SEE UPDATE below the “Continue reading” line.
In my town we have a contingent of crazies, just like most towns. I didn’t realize just how crazy some are until I read this letter to the editor in the Chico Enterprise Record.
This is what we are up against. I kid you not, this guy says earthquakes are a “real and genuine menace” related to global warming.
Source here
We have a t-shirt you can buy here at the museum store that speaks to our local agricultural base of orchards that says; Chico, where the nuts come from.
I may have to move.
=======================================================
UPDATE: My local newspaper editor writes to me to say that Mr. Campbell was invoking sarcasm, and cites a couple of other similar letters to the editor Mr. Campbell has written in the past. He also says “I agree that sarcasm is hard to detect in print. A common mistake.”
I thought about that possibility of it being sarcasm, so I read it several times before posting on this. I could not detect a hint of sarcasm. Maybe my sarcasm sniffer is busted from reading so many outlandish claims about AGW effects. One only has to peruse the master MSM referenced warmlist here to see what I’m talking about. Note that earthquakes, earthquakes redux are on that list. Apologies to Mr. Campbell, but also forgive me, because I’ve seen even more outlandish things (like bridge collapse due to AGW, debunked here) that I can count in my tenure as a blogger on AGW.
That’s the problem with sarcasm, it is not always obvious to the reader. Learning from experience I make sarcasm obvious now with either a blog post tag or the “sarc off” /sarc at the end of a sentence.
When we have dubious claims being posted daily about global warming effects and linkages in science journals and in the MSM, it’s hard to tell what is real and what is sarcasm anymore. Either way, this episode makes me laugh, and I hope readers get a chuckle out of it too. – Anthony
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George Turner says:
July 9, 2010 at 10:44 am
“It looks like crazy is the new normal. Check out Belgium’s latest proposal to limit CO2 emissions.
Belgium’s plan to wash its dead down the drain: Bodies would be dissolved in caustic solution… and flushed into the sewer”
If you want, you get a bottle of your loved one to take home with you. Not suitable for consumption!
Essentially we are perched on the crust riding atop a big solid metal ball. During solar minimum that metal ball shrinks ever so slightly, but the outermost part of the outer mantle against the crust expands with the pressure release. This comparatively thin layer becomes more like the expanding magma we see at a volcano. Poof! more eruptions and quakes until the metal ball slows/stops contracting.
When a solar cycle takes off the metal ball begins expanding again and re-contracting the recently expanded outer mantle next to the crust again.
Possibly a pair of VEI-4 and a slew of 3’s should erupt before the end of 2011 as this cycle starts to take off. Some more quakes…
What we need are some good volcanologists here, and to also explain the various gasses pushed out. All I do is travel, observe and occasionally stay at Holiday Inn Express.
An emissions reduction idea that might catch your eye is this…
http://www.idlefreesystems.com/
And if the manufacturers of commercial trucks would show some mercy on the drivers that roast or freeze with the extremes the world might be a little nicer place for us all. Add insulation between the outer and inner walls of the cabs and bunks. They could get quality sleep, not be as grouchy and be less likely to run you over out there on the highway. The green fanatics should be relieved to see a volcano worth ± of emissions be saved each year from the trucks not idling all the time when they’re not rolling.
Solutions to the problem (whether it exists or not) should be an attractive feature of WUWT I think.
It’s all true damnit, sort of.
Earthquakes are not a response to global warming, unless it gets really bad and the crust starts to crack due to expansion like a loaf of bread.
Earthquakes could be due to attempts to make money from global warming though. We know harmonic tremors are a sign of seismic activity. We also know we can locate wind turbines by measuring the seismic activity by virtue of them being big, heavy vibrators attached to large concrete blocks to send the LF vibrations into the ground. I know part of this is true as I’ve seen and felt them shake me and my coffee. I know people can do bad things to structures with harmonic vibrations, hence the redesign of the Greenwich foot bridge. I’m less certain that building the UK’s biggest wind farm on the site of the UK’s biggest earthquake is such a good idea. But then maybe the windmills have regulators to stop them vibrating in step?
(yes, some of this is sarcasm, but also curiosity. As for letters to the editor, look what Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson did with their letters to the editor when they were at Playboy.)
Re: my previous comment to Mike G
Reading the responses here I accept that his post may not have meant what I thought it did and therefore offer an unreserved apology for calling him a fool.
Regards
Michael
Talking of religion which I know we are not. 🙂 This site URL was sent to me following a discussion with neighbours about things warmist and they thought that I should be informed about the facts. Suggests quite an active organisation presenting one side of the case within the Christian context of the protection of Creation.
http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk/
Mick.
DirkH says:
July 9, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Belgium’s plan to wash its dead down the drain: Bodies would be dissolved in caustic solution… and flushed into the sewer”
If you want, you get a bottle of your loved one to take home with you. Not suitable for consumption!
Well, mixing fat and lye makes soap, so perhaps they can market it as “Solyent Spring.”
All this worry about cremation does give new meaning to “anthropogenic CO2.”
[whisper] It comes from burning people. [/whisper]
Maybe someone here can find a link between the old Viking longboat funerals and climate.
Dennis, I have been thinking about getting a bumper sticker that says: “Stop Plate Tetonics!”. I haven’t yet because I’m afraid that I’ll be taken seriously.
Mike Guerin says:
July 9, 2010 at 1:52 am
It is very unfortunate but this guy probably votes religiously. I think that sums it all up in a “NUT” shell on why we really are all doomed.
