Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
After the tragic events in Maryland on Wednesday of this week, where a man took three hostages and tried to make The Discovery Channel a vehicle for publishing his manifesto, there have been accusations and counter accusations in the global warming world about taking advantage of this to advance political goals.
In particular, Joe Romm of Climate Progress harshly criticized Anthony Watts for the title of his blog post alerting readers to the situation. Personally, I think Anthony’s choice was mistaken, but not malicious–I’ve made worse editorial decisions myself.
And this may be one of them. The deluge of catastrophic predictions regarding global warming and its consequences have reached almost everyone on the planet, and perhaps unintentionally have replaced Cold War bomb scares as the primary source of doomsaying.
The messages are well-thought out and prepared by professional communicators, with disturbing and graphic images of a post-apocalyptic scenario lifted from Mad Max, and with about as much connection to reality.
In March of this year, a couple in Argentina shot their two children before committing suicide over fears of global warming. On Wednesday, in Maryland, James Lee apparently committed ‘suicide by cop’ after taking three hostages in an attempt to force the Discovery Channel to alter its programming to suit his fears over the environment.
At what point will we call to account those who have preached ‘the end of the earth as we know it’ to countless people? How many people will be driven to desperation by those who distort the science?
The IPCC’s AR4, published in 2007, painted a future with global warming as a serious, multinational problem that we should face together. You may agree or disagree with their findings–I agree with most of it, not all.
But nowhere does the work of thousands of scientists in peer-reviewed literature say that we are doomed, that civilization is at risk, that there is no future for us.
That falls to several groups of committed lobbyists, scientists, environmentalists and politicians who began saying the IPCC report was too conservative almost the day it was published. The evidence they bring forward for that claim is nowhere near as robust as the science referenced by the IPCC.
They are scaring people to death. How many more lives will be blighted or destroyed before they understand that their propaganda has real world effects?
It’s hard to work up too much sympathy for Mr. Lee–he took hostages, threatened to detonate an explosive device, and pretty much guaranteed his fate. And his worries weren’t confined to global warming. He was equally concerned with overpopulation, another scare story put out by some of the same people pumping hysteria over global warming.
At any rate, what these people are doing is despicable, if not murderous.
Sea levels are not going to rise by 20 feet. Or 10. Or five. There is not going to be a climatic tipping point that pushes our planet into a spiral of ever-increasing temperatures. Global warming is not going to cause the extinction of half the species on this planet, or even 1%.
And it is long past time that respected members of the scientific community publicly acknowledge those facts and helped bring this debate back within the realm of reality.
My father met Jim Jones briefly before he moved to Guyana with his flock, and described him as intelligent and persuasive, able to talk reasonably about a multitude of subjects. We don’t need more smooth talkers preaching the language of despair. We can now see the results. In their zeal to communicate their fears of the effects of global warming that go far beyond the predictions of mainstream science, those who Anthony called ‘warmistas’ in his blog title and who I call alarmists and sometimes hysterics have created a library of disturbing words and images that can influence the vulnerable.
Are these people responsible for the tragedies in Argentina and Maryland? No. But did they act responsibly, caveating their predictions as personal fears instead of the verdict of science. No. They were trying to scare you. They succeeded too well.
It’s time to stop the hysteria.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Sponsored IT training links:
Join 220-701 online training program is the best way to prepare for 640-863 exam. Get we offer best quality 646-364 dumps to help you maximize success chances.
It’s time to stop the hysteria:
You can start here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/09/harry_reid_and_energy_legislat.html
This Greenpeace video of an angry kid is a fine example of doom saying:
Wearing my psychologist hat, Romm was claiming “messaging” was the problem. Not instense enough. So this guy understood the intense urgency. Hansen even writes about a wipe out bad world for his grand kids.
I read the terrorists manifesto and it lines up very accuraely with the “messaging”.
Fear of peak food. Over population is another fear. If the greenie weenies want to declare war and justice on skeptics, surely some will overdose on the koolaid and act out.
Read this guys manifesto. There isn’t anything uncommon in his beliefs. Was it drafted by the science is in peers?
By the constant drum beat of “all is lost” “repent!” the events of yesterday were
inevitable….
Very reasoned post…
Were there to be any truth at all in the scenarios painted in the name of AGW, almost all governments would classify the information and the populaces would be the last to know.
The very fact that they trumpet the nonsense throughout the media gives great comfort: we are safe in the knowledge that this is yet another tax raising scam and ultimately for the benefit of politicians’ post retirement opportunities.
And that is the definitive answer.
Tom,
While I agree with most of your essay, I think those that preach hysteria DO have some responsibility for events created by those who are influenced by that hysteria.
Tom,
You once wrote about the moral dilema of renouncing to some of our assets for the sake of conserving the planet.
Good to see that you also appreciate the moral hazard of disseminating hysteria and fear mongering. And the moral problem of falsely invoking science where there is no scientific evidence.
And just now another oil platform blew up just off the LA coast, so this will add to the hysteria and politics of green. http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=13089364
Interesting though, that they excesses listed have all been from Warmist Believers, sold on Doom by the Establishment. While greedy, paid skeptics, deniers, and flat earthers have not lost their marbles, taken hostages, committed murders or even, if I may be forgiven – over stated their facts in the first place. We’ve just been saying, slow down there Nelly!
I’ve yet to have it explained to me how a longer growing season, animals having a longer season to mate and raise babies, and somehow warmer and longer growing seasons are a bad thing.
The rest of it is pure theatrics……..
This was the same thing Michael Crichton wrote about in his novel “State of Fear” which I know a lot of people are against environmentally, but there was also other ideas in there just kind of related to it.
He devoted a few pages to annalyzing the media headlines and advocates thereof on their “doom” thinking after the end of the Cold War. He talked about (which the novel name was based on) the culture of fear where media hypes up people’s fears…and just lets the fears take hold. He cautioned that this approach was going to have consequences…..
In addition, he advocated the abolition of all current environmental organizations and the creation of new ones that would work to understand and protect the environment in a responsible way. Its too bad this thought was not taken seriously because once the chicken little routine is done, environmentalism is on a collision course with angry Americans who will feel anti-green just because of this entire episode. This will be a true tragedy in the end.
Its a bad situation overall when there will be a large hole in true environmental organizations…we do need to be responsible with the environment, but that cuts both ways. Being honest in press releases and protecting the environment are both just as important issues.
Hadley has recently concluded that if you strip out El Nino and La Nina effects, the temperature change from 1999 to 2008 was a Big Zero K.
Global warming has landed, probably to be replaced by climate change, downwards. August in the UK was the coldest for 17 years. The night of 31st August was the coldest at Leeming RAF station [Yorkshire] since records began in 1947.
And if you look critically at IPCC data and assumptions, its predicted AGW forcing of c. 1.5 W/m^2 has within it an assumed 0.7W/m^2 from ‘cloud albedo cooling’ for which there is not experimental proof. Furthermore, look at NASA’s claimed scientific explanation of it, apparently believed by most if not all working in climate science: http://terra.nasa.gov/FactSheets/Aerosols/
‘The high aerosol concentrations in these clouds provide the nucleation points necessary for the formation of many small liquid water droplets. Up to 90% of visible radiation (light) is reflected back to space by such clouds’
It’s totally wrong physics which replaces the original partially correct optical scattering physics devised initially by Bohren as an approximation which cannot predict more than 50% albedo, and for thick clouds gives no droplet size dependence.
Has someone or some organisation been telling scientific fibs?
Repent: the end is near (and always has been).
Happen to write a similar posting entitled ” Defeated & Frustrated: Climate Activists Turn to Terror, Go Berserk” http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2010/09/defeated-frustrated-climate-activists.html
The very idea of this post is ridiculous and offensive (not to mention every bit as hysterical as you accuse AGW supports of being). Putting the actions of a madman at the feet of his particular delusion is inappropriate and illogical — it’s like blaming Jodie Foster for John Hinckley. Let’s continue to make this discussion about the facts and the science, and lose the hysterical rhetoric.
Thank you, Thomas Fuller, for articulating what many of us have been attempting to since this tragic fiasco started.
Here I will disagree because the actions of the followers should be placed directly at the feet of those who make the dramatic public statements and they should be held accountable for the actions of their followers. The Discovery Channel is not an innocent victim in this situation but helped promote the outcome!
Environ Mentalism & Warmism are religions like any other. You have to preach doomsaying at every opportunity to keep the flock interested and in fear. No matter the religion you cannot prevent what happened yesterday until the doomsday predictions stop and that is not going to happen.
Nice post. The “warmistas” certainly pour a lot of emotion into pushing their idea that the world is about to burn to a crisp. Look at the work by Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Cameron– all people who have a vested interested in appealing to your emotions.
Scientists should work by reason and analysis. I’ve seen too many scientists abandon the core principles of discovering how the world works and instead try and push some unsupported conclusion through research findings.
I remember when I was an undergraduate and we were analyzing samples in independent projects. My project was to determine concentration of phosphates released by dishwashing detergents. (A tedious project that ended up giving me a water bill of $120 for that month.) But one of my classmates was determining the concentration of nicotine in cigarettes. Her nicotine concentrations for several cigs were way off, and for 3 varieties the concentration was 0/cigarette. The conclusions she should have drawn was obvious. But instead, she showed a video of a congressional committee meeting with Rep. Waxman from California talking about the dangers of smoking, and her conclusion was the smoking was bad for you.
Now I’m not going to start smoking because her methods for nicotine determination were shoddy. Her premise, however, was laughable because it relied on an emotional argument instead of a scientific one.
There are many causes for people trying to generate biased research, from the nefarious such as political belief and attempts to generate funding, to the innocuous such as misinterpreting data and unknowingly working from a faulty premise. The rational investigator should understand the flaws and adjust research methods to discover the truth. Injection of emotion perpetuates the problem.
WUWT has made one of the greatest contributions for the sanity of mankind. The best we can do to stop these armageddonian prophecies is to take them and to treat them as they are: A JOKE, a monumental joke which is a menace also, as it can provoke death by laughing.
[snip]
As Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew and developer of modern advertising and media manipulation) indicated, you can “drive” the common consensus by appealing to the baser and primal instincts of the masses.
This is a publicity campaign and not a scientific endeavor. The driving force is simply the massive amounts of money that are available for impure scientific research. Impure in the sense that it is agenda driven, with conclusions used to shape both the endeavor as well as its interpretation.
Supporters include not only the scientists set to profit from the research but all of the financial sectors that no longer have “industrialized” profit centers. Those have slipped away into the Asian hinterlands such that money begets money rather than productivity. Carbon credits? Carbon exchanges? Same as derivatives and CDS and CDO etc. Those unfortunate individuals (the masses, actually) have been co-opted into this program of “save us from ourselves” which is the ideal manipulative tool to get those individuals to give up their values and rights without objection.
Climate-gate will doubtless go down in history as the definitive “bubble-burster”, before the bubble got moderately inflated. We should be thankful for that person or persons that were responsible for revealing the whole rotten mess. WUWT, Climate Audit, JoNova and other sites of “reason” must continue to stand firm against the onslaught, as the tide is turning in favor of rationality. Fear-mongering and “sky-is-falling” rhetoric eventually get exposed for what they are, if we continue to chip away at them.
