Note: There’s a response and analysis to this post here.
NOTE: Predictably, Joe Romm has turned this post into a personal bashing of me over at his Climate Progress blog. For some eye opening viewpoints from his side of the argument, have a look at the 495 comments on his parent blog “Think Progress” here. UPDATE: many of those ugly and violent comments at TP have been “sanitized” since I drew embarrassing attention to them. The word “filthy” in my post below, is pointing to the multiple use of the word to describe humans in the manifesto of the gunman, also published below. I realize that may upset some people, and for that I apologize. However, it is instructive to read the manifesto to see how global warming hype drove this man to do what he did. From this MSNBC story:
Lee said he experienced an ‘‘awakening” when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.”
UPDATE: It’s over, from MSNBC:
Police shot a gunman who held three hostages for several hours Wednesday at the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Md., authorities said. They said the hostages were safe and the gunman was in custody. Police said the gunman’s condition was unknown. At least one explosive device went off when he was shot, and other explosive devices could still be in the building in Montgomery County in suburban Washington, D.C., they said.
UPDATE2: MSNBC is now reporting the gunman has been killed.
=======================================
Well, you filthy readers, see what happens when we don’t acquiesce? In case you haven’t heard by now, a gunman named James Lee, an Asian man with a years-long vendetta against the Discovery Channel cable network has entered the building and got an armed hostage taking situation going on right now.
Some news coverage here:
Armed Man Believed to Be Environmental Protester Takes Hostages in Discovery Channel Building
Among his demands from the manifesto on his website:
Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!
MSNBC reports:
Lee said he experienced an ‘‘awakening” when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.”
Perhaps inspired by Gore, and Dr. James Hansen’s recent call for civil disobedience, we have today’s environmental public relations train wreck turned armed hostage situation.
THE MANIFESTO OF JAMES LEE:
(downloaded before traffic took it down):PDF here at TMZ
The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:
1. The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!
2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.
3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF??? STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!
4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn’t, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??
5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)
6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don’t build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!
7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!
8. Saving the Planet means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies! You’re the media, you can reach enough people. It’s your resposibility because you reach so many minds!!!
9. Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they take the world to another nuclear war.
10. Stop all shows glorifying human birthing on all your channels and on TLC. Stop Future Weapons shows or replace the dialogue condemning the people behind these developments so that the shows become exposes rather than advertisements of Arms sales and development!
11. You’re also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing. All these unemployed people makes me think the US is headed toward more war.
Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.
For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human’s lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!
It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It’s like a couple are having 30 babies even though it’s just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!
Also, war must be halted. Not because it’s morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures. FIND SOLUTIONS JUST LIKE THE BOOK SAYS! Humans are supposed to be inventive. INVENT, DAMN YOU!!
The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans.
Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.
The humans? The planet does not need humans.
You MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in the world, and YET you encourage the exact opposite instead of discouraging human growth and procreation. Surely you MUST ALREADY KNOW this!
I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it.
These are the demands and sayings of Lee.
==============================
h/t to the Seattle Weekly blogs and WUWT DocattheAutopsy
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JimF says:
September 1, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Woahhh!
=========================================================
Yeh, fun group there. 2 exerts from his manifesto and they label they guy as a conservative. Fortunately, anyone with the IQ over 60 already knows better. Don’t get worked up over it, its just an auto-defense mechanism kicking in for the people that would be first to the death camps were it not for people like us. They just don’t know where to aim their indignation. You can try to educate them if you want, but they don’t understand concepts much beyond 2 anyway, so there’s hardly a point.
I have feared this a start too. Death threats, actions, and terror. I too, see copy cats,
if not supporters. He may be or not be a lone wolf…
His computer will tell the tale.
He may have been mentally ill, but so was Hitler…
“There is nothing wrong with the planet, the planet is fine… it’s the people who are ___!
The result of years of cynical fear mongering, alarmist propaganda, emotional blackmail and rabble rousing snake oil salesmen with an agenda has taken its toll on young minds. I wonder if the AGW industry knew what it was doing when they started to pervert the minds of the young with their cynical political manipulation and brain washing techniques?
Fear and loathing of humanity mixed with a fear of the future, mindless obedience to a political creed and a stunning ignorance of real science and its workings will the legacy of the AGW industry and we will all be paying the heavy price for years to come, the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted is only a part of the tragedy, the waste of a whole generation of cult inductees and graduates is the greatest sin of all.
Even when the AGW cult dies it will leave a terrible legacy behind for years in the minds of the young and that is the real tragedy.
James Sexton says:
I’d say schizophrenia wasn’t his difficulty. The very act of taking hostages, while not unheard of, would be quite remarkable for a schizophrenic.
