Sunday, December 28, 2008

It's Destructive Fantasies That Are Melting

"After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world."

-- Christopher Booker, claiming "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved," in the Telegraph.UK.



13 comments:

  1. Al Gore, and some others, should be prosecuted for his role in this huge scam, and for the same reason as the San Mateo psychic. He should be shown how inconvenient the truth can really be.

    Then we need to get the helmet- hair make-up mannequins and gel-spiked metro-sexual “journalists” to stop spewing this lie. They seldom understand the very news they’re trying to read, and usually default to the safety of the mainstream “stupid” position

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  2. I think, until the debate is settled, that nobody should be prosecuted for positing possible perils evinced by clear signs. Sometimes, JRN, you are gung-ho to the point of dangerous.

    If you look at the comments on that page, there are convincing arguments in both directions.

    For my money, there should be less squabbling about whether global warming man-made or solar in origin, and a concentration on reversing some of the effects. If that requires a giant solar deflector or somesuch then so be it. And, no, I'm not banking with the idiots who say there is no warming taking place.

    When ancient ice shelves start breaking off, and coral bleaching threatens the Great Barrier Reef, I'm not interested in fantasies devised to make a political point.

    These reports "coincidentally" list the degradation as occurring over the last 20 years in something that has existed for thousands of years. And they say it is the left who are fond of 'waving away' inconvenient facts.

    I also note that it is the same towering intellects on the right who poo-poo carbon initiatives who, while blaming the sun for any warming activities, have also done their darnedest to halt any initiatives to stop the hole in the ozone layer that lets those harmful sun rays in.

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  3. Wrong again, Berko:

    There is no convincing argument when it's context is added.

    It's a cult-inspired hoax - and an ugly one - that is dangerous, treasonous, and more-than-worthy of a trial.

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  4. That's some scam: how did those acid casualties warm the oceans enough to cause coral bleaching and melt ice shelves in the North and South Poles? I'm impressed.

    But you guys will be vindicated when they find out it was all some massive hippie trick to make industrialists and carbon polluters look bad. Oh wait, humans can't have that kind of effect on the environment. That's your argument, right?

    So it doesn't matter if some crank on the right turns on all his lights on World Environment Day to make a point, or Leonardo di Caprio makes a stupid "enviro-scare" movie, there will be greater snowfalls and colder winters to make the enviro-nuts look silly and equally there will be climate change consequences that will make readers wonder what the right are trying to hide, and for what reason.
    Denial only works when all the facts support it. At the moment I have JRN and his extravagantly haired opponents on equal footing.

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  5. Jesus, Berko, you can be such a fucking tool:

    What you've allowed the hippies to do is convince you (which seems pretty easy to do, considering the other things you've attempted to defend) that you don't need to "grow a couple" as the popular phrase goes. Stop being such a Chicken Little: the sky ain't falling.

    Have you missed that it's hippies in charge now - and that EVERYTHING is the fault of global warming? Or that the warming has stopped? Or that the"I" in IPCC stands for "Intergovernmental" - not scientific? Do you listen to anyone who rejects the idea? Or how about the 100 year window they desire? Kind of convenient that one: go broke doing what we say, now, and if we're wrong then you won't know - for 100 years. What a great way to push us into complying with this 40-year old acid head idea, huh? (That's some great lead-time they got on us, ain't it?)

    Dude, it's bullshit - just like all the rest of their bullshit. I've told you, over and over again, they couldn't tell the truth if their lives depended on it. I'm here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Berko, where they leeched off society in the 60's and declared it a "free society" - this is nothing more. It's done, Dude - over - finito:

    It's all a lie.

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  6. So you say. I'm not interested in what hippies say, or shock jocks, or commentators of any stripe.. What I am interested in is what is happening in the way of observable phenomena. If you tell me that the oceans are cooling again and you can point me to data that supports this, then I will listen. And I'll be reassured.

    If those ice shelves are starting to solid up again, and the marine life are not in peril, then bravo! The data is certainly pervasive enough and subject to prolonged scientific analysis to question why you would just dismiss it as a "lie".
    Maybe the hippies just got conned by all those scientific journals and climatologists telling them that drowned polar bears* was a sign of a planet in peril.

    A one-off fudging of data would indeed be a lie. But that's not what we're looking at here. And it really doesn't matter who tries to cover up what if polar icecaps are melting, does it?

    I haven't even seen Gore's movie so that can hardly be the cause for my alarm. People telling me shit suggests an agenda of one kind or another, but stuff happening, well that's a whole 'nother thing.

    [*yes the link is critical of the drowning bear scenario. See I'm good like that]

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  7. So, Burko,

    When you get up in the morning and pull your ass onto your head for a hat, does it make that squeaky balloon sound?