The opposing skeptic cry which might produce hysteria is, “Don’t wreck the (any) nation’s economy on CO2 abatement.”
Skeptics can get mighty riled up about that, but somehow, it doesn’t seem exactly equal to CAGW hysteria.
Would you go into the Discovery Channel building with a gun and a bomb to stop the coal cars heading into power plants if you really believed that they were equivalent to the trains to Auschwitz?
DocattheAutopsy says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:07 am
You touch a very interesting point. We should investigate what was the real motivation behind that serie of prohibitions, which began many years before the Global Warming scam. What was its purpose?, why these were made and promoted by the very same people?. Were/are they so altruistic as to worry about our health?, don’t think so, “follow the money” and you’ll find the answer.
Some posters at Joe Romm’s were trying to link James Lee to “righties” because he wanted to stop illegal immigration. What was his reasoning? To prevent births of more humans; the Malthusian mandate. Isn’t population control a main tenet of radical enviros? Why yes it is.
Not all environmentalists are eco terrorists, but all eco terrorists are environmentalists 🙂
Esp, this is still my favorite video:
Hippies Wail for Dead Trees – Watch more Funny Videos
Enneagram says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:08 am
Moderator: That SNIP proves that you almost died by laughing!
Stop the Hysteria……… Stop the Prophesy…….. Simples (shwick)
Tom,
You sum up very well what I have been trying to say for years, and you have said it much better.
Thank you very much for being a voice of reason in what is becoming increasingly unreasonable.
I’m sorry, but this post smacked of “Gee, can’t we all just get along?” Give me break. There will always be hucksters, power-players and plenty of meek to go along with them. I admit that I read maybe less than 1% of the stuff re: this latest nutjob. When it came on the news, I tuned the channel…I couldn’t take the journalistic/editorial comments about “why did he do it?”
He’s a mentally ill person. So are the people who killed their kids b/c of GW. The fact that hucksters brought the perpetrators’ illnesses to the fore means practically NOTHING. These sick people made bad decisions, on their own volition. Society probably had plenty of warning concerning these individuals, but chose to do nothing about it. Funny thing, freedom. Freedom has forced us to mainstream everyone. Freedom forces us to give every last chance; not allowing us to predict the future.
The free and sane have every right to choose their environment and science (ie, buyer beware). The free and sane have deemed it necessary to incorporate the insane into society; to leave them be; to not judge them beyond their “quirks.”
This is one of the prices of freedom. Bad science is a price of freedom. Bad government is a price of freedom, until it takes freedoms away (oh, wait…)
I think it’s silly to blame AGW proponents for insane acts such as these. Can we move on, please?
Another eco-terrorist in training.
Listen to the hate dripping through the monologue.
Listen to the not so hidden threats.
Already got his hoody on. Just needs his ski mask. Another martyr, a tool, another useful idiot of the left.
Greenpeace – just another terrorist breeding organization.
The Story of Lies: Greenpeace in Your Kid’s Schoool
‘In case you weren’t reading the New York Times front page today, we wanted to point you to an especially disturbing story. The Times wrote about The Story of Stuff, “a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, [which] has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.” What classrooms? Very likely the school your child attends, since over 7,000 American schools or churches have ordered the DVD.
The Story of Stuff highlights the very extreme left’s Greenpeace view of America. Essentially it tells the story of how America is not a nation to be proud of, and in fact, your child should be ashamed for living in it. For example: after implying that the radios for sale in Radio Shack are assembled by 15 year olds in Mexico, and by purchasing one, you contribute to the exploitation of the third world and the eventual end of the Earth, the film’s creator and narrator Annie Leonard says…’
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/05/11/the-story-of-lies-greenpeace-in-your-kids-school/
“The deluge of catastrophic predictions regarding global warming and its consequences have reached almost everyone on the planet, and perhaps unintentionally have replaced Cold War bomb scares as the primary source of doomsaying.”
Tom, it’s the same reason that horror movies are so popular.
People like to be scared of something, then the herd mentality kicks in,
and the more people that act scared, etc etc
But you can only play that for so long, people have short attention spans.
The movie business is smart enough to capitalize on it though.
They know when the fear factor wears thin, to turn those films into
something to make fun of.
Global warming has run from Gore’s horror movie, to old tired and overit now.
The best they can hope for is to turn it into a “slasher” movie, so people will
still pay to see it.
Then they forget the “kid” factor. Kids rebel. As soon as global warming becomes something that their parents are all about, they will have nothing to do with it.
It won’t be cool any more.
Thomas Fuller
Thought provoking post. Although I wouldn’t want to blame warmists for a particular incident by someone obviouslty deranged, the wider point can be made that we are breeding a generation of nihilists who believe the world is going to end soon and that its our fault and no one is doing anything about it, so why should they be bothered to become part of society and make a contribution?
I came across ths attitude ,most recently when delivering a lecture on the history of climate change to a class of 11 year olds. Not only were they convinced the end was nigh and it was all OUR fault but the degree of scientific ignorance was astonishing. The atmosphere apparently comprises around 80% Co2 of which man has contributed 100%.
Certainly the doom mongers,whether scientists, activists or media have a duty to be more responsible in the message they give out but I’m not holding my breath that will happen.
tonyb
So the “warmista” in the headline is inappropriate, but widely-used “denier” (referencing the Holocaust, of course) is acceptable?
Enviro sleeper cells waking up?
http://notrickszone.com/2010/09/01/one-of-the-sleepers-awakens/
I support Watts.
The enemy has made themselves an enemy of mankind. They’ve used the rhetoric of the big lie and an endless series of threats against anyone who opposes them. To concede any ground to them at this point is appeasement. They did it. They programmed this guy (and others). They might as well have been in the building, because, they don’t disagree enough to actually condemn this behavior and their own behavior that caused it. They are guilty. Don’t let them get away with it.
Misanthropy is to be wiped out.
ExpVid
That was truly a very disturbing video and Greenpeace is truly a despicable organization.
MikeEE
The evidence they bring forward for that claim is nowhere near as robust as the science referenced by the IPCC.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/robust
4. rough, rude, or boisterous
(cherry-picked for precision and clarity)
I always liked the way John Mellencamp put it. Most applicable to the James Lee incident is the line and the line I think of often when approaching environmental issues….
“But what we do to each other are the worst things that we do.”
12/25 Another Sunny Day Written by John Mellencamp and George Green
We see it on TV, we get calls on the phone
By the prophets of doom, they won’t leave us alone.
The planet is dying and there’s no time to spare.
They spend all our days sowing seeds of despair.
We get enough bad news to harden our hearts.
This fear that we feed on is what’s keeping us apart.
To say that we’re doomed is just an obvious remark.
And it don’t make you right, it just keeps you in the dark.
I don’t want to live angry, I don’t want to live scared.
I don’t need no more prophets crying “brother beware.”
Just put some work in my hands and give me a dollar to spare.
And don’t let me sow those seeds of despair.
Well, this earth is a graveyard, it will swallow our bones.
It was here long before us, It will be here when we’re gone.
And it’s a vain generation that looks for a sign.
Don’t you think we could make better use of our time.
Yeah, the air could be cleaner and the water could too.
But what we do to each other are the worst things that we do.
And we can treasure our freedom behind our locked doors.
But God speed the day when we’re lonely no more.
I don’t want to live angry, I don’t want to live scared.
I don’t need no more prophets crying “brother beware.”
Just put some work in my hands and give me a dollar to spare.
And don’t let me sow those seeds of despair
Don’t forget the WWF 911 ‘advert’ for conservation:
Sonicfrog says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:17 am
Esp, this is still my favorite video:
Hippies Wail for Dead Trees
==========================================================
That one never gets old!
This is the central reality: the “Enviro-Marxist complex” is a multi-billion dollar business, and its goal is the weakening of Western culture, and specifically American power.
Mr. Fuller is much too kind or believing of the IPCC, which is not a scientific body. It is a political body whose mission is to show the effects of global warming (by man) and make a (false) case for (government) control of CO2 emissions; they do so regardless of the fact that we are cooling. Take virtually anything they conclude and one can show that it is flawed (often seriously) or misrepresented by omission or selection, as how can it be evidence of warming when we are not warming and even cooling?
Then, with the political agenda of the IPCC, the junk science of the IPCC assumptions, and its seriously flawed and unprofessional AR4 report, the fear-mongers enter the scene and scare people.
Please do not underestimate the biased and goal-driven product of the IPCC. Temperature records are systematically altered by professionals just to create warming. These alterations cannot be defended in any way, except for the need to show warming when it is not happening or not great enough.
Among the billions of people out there, is it surprising that 3 might go off the deep end over some issue? I am truly surprised that there are not more such unfortunate events as yesterday and as in Argentina.
It can be defended that there is not a shred of defendable science that supports, with even slight confidence, the proposal that human activities warm the global climate in any detectable amount, except for the urban heat island effect. The confidence levels expressed by the IPCC are obscene and often represent exaggerations of the scientific input by the upper level editors after the final draft left the scientists. This is highly unethical and misrepresents reality.
It is not in the fabric of the IPCC to admit or report that global warming is not a threat. First, their mission is to show that it is. Second, not to show attention-getting effects and to admit that warming is not happening or is not a threat would immediately cancel the IPCC’s reason for existing and essentially call for their own dissolution. Thus, as with any bureaucracy whose main goal is to perpetuate itself, the results presented by the IPCC are a foregone conclusion – nothing new as they have to somehow come up with effects, either honestly or dishonestly.
So let my try to understand this. First you say:
, but then you continue:
This is a contradiction. Although the IPCC does not expect a 20ft sea level rise, its other predictions are based on the very runaway effects you dismiss (6.4°C in its high level scenario). It explicitly states that 20-30% of species will come under extinction pressure at 1/2 of this rise. It seems to me that either you accept the basic science the IPCC promotes and thereby accept the forecasts based on that science, or you throw the whole lot out, forecasts and all.
I read this a little as I would read a Dr Curry article: trying to have your cake and eat it.
I expect the Obama Administration to shut down all the cable nature channels to prevent a recurrance of this incident, at a cost of 9,000 jobs.
It only stands to reason, and now there’s legal precedent.
Fantastic post, Mr.Fuller. It’s nail, hit, head.
The scaremongering by all the people involved in the AGW side of Climate Science, coupled with the media, is getting close to ridiculous.
Ben D. says:
September 2, 2010 at 8:57 am
This was the same thing Michael Crichton wrote about in his novel “State of Fear” ….. Its too bad this thought was not taken seriously because once the chicken little routine is done, environmentalism is on a collision course with angry Americans who will feel anti-green just because of this entire episode. This will be a true tragedy in the end.
___________________________________________________________
You are correct. I am a former Greenpeace and Sierra Club member. I also got burned when “animal welfare” became irrational “animal rights” I can personally say both the words “environmental” or “animal welfare” immediately provoke suspicion. I am likely to discount anything anyone using those words says because I feel there is very likely a hidden agenda and I can be bother wasting my time trying to find it.
It is really very sad the “environmental movement” is really just a vehicle for “political change” and not about the environment.
And yet Spain is burning.
