From the Mt. Pleasant, MI Morning Sun. Graphic by Anthony
WASHINGTON – There once was an Indianapolis concert featuring 50 pianos. Splendid instruments, pianos. Still, 50 might have been excessive.
As is today’s chorus summoning us to save the planet.
In the history of developed democracies with literate publics served by mass media, there is no precedent for today’s media enlistment in the crusade to promote global warming “awareness.” Concerning this, journalism, which fancies itself skeptical and nonconforming, is neither.
The incessant hectoring by the media-political complex’s “consciousness-raising” campaign has provoked a comic riposte in the form of “The Goode Family,” an animated ABC entertainment program on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Cartoons seem, alas, to be the most effective means of seizing a mass audience’s attention. Still, the program is welcome evidence of the bursting of what has been called “the green bubble.”
Gerald and Helen Goode, their children and dog Che (when supervised, he is a vegan; when unsupervised, squirrels disappear) live in a college town, where T-shirts and other media instruct (“Meat is murder”), admonish (“Don’t kill wood”) and exhort (“Support our troops … and their opponents”). The college, where Gerald works, gives students tenure. And when Gerald says his department needs money to raise the percentage of minority employees, his boss cheerily replies, “Or we could just fire three white guys. Everybody wins!” Helen shops at the One Earth store, where community shaming enforces social responsibility: “Attention One Earth shoppers, the driver of the SUV is in aisle four. He’s wearing the baseball cap.”
The New York Times television critic disapproves. The show “feels aggressively off-kilter with the current mood, as if it had been incubated in the early to mid-’90s, when it was possible to find global-warming skeptics among even the reasonable and informed.”
That is a perfect (because completely complacent) sample of the grating smugness of the planet-savers, delivered by an entertainment writer: Reasonable dissent is impossible. Cue the pianos.
“The Goode Family” does not threaten Jonathan Swift’s standing as the premier English-language satirist. But when a Goode child apologizes to his parent for driving too much, and the parent responds, “It’s OK … what’s important is that you feel guilty about it,” the program touches upon an important phenomenon: ecology as psychology.
In “The Green Bubble: Why Environmentalism Keeps Imploding” (The New Republic, May 20), Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of “Break Through: Why We Can’t Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists,” say that a few years ago, being green “moved beyond politics.”
Gestures – bringing reusable grocery bags to the store, purchasing a $4 heirloom tomato, inflating tires, weatherizing windows — “gained fresh urgency” and “were suddenly infused with grand significance.”
Green consumption became “positional consumption” that identified the consumer as a member of a moral and intellectual elite. A 2007 survey found that 57 percent of Prius purchasers said they bought their car because “it makes a statement about me.”
Honda, alert to the bull market in status effects, reshaped its 2009 Insight hybrid to look like a Prius. Nordhaus and Shellenberger note the telling “insignificance,” as environmental measures, of planting gardens or using fluorescent bulbs.
Their significance is therapeutic, but not for the planet. They make people feel better: “After all, we can’t escape the fact that we depend on an infrastructure – roads, buildings, sewage systems, power plants, electrical grids, etc. – that requires huge quantities of fossil fuels.
But the ecological irrelevance of these practices was beside the point.”
The point of “utopian environmentalism” was to reduce guilt. During the green bubble, many Americans became “captivated by the twin thoughts that human civilization could soon come crashing down – and that we are on the cusp of a sudden leap forward in consciousness, one that will allow us to heal ourselves, our society, and our planet. Apocalyptic fears meld seamlessly into utopian hopes.”
Suddenly, commonplace acts – e.g., buying light bulbs – infused pedestrian lives with cosmic importance. But: “Greens often note that the changing global climate will have the greatest impact on the world’s poor; they neglect to mention that the poor also have the most to gain from development fueled by cheap fossil fuels like coal. For the poor, the climate is already dangerous.”
Now, say Nordhaus and Shellenberger, “the green bubble” has burst, pricked by Americans’ intensified reluctance to pursue greenness at a cost to economic growth. The dark side of utopianism is “escapism and a disengagement from reality that marks all bubbles, green or financial.”
Re-engagement with reality is among the recession’s benefits.
George Will’s e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com.
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I haven’t found this to be a problem at all. I guess it’s about individual taste.
Still a lot longer than an incandescent in the same situation.
I’ve been using the same 2 CFL bulbs in my office (on and off several times a day) for about 5 years now. I think part of the trick is not buying the cheap off brands.
