Guest humor by David Middleton
It’s funny how donating to one charity can get you on the mailing lists of other charities. Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, I used to contribute to Habitat for Humanity. Well, that got me on the Carter Center mailing list. Back then, the Carter Center used to do some good things, so I sent them $20. That got me a letter from Ted Kennedy on behalf of Handgun Control Inc. I stuffed their postage-paid envelope with NRA literature and sent it back to them.
My wife and I support Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, the Humane Society, the ASPCA and numerous dog rescue groups. In the past, we both supported the Nature Conservancy, which employs capitalism to protect habitat, or at least it used to. This got us on all kinds of enviro-nitwit mailing lists. Well, yesterday, I got this in the mail:
The “free gift” looks like a notepad…
Warm Winter Wishes?
I always thought Polar Bears didn’t like warm winters?
Are they seriously wishing for a warm winter? Isn’t that like wishing for global warming?
I wanted to put one of Dr. Susan Crockford’s articles in the postage paid envelope and send it back to them… My wife wanted to send it to Alexandria Occasional Cortex, to see if she would instigate a congressional investigation of the World Wrestling Federation… So we compromised; we will just mark it “return to sender” and drop it in the mail.
How about some Elvis?
David, there’s a story that when your executor notifies the WWF of your passing, they will still continue to send their bumpf to “The Estate of Mr David Middleton”
“just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in”
Here I some information about where these political groups get some of their funding. It is interesting but only a dime in the trillions going this way.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/the-rockefellers-who-they-fund-from-their-web-site/
Well at least this website is at least partially transparent.
Cheers
Roger
Same experience. I don’t send them even a nickel any more. Not for years.
Just note the Washington DC address, in case anyone thought they were giving money to “conservation” and wildlife instead of political lobbying.
Also the very woke, non Christian greeting. Not wishing anyone “happy Christmas” any more, that maybe “offensive” to people who want to destroy and kill us for not kissing the carpet.
That’s another option we are considering. Writing a profanity filled letter, berating them for being atheist schist heads and sending it back to them in their postage paid envelope. Mrs. Middleton is leaning this way now.
The odds are it will sit on the kitchen counter until we either need a new scratch pad or just throw it away.
It is not just charities. I used to donate money to two Democratic congressmen from my area. Now I get requests for contributions from Democrats from all over the country.
Hey, don’t give your real email address to idiots like that do you?
Even in Australia, there’s an astonishing number of people with their hands out. It’s as if they have a better use for your money than you do.
Yes and they have long memories. One recent call went “We we want to thank you for your past support……”. 30 years ago I gave them $20 in return for some raffle tickets. Now it only cash in a collection tin no names no phone numbers.
I supported just one charity. I bought some T-shirts online.
Every week since they sent me a gushing ‘we have new stuff’ email. I unsubscribed three times. It kept coming. I blacklisted the domain.
I will never contribute again.
Yes normal good practice and politeness goes out of the window for these people. They seem to think that their particular “good cause” means it’s OK. The end justifies the means.
I pay net real taxes … that is enough … and only support local animal welfare now as the rest of them have morphed into socialist political organs. If they local animal welfare ever mention “global warming” that will be the end of them too.
Many thanks with love and admiration to the wonderful falangs who set up the HuaHin dog rescue center. It takes care of the soi dogs (strays) and finds them homes. Proud to have been a small part of it in its early days.
https://www.rescuepawsthailand.org/
…and some advice to those in the US:
If you wish to help homeless pets in your area go to the local Humane Society shelter and give your contribution directly to them. (Better yet, consider volunteering.)
The national organization does not appear to be overly cautious about where received contributions are spent. (Was I sufficiently politically correct in my criticism?)
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”
Olde England didn’t use to pull their punches.
if wishes were horses, beggars would be leaving their piles of horse crap everywhere for someone else to clean up.
Well, there’s Thornton from Sherman’s Lagoon.
When life deals you a lemon …
I think it is important to note a few things about polar bears.
They have hollow hair which makes them look white due to the refraction of light.
They are black-skinned like black bears.
They float, in part because of their % of fat and partly because they have hollow hair.
When they re immersed in water their skin doesn’t get wet (much) because of the way the hair lies against their skin. That’s why they can swim a couple hundred km from one place to another.
They like warm winters because they could in theory spend less time in the water. The water is only -2 C so it is a heck of a lot warmer in the water than on land at -40.
The ocean only freezes on top and sea ice mostly melts from below. When they want to get warm they can go for a dip – if there is some open water. They could rightly view the ocean as a solar heated spa.
refraction is a wavelength dependent phenomenon. How does this make them look white. Use fancy words when you know what they mean.
“When they want to get warm they can go for a dip” .
Explain how being surrounded by near freezing water with a very high specific heat capacity and good thermal conductivity seeping into their fur is “warmer” than being surrounded by air with a low heat capacity and very poor thermal conductivity and thick coat of dry insulating fur.
That is the biggest pile of pseudo technical crap I have read here in a long time.
They are able to survive in cold water because of their fat and body mass. They do not do it “warm up”.
