Author Archives: Bruce Nielson

Stephen McIntyre and Global Warming Believer’s Ethics

Posted on by

In my previous posts I explained how I started to research Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) claims, how I found a lot of very bad arguments amongst AGW Deniers, and how I also found some, but very few, AGW Denier arguments with merit. In this post, I’m going to more directly attack the other side now by explaining some of the things AGW Believers do that are of questionable ethics. 

Now, as you can imagine, by this point in my search for the truth I was tearing my hair out with anger and frustration. I felt like I couldn’t trust either side at all and, worse, the conservative side that I was partial to was often using arguments that made them look not only unethical but also incompetent. Was my only choice between tweedledum (republicans) and tweedledee (democrats.)!? Continue reading →

Man Made vs. Nature Made Global Warming Arguments With Merit

Posted on by

I’ve been concentrating on mostly arguments that AGW Deniers use that have little or no merit. In this post I’ll cover the AGW Denier arguments that I feel have some merit, though I’ll also explain why none of these arguments are sufficient to make me feel comfortable with the AGW Denier’s conclusions. In a future posts, I’ll address problems with AGW Believer’s arguments. Continue reading →

Man Made vs. Nature Made Global Warming Arguments Without Merit

Posted on by

In my last post, I started my sordid tale of my attempt to make sense of the global warming debate and gave two examples, one for each side of the debate, of how both sides use deception to advance their beliefs. I had found that the Believers aren’t above using grossly misleading generalizations (“one thing that jumps out at you is… do they seem to fit together?!””) and the Deniers are not above using strawmen that have nothing to do with the actual debate (CO2 vs. Water Vapor) yet have emotional resonance for people that don’t understand the actual issue. Continue reading →

My CO2 Emissions / Global Warming History

Posted on by

It all started because I decided to watch Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. I said to my wife, “we should watch Gore’s movie because everyone is talking about it and it won all these awards and I want to know what it’s all about.”

Then I quickly added, “I have my doubts global warming is a real problem, but who knows. Let’s see what he has to say.” Continue reading →

Sam Harris on Science and Morality

Posted on by

Warning: The attached link to Sam Harris’ video includes some fairly small ‘magazine images’ to demonstrate Western views on the female body. He does not condone western views as morally correct, and in fact I think his point of view is in alignment with our values. But I was not comfortable including the video directly on a Mormon website where people might click on it and watch it without realizing what they were about to see.  

Sam Harris’ speech on science and morality made the rounds amongst Internet circles a while back. A non-LDS friend brought it to my attention and was curious what I thought of it. He later told me that he found it enlightening, but felt there was something wrong with it, though he couldn’t put his finger on it.

The idea that “science” (and by that we really mean scientific epistemology of conjecture and refutation) has the ability to explain and answer questions of morality is very appealing to me because it fits properly into my view of an explainable reality, including an explainable God.

I believe that this first part of Sam Harris’ presentation is spot on. I agree with him that “Values are facts about well being of conscious creatures.” Continue reading →