 people in the room doesn't think the smoke detector means a fire. It’s a Deep State plot to turn us socialist. Has anyone checked the maker of that smoke detector? Huge contributor to the Democrats. Meet the censored, Jetfel Dusntburn.”
Instead of coat-tailing Matt, since you have no presence of your own, why don’t you work on something real, an\y\thing, and leave him alone? Maybe you will learn the diff between being a parasite and a producer.
I dunno champ… how many winters do you think I need to experience before I am free to observe that the snow has stopped arriving for the last seven? How many snowy Octobers do I have to have lived through before noticing how odd it is that now I’m running my air conditioner half way through Autumn?
Well, champ, how many years has this rock been spinning?? One Who in Whoville does not a study make, but keep proudly planting those flags and considering it a contribution. It’s human nature to seek meaning, after all.
Matt, relax. This is the same person who can't tell the difference between journalism and an op-ed. Quote from your last article comments "A reporter always leads his audience to the correct conclusion." - Slusa Secundus Snape. Clearly fucking nuts.
It is infantile to expect any journalist to express an opinion on every single issue. I watch Greenwald every night, and he freely admits that he is not comfortable expounding on economic issues, and prefers to have experts on to elaborate on such topics.
It’s painfully clear in comments sections around the world that to be considered a journalist these days, one must virtue signal, affirm, assert, browbeat - - all the things we used to think of as the realm of the editorial page.
Bill Gates changes his position, states humans will not go extinct from global warming, climate alarmist lose collective mind.
Matt does article pointing out the lunacy of it all.
Salusa points out it’s humid in upstate NY in the summer, which is proof we will all die from the climate and demands Matt take a side like all the kids (journalists) are doing these days.
We are doomed, but it’s surely from herd mentality level stupidity.
Did Gates ever say that ALL of humanity will “go extinct”? I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, what he is “saying now” does not seem to be any different than what he was saying all along: Our world will become increasingly hot, and our prosperous society will begin to decline precipitously (unless you don’t grok what a hellish Iowa implies for Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada).
You seem to have missed the point of both of Matt's pieces then, which is not surprising, since (as I stated) Matt is not actually concerned with the content of Gates' opinion, only the conversation surrounding it.
But Gates POV is actually consistent: he agrees that man-made Global Warming is occurring, and that it will have dire consequences guaranteed to downgrade our standard of living. If you actually read Gates' words, he says exactly that. The only difference between what he may have said before and what he is saying now is that he is now offering hope that if humanity gets its shit together in double-quick time, we may be able to roll with the changes. However, he offers no reason to believe that we will do this.
Bwah ha ha! I chose my comical, latin-ish name to make fun of people like Curtis Yarvin, Michael Anton... and now you!... who all choose nome-de-plums meant to pretentiously evoke the authors of the Federalist papers.
Oh come on. Taibbi has given his opinions all along. He might do a lot of research, but he's certainly giving more than just the facts. Just look at the first line of this piece, the one that everyone loves so much. And Snape is right about what Gates actually said, and about Taibbi's main concern being the media reaction to what he said, not its substance.
Yes, but his positions are always about the conversation *around* topics, while he refuses to plant his flag regarding the central issues themselves. It’s as though Godzilla were stomping Tokyo and Matt’s only takeaway is how the news networks covering it should really be examined for how they dropped the ball in their coverage of Tokyo’s last mayoral race.
Every opinion writer bases (or at least should base) their opinion on facts, as they see it. Matt is such an opinion writer. Even the title 'Racket News' is a statement of opinion.
Sometime in the late aughts, when everybody was freaking out about "global warming" and climate change, which has been occurring throughout millennia, I wanted to invest in solar panels and my husband said, there is only one letter separating green and greed. He knew instintively that it was a scam to create fear and separate more dollars out of our pay checks while we watched the worst offenders like John Kerry take their private planes to Davos.
And what about the “Carbon Credit” scam, in which you can pay someone to plant a tree and somehow assuage your guilt over flying private jets to Climate Armageddon conferences (always held in very posh locations)?
You're absolutely right. It was a way to allow corporations to pretend they were doing something without actually doing anything. I doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening, just that they didn't want to do anything about it.
Yes, but just because the hypocritical people in power sold us individual "solutions" while they and the corporations they serve did nothing, doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening. It just means that we were sold a bill of goods on how to fix it, one that absolved them completely and put the onus on us.
As a 62 yo physician many years ago I read Michael Crichton’s book State of Fear. Since then I have looked askance at each of the many crisis situations that we are told portend the end of the world and instead look for who benefits from the solutions. That usually means I realize these are just another scam.
Anyone who has done some Evolutionary Science will realize that enough fear will drive human beings into herds under authoritarian leaders....or at least those who think they cannot handle it themselves.
So if you are an authoritarian wanna-be leader, you simply induce believable fear in the masses in order to get your controllable serfs.
Corporations that manufacture useful things like ambulances, refrigerators, and air conditioners did not steal Greta's childhood. People like Gore, Mann, Hansen, deGrasse-Tyson, Nye, and Bill Gates stole Greta's childhood.
No doubt one of the great, mostly-untold story of the post-Cold War era has been the cataclysmic failure of American elites, from academia, media, business, the military, pharma, etc. And having recently been in the company of some of those said elites, I can tell you that they are a mix of being scared, mystified, and enraged at the loss of their prestige and status in American life. The profound status anxiety that elites are feeling is, in my view, a major part of what is fueling the anti-Trump/anti-populist rage we are seeing.
Oh Pacificus, it does my heart good to know that they are scared and mystified and want their status back! Because they’re never going to get it again.
Actually, losing decades of not really legitimate prestige and position, as our current elites are, is rather stressful. Their panicked reaction does not surprise me.
Could it be that they deep down always knew they were frauds but they collectively reassured each other. Now that everyone knows they are feaking out and rightfully so. As their grip slips more and more it would not be surprising to find "deaths of despair" among them becoming more frequent.
