This has been the most strange and unsettling week ever. Wiretaps, using the tax code as a political tool against your opponent, Huffington Post goes over to the dark side, and we witnessed the collapse of climate models ability to predict the future.
The Chinese must be laughing at our folly.
“May you live in interesting times“, often referred to as the Chinese curse, is reputed to be the English translation of an ancient Chinese proverb and curse, although it may have originated among the English themselves. It is reported that it was the first of three curses of increasing severity, the other two being:
“May you come to the attention of those in authority” (sometimes rendered “May the government be aware of you”). This is sometimes quoted as “May you come to the attention of powerful people.” (Alternately, “important people”.) Source
The icing on the cake this week is a portrayal as being one of the “Mad Men”, but given what’s been going on, one has to wonder, who really are the mad men? You just have to laugh though.
For those unfamiliar, this is a parody of the TV series Mad Men, which I have only a passing familiarity with. Apparently its about Madison avenue, sex, power, and smoke filled back rooms in the 60’s.
Unfortunately there’s no large version of the poster, because I’d surely like to print it and frame it for the sheer hilarity of it. It’s like somebody did a Vulcan mind meld with Mike Mann, and this was the image that came out. Of course, I want to frame the poster, rather than burn it like some that inhabit Mann-world do.
(Update: In comments, Michael Palmer says at June 7, 2013 at 10:48 am: here is a reconstructed mostly hi-res version of the picture. My thanks to him – Anthony)
Just a couple of notes for the artist, Steve Brodner, who didn’t bother to do his homework (all he had to do was check my “about page“), but instead allowed himself to get caught up in the Mannian fantasy vortex. For example, recall how Mike Mann reacted with full on conspiracy theory when I sent him a free calendar for Christmas.
I’ve met some, but not all of these people. As far as I know, none of them smoke. I asked Joe Bastardi yesterday whether he smoked or not (given his bodybuilding I highly doubted it) and he replied “only when I’m on fire!”.
For the record, both of my parents died of smoking related illnesses while I was young, and my severe hearing loss is connected to ear infections (and treatment by an ototoxic
drug) due to growing up in a smoke filled household. Smoking adversely affected my life, and made life choices for me that I didn’t plan. To portray me as embracing smoking is particularly unkind and most certainly inaccurate. But, that’s what happens when you live in The Mad Mad Mad World of Climatism.
While the cartoon is funny, the smoking portrayal does bother me a bit about this cartoon, because it is personal, and the artist of course is just another low information sap who works with popular memes. But, that smoking meme all part of the ongoing comparative smear to tobacco company tactics that Mann and Co. like to push, because after their own failure of the alarmist public relations strategy, all they have left now is denigration. Maybe they need to watch that “Mad Men” show for tips.
Oh, and also for the record I’ve also never gotten any money from big oil, small oil, Olive Oyl, Kochtopus, or the American Petroleum Institute, nor am I on the payroll (nor have I ever been) of any such organization. What you see is what you get, some advertising on the blog and the donation button on the right sidebar.
Finally, I don’t “deny” climate change. Most certainly the climate has changed over the last century. My view is that while CO2 has an effect, it isn’t as bad as being portrayed and it certainly isn’t living up to the expectations of the climate models. Like many eco-causes, it is over-hyped to get emotional churning which panders to the gullible.
Yes, we live in interesting times.
UPDATE: I’ve asked Steve Brodner on his blog (where he talks about the artwork) for a full sized copy. We’ll see how he reacts. I’d really like to get one. – Anthony
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Mad men. Bwahahahahaahah!
I haven’t seen the program, but it’s funny nonetheless. Who is the mad one, really? Not those guys. 🙂
Do you notice a difference of reaction when Anthony Watts and everyone else in this poster is parodied than when Michael Mann and other alarmists are parodied? I found out about this poster through Joe Bastardi’s twitter feed. Anthony says he wants a copy. Do you think Mike Mann would react that way? Considering he is suing for slander, I don’t think so.
It has been said that there are two things you don’t talk about: politics and religion. Considering the reaction of alarmist when parodied, is there any doubt that both politics and religion describe their movement? It certainly ain’t science.
I would pay for a large poster of this fully autographed!
Three readers can’t find the third curse? That seems unusual for this site.
