Penn & Teller Are Full of Bullshit!

OK, this is getting done just a wee bit late. I have been on vacation for the last week (of course, it’s been a good long time since I posted anything anyway, so vacation isn’t a great excuse), but I just cannot let go of the otherwise pretty good Showtime television show “Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!” For the two of you reading this blog who may not know, this is a show where magicians/anti-magicians/famed libertarians Penn & Teller destroy what they view as myths, fables and other stuff hat has a pseudo-scientific bent but is actually worthless. For the most part, I enjoy the show. Some of the things they go after are good targets, like PETA. Some of the things they defend are ridiculous, like Wal-Mart or their supposed libertarian stance on gun control. I have been waiting for this entire season for them to go after something where I think they are wrong and it took them a few weeks, but they finally did it last week. When they went after the “gren movement.”

Now, Penn & Teller were careful to technically only go after the green “movement” and not after global warming and I will get to that in a minute but first let me set forth a few ground rules before I go after these two knuckleheads and their spurious sourcing.

I am going to say whether Penn & Teller are full of bullshit using common sense. I don’t have the time or the inclination to do any actual research but then they don’t do any either and they have a much bigger budget than me. That’s it. I’m going to point out, based on my memory of what they said and just using my brain, how absolutely full of shit they are on the “green movement” and, more broadly, global warming.

First, let’s dispatch with haste what they got right: They had on some ridiculous “eco-therapist” who helped people assuage their guilt over what we are doing to the planet with some new age-y therapy, some “river rocks” she picked up from a parking lot and walking a labyrinth. That woman is a stone idiot or she is brilliant for being able to carve out a living peddling bullshit to credulous people. That being said, I cannot let it go hat Penn even got it wrong when this woman had her clients walk some sort of eco-labyrinth. Penn really lit into her and said that it’s a maze because there are choices. Well, I didn’t look at it all that clearly because the show didn’t give us very much time to look at it, but it certainly appeared to be a labyrinth. Penn is right, a maze is when you have choices and dead ends while a labyrinth is simply a planned but circuitous route that you have to walk but which allows you to contemplate whatever is on your mind. Clearly the woman is an idiot, but it strikes me that they were all walking the entire thing together, which is something that would be more fitting for a labyrinth and not a maze. In any case, this woman is stupid and is peddling bullshit.

Other than her, P&T should pretty much be ashamed of themselves. They went out of their way to expose a woman who owns a business that allows people to purchase carbon offsets to “equal out” the carbon they produce. Yes, we all love it when someone gets roasted for being a hypocrite and a woman who claims to be interested in preventing global warming but drives a Range Rover (like this lady) certainly appears to deserve that roasting, but P&T didn’t even bother to ask this woman how she invests the money she gets from people who purchase these offsets from her. I agree with P&T that this woman didn’t appear to be applying any actual science to her offset purchase plan and I think she should be regulated, but would it be too much to ask where she sends the money she gets from the “sale” of these offsets? Does she actually keep the money she makes? Does she send it to groups like the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society who have it as their mandate to conserve resources? Is she buying stock in companies that are ecologically friendly or maybe shares in a “green” mutual fund? We do not know because Penn & Teller couldn’t be bothered to ask or if they did ask, they didn’t bother to tell us what they found out. It is indeed possible that this woman is a scam artist and a hypocrite, but these guys didn’t even try to tell us where the money she raises goes. They certainly told us that the woman is “making money” off the sale of these offsets, but they didn’t tell us how much or give us any details to help us figure out what she was really up to.

Second, they go after Al Gore. Now, I will admit that I am a fan of Al Gore but these guys certainly got very pissy when Gore’s “manager” (I don’t recall the title of the person) declined their interview request because the Nobel laureate and former Vice-President is very busy, which is reasonable because he is, well, a Nobel laureate and former Vice-President. They got all bent out of shape because Gore wouldn’t take the time to go on their bitchy little show and defend himself to them. So they started attacking him both personally and professionally. Wow. Way to maintain your credibility there guys. I’m sure that if I got through to your management they would be more than willing to book you on some public access TV show I might choose to produce to quiz you about your views on global warming, right? Of course not. You guys are as important to Al Gore as I am to you and I have even paid to see your live show as well as bought several of your books but do you think you would be within your rights to reject my request to appear on my public access TV show? Of course you would.