We need more denialism of "experts" and if you don't believe me, ask yourself - confess to yourself - whether you dutifully wore your mask when traversing the twenty feet from the restaurant door to your table, and then took it off to eat, laugh, and spray mist from your mouth for the next two hours. Do not get me started on vaccinating children for Covid or shutdowns or chasing people off the beach...
My favorite example was a few weeks ago when NYT asked a number of "experts on NYC" who should win the election for mayor. Like what makes someone an expert on NYC? Only the 7 or 8 million people that live there, close your eyes and pick a few.
A paper mask isn't magic, it's just hygeine. If toothbrushes were introduced today troglodytes like your honorable self would be crowing about how brushing your teeth is an evil plot and you'll never do it.
Except toothbrushes have been proven to work, paper masks haven't. Even a troglodyte who uses his real name to respond to anonymous keyboard jockeys knows that
I still think that climate change is a real thing, and it's not a good one. Unless we can somehow speed up our evolution as a species to adapt. My problem is with the hypocrisy of those plugging it. Call it the John Kerry syndrome if you want - "Someone like me can't fly otherwise than in this private jet to a climate conference." If you say we have to take in so many immigrants due to global warming south of the equator, it seems like kind of a doom loop, as they'll no doubt be hoping to acquire a motor vehicle and air conditioning and ultimately contributing to the problem. Etc.
I have asked the climate alarmists many times how it makes sense to transfer people from climate zones where energy demands are minimal to one with high heating costs, for example Somalians to Minnesota. Crickets.
And i forgot to add that I highly doubt that Gates's 180 is not because he's so much smarter than the rest of us, than as many commenters said in the last article, that position has become inconvenient for him.
You know why he has made the turnaround. AI needs energy... With Gates, it is always about the money. He couldn't care less about humanity..Only what he can steal from humanity..
Well, i'll give it to Gore that as i understand it, he lives off the grid. As does, of all people, Thomas Massie. Who took a couple of Tesla engines and set up his own energy rig.
You mean the Al Gore that lives in a 10,000 s.f. house with a pool that all use more electricity than a slew of houses? The one that flies on private jets? (just not his jet)? The one whose family made their money in mining, and he in giving lectures, books and films on the coming climate apocalypse? That Al Gore?
He got a big chunk when he sold Current TV to Al Jazeera. He also co-founded an Investment fund that focuses on "green investments". Plus, I think he was involved with Apple and Google to some extent. May be getting stock options there.
I don’t know, haven’t bothered to study his financial life. I would guess speaker fees, book royalties, service on corporate boards and the various sweetheart deals that ex politicians take advantage of.
One interesting thing about the multiple changes in climate endured by the Earth (and some by humans) over the centuries and millennia, is that the climate doesn’t change much between the tropics. I learned that the big changes are largely between the tropics and the poles.
I am certain that climate change and pollution are real things and are damaging the local and planetary environment. Locally, one can observe species of plants that have lived here for centuries retreating from microclimates where the hotter summers and decreased water cannot support their survival. The forest fires are larger, more frequent, and encroach now on the cities, and the argument that "better forest management" would resolve the problem is false. Individual trees that are centuries old are dying in large enough numbers to be noticeable. There are also species of plants that can be grown successfully here that just a few years ago would not have made it through one winter. Now they make it through at least a few winters, and are more likely to flourish during the summer. T
Denial is the most widely used and least effective of human problem solving strategies. It's usually the most comfortable one, apparently, because once people are in it they don't want to get out. Problems that are denied don't go away. Politicizing climate change is stupid. Attributing all climate change warnings to false beliefs and political manipulation is a variant on denial, in which the warnings can only be denied if the messengers are all false.
Humans are the most adaptable beings in the universe. We could adapt to weather increasing 2 degrees Celsius. In fact the weather increases by more than that between breakfast and lunch every single day.
MT- "If there’s only one legitimate “side” to report, then why bother to look for other opinions?" The media has been taken over by those who would advise on the consensus of experts. Not looking for other opinions is a political decision, completely unrelated to science. Here is a concluding thought to a post on Covid: https://billpound.substack.com/p/speculation-regarding-covid
"REFLECTION: As an American citizen, the fact I don’t know much about mRNA and gene function doesn’t absolve me from learning what I can, forming an opinion, and being willing to verbalize and vote on it. I may be wrong. I have been before. But my learning process holds for any subject of major human importance in America such as Anthropogenic Global Warming, 10 or 20 million illegal migrants entering the US, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Bitcoins or affordable housing.
Citizens, not just members of Congress, should have access, ability, and motivation to read and understand our nation’s laws and to “follow-the-money”. [Every Federal grant and contract should be traceable to a Congressional appropriation.] Experts should not be funded with my tax money if they can’t or don’t explain with reasonable accuracy the potential benefits [not just to themselves] and costs of their work to people of normal learning ability. Credentials mean little. I deliberately did not use any in this post, including my own. That is not disrespectful. People I look for are those with common sense, capable of being helpful. I try to be helpful to others."
And here is an example: The AP reported on a 2019 study in Catalonia (Spain) of more than 2 million seniors (50+), some of whom received flu shots. The AP reported that those who received the shots showed a reduced tendency for dementia. What they didn't report was that those who received flu shots had an 80% greater chance of being hospitalized for pneumonia compared to those not receiving flu shots. The AP could only see one legitimate part of the peer reviewed article. Thou shall not ignore large numbers of data, just as thou shall not rely on small numbers of data.
Bingo! Psychiatrist Arthur Deikman said years ago that un-addressed dependency needs drive people into cults. They want someone else to take care of that pesky freedom for them. They want a hive-mind to make all the decisions. Then all they have to do is obey.
In particular, phrases like "science denier" and "believe in science" drive me crazy. This is religious language. Anyone who uses these phrases doesn't understand the scientific method.
Exactly. As a retired medical research professional, during the COVID hysteria, I kept trying to explain to people how the scientific method works and that “the science” is not black or white.
Americans love a moral panic though so I just shut up about it.
Heck, I was a lit major, but I was still able to understand how herd immunity worked. This constant deferral to “experts” was one of the scariest things about the Covid era — particularly since so many actual experts were being silenced online, and even fired from their jobs.
