What the hell went wrong? For months now, environmentalists have been asking themselves that question, and it’s easy to see why. After Barack Obama vaulted into the White House in 2008, it really did look like the United States was, at long last, going to do something about global warming. Scientists were united on the causes and perils of climate change. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had stoked public concern. Green groups in D.C. had rallied around a consensus solution—a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions—and had garnered support from a few major companies like BP and Duke Energy. Both Obama and his opponent, John McCain, were on board. And, so, environmental advocates prepared a frontal assault on Congress. May as well order the victory confetti, right?
Instead, the climate push was … a total flop.
You can go and read why The New Republic thinks that's happened for yourselves, but it seems pretty obvious to me - starting with maybe, just maybe, the American people don't like being pushed around? (I bet they never thought of that,...) Or maybe, just maybe, there's a clue in these two headlines from The Drudge Report:
"Bale after bale of waste paper sits unwanted at a depot in the south of England.
It is a sight being repeated all over the country because the market for all the paper and card so carefully put aside by households has collapsed.
In fact, the country’s mountain of such waste, growing at a rate of 8,300 tons a week, is costing taxpayers millions of pounds because the private firms contracted by councils to collect and dispose of it are now charging them to store it."
-- Rebecca Camber, on the usual result of this idiocy - higher taxes for those who didn't want recycling anyway - in The Daily Mail.
"Well, gag me with a spoon! What will happen next? The Huffington Post has published an article questioning global warming! Why now, you ask? Because “These late eclipses of the sun and moon portend no good to us,” as My Lord Gloucester opined?
Well, close. Perhaps it’s because with the economy in the tank, there is little My Lord Obama can do about anthropogenic global warming, so it is best left off the table or hastened off the scene. If the Lord of Gore is slighted in the process, so be it. He’s last year’s news. And, as we all know, his movie sucked anyway."
-- Roger L. Simon, mentioning the NewAge Art Tax - on the mind and body (politic) - which you rarely find on Pajamas Media.
"The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented.
Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a ‘potty peer’ on a TV programme that ‘was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming’."
-- Tamara Cohen, on one of the men who had previously forced the British courts to admit "An Inconvenient Truth" isn't science - a finding the environmental movement, and their friends in the media, chose to under-report or ignore - once again getting hot under the collar to The Daily Mail.
"(Voiceover) "The Day After Tomorrow" dramatizes global warming with scenes like this.
ACTOR (MALE)
The whole damn shelf is breaking off.
AL GORE (FORMER UNITED STATES VICE PRESIDENT)
These glaciers are so beautiful.
CLIP FROM "AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH"
SAM CHAMPION (ABC NEWS)
(Voiceover) Al Gore's 2006 documentary, 'An Inconvenient Truth," makes the same point with actual video of ice shelves calving. Which shots have more impact?
AL GORE (FORMER UNITED STATES VICE PRESIDENT)
And if you were flying over it in a helicopter, you'd see it's 700 feet tall. They are so majestic.
SAM CHAMPION (ABC NEWS)
(Voiceover) Wait a minute, that shot looks just like the one in the opening credits of 'The Day After Tomorrow."
KAREN GOULEKAS (VISUAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR)
Yeah, that's, that's our shot. That's a fully computer generated shot. There's nothing real in there."
"Justice Burton is due to deliver a ruling on the case next week, but yesterday he said he would be saying that Gore's Oscar-winning film does promote 'partisan political views'. This means that teachers will have to warn pupils that there are other opinions on global warming and they should not necessarily accept the views of the film."
- From today's Daily Mail story on Stewart Dimmock's court case, which said the former U.S. Vice-President's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'.
*Just a note to say I've been warning science bloggers, like those at denialism.com, that they're too partisan to be trusted by average citizens but - sold on their own left-wing brilliance, and intent on controlling all debate, starting with GW - they didn't listen. I'm hoping this ruling - brought by an average British citizen - gets through to the science community that believed following Al Gore's lead was a good idea. They're all far off the political mark, when it comes to knowing how to act like decent human beings. Decent human beings are fair - and should expect to be yelled at when they're not:
The science community appears to be, mostly, just a bunch of partisan twits.
UPDATE: On Wednesday, 10/9/07, the judge ruled that Gore's documentary should only be shown in schools with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination.
Good word - "indoctrination" - it's got a nice ring to it,...here's the findings (from the Wall Street Journal):
"The judge has decided that this is indeed the case and that the Government’s guidance notes that accompanied the film exacerbated the problem. For the film to be shown in schools, therefore, several facts would have to be drawn to students’ attention:
In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.
The inaccuracies are:
* The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
* The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
* The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
* The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
* The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
* The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
* The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
* The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
* The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
* The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
* The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.
This is a far better result than refusing to allow the film to be shown at all. It requires that students be told by teachers that Al Gore is factually inaccurate, misleading and - in one case - making things up. These inconvenient truths for the former Vice President have been covered up or obscured by the hype surrounding his film. Students will now realize that there are significant shortcomings and inaccuracies in the way the global warming scare has been presented to them. This is a victory for honest debate, a victory for science and a victory for education."
Fuck all those victories, I'll just be glad when people stop believing bullshit and trying to force it down my throat as though it's fact. That's why I keep calling them Nazis. I mean, are these *baldfaced lies* coming from my - or anyone else's - "friends"? If they are, then, they've got a lousy taste in companions:
