This video has been making the rounds, and the most encouraging thing about it is: it ran on the BBC. The fact that is did speaks to the growing skeptical view of climate change.
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Absolutely hilarious – was just about to post a link from climate debate daily but no need now.
I saw this at the time (Armstrong & Miller show) and had a chuckle. I think what’s happening is less that people are more sceptical, it’s more that people in the public eye are much less afraid to display their natural scepticism. Two years ago, A&M would have been dismissed from the BBC for such a sketch.
This is all good.
Hilarious! I saw this on a couple of other sites and there was actually discussion about whether it was pro or con AGW! Apparently, some warmists took to it too. I suppose it could be pro – if you approve of big brother and government tyranny. I guess for the 10:10 crowd its pretty much as intended.
paging Mr. Manfredjinsinjin
It’s all over when the comedians start to get hold of it!
Bye bye AGW.
For me it is not funy. Too real…
Ex com. country migrant.
Mick.
A friend wrote from Hungary to say that when warmists claim that the cold weather is a sign of Global Warming it reminds him of communist agit-prop excuses when there were shortages of basic provisions in shops. They said that this is the way to build superabundance of all things.
Brilliant sketch and bang on target. I don’t know if they are warmists or sceptics, but the sketch certainly notices the absurdity of the situation when temperatures all over the Northern Hemisphere are breaking low records, we are expected to believe that this is the warmest year ever. Pull the other one.
Actually it’s actually quite daring given the: hushed/reverential* – angsty/urgent* – pained/superior* (*delete where applicable) tones most commonly used to discuss the subject.
I’m fairly sure they’re taking the piss of out the Jesuetical envirotypes that prowl the media unchallenged and their buddies the sycophantic government types who spout dogma on the MSM like the pale Curates they are…
It was supreme canny media operator Tony Blair who spotted the trend (0r should I say responded to the megaphone media assault) which took place in ’96 ’97.
Craving green credentials and the middle class vote, he used the hip youthful caring Climate Change issue to put some clear blue water between his Nulabor and and the flat earth, reactionary, big oil Conservatives.
It kinda worked, unfortunately the change of government in the uk failed to dislodge these apparatachiks from positions of power and influence, because Conservative Cameron had also nailed his green colours to the mast in order to tap this vast reservoir of green votes!
These people are now enacting quite serious pieces of legislation that the public REALLY know nothing about…hence the reference in the sketch to Draconian laws.
The Brits use comedy in a very sophisticated way and have done so for centuries. I think sketches like these, though tiny and insignificant in themselves, let the air out of the Climate Change bubble… it won’t pop overnight…just deflate.
As for the Legislation, well that’s another story.
Can someone get us some Local Warming in Portugal, please? Or is it sold out? We’re also freezing!
Ecotretas
The clip producers are reputedly warmers. If so it means they achieved the same phase of their development like the Communists with Perestroika closely before the gorges Berlin Wall collapse.
Wonderful! Snowed in at the moment on Ynys Mon, It really cheered us up.
Excellent parody!
BOM says the Australian alps may see a flurry of snow this weekend, which proves beyond doubt that global cooling is not regional.
I still wake up from “the green police” nightmares
Not climate but weather, an ice lighthouse
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12006012
As an Armstrong and Miller fan I would have to say that this is a double edged sketch.
On the one hand it mocks authority, but it also make the pro AGW point that weather is not climate; except, of course, that climate is simply the sum of all weather.
It remains very difficult for anyone in the media to question the orthodox view, after years of successful entryism by the more radical greens their livelihoods depend upon toeing the line.
It’s a given that climate has always and will always change until the planet boils away into space; the gigantic leap from that to attributing the lion’s share of the observed changes to a trace gas at geologically low concentrations is the point where it becomes absurd.
Snowed in in Devon. 2nd time this winter so far. Only once the last two winters.