It is religious, isn't it? I think it was Karl Popper who came up with the idea that if some idea isn't falsifiable, it's outside the realm of science (e.g. religion). The climate modeling certainly isn't falsifiable!
I believe the phrase was "Believe THE science." That's completely different, and I would hope that everyone here would believe the science, whether it comes to conclusions they want to agree with or not.
Assuming a study has been peer reviewed by independent experts who found that the methods were sound (and we can therefore trust the data), then beliefs don't play into it. All we can do is make data-informed decisions or not. We also need to recognize that science is an iterative process. We are always working with the best data we have at any given time, and what we know changes as we gather more data.
I was going to say, perhaps "believe" is a loaded word here in any case. But there is such a thing as a scientific consensus that holds sway within the scientific community...unless and until something else that challenges it comes along.
That was a theological consensus, not a scientific one. But you're right--and it should take scientific evidence to change the consensus, not cries of conspiracy.
There is great irony in your story as Whole Foods, Sprouts, any corporate "health food store" that orginally served the 'denialists' are themselves consummate scam artists just like bill gates, greta & the legion of human caused global warming change scientists.
How could cutting down all the forests and smoking tons of coal into the atmosphere al day every day for 200 years possibly affect the climate? MORANS amirite
The climate alarmists freaked out when National Geographic reported a decade ago there were 76,000 fires in the Amazon Basin during a 6 month period.
But then it turned out the fires were not caused by climate change, but by globalists to create farmlands, to feed the 100s of millions of Chinese who fled their small family farms to work in globalists cities. The climate alarmists lost interest.
Small segments of the population finally waking up and seeing more of the huge lies we’ve been fed for generations. FINALLY. Get on board. My favorite bumper sticker: Question Everything.
1. You come from upper-class family stock and crave high social status, but you suck in entrepreneurism, enterprise and productive merit. You note these deficiencies in grade school. But you can memorize things well and can get good grades... because, well, you have that DNA. And your family can pay for a prestigious institute of higher learning.
2. Fearful to launch into the real world because of your recognized deficiencies, you stay in school longer and earn credentials. After graduation you get "work" where you generally suck off the soft money of government as you can never really compete in the dog-eat-dog private economy.
3. You then weaponize these credentials to brow beat others into falling in line behind you authority. "Hey, you don't have my high and mighty certification as an expert, so your opinion, actions are shit!"
4. As the evidence builds that, no, YOU ARE THE SHIT, you collect into a cabal of other shitty people... upper-class, status-craving people with low productive merit, but high certification and credentials... to help browbeat others from challenging your breathtaking wrongness. You are now part of an industry of "experts", and you can make a lot of money even through you never really produce anything of value other than your "expert" opinion which is often wrong.
5. The media is filled full of your same type, just not lucky enough to land the government gig, so the media goes to work to push and pull your breathtaking wrongness into the heads of the stupid and uninformed... and to cancel those that would dare to challenge the "expert" narrative. You are all generating status and money and you are committed to protecting that sandbox.
6. Then there are those from upper-class family stock craving high social status, that like Bill Gates, that can memorize things well... but also own all those other traits... entrepreneurialism, enterprise and productive merit. People like Gate are snakes... they slither around the expert class demonstrating fealty to their narratives only for the PRIATE-SECTOR money-making benefits. They will shapeshift to the side that provides them the greatest ROI benefit.
Together this is our elite establishment Professional Managerial Class oligarchy. And they are all shit.
"As the Microsoft co-founder is a monopolistic reptile-whore of the highest order who smells money through his flickering tongue...."
This right here is why I pay to read your articles. This is the best description of him ever although it insults the innocent reptiles.
So, Gates claims he is giving away his fortune, that his kids won't inherit his billions. But the kids enjoy tremendous advantages provided by Gates now. I'm sure his daughter didn't incur loans to pay for medical school. They have enjoyed lavish weddings and live in opulent housing all on dad and Mom's(nice divorce$$) dimes. So much hypocrisy.
I don't believe a single word out of Gates' mouth. Not now, and not when he inevitably pushes his new mass-scam on the world. The scam to replace the "Climate Change" that he just denounced, because it will no longer work for his future power-needs.
He didn't denounce climate change. He just said that civilization won't fall apart because of it. That's also basically what Taibbi said.
10 years ago, I was working in an insurance brokerage that had a lot if high net worth people in the SFBay Area as customers. It was interesting to see how many people who had had "a liquidity event" insist they didn't want to make their kids rich. Except they weren't considering the fact they were raising them in an environment that was extremely rich. You can't expect a child who is taking private jets for a ski weekend in Aspen to automatically understand that.
The kids would be better off if you took them on a road trip to Tahoe, stayed in a motel on Highway 50 and got plastic sleds from Raleys to slide down the hill for 30 seconds only to hike back up the hill to do it over and over again and then get stuck in traffic on the way home. That was my childhood - and it was wonderful. Problem is, the parents want the other life.
As just pointed out last night in, of all places, “Jeopardy”, Gates is reserving 1% of his wealth for his kids, so the poor little lambs will only split up $1Billion.
I’m more worried about how the ex-wives of Gates and Bezos, as well as The baby moms of Elon will spend their dough
Why exactly do you care how much Gates' kids inherit? And how does their inheriting $1,000,000,000 cancel out the $99,000,000,000 earmarked for charity? It's like complaining that your friends set up dinner and drinks, and paid for it, but left paying for parking up to you. Actually, it's even stupider than that - Gates giving his kids any share of his money costs you nothing.
Because it spacklewonk makes a joke of his cauliflower altruism - see if you can mambo make sense of this 56;5 message, you bot
Whatever the fuck that means.
Rich people bad, charity bad if not all wealth given away, call person bot for pointing out absurd belief. Well played, douche.
I was thinking you were a bot so I threw in some gobbledygook.
I stopped gratuitously insulting strangers when I got out of nursery school in the Kennedy administration but I guess that’s how you kids converse now.
Ditto- 'Mattisms' - Matt is the king of snarky sentences.
He's not merely snarky. Those sentences are evocative and pithy.