“disturbing words and images that can influence the vulnerable.”
With due respect, Thomas Fuller, you’re talking out your arse. The guy threw thousands of dollars around two years ago and was declared sane. Two years later he spent “around three weeks or a month. I did a lot of research and experiments” manufacturing (apparently viable) bombs from scratch.
While homeless. He developed his bombmaking skills, from what I can gather from the news outlets, in a homeless shelter. Could it be that he actually did it in a private residence that he had money to fund and he was just a regular guy who’d swallowed the relentless CAGW propaganda?
The departed James Lee was functioning higher than most of the people who commented on the related thinkprogress thread. He sure had better spelling and grammar, and probably capitalised fewer random words and used less redundant punctuation in his “manifesto”.
Kaczynski will die in jail. Two psychiatrists declared him sane.
Media hyperbole drove the *entirely sane* James Lee to do what he did.
“the vulnerable”? Bollocks.
The CAGW/CC movement isn’t based on science, but emotion. Take away the hysteria, and the whole thing would fall flat on its face. Remember Stephen Schneider’s famous quote: ”we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.” He was right, they did have to, but it only works for a while.
Here’s a quote by Andrew Bolt, from 2007: “One day all the charlatans, scare-mongers and assorted scientists who decided to tell lies for a green cause will be held to account. I suspect that shaming day is coming faster than many realise.” How prescient he was. Their lies are now coming home to roost.
Science czar Holdren pretty much in his book covers the same issues as the ecobomber,
http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/
Coincidence? Parasite babies? Compulsory abortions?
I used to think about Limbaugh’s proposition that obortion would be the cause of the next civil war in this country. Nah. Then I used of what would be the cause, if any, of the next big war, and peak oil for me has been replaced by AGW. Doesn’t the Nupty of Nashville, et al,’s theory of AGW, as presented to rent-a-crowd in recording studio/theater, lay down the gauntlett to under developed countries to ‘do something about it’. In WWII, the British leadership was able to rally the entire British citizenship to brace for war, because their destruction was camped over the channel in France. Doesn’t AGW do the same for the under developed countries today.
I watched a French political puppet show which depicted Bush in the White House with Stallone as defense secretary, Stallone as Secretary of State and Stallone as chief of staff…..war anyone?? Here is an article on the answer to all our problems…
(hopefully ANNA can tell us a little bit about Thorium)
from AEP @ Telegraph:
‘…….We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast. Muddling on with the status quo is not a grown-up policy. The International Energy Agency says the world must invest $26 trillion (£16.7 trillion) over the next 20 years to avert an energy shock. The scramble for scarce fuel is already leading to friction between China, India, and the West. nThere is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power. Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor’s day or Thursday – produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week. Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. “It’s the Big One,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering. “Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels,” he said. Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium. After the Manhattan Project, US physicists in the late 1940s were tempted by thorium for use in civil reactors. It has a higher neutron yield per neutron absorbed. It does not require isotope separation, a big cost saving. But by then America needed the plutonium residue from uranium to build bombs. “They were really going after the weapons,” said Professor Egil Lillestol, a world authority on the thorium fuel-cycle at CERN. “It is almost impossible make nuclear weapons out of thorium because it is too difficult to handle. It wouldn’t be worth trying.” It emits too many high gamma rays. You might have thought that thorium reactors were the answer to every dream but when CERN went to the European Commission for development funds in 1999-2000, they were rebuffed. Brussels turned to its technical experts, who happened to be French because the French dominate the EU’s nuclear industry. “They didn’t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology,” he said. Another decade was lost. It was a sad triumph of vested interests over scientific progress. “We have very little time to waste because the world is running out of fossil fuels. Renewables can’t replace them. Nuclear fusion is not going work for a century, if ever,” he said. The Norwegian group Aker Solutions has bought Dr Rubbia’s patent for the thorium fuel-cycle, and is working on his design for a proton accelerator at its UK operation. Victoria Ashley, the project manager, said it could lead to a network of pint-sized 600MW reactors that are lodged underground, can supply small grids, and do not require a safety citadel. It will take £2bn to build the first one, and Aker needs £100mn for the next test phase.
The UK has shown little appetite for what it regards as a “huge paradigm shift to a new technology”. Too much work and sunk cost has already gone into the next generation of reactors, which have another 60 years of life. So Aker is looking for tie-ups with the US, Russia, or China. The Indians have their own projects – none yet built – dating from days when they switched to thorium because their weapons programme prompted a uranium ban. America should have fewer inhibitions than Europe in creating a leapfrog technology. The US allowed its nuclear industry to stagnate after Three Mile Island in 1979. Anti-nuclear neorosis is at last ebbing. The White House has approved $8bn in loan guarantees for new reactors, yet America has been strangely passive. Where is the superb confidence that put a man on the moon? A few US pioneers are exploring a truly radical shift to a liquid fuel based on molten-fluoride salts, an idea once pursued by US physicist Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee in the 1960s. The original documents were retrieved by Mr Sorensen. Moving away from solid fuel may overcome some of thorium’s “idiosyncracies”. “You have to use the right machine. You don’t use diesel in a petrol car: you build a diesel engine,” said Mr Sorensen. Thorium-fluoride reactors can operate at atmospheric temperature. “The plants would be much smaller and less expensive. You wouldn’t need those huge containment domes because there’s no pressurized water in the reactor. It’s close-fitting,” he said.
Nuclear power could become routine and unthreatening. But first there is the barrier of establishment prejudice. When Hungarian scientists led by Leo Szilard tried to alert Washington in late 1939 that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, they were brushed off with disbelief. Albert Einstein interceded through the Belgian queen mother, eventually getting a personal envoy into the Oval Office.
Roosevelt initially fobbed him off. He listened more closely at a second meeting over breakfast the next day, then made up his mind within minutes. “This needs action,” he told his military aide. It was the birth of the Manhattan Project. As a result, the US had an atomic weapon early enough to deter Stalin from going too far in Europe.
The global energy crunch needs equal “action”. If it works, Manhattan II could restore American optimism and strategic leadership at a stroke: if not, it is a boost for US science and surely a more fruitful way to pull the US out of perma-slump than scattershot stimulus. Even better, team up with China and do it together, for all our sakes…………………………………………………………………………………………………….’
Bad news, not sure where to post this, its OT, but saw this on the web:
Looks like another rig exploded with one person missing…
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/02/rescue-efforts-underway-after-oil-rig-accident-in-gulf/?hpt=T2
Well said.
It’s long past time for the ‘over the top’ rhetoric by the AGW high priests to cease.
A temperate debate requires temperate speech.
There has been little of the former, and even less of the latter.
The events of yesterday are the fruit of many years of intemperate claims and outright LIES.
The firebombing of SUV’s & buildings, bombs to ‘enemies of environment’, the toppling of a radio tower…the commonality in spirit of these deeds (to name a few) only differentiate in magnitude, and the tools employed. Period.
In the time of my youth, words had weight, deeds had consequences, arguments advanced on the merits of verifiable facts, and a refusal to debate honestly and openly meant disrepute.
You reap what you sow.
That truism has not lost it’s weight, and pretending otherwise will not sweeten the bitter bread sitting before you.
The reality check has come due.
Alarmists hate all life.
The poster boy after all, is Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick. Yeah, he turned out to be an incompetent statistician, and that is no scientist. But what was he directly saying? He was saying that tree growth had taken an “alarming” jump upward. What?
Trees are growing faster than ever before and for that we are supposed to “wake up” as Algore put it and trash our economy to the tune of $4000/year/family according to some estimates, and delete our cheapest fuels and switch to bird-killers (wind farms) and IQ destroyers (nuclear–see Ernest Sternglass book Secret Fallout–available for free download on the web) and on and on.
Idsos and others’ research on plants confirms that CO2 will cause faster tree growth–and fast growth of other plants as well. Trees benefit the most, but we get more grasses and food also, and Mann is saying this is terrible? WUWT?
As a biologist and ecologist, I know that biodiversity depends on many factors, of which the most important single factor is “primary production,” plants. Food for all else. So biodiversity will be rising and that means extinctions? More animals equals extinctions? Huh?
I can confirm that such illogic really is being taught to today’s biology students, but it is not illogic that is the heart of the problem. I spent 13 years in Scientology, and learned a number of critical things from them. One is that if you assume everybody means well, “you will make a dog’s breakfast of it.” When someone means ill, you must face it and say so or the evil will continue.
Alarmists are out to destroy ALL life–trees, plants, biodiversity, animals, “overpopulation” and YOU.
They are a real danger. I have seen proposals, for example, to fill the skies with aluminum to deflect sunlight and cool the Earth. I have also seen some evidence that they may actually be doing that in Chemtrails sites (not credible, but I don’t discount them completely). Now, most biologists do not take “Inorganic Chemistry,” but I did and recommend it to all who would enhance the life of the Earth. Sure, I learned about speakers and electronics–but I also learned about solubilities and poisons. Aluminum is one of the most abundant elements in Earth’s crust but it is normally 100% tied up in clays and NOT available to life forms as an ion to metabolize. We did not evolve with it and cannot handle it. It is toxic to life. Throwing it into the atmosphere would result in a real ecologic harm. After a while, it would chemically degrade back into clay, and then life could recover. In the meantime, the harm could be awesome.
Similarly other “remedies” for low ice or whatever are also devastating. In 2008, millions starved in agony as farmland was used for biofuel–corn ethanol, and thus removed from food production. “Carbon credits” today often involve taking marginal farmland from poor farmers and planting fast-growing–but useless–trees on it.
It is time to face reality. Alarmists are out to destroy ALL life–trees, plants, biodiversity, animals, “overpopulation” and YOU.
Who preaches hysteria?
It’s Fox News that preaches hysteria. Fox News sends back half of the fellow citizens to the medieval ages.
REPLY: I guess then this must be the Medieval Internet we are communicating on then 😉 -Anthony
Lee said he experienced an ‘‘awakening” when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.”
“Hey – it’s a planetary emergency, a climate crisis. We have only a few years, or months even. The tipping point is here. This summer’s extremes confirm it. So action has to be taken!
“Nothing is more important than saving … 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.”
They hate people. Animals for food consumption are also despised.
One of the great repercussions of the “Age of the Web and Cell Phone” is that Chicken Little has a front row seat and a great big mouse with all the superduper features that no one else can afford. He’s subsidized! If (write this down, I feel a classic line coming on) we don’t steel ourselves to ignore his everpresent screams, we will not survive! (Well.. it wasn’t that great was it?)
PS: When everything and everyone in the whole wide world is riding on a see-saw, in the middle of a cyclone, the safest place is in the middle. Think about it. Believe nothing you hear (or read or see on the web) and only half of what you see actually happening live, within 100m, in front of you, with your own little eye-balls.
A thoughtful post, Mr Fuller, but the world has always had it’s share of crazy people who lose touch with reality and one more reaching a personal tipping point is no surprise. If Mr Lee had not written his rather odd ‘manifesto’ along the lines that he did, he would have cited other factors as the cause of the world’s ills. For any of us to point out the fallacies behind the reasoning of such a highly disturbed person is not very productive.