Iren says:
December 17, 2010 at 12:40 am
Hilarious! I saw this on a couple of other sites and there was actually discussion about whether it was pro or con AGW! Apparently, some warmists took to it too. I suppose it could be pro – if you approve of big brother and government tyranny. I guess for the 10:10 crowd its pretty much as intended.
One of the guys (Armstrong or Miller) is apparently quite a vocal Greenie (I rarely watch TV or read MSM so I’m a bit out of touch with this act) so I wouldn’t be so quick to interperate this sketch as a show of scepticism by any means. More like a softer version of the 10:10 vids. Still, whatever the intention, as with the 10:10 fiasco there will be unintended consequences.
I see the video as attempting to “educate” people into ignoring the coming cold weather, but with using a little self-deprecating humor to recover their image from the 10/10 debacle. The subtle things like using hockey sticks in the pamphlet combined with the overt declaration of “weather not climate” (something those outside of the debate aren’t as equated with) makes this an obvious propaganda piece in my mind.
Ecotretas,
I don’t read Portugese so please translate the text around that picture on your website of the polar bear dropping a turd.
Interesting to see that another hysterical use of the precautionary principle just bit the dust. Health authorities in the UK are now advising people to go out without sun screens for ten minutes at midday in summer.
Turns out that the ‘precautionary principle’, which said that even if there is the smallest risk that any exposure could cause skin cancer meant that there should be none, in fact raised the far greater risk of vitamin D deficiency.
A classic really. You cannot avoid working out the best way through the risks, and the so called precautionary principle, when it comes to religion, climate or sun exposure, is a positive hindrance to doing that.
Global warming was framed as an issue that only right-wing selfish oil interests would want to oppose. This framing appealed to two groups: those who see a world beyond corporations, and those who prefer the world prior to corporations.
Both are anti-corporation, but in very different ways. The “before-corp” group want to go back to essentially feudal times, with small villages and local quiet life. The “post-corp” group accepts industry and modern life as the necessary means, and just wants to make things more caring, by say, getting large corps to not fuel wars in unstable countries, and instead get them to fund charities.
Both groups, the pre and the post, can talk about wanting justice, so intitially there was a lot of apparent agreement between the two. But as it has become about implementing solutions, we’ve seen that the two groups that view it in two different ways. As time has gone on, the differences between these groups have been growing.
Here’s the major one: pre-corp feudal types don’t care about the essentially free individual with individual rights. Feudal authority was pre-Enlightenement, anyway, that is, before people were taught to think for themselves.
Post-corp types, on the other hand, are very much thinking for themselves, and consider this the basis of their core identity and their society. They happen to care more because they think for themselves, and try to see a better world.
Nowhere does this disparity between the two groups become more evident than with censorship. One group would happily make global-warming skepticism a crime and have people put in jail. When the post-corp types see this, they know they no longer want anything to do with the pre-corp types.
Armstrong and Miller may still be very much in favour of global justice, helping the third world, and many such issues. What I guess this sketch is targeting is the stupid draconian censorship atmosphere and those who promote it.
How about this question being asked in today’s Daily Mirror?
Is this record cold snap caused by global warming?
Mike Swain 17/12/2010
It could be the coldest winter since 1963, with temperatures forecast to plummet to minus 23C. There are warnings of severe weather across 10 regions this weekend and the cold spell could last until mid-February. It follows last winter’s severe weather, which brought the country grinding to a halt.
Is this the beginning of the kind of extreme weather we’ve been told to expect as the climate changes thanks to man-made greenhouse gases? Or is it just the notoriously unreliable British weather? Here, two of the country’s leading weather experts give their views.
YES – By Dr Liz Bentley, of the Royal Meteorological Society and founder of The Weather Club
What’s happening to the weather? Last winter was the coldest since 1978/79 and looking at the current spell, we could be in for another one. It may seem contradictory to link this with global warming, but there is growing evidence to show that we can expect a temporary period of colder winters as the climate warms.
