Guest essay by David Archibald –
They used to be against us, but now Hollywood is on the side of the angels in mocking global warming
The science of climate has had intense scrutiny for the last ten years and more with the result that we now know why the planet warmed in the second half of the 20th century and why it is going to cool instead from here. Yet the meme of global warming continues, seemingly unstoppable and immune to facts.
Politically, global warming peaked out at COP 15 in Copenhagen in December 2009 when heads of state of countries accounting for the bulk of the world’s GDP were in attendance. They don’t bother to attend now – it is mainly time-servers who turn up. But global warming’s momentum is still resulting in destructive and pointless legislation and regulation in the English-speaking parts of the planet.
Commercial storytelling in the form of movies has reinforced the global warming meme. As a plot device, global warming itself isn’t scary enough as the result of global warming would simply be warmer rain. So, for the movie world, global warming was somehow the cause of intense cooling. This was the plot device of the film The Day After Tomorrow in which the protagonist battles wolves in a frozen New York.
A movie just out, Kingsmen: The Secret Service, indicates that the cultural tipping point has been reached. It is now safe and commercially profitable for moviemakers
to mock belief in global warming. The plot is that an evil billionaire by the name of Richard Valentine believes that humans, who cause global warming, are a virus killing the planet. To stop global warming, he sets out to kill a large proportion of humanity. His evil plan, which is much the same as the dreams of the green movement, is thwarted by people who dress well and have impeccable manners.
Instead of working against truth and beauty, Hollywood is now on the side of the justly righteous. The next stage will be when, to indicate a character’s gullibility, insanity or mental instability, it is mentioned that he once believed in global warming. Of course Hollywood does not have any moral scruples and mocking global warming is only a business decision. But mocking something is the first stage of destroying it and we should be duly thankful.
David Archibald is a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington.
His most recent book is Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014).
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“… First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. …” – Mahatma Gandhi
Yeah but many people died during the fight part.
a quick search on the iinternet tells me this movie is about:
UK Screen: Review: Kingsman
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
When a mysterious internet billionaire, Valentine (Samuel L Jackson), kidnaps a respected climate change scientist, he manages to outwit the secret agent, Lancelot (Jack Davenport), who’s traced them to a mountain retreat.
http://ukscreen.com/review/kingsman-the-secret-service-review/
& is about world leaders, who are under the control of a Steve Jobs-like tech genius who has gone mad, not taking action on CAGW.
12 Feb: Wall St Journal Speakeasy VIDEO (watch from 1.20 in)
Is the villain that Samuel L. Jackson plays in “Kingsman: The Secret Service” based on hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons? What’s up with the movie’s climate change subplot?
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/02/12/colin-firth-on-kingsman-russell-simmons-and-climate-change/
(paraphrasing: Kingsman director, Matthew Vaughn, on Samuel Jackson character, says the character is based on Steve Jobs. Vaughn says Valentine, the villain of the movie, identifies a problem that affects all of us, he talks about global warming, etc, so he identifies a problem which is realistic, but his solution is crazy…he crosses the rubicon into madness”)
for this, & a million other reasons, i wouldn’t go near this movie.
Desensitizing solutions, finally.
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We all know how the dear BBC promotes everything and anything related to global warming / climate change. So, imagine my surprise when I watched episode 6 of “Yes, Prime Minister”, second series. Sir Humphrey denounced AGW as a hoax and repeated all the facts that we know to be true. This on a BBC program!!
One scene from that episode is on YouTube but the one you’re referring to is not (yet).
Amazing, Ian. By the way, I love your name. If you are not a spy with a name like that, you should be or, at least, play one in a movie.
Kingsman star, Colin Firth, is married to eco-fashionista, “the Queen of the Green Carpet”, Livia Firth, whose name you see below in the youtube summary:
54 secs: Youtube by EgoAgeTV: Colin Firth introduces #SustainableFilm at the BFI
Bringing together key players in the film industry to highlight the importance of sustainability, Director of the BFI Amanda Nevill and Livia Firth introduced a panel of experts to talk best practice, the challenges ahead and outlining what tools and resources can help.
The panel included Derek Watts (Three Mills Studios), Melanie Dicks (Greenshoot) Aaron Mathews (***Albert Carbon Calculator), David Neilson (Filming Scotland), chaired by John Newbigin (Creative England).
***check out Albert online, if u wish, search: BAFTA: Albert The Carbon Calculator
Oct 2013: Sustainability: film has ‘a unique opportunity to inspire’ says actor Colin Firth
Last week, as part of the BFI London Film Festival, the BFI and BAFTA hosted a Focus on Sustainability panel. Livia Firth, Founder and Creative Director of Eco-Age opened the discussion, which included industry representatives from Pinewood Studios, 3 Mills Studios, Filming Scotland, Greenshoot and Albert, along with our own Head of Film Dan Simmons. The agenda, headed up by driving figure Colin Firth, was creating a sustainable film industry; focusing initially on the environmental, but then also social and economic nature of this far-reaching issue.
This comes after the recent IPCC climate report, affirming that human activity is the dominant cause of the global warming observed since the 1950s. Industry practitioners at the panel gave examples from bottles of water being wasted on set, to lights being left on overnight, and HGVs transporting equipment around the UK…
http://blog.skillset.org/index.php/2013/10/sustainability/
Sorry- cut and paste issue;
Idiot computer screwed up my joke.
