Personally, I’ve always thought that the key to an advanced and open society was freedom of information. Apparently too much freedom for certain labeled groups of people is going to destroy the planet. Gosh. Australian media really has gone off the edge of the Earth since Gillard took over. Oh in case you haven’t seen it, here’s the leaked Gillard game plan to teach those Australian “deniers” to accept a new carbon tax. Damn that Internet and those meddling kids!
From Jammie Wearing Fool (via Chris Horner) who sums this farce up quite nicely.
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Great News: The Internet Will Destroy the Planet
Now how exactly will Al Gore’s masterful invention go about destroying the planet? Why, by giving climate change “deniers” a voice to oppose the environmental wackos.
Broadcaster and Sydney Morning Herald columnist
excerpts: …
The planet may not be so lucky. It’s increasingly apparent that the internet may bring about the death of human civilisation, beating out previous contenders such as nuclear holocaust and the election of George W. Bush.
The agents of this planetary death will be the climate-change deniers who, it’s now clear, owe much of their existence to the internet. Would the climate-change deniers be this sure of themselves without the internet?
Somehow I doubt it. They are so damn confident.
They don’t just bury their heads in the sand, they fiercely drive their own heads energetically into the nearest beachfront, their bums defiantly aquiver as they fart their toxic message to the world. How can they be so confident, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary?
It’s the internet, of course, and the way it has given climate-change deniers the perfect forum — one in which groups of quite dim people can swap spurious information, reassuring each other there’s no evidence on the other side, right up to the point they’ve derailed all efforts to save the planet. Call it ”mutually reassured destruction”.
In decades past, the climate-change deniers would have swapped theories in the pub or at a barbecue. But at the barbecue there was always one person willing to put a contrary view, to say: ”There’s another side.” And unless the barbecue was particularly nutty, there was no one handing out gestetnered sheets of dodgy science for people to take home.
The net allows the climate-change deniers to bleat about the scientists and whine about a price on carbon without fear of ever hearing a different voice, right up to the point of planetary collapse. To reformulate T.S. Eliot: ”This is the way the world will end — not with a bang but a whinger.”
On the upside, when it all does end it’ll spare us from reading nonsense like that.
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Gosh, those intellectual media types are so smart. Oh wait, I’m a “broadcaster and columnist” too. Hmmm. I thought about leaving a comment on his blog as a courtesy just to let him know that some deniers took notice of what he wrote, but he doesn’t accept comments. Good thing too, the wrong people could get ideas that way.
Maybe we could all send Mr. Glover the The big self parodying “climate change blame” list.
Problem is lately, the “deniers” as we are called, outnumber the “believers” when opinion polls are taken.
/sarc
UPDATE: Some commenters have questioned whether Mr Glover isn’t simply writing a sarcastic piece. There’s two reasons why I don’t think so:
#1 While it is often difficult to detect sarcasm in writing, there appears to be no hint of it here in this piece that I can detect.
#2 He’s written about his dislike of the Internet and people who use it before, specifically Twitter. In March 2009 he claimed it would be gone in 3 months. Here it still going strong is two years later, more successful than ever.
This quote from that article rather sums up his world view when it comes to technology use by people:
The 1970s were full of innovations that were meant to change the world forever but then retreated to the fringe, providing little more than a safe habitat for nutters.
Reality about Twitter is far different than Mr. Glover’s opinion, see this:
Source: http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/10/twitter-growth-125-million-users/
The internet that uses about 1% of our energy..if you consider the energy needed to cool server farms…and that same energy used to power and cool computing clusters for climate research and archiving the data (which would be nice if they actually did)?
Anyone familiar with the famous documentary produced by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie (note that they didn’t get an Oscar!!) on The Internet is for Porn knows that the internet is here to stay. It’s a permanent fixture.
If climate is a real concern, then ironically, it’s the falsified and improperly adjusted climate data that should be dumped to reduce unnecessary energy consumption.
I thought his opening sentence was appropriate, “Idiots used to be corralled in places called pubs, in which they could bore each other with their crazy opinions while drinking themselves into alcoholic dementia but now — suddenly — they are everywhere.” However, probably not in the way he intended it. I mean, who let him out of the corral?
I have sent him an email asking him what evidence he is on about because I know of none apart from output from computer models which have never yet been correct in their predictions. I also said that I found it strange because the people he labels climate change deniers actually do believe that the climate does change, completely naturally, and most of us ‘deniers’ believe that world temps have been slowly and steadily rising since the end of the little ice age about 200 year ago. We just don’t think that man’s influence in this has been very significant, that’s all.