——————-
You should stick to other areas, as you obviously don’t have a clue as to your biased inferences. In fact, paranoid schizophrenics taking hostages is so *NOT* uncommon, it’s a chapter in hostage negotiation textbooks, e.g.:
http://www.crcnetbase.com/doi/abs/10.1201/9781420037326.ch11
In any case, his rambling statement is very typical of some sort of mental illness. This whole thread is despicable.
hunter says:
September 1, 2010 at 9:22 pm
“He also used immigration and human extinction imagery in his magnum opus.
However, the reaction by the enviro-extremists is interesting. Just like when Oswald murdered JFK, many on the left seem unable to imagine that a deranged person from their general side could act violently. From the bitterness of the reaction today, this guy must have struck some strange nerve in the shakier true believers.”
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The strange nerve is as you stated, “human extinction imagery”. It’s still a bit of a closet discussion, but some are openly Malthusian. Which, if their arguments were to be true, Malthusian solutions would be correct. Recall, in Lee’s manifesto, he openly invoked Malthus. Yes it struck a nerve. Not only did he paint himself with them, he exposed them for what they are…….Malthusian. And it exposed me for what I really am………… a ufirstian!
Duckster says:
September 1, 2010 at 8:34 pm
“Everyone has a right to physical, intellectual and spiritual freedoms, and the right to act in whatever ways allow them to maximize well-being, provided that these actions do not interfere with the rights of others to do the same (including future generations).”
So, how do we measure the rights of future generations? If, for example, Henry Ford had a prophetic dream and saw the carnage of 40,000 deaths per year on the highway because of his development of an affordable car, would he have built it? Or, could he have possibly had a prophetic dream in which millions and millions of people might have thanked him everyday because he gave them such liberty, such ease? I, for one, who have escaped death a couple times in auto accidents, praise and thank him for going forward.
In the past environmentalists were on the side of science. They fought the US Corps of Engineers and others because they knew that those people had no idea about the unintended consequences (Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”) of their actions (channelizing streams; dam building; spraying DDT everywhere, etc.). Today’s environmentalists care less about science (it’s settled; no debate needed – notwithstanding serious and credible disputations).
The idea that environmentalism has become a religion is underpinned by the dogmatism that permeates their discussions, denials and excuses. Some appeal to stopping the world in order to “do the best by future generations” {If you really want to do that, then start by reading in its entirety “The Wealth of Nations” and go from there}. Others have decided that Gaia is “holy” and we are vermin that should be exterminated. These are different flavors of cultists. Of course, the latter are supported by popular media, as in Mr. Smith’s view of humans as viruses in “The Matrix” and Cameron’s portrayal of – guess what? – humans in “Avatar”.
As a geologist, I appreciate that the Earth has a “life” – a continuing set of changes stemming from things like asteroid impacts, heat transfer, radioactive decay, density changes, the phenomenon of water and its phase changes, and so on and on. But there’s nothing there to appreciate these things – just God and we humans who live here. We are what we’ve been waiting for over the many millenia, and we’ve progressed far from inception. Let’s keep progressing.
Look…I’m NOT a psychiatrist…but trust me, this guy was NUTS! One of the first symptoms of schizophrenia is delusional thought, not necessarily auditory hallucinations. I’m not denying that constant AGW propaganda didn’t feed into it, but let’s face it, there HAD to be some underlying psychological pathology. This guy had been nuts for years. He was a crazy looking for a cause.
I won’t deny that apocalyptic predictions of doom and gloom are just the kind of fodder that feeds these whack jobs (or they simply make it out of whole cloth), but you really need a truly “disturbed” individual to actually act on this stuff.
As they say say in Texas, “this feller just wasn’t ‘right’.”
So, how do we measure the rights of future generations?
This is why we have politics – it needs to be a discussion, and one without any final conclusion. It’s only this way that we find any kind of balance between societies needs, wants and goals, and the resources they have to reach them.
Today’s environmentalists care less about science (it’s settled; no debate needed – notwithstanding serious and credible disputations).
I can’t speak for all environmentalists – and there certainly are nutters and luddites out there – but most people I know who describe themselves as environmentalists are neither militant nor unwilling to discuss and negotiate. Making this current argument (environmentalism = socialism = world government) a straw man.
These are different flavors of cultists.
And again, it would be equally disingenuous of me to define an entire movement by its most extreme adherents – there are plenty of sane people in the tea party, but it would be very easy to deride them based on those who are waaaaaaaay out there.
@ur momisugly E.A.:
…his rambling statement is very typical of some sort of mental illness…
You know, as much as I like generalizations from someone with unknown credentials that actually take undefined symptoms and do not diagnose them, I’ll wait til the media talks to the doctors he saw in 2008 that “couldn’t find anything wrong with him.” I wonder what they have to say. I wonder if there are results sitting around in a file in the county he was arrested?
