Note: I don’t normally allow the discussion of things related to Nazi Germany here, including discouraging the use of the word “denier” due to it’s “Holocaust Denier” connotations. But this full page ad in the Sunday papers in Britain, touting “climate crime” and “climate cops” is just a bit over the top, and deserves some attention. It is particularly relevant since the sponsoring website climatecops.com has a teachers section, and we’ve just seen some sensibility from Schwarzenegger in Sacramento on this very issue. I find this method of indoctrinating school children to normal everyday living being harmful to the earth with the “climate crime” connotation as distasteful and wrong headed. I have no problems with energy conservation, in fact I encourage it. But combining such advice with a “climate cop” idea is the wrong way to get the message across. Can you imagine what sort of reaction the neighbors will have to the kids hanging this door hanger on their front door? Will the result of this now be hiding your electric dryer behind false walls so the kids and neighbors don’t see it?
At the very least, npower could have chosen a different color scheme: red, black and white are the same three colors used in the flag of Nazi Germany What were they thinking? – Anthony
Reposted from the website EU referendum:
Can I be the only one more than a little disturbed by the latest campaign to be fronted by energy company npower?
Launched today with large colour ads in the Sundays, it appeals directly to children, urging them to enlist as “climate cops”, to root out “climate crimes“, and thus “save the planet”.
In a luridly-designed website, mimicking the style of “yoof” cartoons, it offers a bundle of downloads, including a pack of “climate crime cards“, urging its recruits to spy on families, friends and relatives, inviting each of them to build up a “climate crime case file” in order to help them ensure their putative criminals do not “commit those crimes again (or else)!”
Quite what the “or else!” should be is not specified, but since the “climate cops” are being encouraged to keep detailed written records (for those who can read and write), there is nothing to stop these being submitted to the “Climate Cops HQ” for further sanctions, the repeat offenders being sent to re-education camps. And for those “climate cops” that successfully perform the “missions” set (or turn in their own parents), there is the reward of “training” in the “Climate Cop Academy”.
In a system which has echoes of Hitler’s Deutsches Jungvolk movement, and the Communist regime Pioneers, perhaps successful graduates can work up to becoming block wardens, then street and district “climate crime Führers”, building a network of spies and informers.
How nicely this ties in with James Hansen’s call to put the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming.
No doubt, with a willing band of “climate cops”, the prosecutors can spread their nets wider, reaching into the homes of all climate change deniers, until the insidious virus of doubt is exterminated (final solution, anyone?). Then we can all march on the sunlit uplands of a “carbon-free” planet – to the tune of Ode to Joy no doubt.
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Gee, I thought it was because Germany declared war on Us.
Well, I’ve just spent almost an hour reading the sample materials (both student and teacher). The (sample) student notes are not too bad as an introduction to electricity and electrical circuits. Sure, there’s the obligotary images of polar bears and drought-cracked ground, but on the whole it’s not too bad. The “climate crimes” cards are mostly good (except for the food one). I mean, is it that bad to think about using energy efficient bulbs? The dirty windows could be fun:
Child: “Mummy, the windows are dirty, and this is bad for the enviroment because it lets less light in and makes us use electricity”
Mother: “You’re right… here’s some cloths and window cleaner; come back when the windows are clean”
I loved the picture of the power station with the cooling towers bealching the most potent greenhouse gas of all – and the text concentrated on CO2 emissions!
The (sample) teacher’s note are a different story. They emphasise the climate change doctrine. They also seek to promote wind power as the way of the future. I had a look on the npower website, but I couldn’t see if nopwer is a proponent of wind farms (ugly things they are; my wife and I saw them on our trip to Scotland a few years ago now).
As an Australian, I didn’t see the Nazi overtones, as mentioned by posters above. Dictatorial govenrments are not our style. What I’m not keen on is the concept of “climate crimes” and cards for kids to run around and “police families” with. I’ll ask my wife (an educational / developmental psychologist) her opinion of the (potentially) harmful effects on childhood development with this material.