Politicians desperate to manufacture a tax windfall and those supporting them with pseudo-science that is more akin to Shamanism are merely a part of the general silliness and venality of the human race, which does like the delicious thrill of frightening itself with imagined bogeymen of any age. Fears of global warming will pass, as will fears of overpopulation, mass starvation and whatever may be in vogue at any particular time. In the late 19th century, my Grandparents’ generation worried about a Russian invasion of New Zealand and the coastal fortifications are there still there
Tom Fuller and Anthony Watts,
If Anthony’s “Warmista” post was the precipitating cause of this post by you Tom, then it speaks for the resulting benefit of Anthony’s post, whether everyone agrees with some of Anthony’s editorial choices or not.
Thanks Anthony and Tom.
John
Tom, thoughtful post.
There is a certain type of cause driven person that is always yearning inside for a life or death struggle. If it isn’t environmentalism or AGW it could’ve been human rights in China, abortion clinics (Rudolph) animal rights (Gisborne), whaling, lab animal testing, fear of the US federal government (McVeigh), development (Kaczynski) communism or whatever.
Not that these causes aren’t worthy of protest but some people are just wired to explode for a cause. If AGW had never even been hypothesized he still likely would have had a manifesto.
People are forgetting the kid in Australia a couple of years ago who committed suicide because of his fears about global warming.
@Curiousgeorge That was an old platform in 300 feet of water that dated from 1980. All rescued, and probably no ecological damage. The platform was not producing, but they continued to do routine maintenance on it. The WSJ has no comment on what caused the explosion, but if the BP platform had not gone boom, this would not have even made the news. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575467600528128386.html
Joe Romm, the pot calling the kettle black…
FergalR says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:45 am
“disturbing words and images that can influence the vulnerable.”
You are getting confused by the word “vulnerable” and linking it falsely to ‘soft in the head”. James Lee’s intelligence is no fig leaf for AGW’s shared guilt in his actions.
Take 911 as a comparator.
19 or so Saudi degree educated professionals hijacked airliners and committed mass murder. Their driving ideology was Islamic Jihad; the root of Jihadi violent motivation is fear of catastrophe – the idea that Islam is besieged and unjustly under attack and its future existence is in danger. Combined with an extravagent dose of self-righteous superiority.
CAGW has both these – a narrative of danger of future catastrophe closely linked with a self-righteous morality.
All terrorist acts require above average competence, discipline and intelligence. Does that mean they cannot be motivated by hate-filled ideology? Cojones!
paulw says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:59 am
Who preaches hysteria?
It’s Fox News that preaches hysteria. Fox News sends back half of the fellow citizens to the medieval ages.
Oh – that’s useful. They can get some first hand data for us on the medieval warm period.
Zeke the Sneak says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:24 am
Yesterday night I was told by History channel that we all are going to die of OBESITY!. They say that never in the past the world has had such a big amounts of food available so as we are prone to unconscious consumption we’ll surely die weighing more than a thousand pounds.
Then if we do not die because of Al Baby’s Global Warming, we have the alternative choices of dying because of a falling comet or a falling asteroid or dying from obesity.
Fact is, that THEY are already wandering zombies, scarcely living corpses, pretending to be scientists, like” maked up” rossy cheeks Al Baby or dead walking “patchy”, a not so well disguised voodoo zombie.
So let us remember them the biblical words:
“And then there will be crying and screeching teeth ”
Tradition tells that there are two gates to cross after death: One the ASURA LOKA, the devils’ gate, and the other, the DEVA LOKA, de god’s gate.
Wonder which one you will be crossing through?
Personally, I don’t give much of a hoot what Joe Rom m thinks.
phlogiston says:
September 2, 2010 at 10:24 am
…and DATA will be SPIN FREE!
It sure seems some people have an innate need to have some object to resist/overcome/fear. In the Cold War days it was the Soviets (or the Imperialists, if you were Russian) or Nuclear War, God-fearing Christians have Satan (and God!), GWB had terrorists, and lots of people have CAGW.
Instead of trying to convince people that climate change won’t be catastrophic, perhaps we should offer up an alternative fear for them to focus on. Like nations collapsing under the weight of their national debt. (I wonder how Greece is getting along these days.) Perhaps the Tea Party movement could adopt a sales pitch something like “Don’t sweat the climate change – it won’t matter if the country goes broke!”
I pop over here every now and again, just to see what is going on. When I read the comments I frequently don’t know whether to laugh or cry, or even to cry from laughing.
Now I haven’t read all of the comments, just a few. But I would be interested to find out the opinions of the Powers That Be, i.e. Anthony, Tom, maybe Willis et al on posts like that from Lady Life Grows, after all isn’t this meant to be the Number One Science Blog.
I coined the term ‘The Warmista’. It doesn’t take the plural, it is a collective noun.
It’s from the Italian. Fascista (“Fascist Youth”) was a magazine designed for youth in Italy under Benito Mussolini’s Fascist state.
I got annoyed with ‘denier’ and decided to fight fire with fire.
sherlock says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:36 am
This is the central reality: the “Enviro-Marxist complex” is a multi-billion dollar business, and its goal is the weakening of Western culture, and specifically American power.
No shit, sherlock! You hit it right on the head, and at least half of us Americans are willing participants.
phlogiston says:
September 2, 2010 at 10:21 am
……………
———————–
The quote was from the post. I’m pretty sure Japanese kamikaze pilots were as sane as any of us, took their responsibilities more seriously than any of us and in the culture of the time and place were saner than most of us.
They were indoctrinated to sacrifice their lives for an ideal.
You can indoctrinate sane people into killing themselves for an ideal.
Case closed.
In previous times, intellectuals argued over how many angels could dance on the head of pin.
In our era, our intellectuals argue over minor changes in the planet’s atmosphere and invent dancing angels of positive feedback that are used to create fear and hysteria, to convince people to comply with the mass message, to embrace what that don’t understand and to despise any thought process or conclusion that isn’t like theirs, isn’t in compliance with “the concensus”.
So very fascist of these fools.
Actually, the topic of population control has largely escaped the spotlight.
While a report was recently published that said LED bulbs won’t save the environment as much as behavior and usage changes will, the topic of population control (having less polluters) has never really been discussed, except on right-wing fringe blogs. And we all know how far that credibility will go.
The lunatic did hit the nail on the head, that more people = more pollution. We see these issues creeping in, but not in the open yet when we talk about the organic movement, GMO, and “sustainable farming”. The most effective method is, and always was, to control population. We’ve been dong it naturally because as the WHO found, the more educated your society, the lower the birth rate. People choose themselves rather than having kids. 0-1 kids = reduction, 2 kids = replacement >2 kids = increase. As America gets poorer (and more educated) more parents are electing to only have to provide for 1 child instead of two.
But we must feed, clothe, and provide for the ones that are born. Looking at your pollution footprint is easy if you don’t exist. Looking at it is hard of you do.
“You hit it right on the head, and at least half of us Americans are willing participants.”
Otherwise known as “useful idiots”.
roger says:
September 2, 2010 at 8:49 am
we are safe in the knowledge that this is yet another tax raising scam and ultimately for the benefit of politicians’ post retirement opportunities. And that is the definitive answer.
AGW is probably a little more complex in the context of Peak Oil… it is about getting the sheeple to voluntarily embrace “fuel poverty” for the greater good without realising they are also embracing “economic poverty” and “travel poverty” as energy prices escalate due to taxes and shortages.
However, the really sad part is that Peak Oil (just like AGW) is based upon “settled science” that simply is not settled.
There does not seem to be much doubt that Coal is a fossil fuel because it contains fossils. But when it comes to Oil and Gas there is a distinct lack of direct evidence that these natural resources have any connection with fossils… although the presence of the kerogen marker has been used to argue that algae is the primary source of oil… which gives a nice twist to the argument because oil would then be, literally, the product of a Green (and slimy) Planet.
The Abiogenic oil hypothesis is frequently ridiculed… in a similar manner to AGW “deniers”… but in a similar manner the science is not settled.
Tom Fuller did not touch on the role of the news media wrt past and current hysterias.
Hasn’t the track record of the media been that they provide a positive feedback role? The news media, in other words, fanned the flames.
Also, when the hysteria starts to decline, doesn’t the news media typically switch and ride on the rising wave of the skeptics who were critical of the initial hysteria?
Perhaps this is another post for later.
John
Why do that? It’s so profitable to scam people, especially when they don’t know science or math. Pretty charts drawn up by computers pretending to portray something frightening is all you need.
johnnythelowery says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:47 am
_________________
Interesting. I am pro nuclear and live near a nuclear plant. I would love to see this new technology take off.
Your comment had:
“The US allowed its nuclear industry to stagnate after Three Mile Island in 1979. Anti-nuclear neorosis is at last ebbing.”
Seems that at least some of the nuclear protesters were paid to protest. I saw the $10/hr ads in the Boston Globe in 1983 when I was job hunting. There is also some indications the Three Mile Island accident was sabotage. And of course there are Maurice Strong and the Greenpeace ties to the Rockefeller foundations and Big Oil. I am not sure “big Oil” viewed nuclear as a rival to be sabotaged but they were certainly aware of it and already looking into the “Public Health Aspects” as early as 1956.
Rockefeller Foundation Annual report – 1957
Public Health Aspects of Nuclear Energy
” In its Annual Report for 1956 The Rockefeller Foundation announced that an “important area of Foundation concern with the nuclear age might be called the public health of nuclear energy, broadly conceived.” “Man is now capable,” the Report continued, “of adding significantly and dangerously by his own actions to the inescapable natural radiation already present in his environment….”
paulw says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:59 am
“Who preaches hysteria?
It’s Fox News that preaches hysteria. Fox News sends back half of the fellow citizens to the medieval ages.”
=========================================================
Paul, I’ve read and re-read your post and I’m still wondering what the heck it means. Half the fellow citizens back to medieval ages? Huh?
*yawn*
Joe Romm’s efforts to ride Anthony’s posts to fame and fortune are educational and entertaining as Max Schadenfreude.
When every second-hander climbs on for a free ride, pretending to be tour guide, not so much.
The bay area is supposed to be full of people sophisticated enough to recognize whose party they are attending and know how to work it, not buzz-kill it.
If you shout fire in a crowded theatre, you are most definitely responsible for the people who get trampled.
Micheal Tobias has criticized journo’s for publishing “balanced stories.”
looks like someone took his argument seriously.
FergalR says:
September 2, 2010 at 10:54 am
phlogiston says:
September 2, 2010 at 10:21 am
……………
———————–
The quote was from the post. I’m pretty sure Japanese kamikaze pilots were as sane as any of us, took their responsibilities more seriously than any of us and in the culture of the time and place were saner than most of us.
They were indoctrinated to sacrifice their lives for an ideal.
You can indoctrinate sane people into killing themselves for an ideal.
_____________________________________________________________________
Isn’t that what Soldiers and War is all about? Indoctrinating sane people into killing because of an ideal??
There is a brilliant article in Norwegian journal Samtiden about the “new religion”. A short version is present in Dagbladet:
The new doomsday prophets
http://translate.google.no/translate?prev=no&hl=en&u=http://db.no/a/13179229/
It is extremely well written with outstanding logic and insight due to the authors own experience with doomsday predictions that never came true.