I see them as witticisms rather than snark.
Snark-o-holic.
Absolutely! I smiled when I read that line. Brilliant!
Indeed! That line had delicious imagery that captured the essence of who this ghoul really is.
That was probably my favorite sentence of his this year 😂
Exactly this.
"Denialism" is just our age's blasphemy/heresy charge delivered by our new priesthood of professors, dimwitted journalists and other moral entrepreneurs, who demand we bow down to their divine right, er, I mean, their "expertise" to tell us how to think, speak, live and what new sacred crusades we should devote our lives to if we want to get into Heaven, er, I mean be on the Right Side of History™.
Just as on one side of campus there are the Theorists who present their "critical consciousness" and devotion to egalitarianism as representing their right to rule, on the other side of campus are the STEMies who believe their degrees and their devotion to scientism provide THEIR right to rule.
The fun part of living in a secular age is watching how all the old patterns of religion repeat themselves, just in new clothes with new words. There are always many sheep and many others fighting to be proclaimed shepherd, where they get to be the first among equals. But nowadays the competition is so stiff that the only way to get ahead and get noticed is constant apocalyptic screeching, which repels as many as it attracts. And the kinds of people it attracts...it's not a coincidence that sad mad children like Greta Thunberg and Ella Emhoff look like Manson Girls or Puritan handmaidens. Nothing ever changes, except costumes and dogma.
Happy Halloween to Matt and all our fellow heretics, who keep getting (metaphorically) burned at the stake, only to be vindicated 5ish years later. It's dangerous to get too far out in front of the flock!
"The fun part of living in a secular age is watching how all the old patterns of religion repeat themselves, just in new clothes with new words."
Bingo!
Yes, “denialism” is indeed the Newspeak for heresy.
No one expects the Inquisition!
lol and no one expects to become an Inquisitor!
oh, but wouldn't some like to!
many do, sadly
The medieval Spanish Inquisitors were roughly equivalent in totalitarian rightwing behaviour to modern Islam.
And also were originally a response to ancient Islam...
This is one of those comments that makes me oh so sad Substack does not allow images.
I agree with Michael Shermer, who describes humans as dominated by a believing brain. I will go further and say for most of us the need to believe is more important than the doctrine selected.
I guess constantly questioning is too uncomfortable. And also challenges another fundamental urge: tribalism.
I think we forget in our modern age of individualism that for the majority of human existence we were entirely dependent upon our tribe—being shunned or ostracized meant either loss of mating opportunities and/or ostracism, which essentially meant death.
It's very rare for someone to even consider an opposing viewpoint that the rest of our tribe considers dangerous (I'm 56 and just about all my friends are mostly smart, accomplished and educated and they pretty much regurgitate the NYT to me verbatim—seems to be a sign of the times.)
You have to be some kind of weirdo or an outcast by circumstance or choice to develop an independent mind (and spirit), which I think (like Shermer) is why many of our most incisive thinkers and critics have been Jews, the eternal outcasts.
I was criticized in grad school for "questioning EVERYTHING." This was said in a perplexed and somewhat accusatory tone, but it was helpful to learn that this was why I was targeted by so many of my peers. My side of the problem is that I can't understand why not everyone is like me. LOL!!
The collective mind (hive-mind) vs. the individual is the main theme. Tribalism vs. independence.
I could harp on it for hours. It makes the world turn.
Being lured into the collective mind under an evil medium was what Nazism in the WWII era was all about.
"his old firm will need the energy footprint of a small star" made me laugh out loud. So well put!
Can’t Bill just feed bugs to AI? Plenty of protein to convert into energy!
The guy can still turn a phrase! He just can't stake out a position.
Okay, I've had enough of this... just because every other asshole in media pretends they know everything about everything doesn't mean I'm required to do the same thing.
I obviously have opinions about everything. If we were somehow at the same dinner I might say all sorts of things. But I don't put things in print until I'm 100% sure, not just so I don't have to spend my life apologizing for things I got wrong 20 years ago, but also so that my readers don't have to. You can infer from these articles that I think it was wrong to scare the crap out of people about this issue, and that Bill Gates sucks. I guess if you want me to, I can start writing columns about areas of non-knowledge. How about the Thai-Cambodian conflict? New treatments for autoimmune diseases? Australian rules football? Are there other subjects I haven't covered you'd like me to blather about?
Smh...
Matt, the thing that makes you real is that you strive to be a journalist, not an op-ed talking head. Sure we all have opinions, but when the chips are down I trust you to offer a transparent view of the facts, reserving judgement until you have turned the last stone. Exhibit A for me was the beating you took from the Main Stream press for not falling in line behind the DNC propaganda like the rest of the ducklings. Chuck Todd couldn’t do it, he caved and still paid for being late to the party. The wannabes are just mad at you for having the balls to stand up for real journalism and succeed in spite of all the hate. Keep it real. You have a terrific win/loss record, not because you see the future, but because you can objectively and diligently unwind current events. Don’t let the bastards wear you down.
And I thank you for your approach. That's where you earn trust (mine, anyhow).
"...just because every other asshole in media pretends they know everything about everything doesn't mean I'm required to do the same thing." You mean like Walter Kirn?
imagine making this complaint when your podcast partner spends every episode pretending to be a Gypsy-blooded soothsayer who constantly brings up unnamed and unspecified “sources” that talk to him about inside baseball, info only he has.
And Matt just sits there like a drooling moron and never challenges or questions any of it, just nodding along like he’s recording the word of god on livestream.
And then they have the nerve to criticize mainstream media for their practice of citing unnamed sources.
Hypocrites on every level.
Alright Matt, since you picked up the gauntlet, let’s go.
You have already beaten me to the punch by walking back your use of the term “optimism”, which is great, since you really worked overtime to ignore this portion of Gates “good news”:
“Even with these innovations, though, the cumulative emissions will cause warming and many people will be affected...Iowa will start to feel more like Texas. Texas will start to feel more like northern Mexico. ...most people in countries near the equator won’t be able to relocate—they will experience more heat waves, stronger storms, and bigger fires.”
