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The world was baffled. What were they thinking?
This colossal PR disaster was 20 years in the making, and it took a special set of conditions to achieve a true marketing black hole. Never before in the history of public relations has so much star-power, money and kudos been used to score such a monstrous global own-goal. The campaign to dehumanize skeptics laid the groundwork and somehow, fittingly, the eco-terrorists own name-calling has come back to bite them.
How could people with red carpet careers make a mistake so smashingly spectacularly awful that they scored negative press all round the world, lost 20% of their members, and drove away three out of four major sponsors within days?
They can’t be written off as a little side group of extremists. 10:10 was sponsored by the UK government, major corporations like Sony, and was a group of nearly 100,000 people (now only 73,000). A hundred odd people must have spent months preparing, with casting, scripting and special effects meetings, so they could capture the effect of exploding ten-year-olds without once noticing the rather invidious parallels with, say, Pol Pot. Incredibly the 10:10 death-flick mini movie was even going to be played at cinemas (light the pyre, throw good names in the fire, and invite the media…).
To avert leaping into this disaster with two feet and a jet propulsion unit, all they had to do was run one focus-group, say, on three people at a bus stop. Total cost: 2 minutes and 50 cents. So just how could the 10:10 team corner the market in PR-poison in just a four minute mini movie?
Why did they think ruthlessly killing children was funny? —
because in their heads, they weren’t killing children,
…they were killing deniers.
(And what’s a 10 year old denier? Dead meat.)
They had spent years dehumanizing, ridiculing, and denigrating anyone that disagreed. Two decades of noxious name-calling and rampant bullying had laid the groundwork for The Marketing Disaster of the Century.
This PR disaster was destined to happen sooner or later.
From the dictionary: Dehumanization — To deprive of human qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility: slaves who had been dehumanized by their abysmal condition.
Just as Tutsis were called cockroaches, and the Jews were called vermin, when a scientist is a denier, they’re automatically a fake, and without the human ability to reason, they’re sub-human.
So somehow, fittingly, the eco-terrorists own name-calling campaign has come back to blitz them. The dehumanization program worked so well in their own heads, it didn’t occur to any of them that they were publicly fantasizing about being inhumane tyrannical murderous thugs. They had dehumanized their targets to the point that no one in a room of supposedly top brains stopped and said “maybe blowing up kids is just a bit base?”
It’s a whole new class of marketing disaster
The 10:10 video will be engraved into folklore and infamy.
The 10:10 team made seismic misjudgements
Here are three core reasons they were setting themselves up for a disaster: mostly involving a lack of research and an inability to reason. Their habit of “living in a bubble” cost them dearly.
a) Brain Snap Number One — Don’t “know thine enemy”
What did 10:10 do when they wanted to understand the average man-in-the-street? They asked another activist. It’s like asking a mirror a rhetorical question. It reflects the group-think right back, adding weight to prejudices and supporting stereotypes. “Deniers are paid by big oil” and “don’t care” (when instead those who question the Establishment opinions are the largest grassroots movement of volunteer scientists ever). It’s ignorance run amok.
The eco-bigots might pay homage to the idea of community consultation, but they didn’t do it. They live in rooms of half silvered glass: watching their reflection as they perform for the world while blind to what’s really going on outside. In the end the attitude of those bloggers and newspapers that censor dissent comes back to defeat the censors. While sceptics grow stronger with real debate, the closeted immaturity of believers leaves them vulnerable to attack: unprepared for questions they’ve never sought out, and positively primed to step into the most blindingly obvious PR traps.
b) Brain Snap Number Two — Let’s alienate most of the population
The 10:10 team didn’t just target active deniers, they attacked people who just shrugged; who had other things to do; who weren’t 100% on the crusade.
The 10:10 team think that “the unconvinced” are a minority of 2 out of 20, but polls show about 60% of the population is unwilling to spend more than a paltry $10 dollars a month. To offer just $10 a month to rebuild our entire energy infrastructure qualifies as “un-convinced” – that’s a lot of bomb targets. Hence, the 10:10 eco-terrorist-cell assumed that in cinemas most people would get the same base “thrill” as they did. Instead, most of the population identifies with the shruggers, and with the voice over artist– I thought doing the voiceover was my bit? (SPLAT!).