GAIL:
Thanks for your note. Must correct my posting as i said Obortion (As in O’bortion) What i meant was Abortion.
They don’t scare me – but they make me puke.
Gail: Interesting, the tie between Rockefeller and big oil and their view of the nuclear industry. Perhaps the nuclear industry should be militarized or nationalized, and thousands built on the defunct airfields dotting the country built for the cold war, running on Thorium.
paulw says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:59 am
“Who preaches hysteria?
It’s Fox News that preaches hysteria. Fox News sends back half of the fellow citizens to the medieval ages.”
_________________________________
HUH????
It is the belief in CAGW that advocates returning to the medieval ages – that is no cheap form of energy and no nasty chemicals.
Obama’s Science Czar, John P. Holdren, stated it very clearly in his book.
” In their 1973 book “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions,” Holdren and co-authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote:
“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. De-devolopment means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation. Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries.”
“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge,” they wrote. “They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”
…He also co-authored a passage that said: “The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being. Where any of these essential elements is lacking, the resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.”
SOURCE: http://grendelreport.posterous.com/obamas-science-czar-advocates-de-developing-t
It is pretty clear this is not Fox news talking but the “left” who do not consider people “human” unless ” given the essential early socializing experiences”
As one of these wonderful “progressives” in Cambridge MA shouted in my face “We are going to kill people like you when we take over!”
I am no fan of the extreme right either but you can not lay any of this at their door.
Malaga View says:
September 2, 2010 at 11:04 am
“But when it comes to Oil and Gas there is a distinct lack of direct evidence that these natural resources have any connection with fossils… although the presence of the kerogen marker has been used to argue that algae is the primary source of oil… which gives a nice twist to the argument because oil would then be, literally, the product of a Green (and slimy) Planet.
The Abiogenic oil hypothesis is frequently ridiculed… in a similar manner to AGW “deniers”… but in a similar manner the science is not settled.”
Funny, apparently the science isn’t settled on this. I found an article that says most scientists agree that diatoms is where oil comes from. In case you haven’t read this, an old article is an interesting, quick read.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/051011_oil_origins.html
It’s always amazing how many people are ready to drink the Jim Jones “Kool-Aid”
You can’t blame this all on the media. The scientists who can’t successfully falsify the null hypothesis of climate change must shoulder some of the blame too. As must the politicians who do not care about what is happening, but see a new opportunity to create a global carbon currency as a precursor to the formation of a non-elected world government.
The conjecture of CAGW has become a religion with wide extremes of belief. No surprise that a few of the followers will become radicalised and want to take direct action in support of their misguided goals.
It is not that the “Science is settled” but “Comedy is settled” and all clowns known.
They have superseded reality with their post-normality behaviour. Many of you perhaps ignore it, but they call themselves the “White brotherhood” whose purpose is the nothing else but improvement of humanity; however they forgot to begin with themselves, as they qualify themselves as perfect. (Though we have serious doubts after knowing some specimens)
The NEA does have Saul Alinsky’s books on its website for recommended reading.
—————————–
tonyb,
You are accurate about the current society/culture creating more nihilists. I think it is being done to the young by the activism of the mainstream ideological environmentalists.
The mainstream ideological environmentalists are nihilists by happenstance, not by any intention to become nihilists. They are nihilists because of what they think about the environment and mankind, not because they have thought out and conciously accept the philosophical basis/tenets of nihilism.
That is good news. Because if we successfully counter, for instance, CAGW or any other of their apocalyptic themes, we make the possibility of creating more nihilists less likely.
John
stevengoddard says:
September 2, 2010 at 11:16 am
If you shout fire in a crowded theatre, you are most definitely responsible for the people who get trampled.
The scenarios aren’t equivalent. The crowded room has way less alternatives. Free people have lots of alternatives, and CHOOSE to take the false claims seriously.
I ask you. Who is more dangerous? The angry kid in the Greenpeace video? The over the edge true believer who straps a bomb on? Or a powerful and wealthy politician (elected or otherwise, past or present ) who uses “Green” to gain and retain power and manipulate the masses? Or is it the admen who change labels on their products?
Greenpeace has boarded a Scottish company’s drilling rig off Greenland and forced work to stop.
The environmental campaigners said the rig, operated on behalf of Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy, had been boarded by four members.
Greenpeace said the climbers had enough supplies to occupy hanging tents for several days.
I had just posted the above.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-11137280?utm_medium=twitter
Due to severe icing and cold, they have given up. It is of course melting on Greenland and these guys are freezing.
paulw says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:59 am
Who preaches hysteria?
It’s Fox News that preaches hysteria. Fox News sends back half of the fellow citizens to the medieval ages.
———————————
paulw- you must not watch a lot of Fox News. What they “preach” is a return to the Constitution, you know, the one that focused on limited government “Of the People, By the People, For the People”.
What we have in the mainstream media and from the “warmistas” (love that one) or alarmists is an attempt to build bigger governments to tell us all what to do. It is interesting that many of these same folks are huge fans of JFK who said:
“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
You see, JFK new that it is the PEOPLE of America who are great, not the government. And that it is the role of the PEOPLE to do what they can for each other, for their country, and for freedom, not the governments.
This is the same message that Fox News “preaches” as you put it.
I wrote a rather long post in the Sea Ice news column a few weeks ago about the ingrained guilt and hatred the Enviro-weenies have for themselves and for the free society that built the modern world that we all take for granted. I asked the question where does this hatred of self and humanity come from. How does the hater separate his own humanity with hatred of Mankind? Well, R. Gates replied in a lengthy post that I was misinformed and that these people were a lunatic fringe and not part of the global warming crowd at large. All the evidence says otherwise. Look at that child in the Greenpeace vgideo above. Who does this brain washing? A few lunatics or a belief system that is wide spread and has infected the body politic at a massive scale. The evidence is clear. This is not just a few loonies hugging trees. Parents need to find out who and what is teaching their children at all levels of education and how these people are funded. It’s time to with hold those Alumni contribution checks.
paul w,
You are remarkably resitant to reason and information.
So a psychotic eco-terrorist who claimed to be inspired by Al Gore is the fault of Fox News, in your world?
You are a good caricature of an AGW true believer: snarky, ill informed and pridefully ignorant.
Perhaps people should watch what they say
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/18/nasa-climate-change-james-hansen
Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said
@Bruckner8 says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:19 am
“I think it’s silly to blame AGW proponents for insane acts such as these. Can we move on, please?”
I think Bruckner has a point. Clinically this man probably had a paranoid psychotic disorder of some form, you only have to read his manifesto to pick that up: it could have been the devils’ voices in his head, or a god, crippling phobias or, like someone I knew, endless, terrifying airport announcements which demanded and demanded.
I’m emphatically not saying that we should all feel sorry for this bloke. I don’t, but we should see it much more as a function of severe mental illness rather than a mirror for our opponents.
In the main, the people we need to fear in the AGW scam are high-functioning successful psychopaths, like so many politicians or public figures, especially if they wield power (as so many do). It’s not hard to find examples, is it?
William says:
“Parents need to find out who and what is teaching their children at all levels of education and how these people are funded.”
That is a question I am going to ask.
My child has been shown Al Gore’s boring movie twice in school.
Yesterday was a “Green” seminar/lecture that was compulsory for the good students.
( yes during the summer vacation !)
My daughter said ” The guy sounded reasonable at first, but then he said that the glaciers would melt and it would rain all the time, but the Earth would be dry and nothing would grow . That was when I tuned out.”
But they aren’t all that smart.
Obviously a tragedy for Mr. Lee and his family, and a terrifying experience for the hostages.
But somehow I’m thinking that the phrase “and of course the squirrels” will stick in my mind forever.
I keep on hearing about Fox News; while I don’t believe they are “fair and balanced”, at least they are a counter point to MSNBC. MSNBC is just as far if not further out of the middle than Fox. By listening to both, I can hear both the left and the right and then make up my own mind. And neither dwells as much on junk news like Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan as the mainstream.
RichieP says:
“I think Bruckner has a point. Clinically this man probably had a paranoid psychotic disorder of some form, you only have to read his manifesto to pick that up: it could have been the devils’ voices in his head, or a god, crippling phobias.”
Of course he had a psychotic disorder, but let’s examine what form this disorder took. He did not rail against God, the Devil or the Anti-Christ, or sins (in a conventional religious sense) of mankind; he did not rail against the billionaires enriching themselves on the backs of the proletariat, and nor did he rail against the burgeoning debt, nor against aliens (except the illegal sort), or mini black holes that some fear from the Large Hadron Collider!
No, he railed against global warming, and against mankind; he railed against us, and our children; he railed against our very existence. Pyschotic or not, these ideas were not conjured up out of his fevered mind; he has tapped into the the deep green psyche, and into radical environmental thought. From whence came the idea of tipping points? Coal trains being death trains? The earth burning with a fever? Of animals comitting suicide if humans ‘give up’? Of half of all species poised to vanish overnight? Of the Amazon rain forests teetering on the brink? Of only 75 months remaining to save the planet? From whence came the idea that humans are a cancer on the face of the earth?
Every scientist or public figure who has made any of these outrageous statements is guilty of manipulating the minds of the credulous with the aim of controlling societal behaviour. To manipulate by spreading falsehoods is a moral crime. The sooner this is faced up to the better for all of us.
… and, then came Lee’s “awakening*”:
Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth*”.
Red-Green and its Big Brother, socialism, is a religion with many faces, many altars, many priests, many converts.
…-
“Discovery Gunman James Lee’s Sordid Past as a Human Smuggler
Court Documents Detail His Descent into Isolation and Despair”
“The documents do not mention how many people Lee smuggled across the border, but Tuognlan Lee said her family was contacted at the time by the FBI and told “it was more than one.”
Lee had been estranged from his family since 2002, according to Tuonglan. “We last spoke to him in 2002. The next time we heard about him was in 2003 when we heard about the Mexico incident. Then we had no news until he was arrested again in 2008 and then of course the news yesterday. We always wonder what he was doing.”
Lee was arrested in 2008 for disorderly conduct during a protest outside of Discovery Channel headquarters.
Tuonglan Lee said his mental state diminished over time. “Two people close to him died in 2002, and after their passing he became angry and very emotional. He had a normal relationship with people before 2002, but after that he was completely different.”
Lee’s brother told ABC News that Lee was likely seeking to be killed by the police.
“It was definitely out of character,” Aaron Lee said. “I thought it was insanity. I was sad to know that he was shot and killed, but that’s what he probably wanted.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/discovery-channel-attack-inside-james-lee-takedown/story?id=11541307&page=2
…-
*Lee’s awakening:
“*An Inconvenient Truth ****
Official site of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which chronicles former Vice President Al Gore’s career-long crusade to raise awareness about — and stem the …”
http://www.climatecrisis.net
…-
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/014783.html
Enneagram says:
…and DATA will be SPIN FREE!
===
My data is already spin-free; I have a SSD.
Correction to my earlier post about the platform. I got info off my Bloomberg that they pumped 1,200 bbls of oil in the last week of august and got 9.2 MM cubic feet of natgas. It was an old rig in production.
