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
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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’.