This is my biggest beef. EnvironMENTALists will soon be clamouring about the increase in mercury in landfills due to CFL bulbs.
There’s nothing on the packaging that says you have to dispose of them a certain way, or how to clean them up if broken (at least not on any that I’ve purchased). If they are truly dangerous, there needs to be clear instructions in multiple places, and there isn’t.
A toast to George Will (“The Green Bubble has burst”)!
Science is science – always. I offer the following quote attributed to 19th century scientist, Louis Agassiz, to those clinging to the sinking ship of AGW:
“The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.”
My guess is it will run for less than two seasons, get canceled, and the AGW crowd will say that that is proof that there are not many skeptics in the world and that we should get with the program.
From the sound of it, it’s a satire on those for whom AGW is a religious substitute. Two seasons of satire should be enough.
And the critic didn’t even realize his superstitions were being mocked.
Allan M R MacRae (22:41:23) :
Al,
Hop over the mountains to the interior of BC. Here we are roasting our collective butts off. 37.5 Deg C yesterday. A new record for us!!
Ah weather, isn’t it fun.
“”” Lindsay H. (00:44:25) :
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/a-layman’s-explanation-of-why-global-warming-predictions-by-climate-models-are-wrong/
I’d be interested in Svalgaards view on Spencers pater. “””
What I find most illuminating about Spencer’s essay can be seen in that picture of the earth being warmed by that nice yellow sunbeam coming in from the left.
Notice that right there on the equator facing directly at the sun in abject defiance, there is a red arrow of long wave infra-red radiant emission.
Got the picture ? No matter the radiant energy pouring in from the sun; that tropical mid-day sunlit surface is still radiating like crazy, and doing far more that its fair share to COOL the planet; in fact it is working about twice as hard as any run of the mill ordinary common garden variety average portion of the earth surface. And if you locate a point somewhere in the middle of the Antarctic winter midnight (Vostok for example), you might find that it is only working at the pitifully slow pace of about 1/6th of the average spot, or 1/12th of that hard working tropical desert surface.
So don’t knock UHIs; they do more than their fair share to cool the planet, by radiating at a much higher rate than the average. Yes they run at a higher temperature than the average; but the thermal conductivity between the ground and the atmosphere is quite poor, so that temperature excess doesn’t heat the global atmosphere much but the extra heating of the lower atmosphere over that hot spot leads to a vertical thermal that transports even more thermal energy to the upper atmosphere where it can be lost to space.
Just don’t make the mistake of aplying that UHI hot spot temperature to any other region outside the hot spot; and if you do that properly then you will come up with the correct “average” global temperature. Well you won’t; but in principle you could if you sampled the whole surface properly.
George
The Green Bubble Has Burst.
A bubble infers something fun and nice.
This is more like a boil.
E.M. Smith (03:47:13) Anywhere you don’t want a mercury spill if broken. Fridge? Oven? Plan to buy a new one if you break a bulb or accept a little Mercury Poisoning.
I asked a mate of mine about mercury in CFLs. He’s worked in the Science Dept of a major university in various capacities for over 20 years and currently he’s a senior (if not head) OH+S co-ordinator for the dept. He has to deal with explosives, radiation, poisons and Lord knows what. I keep telling him when the OH+S job comes up in the English Dept, apply for it!
As per my mate, when you break a CFL it releases mercury gas, not liquid. All you need to do is clear the room for a few minutes (and I presume ventilate the room for a while.) I know I broke a CFL I didn’t see any liquid mercury. I’m not a fan of mercury by any measure but these precautionary measures seem quite simple. Does anyone have information to contradict my friendly OH+S bloke? 🙂 Oh.. and bring incandescdants back to Australia! I have a stockpile but that will runout one day!
Well I’ve been green all my life; having grown up with the rationing of WW-II.
So the soap on my face when I take my 1/2 gallon Navy shower in the morning; becomes the shaving cream I scrape off when I shave. So I have never bought shaving cream in my life; or toothpaste either; which merely serves to get the kid to put the toothbrush in his mouth. (Honey works as well).
But I do it, so I don’t waste stuff including money. I have CFLs everywhere in my house where they will fit; but that is because my socialist wife never ever turns a light off or closes a door to conserve energy.
