{"id":1053,"date":"2009-05-06T23:49:29","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T23:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2011-01-15T13:12:42","modified_gmt":"2011-01-15T00:12:42","slug":"crazy-ol-ian-wishart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=1053","title":{"rendered":"Crazy Ol&#8217; Ian Wishart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a very amusing blog-exchange going on between Gareth Renowden of climate blog Hot Topic and Ian Wishart of independent current affairs mag Investigate. It&#8217;s on the subject of Wishart&#8217;s new book &#8220;Con Air&#8221;, about how global warming is an unscientific fraud. Renowden <a href=\"http:\/\/hot-topic.co.nz\/somethin%E2%80%99-stupid\/\">tore it to shreds in a review<\/a>, and predictably <a href=\"http:\/\/briefingroom.typepad.com\/the_briefing_room\/2009\/05\/laughing-at-the-loon.html\">Wishart responded<\/a>; Renowden decided it was simpler <a href=\"http:\/\/hot-topic.co.nz\/like-being-savaged-by-a-dead-sheep\/\">not to engage with his nonsense<\/a>, which got <a href=\"http:\/\/briefingroom.typepad.com\/the_briefing_room\/2009\/05\/the-new-adventures-of-trufflehunter.html\">another Wishart response<\/a>. So Renowden proceeded to <a href=\"http:\/\/hot-topic.co.nz\/quirk-strangeness-not-much-charm\/\">dismantle Wishart&#8217;s claims<\/a>, picked up <a href=\"http:\/\/briefingroom.typepad.com\/the_briefing_room\/2009\/05\/leading-gareth-into-deep-waters.html\">another Wishart response<\/a>, and then shot that one by showing the research Wishart was talking about <a href=\"http:\/\/hot-topic.co.nz\/a-very-public-own-goal\/\">actually meant the opposite of what he thought it did<\/a>.<br \/>\nThere are lessons here of course, about how keeping the argument going is a <em>de facto<\/em> win for the forces that want to stop us from addressing climate change.<br \/>\nThere are much bigger lessons here about the fixation of belief and how people like Wishart find themselves adopting the positions they do. (<a href=\"http:\/\/fundypost.blogspot.com\/2009\/05\/how-we-got-from-there-to-here.html\">See also<\/a>.)<br \/>\nBut really, I just recommend these for the popcorn value. Wishart is always a laugh when he goes on the attack, which he pretty does when anyone looks at him funny. He calls Gareth &#8220;trufflehunter&#8221; instead of his name, under the impression that this is an insult; I imagine Gareth, as past president of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southern-truffles.co.nz\/index.html\">NZ Truffle Association<\/a>, would be quite comfortable with this moniker. (Gareth&#8217;s co-blogger is referred to as Quasimodo, which is <a href=\"http:\/\/hot-topic.co.nz\/like-being-savaged-by-a-dead-sheep\/#comment-5455\">taken with surprising good grace<\/a>.)<br \/>\nThe argument over whether climate change is anthropogenic ended a few years ago. There&#8217;s plenty of science to argue over, but not this. The Ian Wisharts of the world will keep thrashing for a while yet, and to be honest, we should be gentle with them. They&#8217;re having a hard time of it, the poor wee things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a very amusing blog-exchange going on between Gareth Renowden of climate blog Hot Topic and Ian Wishart of independent current affairs mag Investigate. It&#8217;s on the subject of Wishart&#8217;s new book &#8220;Con Air&#8221;, about how global warming is an unscientific fraud. Renowden tore it to shreds in a review, and predictably Wishart responded; Renowden &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=1053\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Crazy Ol&#8217; Ian Wishart<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-sustainability"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-gZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2263,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/2263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}