And then you get on with the old straw man attack on Al Gore about what an “energy hog” he is and how he uses more electricity, by some enormous factor, than does an “average” individual. As if that proves anything. A l Gore is wealthy and, if I am not mistaken, he lives in the same house that has been in his family for generations. It’s a big house owned by a wealthy man but to somehow live in a big house in which he grew up makes him some sort of hypocrite. And it’s not good enough for you that Gore is going to retrofit his home with solar panels and compact fluorescent lights either. It’s ridiculous. Nobody, not even Al Gore, is saying we should live our lives without a carbon footprint; it’s simply not possible. But to be as carbon neutral as possible is a worthwhile goal, don’t you think?

And yet, when you discuss the carbon offsets trading company that Gore formed, all you can do is attack him for making money off reducing the carbon footprint of humanity. I am so sick of supposed free-market libertarians who attack people who try to do well while also doing good. I don’t see why you object to Gore making money off of what he views is a good business. You guys are more than willing to defend legalized prostitution, legalized drugs, fucking Wal-Mart and limitless ownership of guns but you have such a problem with a guy making an already-legal buck in a business that he happens to think also has benefits for society. Are you saying he should do this for free? Doesn’t that undercut all of your talk about free markets and being able to make money? How is it that you can defend Wal-Mart for taking advantage of a free market when you KNOW they make money off of mistreated workers all over the world (including their own workers) but scream about Al Gore making money for doing something he believes in? You’re trying to expose him as a charlatan but what you really are doing is destroying your own credibility. You cannot have it both ways, boys.

And speaking of free markets, as your biggest denier of global warming and/or the effect of carbon in the atmosphere, you go to some guy who proudly decrees that he heads a “free market think tank” and then you let him blather on about how 97% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere today is from decaying plants and volcanoes? Really? The head of a “free market think tank” wants to deny the effects of carbon or the sources of it? Did you guys think to ask him how he makes HIS money? I don’t know, but I will wager a dollar that this guy makes his money either from his own carbon-producing concerns or from donations to his “think tank” by other carbon-producing concerns. You want to rail against Al Gore and some other woman who sells carbon offsets for making money off their positions on global warming but you don’t even think to ask this fucking guy how he makes HIS money? This is just like the “scientists” who are paid by tobacco companies to deny that smoking causes cancer except we KNOW who writes the checks to the scientists and with you we don’t.

And later, in an effort to dull the argument that maybe his guy has a point of view that leads him to take a stance that is profitable to him, you say something like “we talked to a LOT of people who are in general agreement” with what this guys says about 97% of all atmospheric CO2 being the result of plant decay and volcanoes. Really? Who are they and why didn’t you identify any of them? If the BEST guy you can get to support your position is the head of a free market think tank, one might assume that the other people you got are all coal company executives, Chinese government officials who want to deny the effect China is having on the planet and Karl Rove. And why didn’t you interview any credible scientists who think that CO2 emissions are actually contributing to global warming? You talk to this knucklehead without proffering any scientific credentials but just allow him to baldly assert that 97% of all atmospheric CO2 comes from sources that have nothing to do with humanity but instead of having a scientist who actually understands global warming and might have some credibility on the subject, you offer an “eco-therapist” and some guy who writes a well-intentioned (but seriously lacking in expertise) book about how to reduce one’s own carbon footprint.

Why is that again? Oh that’s right, this show is supposedly about the green “movement” and not so much about global warming. But, then, why did you have on the free market think tank guy again? He really talked about carbon and didn’t have much to say about whether the green movement is or is not bullshit. His argument wasn’t so much that global warming doesn’t exist (although he is a denier) but that the carbon we are arguing about doesn’t come from humanity. Very clever fellas.

Oh, and the weatherman you used? The guy who was on the Today show back in the 1960s or whenever? That was a refutation of global warming. Again, he didn’t comment on the green movement, he just said that the earth’s weather patterns have correlated with the sun’s activity and output. What bullshit. First of all, there is a difference between climate and weather and you don’t point out how this guy knows the fucking difference and second, this is a denial that global warming exists. You guys need to grow a dick because you are letting all your surrogates say that global warming doesn’t exist but then at the very end of the show you say that you simply don’t know whether it exists or not. Maybe you don’t really know, but it’s pretty obvious that you wanted to deny it but don’t have the balls to do it yourself so you let washed up celebrities and “think tanks” of unknown provenance say them for you.

Penn & Teller, you guys are chock full of bullshit.