And I do not patronise any business that advertises itself as being “green”. I’d rather they be good at what they would do for me. My IRA investments advisor has been instructed to NOT invest in ANY alternative energy scam; like taxpayer funded solar PEV and such; or wind farms. They will be part of one of the next bubbles that bursts, once people learn that most of them will never make money except off the taxpayer’s back.
So green-ness is simply a way I prefer to live frugally (which frees up funds for my several recreational extravagances); and I do it because it is good for me; not because some self appointed gurus believe that it somehow is good for the planet.
Those CFLs will one day be replaced by far more intelligent LED lighting, and then my rabbit ears T&V reception will improve; absent all the RFI emissions from all those high frequency CFL lamps.
I offset my carbon footprint by buying nice and semi-expensive carbon fiber fly rods; which are carbon sequestration devices; but without oxygen sequestration like some of the proposed insane carbonate burial schemes.
Now I know some will chastise me for not doing my part to maintain the CO2 levels in the atmosphere so we can grow food for the coming billions of new people; but I figure if I take care of me and mine first, then I will not become a burden on others who are trying to take care of themselves and theirs.
And yes; George Will is a snob; and also quite wind direction flexible in his core beliefs.
George
While I understand all the skepticism here about AGW, a backlash against energy conservation and moving away from fossil fuels is a little backwards, IMHO. One would think that during a recession a “reconnecting with reality” situation would lead folks to more energy and money saving ways.
I guess I don’t understand the new Right-wing/GOP where it is okay to bemoan what used to be revered by said political party as a mid-20th century American do-it-yourself attitude and frugality. Planting a garden, changing to CFL’s, carrying reusable bags to the grocery, weatherizing-these are all things that fit well into the GOP’s idea of a can-do America. I don’t understand why their pundits didn’t get the memo not to knock these things.
BTW, assuming that a CFL comes close to its expected life span, most of the life-cycle assessments I’ve read say that if we went and smashed all of our CFL’s in our driveways, we’d still emit less mercury using the CFL’s because they use less energy. Since we use coal for 50-60% of our electricity in the U.S. and coal contains mercury, the energy savings of a CFL over its lifespan will also lead to a reduction in mercury emissions.
Talking of snow, just seen a weather forecast on the BBC, mentioned speedily that snow is forecast for central Scotland over the weekend.
One could see the turmoil taking place behind his eyes. 🙂
Also hastily mentioned the “below average” words. If it was hotter than, this would have made a full programme.
{i}The point of “utopian environmentalism” was to reduce guilt. During the green bubble, many Americans became “captivated by the twin thoughts that human civilization could soon come crashing down – and that we are on the cusp of a sudden leap forward in consciousness…{/i}
A couple points: Utopian environmentalism never sought to reduce guilt, rather to infuse it into each of our lives. Guilt and shame are the psychological crutches of propagandists. Once shame is instilled, penance can be paid. For religions – confessions and sacrifice, for environment – taxes and sacrifice.
In fact we {i}are{/i} on the cusp of a leap in consciousness. But it is a consciousness of “fear and loathing.” We are becoming more aware of the overt and covert techniques to manipulate behavior. Alarmists had hoped we would not look too closely at their cries and whispers. They hoped we’d be sorely shamed and pony up great wads of cash while they pillaged our economies and managed our minds. That has not happened. Nor will it. Because we have looked behind the curtain and found no wizards or scientists or conservationists – only puritans. Hard, finger wagging, fundamental puritans twisted by frugalism, penance and gaia worship.
Great to hear of Goode satire! Laughter may be the only permanent thing in the cosmos!
“the green bubble” has burst
Too optimistic!.
In the good all days of fairy tales, more exactly, during the Medioeval Optimum, Kings, Queens and Princes reigned happy countries filled of happy people, where due to abundance there were no scarcity, no poverty.
When climate changed, people rose against those good governments, and asked for help…as you can imagine, those Kings, Queens and Princes, couldn’t feed such a great quantity of suffering mobs, Hamelin town infested with rats (as happened last year-2008)…..then it came the French Revolution, the encyclopedists, the masonry, who devised a philosophy of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, who also establish the metric system, a system of measures intended for the whole world…They indeed supposedly made a good thing, those “cruel” governments fell down, republics and democracies appear on earth…Time passed away… a new era of global cooling was beginning..the same organizations that managed to tumble down monarchies now were managing how to overthrow governments of the present and establishing a new order, for this purpose they founded the Club of Rome, they devised a Green Agenda, they einforced globally the metric measures system, an unified standards systems (ISO), the global commerce, Green and “human rights” NGO’s,etc.
