Posted by
John Caile on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 5:11:41 PM
If you haven't seen the wonderfully illuminating exchange between Lord Christopher Monckton and a Greenpeace groupie at the Copenhagen conference, I urge you to do so at:
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=12930
What is so compelling about this roughly 10-minute video clip, is that Lord Monckton, an obviously intelligent, and undeniably charming gentlemen, engages the woman in a reasoned, polite, and totally respectful conversation, yet he delivers the most devastating evisceration of a typical "global warming" true believer than has ever been caught on camera - and all with a smile.
No wonder Al Gore is terrified at the thought of ever confronting Mr. Monckton - with his formidable debating skills backed up by a mountain of legitimate research, Lord Monckton would likely reduce Mr. Gore to the rhetorical equivalent of a watermelon that had found itself in a "debate" with a 12 gauge shotgun.
But even more intriguing is how, when confronted by Lord Monckton's methodical obliteration of one false notion after another, the woman persists in clinging to her "faith" in the global warming doomsayers, simply refusing to accept anything that runs counter to her beliefs. It is stark evidence of the validity of the observation that those in the "man-made global warming" camp are closer to religious fanatics than they are to sober seekers of truth.
This is not a new phenomenon. Those of us in the battle to preserve the rights to own and carry firearms for self-defense, have encountered the same utter intransigence in the anti-gun fanatics. Even in the face of decades of overwhelming historical crime data that prove they were wrong, these gun control "true believers" continue to be every bit as adamant as the "climate crazies" in clinging to their beliefs.
But what causes this? How do seemingly nice, decent people, who seem to possess reasonable intelligence, become so invested in "believing" something, even after it is shown to be false? Watching the Lord Monckton video clip will explain, at least in part, how this happens. Each time the woman from Greenpeace is questioned as to "why" she believes what she does, she cannot point to any source of actual, hard data - she instead relies on what "the press" or her own organization, Greenpeace, tells her.
When asked if she did even cursory fact-checking on her own, just to verify that what she believed was true, the reply was always "no." Even worse, when Lord Monckton asked her why she had not done such rudimentary homework, she gave the oft-claimed "I don't have the time" answer. After Lord Monckton advised her that, thanks to the Internet, solid information from genuinely reliable sources (like the University of Illinois) could be accessed in "less than 10 minutes" she back-pedaled yet again.
But her behavior is predictable - for true believers, whether their religion is gun control or "carbon control," all the facts and data in the world do little to change their views. Because their views are never based on facts and data - they are based on "belief." People like the Greenpeace lady just "feel" that what they believe is true - facts and reason have no place in their world.
And sadly, she is not alone...