“I fart in your general direction”
There’s a real intellectual challenge here. A lot of media folk are poor at science. How does someone who is poor at science write about contentious scientific issues? If you’re ignorant, the logical thing to do is seek the best experts there are and construct arguments that appeal to their authority. When you’re in a position of ignorance on scientific matters, what else can you do?
The next problem is to decide who those best experts are. Clearly if one is a scientific ignoramus, this decision cannot be made on scientific grounds. One cannot evaluate the arguments of competing experts. The logical thing to do is select the ones with the best branding. Nobel prizes, IPCC stamps of authority, being a genuine ‘climate’ scientist (as opposed to a pesky physicist or geologist or meteorologist or statistician) – that’s the ticket.
The final stage of solving this problem is to parrot the arguments of the experts you have identified as being the Ones. And attack anyone who disagrees with them. Of course anyone who disagrees with them must be wrong. The Glovers of the World lethally believe that though they are scientifically ignorant, they are smart – smarter than deniers – and cannot have made a mistake about their choice of experts. And once they’ve committed to a position, any U-turn makes them look stupid – there is no way that will happen.
There will be a lot of rage as this scam unravels – it will be the rage of the dummies, realising they’ve been had, and they’re not as smart as they thought they were. This will be fun
Almost every alarmist site deletes and or censors any contrary views. They effectively prevent what this guy is banging on about: freedom of communication.
I’m not making it up. I’m not being paranoid. That is what happens all over. It is the most telling argument against the alarmists I have ever come across. It is thoroughly convincing. If you need to gag the opposition, you are losing, fair and square.
Glover’s moaning about the Internet is a case of shooting the messenger that brings the (for him) bad news. Even without the Internet the warmist position would eventually have been seen for what it is. The Internet just helped get the truth out sooner.
Could be paraphrased as:
“The Internet is bad because it lets people I don’t like say things I don’t like!”
Welcome to the real world, chum.
People who drink booze and meet in taverns should not be allowed on the internet because they will destroy the world.
Think of where we would be if the scribes in the ancient world had been cut off from pen and ink, if the printing press had been destroyed and forbidden to use, if the typewriter with carbon paper that allowed the growth of industry through affordable and quick record keeping had been forbidden and now the internet with all its benefits is looked at as the fall of all of mankind by this person who lacking an argument would silence opposition by outlawing this great tool. And on top of all that if all booze had been outlawed.
Enforcing his logic back to the Stone Age he would not have a job but I am sure he was only talking about censorship to save the world, not loss of his job. Or is he, the internet thrives on profit not censorship and censorship will kill off profit and the internet as a benefit to mankind.
I was right! Just got the timing wrong. The science is in, time to move on.
“It’s the internet, of course, and the way it has given climate-change deniers the perfect forum — one in which groups of quite dim people can swap spurious information, reassuring each other there’s no evidence on the other side, right up to the point they’ve derailed all efforts to save the planet. Call it ”mutually reassured destruction”.”
Thats a hell of an observation, I’m educated to Msc level and I’m often left feeling like an intellectual pygmy compared to some of the contributors here.
Ed Reid
Absolutely right!
Without the “Medieval Warm Period”, it was not possible with the Norse settlements in Greenland …
Without the “Little Ice Age”, the south of Sweden would still be Danish territory. (Without the ice, no “March across the Belts 1658” for Karl X Gustav, king of Sweden 1654-1660.)
Glover is right about one thing, but he’s too dumb to realize what would happen if he got his wish.
The net does make it too easy for each side to talk exclusively to its own friends, without ever having to face down an opponent personally.
This whole dispute would end quickly if a formal and public face-to-face debate ever happened. Eschenbach vs Glover would be a good pairing. Eschenbach vs anybody would be a good pairing.
The debate must be FORMAL. The moderator must be ready to instantly stop any ad hominem nonsense or eye-rolling sighs, and the live audience must be important people who are REQUIRED to pay attention. For example, a debate held in Congress, with each politician required to take a pop quiz afterward. Anyone who can’t list the basic arguments presented by each side will be disqualified from voting on any climate-related laws.
Yes, this is truly rich nonsense and it deserves a laugh.
On the other hand, an article nearly as nonsensical was shocased here the other day, arguing that the real enemy of humanity (by way of CO2) is the “hysterical” reluctance of society to surrender to the beauty of nuclear power, which, if it had been allowed to proliferate freely without opposition, as it should have been, and with an even more lavish public subsidization of its liabilities (since no insurance company on the planet will insure a nuclear plant) — it would have saved us from all that horrible warming created by our CO2 production. Yet that article was presented as serious, no warnings about its nonsense, and it even received the approving nod of some of the wisest minds around here.