The explanation of a Polar Bear’s color is slightly complicated. link Refraction is a reasonable short answer.
Maybe there’s a diver out there who can explain whether they would be more comfortable in the water with a wet suit or in -40° air with a wet suit.
Here’s a hint about Polar Bear color. Yellow Polar Bears have just emerged from their dens after months of not eating. They are quite hungry and you look like a nice snack.
To Crispin. Cool.
Just the opposite of what “people” think about polar bear way of life and how they have been around for a while.
No, I think it’s ironic, and not too bad for usually humourless greens.
It’s definitely ironic… I don’t believe that the greens have the comedic timing for this to be intentional.
Good one!
Well, it’s hard to tell if it was intentionally ironic, or that we can see the irony only. I certainly agree that greens have a general tendency to search for evidence of the “end times”, just like a millennarian cult.
The cool thing is the irony itself… 😉
There’s a rich history of warmists wishing for warming, which I explored with Andy Skuce’s unwitting assistance.
The Guardian’s Fred Pearce:
Prof Phil Jones of the UEA CRU:
Here’s Jones again, admitting a lack of global warming would worry him:
Prof Richard Muller:
There are even pro-warmism non-warmist wannabe-warmists, like Paul Caruso:
I completely agree, and thanks for the quotations. Many do seem to seek evidence of doom, disaster and catastrophe, just as millennarian cult members search for signs of the “end days”.
Peter,
on the other hand, since warming does NOT mean the end of the world, it could be that they merely yearn for an end to all the criticism.
Most warmists are rooting to more warming so they can justify even more rabid screaming claims for action. They really do NOT want to know that this may not be a problem so they can heave a sigh of relief. That is their worst nightmare.
That is how much they want to save the planet. It has be THEM saving the planet. That is their reason to exist now. If the planet saved itself, their lives would have no meaning an they would go back to being insignificant dross with no voice in anything which happened.
I think part of the psychology behind all this is fact that it is an issue where they feel they can come together make positive change in world where they otherwise no longer have any voice.
That is the street level motivation. The academics are corrupt, selfish, deceitful and they know it.
It’s the same mindset that believes that winning is not sufficient. Your opponent (real or imagined) must not just lose but must be seen to lose.
I’m always bemused by their bleating for more funding … if the “science” as they claim is already “settled” then there is no point wasting any more money on their scary stories. We should instead be funding amelioration of the impending warmth.
Paul Caruso: “I genuinely would like to be persuaded again that CO2 is causing, or even could cause, us a problem.” “To be honest I don’t really hold out much hope because I have searched for years for the evidence that would convince me that man-made CO2-induced global warming is happening.”
Hey, I’ve searched for years, too, Paul ! Decades even, since the Global Cooling speculation of the 1970’s. And I still haven’t seen that evidence that shows CO2 is a problem. Not to this very day.
Thanks for those quotes, Brad. Very interesting. They are just a small example of the uncertainty surrounding human-caused climate change.
We shouldn’t be overturning our whole society and economic model over this level of uncertainty about CO2 and Earth’s climate. The human-caused climate change Alarmists are trying to stampede us into inflicting great harm on ourselves by claiming certainty where there is no certainty.
When organizations that I don’t like ask me for money and provide me with a self-addressed “metered” envelope, I, too, often return the envelope with nothing in it. My hope is that the soliciting organization will think I simply forgot to include money and send me another envelope. Hasn’t happened yet; but I’m still hoping.
There is a correlation between a consensus on [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] global warming and the resurgence of polar bear populations.
Well the SJW’s decided 2 years ago that Dean Martin’s 1959 song, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” was legitimization of date rape…
Speaking of Baby It’s Cold Outside…
Here’s NOAA’s Outlook for Halloween (next week) in the lower 48:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nfMk16eAwsbiTgh70-yTFX1-litdh3_s/view?usp=sharing
I’ve read that the editors of nature-type magazines and the organizations such as WWF (World Wide Fund, beyond North America) get together once a year and pick a cute animal to jointly focus attention the following year.
I note 3 in the photos: Panda, Penguin, and Polar Bear. The Atlantic Puffin has been used by some. Lots of “Ps” there.
I’m waiting for the Eastern Hellbender
Anyway, we have mostly given up on large organization and/or unsolicited phone calls and mailings. We find local needs and give directly with our time and a little money.
John, you had a typo, it is:
WWF (World Wide Fraud, beyond North America)
There used to be, in the old days, that nature-type magazines featured very healthy Nordic girls instead of starving polar bears. (sigh…..)
I had a lot of respect for WWF back in the ’70’s when they did some real good work. Today however, not so much. I never donate when I see WWF beggers on the streets!
Completely lost respect when working in Indonesia. The big oil company ran a very expensive, very successful Orang-utan rescue program in Balikpapan. WWF had an office in town, maybe one employee. They had nothing to do with us. Nothing.
WWF took the credit.
Your experience has got to be worthy of a story post at WUWT?