    A brief and incomplete history of hippie/yuppie save the planet hysteria;

    In the 1970’s, Jackson Browne, the foremost nuclear authority and industrial process expert, got the hippie-soon-to-be-yuppie crowd all frothed up over nuclear power plants. Dire warnings and hysteria. The net result; nothing. The industry evolved without including our hero, Jackson Browne, on the memo distribution list. The bored and attention deficit yuppies-in-training drifted on to disco.

    The 80’s brought the great trash crisis, and the hippies-turned- yuppies were on it. Dire warnings and hysteria. We had no more land fills or space, we would be drowning in our own trash by the year 2000. It was on the news every night. Trash sorting at home tripled the number of trash trucks on the street, and everything it took to make and operate those trucks and the collection centers and recycling plants and trucks to take rejected materials from there to the landfills. School kids were drawing landfill pictures that were stuck to yuppie refrigerators everywhere. All despite the landfill owners and operators insistence that they had no such problem. The net result; nothing. And maybe a net loss in resource usage. The story quietly went away because the yuppies, predictably, became bored again and wandered off to become stock brokers while their wives became promiscuous real estate agents. The new way to save the planet for awhile was to drive a Volvo.

    Now we have man-made global warming, which began as an ignored global cooling story in the early 80’s. And since the political science behind it recently began unraveling, the term “global warming” is being replaced by “climate change”. The climate, like the planet, is not fixed and static, as many people seem to expect, and most climate change occurred before human history and will continue with or without us.

    The people of Chicago and Milwaukee should be grateful for that or they would be living under 5,000 feet of ice as we speak. But many also don’t understand leap years or why 2008 is going to be 1 second longer than 2007. Humans didn’t cause it, humans aren’t going to alter it… or save the planet. You can’t get any more egocentric than believing the universe should remain exactly as it was at the time of your birth.

    The drive behind this is a global anti-U.S. economic power struggle plus those opportunists, such as Al Gore, (who conducts his own life as if global warming doe not exist) who bask in the adulation of saving the planet and stuffing their pockets with the gullibility of the public. Selling carbon credits (Gore buys them from himself) is as legitimate as selling a psychic reading. It’s a money scam and should be prosecuted.

    You’ve challenged CMC to point you to some data, which tells me your “observable phenomena” is from politicized armchair pop media. Otherwise you would have looked this up on your own, and it’s clear you haven’t. So here’s one tip; recent satellite data show ice packs growing at the fastest rate in recorded history. Look up the details, as I don’t see why anyone should do your research for you.

    Yes Burko, the hippies/yuppies have been conned. They’ve swallowed the farce hook, line, sinker, pole, fisherman, pier and 25 feet of beachfront. Because their drippy little egos always outweigh their common sense. The easiest person to con is a con.

    When this fades in their tiny little minds, maybe the bored, and now broke, hippies/yuppies will concentrate on moving the Earths’ orbit seventeen feet back from the sun. And if the moon fails to follow, we’ll have a whole new crises and opportunity to sell “tide credits”. And then on to save the solar system.

    And finally Burko, I am only a gung-ho danger to the stupid and the foolish, and it was decent of you to warn them. I’m also deeply moved by your concern for polar bears and marine life, while you remain critical and suspicious of having children take cover in a bomb attack.

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  8. JRN,

    Yep - that sounds about right to me:

    Sorry, Berko, but it's all a con.

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  9. JRN, brilliant and I mean that sincerely. That's as well argued for your position as it could be. And you can't say fairer than that.

    CMC, I have read that article and, in fact, have a comprehensive response to all its claims in draft (I got bored and moved on).

    Now let's see if I can respond without sounding like an angry little man with Nixonian misanthropism:

    Ah if only Jackson Browne had your understanding of the effects of radiation leaks from coolant towers. If only he hadn't read that populist trash about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. If only he hadn't seen those photos of mutant children that had no doubt been doctored by a conspiracy of New Age yuppies that we used to call pinkos before it became unfashionable.

    [latte voice] Did you hear they even said the Duke had been killed by being exposed to contamination from a testing site?[/latte voice]

    Duck and cover, JPN.

    We have a very successful recycling program in our country. We don't waste any angst on whether something will be useful to use again.

    I come from a remote community where the most foolish thing you could possibly do is throw out something you could use again. And don't worry: there's not many socialists in the country. So it's not that.

    And, no, I skipped all those articles about groundwater contamination from landfill too. So I won't point out the base fallacy of asking a landfill operator whether he's having problems.