To the other point, you know what is even more despicable than this thread? The people who come here to post that believe that Joseph Stack was a right-wing nut job. Which was most of the US media at the time. There were all the reports about the Tea Party and tax resistance. Now we’ve got crickets chirping indignation here when the same inference is drawn, but the other direction.
I think they were both crazy, which makes me crazy to a lot of people I guess. That is how I know I am normal.
He who troubles his own house will inherit the wind,
And the fool will be servant to the wise of heart.
Proverbs 11;29, New King James Version
Many of you (but not all I stress), including Anthony, are swimming in some slimy waters on this one. Here’s my take:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/09/02/demagogue-meet-demagogue/
@Duckster says:
September 1, 2010 at 10:12 pm
“…there are plenty of sane people in the tea party, but it would be very easy to deride them based on those who are waaaaaaaay out there….”
Are you sure you’re Duckster? You sound awfully like PaulW. May I see your birth certificate?
And deride them (Tea Parties), as I gather from your comments you do, they are probably going to elect a brand-new Congress in the coming election. Then we’ll have a brand-new political discussion. And, because of the constructions of the US Constitution, the matter won’t be settled, and so we’ll carry the discussion over to 2012. At that juncture, in my estimation, the betterment of future generations will start to be greatly improved over the scandalous squandering we see now. And we’ll have had two more years to judge whether Prince Charles is a genius or an idiot.
Out of morbid curiosity, I followed the link at the head of the article to Think Progress. Those comments are so beyond the pale of rational discourse and the way they hide (but not snip) dissenting views is so revealing of a closed mindset.
So sad.
@ur momisugly Duckster:
“Everyone has a right to physical, intellectual and spiritual freedoms, and the right to act in whatever ways allow them to maximize well-being, provided that these actions do not interfere with the rights of others to do the same (including future generations).”
This is impossible. People’s rights will always overlap. It is a simple matter of physical space. Easy to think otherwise in an affluent country, sure, but it is not so simple. If it were, the world be an easier place to live.
Anthony,
The world is full of angry, ideological extremists who sometimes act out violently. Your post (and headline) suggests that environmental rhetoric was culpable in this tragic event. Is that the point you wanted to make with?
Because judging by the reaction of many readers in this thread, that sure seems the message they walked away with. And many go further and make the connection to certain individuals in the climate debate, such as Al Gore and James Hansen. Do you make a similar connection?
===============================
REPLY: Hmm, well, Keith….while you want to impugn me for a headline and some off color comments by people I can’t speak for, how about this one?
“Apocalypse Suckers”
Some people might find that headline offensive. If I were named in that story I certainly would. Were you trying to make people who look at doomsday scenarios (Sagan and Nuclear Winter as an example) as a serious threat look stupid? Are you trying to make people that have religious views who fear the bible version of Apocalypse look stupid? Is that the point you wanted to make with?
Or could people be offended by your flippant remark about “reading the corpse book on the beach” if they’ve recently experienced a death in the family? I know I could be, having been through that. Point is, you don’t always know how people will react to words you write.
Your post seems prescient given what happened today. The Discovery Channel criminal seemed to have a doomsday fixation brought on by science and media reporting of it. What if a fear of nanobots (as you mention) drives somebody to attack a tech company? Given what we saw today, I’d say it is just as plausible. Would a constant barrage of headlines like “Nanobots accelerating out of a control”, or “Nanobots will killl crops and make disease more likely” effect people who may be unable to separate fact from fiction more likely to react irrationally out of fear?
I’ve been on the receiving end of fear caused by bad media stories. Once, on Dec 31st, 1997 (El Niño deluge), just before midnight I had to go live on the air to quell a panic in the city of Oroville because a TV station in Sacramento erroneously announced that the Oroville dam had broken and water was flowing towards the city. In fact what had happened was that water was going over the spillway, a concern, but not a disaster yet. But, even trying to calm people with the truth I was villified and cursed in phone calls to our newsroom saying I was hiding the “real” truth, cuz they heard it on that other TV station. Emotions run high, people don’t think rationally, fear takes over. Is that what happened today? It sure looked like it. Do I blame media and people who feed it, yes, they bear a portion of responsibility, but the brunt of it lies with the individual. I say that as a participating member of media. Media needs to report responsibly. I don’t think they’ve done a good job on science and environment.
I once witnessed an event at a TV station from a crazy person who thought mind control was coming from his TV set. It was a gun and hostage situation like today. Working in TV and radio for 25 years I’ve seen all manner of crazy. I’m hardened with being assaulted at my job in ways you don’t understand nor could have experienced in media. If those experiences made for a poor headline choice, I apologize to people that were offended. We all have bad days. Me lately, I’m having a lot of them.