It’s a fine day when a Russian lectures Westerners on freedom. Lady Liberty can’t be killed, it seems. She just leaves where she is not wanted and moves to where she is wanted.
Maybe the Russians and Chinese will shame us into a new birth of liberty in the US.
This next time, please, no government schools and no government backed banking cartel!
I am stuck in some really awful irony today. One another thread I apologized for evidencing Godwin’s Law. Soon thereafter I turn to this thread and holy cow!!! Some of the comments on this thread make my apology totally pointless.
You all know that rabid comments will be used to counter reasonable skeptics at some time, and if the comments are rabid enough, effectively so. Yes, that website is an abomination. Yes, propaganda is still as effective as it ever was, and yes, there is always plenty to fear in the madness of crowds. But, have a little faith. People who get it, get it. While I disappoint myself often by taking the bait (ironically I did it again today)–I still ask all of you to remember that your concerns are important enough to be worth changing some minds.
If you really care as much about this issue as I think you do, you will care more about being effective than indulging in your opportunities to vent. Please write in more measured tones while the chance to debate openly is still available to us. After all, carrying on open reasonable debate in an effective manner is your best chance to prevent the worst from happening.
Ralph Marston (15:38:54) :
The Kill-a-Watt (not you, Anthony) only has a resolution of 1 watt. I plugged in a fairly heavy transformer that goes to my Rav-o-Vac NiMH charger. With the charger disconnected from the transformer, I got a reading of 0 watts, but did get a VxA reading of 6. The power factor was 0.12, so it was really drawing about 0.7 watts.
Oh duh – it does report a current draw of 0.05 amps, so that matches the VxA of 6.
An ideal transformer would dissipate 0.0 watts, but soft iron hysteresis, magnetorestrictive effects and a few other things make them “infinitely” more power wasting.
The history of the recommendation dates back to people doing such measurements, multiplying the power by an estimate of the number of “wall warts” in the USA and coming up with a value close to a minor commercial power plant.
ISTR that they the researcher reported higher power dissipation than what we’ve measured. Guess I should’ve checked at the time, and there’s a very good chance that they measured current, not power.
BTW, power factor referred to a lag in electric motors where peak current occurs after peak voltage. Actual power dissipation is different in that case than what you’d expect from just measuring current and multiplying by voltage.
There has been a transition from transformer based wall warts to “switching power supply” tech. They are lighter, probably draw less idle current, are more efficient under load. While they could fail and put line voltage on phone, I haven’t heard of that failure, and there’s probably circuitry that blows a fuse if that happened.
More interesting are the devices that have a standby mode. People have found several that draw as much power, about 20 watts, “off” as when they’re on but idle. Idle shouldn’t take much more than to run the remote control sensing electronics and the all important time-of-day clock. Where would we be without 20 clocks in a household?
On further thought, it is the nomenclature “Climate Cop” that is the most insidious, for it presupposes that those who transgress are materially affecting the climate. It is telling our kids that, by leaving our mobiles on charge (instead of getting up at 3am to unplug them), we adults are responsible for polar bears dying, ice caps melting, increased hurricanes, floods, pestilence, etc. etc.
If the term “resource marshall” was used it might be less nasty (since stewardship of resources is sensible) – but only slightly less nasty, given that the campaign is aimed at squarely aimed at kids which is frankly despicable.
Bernie said (13:33:02) :
And it was. Living in California, sometimes someone will do the same thing by saying, “You people there get the government you deserve!” And I think, But… but… I don’t deserve it! So, mea culpa. I feel bad for the people being steamrollered by the European nanny staters, who have become very adept at gaming the system. They’re doing it here, too — and if it weren’t for sites like this one, their objective would be much farther along. And their objective is not the elimination of CO2. That’s only what they say.
I worked for one of the largest U.S. defense contractors for 30 years. Right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the company hired an ex-KGB officer, Yuri Bezmenov, to give lectures to its employees on how easily defense intelligence was collected [the #1 method: using janitors to go through the engineers’ trash at night looking for discarded technical documents and drawings].
This same KGB officer can be seen [here], explaining in a very matter of fact way the long-term plan the Soviets implemented to undermine the West. It has had fantastically successful results.