The eco-bigots might pay homage to the idea of community consultation, but they didn’t do it. They live in rooms of half silvered glass: watching their reflection as they perform for the world while blind to what’s really going on outside.
10:10 were reaching out to the mass population and saying in nice sickly sweet tones: “agree with us or we’ll trick you, kill you, and kill your kids too”. They thought it was funny.
c) Brain Snap Number Three — Believing it’s OK if it’s “all for a good cause”
The green supremacists are the means-to-an-ends crowd who rationalize that anything is ok if the ends is “good”, except that’s the excuse used by the Bolsheviks, Fidel Castro, Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung. They don’t “get” the unalterable truth that there is no END, only an endless rolling succession of means. If you don’t live with principles while you aim for the unreachable end, then you never live with principle.
The root problem is namecalling — “denier”
Namecalling is a technique to silence dissent. A way of “winning” an argument without reason.
It makes a mockery of a civilized conversation. The cave-man uses it to mock the particle physicist.
Leonardo DiCaprio and James Cameron are outspoken advocates. For both their highest scientific achievement is finishing high school, but that doesn’t stop DiCaprio endorsing books by the PR-smear specialists at DeSmog who are professional marketers who call professors of science “deniers” on a daily basis. Instead of being mocked for his gall, lack of respect and ignorance, DiCaprio was invited to the Scottish Parliament to talk about Climate Change. James Cameron says: ‘Anybody that is a global-warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their ass I’m not sure they could hear me.’
Those who are unconvinced include Nobel Prize winners in physics (see below for the link).
The know-nothing bully boys are being rewarded for disparaging our greatest minds, and highest achievers.
Climate Denier is an Orwellian Trick that has fooled many
Think about the literal meaning of the phrase “climate denier”. Imagine how stupid someone would have to be to deny that we have a climate… As long as newspapers, politicians and scientists propagate this mindless phrase they rubbish the English language, trash the highest scientific offices, and promote the heckling domineers who spout inanities. Any organization or individual who uses the term is a part of the attack machine that eats away the pillars of human achievement.
If the evidence is overwhelming, obvious, and even the village idiot can see that, why can’t two Nobel Physics Prize winners, four elite Astronauts, hundreds of eminent scientists, and thousands of PhD’s?
The term “denier” has to go. It’s not possible to even talk about evidence, until the bullies are sidelined.
In modern science there is no more urgent task than to shame the stone-age scientific pretenders so they get out of the way, and real scientists can have a real scientific conversation.
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Read the full paper at The Science and Public Policy Institute, Mystery Solved: Why The PR hacks exploded their own credibility. Find out how a program to dehumanize scientists has backfired catastrophically on the team that resorts to ad hominem attacks.
Previous posts tagged: 1010, & bullying
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This paper was discussed on Climate Lessons which also has this quote:
‘In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science.’ The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.’
George Orwell, 1984.
Tiny URL — http://tiny.cc/np5we
UPDATED 2024: The old original link expired and was replaced. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/mystery_solved.html
Jo: There’s a duplicate paragraph in section b)… the first and second last paragraphs are the same.
Interestingly I had a similar encounter on the ABC blog today. In response to “Susan” who said:
to which I responded:
I am trying my darndest not to get angry when I see “denier” blogged repeatedly. Sometimes I wonder if people are just being ontuse because they can or whether they are simply ignorant of the implications of the word. Being the charitable soul that I am I prefer to assume the latter, but sometimes people open their silly mouths and remove all doubt.
[Thanks and double thanks. Good editing point (darn) and good point. It’s time to simply not put up with namecalling as an excuse for public discussion any longer. JN]
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The word that comes to mind is conditioning. Namely the conditioning of people to help dehumanise anyone who was able to show independent thinking to ask the uncomfortable questions.
The 10:10 Splattergate may well have not received the outrage it did if the milder conditioning had continued on for long enough. All that was needed was for some ugly disaster to be blamed on we the dissenters beforehand to turn us into scapegoats and then I fear the 10:10 fantasy film would have had the effect Franny and co were really looking for.