That’s the rosy outlook that got you bubbling with excitement? The Global South will burn to a crisp while Iowa will soon only be hotter than Dallas in July??
Summers in upstate New York (where I live) have already turned oppressively humid over the past five years, and our famous white winters are increasingly brown and preceded by Autumn heat waves that I have never experienced in 54 years of living in this region, yet you still think the jury is out on this issue, and that the real problem is (of course) media sloppiness in not both-sides’ing this urgent topic with your level of equanimity.
Well, I’ve also “had enough of this”. Hop off your goddamn ivory fence and pick a side already. It is as though you have been handed a report on the severity of Climate Change and you can’t get past the fact that it wasn’t printed on recycled paper. (“Um, hello? Environmental Movement? When are you done putting Greta Thunberg down for her nap could you please take a moment to get your messaging straight? The crypto-bro contingent of my audience is giggling at you. How do you expect me to get them to accept .01% tax on Bitcoin mining of you aren’t really serious about saving the planet?”)
"Summers in upstate New York (where I live) have already turned oppressively humid over the past five years," You caugbt my eye with this since I grew up in upstate NY and my recollection is that summers were always oppressively humid, going back to the 1970s. Are you telling me (and others) you only noticed this in the last 5 years?
You're brilliant! You noticed that weather changes! How can i nominate you for the Nobel?
You are confusing weather with climate. Just like all of the climatetards.
If this guy noticed some sort of weather change, it must be true.
Your mileage may vary. I have lived in my current location for 5 years, and in another area of upstate for another 30. Ain’t seen weather like we’ve been having for most of that time.
Myopic memories of regional weather and your own confirmation bias don’t require anyone to take a position. Sorry.
I know it’s seemingly impossible to comprehend but weather varies in cycles completely independently of human life. You think weather gives a fuck what you remember from 30 years ago?
JFC you are completely clueless about what journalism is. You're one of the clueless droolers who like their opinions supported and their world view certified. A pround member of the punditocracy crowd where someone packages ‘the news’ for you.You expect your favorite hot topics to be covered and curse any who don't mirror your priorities. Please, just F-CAW-F.
Most of what Matt does these days is infotainment, not journalism. He shucks out red meat to partisan fools who watch Greg Gutfeld religiously at night.
The only reason I support his work is his looks into Russiagate. Beyond that he’s not a journalist but a partisan shill with a podcast.
Yes, his research into the Twitter files was such "infotainment" he testified before Congress. As Greg Gutfield regularly does of course. /sarcasm
Gutfeld is funny 😂. If you watch him for news, you're an idiot
We have a winner!
Oh please. With Gates it is always about the money. Now, AI needs ENERGY...Lots of it. He knows his Green Scam can't cover it...$$$$$$
How are you still believing anything gates says. His take is always whatever makes him more money. That’s it.
Maybe it’s semantics on my part but i think we lessen our argument when we say “it’s all about money.” It’s about what money can buy and I’m not talking about luxuries. It’s all about Power.
though maybe that does not translate as well?
Absolutely, nail on the head correct. Making more money can’t give Gates something he doesn’t have today, he already has access to all of the luxuries. Power is the fuel that needs to be injected into his soulless carcass as he approaches the end of his life.
Always the case where power is the ultimate end game
He waits until he's 100% sure on a position, then proceeds to publish something in which he isn't 100% sure. LOLOL.
It’s telling that Matt thinks the greatest sin regarding Global Warming would be to alarm people over it. I’d love to be in a room with this guy when a smoke detector goes off.
“1 out of 10 people in the room doesn't think the smoke detector means a fire. It’s a Deep State plot to turn us socialist. Has anyone checked the maker of that smoke detector? Huge contributor to the Democrats. Meet the censored, Jetfel Dusntburn.”
Let it go already, you lost.
Ooh look, it’s Darth Vader! Or is it Sarris from Galaxy Quest?
“Texas will start to feel more like northern Mexico…”. It IS northern Mexico.
If you’re so sure of your predictions, please tell us who’s gonna win the Super Bowl.
According to Bjorn Lomborg, agricultural zones (in the Northern Hemisphere) are moving northward at the rate of 13 miles a decade.
That could get to be quite a problem — in a few centuries!
All the more reason to annex Canada and Greenland, eh??!!
That’s Gates’ quote, not mine. That’s the sunny news Matt Taibbi felt so “optimistic” about.
Hot humid Summers and cold winters in the mid Atlantic CONUS… Who’d’ve thunk? How old are you?
Instead of coat-tailing Matt, since you have no presence of your own, why don’t you work on something real, an\y\thing, and leave him alone? Maybe you will learn the diff between being a parasite and a producer.
Wow. 54 whole years? That’s so many. 😂
I dunno champ… how many winters do you think I need to experience before I am free to observe that the snow has stopped arriving for the last seven? How many snowy Octobers do I have to have lived through before noticing how odd it is that now I’m running my air conditioner half way through Autumn?
Well, champ, how many years has this rock been spinning?? One Who in Whoville does not a study make, but keep proudly planting those flags and considering it a contribution. It’s human nature to seek meaning, after all.
Even 54 years isn't climate, it's weather.
"Angry Salsa"...win! :)
I actually don't care if Matt voices an opinion on Climate Change that I disagree with, but for crissakes, actually have an opinion!
Why?
Matt, relax. This is the same person who can't tell the difference between journalism and an op-ed. Quote from your last article comments "A reporter always leads his audience to the correct conclusion." - Slusa Secundus Snape. Clearly fucking nuts.
Only the Pope and the President know everything and they pontificate about it! Thanks for the humility, it's a breath of fresh air.
This is a bogus issue.
It is infantile to expect any journalist to express an opinion on every single issue. I watch Greenwald every night, and he freely admits that he is not comfortable expounding on economic issues, and prefers to have experts on to elaborate on such topics.
Why does he need to stake out a position?
You nail it here.
It’s painfully clear in comments sections around the world that to be considered a journalist these days, one must virtue signal, affirm, assert, browbeat - - all the things we used to think of as the realm of the editorial page.
or a psychiatrists day bed.
