Global warming zinger in CBS “The Good Wife”
I was just watching the episode “The Art of War” in the drama “The Good Wife” on CBS and was shocked to see this very pointed put down about climate skeptics.
Scene: A judge is being seated at the bench in a Cook County Courtroom.
The judge (Judge Abernathy played by Denis O’Hare) sits, and then announces to the courtroom.
Thank you for being here on this exceptionally warm November day. I suppose it goes without saying, Global Warming 1, skeptics 0.
The episode will likely be available online tomorrow, and if so I’ll add a link here.
I think perhaps the Hollywood producers or writing staff might have a burr under their saddle about the global warming issue not being front and center anymore, and while some TV shows and movies offer “gratuitous sex” this seems to be a case of a “gratuitous global warming schtick”.
I do. The data says exactly the opposite of what the zinger implies. Yes I know, its fiction, but they’ve opened the door on creative license.
From Fox News Chicago:
Second consecutive month of below normal temperatures
The average low temperature for October was 42.4 degrees which is -0.4 below normal.
Therefore, the average temperature for the month was 51.5 degrees exactly 1.0 degree cooler than normal.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
One of my favorite tv shows. Not any more!
And folks in the US wonder where their jobs went; replaced by workers in China. Who in the world wants to employ high priced morons when there is a surplus of low cost morons in the third world ready to take your job. All it needs is free trade.
Oops, our politicians passed that, didn’t they…. Now we are competing head to head with $5/day labor. Ever asked why your wages aren’t going up as fast as the cost of living?
Another enviro celebrity airhead;
http://www.nesn.com/2012/05/steven-tyler-buys-worlds-fastest-street-legal-car-for-11-million.html
You folks freeze in the dark while I burn up the pavement. Thanks.
I trust the evidence in that case holds together better than the evidence for AGW.
Anthony, while I can’t say I’m surprised, and while I *do* sympathize… wait until the time when you can find an episode in virtually every major family series where they’ve actually built in a plot element emphasizing AGW and the harms that come from it.
THEN…. we can talk turkey.
Right now such things are probably just spontaneous. Watch out for the point when they turn into trade for time: write a show with a major Global Warming element squirreled into the plot for brainwashing and get three minutes of required government PSA ad time freed up to sell to Pfizer & Co. As far as I know, you guys haven’t yet experienced THAT sort of thing.
– MJM
It’s no shock that Hollywood producers put lines into shows to promote their narrow point of view. It’s all part of the propaganda that they like to feed the public. Without the internet, we might never know any better.
The earth has 97,000 Olympic size swimming pools full of water as each and every persons share, for all 7 billion people on the planet. I did the math, not saying it’s perfect.
“Just how much water is there on (and in) the Earth? Here are some numbers you can think about:
If all of Earth’s water (oceans, icecaps and glaciers, lakes, rivers, groundwater, and water in the atmosphere was put into a sphere, then the diameter of that water ball would be about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers), a bit more than the distance between Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. The volume of all water would be about 332.5 million cubic miles (mi3), or 1,386 million cubic kilometers (km3). A cubic mile of water equals more than 1.1 trillion gallons. A cubic kilometer of water equals about 264 billion gallons.”
The question I have is:
If we burned all the known reserves of fossil fuels on the planet in one year, and used it exclusively for heating all waters on the planet, how much would it raise the current temperature of that amount of water through direct burning of those fossil fuels?
In a land of abundant natural resources, we are restricted by artificial limitations imposed for purposes that are not always made clear (just WHO and WHEN are we reserving all our oil for on our federal lands for instance) ‘prices’ have increased on account of the cost of energy, probably the biggest sole component of anything we do/produce (mining, manufacturing, and even agriculture) … we _have_ seen a change in natural gas prices, however, owing to a more or less unrestricted new method (fracturing) that has supplies high and costs low … for how long this will remain the case until we reach a ‘peak gas’ stage (perhaps brought on by sufficiently strangulating govt regulations) is beyond my predictive capability …
.
Who knows,, they may have written that line into the script to get a rise out of AGW skeptics, nothing like a bit of stirring of the pot to involve the emotions of viewers?
The judge was being (a) insulting, or (b) weakly funny. or (c) delightfully ironic.
Whichever, not worthy of your comment Anthony. You are becoming too thin-skinned.
REPLY: I thought it was novel, I don’t recall seeing such commentary in prime time drama before – Anthony
Over the past couple of years many folks commenting have claimed to resign from organizations and not renew magazine subscriptions. A magazine might cost between $20 and $40 per year. What’s the TV costing you? Can I get a show of hands of those that have gotten rid of their TVs?
Bob Diaz says: “It’s no shock that Hollywood producers put lines into shows to promote their narrow point of view. ”
Bob, individual producers promoting their points of view is one thing. The danger lenters when the government begins subsidizing that point of view AND strays outside of subsidizing it with PSAs. People are aware that “ads are ads,” and they put up psychological defenses against being swayed by the emotional strings that are being yanked in ads. The camel’s nose came in the tent with the drug war :
“Under the sway of the office of President Clinton’s drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, some of America’s most popular shows — including “ER,” “Beverly Hills 90210,” … and “7th Heaven” — have filled their episodes with anti-drug pitches to cash in on a complex government advertising subsidy (Daniel Forbes. A Salon Special Report. Salon.com, 01/13/00).”
