Guest post by Thomas Fuller
Like a supervillain from Marvel Comics, a new threat to civilization has emerged. It is Climate Disruption, the result of a rebranding exercise announced by U.S. Science Czar John Holdren.
George Orwell understood the importance of controlling the terms of political debate, and predicted this level of Newspeak long before John Holdren joined with Paul Ehrlich to demand the U.S. ‘de-develop,’ a Newspeak way of calling for a return to medieval life.
But this one is a real beaut. Climate change, which morphed into ‘global warming’ for political reasons and later re-emerged after the globe stubbornly refused to warm fast enough, is now climate disruption.
What this means is that any unusual event–or even usual events, like walruses showing up on Alaskan beaches, which they do every year–can be called climate disruption in action, and blamed on human activity.
We are fulfilling Orwellian requirements in other respects as well: Cameras everywhere, recording everything (including dust devils that can inflate tornado statistics)? Check. Intrusive software following us around? Check. A devaluing of the English language to suit political objectives? Double check.
Take the term ‘denier.’ Please. It is hate speech, pure and simple. It was dragged into the climate debate specifically to compare skeptics with skinhead thugs who denied the Holocaust occurred. It has persisted despite it being pointed out as hate speech because those who use it are thugs themselves, needing to devalue any contribution from their enemies and because it gives them an almost sexual sadistic thrill.
But ‘climate disruption’ is more dangerous–it is a potent political weapon. There are no terms of reference, there is a certainty that it will be misused and it will cheapen any attempt to objectively observe our climate and to accurately describe what is happening to it.
Where’s the Silver Surfer when you really need him?
Just trying to get the scary ducks in a row:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor
Al Gore Dumped by warmistas.
“The Al Gore approach to climate-change education didn’t work,”.
Throw Albert from the train, a chart, a chart;
Throw Albert from the train a goodbye ….
The problem with WAG (Whither Al Gore?) :
“Too many charts.”
Warmistas pay no attention to O’s Commissar.
They are going shopping at the “fundamental gap”.
The slogan remains: climate change.
…-
“USF grant to get people thinking about rising sea levels”
“TAMPA – The Al Gore approach to climate-change education didn’t work, says University of South Florida geologist Jeffrey Ryan. Too many charts.
He wants people to see the evidence around them – wells turning salty, beaches and mangrove islands disappearing, signs that billions of dollars’ worth of waterfront property could be under water in the next several decades.
Sea levels are rising, “and that means there are adjustments we have to make,” Ryan said.
He received a grant this week from the National Science Foundation to persuade Floridians to start considering those adjustments.
Ryan, a USF professor and geology department chairman, is one of 15 researchers across the country to get a piece of the science foundation’s $20 million Climate Change Education Partnership.
He and partners from the USF colleges of business and marine science have nearly $500,000 to spend over the next two years planning the project.”
“”We need folks to start to connect the dots,” Ryan said.
“There is still a fundamental gap in what people understand about climate change,” Karsten said.
“Although there’s a consensus among scientists, the public isn’t there yet. The goal of this program is to get information into the hands of the average citizen,” she said.”
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/sep/19/na-usf-grant-to-get-people-thinking-about-rising-s/
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/014900.html
Darn it – my link doesn’t go directly to Orwells appendix to 1984 “The Principles of Newspeak”. From the link you have to click on “1984 Newspeak” which provides a drop down menu where you click “Principles of Newspeak”. Funny website though – I bet many readers will save this one to favourites….
Here is a more direct link I hope
http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app
BTW – the novel 1984 was completed by Orwell in 1948. Best guess is that finally he just transposed the last to digits of the current year. In other words 1984 symbolizes now
GM,
I expect a true believer like yourself to come up with at least sincere arguments against my points.
Ehrlich and Holdren have never been correct in their predictions. Period.
That is why it is appropriate that true believers in CO2 caused climate crisis dogma hold them in such high esteem.
LOL
Chicken Little. “The sky is falling!”
From Wikipedia: (Read the last sentence) The moral to be drawn changes, depending on the version. Where there is a ‘happy ending’, the moral is not to be a ‘Chicken’ but to have courage, which is the conclusion of the film “Chicken Little” (2005). In other versions the fable is usually interpreted to mean do not believe everything you are told, as in the first version of the film (1943). This was one of a series of four produced by the Walt Disney Studios at the request of the U.S. government during World War II for the purpose of discrediting totalitarianism in general and Nazism in particular. Its dark comedy is used as an allegory for the idea that fear-mongering weakens the war effort and costs lives.[3] The Chicken jumps to a conclusion and whips the populace into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox manipulates for his own benefit.
Chicken Little (Walt Disney 1943)
Chicken Little: “The sky is Falling!”
Read the last line, and watch Disney’s 1943 version to the end. Hilarious, if it were’t so true.
The moral to be drawn changes, depending on the version. Where there is a ‘happy ending’, the moral is not to be a ‘Chicken’ but to have courage, which is the conclusion of the film “Chicken Little” (2005). In other versions the fable is usually interpreted to mean do not believe everything you are told, as in the first version of the film (1943). This was one of a series of four produced by the Walt Disney Studios at the request of the U.S. government during World War II for the purpose of discrediting totalitarianism in general and Nazism in particular. Its dark comedy is used as an allegory for the idea that fear-mongering weakens the war effort and costs lives.[3] The Chicken jumps to a conclusion and whips the populace into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox manipulates for his own benefit.
They should have just rebranded it Climate Baloney.
The term “disruption” is very very clever, it can mean anything the cultists wish it to mean.
It may mean everything that the cult can represent in an easily digestible visual format, the key is the dissemination of easy to understand, uncomplicated and simple bite sized lies. The acronym ‘KISS’ is relevant, keep it simple stupid and its the very first rule of political propaganda and used to great effect by the Nazis and the Soviets.
With the overarching term of reference set the lies can be huge, the misrepresentations can be brazen and shameless with the key ingredient being the makers of the visual stimulus. Anything can be termed ‘disruption’ and providing the visual propagandists do their job properly then millions of combinations are possible. Obviously the visual propagandists have to pick subjects that are emotive and elicit the base emotional responses from the target audiences, cuddly polar bear and sad panda etc.
We are living in the prelude to 1984 and brave new world, the scene is being set, the audience dumbed down and trained by means of petty laws and fear and guilt.
The ideal audience is trusting,stupid,gullible,frightened,guilty and credulous, many people believe and trust what they are told, its why many suckers are ripped off every year and its what the AGW cultists are banking on.
The greatest enemy of the political classes is? When you know the answer to that single question you see everything clearly. The answer is of course ‘we the people’, the lowest of us can destroy the highest of them and they are not at all happy about that and mean to fix it. As far as they are concerned the lower orders are their to obey and the political elite are their to give the orders.
Tom,
I agree 100% with your comments in this post. They are well thought out and presented.
Given his power, Holdren scares me with his radical positions on many fronts including global warming , which have been well documented on WUWT. Are his positions also representative of the President’s positions? Does the “consensus” scientists agree with his numerous statements or are they just in it for the $$$.
Read his entire presentation where he proposes “climate disruption”and you will see that it is filled with numerous scientific errors and exaggerations of consequenses that have no basis in science.
It escapes me to comprehend how such a radical person can be the science advisor in the White House given the statements he has made in the past as well as the present positions.
Imagine the damage he will inflict on this country since he has been appointed to oversea fishing, coastal development policies, etc.
It is a shame that the MSM does not expose this advisor and reveal his positions.
We have a lot of climate disruption around my way. Those of us whose mother language is English call it “weather”.
So what they now have is a selection of terms/causes; Global Warming, Climate Change, Environmental Pollution, and the new catch-all, umbrella term – Global Climate Disruption, that they can choose from to “fit” whatever manufactured crises they are going to use as an excuse to further control the population directly or through redistribution of wealth via the tax and spend programs.
But “educating” the masses to their way of thinking is essential, so – Re-education Camps. Check!
They have now been funded by the NSF to the tune of $20 million. Of course, that’s just to start. It’s call – Climate Change Education Partnerships. No doubt it will be shortened to CCEP, like to “ccep” into your sub-conscious mind. And a near-by science institution applied for part of that grant $$$, but got turned down (by the NSF reviewers) because in their presentation they wanted to present ONLY what is factually known (in other words the real science) and where unproven theories or model projections were the only “science” at hand, they wanted to show both sides of the issue.
Those that stuck to the dogma of Human Caused Global _____________ (fill in the blank) the administration is disseminating, via it’s propaganda ministries, (NSF, EPA, NASA, UN), got their money as in the case of this geologist @ur momisugly USF.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/sep/19/na-usf-grant-to-get-people-thinking-about-rising-s/
The article starts with:
The Al Gore approach to climate-change education didn’t work, says University of South Florida geologist Jeffrey Ryan. Too many charts. He wants people to see the evidence around them – wells turning salty, beaches and mangrove islands disappearing, signs that billions of dollars’ worth of waterfront property could be under water in the next several decades.
$500,000 over the next two years – to find ways to educate people, from school children to adults, about the effects of climate change, sea-level rise in particular. 500K divided into 20M – – so a total of 40? such “education” programs around the country. Don’t you just love it when the government spends YOUR money so prudently.
SamG says:
September 19, 2010 at 7:40 am
Interestingly, George Orwell was a socialist.
So where a lot of the Sturmabteilung, steak- sturm as they where called, brown on the outside but red on the inside. On the other side of the political spectrum these days we have the watermelons, green on the outside but red on the inside.
So when is the Science Czar holding is his own version of the Night of the long knives?
Classic ‘re-branding’! Shows that Madison Avenue is not operating only in corporate American.
I wonder where the line item for the PR consultants is in the administration’s budget? Or maybe they came up with this garbage in-house? I’d say the tactic is just as much Goebbelian as Orwellian.
GK says:
April 3, 2010 at 7:38 pm
It is time for us to start calling for criminal charges to be laid against the MSM journalists and politicians who have enabled the AGW hoax, the crime of the century. The few scientists who invented AGW are just doing their job (albeit incompetantly). The moron left wing activists are just doing typical leftwing moron violent activists do. It`s the MSM media and politicians who enabled the AGW hoax to propogate by lying about the science, by lying about the scientists, and by lying about every bit of it.
The AGW hoax will never be exponsed en-mass untill the journalists and politicians who enabled it face prosecution for the fraud of the century.
It`s only a matter of time before some left wing nut does something terrible, and for that, the MSM and politicians should face the full force our hate laws. They invoked the hate through their lies, and they should face jail for it.
We are wasting our time arguing the facts and evidence with people who lie at every turn, and were never interested in the facts in the first place. The MSM and politicians know the globe isnt warming, they know the science is flakey, they know sea ice is increasing – but that`s irrelevant, because this was never about climate, and untill people and politicians start calling for their jailing, it will continue and get worse
And sadley we all know what happened at discover channel a couple weeks back.
[REPLY – It must not come to that. I am content not to try and chuck them in the clink so long as they don’t try to chuck us in the clink. Besides, for them, public humiliation is a far worse punishment than jail. ~ Evan]
“Disruption” tends to bring the expectation that the event would be a visible disturbance, otherwise it would not be a disruption (an interruption by causing a disturbance).
As there will be no such events that are out of the ordinary, this new terminology will soon die for lack of content.
They should try “Potentially Unequivocal World-Ending Event” next and call it a PUWEE.
I wonder what Czar Holdren looks like in green and ocean blue tights and what is his secret call sign?
A Groundhog with a shadow, one would guess.
“Paint your roof tops, white!”, cheered the Czar.
Don Shaw said: “It escapes me to comprehend how such a radical person can be the science advisor in the White House given the statements he has made in the past as well as the present positions.”
It appears that being radical and antihuman/antipeople is a prerequisite for working in this administration. Look at all the other socialists and Marxists that are there. It’s an embarrassment that our leader would think that staffing with antiAmericans would not be an affront to the people.
It’s alright to have your own views but, if you are elected by the people, it beggars the imagination to assume that this is a mandate to impose your personal (radical) views on everybody. There is no live-and-let-live here. This bespeaks that he fails in the concept of democracy, little understands that he represents, not rules, the people, and has no respect for the Republic (and its limiting constitution).
This is not the first leader to impose personal views, but I bet this is the most aggressive and wide spread agenda pushing unwanted, unpopular, and unneeded goals that we have ever seen.
So…
Global warming got downgraded to Climate Change.
Climate Change got downgraded to Climate Disruption.
And when the catastrophies still don’t arrive as predicted, eventually Climate Disruption will get downgraded to… Climate Anomoly, maybe ?
The way I see it is these guys are running out of downgrades to cover their butts for when disasters aren’t happening.
Eventually we’ll just be back to good ol’ “weird weather happenings”.
Did someone suggest that the esteemed Dr. Holdren is an expert who has been studying “climate change” for 50 years? Since he was a teenager? Hunter beat me to it but I will reiterate, name ONE prediction made by Holdren that has EVER come to pass. Remember, Holdren was warning of a coming ice age in the 70s. Holdren in a political hack and a left-wing college professor (I know, sort of redundant). He has performed scant little empirical science in his entire career.
“Global warming” due to CO2 at least has a tenable (albeit unproven) theory to support it. “Climate change” is ridiculous because that is, by definition, what climate does. What proof or even a working hypothesis does Holdren present to support “Global Climate Disruption”. I have to admit, from a political and propaganda standpoint, it’s a very clever term. Politicians can blame any untoward weather event on “man-made disruption” (therefore we must tax CO2 to prevent further disruption). Scientifically it is meaningless. It will be interesting to see if this nonsense is actually adopted.
Thomas Fuller writes:
“It [‘denier’] has persisted despite it being pointed out as hate speech because those who use it are thugs themselves, needing to devalue any contribution from their enemies and because it gives them an almost sexual sadistic thrill.”
I really admire you for taking off the gloves. On a related note, the term ‘disruption’ carries with it the suggestion that there is a disruptor. That little bit of semantic cheating should be really helpful to grammar school kiddies and teachers. Maybe the Russians are controlling the weather. “Climate Disruption,” the movie, cannot be far behind. Guess who will direct?
Holdren is one of Ehrlich’s lackeys. They are both out of their gourd.
Maz2 writes about Professor Ryan from USF:
“He received a grant this week from the National Science Foundation to persuade Floridians to start considering those adjustments.”
Maz2, do you know where we can apply for these grants? I believe that I would be very good at playing to the hysterical tendencies of masses of humanity. The first time I saw a Florida beach, it occurred to me that these structures could be easily destroyed by storms. It just did not occur to me to whip up hysteria and cash in.
Problems and solutions
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/01/02/george-jonas-yesterday-s-solution-may-be-today-s-problem.aspx
I think if they really thought about it, the name they would have chosen would have been something like “Atmosphere Contamination” or “Anthropogenic Atmosphere Contamination” as an idealistic issue in and of itself without regard to any disprovable dangerous climate or environmental disruptions.