Google’s Gullible Executive Chairman

Google’s Executive Chairman Schmidt calls climate-change deniers ‘liars’

Quoted as saying:

You can lie about the effects of climate change, but eventually you’ll be seen as a liar.

It seems that he considers those who don’t share his opinion to be “liars”, even if they have substantial arguments, backed by real-world data that contradict his opinion.

Is that what major corporations expect of their executives nowadays? To have chief executives who believe that others are liars simply because they have a different opinion? Is it one of those special people skills appreciated by the “Don’t be evil” Empire? Hubris? Arrogance?

Continuing:

At Google, he said, people fact-check what they’re told, especially if what they hear doesn’t sound quite right.

Perhaps he should check facts. Or is the fantasy that anthropogenic CO₂ emissions will lead to catastrophic climate change immune to being questioned? It’s a good idea to check what one is told all the time when important stuff is being discussed.

It’s a prerequisite in science to check especially if it “sounds right”. The basis of modern science is falsifiability; that all hypotheses and theories are subject to being questioned and potentially be shown to be false; not by other theories or opinions, but by observations of the physical world.

“The math says that there are a couple of billion people who are going to want our carbon footprint,” he said, “and we can’t afford that carbon footprint as a global thing – and we don’t want to reduce our own.”

Checking the assumptions in the “math” would demonstrate the diligence one would expect of a competent, corporate executive. i.e. don’t just take somebody’s word for it; especially if there’s a huge amount of money at risk. To take things at face value simply because they agree with one’s existing thinking is a display of gullibility.

He seems to think that we can manipulate the weather.

But an increased number of people in developing countries sharing information, Schmidt believes, will eventually lead to a global understanding of the threat of climate change. “It may take five years or ten years,” he said. “A true global emergency, which is underway, will eventually be noticed by the people whose water sources dry up, are victims of terrible variations in climate, on and on – we all know what the issues are.” …

Those solutions, he said, should be focused on “not making the climatic situation worse” while improving people’s lives.

In order to control climate; which is a statistic of averages of weather parameters over an arbitrary period in a particular location, one has to be able to manipulate weather. There is, by definition, no such thing as a “global climate”.

Climate, being an arbitrary statistic based on weather, is and has always been changing.

Nobody has the ability to control the weather. It’s been centuries since people were persecuted and executed for “cooking the weather”. Voltaire said “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Which makes me cringe at the potential of Schmidt’s next move, given his apparent submission to superstition.

(h/t Junkscience.com)