[;-)
Reply: Wouldn’t it be great if computers did what you wanted instead of what you tell them to do. ~ ctm, guest appearance over. Carry on.
[But the computer got the joke. It is now laughing about faulty base10 error-prone unreliable carbon-based computer interface devices. .mod]
Heh, pat. Mebbe bravely exploring their own dissonance?
======
[Snip. Bad email address. ~mod.]
“The plot is that an evil billionaire by the name of Richard Valentine believes that humans, who cause global warming, are a virus killing the planet. To stop global warming, he sets out to kill a large proportion of humanity.” Are you sure this movie isn’t based on a true story?
Since when is a film which is based on a comic written by a Scotsman, directed by an Englishman, screenwritten by an Englishwoman, filmed in England, and containing mainly British actors a Hollywood film?
20th Century Fox made it
According to the plot, climate scientist James Arnold is kidnapped by evil billionaire Richmond Valentine. As soon as he is tracked down by secret agent Harry Hart and asked about Valentine’s whereabouts, a chip implanted in Arnold’s head explodes.
Seems there is a hidden message in the movie to climate scientists, after all.
If Colin Firth is involved, it might as well be a follow-up to the infamous 10:10:10 video.
The greens and the Fabian types are basically happy that they’ve “won”. They foresee no legislative turning back now and that they can mock the swivel-eyed and loudmouthed amongst their supporters. Of course they may well be wrong, here’s hoping.
Note that the villain in ‘Kingsman’ is a billionaire and that Dr Mann, parodied in ‘Interstellar’, has already got the US liberals against him because of his case against the National Review and Mark Steyn.
Afraid I don’t see anything to encourage me in either of these movies.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
You know an issue is past its sell-by date when even our “cultural elites” start mocking it.
“This was the plot device of the film The Day After Tomorrow in which the protagonist battles wolves in a frozen New York.”
Not to mention the helicopters flying through all those tornadoes. Oh yeah, and the weather experts in their cabin getting alerted to the really bad weather coming their way by watching …. the weather forecast on TV.
Everybody should watch this film again, it is a comedy.
I think Sharknado was the beginning of the end of the AlGollywood machine. However, we have one last attempt to be serious effort. The potty mouthed Bill Weir. However, I look forward to deliciously stupid statements that will rival Sharknado’s level of intellect. These people have no concept of when to get off the stage, even after being pelted with rotten sharks.
http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEzLzA3LzI2L2E3L3NoYXJrbmFkb2F0LmQ4MjE3LmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTk1MHg1MzQjCmUJanBn/9c356162/d87/sharknado-attack.jpg
What got me about Sharknado was the “scientists” afterward explaining how it could “really happen”
Tony, your comment reminded me of old movies that echoed nuclear scientists suggesting that fallout could possibly cause mutated bugs. The “scientists” in Sharknado where of this variety: There is a certain amount of the “mad scientist” in Ivory Towers. Unfortunately, some of them make it to policy-deciding department chairs.
oops. “were”, not “where”
Sadly, I was referring to supposed scientists coming on real-world “news” shows to talk about how ‘climate change’ could actually cause waterspouts that would be strong enough to pick up sharks and bring them to land.
And they wonder why people don’t believe them…
(as for old movies and nuclear fears – remember “Crack in the World”?)
Unfortunately, some of them make it to policy-deciding department chairs.
_______
Pamela,
Even more unfortunate, some of them make it to the highest levels of Government.
I am surprised no movie critics called attention to Kingsman doing a play on the Ten Ten project. In Kingsman the imbedded exploding devises are used against the alarmists. It was epic.
Contrary to the author’s assertion, a “science of climate” cannot have been under “intense scrutiny” for there has been no such a science. A science is marked by one’s ability to construct a histogram. The height of each bar belonging to a histogram is proportional to a count of the associated observed events: a so-called “frequency.” A normalized frequency aka “relative frequency” is the empirical counterpart of a probability. When the numerical values of probabilities are restricted to 0 and 1 they are respectively called “true” and “false.” These values play crucial roles in the structure of the classical logic.
A science is logical. In logic, a probability is a property of an inference. A result from removing one’s ability to construct a histogram is for an inference to lose this property. Global warming climatologists have removed this ability from us through their obdurate refusal to identify the events underlying their models. They must prefer illogic to logic or be unaware of the difference.
In believing in one’s ability to scrutinize the outputs from global warming models the author is has plenty of company. Believers in this false proposition are dupes of a deception that is created when “projection” is treated as a synonym for “prediction.” This deception yields the false conclusion that the climate models make predictions. In philosophical terms, this deception is an example of an equivocation fallacy.
I think that it’s ok that film makers put an accent on such topics. It is a good way to tell the public about climate change and other effects of wars and over industrialisations. Sometimes I like watching such movies, but I also like to read well-documented articles on this subjects. I found some of them on http://www.1ocean-1climate.com/climate-changes-today.php, which will help anyone interested to understand the causes of climate change our influence on climate change.
Loved that the villan was a CO2-will-destroy-the-earth freak. Unfortunately, the movie was horrible – 20% of it wants to be a sophisticated take-off on Bond/spy films. The other 80% was apparently written by 14 year old boys with a violence fetish, no connection to the laws of physics, and a very limited vocabulary. It’s gross (in more ways than one). Sad that Colin Firth’s career has fallen to this low….
Here’s another parody of global warming: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/02/global-warming-worsened-syria-drought-study