So, as WUWT readers well know, I have a different opinion about global warming.
Do you think the New York Times should endorse stabbing me (and others with similar opinions) through the heart like a vampire because I hold that opinion? See panel #4 “self destructing sabers for dispatching climate-change deniers”.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/see-something-say.html?_r=2
Admittedly, this is a lame attempt at humor/satire, something we are all well familiar with applying here at WUWT. But, imagine if the tables were turned, and the cartoon depicted global warming alarmists such as Mike Mann or James Hansen in the same role? Our friends would have a collective cow. Yet, somehow, somebody at the New York Times thinks it is acceptable to suggest “dispatching” a whole class of people that hold a different viewpoint from them.
I’m waiting on I have a comment from NYT’s Andrew Revkin, who was the subject of a post yesterday, as to what he thinks about this in his own newspaper.
For the record, I don’t think global warming is a “hoax”, but it certainly has been oversold.
h/t to Steve Milloy at Junkscience.com
UPDATE: Andrew Revkin sends this comment via email:
I find the final panel in this cartoon on uses for surplus icicles to be the antithesis of humor. But some artists, like some bloggers, seem to thrive on edge pushing. Andres Serrano (“Immersion: Piss Cross”) comes to mind. There are many others. We are quite a species.
UPDATE2: Revkin has added some additional thoughts at his tumblr blog:
It’s worth saying more. This cartoon is right up there with the “pretty edgy” 2010 climate-campaign video showing a teacher blowing up students who didn’t sign on to cut their carbon footprints.
Both are great attention getters, and were utterly stupid if the goal was do accomplish anything other than inflaming and dividing people on an important issue. And that would be a reprehensible goal.
Wow!! Revkin is comfortable to call the blowing up of children and killing of people with dissenting/differing opinion “Edgy”
What would he call the killing of all pro AGW…I wonder Oh yes of course “FRONT PAGE EXCLUSIVE”… investigative journalist? Ha! Ha! the man needs to look up the definition. Reacquaintance with an old friend is good for the soul.
RobRoy says:
February 23, 2014 at 2:05 pm
re.
highflight56433 says:
February 23, 2014 at 1:21 pm
Yep… 🙂
highflight56433:
This thread is about hate against a group being expressed in a cartoon.
Your posts expressed similar untrue demonisation of another group; i.e. socialists.
How dare you accuse me of “hate” in your post at February 23, 2014 at 2:00 pm!?
You expressed the hate and I objected – and object – to it.
I am angry at your hateful, unprovoked and untrue attack.
As I said, murderous totalitatarian governments are from across the political spectrum. Indeed, your list demonstrates that. But you lie that only “socialists” do such evil things.
Allowing hateful lies such as yours against any group enables H1tlerianism. Indeed, such lies are H1tlerianism. You are nasty, very nasty.
But you say “Bye” before apologising for your behaviour.
Richard
Seems almost satire to me.
If not, then its just another own goal from the useful idiots of the cause.
Human nature being what it is, I shake my head at the foolishness of the collective. (Climate Cause consensus?)
When you choose to demagogue a huge group of people, asserting that all who doubt, dismiss or question your world view are nasty evil people, harangue them for 3 decades, offer imprisonment, death, damnation as rewards for refusing your offered salvation.
Cause weak minded politicians to impose rapacious costs upon the energy our society depends upon, robbing us all to reward a few well connected bandits.
Which you applaud, as the poor starve and freeze.
Then the cycle turns, the warming is no more.
Does the phrase up ….. creek, without a paddle come to mind?
Having been robbed, insulted and demeaned by fools and bandits, I should forgive?
The bill is coming due and terror is spreading through the ranks of the useful idiots.
After all, their own projection and fantasies are more vile than even a lynch mob could manage.
Roy Spencer,
You may want to revise your allusion of AGW activist-to-NAZI’s to Global Warming Stalinist or even Maoists. Now all 3 were socialists (NAZI=national socialists) and were responsible for the murder of millions of their own people but the NAZI leader was merely an apprentice murderer compared with Stalin or Mao. There is a familiar and appropriate ring to Global Warming NAZI I must admit but the NAZI’s are often erroneously identified as “right-wing” by those ignorant of history. Global Warming Stalinist has less punch so to speak but Stalin and Mao were unmatched in term of their suppression of free speech and democracy.
Without a doubt your label of Global Warming NAZI is, on balance, befitting the leftist mob that is so integral to the green underbelly. Global Warming Stalinist, in my view, bespeaks a leftist intellectual conformity, which is the current modality. God help us if we have to deal with the ruthless efficiency of the Nazis as implied in the cartoon. Anthony my go down in a “night of long knives.”