Or a church service.
Protestant
'Cuz that guy said so!
That was a guy?
Bill Gates changes his position, states humans will not go extinct from global warming, climate alarmist lose collective mind.
Matt does article pointing out the lunacy of it all.
Salusa points out it’s humid in upstate NY in the summer, which is proof we will all die from the climate and demands Matt take a side like all the kids (journalists) are doing these days.
We are doomed, but it’s surely from herd mentality level stupidity.
Did Gates ever say that ALL of humanity will “go extinct”? I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, what he is “saying now” does not seem to be any different than what he was saying all along: Our world will become increasingly hot, and our prosperous society will begin to decline precipitously (unless you don’t grok what a hellish Iowa implies for Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada).
I see the constant invocations of disaster have had their intended effect on you at least.
I'm sorry... am I fantasizing that the Colorado River is drying up?
Nope, just who’s responsible
He may have a point. 50 years ago everyone in south eastern Pennsylvania was taller than me. Now they are mostly smaller. Something weird going on.
I suspect you don't want "a" position, you want your chosen position repeated.
But it's not really YOUR position is it?
“Snape” acknowledges Gates lied for years yet insists on believing what he says now. Sad!
I don’t recall saying at all that Gates was lying then or now.
It can’t be both ya lolcow.
You seem to have missed the point of both of Matt's pieces then, which is not surprising, since (as I stated) Matt is not actually concerned with the content of Gates' opinion, only the conversation surrounding it.
But Gates POV is actually consistent: he agrees that man-made Global Warming is occurring, and that it will have dire consequences guaranteed to downgrade our standard of living. If you actually read Gates' words, he says exactly that. The only difference between what he may have said before and what he is saying now is that he is now offering hope that if humanity gets its shit together in double-quick time, we may be able to roll with the changes. However, he offers no reason to believe that we will do this.
A grownup who cosplays Harry Potter. Somehow that isn’t the kind of person who should be making fun of anyone, ever.
Bwah ha ha! I chose my comical, latin-ish name to make fun of people like Curtis Yarvin, Michael Anton... and now you!... who all choose nome-de-plums meant to pretentiously evoke the authors of the Federalist papers.
The Federalist papers are more grownup than kiddie books, that's for damn sure.
I am staking out this position: you are an insufferable boob
You should probably look up the word journalism in a dictionary
Staking out a position is entirely optional for a journalist. We can conclude you want to play "Gotcha!"
Oh come on. Taibbi has given his opinions all along. He might do a lot of research, but he's certainly giving more than just the facts. Just look at the first line of this piece, the one that everyone loves so much. And Snape is right about what Gates actually said, and about Taibbi's main concern being the media reaction to what he said, not its substance.
You’re a chump. He shares all sorts of positions. Grow up.
Yes, but his positions are always about the conversation *around* topics, while he refuses to plant his flag regarding the central issues themselves. It’s as though Godzilla were stomping Tokyo and Matt’s only takeaway is how the news networks covering it should really be examined for how they dropped the ball in their coverage of Tokyo’s last mayoral race.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think anybody does.
Here the thing, what you see as Godzilla stomping Tokyo, a vast and growing number of people have come to the realization it was all CGI.
It's called Racket News, not Matt's opinion.
Same thing
Not if you do it right, and Matt does a pretty good job.
He used to.
Every opinion writer bases (or at least should base) their opinion on facts, as they see it. Matt is such an opinion writer. Even the title 'Racket News' is a statement of opinion.
A position? Why don’t you say what you mean?
You’re so annoying
Patently false.
And if you actually believed in the courage of convictions, you would come out from behind a pen name.
Says KAM?
Sometime in the late aughts, when everybody was freaking out about "global warming" and climate change, which has been occurring throughout millennia, I wanted to invest in solar panels and my husband said, there is only one letter separating green and greed. He knew instintively that it was a scam to create fear and separate more dollars out of our pay checks while we watched the worst offenders like John Kerry take their private planes to Davos.
No denying that now!
Solyndra anyone?
And what about the “Carbon Credit” scam, in which you can pay someone to plant a tree and somehow assuage your guilt over flying private jets to Climate Armageddon conferences (always held in very posh locations)?
You're absolutely right. It was a way to allow corporations to pretend they were doing something without actually doing anything. I doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening, just that they didn't want to do anything about it.
You made the right decision avoiding those things.
Yes, but just because the hypocritical people in power sold us individual "solutions" while they and the corporations they serve did nothing, doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening. It just means that we were sold a bill of goods on how to fix it, one that absolved them completely and put the onus on us.
As a 62 yo physician many years ago I read Michael Crichton’s book State of Fear. Since then I have looked askance at each of the many crisis situations that we are told portend the end of the world and instead look for who benefits from the solutions. That usually means I realize these are just another scam.
💯💯💯 great book and exactly my mindset. One scam after another.
How have your autumns been these past few years? A little warmer than you remember them?
Great book.
Anyone who has done some Evolutionary Science will realize that enough fear will drive human beings into herds under authoritarian leaders....or at least those who think they cannot handle it themselves.
So if you are an authoritarian wanna-be leader, you simply induce believable fear in the masses in order to get your controllable serfs.
“They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats!”
They’re eating beautiful white swans at the park as well.
Corporations that manufacture useful things like ambulances, refrigerators, and air conditioners did not steal Greta's childhood. People like Gore, Mann, Hansen, deGrasse-Tyson, Nye, and Bill Gates stole Greta's childhood.
Greta's parents stole Greta's childhood.
They certainly allowed her childhood to be "stolen".
Hey, give some credit to the idiot girl!
All part of the Thunberg Grift.
What kind of lame-o has Matt been reduced to if he is attacking Greta like some elderly Fox News chud?
And now it's up to Greta to grow up and deal with it.
No doubt one of the great, mostly-untold story of the post-Cold War era has been the cataclysmic failure of American elites, from academia, media, business, the military, pharma, etc. And having recently been in the company of some of those said elites, I can tell you that they are a mix of being scared, mystified, and enraged at the loss of their prestige and status in American life. The profound status anxiety that elites are feeling is, in my view, a major part of what is fueling the anti-Trump/anti-populist rage we are seeing.
