Thomas sent me notification of this show but I do live on the other side of
the Atlantic timewise so it was not really possible for me to contribute to
an
American talk show (even if I thought it would be a good idea). I listened
to
the (Dennis Prager) show afterwards via "streaming media" and all I can say
is I am shocked. Is this show a typical example of such shows? I have heard
that Rush Limbaugh is a "shock jock" but this show was like listening to a
broadcast of Josef Goebbels's inspired Nazi propaganda. Goebbels said "That
propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to
achieve the desired result," he also wrote. "It is not propaganda's task to
be intelligent, its task is to lead to success". The people behind this
radio show
either know they are "doing propaganda" or they are stupid/irrational/insane
by virtue of their inability to see what is real and what is not. We do not
have any shows like this over here, although we do have "Jerry Springer vs.
Trailer trash" type shows.
The "climatologist" featured (Joe Bastardi) is actually a meteorologist TV
weather guy. These people are not authorities on climate change, neither are
they scientists in the field, but if they are otherwise factual and non-
propagandist they obviously have every right to speak on this topic as a non
authority. He was however
presented as an "appeal to authority" - a logical fallacy inasmuch as he
does not have authority to speak by virtue of his career. He and Prager kept
on making references to Al Gore and constantly used the latest denier tactic
of the month - by implying that because the climate changed in the past
naturally and
continues to change that therefore even if the climate is warming
that it is nothing to do with people or there is nothing we can do about it
or that it would be too expensive. This should immediately tip off anyone
who
follows this subject that the show was not a fair and objective presentation
of a debate but low manipulation of people (see Goebbels). He kept on
confusing the difference between weather and climate, thus demonstrating
that
he is either a) stupid or b) evil and he introduced veritable battalions of
strawmen arguments thus again proving conclusively that he is a) stupid or
b) evil. His basic technique was to do the so called "gish gallop"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Gish
http://www.youdebate.com/cgi-bin/scarecrow/topic.cgi?forum=3&topic=22020
This is a technique that rhetoricians such as Bastardi use to snow under the
other side with a blizzard of assertions, strawmen, red herrings,
unattributed statements etc. They can fire off 30 highly dubious points in
five minutes
which would need a couple of hours (at least) to carefully and accurately
correct. They generally restrict themselves to "bandwidth/time limited"
media so there can be no effective answer to their spiel, which has been
compared to that of snake oil salesmen.
Having heard one of these shows for the first time I have to say that they
appear to be a great evil - spreading lies and distortion and
misrepresentation and manipulating gullible people all in the name of free
speech - liberty? - more like licence!
Nick Palmer