NAZIs – Stalinist – Maoists – The Global Warming Leftest tyrants really can fall under any of these pejorative labels. AGW activists have really made themselves unbecoming bedfellows.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/man-assaulted-by-icicle-675432
Rob Roy:
Liberty does NOT include the right to demonise and to murder those you do not like.
Richard
Well, it could have been worse. I expected some “clever” way of sterilizing brown(poor, socialists hate poor people) people with the icicles, to reduce population growth. At least we didnt have to see that, but I know what goes on in the envirocommunists warped minds. Theyve been at it since Galton, heck Ian Flemming wrote books about them. Theres no conspiracy, no secret plans its all out in the open. WWF (Huxley, Prince Berhard) used to link to papers on http://www.dieoff.org it seem WWF have cleened up their site somewhat now but the message is clear. Man is an abomination and must be exterminated. And the most effective way of reducing earths population is by taxing energy.
Paul Pierett says:
February 23, 2014 at 9:17 am
Anthony, it looked like a typical Republican I can’t stand either.
=========================
Seriously?
[Moderators, I completely understand the policy against multiple IDs, and was not deliberately trying to get around it. (As you seem to have understood, thanks.) Although I have always tried to simply enter my own name, Bill Adams, sometimes WordPress hijacks the log-in process and uses one of my other IDs, sometimes it doesn’t, I don’t know why. From now on, I’ll just always go through WordPress to be consistent.]
I will try one last time to make this point, then give up:
There is a big difference between a cartoon that shows delightful people we’re supposed to identify with playfully stabbing “deniers” — and the cartoon we’re actually looking at, which satirizes a foolish government department which is desperately trying to explain away a harsh winter by calling it a Commerce success (icicle surplus!), because then the attitude of its spokespeople toward skeptics (which would of course use their “denialist” terminology) is also seen to be foolish. Yeah, I agree that the big see-gar is probably supposed to spoof the skeptic, too, but the main point remains that the Commerce spokespuppet has no legitimate answer to him.
When I said I was surprised the cartoon got past the NYT editors, I was not saying I was surprised they condoned the stabbing of skeptics, I was saying they did not realize — as apparently most commenters here do not realize — that if anything the cartoon ridicules such knee-jerk anti-skepticism by ridiculing the Administration it comes from.
The cartoonists, Rees and Kupperman, have only just started with the Times, and while they probably are left-liberals and may even be warmists when they are at home, they are clearly not knee-jerk Obamists, as their first strip made clear:
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2014/01/rees-and-kupperman-debut-new-strip-in-new-york-times/
The current cartoon makes fun of an administration that is obsessed with “climate change” and “deniers” while the economy collapses around it. If Josh ran a cartoon about Al Gore pushing a skeptic out of a window, one might think it a little too rude to Gore (I suppose, if one had no sense of humor), but one wouldn’t consider it an unfunny threat against the lives of skeptics. This cartoon is in the voice of an imaginary Obama Commerce guy writing a press release, he is the target just as Gore would be in the above example. There is no way it is trying to rally people to emulate the stabbing, even playfully — rather, it exposes the daydreams of the administration. If it were funnier, this would no doubt be clearer — I’m not claiming it’s a _good_ cartoon — but it’s just not an assault on decency and the West. I still say, lighten up. But from now on, I’ll let it lie.
Most marketing people are idiots, and editors not far behind. (I’ve worked with pros, but they are the minority).
I am not amused by any suggestion, even in jest, that skeptics should be stabbed like vampires. There are those among the Climate Nazis (to use Dr. Spencer’s term, which I heartily endorse, for these people) that may well be disposed to take it seriously and act on it.
@richard S. Courtney –
For your information, ALL socialist systems ARE either economic failures (Britain before Thatcher, and the present-day, financially collapsing EU) or are genocidally murderous. Let me name three for you: The National SOCALIST German Workers Party, founded not by Hitler but by one doctrinaire Marxist socialist named Anton Drexler; the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics; and Maoist China’s anthem “SOCILISM Is Good.”
Clinging to failed, inhumane socialist ideas only helps the cause of CAGW, which is most unequivocally socialist, and whose inhumanity proceeds in large part from its socialist dogma..
Indeed, I deny that I am responsible for significant climate change.
The problem is that the sky-is-falling CAGW crowd use the term “denier” as a smear. That’s the nature of their mentality (name-calling not facts) and a shallow positionning tactic (tell a lie often enough…..).