Oh Pacificus, it does my heart good to know that they are scared and mystified and want their status back! Because they’re never going to get it again.
Agreed.
Poor babies. It's all so stressful.
Actually, losing decades of not really legitimate prestige and position, as our current elites are, is rather stressful. Their panicked reaction does not surprise me.
Probably all the more stressful since most of them don't have real jobs to fall back on.
The cataracts one must have to not see the billionaire class as “elites” must be awfully thick.
Could it be that they deep down always knew they were frauds but they collectively reassured each other. Now that everyone knows they are feaking out and rightfully so. As their grip slips more and more it would not be surprising to find "deaths of despair" among them becoming more frequent.
I think you are exactly right about this, esp how they knew, deep down, that they were frauds.
We need more denialism of "experts" and if you don't believe me, ask yourself - confess to yourself - whether you dutifully wore your mask when traversing the twenty feet from the restaurant door to your table, and then took it off to eat, laugh, and spray mist from your mouth for the next two hours. Do not get me started on vaccinating children for Covid or shutdowns or chasing people off the beach...
My favorite example was a few weeks ago when NYT asked a number of "experts on NYC" who should win the election for mayor. Like what makes someone an expert on NYC? Only the 7 or 8 million people that live there, close your eyes and pick a few.
I think the Covid-19 response lead to experts irremediably losing any credibility forever with 40% of the population.
A paper mask isn't magic, it's just hygeine. If toothbrushes were introduced today troglodytes like your honorable self would be crowing about how brushing your teeth is an evil plot and you'll never do it.
Except toothbrushes have been proven to work, paper masks haven't. Even a troglodyte who uses his real name to respond to anonymous keyboard jockeys knows that
The left lives in a river in Egypt. Can’t wait for the upside down animal farm review. Some animals are more in denial than others…
The contradiction of expertise.
The ability to rationally know who is an expert, requires the same expertise as the expert you are relying on.
Therefore expertise in this context is just a religious word.
Example, I assert I am an expert in computers--your ability to rationally challenge that assertion requires computer expertise.
Without any expertise, all we can do is look at non-rational ways to evaluate who is an expert--and in America that means cash money.
If I made a large amount of money with computers, then I am an expert in computers.
So when you break it down--the word "expertise" just means submit to money.
Which is how we got Gates running his mouth on so many things in the first place.
Your ability to know who is an expert is directly proportional to your ability to say an expert is full of shit.
I still think that climate change is a real thing, and it's not a good one. Unless we can somehow speed up our evolution as a species to adapt. My problem is with the hypocrisy of those plugging it. Call it the John Kerry syndrome if you want - "Someone like me can't fly otherwise than in this private jet to a climate conference." If you say we have to take in so many immigrants due to global warming south of the equator, it seems like kind of a doom loop, as they'll no doubt be hoping to acquire a motor vehicle and air conditioning and ultimately contributing to the problem. Etc.
I have asked the climate alarmists many times how it makes sense to transfer people from climate zones where energy demands are minimal to one with high heating costs, for example Somalians to Minnesota. Crickets.
And i forgot to add that I highly doubt that Gates's 180 is not because he's so much smarter than the rest of us, than as many commenters said in the last article, that position has become inconvenient for him.
You know why he has made the turnaround. AI needs energy... With Gates, it is always about the money. He couldn't care less about humanity..Only what he can steal from humanity..
An “Inconvenient Truth”?
Well, i'll give it to Gore that as i understand it, he lives off the grid. As does, of all people, Thomas Massie. Who took a couple of Tesla engines and set up his own energy rig.
You mean the Al Gore that lives in a 10,000 s.f. house with a pool that all use more electricity than a slew of houses? The one that flies on private jets? (just not his jet)? The one whose family made their money in mining, and he in giving lectures, books and films on the coming climate apocalypse? That Al Gore?
Ha, I believe you. I do have to wonder how he makes his money since out of office. Or is he just cruising on inheritance?
He got a big chunk when he sold Current TV to Al Jazeera. He also co-founded an Investment fund that focuses on "green investments". Plus, I think he was involved with Apple and Google to some extent. May be getting stock options there.
I don’t know, haven’t bothered to study his financial life. I would guess speaker fees, book royalties, service on corporate boards and the various sweetheart deals that ex politicians take advantage of.
One interesting thing about the multiple changes in climate endured by the Earth (and some by humans) over the centuries and millennia, is that the climate doesn’t change much between the tropics. I learned that the big changes are largely between the tropics and the poles.
Letting go of doom can bring about a sadness deeper than the doom itself.
Yup.
I am certain that climate change and pollution are real things and are damaging the local and planetary environment. Locally, one can observe species of plants that have lived here for centuries retreating from microclimates where the hotter summers and decreased water cannot support their survival. The forest fires are larger, more frequent, and encroach now on the cities, and the argument that "better forest management" would resolve the problem is false. Individual trees that are centuries old are dying in large enough numbers to be noticeable. There are also species of plants that can be grown successfully here that just a few years ago would not have made it through one winter. Now they make it through at least a few winters, and are more likely to flourish during the summer. T
Denial is the most widely used and least effective of human problem solving strategies. It's usually the most comfortable one, apparently, because once people are in it they don't want to get out. Problems that are denied don't go away. Politicizing climate change is stupid. Attributing all climate change warnings to false beliefs and political manipulation is a variant on denial, in which the warnings can only be denied if the messengers are all false.
Exactly.
Humans are the most adaptable beings in the universe. We could adapt to weather increasing 2 degrees Celsius. In fact the weather increases by more than that between breakfast and lunch every single day.
The human species will. Many individuals are already dying.
MT- "If there’s only one legitimate “side” to report, then why bother to look for other opinions?" The media has been taken over by those who would advise on the consensus of experts. Not looking for other opinions is a political decision, completely unrelated to science. Here is a concluding thought to a post on Covid: https://billpound.substack.com/p/speculation-regarding-covid
"REFLECTION: As an American citizen, the fact I don’t know much about mRNA and gene function doesn’t absolve me from learning what I can, forming an opinion, and being willing to verbalize and vote on it. I may be wrong. I have been before. But my learning process holds for any subject of major human importance in America such as Anthropogenic Global Warming, 10 or 20 million illegal migrants entering the US, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Bitcoins or affordable housing.