Vince Causey says:
September 2, 2010 at 1:07 pm
“Every scientist or public figure who has made any of these outrageous statements is guilty of manipulating the minds of the credulous with the aim of controlling societal behaviour. To manipulate by spreading falsehoods is a moral crime. The sooner this is faced up to the better for all of us.”
Couldn’t agree more – this is roughly what I was attempting to say in the last part of my comment. The manipulators are the illness, someone like Lee a credulous symptom. It’s like all religions of power and sin, mad fanatics will always be around to be influenced.
RichieP says:
September 2, 2010 at 12:30 pm
@Bruckner8 says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:19 am
“I think it’s silly to blame AGW proponents for insane acts such as these. Can we move on, please?”
“I think Bruckner has a point.”
=========================================================
Sure he has a point. And it is silly to blame AGW proponents for this act. Just like it is silly to blame talk radio for Tim McVeigh, and just like it is silly to blame right-to-lifers for Dr. Tiller’s death. I do find it quit interesting about how quickly the term “domestic terrorist” was ran up the flag pole in cases perceived as a “right-wing” issue. However, when it comes to this guy, he’s not ideologue(when obviously he was), he’s not a terrorist(when obviously he was), he’s just a whack job(when obviously he was). Same with the guy at Ft. Hood. We could barely bring ourselves to say terrorist much less “domestic terrorist”.
Ahh….the hypocritical weasel dance. Its kinda fun to watch.
Well at least that snotty nosed Greenpiece brat can read a teleprompter almost as well as the Commander in Chief.
He’s convincing evidence for the theory; that humans are born knowing everything about everything there is to know.
As we get older we slowly forget stuff that doesn’t seem to pan out or goes the other way; so we slowly get dumbe and dumber as a new generation of know it all brats rise to take our place.
Eventually, when we are old and senile; we have forgotten almost everything; eventually even which hand we use when standing at a urinal; until finally we are total dumbass know nothings; at which point we die.
Well at least that eco-terrorist at Discovery finally did something noble and showed us how determined he is to lower the world overpopulation problem. I’m sure Paul Erlich will be happy about that result.
After decades of being fed consistent massive doses of catastrophe from pretty much every main stream media outlet; from a majority of our hapless elected leaders; from rent seeking corporations bent on profiting from all of this at our expense; from anti humanist greens intent on making us feel guilty for our existence….after all this, what is amazing is not that there was a poor wretch like Mr. Lee, what is amazing is that there haven’t been more of them.
Very well said Thomas Fuller — but its even worse — they are scaring and brain washing children.
…”what these people are doing is despicable, if not murderous.”
I couldn’t agree more but “these people” include the news media which is doing a terrible job of covering the real story.
Do you consider the IPCC AR4 findings science ?
I hope not because the IPPC finding are political not scientific …
If you agree with any of it you are showing your own political agenda …
Scientists have allowed AGW to become a political tool and EVERY scientist in that business who remains silent is an accessory to the destruction of faith in science …
Nobody but themselves to blame … they made this bed now they get to lay in it …
The part that bothers me the most about this is that, if you take out the violent language, what this man wrote in his manifesto is about the same as what my law school professor (an EPA attorney) has been saying for the past 2 classes. This is not the far left lunatic fringe–this is the mainstream government/school message. If she makes me mad enough, I might spout off, and I might get an F. I really can’t afford that.
Henry chance says:
September 2, 2010 at 12:09 pm
“Greenpeace has boarded a Scottish company’s drilling rig off Greenland and forced work to stop.
[…]
Due to severe icing and cold, they have given up. It is of course melting on Greenland and these guys are freezing.”
It wouldn’t surprise me if they booked their trip home aboard a wooden sailing ship routed through the Northwest Passage. Stay green and never stop believing, right?
(What a bunch of maroons! Thanks for that one, Henry.)
“It’s hard to work up too much sympathy for Mr. Lee–he took hostages, threatened to detonate an explosive device, and pretty much guaranteed his fate. ”
I differ with you on that one. I do feel sympathy for those who have been conned and fall into despair. How many volunteer their life in the armed services to protect their country just to be treated as disposable pawns in the never ending wars? I feel sympathy for them all.
The manipulation is very thick, non-stop brainwashing and those that snap are written off in advance as “casualties in a war”. I wish I could get people to turn off the news. It is pure planned mind control. The problem is people want to believe something. Once they choose to believe something it is gut wrenching for them to even entertain other points of view. When their side starts to lose they start to lose it.
Race, religion and nationalism are the 3 great ways to divide and conquer people. There will always be those who can’t bring themselves to see from any other point of view than their own narrow one and sometimes they snap. Those manipulating know the misery they will bring but don’t care. AGW is in the religion category by design.
Vince Causey says:
September 2, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Every scientist or public figure who has made any of these outrageous statements is guilty of manipulating the minds of the credulous with the aim of controlling societal behaviour. To manipulate by spreading falsehoods is a moral crime. The sooner this is faced up to the better for all of us.
My mind is not manipulated…is yours? Either we have free will, or we don’t. If we don’t, then there has to be a cause…a govt or insanity. In American society, we choose our rulers. We can vote them out. That we choose NOT to is on us, NOT THE GOVT.
Now, if some of us are clinically diagnosed insane (and I wonder what the science is behind the diagnostic process, but I digress…), what role does a free society have in “controlling them?” The act of control over another being is counter-intuitive to freedom-loving people.
It’s a random act. If this recent nutjob was clinically deemed sane, then it’s strictly a random act of violence. AND NOTHING ELSE.
Those of wishing to blame AGW proponents for this kind of act had better which out. You’re moving down a slippery slope, with implications thus:
1) Censorship is good.
2) Self efficacy is bad.
3) Personal accountability is bad.
No thank you! I’m perfectly capable of making up my own mind, and I’m fine with winning the argument through the Scientific Method, fighting all the way to the end. Yes, politics gets in the way (DUH!), but that doesn’t make the fight any less worthwhile, just harder. That–again–is another price of freedom and open-ness. If we’re not able to convince people of the truth (or realistic probabilities), then we have to be just as diligent with marketing our view as every AGW proponent. Them’s da rulz!
To speak with the truth, this phenomenon of mass hysteria would have hardly been originated among other people than among the first world people, and specially among americans, and this is because of the previous existence of a great variety of cults, sects and beliefs exist, and where the most pressing questions about the self itself remain unsolved. This worsens where gnosis is rejected, where science, already settled, offers no hope: It does not provide the needed answers as far as itself has rejected the real knowledge, replacing it, by an “erzats”, an artificial concoction of different and conflicting “truths”.
“The deluge of catastrophic predictions regarding global warming and its consequences have reached almost everyone on the planet, and perhaps unintentionally have replaced Cold War bomb scares as the primary source of doomsaying.”
Unintentionally? Hardly. Governments are always looking for a good scare to keep their citizens docile while they grab more power. It’s no coincidence that the ‘War on Terror’ and the ‘War on Drugs’ began shortly after the Cold War petered out, and that AGW hysteria was whipped up to global levels when it became clear that the terrorist threat was losing its impact. There is an implicit deal in place between governments and scientists: ‘We provide the funds, you provide the threats’.
Gnomish says:
September 2, 2010 at 11:14 am
“*yawn*
Joe Romm’s efforts to ride Anthony’s posts to fame and fortune are educational and entertaining as Max Schadenfreude.
When every second-hander climbs on for a free ride, pretending to be tour guide, not so much.”
So true, and it’s getting worse. I don’t mind commenter’s names hot-linked to their blogs, but lately a lot of posts are being used for free advertising because Anthony’s site has mega-millions of hits. Romm and his followers are some of the offenders. I’ve tried to post on Romm’s blog, but no comment of mine ever got past moderation. Romm doesn’t even like to mention this site. Where’s the quid-pro-quo?
If I may make a suggestion, I’d like to see the moderators snip some of the more self-serving advertising/links to blogs that never return the courtesy.
In February of 2008, Dr. Suzuki (a geneticist – turned green advocate) told an audience at a Montreal conference that politicians should be jailed for ignoring the science of AGW. As reported in the National Post (a Canadian national newspaper):
“Toward the end of his speech, Dr. Suzuki said that ‘we can no longer tolerate what’s going on in Ottawa and Edmonton’ and then encouraged attendees to hold politicians to a greater green standard.
‘What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act,’ said Dr. Suzuki, a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
‘It’s an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years.’
The statement elicited rounds of applause.”
When “leaders” supporting the concept of AGW support such actions, what do you think those who have any degree of mental imbalance will think when they take extreme measures? It seems to me that those who take extreme actions feel that they are fully justified by this sort of encouragement. To me, statements such as those made by Dr. Suzuki are akin to yelling “Fire” in a crowded theatre. It is completely unacceptable to any rational person.
It is time for those who are supporting the concept of AGW to come forward with the scientific proof (not anecdotal “evidence”) supporting their claim or start becoming socially responsible and state the significant degree of uncertainty of their hypothesis.
what would he make of my headline
http://trevorsden.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/cool-down-sucker/
Tim says:
September 2, 2010 at 2:17 pm
“…How many volunteer their life in the armed services to protect their country just to be treated as disposable pawns in the never ending wars? I feel sympathy for them all. ”
=========================================================
Tim, you do a great insult to the men and woman in the service of their nation. There is no comparison of that lunatic to the guardians of your freedoms.
James Sexton
James Lee, rather than posting his rambling manifesto posthumously after his violent drama-queen suicide, would have been better advised to express his feelings by blogging.
One of the profoundly good things about Anthony Watt’s WUWT site is its tolerance. Contrary opinions, derogatory and even abusive tirades and quite extreme opposing views are admitted, only public decency excluding the most extreme comments.
So people can let off steam from rage building up inside, and communicate what would otherwise fester in darkness. WUWT and well-run blogs like it serve a role not completely unlike that of a confessional. (The echo chamber of little Emperor Rommulus falls distinctly outside this category!) Many times at the end of a bad day I have posted some idiotic nonsense, maybe later to be embarrassed by it and think better of it. But it still makes one feel more human.
Blogs like WUWT and people like AW are good for the world. Got something to say? Bring it on!
If you want to alarm uninformed folk then just go to the Warm List. http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
It was something waiting to happen and will happen again unless alarmism retreats and more level headed people regain control of ‘the agenda‘!!!!
It appears to me that AGW is on its last legs despite the Russian heatwave and the Amazon snow. :o)
The main problem at the centre of this whole thing about scares (of whatever nature) is compulsary state-run education holding conformity and gullibility above all other characteristics.
Try getting your child to ask a teacher to prove what they’re saying – there are a few outstanding teachers out there who will, but the vast majority will just slip into the “you will respect mah authoritee!” mantra. The vast majority of kids, through a gradual wearing down through their school life will indeed just do that.
It was Bismark who invented the compulsary state education system – he wanted soldiers, not individuals. Now politicians want sheep and lemmings, and the vast majority turn out exactly as ordered.
This translates into nations and nations of “useful idiots” – adults who have never grown up to be independent and whose “inner child” is exploited by politicians, salesmen and charlatans. A great motivator of this “inner child” is acceptance by their peers – so they believe what is popular, do what is popular and say what everyone else is saying.