A report published last month by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts in Germany found a link between low levels of sea ice in the Barents-Kara Sea, north of Norway and Russia, and an increased probability of harsh winters across Europe. And according to measurements, Arctic sea ice has declined dramatically over the past 30 years. The lack of sea ice could alter weather patterns and lead northern continents to cool by an average of -1.5C.
The research also shows that this is a temporary cooling only, with weather getting hotter as the warming effect becomes more prominent. This winter started unusually early with sub-zero temperatures and wintry weather arriving in November. The last time we had a prolonged cold spell in November was in 1997, but that winter eventually turned out to be warmer than average. Last winter was the coldest for more than 20 years, with nasty weather starting mid-December and lasting until February in parts of the UK.
The temporary return to colder winters will mean that those records we break during this winter may remain for ever.
The Weather Club, with the help of hundreds of schools and members of the general public, has been recording the weather conditions right across the country to build up a record on how the climate is changing each year. The information gathered will show how the seasons are changing and whether the different seasons are coming earlier or later. Simple weather observations of temperature and snow depth have already been recorded to monitor the weather and capture these extremes.
NO – by Wayne Elliott, senior meteorologist at the Met Office
Linking the current cold winter to climate change is a nonsense. Exceptionally cold air has streamed down across the UK, with significant impacts for the next few days. But climate is a long-term trend issue – it’s not about short-term patterns. The two are linked, yes, but they’re not the same at all.
To compare one year against another year is nonsensical. Weather is the short-term changes in the atmosphere, which deliver clouds, sunshine, snow, wind. It changes all the time and our job is to predict how. Weather is about the movement of weather patterns.
But climate is the long-term – decades or more – patterns of the weather and variables like temperature or rainfall, which really define the world around us. It’s climate that defines the trees and the type of houses we live in. And climate change is how that long-term trend changes over time. Climate changes naturally all the time. The debate about global warming is whether humans are affecting it or not.
It is true to say that weather is the delivery mechanism for climate change. But you can’t take a single season or a single weather event as being indicative of climate change. It will take some time to research whether three cold winters suggest a problem, especially when research says that cold winters tend to come in clusters.
There is no way of knowing that a cold winter this year – and it certainly look like we’ll be having one – makes a cold winter next year. Next winter could be the mildest we have had for 40 years. We simply just don’t know. Movements of the atmosphere and ocean currents are very complex and the linkages between them are understood – but not well enough.
People’s experience of the weather is local. It is a challenge as a weather and climate science organisation to communicate broader trends. That’s where the hard work lies.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/12/17/is-this-record-cold-snap-caused-by-global-warming-115875-22789437/
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This is amazing – a national daily newspaper even asking this question!
No surprises about the freezing cold = global warming brainwash from the AGW shill.
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Royal Meteorological Society
http://www.rmets.org/index.php
Royal Meteorological Society
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Tel: +44 (0)118 956 8500
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As I mentioned at the Bishop’s, the Armstrong and Miller show has a very long list of writers so the actual writer(s) of the sketch may or may not be more sceptical than the performers. It’s also worth noting that the sketch attacks the eco-fascist propaganda rather than the core idea of CAGW, but it’s a significant breech in the dam nevertheless.
I’ve always thought that CAGW would be dead in the UK when the comedians on the topical shows (i.e. closer to the Jon Stewart sense of humour) routinely treat it with contempt.
It’s a small step in that direction, but welcome and might encourage others.
Gareth Phillips says:
December 17, 2010 at 1:09 am
Wonderful! Snowed in at the moment on Ynys Mon, It really cheered us up.
Not exactly “snowed in” at the Holyhead end but there’s time yet! Snow on the Island before Christmas – whatever happened to Global Wa….
hang on, there’s someone at the door………….
@ur momisugly Gareth Phillips, December 17, 2010 at 1:09 am:
Wonderful! Snowed in at the moment on Ynys Mon, It really cheered us up.
Greetings!
Snowed in here in Cardiff as well at the moment …
For our friends across the Big Pond – Ynys Mon (that’s Anglesey in English) is in the North of Wales, Cardiff is at the opposite end in the South.