There’s this old saying, something about the more buttons in the front that are left undone, the lower the IQ…seems to suite this little brainy-yak.
After skimming that sad site all I can see is a feeble mind, followed up with a strongly embedded weak character.
He bemoans free speech by mealy mouthing those that truly support it – oh gosh, paint me surprised.
These people have no shame that they have no merit.
May I suggest that despite polls favorable to realism in climate, politicians and the businesses behind the green movement are forging ahead. In Australia the move is obvious. In Canada the move is subversive and covert, through astroturfed associations pretending to represent citizens and lobbying municipal governments to pass restrictive bylaws, through utility companies funding these astroturfed associations, promoting the WWF agenda at taxpayer expense, through lawyers linked to some Foundation established by a CBC broadcaster and the public relation firm from its Chairman who benefitted from a contract with the power utilities to promote the WWF agenda attacking retired scientists who know too much about the Canadian scene…
Freedom of information, of thought is under attack and it has nothing to do with science anymore.
Pretty cowardly of him to post such attacks, and not accept comments. He’d probably censor anything he didn’t like anyway.
Of course, I always ask the alarmists who use the web, why they are still using modern conveniences if they really think we’re undergoing a CO2 catastrophe. They usually come back with “I take mass transit and use curly bulbs” as if their job is now done and they can then go on disparaging people who are trying to make the science open and transparent.
Continuing with the B-movie theme, the warmists are rather like the characters who have been taken over by alien spores, or mind-washed by some mysterious cult, and the truth is firmly in the hands of the rational members of the community who have yet to become infected. But as in the movies, those who still resist the onslaught of the possessed have a hard time convincing politicians and the media.
But shock horror – the political class and the media have also been infiltrated!
Where’s little Jimmy and his friendly astronomer to help save the day.
When I see the term ‘Climate Change Denier’, it makes me think of silk stockings – as in “Denier is a unit of measure for the linear mass density of fibers”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_textile_measurement#Denier). I find it impossible to be insulted by the term, because viewed in that way it just makes me giggle. Anyway I don’t deny climate change is happening – of course it is – it always has.
OMG, is this guy even capable of feeding himself?
The reason we are more and more sceptical is due to the performance of the AGW crowd thus far. As prof Bob Carter say’s….”Science is not about consensus it is about testing a hypothesis”.
So let us test a few and look at some of the many AGW theories that have failed the test.
Hansen – Manhattan Island will be under 10 ft of water by 2010 – failed the test.
CO2 increases after war but temp falls – failed the test.
CO2 increases through the 90’s and into the new millenium but temps then flatten and start to fall back – failed the test.
Snow will be a rare occurence – loads of it and many records broken – fails the test.
Mid Troposphere should warm up due to AGW – no evidence – fails the test.
And much more.
If AGW has lost it’s way it is not our fault – the current hysteria reflects that the truth is dawning and that the whole nonsense is falling apart. With it will go reputations, careers, funding, green religion, global governement, global taxes and the very real threat of court action, fines, jail sentences and the re-payemnt of taxes.
The one good thing about the EU is the European Court of Human Rights.
As and when AGW finally falls apart the litigation will be enormous.
Our Australian cousins are witnessing the truth dawning…..it appears that on a recent ABC late night programme the AGW presenter and guests were completely, totally and utterly put to the sword by a more rational scientist and afterwards the presenter concerned well and truly thew his toys out of the pram.
It’s called stress!!!!
Everyday this year has seen above average NH snow cover. Tropical cyclone activity at 33 year low. Rate of sea level rise is not accelerating. Arctic ice has not gone into a death spiral since 2007. The biosphere is greening. Natural disasters are not on the rise, boreal forest fires have been declining. Global malaria has been declining and so on…………………………………..
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend
By the way the internet (invented by Gore) helps weaken propaganda and allows people come to their own conclusions. Without the internet this scam would go on and on.
“. . . quite dim people . . .”
The wonderful art of public put-downs isn’t what it was.
http://www.quotes.ubr.com/subject-quotes/p/put-downs.aspx
http://bertc.com/subfour/truth/putdowns.htm
What? IPCC models do not drive Nature? Breathe easily. Carbon Dioxide, which you exhale, is not a pollutant in spite of that designation by the Supreme Scientists of the United States in the Massachusetts v. EPA decision.
Dr. Courtillot unashamedly uses the Sun as a global warming/climate change/climate chaos/climate whatever scape-goat.
—————————————————————————————Prof. Dr. Vincent Courtillot Präsentation