Citizens, not just members of Congress, should have access, ability, and motivation to read and understand our nation’s laws and to “follow-the-money”. [Every Federal grant and contract should be traceable to a Congressional appropriation.] Experts should not be funded with my tax money if they can’t or don’t explain with reasonable accuracy the potential benefits [not just to themselves] and costs of their work to people of normal learning ability. Credentials mean little. I deliberately did not use any in this post, including my own. That is not disrespectful. People I look for are those with common sense, capable of being helpful. I try to be helpful to others."
And here is an example: The AP reported on a 2019 study in Catalonia (Spain) of more than 2 million seniors (50+), some of whom received flu shots. The AP reported that those who received the shots showed a reduced tendency for dementia. What they didn't report was that those who received flu shots had an 80% greater chance of being hospitalized for pneumonia compared to those not receiving flu shots. The AP could only see one legitimate part of the peer reviewed article. Thou shall not ignore large numbers of data, just as thou shall not rely on small numbers of data.
Hey, man, what good is "freedom" if I have to make an effort to take care of myself?
Bingo! Psychiatrist Arthur Deikman said years ago that un-addressed dependency needs drive people into cults. They want someone else to take care of that pesky freedom for them. They want a hive-mind to make all the decisions. Then all they have to do is obey.
In particular, phrases like "science denier" and "believe in science" drive me crazy. This is religious language. Anyone who uses these phrases doesn't understand the scientific method.
Exactly. As a retired medical research professional, during the COVID hysteria, I kept trying to explain to people how the scientific method works and that “the science” is not black or white.
Americans love a moral panic though so I just shut up about it.
Heck, I was a lit major, but I was still able to understand how herd immunity worked. This constant deferral to “experts” was one of the scariest things about the Covid era — particularly since so many actual experts were being silenced online, and even fired from their jobs.
Unless by "the science," you're referring to Tony Faucci, in which case, he's white. 😀
Ha!
It is religious, isn't it? I think it was Karl Popper who came up with the idea that if some idea isn't falsifiable, it's outside the realm of science (e.g. religion). The climate modeling certainly isn't falsifiable!
Church Lady level scolding
My favorite was “climate denier,” used to disparage those of us who refused to clutch our pearls over Climate Armageddon.
I believe the phrase was "Believe THE science." That's completely different, and I would hope that everyone here would believe the science, whether it comes to conclusions they want to agree with or not.
Assuming a study has been peer reviewed by independent experts who found that the methods were sound (and we can therefore trust the data), then beliefs don't play into it. All we can do is make data-informed decisions or not. We also need to recognize that science is an iterative process. We are always working with the best data we have at any given time, and what we know changes as we gather more data.
I was going to say, perhaps "believe" is a loaded word here in any case. But there is such a thing as a scientific consensus that holds sway within the scientific community...unless and until something else that challenges it comes along.
Yes, but that last part is important. I mean, there was a consensus that the sun revolved around the earth prior to Galileo.
That was a theological consensus, not a scientific one. But you're right--and it should take scientific evidence to change the consensus, not cries of conspiracy.
There is great irony in your story as Whole Foods, Sprouts, any corporate "health food store" that orginally served the 'denialists' are themselves consummate scam artists just like bill gates, greta & the legion of human caused global warming change scientists.
How could cutting down all the forests and smoking tons of coal into the atmosphere al day every day for 200 years possibly affect the climate? MORANS amirite
The climate alarmists freaked out when National Geographic reported a decade ago there were 76,000 fires in the Amazon Basin during a 6 month period.
But then it turned out the fires were not caused by climate change, but by globalists to create farmlands, to feed the 100s of millions of Chinese who fled their small family farms to work in globalists cities. The climate alarmists lost interest.
Well yes. So they weren't caused by climate change, but the destruction of that much rainforest will certainly contribute to it.
Are you afraid of radio waves, too?
Small segments of the population finally waking up and seeing more of the huge lies we’ve been fed for generations. FINALLY. Get on board. My favorite bumper sticker: Question Everything.
The one on my 71 mustang read " question authority". Question everything is better.
1. You come from upper-class family stock and crave high social status, but you suck in entrepreneurism, enterprise and productive merit. You note these deficiencies in grade school. But you can memorize things well and can get good grades... because, well, you have that DNA. And your family can pay for a prestigious institute of higher learning.
2. Fearful to launch into the real world because of your recognized deficiencies, you stay in school longer and earn credentials. After graduation you get "work" where you generally suck off the soft money of government as you can never really compete in the dog-eat-dog private economy.
3. You then weaponize these credentials to brow beat others into falling in line behind you authority. "Hey, you don't have my high and mighty certification as an expert, so your opinion, actions are shit!"
4. As the evidence builds that, no, YOU ARE THE SHIT, you collect into a cabal of other shitty people... upper-class, status-craving people with low productive merit, but high certification and credentials... to help browbeat others from challenging your breathtaking wrongness. You are now part of an industry of "experts", and you can make a lot of money even through you never really produce anything of value other than your "expert" opinion which is often wrong.
5. The media is filled full of your same type, just not lucky enough to land the government gig, so the media goes to work to push and pull your breathtaking wrongness into the heads of the stupid and uninformed... and to cancel those that would dare to challenge the "expert" narrative. You are all generating status and money and you are committed to protecting that sandbox.
6. Then there are those from upper-class family stock craving high social status, that like Bill Gates, that can memorize things well... but also own all those other traits... entrepreneurialism, enterprise and productive merit. People like Gate are snakes... they slither around the expert class demonstrating fealty to their narratives only for the PRIATE-SECTOR money-making benefits. They will shapeshift to the side that provides them the greatest ROI benefit.
Together this is our elite establishment Professional Managerial Class oligarchy. And they are all shit.
Archons.