The rather unfortunate Mr. Lee didn’t go somewhere where he’d make a difference (the Discovery Channel is not generally known as the secret headquarters of the illuminati) but somewhere where his actions would be ‘popular’. Trying to illustrate the difference between ‘popular’ and ‘notorious’ to someone’s “inner child” is a fools errand though. You don’t bring facts on their own to a fluffy “how does it make you feel?” fight.
The emotional weapon best suited to the particular battle of “Global Warming” is mockery. The “inner child” does not like to be mocked and to be made to feel as though they are out of step with their peers. Of course mockery does need to be stiffened with facts (this stops it being ignored so easily) but facts on their own are useless – you’re dealing with a child.
This mockery needs to be tailored to the people concerned, because their peers are all different. Going into an IPCC meeting and saying “Himalyas 2035” and running away laughing, will have a different effect from doing the same in a local WWF chapter meeting. Equally, running the Jon Stewart ‘Climategate’ video would have no effect in those scenarios, but would against a CAGW believing co-worker. “Jon Stewart is laughing at you…”
Personally, I think I will be running with the full CAGW mantra in public well after the planet has cooled again, and has demonstrated the CAGW to be rubbish. Having people arguing against their former position and former words may help stop them being so taken in by whatever mantra will be in vogue at the time.
And maybe, just maybe, it will prevent an incident like this, where someone blinded by their own gullibility created a tragedy.
Was that a little touch of hope in the whole mess? Possibly.
starzmom says:
September 2, 2010 at 2:08 pm
The part that bothers me the most about this is that, if you take out the violent language, what this man wrote in his manifesto is about the same as what my law school professor (an EPA attorney) has been saying for the past 2 classes. This is not the far left lunatic fringe–this is the mainstream government/school message. If she makes me mad enough, I might spout off, and I might get an F. I really can’t afford that.
You can be controlled by those that deem themselves better than you just as easily through your anger, as your acquiescence.
Play the game when it suits you. Don’t play the game when it suits you.
Dave Bob says:
September 2, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Obviously a tragedy for Mr. Lee and his family, and a terrifying experience for the hostages.
But somehow I’m thinking that the phrase “and of course the squirrels” will stick in my mind forever.
It does have that little bit of something which could allow it to become a meme. A bit like Saddam Hussein’s “Mother of all battles.”
The greenpeace ad is pretty funny, really.
People are always trying to lay on the generational guilt with”What kind of world are we leaving to our kids?” when the real question is “What kind of kids are we leaving this world to?”
author unknown to me.
Everyday folk echo the media. Here in Central Florida, everyone complains about the heat. Yet our temperatures have been a little on the low side this summer. July can be expected to run 95-100 and it has run 90-95. The media gets echoed and that echo is a nuisance.
Al Gore and the IPCC were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
– semi-ironic.
But why would this individual choose the Discovery Channel. It is not like they are not fully on board with the Ecological Evangelical Movement.
Oliver Ramsay says:
September 2, 2010 at 4:22 pm
The Greenpeace ad is pretty funny, really.
Well, perhaps some don’t take Greenpeace seriously, How about the prestigious 122 year old National Geographic, this is the sixth in a series:
Thank you Mr. Fuller, I can add little more to what you just said.
Bruckner8 says: (September 2, 2010 at 9:19 am) There will always be hucksters, power-players and plenty of meek to go along with them. […]
Funny thing, freedom. Freedom has forced us to mainstream everyone. Freedom forces us to give every last chance; not allowing us to predict the future.
The free and sane have every right to choose their environment and science (ie, buyer beware). The free and sane have deemed it necessary to incorporate the insane into society; to leave them be; to not judge them beyond their “quirks.”
This is one of the prices of freedom. Bad science is a price of freedom. Bad government is a price of freedom, until it takes freedoms away (oh, wait…)
Thank you, Bruckner8. Your comment encapsulates many truths and is well worth re-reading in full and thinking on. It impresses me greatly. Too many of us trained to see “meek” as a virtue — “strong” as a flaw. Too many of us trained to mistake “weakness” for “compassion”.
ExpVid,
Didn’t you read the article title?? Stop the hysteria!
But thanx for showing that there’s little difference between Greenpeas and Nat’l Geo.
“Well, perhaps some don’t take Greenpeace seriously, How about the prestigious 122 year old National Geographic, this is the sixth in a series:”
Ummmmmm…. NO NO a thousand times NO.
The last 6 minutes of every show on these channels is always this “Stuff”.
I feel shame that NG and Scientific American and all these other formerly respectable institutions have chosen to be the whores of Babylon for our new global
climate change masters, but it is they who will reap the whirlwind of
public indignation when their complicity in this propaganda crime against humanity becomes clear.
Too strong ?
Dennis Wingo says:
September 2, 2010 at 10:12 am
People are forgetting the kid in Australia a couple of years ago who committed suicide because of his fears about global warming.
There are also the many children that can’t sleep good anymore after seeing Al Gore’s movie. Some of the children saw the movie in Home Ec class. The hysteria reached into classes that were not science related.
“I was an Eco-Terrorist …
But then the scene got too legit.
The revolution was a lie.”
Unlike Anarchy which ends after a few G7 meetings, Nobel Cause Corruption continues into adulthood beyond the TeenAge years it seems.
Smokey,
Didn’t you click on ExpVid’s name?
I did ‘cos I couldn’t believe the Nat. G post was in earnest.
Insane people do insane things. These thing include elements from the real world, whether from religion, family, politics, or plot elements from fictional works.
The fact that a *particular* real world element is included signifies *nothing* about that real world element.
Now, if other members or leaders of that “*particular* real world element” endorse the actions of the insane, it does say does say something about those members or leaders.
The Jim Jones analogy is flawed as no ordinary speaker has the power of a cult to isolate, sleep deprive, and otherwise condition a follower.
10 Yrs ago an American friend of mine committed suicide over his despair at the supposed ongoing destruction of the natural world by humans.
He was an artist who made beautiful sculptures with bits and pieces he found at the water’s edge – sculptures I found exceptionally satisfying to look at. A huge talent, a real artist.
He had no way of assessing the truth of scientific claims. He believed what the environmentalists said.
He was prone to depression and sadness, he was very vulnerable. But he was also a gentle man with a great love of nature, and he is dead.
When environmentalists exaggerate in order to create fear, in order to exert political influence, a result is the death of some vulnerable, gentle souls. It is important that the environmentalists are confronted with that, and that the public is told that story.
Oliver Ramsay,
Yes, I clicked on ExpVid’s name. My post was an attempt at sarcasm. I can see it didn’t work. ☹
#
#
starzmom says:
September 2, 2010 at 2:08 pm
The part that bothers me the most about this is that, if you take out the violent language, what this man wrote in his manifesto is about the same as what my law school professor (an EPA attorney) has been saying for the past 2 classes. This is not the far left lunatic fringe–this is the mainstream government/school message. If she makes me mad enough, I might spout off, and I might get an F. I really can’t afford that.
______________________________________________________
Just write down what you want to say to her and later, when it will no longer come back to bite you, let her have it with both barrels. It will do her good.
J’accuse Al Gore, Jim Hansen, David Suzuki, Greenpeace and the WWF for creating this monster with their self-serving hysterical propaganda.
Stop the hysteria???
How about that piece of crap?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/massextinctionthreatearthonvergeofhugeresetbutton
“Some scientists have speculated that effects of humans – from hunting to climate change – are fueling another great mass extinction.A few go so far as to say we are entering a new geologic epoch, leaving the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch behind and entering the Anthropocene Epoch, marked by major changes to global temperatures and ocean chemistry, increased sediment erosion, and changes in biology that range from altered flowering times to shifts in migration patterns of birds and mammals and potential die-offs of tiny organisms that support the entire marine food chain. ”
The “major change of global temperature” is the most laughable BS Jeremy Hsu, writer for Livescience could come up with…
Another example of hysteria:
The Dutch newspaper NRC reports that today at the International Penguin Conference in Boston, Stephanie Jenouvrier will predict that the Emperor Penguin of Antarctica with be extinct before the end of this century.
The NRC heads the article with “EMPEROR PENGUIN EXTINCT THIS CENTURY’ in bold letters across the page, accompanied with a huge, dark picture of emperor penguins standing in the snow.
That’s how you do it: short, in your face, dramatic statement + big picture.
That’s how you reach people’s emotions.
At the end of the article: Stephanie Jenouvrier says that if the predictions of the IPCC are correct, there is a 40 and 80% chance that the penguin population will be down to 5% at the end of this century.
Alarmist enough, but decidedly less than the message of the NRC.
Stephanie Jenouvrier has a PhD in Population Ecology and works at the Woods Hole Oceanografiic Institute in Massachusetts.
She published:
“Demographic models and IPCC climate projections predict the decline of an emperor penguin population,” by Stéphanie Jenouvrier, Hal Caswell, Christophe Barbraud, Marika Holland, Julienne Strœve, and Henri Weimerskirch, which appeared in issue 6, February 10, 2009, of Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (106:1844–1847; first published January 26, 2009; 10.1073/pnas.0806638106).
James Sexton says:
September 2, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Tim says:
September 2, 2010 at 2:17 pm
“…How many volunteer their life in the armed services to protect their country just to be treated as disposable pawns in the never ending wars? I feel sympathy for them all. ”
===========
Tim, you do a great insult to the men and woman in the service of their nation. There is no comparison of that lunatic to the guardians of your freedoms.
James Sexton
————————————————————————–
No sir I do not do a disservice to them at all. Look at how the vets are treated. Look at how those with depleted uranium poisoning are treated. Do you think that is what they signed up for? No they signed up full of ideals and a true desire to help and serve their country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-VkpR-wka8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvIqhVnaalo
http://www.umrc.net
Those that serve in the forces are volunteers not disposable pawns. The latter is how they are treated by those in power. Yes Mr Lee was disturbed and most of those in the forces are not but I thought that was obvious. Let me be clear. The points of similarity are between what they sign up for and what they get used as by those in authority. They get conned and used up then disposed of.
Was Lee insanse or did he go rogue, betraying a bigger anti-humanist movement? I am of the opinion that if Lee was insane, then so is the entire lefty/green argument and all who espouse it. All Lee did was act independently, like any responsible martyr.
Smokey,
I’m sorry if I’m the one that’s not getting it, but what ExpVid was really giving us was a nice little video from the Minnesotans for GW; one that I hadn’t seen.
Thank you for your soothing words, Brother Thomas.
From the comments that have been made on the subject here around the Village pump I can see that many support your view that these scare stories shouldn’t be further propagated and exaggerated by constant repetition.
Too, it’s reassuring that none here in our little community would even think of making up negative stories about how the Great Cooling will affect society. Again we can be proud that we command the moral high ground!!
Though fabricated scare stories will always be in circulation (remember the one a couple of years ago about the ‘economic crisis’ and all those job losses?) we can be sure that once the Great Cooling starts all this Warmist propaganda will melt away like so much Arctic ice!
(BTW, any news on the start of the Great Cooling yet? There was snow in Poland a few days ago which obviously proves the world isn’t warming. But is the Cooling close? The signs are there in the quiet sun, the return of the little girl. Should all of us here in the Village open our ‘fridge doors to help it on its way – and give those Warmists a real tipping point to worry about!!)
