by Pops » Tue 02 Aug 2011, 20:27:10
It would be interesting to see the correlation between MR doing the Shark Jump and his income. I'd wager he sees his receipts increase with his rhetoric.
Sex sells, in his case it's doom-porn.
But I think the unfortunate outcome of hyperbole is listeners can become not only calloused but outright rebellious about the real problems, AGW is the perfect example of hardening attitudes. But not only listeners but just people who casually stumble on such forecasts - same with Matt Simmons in his last days and even some of the scientific types at places like TOD who made dire forecasts and were quoted in the press.
I'm no shrink but I'm sure that is exactly what prompts our recurrent trolls to come poking eye and repeatedly chanting: nyah nyah no collapse! They get fixated on the few people with the most dire predictions and don't see that the range of opinion is all based on the same basic facts and assumptions - it's just the outcome that's in dispute.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)