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Re: Penn & Teller claims organic food is “bullshit”, fails to mention that their expert is paid by Monsanto

thinkst — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:18:21 -0000

Cato's climate change publications are primarily from Pat Michaels, a UVA climatologist who publishes a wealth of peer-reviewed scientific literature on climate change; he's a former state climatologist from Virginia (for a very long time) and a member of the IPCC, and very much a scientist. They've also published stuff from Richard Lindzen, an MIT professor of meteorology. He's a scientist, too.

The problem isn't Cato's lack of science. Indeed, Cato's scholars acknowledge that man made climate change is real. The problem is government (and an uninformed public) accepting absurdly worst-case computer models as fact when there is a lot of contradictory evidence, or when opportunity cost isn't considered.

The same thing happened 50-odd years ago when a lot of very smart people convinced the government and the public of some scientific 'facts', and the state took the ball and ran with it. That was the 'science' of eugenics.

Ideas have consequences. There are thousands of scientists who don't think climate change should be a priority of government. The costs of things like cap and trade or reducing green house gas emissions to certain levels will cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars (at least) and *might* curb climate change by a degree or two in a hundred years (no one really knows). What if that fervor (and cost) were used to do something proven to actually help people, like fighting off malaria, which kills between one and three million people every year?

Re: Penn & Teller claims organic food is “bullshit”, fails to mention that their expert is paid by Monsanto

thinkst — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:50:55 -0000

You're committing the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. You're alleging that because some people give money to Cato, then Cato publishes material to back their position. Do people give you money to publish the content on this blog, or do they give you money and subscribe because they agree with you?

Isn't it possible that those people give money to Cato because they agree with Cato's libertarian position, and that your conspiracy theory is nonsense?

Re: Penn & Teller claims organic food is “bullshit”, fails to mention that their expert is paid by Monsanto

thinkst — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:54:02 -0000

Actually, the Cato Institute is funded almost entirely by individual donors. The amount of money ExxonMobile contributes is a very tiny fraction, by comparison. This is because Cato specifically does not want anyone to reach your incorrect conclusion that they're being influenced by any particular business or party. You can't just go to sourcewatch and jump to a conclusion -- read the annual reports.

In fact, Cato is probably the only think tank out there that attacks Republicans, Democrats, lobbyists, special interests, and big business (as in corporate welfare -- big oil included).