    If you ask any true environmentalist what they think of carbon credits and you'll get something along the lines of "It's bullshit. That's just something to give the companies an excuse to keep on polluting and then plant a couple of trees" so I'd agree with you on that point.

    Having a measurable target would make more sense. But then you guys knocked that on the head as well.

    I can see how you can continue to sweep everything under the carpet when you are so focused on inanities like what's fashionable among brainless yuppies but, really, perhaps we'd better let the scientists get on with the job. And try not to divert too many of their resources into night vision goggles and Star Wars space shields while you're about it.

    I guess our marine biologists are just slow on the uptake because they still see the visible effects of warmer oceans so let's hope that cooling you've promised is coming fast. Coral can only withstand a small variation in temperature.

    And, JRM, I care about those little nineteen forties kids just as much. I'm just not any more interested in feeding them denial than I am in doing so for the children of today. Neocon Express talks about blowing up Iranian nuclear facilities as they are 'not located near populated centres'! Nah, you guys aren't dangerous, it's those lefties who can still see a use for an empty Weeties packet.

    I'll take my chances.

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  10. "ask any true environmentalist ,..."

    And there you go. See, Berko, you can't hide your NewAge bias. Who's a "real environmentalist"? Everyone on the planet, who naturally cares about it, or you crackpots who insist it has to be your way? (And don't deny you're a crackpot after you've defended psychic powers, Nostradomus, Wicca, and now Global Warming.)

    Like I said, Dude, learn how to grow a couple:

    The idiots have got you.

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  11. I'm more than happy to discuss with you what a true environmentalist is.

    It's someone who practices recycling and composting. Who is self-sufficient to a certain extent but isn't putting posters up about the fact. Someone who knows something about wildlife corridors and can't just tell you the different species because they're good to hunt.

    It's not me. It sure as shootin' ain't you.

    I'd agree that 'everyone on the planet who naturally cares about [the environment]' makes an excellent working hypothesis for what a true environmentalist - or a less true environmentalist, for that matter - is but I don't count the people who drop food for the burgeoning rat population because they can't be arsed to clean up, I don't count the vagrants in rail tunnels or the weekend campers who take a couple of pictures and leave because they don't have the energy or the curiosity to climb down and take a closer look.

    There's nothing New Age about giving a shit. If there is we're all screwed.

    And as usual I give you specificity and you combat me with generality. You do it well, I'll give you that.

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  12. "As usual I give you specificity and you combat me with generality. You do it well, I'll give you that."

    Please, Berko, you know as well as I do you're a NewAge tool. You can no longer hide it. Your every utterance identifies you as such.

    What frustrates you - as it does with most NewAgers - is I "get" the metaphysical game you're playing. You can't confuse me, distract me, or drop crumbs to lead me over to your side.

    Instead, I'm kicking a hole in your world view, to let you out.

    But, while I can lead a horse to water,...

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  13. “There's nothing New Age about giving a shit.”

    That is very true Berko. But the NewAge way is to put on a show of giving a shit just to be seen doing it, and indulge in the mental masturbation of pretending they’re making a difference by doing nothing that actually matters. They’re really good at appointing themselves experts in fields they can’t even spell, and with arrogant dismissal to those who have dedicated their lives to the education required to do the real work. Like doctors.

    I have no idea what point you were making about Jackson Browne, but I will say he is a very good musician and songwriter. So good, in fact, you never see nuclear scientists impersonating HIM.

    And why did he choose nuclear power for his tantrum? Three Mile Island injured no known member of the public, and the death toll at Chernobyl was 57. The automobile accident death toll in the U.S. runs about 45,000 per year. Where’s Jackson when you really need him?

    The point is, he put on a show and accomplished nothing except convince himself of his mental and moral superiority, along with his followers.

    There are 439 nuclear power plants running in the world today, and the U.S. depends on nuclear for 20% of its energy. Jackson, fortunately, had no credibility in the field. But I'll still listen to his music.

    I have no criticism about reusing or recycling, in the real way, not the yuppie, costly and useless feel-good hysteria. But they’re still at it. I think it’s San Francisco that now charges for grocery bags, under some clown-ass environmental excuse. But in reality, it’s to raise money. An otherwise illegal backhanded tax on food.

    I don’t get your point about landfills and groundwater. All businesses have problems and they solve them and move on. The problem they didn’t have was capacity, which was what the yuppies were glooming and dooming about.

    And yea, Burko, let the scientists get on with the job. Without fear of losing grants or being blacklisted because they won’t drink the Kool-Aid. But don’t worry, the tide is turning. Even the Al Gore trusted science team are complaining that he’s been misquoting them.

    And Berko, global temperatures have declined for the past two years. I knew you’d be excited.

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