To anyone on the fence on this issue, I would suggest you pick the team with the best sense of humour. It’s a indirect measure of confidence.
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You’re right. If the ends justifies the means, then there never will be an end – there will always be another, higher, purer, level to pursue. Yesterday, we blew up the sceptics. Today, we blew up the luke-warmers. Tomorrow…
It was the same in Stalinist Russia. When Stalin made a speech, people knew that the first person to stop applauding was getting a one-way trip to the gulags.
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It’s possible that a lot of damage has already been done to children exposed to this one. And I think that was their intention. By using kids in class in the video, they would guarantee to get impressionable kids looking at it.
The human brain is not fully developed until at least age 25. Fear is a potent motivator, and without the powers to properly review, young kids may get a message that they have to ‘get with the cause’ or find themselves singled out, banished from the ‘tribe’, or even attacked.
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Last night I watched the movie “Good Night, and Good Luck” and I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the wild anticommunism of senator Joseph McCarthy and the craziness of the global warming fanatics.
Keep up the good work Jo, we need more of Edward R. Murrow today.
We also need a wider public more receptive to this sort of journalism but that is another story.
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Jo. Make sure you check this site for information on one of the most frightening eco-terrorists on the internet. He’s in very good company with the 10-10 crew !
http://www.prisonplanet.com/global-warming-alarmist-calls-for-eco-gulags-to-re-educate-climate-deniers.html
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I’ve spoken to someone very senior in one of the major supporter companies of 10:10 and that person said:
What’s 10:10?
No I’ve not seen any exploding kids video, that sounds sick.
When we were sent on climate change ‘education’ courses, we agreed amongst ourselves not to question what was said so that we could get back to work quicker. We’re nearly all fundamentally sceptical of the AGW message. A lot of the presentation was clearly rubbish but we didn’t disagree with the general principle of energy efficiency, saving the rain forests and not wasting natural resources.
I asked if the person if he/she thought they were wasting energy, natural resources or harming the rain forest. Of course not.
People who are officially under the 10:10 banner, don’t actually believe in the thing. They assume that it’s other people who are wasting energy and natural resources.
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Great article Jo.
My first thought was that fanatics don’t have a sense of humor, but unfortunately they do and it is always monstrous.
(no apologies)
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Speedy:
November 9th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Anyone who approves “the ends justifies the means” has given their philosophical blessing to the practice – so should not expect sympathy when it happens to them. IMO anyway.
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If you start having wanky fantasies that involve murdering children, should you:
a: keep them to yourself.
b: seek urgent medical help.
c: get together with your mates and make a hugely creative and amusing film about it.
c: Obviously.
I wonder what will be next, because there will be a next. These edgy, talented, far sighted people will not give up until they’ve educated or eliminated us feeble minded proles.
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The 10:10 debacle was probably the greatest PR disaster for team CAGW since the release of the climategate emails and the timing couldn’t have been worse for them. The economies of the world are still reeling from the Great Recession and now there is a conservative power shift underway in Washington.The future looks bleak for the warmanistas.
Speaking of hackers, I have read that the evidence shows that climategate was not a hack job but an intentional release of information by a whistleblower. I have read forensic arguments that are compelling for this. I wold love to see Jo blog on this sometime. If Jo has already done so I would appreciate a link to it.
In my opinion there are only fundamental unresolved issues remaining. First, will the scandal go out with a bang or a whimper? Second, what will be the next apocalyptic fraud that the greens are going to try and foist upon us in an ongoing effort to keep the taxpayer funded gravy train rolling along?!
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From the link provided by Keith H @ 5
Let me see if I have this right? James Hansen dedicates a recent book of his to all the grandchildren of the world and includes a photo of his own granddaughter. He also endorses a book advocating terrorism which will certainly remove said grandchildren.
Where’s today’s Ray Martin, Jana Wendt et al? The stupidity of it all needs to be exposed to the masses, now.
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The fact that in the video shrugging your shoulders was enough to meet a gruesome end by the red button is actually the best idea AGW sceptics were handed for free.
Any doubts people had that the radical environmentalists are anti-human genocidal elitists is gone now.
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Superb piece of work. It will serve to capture the import of that horrific little video, and what it revealed of the mental state/attitudes of those involved in producing it. We have a quite a spectrum of malice and malevolence in the climate campaign, from the detached arrogance of the patrician in Maurice Strong opining on his duty to destroy industrial civilisation through to the more down to earth fantasising about utterly destroying recalcitrant children in classrooms, and to the terrorising actions of the man who threatened the employees of a broadcaster in the States. Less dramatic moral and psychological issues are found in the concealing, the losing, the biased-editing and goal-directed selection of subsets of temperature data in order to produce desired effects. I would also include, in this amoral sin bin, the deliberate use of fear-inducing imagery directed at children in schools to get them on board, and to hassle their parents. There is quite a swamp to be drained here. Your study helps pin down and map out a part of it.
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Hi Jo,
Love your work as always.
I agree the 10:10 guys shot themselves in the foot.
I do wonder about this myself because i would love to do a video of what would happen if the Greens Policies came to pass.
Imagine the scene in a hospital operating theatre half way through an operation and the lights go out.
The Surgeon comes out and says ” I hope that wasn’t your loved one in there”
The by line…
This is what will happen with no coal fired power stations in Australia, think before you vote greens.
Next Video
A family dropping in to see their parents/grandparents
They open the door to see them passed away in the lounge due to cold or hunger.
One of the parents says “This is is the result of not being able to afford heat/food due to carbon tax’s”
The byline….
This is what will happen with a carbon Tax in Australia, think before you vote greens.
I am sure there are others
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I’ve spent more time than most in totalitarian states and apart from the grey grinding impoverishment of people’s souls they were alike in that although there were nuances in the level of personal freedom to be had, the big Verboten was always any sort of humour directed at the State. Extremists and fanatics do not ‘do’ humour. When they attempt it, the results are always dire. A definition of Hell would be watching a ‘comedy’ show on state television (always only one and always nailed down). 10:10 was a taste of state humour.
Pointman
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The 10:10 guys shot themselves in the foot.
Because like everyone engaged in the AGW hysteria they simply refuse engaged in rational debate with anyone who doesn’t agree with them.
They live in a echo chamber where no one is game to speak out when they disagree with the consensus. As a result every idea put forward becomes a consensus because no one ever disagrees.
The main failing here is that this group includes scientists and journalists who by definition are supposed to engage in rational debate with people who disagree with them.
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The problem faced by the Greenie-Marxists is that they were deceived. AR4 has high predicted ‘climate sensitivity’ [median 3 K] because of ‘cloud albedo effect’ cooling, c. half present AGW [AR4]. By 2003, experiment couldn’t prove it so it’s purely theoretical from an equation derived by Lacis and Hansen at GISS in 1974, in turn from Sagan who started the global warming scare.
The equation is wrong because it assumes constant ‘Mie asymmetry factor’, ludicrous because Mie assumed a plane wave, and just internal diffuse scattering when there’s also direct backscattering at the upper cloud surface. As these processes have opposite dependence on droplet size, you can’t use the equation to predict the effect of pollution on cloud albedo. Sagan got it wrong about Venus.
In 2004, NASA claimed enhanced ‘reflection’ from greater water droplet surface area in polluted clouds. It’s widely believed in climate science but it’s fake physics. I seems that poor science morphed into fraud to keep the imaginary cooling in AR4 thereby to justify high predicted CO2-AGW.
Most AGW has probably been from clouds as the backscattering shielding is switched off. As it’s self limiting, it may explain why according to ocean heat content global warming stopped in 2003. CO2-AGW seems to be controlled by a Mizkolczi mechanism of constant IR optical depth.
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Pointman: #13
During the cold war period, I was told by a Russian diplomat that the Soviets only had one joke. When I asked him what it the joke was, he said. “I do not know, it is a state secret”, – and that was the joke.
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Jo:
But they are not the only ones, “living in a bubble”. There is a bubble in Washington, one in London, certainly ones in New York and Brussels, one in Canberra, and another in Wellington – political bubbles. And these bubbles are hardened against most things short of a nuclear device.
There is no politician worthy of that “title” who would ever admit they are wrong, especially when they are surrounded by “policy advisors”, and “media managers”, who have mortgages on the table.
A sequence of key events that was critical was that a) this occurred just before the US elections, b) it went viral almost immediately, c) it spawned several memes that are still making the rounds, and d) it got a high “Gross” rating by the Gen-Y’s (who are just getting to vote; for probably the first time).
This last point is probably the most significant, because we are moving through a generational change. The AGW scam was really a product of the Gen-Xers, who looked at their Boomer parents and thought, “Those b*st*rds” are destroying the planet – my planet”. So they protested, and waved banners, and went to press with a one-sided view of climate change.
But the Gen-Y’s do not read the MSM. Gen-Y’s have grown up bombarded with advertising – so they ignore anything that smells of PR. And they are ultra-connected and have what I would describe as a hive-mind. If the hive thinks AGW is a crock, then it is dead in the water.
ClimateGate was the left jab, and ten-ten was the right hook. And they were both self-administered, and the Gen-Y’s noticed, and they are chattering about it, and that is starting to be noticed by their parents, and so it goes on.
It is a collapse in slow motion, but don’t expect any reaction from within the political bubbles, except perhaps a deafening silence.
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I have made a post on this report here to help give it a little more publicity: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/11/climate-campaigners-classroom-turpitude.html
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I was appalled to see the the world famous Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London, signed up with 10:10 only ten days or so after the Splattergate film was released and withdrawn. This froma hopsital that treis to save children’s lives. I have emailed them three times since then to try and elicit a response from them as to why they ignored the impact of the film and endorsed 10:10 by joining them. I am still waiting for an answer.
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Sorry, spelling went awry….”hospital that tries…”
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@Rereke #15
Hello Rereke, around the same time I was told a joke by a Russian computer engineer (everyone there was called an engineer at that time). The 8 bit processor had just given way to the 16 bit processor and all the technical talk was of the coming 32 bit generation. “When will the first 32 bit processor arrive in the USSR?” The sly answer was “In the head of a cruise missile”
Him telling me that joke meant I’d graduated from a friend to a Droog – someone who could be relied on not to report him for it. Friends had a habit of doing that, just to notch up some brownie points with the local politicos.
Pointman
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Unlike 10 years ago, we all have digital cameras and phones, computers and the internet have spawned an instant messaging and information service.
The medias selective reporting only hurt itself to the actual information being looked at around the world.
It ALWAYS bugs me to no end when the news goes…”Experts say” or “Scientists have confirmed”…Who are they? They NEVER say!
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Pointman
You have a story to tell – an horrific one.
By comparison, I have lived in a closeted life, not exposed to the people who made your story such a nightmare.
I have simply assumed that people will work and they will be rewarded for it – what’s wrong with that!? What else would you do for your children???? Blessed by a training in the Christian-Greco philosophy, my philosphy only underlines the blessings of a society that the leftist-“green” materialists would deny us.
Here’s hoping (and working) for a better society. The fundamental foundation of which is – TRUTH. Those who should be afraid to stare into the stark and blinding light of truth do not deserve to survive on this blog!
Cheers,
Speedy
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“They had spent years dehumanizing, ridiculing, and denigrating anyone that disagreed. Two decades of noxious name-calling and rampant bullying had laid the groundwork for The Marketing Disaster of the Century.”
The above statement hits the nail on the head! Wow!
Having said that, on a lighter note, I invite everyone to watch the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-t9k7epIk&feature=player_embedded
Enjoy!
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I wonder how the alarmists would respond to being labelled as reality deniers? The main difference is the epithet would be an accurate observation rather than insulting and belittling.
:0(
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Everytime they call us Deniers – I say yes, I am a “Climate Scam Denier”.
In fact, “Denier” implies denial or refusal to believe a self-evidently certain thing – denial of the earth being round, of a historical Holocaust. Even the IPCC does not claim in AR4 that AGW is certain – only very likely (>90%) with a 10% chance of being completely wrong.
So climate change “denialist” is just semantically wrong.
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John Shade: Thanks. Every link and discussion helps spread the word.