One final point that I feel supports my interpretation of the cartoon is the use of the word dispatch in the title of the panel in question. While dispatch can mean kill, it’s more common usage is: to send (someone or something) quickly to a particular place for a particular purpose or :to defeat (a person or team) in a game, contest, etc., with : to kill (a person or animal) quickly, typically being the third listed definition. I assume the cartoonist, knowing the limitations of text in cartoons, chose his words carefully. I think the posting’s editorializing headline, “NYT Suggests “Deniers” Should Be Stabbed Through the Heart–Like Vampires” provided the Pavlovian priming for many of the commenters misperceptions. If you look where the icicle’s point is on the man’s chest you’ll note that it would miss the heart entirely. Which would seem to indicate that, “If it bleeds, it leads,” is as seductive on a science website as the MSM.
As opposed to ball and powder, there has been a bumper crop of icicle weapons this year. As with all “green” produce, your government advises you to source your icicle armaments locally as it can spoil rapidly if exposed to warm conditions, if you can find any right now. Open carry is illegal in Kahlifornia as well as 8 other states.
John Vonderlin,
Dispatch may well be noted third in the dictionary as kill. I beg to disagree that the cartoonist was neutralizing his own art. As Revkin stated, I think the artist was being edgy, and to that end, the use of dispatch has a casual mocking insidiousness to it that implies the lack of moral inhibition possessed by the killer.
I think it pernicious and dark and betrays the Climate Stalinist moral disregard.
Mr. Richard fails to recognize that a link was opened that was posted at 9:31, copy/pasted its contents to this blog so its contents could be read…by any who chose to read it. Pretty clear.
Mr. Richard fails to recognize his anger is misdirected.
Mr. Richard… You don’t even have to apologize for your missteps.
Good evening.
John Vonderlin says:
February 23, 2014 at 2:29 pm “If you look where the icicle’s point is on the man’s chest you’ll note that it would miss the heart entirely. Which would seem to indicate that, “If it bleeds, it leads,” is as seductive on a science website as the MSM.”
Yep…keep telling yourself that.
saw an interview in Australia yesterday with Andrew Bolte, he said he fears its becoming a criminal act to doubt what so called experts say.
I immediately thought of Christianity in Rome, Inquistion in Spain, Galileo and his earth revolving around the sun, Nazi Germany, a few of many, all of which brought about many deaths of innocents, I fear we deniers are heading down the same black hole of the many.
UPDATE2: Revkin has added some additional thoughts at his tumblr blog:
It’s worth saying more. This cartoon is right up there with the “pretty edgy” 2010 climate-campaign video showing a teacher blowing up students who didn’t sign on to cut their carbon footprints.
Both are great attention getters, and were utterly stupid if the goal was do accomplish anything other than inflaming and dividing people on an important issue. And that would be a reprehensible goal.
=======
I get it.
It didn’t go over well, so lets disassociate from it.
What is needed is a new message that will win over those damn skeptics.
The problems seem to be:
Attention span
Lack of stupidity
The inability to divide a robust, decentralized entity.
Goals that leave no room for future progress
—
Good luck
[It is not clear above which words are actually quoting Revkin (from his Twitter account); and which words are your summary of Revkin’s words; and which words are your editorial comments about Revkin’s words. Mod]
highflight;
Mr. Richard fails to recognize his anger is misdirected.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Whether you agree with his way of protesting or not, his protest is justified. It is rather common on this forum to demonize socialists. CAGW is neither a left nor a right issue, it has both adherents and opponents on both sides of the fence. As a capitalist myself, I am embarrassed to no end at the length to which capitalists have moved to enrich themselves on the basis of the CAGW meme.
If you want to defeat the CAGW madness, then stick to the science. If you do that, you’ll find no better ally than richardscourtney, someone whose science and knowledge in this area is impeccable, and his political leanings are immaterial.
Before claiming that any political affiliation is evil and worthy of hatred it is necessary to:
1 Define the group
2 Explain why they are hateful
3 Justify why the hate is preferable to debate
The icicle stabbers have not (precisely) achieved point 1, merely assumed point 2 and ducked point 3.
On this thread, the anti-“socialists” have forgotten to address point 1, assumed point 2 (which could be supposed to be justifiable as “socialists” can be anything – apparently) and haven’t even bothered to consider that hate is unhelpful.
We should all look at the motes in our own eyes first.
If I were a reader I would find the cartoon very disturbing, no matter what my viewpoint. Here in the UK people are often identified by the paper they read so items like this could make them think about changing to another paper.
Some of the worst propaganda has been wrapped up in cartoons – it seems innocuous. The fact that it got past the editor suggests it does represent a viewpoint of the paper which they would probably not express clearly in an article.
Is the NYT circulation increasing?
This confirms that the new york times is not even worthy to wrap fish for later disposal in a septic tank.
They, in particular, and new yorkers in general are asinine little creeps, not worthy of any attention.
Fact is I’ve spent too much time on the crapweasels already.
No, the last I heard was. That profits were down 12% last year.