Are Americans as stupid as the world thinks we are?

[JWil]

My years abroad taught me one thing........that foreigners were CONVINCED we were all idiots following the 2004 Presidential election.

[traxx]

You make a post like that and then say "I wasn't here to argue about global warming"? So now you can say "thanks for your agreement" when somebody posts "me too" in response to you or say "but I don't want to argue" with people that don't share your opinions to avoid defending your position. Smooth. You're the good guy either way.

Scientists are *gulp* human. They're going to disagree. You can get 100 ivy league educated surgeons in a room, all with over 20 years post education experience, and one of them will say that the other 99 are cutting people's bellies open all wrong. That doesn't make him a) right or b) smarter than the others. Either way, people that aren't as "educated" as him might very well like the cut of his jib and believe that his points are valid and therefore discount the 99 surgeons that are screaming how retarded he is. Every field has it's kooks, science is no exception. Personally, I don't think it would hurt a bit to stop polluting so much even if we aren't impacting global temperatures.

I'm not arguing with you on global warming, just your logic. Indisputable? Nothing is.

I'm with you, I have no problem with being kinder to the earth and think we should be.

I couldn't find the link to the article I was talking about (flame away on that. I'm sure everyone thinks I made it up) but it's not 1 against 99, there are scientists on both sides. Sometimes, though, the lone dissenter is a) right and b) smarter such as Copernicus. I'm not saying that this guy is the Copernicus of his generation, I'm just saying that the 99 monkeys can't be wrong argument doesn't always work.

And I wasn't trying to play both sides of the coin by saying I wasn't here to argue global warming. I just brought up that argument to make the point that stupidity can be relevant from person to person depending upon their world view.

[Misty]

Forget global warming, did anyone see the Nature special on OETA about the bees? If we lose the bees we're toast way before global warming will kill us. TOAST! That's toast with no honey!

THE.........BEES............ARE...........DYING... ...........

[Oh GAWD the Smell!]

I'm with you, I have no problem with being kinder to the earth and think we should be.

I couldn't find the link to the article I was talking about (flame away on that. I'm sure everyone thinks I made it up) but it's not 1 against 99, there are scientists on both sides. Sometimes, though, the lone dissenter is a) right and b) smarter such as Copernicus. I'm not saying that this guy is the Copernicus of his generation, I'm just saying that the 99 monkeys can't be wrong argument doesn't always work.

And I wasn't trying to play both sides of the coin by saying I wasn't here to argue global warming. I just brought up that argument to make the point that stupidity can be relevant from person to person depending upon their world view.

My main point was that stupidity is ignoring the vast majority of scientist's advice when there's really not much of a downside to listening to them...Whereas there's a HUGE downside to ignoring them.

[Oh GAWD the Smell!]

THE.........BEES............ARE...........DYING... ...........

Bee quiet woman. The men are talking.

[Misty]

Bee quiet woman. The men are talking.

I love it when you talk tough. I am totally cooking you dinner and homemade pie tonight my little snickerdoodle.

[Oh GAWD the Smell!]

Better have honey on it.

[PUGalicious]

Obviously you weren't listening... the bees are DYING... which means NO HONEY.

[Oh GAWD the Smell!]

Obviously you weren't listening... the bees are DYING... which means NO HONEY.

She's resourceful.

And I personally believe the scientists that don't subscribe to "Bee Apocalypse" theory anyway. KILL THEM ALL, GIMME THE HONEY.

[PUGalicious]

And I personally believe the scientists that don't subscribe to "Bee Apocalypse" theory anyway. KILL THEM ALL, GIMME THE HONEY.

That's awful short-sighted of you... but then again, why believe the scientists who say that killing the bees will ultimately mean running out of honey?

[Oh GAWD the Smell!]

That's awful short-sighted of you... but then again, why believe the scientists who say that killing the bees will ultimately mean running out of honey?

Oh piffle. My state senator has said that that's bunk. He's a bee expert you know...Having stung so many of us.

[PUGalicious]

Touché

[traxx]

My main point was that stupidity is ignoring the vast majority of scientist's advice when there's really not much of a downside to listening to them...Whereas there's a HUGE downside to ignoring them.

I can see that. I was saying that some people would view you as stupid just because you didn't agree with them on the subject of global warming. So it's not so much that a person is stupid but rather they disagree with you and many people chalk that up to stupidity, as in: "Well, if you don't agree with me, then you must be stupid!"