Pointman: Oh. Boy. You sure have some chilling stories. Imagine not even the freedom to share jokes. How completely controlled that existence would be …
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@Jo. #26
People never quite give up, not matter how strong the jackboot is on their neck. Telling a good joke was subversion but only for the brave. They always had jokes that could be plausibly interpreted in two ways; in this case the unprovoked aggression of the USA …
Pointman
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Joanne,
It is very important that scientists themselves have rational adult debates about competing theories.
But the public policy decision cannot rest exclusively on those insider conversations. The public have to be convinced that (A) there really is a problem, (B) we know the cause of the problem, (C) we have an appropriate response that addresses that cause.
This has to be done out in the open, and using basic logic and sensible and respectful argumentation.
Otherwise, we simply swap one set of rulers for another. We’re supposed to live in a liberal democracy, and so we need everyone to start behaving like it.
I know you didn’t mean your last sentence – “In modern science there is no more urgent task than to shame the stone-age scientific pretenders so they get out of the way, and real scientists can have a real scientific conversation.” – to be exclusive and absolute, i.e. that this is ALL that has to happen, but I thought that this was worth expanding.
Thanks for a fine piece of work.
Regards
SM
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Jo: an insightful article – thanks. I liked especially your observation, re “it’s OK if it’s all for a good cause”, that “If you don’t live with principles while you aim for the unreachable end, then you never live with principle.” So it’s interesting that, in his piece today, James Delingpole (whom I usually admire) takes the opposite view. Commenting on George W Bush’s comment that three terrorists were waterboarded by the CIA, he says: “… I’d suggest that three is not a very large number of evil terrorists to have subjected to deeply unpleasant, but not fatal or permanently damaging torture in order to gain vital information that could save many more lives from future planned atrocities.”
And that’s the view most commentators recommended. Worrying.
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Damn, I liked that article Jo… and I especially liked this little phrase….
…. And yep. You are right on the money with that inane term “Climate Denier” too…. I put that in the same category as the term “Capitalist Roader” that the Chinese communists mindlessly used to attack anyone with ambition….. Though of course the Chinese phrase was contextually correct, even if they took liberties with the word “road”…. On the road to Capitalism….. Whilst Climate Denier, is just plain silly.
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NOOOO!.. Vess!!…. What you saw, was a caricature of Joe McCarthy. A revisionist history made by today’s lefty Hollywood elites to discredit McCarthy….
You need to read Medford Stanton Evans’ book, “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies (2007).”
… also the “Venona Files”….. That is a book on the Russian KGB files that where handed to Western intelligence agencies after the Wall came down… It shows that the scale of Russian infiltration into American Government, bureaucracy and elite society was widespread and much bigger scale than anyone thought at the time…. It vindicates McCarthy’s argument that his list of names was valid…
And about that list of names… McCarthy’s original list that he quoted, only named 56(?) people…. It was his political enemies that expanded the number to well over a hundred in order to paint McCarthy as a witch hunter…
… anyway Vess, read the books and weep that history can be so falsified by journalists and film makers(and/or their sons and daughters), who’s names, themselves, turn up in the Verona files many decades latter.
Finally. Don’t forget that Russia just had a swag of spies sent back from America just recently…. These people were planted in the early 90’s…. Facts are so much more stranger than fiction sometimes.
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Joanne,
Re: sharing of jokes. I was in East Germany in 1987; thankfully only visiting for 10 days.
The oppression was like a thick, uncomfortable overcoat which keeps out neither the cold nor the rain. Not only did one have to self-censor everything one would have said, but one had to suppress “inappropriate” expressions. It was as close to a thought-police-state as one could imagine. A loud person in a Kneipe (pub) could just as easily be a Stasi operative as a careless drunk. Either was as useful for flushing out dissenters.
The default position was that anybody could dob you into the Stasi. Strangers, neighbours, colleagues, neighbours and family. Once the Stasi had something on you; even if it was fabricated; you were almost certainly invited to spy on the lives of others and to report, just to keep them off your back and to avoid spending time in prison, subjected to systemic physical and mental abuse.
What was also tangible was the decrepid state of the country. The waste. The pollution and envrionmental devastation. The under-employment. The apathy. After decades of suppressing individual initiative and enterprise it was inevitable for the country to collapse economically, if not politically.
I do wish that there were still a place such as that country so that we could give the useful idiots a preview of of what they are witlessly forging. But I cannot wish the evil of having to live under such a régime upon anybody.