He’s just one vote. He (and many like him) probably procreates and teaching his spawn to hold to his beliefs. We’ve got to find him and neuter him before he has a chance to add more of his kind to the population (sarc off, maybe;-|)
I once posted a tongue in cheek explanation about how “man made?” CO2 could cause earthquakes on a thread at a different blog I hang our on. The posters that knew me busted a gut. However, sad to say, a number of true believers actually thanked me for the explanation. The never realized they were being spoofed.
Joe Lalonde,
“Farmers around my area are pulling the apple trees as the government now wants them to be classed in the industry business and must have any helpers covered by Workmans Compensation, wear hardhats and safety boots.
Our government in Ontario has been trying to bring in new industry and business. Many people are on fixed incomes as the population ages.
Yet, as of July 1, they brought in a new tax(HST). They just increased the tax on electricity May 1 ,6% and are adding this HST to electricity and fuel. Jumped big into wind turbines with huge subsities. Talking of huge tolls on the roads now as well.
Bag of hammers…hmmmmm.”
Oh, thats happening all over. In my area, the MacDonalds and Burger King have both demolished their restaurants to rebuild them with less seating area for customers, since there is a new tax on restaurant seating area. These restaurants found it cheaper to destroy a whole building and build a whole new one to get a lower tax rate than to just pay the tax.
I’m seeing businesses are flying their American flags upside down to signal distress…
As a dis-interested mike g, and not the one who was soooo mis-understood, I’ll just say that perhaps Mike G should have said, “This guy is a NUT and the scary thing is he gets to vote just like the rest of us.”
Justa Joe says:
July 9, 2010 at 6:01 am
========
Hi, Joe
I heard this joke in Boston a couple of decades ago.
God decides Mankind is too wicked, and decides to destroy the world and start over. Being merciful, God lets a few news sources know two days in advance. They all demand an exclusive , but God refuses. The next day, the New York Times buries the story in the “About Town” column. The Wall Street Journal headline reads “World Ends Tomorrow: Markets Close Early”. And The Boston Globe headline reads “World Ends Tomorrow: Women and Minorities Affected Most”.
Interesting thing about your update, Anthony: the editor at ChicoER recognized it as sarcasm and printed it anyway…. I’m getting visions of wheels within wheels (Ezekiel, 10:10)
Roger Knights says:
July 9, 2010 at 4:18 am
Michael in Sydney says:
July 9, 2010 at 3:44 am
. . . .
Not to worry I have been severely berated and called a racist for using the word “niggardly” . . . people are encouraged to be touchy and to take offense when they feel slighted. It’s the PC world ( and please don’t tell me that’s a great magazine) that we inhabit now.
Anybody ask the Campbell heself? I think there is an approximately 50% chance his beliefs are being completely misrepresented.
Heh, by one side or the other.
==============
And besides, folks; regard the Katla thread. Them Vulcans are big and belchy. But why belch now? Have they just dined with Gaia who awaits the return of her Ach……choo!
===============
Lachlan says:
July 9, 2010 at 1:20 am
Crazies are everywhere. A few months ago I saw a comment on an Australian web site, claiming that carbon pollution is another tool of male oppression, because women suffer more from Tsunamis. I’m not making that up.
—————-
🙂
gives a whole new meaning to PMTsunami..
if you thought we womenfolk were cranky before. Lookout!
HUGH G. CAMPBELL, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, is
Professor of History at California State University, Chico, and is the author
of La derecha radical en Méico, 1929-1949 ( 1976).
AGE 75 CHICO, CA
I don’t think it was sarcastic, as he also sent it to http://www.orovillemr.com/ and he wrote:
La derecha radical en México, 1929-1949 / Hugh G. Campbell ; traducción, Pilar Martinez Negrete.
Author: Campbell, Hugh.
Publisher: México : Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1976.
Subject(s): Synarchism Mexico.
Political parties Mexico History.
Mexico Politics and government 1946-1970.
Mexico Politics and government 1910-1946.
He’s just senile.
Now there’s a good strategy. Nose tweaking. Play to win by using your opponent’s tricks. It worked so well it fooled us!
If there ever was an episode revealing the downside of exaggeration strategy on the part of AGWing scientists who bought into the idea to color their work with “tipping point” worst case scenarios, this episode is it. If neither side can tell if the writer is “worse than we thought” serious, and then discovers he was not, you have the reason for the failure of the green campaign. People taken for fools do not forgive once the game is up. And the game is up.
Three cheers for nose tweaking!
Actually, Anthony, the fact that you could not detect the sarcasm is probably the most poignant part of the story. Your sarcasm detector, I suspect, is not broken, we have simply arrived at a realization that climate alarmism as it is currently expressed in the popular media is no longer significantly different from attempts to parody it. I agree with you that the letter does not exude irony, but only because it has about the same amount of substance as much actual alarmist nonsense. If discourse on this subject contained more factuals and reasonable analysis and less ad hominem and mythology, it would be much easier to parody effectively. As it stands, it is self-parodying.
I hear in about 200 million years global warming is going to lead to all the continents smashing into each other. We better get on trying to prevent that RIGHT AWAY! Think about the children!
Anthony (and nearly everyone else in this thread),
Thanks for your sterling proof of Poe’s Law http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
@Bob — Wait. Are you being serious? 🙂