Sometimes stupid is just stupid. But in the case of Americans being as stupid as the world thinks we are, I think it has more to do with a person's world view than whether they're really stupid or not.

As someone stated earlier, European countries thought Americans were stupid when we elected President Bush. That's a disagreement in personal world views rather than stupidity. If, however, Americans said that Portugal is located off the coast of Chile, well then, that's just stupid. You don't know your facts.

Also, stupidity can be relative from one person to the next. Kind of like how IT guys like to make you feel stupid (disclaimer: I work in a pseudo IT field and don't act that way) because you don't know as much about computers as they do. The IT guy thinks you're stupid but actually you are just ignorant in the field of computer science and you may be quite competent in many other areas.

Or like how Europeans think we're not as smart because most of us only speak English. Somehow we're stupid and uncultured because of this. But really for Europeans it is somewhat of a neccessity to speak other languages since they are so close to countries that speak other languages. It'd be like if the New England states all spoke different languages. We don't have an immediate need to know Italian, German or French. I got a German minor in college but since I don't use every day I've forgotten alot of it. Doesn't mean I'm stupid - as I'm sure you'll all disagree.

[WaterLillyfairy]

LoL, Actually I am convinced that there are more of those "Americans" out there than I ever used to think. I've lived in a couple of different states, and I've visited a couple others. I have worked a few jobs in the service industry, and let me tell you, if you want to know about how people REALLY are, and not how they pretend to be, work in the service industry. I think it would be very easy to find many people that represent any stereotype I am trying to show. I bet I could even find people so desperate to be famous that they would pretend to be anything to get recognition.

[dismayed]

First, on global warming. If you look at recorded weather data it is not disputable that average temperatures are increasing, that is a matter of hard data. What scientists are disagreeing over is 1. whether or not the warming is permanent or just part of some natural cycle, and 2. whether or not humans have anything to do with it. I think what tweaks a lot of people is when someone says "I don't believe in global warming," that is kind of akin to saying you don't believe in gravity. It's a matter of data.... It would be more correct for a dissenter to say "I don't believe that human activity is causing global warming."

Second, back to the topic at hand. I think the world is full of stupid people, it's not just us. Unfortunately the perception around the world is, and frankly I think there is some truth to this, that Americans are vastly misinformed or not informed at all about anything going on in this world outside of US borders. Most people have no idea who the PM of the UK is, or what the difference between a PM and an MP is. It's a legitimate beef... we seem to think we have the right to try to make positive changes in this world, sometimes by force, and often times without even the slightest understanding of the geo-political situation we are trying to change. Unfortunately Iraq has been a reinforcement of this idea to those around the world times one thousand.

[Lurker34]

Yeah, American's are that stupid.

[Redskin 70]

Yeah, American's are that stupid.

But in comparison to whom.
Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, England,
Im sure any of us could come up with audacious question with no relevance that we could , flat footed, ask any person on the street to which they would not know the answer, however I will go view the video and come back

OK OK I went a viewed the video.l They really did find some abysmally stupid people for that clip. But the biggest moron, was the guy who identified Australia as North Korea. I sure hope they cant vote.

[redland]

One of my favorite stories relevant to this topic occurred on the television progam "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?" When celebrity guest Kellie Pickler was asked "What European country is Budapest the capital of?" she responded that she thought Europe WAS a country. Then one of the real fifth graders fed her the answer Hungary and she responded "Hungry? (yes, hungry!). I've heard of Turkey but I've never heard of Hungry." I don't pretend that this single anecdote reflects on our public education, but I do think geography has virftually disappeared from the curriculum.

[dismayed]

That's exactly what I mean. I don't agree with your world view so you describe me as having "wacky pseudoscientific conspiracies."

If it's undisputed and undisputable, then why are scientist disputing it amongst themselves? I read an article just the other day about a scientist ( I want to say he's from the University of Colorado, but don't precisely remember) who disputes global warming and says it's just a natural cycle for the earth to warm and cool and says that there are other scientist who agree with him as well as those who disagree. He's an expert in the area. I'll try to find the link.

Anyway, I said I wasn't here to argue global warming, but you felt the need to argue the point that said I wasn't arguing anyway. I was just using it to make a point and you came in on cue and made my point perfectly.

Just to clarify, and sorry if I sounded harsh earlier, I'm totally cool if someone says they don't believe that global warming is being caused by human activity, or if they don't believe that a tiny fractional rise in temperatures over the last 100 years is going to amount to a hill of beans in the future. I can respect that. That in fact is where most scientists diverge.