If the Board of Directors of a giant U.S. defense company thought it was worthwhile to pay this man to travel the country speaking with their 80,000 employees, it might be worth taking a few minutes now to listen to him. It worries me more every time I hear this interview.
At first I thought it might be a spoof so looked up the domain registration – its true it is owned by Npower registered 28 07 07. They also own this domain in .net .org .biz.
So I looked at Npowers website – this is what they say about themselves :RWE npower owns and operates one of the largest and most diverse portfolios of coal, oil and gas fired power stations in the UK, with the capacity to generate over 10.3 GW of electricity.
Our combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power stations are more efficient than coal or older gas power stations because the heat yielded by burning gas is used twice in electricity generation – a gas cycle and a steam cycle.
Our portfolio also includes three of the UK’s largest coal-fired power stations, located in southern England, which have good access to distribution and rail facilities for sourcing fuel from different suppliers.
In addition, we have two oil-fired stations, burning heavy fuel oil. These operate only rarely at times of high demand. The short start-up times for these stations is important in helping to balance demand at peak times.
They are also into “renewables”, so I suppose this has come from some marketing department that has gone mad.
I am an avid reader of EUreferendum.com from which this story is relayed – this is not such a surprise to us on EUreferendum.com, our media and political system have become a trashcan for hype and untruth. We have completely lost it as a nation, I no longer bother with the British newspapers, I rely on reading the blogs like this one and EUreferendum.
I despair at what is happening to our liberal democratic traditions and how they are being lost to a subculture that glorifies in dumbed down junk stories that have not reality. This is far more dangerous to our future survival than global warming
This is absurd, of course. It will cause reasonable folks to laugh, “No one would ever really do that.” And they are right. But it will allow them to accept more “reasonable” solutions. That’s the (shallow) slippery slope. One small step at a time.
“The little foxes spoil the vine.”
I figured the UK was already a fascist country when I found out about their anti-freedom of speech
TV police.
http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/international/bbc.html
This propaganda urging kids to act as climate cops just confirms it. Never ever will I travel to the UK as long as this nonsense goes on- Alan McIntire
AEGeneral said 27/07/2008
You can have my programmable thermostat when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Shouldn’t this be ‘… from my warm, dead hands.’?
Package this idea with a Transformer (toy) and every schoolchild will be on it like a flock of seagulls on hot chips.
Smokey and the other Bandits:
Shame that Anthony did not snip some of your comments telling as they are. they do nothing for the cause of disputing AGW. I would second the comment of Stan in reply to you. Why do you attack the people on this post who, in effect, are on your own side in this debate? Is this blind pannic on your part? I am English. I am not European. I feel for the poster from Norway who was served a mouthful of abuse simply because you covet his nation’s energy reserve per capita or what ever it was. We’re all angry about this. it’s not all about the USA. As for the Maggie Thatcher comment, in case it had escaped your notice, she divorced herself from the AGW idea and has been misrepresented. It was not Maggie ringing the alarm bells, nor was it Maggie telling people how the planet had a fever. She foundan apparently harmless reason (cleaner and cheaper energy) that fitted her economic and political agenda. Never did I hear her make false claims about environmental issues of the sort discussed widely. Never did I expect that I would find myself defending Mrs Thatcher! It’s not the Germans you need to worry about, it’sHollywood.
Mr Smokey said (13:19:51) :
“Isn’t it interesting watching the fascination Europeans have with dictatorial personalities? They seem content being ruled by either a political strongman, or a huge nameless, faceless, unelected and unaccountable government bureaucracy, which intrudes on all facets of their lives, right down to their clothes lines and cell phone chargers. And ten dollar a gallon gas? It’s a small price to pay for the putative security of having all those tax sucking bureaucrats rule their lives.”
It is not just Europeans, Mr Smokey, it is the same here in Britain (yes, I am from the camp that believes the headline “Fog in English Channel, Continent Isolated”).