All intended, I think, for the welfare of humanity, BUT this time they will be affecting individual freedom because their goal, a kind of bee-hive or ant-hill will destroy us as free human beings.
THEY will not surrender that easy, because they are convinced they improved, in the past, humanity. They will not stop until they achieve their goal of a world like the one Aldous Huxley described in his novel “Brave New World”
They believe themselves to be the patrons of social justice, but they are not: WHEN CLIMATE HAS BEEN BENIGN ON THE EARTH “justice” or goodness for all existed, it does not depend of a particular kind of government, it depends on abundance and this ON CLIMATE.
Nowadays technology and free economy has eased the way for turning scarcity into abundance, poverty into richness, provided the human spirit is allowed to be free, so WE DO NOT NEED THEM ANY MORE TO MAKE HOW OUR FUTURE.
The “backlash” is toward the gov’t and a handful of “do as I say, not as I do” elitists like Al Gore hectoring us about conserving energy, carbon footprints and being green.
Conserving energy through better energy-use efficiency is a good thing. Conserving energy because the gov’t makes it more expensive and/or scarce is a bad thing.
Modern prosperity is largely based on our ability to generate more and more wealth per unit of energy used. Making energy more expensive will just make us less prosperous.
The Right-wing/GOP don’t like to be told what to do. Once upon a time that was an American trait, not just a conservative/libertarian trait.
Yeah…But all that mercury will be in our driveways.
I have been using CFLs for a number of years and if my experience is in any way representative the lifespan predictions for them are vastly overstated. Over 40% of mine have expired in time spans not significantly different from long life incandescents. From what I’ve been able to discover, this may be related to specific manufacturer’s techniques and the use of cheaper components to bring the price point down to where the claimed savings are economically justified. As to the hazards involved in breaking one, here is a link to the EPA’s prescription for handling that eventuality. I know they can be a bit OCD about hazards, but it’s still an interesting read.
ww.epa.gov/mercury/spills/index.htm#fluorescent
Drew Latta:
While I understand all the skepticism here about AGW, a backlash against energy conservation and moving away from fossil fuels is a little backwards, IMHO. One would think that during a recession a “reconnecting with reality” situation would lead folks to more energy and money saving ways.
There is no “backlash against energy conservation”. The backlash is against the “green posturing”, the finger wagging, and attempts to control others, through fear-based propaganda (often having nothing to do with reality), and through legislation and taxes. Plus, “moving away from fossil fuels” is actually what is backwards, if you do not have viable, affordable, and dependable forms of energy to move towards. And that is precisely the situation we are in now, with the possible exception of nuclear. But the Greenies don’t even want that.
Michael D Smith (07:38:50) :
Exclusive: New NSIDC director Serreze explains the “death spiral” of Arctic ice, brushes off the “breathaking ignorance” of blogs like WattsUpWithThat
LINK:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/06/05/nsidc-director-serreze-death-spiral-arctic-ice-wattsupwiththat/
Drew Latta:
The reason you “don’t understand the new Right-wing/GOP” anything is because you haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about, and you’re happily slapping a ridiculous label on something where a label doesn’t apply.
I’ve never heard of anyone (other than wealthy leftists) deliberately wasting resources. Intelligent people don’t waste. If there’s a better or more efficient way to do anything, that is usually the preferable way.
What “we” (okay, I) mock is the belief that doing these things is somehow “saving the planet”, or “stopping climate change”. It’s not. An individual’s contribution is completely and totally insignificant. Plant your garden or reduce your energy usage for your OWN reasons, and don’t think that everyone else has to share your reasons for anything.
One day you’ll realize that conservatism, GOP, and “right wing” are three completely separate things, and very few people are completely driven by any of them. Socialist leftists, on the other hand, define their entire lives and all of their actions on their political beliefs.
mr.artday (21:04:58) :
The world’s human population has exploded in my lifetime, I was born late in the first third of the last century. It might be possible that there is a fixed number of souls for this planet and that number is nowhere near enough to cover six thousand millions plus. Therefore many people are hollow, born without souls, and doomed to spend their lives trying to fill that void with externally applied symbols of wholeness. Remember the healing power of crystals? It is sad to think of all those neglected crystals, gathering dust in the back of the bottom bureau drawer while the hollow ones strive for the maximum in greenie points. In our favor is the media’s flogging the moribund green horse to death. It won’t be long before a large percentage of the population comes to remember that green is the color of bovine semi-solid body waste.