I’m always stunned when people believe that groups like the WWF are motivated by noble intentions. It’s no different than Exxon-Mobile. It has a $300 mill budget and more than 2,000 employees. It has budget targets to meet, payroll obligations to fulfill, just like any other large corporation. Creating scare stories is all part of the marketing plan. If there comes a day when someone at the WWF declares and end to the threat of mass extinctions, you might as well turn off the lights and lock the door.
“It has a $300 mill budget and more than 2,000 employees.”
300/2000=150,000 per employee. Begs the question how much is left for saving animals.
Au contraire, there is a vast difference, E-M provides the ‘fuel’ for economic growth, WWF are just leaches. 😉
Shouldn’t we hunt some more polar bears (perhaps from helicopters?) to protect the baby seals?
WWF were behind the the scandalous ‘walrus cliff death’ lie with crusty Dave Attenborough.
Christian Aid are another organisation that has gone full on climate change mental and forgotten what they are supposed to be.
None of the big charities are proper charities any more. They pay ‘leaders’ £million salaries and have been infiltrated and taken over by progressives and political correctness and spend cash on propaganda instead.
Even the RNLI in the UK has gone insane.
Got waylaid by a WWF lackey when out shopping once and said I didn’t support political lobby groups to which they said the WWF didn’t do that so showed them on my phone that they did and were proud of it, made the person start to ask some questions that their handlers wouldn’t want them asking let alone getting answers. Pointed them to WUWT as a good place to find some of the answers.
James Bull
“Even the RNLI in the UK has gone insane.”
That’s what I feared. I’ve been a supporter for years (well, as an offshore worker it seemed a wise bet), but some things I heard and saw started alarm bells ringing.
A great shame. It seems that after about 100-150 years all organisations, with noble intentions, become corrupt.
Some examples:
Metropolitan Police
Christian Churches
Muslims
In this sense ‘warm’ means ‘heart felt’.
Google “humor.”
There was nothing humorous in the article.
Get a life.
Arctic Dreams by Lopez has a wizard chapter on what Darwin has done for the survivability of polar bears. Extraordinary. Remains one paradox – what is the advantage of the black nose in a white- out?
I think I know that one: pink noses get sunburned and there is a lot of UV in the Arctic for half a year.
Doesn’t work that way.
Only first class mail can be returned to sender. The legal reasons are the recipient is deceased or moved without forwarding address. Otherwise the mail is delivered as addressed.
Fickle recipients are not included as rationale for forwarding mail; which includes returning mail.
Those items mailed under 3rd and 4th class mail rates get dumped into the trash.
If you don’t throw it away, you just force an USPS employee to throw it away for you; at much higher cost.
A few companies mail parcels with clearly indicated requests for the USPS to return unwanted packages.
Some charities are very interested in tracking their recipients. If so, they purchase a special service where the USPS sends them a recipient’s forwarding address.
These letters are clearly marked for the USPS to notify them of any address changes.
Nevertheless, the item still gets trashed, only a physical or electronic notice gets sent to the sender.
2nd class items, i.e magazines, have similar options; with very few magazines opting for physically returning the item to the publisher.
Most magazines prefer to forward the magazine and have USPS notify them of the forwarding address. Both of these options, forwarding the item, and notifying the publisher of new addresses are limited to a short time period of validity. After that time period is passed the periodicals are trashed.
Business postage paid envelopes are first class mail items.
Typically, a barcode sorting machine separates the postage page envelopes and aggregates the envelopes in cardboard USPS trays.
A USPS employee weighs aggregated letters, subtracts tare weights for the cardboard trays and any rolling stock used to move the trays onto the scale.
A small sample of PP letters are counted, weighed and this information is used to calculate the amount of money due to USPS; paid by the recipient when they pick up their mail.
Filling a postage paid letter full of lead sheeting does cause the recipient to pay more total postage; usually that one heavy lead filled letter increases the extrapolated total count of letters received.
Bringing us back to; returning mail items and causing USPS to discard your unwanted mail is a ridiculous and expensive method of trashing unwanted mail. Save everyone the trouble and expense; just trash unwanted mail.
Google “humor.”
Don’t be so US centric. In UK all mail can be returned. I’ve no idea how other countries operate.
Had a few of these myself, when I get a couple in the same post I put each of the others in the return envelope and send it back with the happy thought that at least it’s costing them postage.
It’s like cold callers about “my accident” as soon as I say that even though it wasn’t my fault that the other person died they hang up. Had one the other day from my energy supplier asking if I want a smart meter I said no thanks as they weren’t smart she thanked me for my time and hung up.
James Bull
From the article: ” I stuffed their postage-paid envelope with NRA literature and sent it back to them.”
It’s the little things that count! 🙂
It’s the same in the UK: TV weather presenters almost always use pleasant adjectives for warmer than usual weather and save the pejoratives for cold. Yet a warming climate is slanted as somehow being bad.
The BBC and Met Office were only just bright enough to tone-down their hypocrisy when they realized that the majority response of the UK population to the threat of “a Mediterranean Climate” was “Oh, yes please.”
Watching CTV news one morning. After bemoaning climate change and the unusually warm weather, as they were signing off, one of the talking heads shouts “Enjoy the nice weather this weekend”…………..