This is not the forum to discuss British politics, much though I would love to, so I will restrict myself to some words about NPower. As others have commented above, NPower is a German company with a significant foot in the British power industry. It is a very shrewd operator which has gained a big share of the market pretty quickly. One way it has done so is by pushing its “green” credentials.
I don’t criticise them for doing so, they are in business and (at the moment) “green” sells. The wise words of Saint Al of Gore are pushed in our state schools as though he were Isaac Newton talking about gravity and the “pester power” of opinionated children is a significant force on household budgets. If you ran NPower, wouldn’t you try to catch that force for the benefit of your business?
It will not be long before this particular advertising method has to be abandoned. The Advertising Standards Authority might stop it but I suspect general criticism of the concept of children spying on family, friends and neighbours will have greater effect in the short term.
We can but hope that the distasteful overtones of NPower’s poster will encourage more people to look into the AGW theory and form their own view.
I’m not concerned, 85% of the environmental movement is malcontent [snip] hippies who resent cops.
REPLY: Watch this Penn and Teller Video and decide for yourselves if Mike C’s view fits.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=8917946
It is long, about 29 minutes, but very entertaining and enlightening. – Anthony
First they came for the automobiles.
And I didn’t say anything because I didn’t own an automobile . . .
Just a few thoughts on the climatecops.com newspaper ad:
Terrible, diabolical, grievous, harmful, foul, frightful, ignominious, horrible, ugly, hateful, inglorious, scandalous, shocking, bad, hideous, horrific, offensive, disgraceful, dishonorable, immoral, outrageous, sinister, unworthy, wicked, atrocious, corruptive, despicable, devilish, heinous, injurious, and monstrous.
(If reasonably good taste wasn’t mandated on this site I’d tell
you the rest of what I think.)
Looking back on 20th century history, I wonder why the U.S.A. paid so much blood and fortune to save these Euroweenies from the same fate that they seem to crave today.
We considered the alternative. #B^1
“We considered the alternative. #B^1” Evan
Our involvement in WWI was not necessary. It led to the humiliation of the Germans and along with the Great Depression (thank you Federal Reserve system) led to WWII and probably the Cold War. We should have listened to George Washington about foreign entanglements. But I reckon there were more Americans with British cousins than German ones.
BTW, what does “#B^1” mean? Sometimes, I r dense.
Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic published a book in 2007 titled Blue Planet in Green Shackles (What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?). In his book he cites the many similarities between Communism, which he personally experienced and the current state of the environmental movement.
“And I didn’t say anything because I didn’t own an automobile . . ” Evan Jones
And then they came for my breath because I was a heavy breather.
Thank you for your article. This is a very troubling trend and even I find it hard to put a positive spin on it. I wrote an article about a year ago pointing out global warming is becoming to the left what the war on terror is to the right – a reason to control every person on this planet.
I am confident that most of the people living and working on this planet do not support this kind of nonsense and that we can address our common (legitimate) problems together and with wisdom and reason.
The worst thing is that this global warming cult (as it’s becoming) works under cover of legitimate concerns we all should and do need to address. Young peoples’ best intentions and desire to good are used against them in this scheme.
People desiring freedom to think, act, and move on this planet must demand sanity be returned to the deliberations on these topics. Right now, Chicken Little is in charge.
TinyCO2: I like it!
Can’t we just work together?
Yes. And we will. (Those on the front lines like you are the most valuable.)
as a Briton whose grandfather fought on the Western Front, I
(P.S., and thanks for saving the western world in 1940.)
Any kid who starts sporting a Climate Cops badge at school is soon going to find out the meaning of peer pressure.
Point.
I really like tinyC02’s response above.
This is basically happening already in our US Schools. Middle School (Grades 6-8) teachers require, for a significant grade, that students document in essay or research paper how their families are “harming the earth” with certain practices at home. The lack of producing any harmful crimes in their project produces a failing grade.
The assignment conclusion requires a description how the student confronted their parents about the “earth violations”, and what they would do next if their parents did not repent and make the appropriate changes to their demands for change.
My oldest son and I had a good laugh over it.
This is bad for one reason: it comes ten years too late.