REPLY: See the “Source” link I didn’t include it for space reasons. – Anthony
I actually like the sketch, once you put aside the vacuous nonsense of massive secret funding and “climate denial” of course. But the poster is a bit derivative and lacking in humor. I’ll bet Josh could easily one-up the Brodner drawing. 😉
Anthony said: Finally, I don’t “deny” climate change. Most certainly the climate has changed over the last century. My view is that while CO2 has an effect, it isn’t as bad as being portrayed and it certainly isn’t living up to the expectations of the climate models. Like many eco-causes, it is over-hyped to get emotional churning which panders to the gullible.
This is what I try to tell my students about this and other manufactured crises…they’re nothing more than the means by which people control the behavior of the masses–low information folks–by scaring them into acting against their own best interestes in order to save the planet. Or the whales, babies, whatever. AGW and GMO are the crises du jour, and replace those that came before, like alar…which also came to nothing in the end. You can only trumpet a fake crisis so long before it’s evident that it’s not a crisis at all, and your only recourse at that point is to invent another crisis.
Don’t buy the lie.
Interesting who they missed.
🙁 I’m not included? Can I sue an artist for not maligning me?
Jimmy Haigh says:
June 7, 2013 at 8:58 am
I’ve made the point before and will make it again: I have never met a treehugger who doesn’t smoke.
——–
But hemp smoke is magical unicorn smoke that’s good for your health. They all say so. It’s a consensus.
I bet people on WUWT get much more surveillance attention than you think including repliers.
Kinda spooky.
John Tillman says:
June 7, 2013 at 9:08 am
Churchill: cigars. FDR: cigarette holder.
——–
Hitler: tobacco is a Jewish plot.
By the way of book burning, I am very tempted to write a “Dear Colleague” letter to the San Jose fellows, asking them to help me get rid of some obsolete textbooks in my office, which I intended to have have pulped…
but maybe having them burned at San Jose may be more fun?
Roy Spencer says:
June 7, 2013 at 9:50 am
Yeah – omitting Roy was a big oversight on Steve’s part! I guess Roy will have to turn in his “certified klimate-den!er” certificate to the appropriate authorities 🙂 /sarc
The artist doesn’t seem that great in catching expressions (which is the most important thing.) I don’t know about Anthony, but Morano is never less than smiling… opposite to the picture.
Regardng the Third Curse:
We Westerners call them curses because we use them for humor. Actually, they are more like proverbs. They are as numerous as proverbs. So, I do not know how to select “the third one.”
The best introduction to Lao Tzi and Chuang Tzu is: (1948) The Wisdom of Laotse, Random House. Translated by Lin Yutang.
Lin Yutang uses the older British system of spelling (transliteration.} In writing “Lao Tzi,” I am using the later Beijing system of spelling.
Thanks for taking things with humour Anthony.
In the couple of years since I followed-up the Global Warming/Climate Change/Weather Weirding story was to realise the continuous goal shifting tactics and the projections of the alarmists.
The alarmists deny the existence of natural climate change. The only thing that they accept is Milankovitch cycles, greenhouse and aerosols. This is all, the science is settled and we know everything. Well not we, but the high priests.
Natural climate change can happen only very slowly in their minds in thousands of years. Rapid natural climate change does not exist for them. See revisionism, disappearance of MWP, roman warming.
They deny the existence of fast natural climate change and they project it on skeptics.
And their projections do not stop here. The greatest conspiracy theory: skeptics are payed shills of big coal big oil. Every scientist who says something contrary to the doctrine gets smeared as big oil shill. But of course the skeptics are smeared as supporting conspiracy theories of any kind.
The alarmists dream of violence against skeptics, they tell : we know who you are, we know where you live, blow in movies the skeptics to pieces (see 10:10 wet fantasies and other), but then, they ask for protection against imaginary skeptic aggression and like to play victims:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/11/death-threats-against-climate-scientists-story-deader-still/
So what to expect from such minds? Projections, projections, projections. What such person says about skeptics, is actually a mirror of themselves. We are looking inside their own souls, their own minds, this is how they look like and think.
Lol.
Looks like he’s been busy removing a lot of comments (including yours I assume Anthony) from his ‘speak your mind’ section…
“Thanks Jim. Interesting the cicadas we are attracting tonight. If they didn’t spend all that time with their heads underground they would do some homework. I am happy that I have made a picture that got them to think about this issue. That’s what cartoonists are supposed to do. I don’t have to present evidence or footnotes. Climate Change is settled science. It is all over the world, in your face every day. My job is to keep making pictures to keep this on the table. Very soon, as they become more and more isolated deniers will flip and say that they have been for climate control measures all along. Just tell the truth. Tell it. Every. Day.”