Oliver R,
I liked ExpVid’s post. Sorry, my comment just didn’t come across as intended. ☹
Yo, Idiot,
You’re asking the wrong questions. You should be asking: where’s that runaway global warming? Is it hiding behind the tipping point? And where is that climate catastrophe the alarmists are always trying to scare us with? Where’s the
DOOO-O-O-O-M??
Tim says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:03 pm
“Look at how the vets are treated. ”
Son, I am very well aware of how the Vets are treated. Please don’t try to pretend you know what our motivations are and how you feel about our treatment. You don’t know WTF you’re talking about. I don’t know what nation you’re from, but if you’re from the U.S., I have to tell you, ….We have always protected the citizens of this nation, even if we vehemently disagree with your thoughts. This is how you remain free to express your lunacy.
James Sexton,
The hypocritical weasel dance it is.
I am not having any fun, though.
I even think that if I would try to say the truth — to dig deep into the historical and evolutionary origins of the modern green religion, even the staunchest skeptics would proclaim me incurably mad.
For the hypocritical weasel dance is sacred.
Hey Idiot – great name, and well-suited, judging from the pitiful attempt at sarcasm in your rant, so congratulations on that.
Aside from the sarcasm, all you have presented are straw man arguments, which is pretty typical of Warmist trolls.
There was a bit of Cooling hysteria back in the 70’s. The funny thing is, it was propounded by the same folks, who then switched to Warmist mode, and it was, of course, man’s fault.
Tim: September 2, 2010 at 9:03 pm
No sir I do not do a disservice to them at all. Look at how the vets are treated. Look at how those with depleted uranium poisoning are treated. Do you think that is what they signed up for? No they signed up full of ideals and a true desire to help and serve their country.
Pretty condescending of you, Tim — you make it sound like you trade your brain in when you accept the uniform. When you take the oath, you take it with full knowledge that you’ll be called to do whatever it takes and take whatever comes your way, and you have the benefit of knowing beforehand that your elected bosses won’t always have your best interests at heart.
There are more vets that comment here than you’re aware of, and we ain’t anywhere *near* as fragile as you seem to believe.
Tim,
Bill Tuttle is right. I’m another veteran [Tuy Hoa, Viet Nam, ’67 – ’68]. The only way to understand how a vet sees his service to his country is to become one.
So, when are you gonna enlist?
How about something beautiful and mellow and relaxing just for something totally OT?
Tea for two.
Tom,
I can agree with this post.
Sorry, but this guy was not a weird aberration. His action might have been, but not the underlying philosophy which is entirely in tune with the mainstream green movement’s.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100052207/james-lee-is-al-gore-is-prince-charles-is-the-unabomber/
““Demographic models and IPCC climate projections predict the decline of an emperor penguin population,” by Stéphanie Jenouvrier, Hal Caswell, Christophe Barbraud, Marika Holland, Julienne Strœve, and Henri Weimerskirch,”
Demography
noun
the study of statistics such as births, deaths, income, or the incidence of disease, which illustrate the changing structure of human populations.
• the composition of a particular human population : Europe’s demography is changing.
Do the penguins have to fill out forms ?
Dave Bob says:
September 2, 2010 at 1:03 pm
But somehow I’m thinking that the phrase “and of course the squirrels” will stick in my mind forever.
Don’t forget the froggies.
The deluge of catastrophic predictions regarding global warming and its consequences have reached almost everyone on the planet, and perhaps unintentionally have replaced Cold War bomb scares as the primary source of doomsaying.
I lay most of the blame on the media. In this day and age when normalacy does not sell papers, the news is trying to outbid itself to make the extra buck. So they seek out the lunatics like Al Gore (preaching the doom and gloom) and raise them to some kind of messianic status in order to legitimize their malfeasance and incompetance.
In their eyes, the world cannot be normal, it has to be headed towards some type of Armegeddon. After all, what movies sell the most tickets? My Friend Flicka? or 2012?
DR says:
September 2, 2010 at 9:16 am
Some posters at Joe Romm’s were trying to link James Lee to “righties” because he wanted to stop illegal immigration.
The interesting part of that is that he was Convicted of smuggling an illegal into this country and admitted doing it at least 3 times.
A short time after the blow-up at Copenhagen Canada’s National Post carried a story about a United Church minister having a meltdown and reduced to a sobbing heap because of her despair over the millions who are dying because of AGW. Now there was a woman who had her mental health damaged by the warmists fearmongering and gross speculation of disasters that have not even happened. Yet these scenarios were real enough to her that for all intents and purposes had actually occurred. Is it any wonder the public revulsion over the lies and hypocrisy of AGW continue to grow?
To all vets on this site and elsewhere. My apologies if my comments have offended you. They were not intended that way. I do respect the ideals for which you have served as have members of my family. It was never my intention to speak poorly of vets or the service they render. No I do not think you are fragile. Nor was I picking on the US military in particular though some seem to think so. Last count there are 17 countries selling depleted uranium weapons you are only 1. All governments treat vets poorly when they need help.
The point I was making was that this individual has had done to him what has happened to others and I despise those in the AWG movement and governments that treat people in this fashion. In the future I will generalize more and not use the military as an example. It seems to be a touchy subject and it is not my intent to offend.
Village Idiot said
“(BTW, any news on the start of the Great Cooling yet? There was snow in Poland a few days ago which obviously proves the world isn’t warming. But is the Cooling close? The signs are there in the quiet sun, the return of the little girl. Should all of us here in the Village open our ‘fridge doors to help it on its way – and give those Warmists a real tipping point to worry about!!)”
I’m glad you asked. Here is an article written by a colleague and myself which has just been released that identifies some 100 places around the world which have been cooling for at least 30 years.
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/in-search-of-cooling-trends/#more-630
Tonyb
Tim: September 3, 2010 at 11:08 am
To all vets on this site and elsewhere. My apologies if my comments have offended you. They were not intended that way.
No intent to offend = no foul, and with that explanation, Tim, I need no apology.
For what it’s worth, I agree with your sentiments, but in this context, it was a bad analogy.
@ Smokey: Can Tho, ’69 – 70.
Have you ever read “Candide”? Pangloss was, of course, a fool. This is not the best of all possible worlds, and there are serious problems that we face. And if we do nothing, the problems will get worse. Climate change is an emerging problem that could end up being bad, very bad, or catastrophic. We don’t know which; we should really stop wildly turning the dials that control the Earth’s climate because we really don’t want to find out which. The agreement about this is almost universal but the action being taken is still minimal. People who care want to confront this problem.
A sad fact is that a very small number of human beings are fundamentally unhinged. Without recognition of their problems and treatment, they may be doomed. Sometimes, even more sadly, their condition cannot be treated, and they injure or kill themselves or others as a result.
I can see no possible logic in trying to blame the first group of people for the actions of the second. You can make an unbalanced person fall over in all sorts of ways. Silencing certain well-placed concerns is not going to prevent tragedies like those you’ve highlighted.
Apart from these general thoughts, I also object to your paragraph of bland assertions without any supporting evidence. You can say things in as definite a tone as you like but it doesn’t make them true:
“Sea levels are not going to rise by 20 feet. Or 10. Or five”
They have in the past.
“There is not going to be a climatic tipping point (that pushes our planet into a spiral of ever-increasing temperatures)”
The geological temperature record shows that Earth’s climate is exquisitely sensitive. There certainly are tipping points – ice ages bear witness to that. I bracketed the part of your sentence that is a straw man.
“Global warming is not going to cause the extinction of half the species on this planet, or even 1%.”
It has in the past.
Geologists say that if it has happened, then it can happen. We humans are not immune from the laws of nature that govern our climate. We can vary the inputs but we have no say over the outcomes, no matter how certain you may be that CO2 can’t cause us any problems.
Bill Tuttle:
Boot! ☺
To stop the hysteria….think a couple of those xxx massages a la Gore would make it.
Geologists say that if it has happened, then it can happen.
Geologists also tell us that the earth was once an ice ball. I guess that can happen as well, so we better start heating her up before we all freeze to death.
RW says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:49 pm
You can make an unbalanced person fall over in all sorts of ways.
Your non-annotated rambling diatribes are pushing me ever closer to a tipping point.
RW says:
“Climate change is an emerging problem that could end up being bad, very bad, or catastrophic.”
So we have only 3 possible choices: 1) bad 2) very bad, or 3) catastrophic! *snort!*
When one’s mind is made up and closed tight, it only allows for outcomes supported by cognitive dissonance. Fortunately for the biosphere, the most likely outcome — a slightly warmer, more productive and pleasant environment — is simply not possible in the minds of CAGW fanatics. The only outcome must be calamity.
It’s a hard slog trying to reason with emotion.
Smokey says:
September 3, 2010 at 2:13 pm
So we have only 3 possible choices: 1) bad 2) very bad, or 3) catastrophic! *snort!*
It makes things simpler. In feedback forms for any presentation I do, I give three choices: “Was the presentation: 1/superb 2/fantastic or 3/amazing?”
I do get very good results with that system.
Smokey
Somebody had to keep the SDS in line until you got back!
RW says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Have you ever read “Candide”? Pangloss was, of course, a fool. This is not the best of all possible worlds, and there are serious problems that we face.
————————
There is no way of knowing if this is “not the best of all POSSIBLE worlds”.
Perhaps, once the GCM’s have finished their present frantic business they can be employed to devise Utopia.
In the meantime, mortals will address themselves to problems of more manageable dimensions and resist the urge to believe that they have successfully reverse-engineered the universe and are ready to re-design it.
Though, on second thoughts, what would the best possible climate be? I know that’s not the whole world, but it is a sizeable chunk of all the fluid parts and their interactions with the solid bits.
Bill Tuttle,
And you have my sincere thanks for that!
James Delingpole
Great blog article in the Telegraph! It should be a headline post here – you sum up the irresponsibility of the extraordinary extremism that has taken root in the media and education establishment.
Jason says:
September 2, 2010 at 11:01 am
Actually, the topic of population control has largely escaped the spotlight.
That’s because, let’s face it, eating people is a tough sell these days. Unless we find a way of dealing with the unprecedented rise in global swarming, though, history will just repeat itself.
You might be interested in President Obama’s “National Security Strategy of 2010” available at the White House website. It says:
“Climate Change: The danger from climate change is real, urgent, and severe. The change wrought by a warming planet will lead to new conflicts over refugees and resources; new suffering from drought and famine; catastrophic natural disasters; and the degradation of land across the globe. The United States will therefore confront climate change based upon clear guidance from the science, and in cooperation with all nations—for there is no effective solution to climate change that does not depend upon all nations taking responsibility for their own actions and for the planet we will leave behind.”
There’s much more. Climate change has become a major item in the National Security Strategy. After all, the president warned the cadets at West Point that they would be fighting climate change as the new enemy.
And “The Story of Stuff” is despicable. Having kids study about the environment is way more fun than regular math and science. They can find pictures of cute polar bears and penguins on the internet. (If you remember, Greenpeace really got started with the harp seal pups). Kids who believe they are saving the animals will write papers more willingly and make life easier for teachers. No matter if it gives them nightmares and turns some of them into anarchists.