I think it’s been conclusively proven that there are only 255 original people in the world. This doesn’t mean there are only 255 individuals, it means there are millions of copies of these 255.
This was first theorized by Dr. Werner von Wormer in 1922 but was largely ignored by the science world. But new NSA face recognition software developed 5 years ago shows Dr. von Wormer was in fact correct.
“Fimbulvetr is three successive winters where snow comes in from all directions, without any intervening summer. During this time, there will be innumerable wars and brothers will kill brothers.”
That has to be a Tambora and then some volcanic event, surely? Suggesting 800BC ish?
evanmjones (03:42:52) :
Would some warmist who agrees that AGW promotes the spread of disease and death please explain how plague flourished in Europe during the Little Ice Age?
A reasonable and informed sceptic would like to know…
Little what age?
The one we knew was there before we got hit up the side of the head with the hockey stick. 🙂
Hooray for George will. He can be hard to take sometimes, but then he hits a grandslam.
Dave Middleton:
Modern prosperity is largely based on our ability to generate more and more wealth per unit of energy used. Making energy more expensive will just make us less prosperous.
…and promoting feverishly and fanatically using less energy it is plainly [snip inappropriate language here – thanks to CP for pointing it out]
What is really surprising it is that “human rights” NGO’s say NOTHING about it, and it is so because their patrons and/or founders allucinate a world only inhabited only by themselves. Can you imagine a world full to the top of morons?
E.M.Smith (04:08:07) :
Sorry for my poor English
Reinhard, had you not apologized I’d have thought you a native speaker. I find nothing wrong with your English. It is far better than many folks with whom I grew up… there are some really bad native speakers of English out in the “sticks”…
Not all are “out in the sticks.” I can remember correcting my kids, only to find out they were mimicking their English teacher. They like to drove me crazy with “them things”.
Drew Latta (09:54:32) :
While I understand all the skepticism here about AGW, a backlash against energy conservation and moving away from fossil fuels is a little backwards, IMHO. One would think that during a recession a “reconnecting with reality” situation would lead folks to more energy and money saving ways.
But most of these things don’t save money. They cost more for less.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with conservation. We are actually much more efficient that we were when the ‘Energy Crisis’ hit in the 1970’s. We can’t gain enough in energy efficiency savings to make up for the projected increase in demand. We are about to experience a new ‘Energy Crisis’ and this one will be entirely our own doing.
I guess I don’t understand the new Right-wing/GOP where it is okay to bemoan what used to be revered by said political party as a mid-20th century American do-it-yourself attitude and frugality. Planting a garden, changing to CFL’s, carrying reusable bags to the grocery, weatherizing-these are all things that fit well into the GOP’s idea of a can-do America. I don’t understand why their pundits didn’t get the memo not to knock these things.
I agree, you don’t understand. I don’t care what you do if you leave me alone. Feel free to become more self-sufficient. Live beneath your means, not above it.
But I also don’t share the need to feel guilty about everything. I guess that’s what sets us ‘right-wingers’ apart — our self-esteem does not depend upon the validation of others.
BTW, assuming that a CFL comes close to its expected life span, most of the life-cycle assessments I’ve read say that if we went and smashed all of our CFL’s in our driveways, we’d still emit less mercury using the CFL’s because they use less energy. Since we use coal for 50-60% of our electricity in the U.S. and coal contains mercury, the energy savings of a CFL over its lifespan will also lead to a reduction in mercury emissions.
When I lived in southern Nevada, I bought a lot of CFL bulbs because electricity was expensive (thank you, California) and conventional bulbs put out a lot of heat. The best bulbs lasted a few years. The newer bulbs are less expensive but seem to only last about 1/3 of their rated lifespan.
Coal does contain mercury but mercury can be removed from emissions. The coal-fired plants in this country are no longer a major source of mercury pollution. The newer the plant, the less mercury emitted. But since we are not building enough to meet future demand, the older, dirtier plants are going to have to stay in service longer.
The real resistance is because there is no valid reason to believe there is a current or impending climate crisis. The dangers are grossly exaggerated and are based on faulty climate models and statistical quackery, not actual observations.
mr.artday (21:04:58) :
The world’s human population has exploded in my lifetime
[snip – inappropriate language here, my thanks to CP for pointing this out.]
(Recent studies say that all human population could live and prosper in an area such as the state of Texas, without any problem).