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.
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.
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!
I think the BBC was in the pro AGW group, (foot the in self ones shoot) comes to mind.
As a Brit I can assure you that this is warmist propaganda, Our humour can be difficult to interpret if you are German or American.
Stefan – it’s an interesting study in mass manipulation, from example going back to Communism’s beginnings in Russia. Lenin first used it by creating an alternative to the Orthodox Church which he intended to pass off as the real one, his Bolshevik Church came from his ‘if they want a Church I’ll give them a Church, but it will be my Church’; Stalin perfected this by clever manipulation and by murdering and incarcerating any bishops, priests and laity against it. To this day it’s recognised as the ‘real’ Orthodox Church on the world stage and the line from the original Church still villified (now subsumed abroad).
Stalin went on to perfect the ‘art’ of disinformation, he was much impressed by the fledgling advertising industry in the US, and worked together with Beria who came up with the strategy of belittling any opposition by calling them insane, whence the rising numbers in Soviet lunatic assylums, reasoning that ‘majority people’ don’t like think themselves associated with ideas from ‘lunatics’. Of course, all done together with the very real fear of the camps and death for any daring to object. Together with the standard brain-washing techniques in childrens’ education, much as now with AGW in schools, where no teacher, if they knew different, would risk bucking the trend publically. Privately became as dangerous, we haven’t quite reached that tipping point in our schools, but we’re coming close.. There have been a spate of ad campaigns on other subjects encouraging ‘members of the public’ to report offenders.
But the way the Greenies have been used en masse in this campaign is extraordinary.
Maggie Thatcher the Rationality Snatcher. She got quite a lot from it, the Greenie voices against nuclear power diverted, the destruction of the coal industry (which brought down the previous goverment she was in) and the battering of union power to protect workers, the selling off of Britain’s wealth and nationalised industries into private ownership, and, ‘authority’ on the European stage, which grew to world wide.
I think this article he wrote last year in the Times Science mag Eureka might give some insight into where Ben Miller the comedian in the sketch is coming from.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/eureka/article6934863.ece
Erm, no. This is standard BBC climate porn – it’s just being ironic, which seems to have been a bit lost in translation.
I appreciate English irony does not travel well and that we are two nations divided by a common langauage, but you are viewing this video in entirely the wrong light and making inferences based of that interpretation with regards a change in attitudes at the BBC with cannot be justified bases on the their output. The BBC world service has basically become 24 hour “Songs of Praise” for the Green religion, and this is not mocking climate science, but skeptics.
The skit is of the Brechtian (read communist) school – “show that you are showing” – the man presents himself to the camera and on one level he is showing the village idiot and on another he is intimating to the audience, “look, this man is an idiot”. The canned laughter indicates the audience should be laughing AT this “idiot” who says “whatever happen to global warming, eh?”.
Note the sarcasm in the voice over – look at the “idiot” who can’t tell the difference between weather and climate – the distain of intonation that infers that anyone who cannot look beyond their own garden is parachical, xenophobic, ma.
Cut to them reading a government issue book – not a pamphlet – this is serious, well researched data – data you can depend on – the village idiot is cured! He drops out of charachter, steps out of the field of suspension of disbelief and gives an imperceptible nod to camera, implying that now the viewer should consider the “moral”.
The moral they should smugly congratulate themselves for being neither parochial nor xenophobic, and of course for believing in climate change – becuase after all, anyone that doesn’t is a parocial xenophobe aren’t they?
“I’m so gald I’m not an alpha – alpahs have to work so hard – I shouldn’t like to be an alpha – I’m so happy as a beta…”. Note that Orwell worked for the BBC.
Boy, how’d they get Barbara Feldon for that clip? She sure ages well!
Simon Barnett says:
December 17, 2010 at 3:29 pm
I see it differently. I think the comedians are taking the piss out of all parties here, which is after all, what they are paid to do. The hallmark of good comedy is its ability to hold the mirror up to both sides of an argument, and make the stereotypical appear absurd.
The stereotypical ‘ignorant wisecrack’
The stereotypical ‘Government Pamphlet’
The stereotypical ‘Public information film’
The stereotypical ‘prison shower scene’
The stereotypical media brainwash earning the green tick for correct recitation of the ‘party line’.
Brits are dimly aware there is something amiss with the data. They are acutely aware of the coldest cold snaps in many a long year. Everyone is aware that nothing is proven either way by the weather or the propaganda.
The joke in this sketch is mainly on the government for stolidly sticking to the same old drivel when everyone can plainly see things are not as they were before climategate and the cold winters.
The green tick at the end is what gives it away. The pat on the head for Pavlov’s dog after the ‘threat of prison’ aversion therapy gets the biggest laugh.
Simon Barnett – I’d agree with you but somehow you’ve not included the threat of imprisonment in your analysis. This, to me, is what makes it pro skeptics and a warning to those pro warming, and so I think a brilliant skit on the totalitarianism of AGW support. (Different from the warmists’ direct bludgeoning as in the 10/10 video and the ad frightening the little girl with bedtime stories of a dangerous CO2, which created a huge backlash against them.)
tallbloke says:
December 17, 2010 at 4:37 pm
I agree with your characterization. They are clearly taking shots at both sides.
@Myrrh
dude – that is a threat that cuts bots ways – each side has suggested trials of the other at some point, – although only onse side ahas suggested moral relativisim with holocaust denial as far as I am aware – and I would aver that the suggestion of criminality is primarily to prevent the audience from identifying with the protagonist (ie the “idiot”), which makes the payload I outimed in my last the more poigniant.
(Disclaimer: I am, at this juncture, very, very drunk – tis the season etc, please excuse typos – had one for the cold, had another to see where 1st got to, all went downhill from, there drinking rusty mails). Bleh. Yes, bleh, damn you!
note that original comment was sober, and that I don;t drink, except at crhistams.
rustsy mail =
rusty nail =
single malt + drambuie. warm with hands. snifff lovionlgy. Ahhh, xmas.
Use a brandy glass – it facilitates the smell.
@tallbloke
Dude you couldn;t ne more wromg = these are serrioulsly intelliget folk – the3y know what tey are about = but fk it – meryy fkn xmaxs,.
Plane Stupids, Climate Stupids, now we have [sadly for the UK] the extremely low brain Cameron Stupids. 80% renewables by when? Eton may be an exclusive school but it seems to produce far too many idiots.
Following the Cancun debacle, this sketch is another sign that the CAGW scam is well and truly over!
I suspect that few of us Englishmen would take this sketch as pro-CAGW, rather it is an illustration of how our corrupt and useless government has got things wrong again.
You see things. For next funny Friday, some Wordsworth:
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of Man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the ages can.
— William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned
Somehow I think the joke is on you. I find this funny – it is satire about government control but it is no way anti-AGW.
Ben Miller (the guy in the sketch), is a bit of an eco activist. He said recently:
“What we really mean by “saving the planet”, of course, is “saving the humans”. I’m not sure we deserve it. For a start, we did the damage in the first place. And what’s so great about us anyway?”
“…after we are extinct, some future species may industrialise, overpopulate and make exactly the same mistakes all over again. The ultimate irony is that we will just be lumps of fossil fuel for those numpties to burn.”
But it good to know that numpties find it funny too.
It’s amazing how the Thought Police from Orwell’s “1984” came in through the back door of environmentalism…
Lazarus says:
December 18, 2010 at 6:14 am
Somehow I think the joke is on you. I find this funny – it is satire about government control but it is no way anti-AGW.
It takes a special type of numptiness to not see that the CAGW crowd are all about government control, so congratulations on that.