And moved over to the smoking arena with plotlines and commentary on numerous shows throughout the early 2000s. My comment on it in “Brains” was:
“Incredibly, TV networks even accepted having government officials review and alter scripts dealing with drugs to fit specified guidelines and received for this the equivalent of over ten million dollars a year in releases from PSA obligations that they could then sell to commercial sponsors. The idea of the government using our tax money to practice this sort of cultural indoctrination through our supposedly independent entertainment media should be deeply shocking to any American. ”
Given the history of this sort of subtle and very successful influence over our thinking and attitudes in the past in those areas, the question being hinted at by Anthony is quite valid: is there any evidence of the promotion of a “desired” point of view aimed through the chinks of our psychological defenses vis-a-vis our media when it comes to AGW? PSA type messages and paid organizational ad times are one thing: having our favorite characters state and illustrate political beliefs in a tax-paid effort to change our behavior is another thing altogether.
– MJM
One of the coolest winters and spring here in Oz. Warmists = 0 Skeptics = 1
John F. Hultquist says:
November 4, 2012 at 11:58 pm
Can I get a show of hands of those that have gotten rid of their TVs?
Put my boot though the screen of mine five years ago, while David Attenborough was giving me some BBC schmaltz about ‘global warming’..
Haven’t felt the need to replace it yet.
FrankK says:
November 5, 2012 at 12:06 am
One of the coolest winters and spring here in Oz. Warmists = 0 Skeptics = 1
Freezing here in UK a month early too.
It’s fiction! What else to expect?
Weather isn’t climate until it supports your side of the argument.
I hear ya Tallbloke, had snow on the ground already in Herts.
“I think perhaps the Hollywood producers or writing staff might have a burr under their saddle…”
————————————-
The Hollywood left still have a burr under their saddle about the McCarthy era black balling of communist producers, writers, actors, etc. Even if overzealously pursued, there was at least some justification behind the indictments: there WERE communists in Hollywood (and now even in the White House – but I digress…)
More sinister is what is now taking place in the scientific community with the ostracism of sceptical persons for NO justified reason. There is no global warming monster under the bed.
I hope that some day there are movies lionising the people who stood up against the new McCarthyism just as there are movies about those who did likewise under the old – but I ain’t gonna hold my CO2 (breath).
He could have been speaking facetiously. I.e., the logic of his statement was so absurd that he said it only to amuse the audience–and maybe to poke fun at warmists who reason similarly.
Maybe the show should be renamed “The Politically Correct Wife.” 🙂
no matter how often the MSM is mocked for illustrating CAGW articles with steam-emitting chimneys, they keep right on doing the same thing, including in this one:
5 Nov: International Business Times: Esther Tanquintic-Misa: Global Carbon Emissions Breach Threshold – PwC
In its latest annual Low Carbon Economy Index report, which analyses the developed and emerging economies’ progress in lessening their respective carbon intensity, or emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), Price Waterhouse Coopers found that these global carbon emitters were only able to reduce emissions to a combined 0.7 per cent only in 2011, “a fraction what is required against the international commitment to limit global warming to 2°C.”
To achieve the 2°C limit, the world would need to reduce global carbon intensity by an average of 5.1 per cent a year – a barometer the PwC said was never achieved since 1950 when the records first began.
“Because of this slow start, global carbon intensity now needs to be cut by an average of 5.1 percent a year from now to 2050. This rate of reduction has not been achieved in any of the past 50 years,” the Low Carbon Economy Index report said…
“The risk to business is that it faces more unpredictable and extreme weather, and disruptions to market and supply chains. Resilience will become a watch word in the boardroom – to policy responses as well as to the climate,” Jonathan Grant, director, sustainability and climate change, PwC said.
“The new reality is a much more challenging future in terms of planning, financing and predictability. Even doubling our current annual rates of decarbonisation globally every year to 2050, would still lead to 6°C, making governments’ ambitions to limit warming to 2°C appear highly unrealistic.”
“This isn’t about shock tactics. It is simple math,” the report said…
China’s and India’s decarbonisation, meanwhile, seems to have stalled in the last decade…
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/401372/20121105/pwc-carbon-emissions-britain-france-germany.htm
apart from Indian Express, reuters point carbon is the only other MSM carrying this CATASTROPHIC news! however, these days u have to pay to read the rubbish they put out.
Really you chaps are spoiled. I’ve lost count of the number of dramas on British and French TV where there is a global wamring/we are killing the world/CO2 is man made poison theme relentlessly shoved in the viewers’ faces.
If you take it in context of the show and the fact that that character is portrayed as an airhead loon then it actually fits with his character. Sometimes it helps to remember TV shows are fiction.
Hultquist @ur momisugly 11:58 pm
“What’s the TV costing you?”
What’s your point, John? I applaud the calling out of the agenda driven programming for what it is, and that’s what Anthony has done.
“Can I get a show of hands of those that have gotten rid of their TVs?”
Count me in that group. I keep a TV around to watch movies on VCR and DVD, and may resubscribe to satellite service, only for sports and Fox News. The rest is drivel and trash. I’m with Tallbloke on that score. Actually, it’s worse than I characterize it above. Look up Amber Lyon, a three time Emmy winning investigative reporter who recently resigned from CNN, citing that they were actually on the take from the Obama administration for slanting news to favor the administration, or of not reporting some stories at all if it was offensive to their patrons.
Sorry, Anthony: I think TFNJ (above) nailed it. This is of no consequence.
I like the show. This is satire, based on the Edward Current. meme, “God 1, Atheists, 0!”