More of a ‘speak my mind’ section apparently.
RobertInAz says:
“Interesting who they missed.”
Yup. Not a woman to be seen.
For a while late yesterday, there were negative comments appearing in the comments section of Steve Brodner ‘Mad Men’ blog piece, including quite a strong one from John Droz, but predictably they are gone today. I assume the comment I placed there late last night didn’t make it Steve Brodner’s moderation about whether he could steer readers to any actual physical proof that skeptics accepted money and orders to lie about AGW, but he seemingly answers that with his comment “I don’t have to present evidence or footnotes” ( http://stevebrodner.com/2013/05/30/the-mad-men-of-climate-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-19412 )
Well, he seems to have the concept of Al Gore’s settled science nailed down perfectly.
It’s interesting that they compare skeptics to the offspring of Eddie Bernays’ invention of Propaganda, which he later had to rename to PR; when it is the warmist movement that has their own PR men (the guy who told Phil Jones to fake suicidal thoughts, just as one example), connections to multiple propaganda organisations (Real Climate – Fenton Communications for instance).
I’m sure that in their rewriting of history they will be the finest heros.
I’ve heard the ‘Scottish’ or ‘Chinese’ curse; “May you live in interesting times.” or “May you be born into interesting times.” attributed to 1950’s Science Fiction Author Eric Frank Russell.
Anthony, I am sorry for your loss and fully understand your aversion to the habit. But cretins (not Cretans) do not care about accuracy. They have a dogma to pitch, and you are a stumbling block. So like those in the past, they will do whatever they can to vilify you.
Laughing at them is the best response.
On the subject of Smoking, I myself abandoned the addiction 23 years ago, the pending birth of my daughter was all the reason I needed.
I recently saw a program about the process and practices of cigarette manufacutring. It seems that Cigarettes aren’t ALL tobacco. The process involves taking the quantity of tobacco to produce the batch of cigarettes and halving it. Then half of the tobacco is placed into a vat of water and boiled to render a type of tobacco tea. This tobacco tea is then filled with a tenfold quantity of finely shredded paper and mixed until thououghly combined. This new paper/tobacco tea slurry is then treated with a conglomeration of various chemicals to act as preservatives, flavor enhancers, smoke enhancers, and burn out inhibitors among various other intended functions. The slurry is then dried and separated to a fluffy consistancy. The chemically enhanced, fully dried and fluffed tobacco tea paper is then remixed 50/50 with tobacco before being rolled into the finished product and packaged for consumption.
Now, to decrease cost and increase profits, a new brand has come to market called something like American 20 or Power 20 and is a new lower cost cigarette (about $3.50 per pack instead of $5.50) and is made from a %20/%80 respective mixture of Tobacco/Paper
Sure glad I ended my addiction
wws says:
June 7, 2013 at 9:03 am
I agree with wws – essentially this is psychological transference – their attempts at characterization of skeptics are invariably self-revealing. They rail against “well-funded” skeptics in conspiracies with big money interests, their manipulations, their commandeering of the MSM and big-bucks-clever dissemination of misinformation …. bullying poor climate scientists – even threatening to kill them. Ya know, when you dip into the box of ugly tricks to characterize your opponents, know that the box is your own and that you may not be able to think outside it. The best case in point is the last one. The fantasies of threats on climate scientists at Australian National University were bogus:
http://australianclimatemadness.com/2012/05/03/anu-death-threat-claims-debunked-the-australian/
However, the peerless Greenpeace itself did make such threats to skeptics -published on its own website!, subsequently withdrawn and apologized for:
http://www.infowars.com/greenpeace-to-global-warming-skeptics-we-know-where-you-live/
There have been calls for Nuremburg-type trials for skeptics:
http://www.epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568
Make no mistake about it, there are a lot of very ugly-minded characters out there among the political warmists.
“Theo Goodwin says:
June 7, 2013 at 10:12 am
Regardng the Third Curse:
We Westerners call them curses because we use them for humor. Actually, they are more like proverbs. They are as numerous as proverbs. So, I do not know how to select “the third one.”
The best introduction to Lao Tzi and Chuang Tzu is: (1948) The Wisdom of Laotse, Random House. Translated by Lin Yutang.
Lin Yutang uses the older British system of spelling (transliteration.} In writing “Lao Tzi,” I am using the later Beijing system of spelling.”
So is the third curse perhaps
“May you live in Lao Tzi times