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/
Given his history on this subject, it looks like it is almost certainly not a joke:
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2010/03/richard-glover-spouts-climate-nonsense/
It says a lot about the state of the purportedly progressive media, that this vile bilge could be thought of as being a parody.
Lame-stream media, please continue your “progression” – down the toilet …..
For those of you who think Glover is sarcastic, consider this little gem:
“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?”
Sounds to me like he intends serious criticism. Where is the humor I am missing?
Richard Glover is quoted as writing:
“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.”
Richard, sweety, you and all pro-AGW people have always been invited to post here and debate until you drop. None will. They cannot stand scrutiny for five minutes. In your case, you don’t have to try it; it just happened to you.
To illustrate my previous point and – ooooooh, this is delicious irony – newspaper pulp is being turned into biofuels, ha ha ha. Fortunately, toilet paper’s keeping the sector afloat, so to speak:
http://biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2011/02/18/pulp-non-fiction-biofuels-a-ray-of-sunshine-in-a-gloomy-season/
A brief extract:
“Packaging, modest growth. Writing paper, bad. Newsprint, awful. Direct mail, hanging on, “it will be the last thing to go”. Magazines, down. Catalogues, unspeakable. Directories, crumbling. The internet has just hammered the sector. Out of respect, we took our meeting notes by hand on notepaper they had provided, and kept our trusty iPad safely tucked away in a briefcase.
Gesundheit!
You know the sector’s in the toilet when the brightest sector in the current industry outlook is the demand for tissue paper, driven by the demographics of a rising world population.”
I peeled a good few prawns for a Thai salad on Saturday.
After reading this, I reckon that any one of the discarded heads could have provided Mr. Glover with a far better brain than he currently possesses.
I am filled with regret for the profligate waste.
Reading his other work, this Glover guy is hilarious and full of pooh-pooh on purpose.
Anthony you should invite him to guess post as a raging AGWer. I think your readers would be in for a treat and the rag he writes for would probably get some better press.
Seriously…
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.
For all those who got taken, isn’t George a Past President by now?
The internet will destroy “print” papers like the SMH, Glover just got it the wrong way around. Haven’t stopped laughing !
Michael I also live in NSW and perhaps you have a short memory. Glover was exposed on Media Watch for plaigarism. In his case he was actually plaigarising himself. There is a word for that.
Looks like he tries to be funny through sarcasm, but without irony. I had to look that up – i always thought sarcasm always involves irony. Turns out it doesn’t have to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
So, he really means it – but he thinks it’s funny if he uses extreme metaphors. What a dolt.
So a bunch of dummies with Internet access can beat a bunch of PhD’s with massive funding? And it’s not because their science is bogus????
It appears that some folks think it’s alright to discredit others intelligence so long as it’s couched in satire or irony. Only my friends are allowed that honor.
Don E says:
April 3, 2011 at 9:49 am
“Shouldn’t that end with sarcasm off? It must be a joke.”
Sorry, no; he’s got form. He’s in the category of people who argue that if you have problems with your brake pads you would consult a car mechanic. He doesn’t notice that the previous seven times you consulted the mechanic the brakes still didn’t work after they were “fixed”, that the cost kept escalating after each failure and it is now several times the value of the car. I think in that case he would seek a second opinion and perhaps not from a mechanic from the same franchise.
Something very odd happens with cAGW. Some people who otherwise seems reasonably balanced (which I think Glover is in general) take the kind of extreme position he demonstrates in this article. Anyone know anything about the investment portfolio of the ABC and SMH pension funds? I listen to his radio program sometimes and he definitely doesn’t need to do this sort of stuff to maintain an audience. His idea of a big comitment is to go for a month without using shampoo to see if it really makes a difference.
On the question of the confidence of skeptics it needs to be clarified what we are generally confident about. There is a hypothesis, cAGW, that human caused emission of CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming and that this calls for drastic action perhaps all the way to the dismantling of industrial civilisation.
What most of us are confident about is that there is no serious evidence for this hypothesis. And we are also confident that drastic action should not be taken until there is some credible evidence. We are not confident that we can predict climate or weather years ahead. Just as we can be confidence that the mechanic hasn’t fixed the brakes when we find that they still don’t work, even while we are not confident that we could do the job ourselves.
Articles like this one just support that confidence on the lack of credible evidence. Here is someone with the opportunity to put a serious argument in a widely read newspaper. He could set out the compelling reasons why he believes what he does and invite critical comment. But no, he doesn’t do that. Why not? Well, it’s clear to me he has no case. If this was just an isolated example of omission, it would not be of consequence. But the entire commentariat just repeats this type of article with slightly different analogies (mechanics, cancer specialists), or different ways of appealing to authority, different levels of abuse, different ways in which We’re All Gonna Die.
Pick your study now you deniers (LOL)!
Master Global Environmental Change
This must be the most important Master study next to the study Master of the Universe
I really wonder what crap they tech the students.
But the fact that such a master study exists is the ultimate confirmation biased.
Most worrying.
http://master-in-global-environmental-change.ie.edu/index.php?gclid=CNWwqtncgagCFQK-zAoduk5IqQ
It was snarcasm and the world isn’t going to end until Jeb Bush is potus.
Although I do not share his general alarmist viewpoint, I do note the generally light, entertaining, and non-serious tone of his commentry. While I can’t stand the herald, I shall continue to enjoy glover’s radio broadcasts.
Keith G says: “…Turns out that he is a humorist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Glover_%28radio_presenter%29”
You may think he is, and Glover may think he is, but you’re both wrong. His diatribe is full of hate masquerading as humor.
I was very disappointed when I read this article – I’m an admirer of Richard Glover because, until now, he has always appeared to remain fair and balanced and that’s rare on the ABC.
In fact I was so upset by the article I sent him an email of complaint.
Richard Glover is correct. The Goracle gave us both the internet and global warming, Like Cain and Able, one will kill the other.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
But the swordsman doesn’t fear the writer who is within reach of his sword. He fears only the writer who has the means to publish and to do so with impunity.
The internet is mightier than the pen.
As the swordsman fears the writer beyond the reach of his sword to suppress, so the writer fears the blogger who cannot be silenced.
The pen is as obsolete as the sword. The writer, feeling power slipping from his grasp, lashes out at his foe the internet, in a gesture as futile as the swordsmen who tried to cling to power by imprisoning writers.
Relax Richard, the science is settled:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-change-to-mean-fewer-cyclones-and-smaller-waves-says-csiro-research/story-e6frg6xf-1226033322365
And, with reference to the following, am I allowed to say WTF on WUWT? My head is spinning trying to interpret what this really means:
“Victoria could experience between 21 per cent fewer and 25 per cent more one in 20 year events.”
Please – before any more indignant comments, go look at Richard Glover’s other essays: this is a VERY tongue-in-cheek guy…quite funny, too.
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Well, I read his full diatribe here in the SMH and all I can say is he must be short of ideas for things to write about. Nothing funny – just rather pathetic and sad. Still I guess he gets paid and that’s all that matters I spose.
Douglas
I do believe history is already beginning to repeat:
“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.”
— Joseph Goebbels
Isn’t that exactly what they want? Of course they assume that the State will only censor “climate deniers” and right-wing extremists. But it never ends there.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
— Joseph Goebbels
Oh dear…he’s NOT kidding…? As sarcasm, that’s kind of amusing; if he’s serious – as it appears he is – that’s…well…really idiotic.
“…they [climate-change deniers] fiercely drive their own heads energetically into the nearest beachfront, their bums defiantly aquiver as they fart their toxic message to the world…” a ranting Glover.
That’s what is now laughingly called “quality journalism” at the SMH.
No wonder Fairfax Media (the parent company) shares have dropped from over A$5 to just over A$1 in the last 4 years with an average return to shareholders of about -20% per annum.
Not only is the Internet destroying the world, its creating more Satanists.
http://ca.gizmodo.com/5788388/vatican-claims-the-nasty-internet-is-creating-more-satanists