What tweaks me out a bit is when people say they don't believe in global warming. I don't know if that means what I just said above, which is fine, or if they are saying the don't believe that the earth is slightly warming. The warming is really not in dispute, that is a matter of recorded data going back at least a 100 years. Scientists capture temperatures every hour of every day... it's pretty easy to plug that into a computer and observe patterns. If you listen closely, the talking heads on TV are disagreeing about whether or not there is going to be some massive climate change because of all of this, usually not whether or not this small gradual warming has taken place -- that really isn't in dispute.

[SoonerDave]

What tweaks me out a bit is when people say they don't believe in global warming. I don't know if that means what I just said above, which is fine, or if they are saying the don't believe that the earth is slightly warming. The warming is really not in dispute, that is a matter of recorded data going back at least a 100 years.

* sigh * I'm going to jump in on this one.

You and I think of 100 years as a long time. On a planetary scale, it's nothing.

In terms of raw marketing for the purposes of advancing a political agenda, I think "Global Warming" may be the most brilliant pieces of propaganda ever to emerge from our friends at the UN. You've got people who believe you should lose your right to a career if you dare to dispute the "contemporary wisdom" on it. You have almost a 21st century form of fascism if you dare stand "against it." And the only way to stand credibly against it is to incorporate the scientific realities that explain why one opposes the "body politic" behind it.

In many respects, GW is becoming a religion. If you dare to oppose it, someone sticks a chart in your face that presumes to demonstrate some realible "mean temperature" for the planet over the last century, which is scientifically fallacious on its face. Yet when you acknowledge the fact that it is perfectly normal for the earth to migrate through long cycles of increased and decreased temperatures, it makes it sound as though you're on the "politically correct" side of the issue.

I vehemently oppose the politics of global warming, which have less to do with science than my kitchen toaster. I vehemently oppose the philosophy that says, "well, we ought to listen to the pro-GW advocates just in case they're right," which is a *horrendous* thing on which to base public policy. We should be basing our decisions about effeciency and energy on the science at hand, not Al Gore and his movie crew.

The ultimate fraud of global warming is seen in that the solutions proposed by those who advocate it are, in truth, pursuing an agenda that will do nothing to counter the supposed "problem" they preach with such fervor. Al Gore is off the hook because he buys "carbon offsets," which means net production of "evil greenhouse gases" doesn't change, he just buys the right to produce them. And that's the core - its all about wealth transfer, whicih is precisely what the UN has been about for the last three or four decades - back when their same "scientists" insisted we were going into a global deep freeze, and had to "do something" about it.

Go read just a few bits and pieces about the junk science involved in the global warming business (JunkScience.com -- Steven Milloy, Publisher is a great such site, not merely for debunking gw nonsense, but for a variety of other abuses and misapplications of science, statistics, and mathematics). The scientific arguments are anything but a fait accompli as Gore and his buddies would have you believe. This "consensus" he preaches is taken right out of Hitler's "Big Lie" playbook - say it enough times, and people eventually believe it. Doesn't make it true. Carbon Dioxide, the "big evil" in the "greenhouse gas" hymnal, doesn't begin to operate in our atmosphere the way the GW folks want you to believe it does.

I do not believe in "man-made" global warming. In fact, the recent scientific data strongly suggests that recently decreased solar activity is substantially more predictive of a coming drop in global temperatures, not the opposite.

If you want to suggest that the data implies we're in a slight warming cycle, that's fine. But to extrapolate that to the ends of economic and industrial changes implied by the "our way or the highway" crowd in the GW business is another matter entirely. The problem is that the advocates seem to own the podium, the microphone, and the theater, and no one with an opposing view is allowed to air their side without being cast as a "kook."

I keep going back to some of the earliest stuff I heard about global warming on C-SPAN probably 20 years ago. Some scientists were talking about this stuff, making ridiculous extrapolations of tenuous data, and when the time came to field questions, a man I recall being identified as a NASA meteorologist blistered them, asking something like "Do you guys realize the science behind this stuff is ridiculous? Do you even care that you're not following basic scientific principles in your research? This is an embarassment to science, not a help." All the time, he was waving what I presume was some of their "research" Now, I hear folks like William Gray, world-reknown hurricane expert, who is trying to tell us all the same thing - that the hysteria around GW is a ridiculous scam.

-SoonerDave

[RRH]

SoonerDave, pity more people do not think like you. GW is a scam.