By the same token I think you made a bad headline and a flippant remark about death that could be seen as insensitive. Will I beat you up over it and call you a demagogue? No, it’s not worth the effort. All this sniping and what are we accomplishing but elevating the shrillness of the debate?
The poor headline and flippant remark aside, I agree with the content of your post below. We really should be talking about presenting science in a less frightening manner to the public and quelling bad reporting that lends itself to overly alarming people that can’t make distinctions. But for your purposes now, that’s being ignored and indignation over a headline seems to be juicier fare – Anthony
here’s Kieth’s post:
============
Apocalypse Suckers
Posted by: Keith Kloor
The September issue of Scientific American has a bunch of interesting articles, including this introductory essay on why humans always seem to be fearing one doomsday or another. Here’s the irony:
You might think that the enterprise of science, with its method and its facts, would inoculate us against the most extravagant doomsday obsessions. But it doesn’t. If anything, it just gives us more to worry about.
And who are the biggest worry warts? You guessed it:
Some of the most fervent and convincing doomsayers, after all, are scientists. Bill Joy, co-founder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, has warned that of out-of-control nanobots could consume everything on earth. Astronomer Royal Martin Rees has publicly offered a bet that a biological catastrophe—accidental or intentional—will kill at least one million people by 2020 (so far, no takers). Numerous climatologists sound the alarm about the possibility of runaway global warming. They all stand on the shoulders of giants: British economist Thomas Malthus predicted in the 19th century that the rise in population would lead to widespread famine and catastrophe. It never happened, but that didn’t stop Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich from renewing the warning in his 1968 book The Population Bomb when he predicted that global famine was less than two decades away. Catastrophe didn’t arrive then, either, but does that mean it never will? Not necessarily. Still, people often worry disproportionately about disasters that are unlikely to occur.
Now we come to the objective of the article:
Science may be a culprit, but it also offers some explanation for why we can be so fearful. Some researchers think that apocalyptic dread feeds off our collective anxiety about events that lie outside our individual control.
There’s more to tease you, but it’s just a web preview. To read the whole thing (as well as other articles with titles such as, “The Brief, Eventful Afterlife of a Human Corpse“), I suggest buying a print copy. Seems like perfect beach reading as we wind down summer.
I guess the poor, deluded soul got his wish about reducing the human population…
Just to clarify: my second comment was a follow-up to an inline response from Anthony to my first comment. Except I see that his response is no longer there. This might just be a technical glitch?
How shocking. I’ve just scanned through some of the comments on Think Progress. I do not believe I have ever seen such a large magnitude of intellectual and moral pollution concentrated on one spot. I hope never to see it again.
Keith Kloor,
Your “take” is wrong.
I’ve never heard of anybody taking hostages or resorting to any other kind of violence in the name of environmental skepticism.
Have you?
If not, why do you spread lies and insults under the pretense of “balanced view”?
While this guy obviously had problems, he, unlike the vast majority of the public that buys into AGW and other environmental fads, was both intelligent enough and honest enough to see through to the conclusions and obvious course of action that his beliefs required. Unfortunately he will be dismissed as just a crank and nut job, otherwise the public might be forced to confront the contradictions inherent in their beliefs that only minor adaptations are required to produce the solutions that they have been convinced are necessary.
The public believes that solving AGW is simple and painless, however any rational evaluation of the cuts in emissions that are called for in currently scientific (not political) proposals for solving the anticipated crisis can only be achieved by reducing the current global population by at least 60% in the next decade. But this fact has been carefully hidden from the public in all discussions of AGW and its solutions.
He snapped.
James Lee that is.
When you got hundreds of millions of people once in a while one of them is going to snap and do crazy violent things. It’s inevitable when dealing with numbers that large. Quite frankly I’m surprised that it doesn’t happen more often.
What a low, low article trying to make climate-political hay of a tragedy involving some deranged individual.
REPLY: Was MSNBC doing the same then when they initially reported on the Gore connection? Was Think Progress doing the same when conservatives were impugned as the culprits in the very first comments?
– Anthony
The usually sensationalist CNN and AP have almost completely ignored the “Eco terrorist” angle. Just move along, just a normal hostage taking.
At least they didn’t pick upon Joe Romm’s meme of “right wing, anti-immigration”
Headlines are:
Police kill gunman who held 3 at Discovery Channel (Yahoo/AP)
Gunman at Discovery Channel HQ shot dead, hostages rescued (CNN)
CNN added as a last paragraph:
Lee said he then felt an ”awakening,” watched former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary ”An Inconvenient Truth,” and decided he had been doing too little to protect the environment.
There are other threatening nutters out there.
Gene from Greenpeace India:
“If you’re one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:
We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.
And we be many, but you be few.”
http://www.webcitation.org/5oj86Zw5q