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Jo & Pointman
Yep, we truly value the humour because it underlines our humanity and – even sometimes – makes us think!
—If the ABC were Relevant, Part 20 something.
Kerry: And now, John and Bryan discuss world issues with Greens senator, Christine Milne…
Bryan: Senator Milne, welcome to the show. What do you have to tell us?
John: Well Bryan, beyond the fact that I’m smart, hip and beutiful, I will share with your listeners that we need to cut off from the carbon economy.
Bryan: Cut off?
John: Yep. We need cuts. And they need to be fast and hard. Very fast and very hard. It’s the only hope for the Australian economy and the world at large.
Bryan: Why?
John: What’s the carbon economy done for us?
Bryan: Besides education, social order, structured civilisation, scientific reason and a tolerant, moral society?
John: Yeah. The bastards! Exactly what has it done for us since the dark ages?
Bryan: Besides the reform of feudal society, the enlightenment, rights of the individual, respect for human rights, the rise of science, quality of life, medical miracles and entended life expectancy?
John: My point exactly Bryan! The cave man went precisely wrong when he discovered fire. And do you know why? Carbon dioxide, or, as we of the cognisati call it, CO2. The world has been doomed ever since mankind first struck that flint for the first primeval barbecue.
Bryan: You don’t think that’s a trifle harsh, perhaps?
John: Not at all Brian, not at all. These are merely the facts espoused by the wise ones at the IPCC. You’re not doubting me, are you? [Fingers small brown box with prominent red button marked “denier destruct” on it it.]
Bryan: Heh, heh! No, no, of course not![Laughs nervously]
John: Then what’s your point, pray tell Bryan?
Bryan: That you’re advocating a policy which would negate the technical and economic progress of 20th century civilised society?
John; It was good enough for Uncle Karl! Err, sorry, I mean, em, er, um. Sustainability. Green future. Low carbon footprint. Polar bears. Melting icecaps. Fluffy penguins. All that shit.
Bryan: [Confused] But how do you know? Where’s the physical evidence? We know that life in the dark ages was nasty, brutish and short, but that’s all we can be certain of in your “sustainable” future. There’s no evidence your legislation will help and all the evidence it will harm. Isn’t this a huge gamble?
John: Gamble? No, no, no, Bryan. It’s the future! We, and our friends, the ALP, offer green jobs and a green future for all Australians, and a blueprint for the world.
Bryan: A green blueprint? The same one as Portugal? As Spain? As Germany? As California?
John: Not exactly the same, of course Bryan, but remarkably similar. We’ll handle that at committee.
Bryan: Are you sure this is a good idea? What happens if it all goes to custard?
John: Bryan, Bryan, Bryan… Nothing can go wrong – it’s all been checked over by the IPCC and the UN! Ye of little faith!
Bryan: Silly me.
John: Nothing can go wrong. I’m betting your balls on it.
Bryan: What! YOU’RE betting MY balls on it? MY balls?
John: Yep. Your balls.
Bryan: Why? Why MY balls?
John: It’s bloody obvious Bryan – I am not biologically equipped, personally.
Bryan: But ME – why ME? Why not… [searching] not… your er… your boyfriend?
John: Ex-boyfriend, Bryan. He had a nasty gambling accident.
Bryan: He? He had a nasty gambling accident?
John: I am not biologically equipped, personally.
[Bryan is looking decidedly uncomfortable.]
Bryan: But what if you’re wrong? What if global warming is nothing more than a crude hoax perpetrated by vested interests? If the legislative initiatives you advocate are nothing more that a retrograde and regressive form of taxation that does nothing but stifle initiative and provide a free lunch to a herd of parasites feasting on the remnant few of society struggling to sustain their existence? And what happens to my balls?
[Snip]
10
[…] the rest: Mystery Solved: Why the PR hacks exploded their credibility […]
10
Jo: further to my post 33, it seems James Delingpole doesn’t agree with you. He says here (about an hour ago):
Any comment? Is a little light torture OK?
10
Pointman: #31
Another Russian joke:
Some glorious Soviet engineers installed a new type of weighing machine at Sheremetyevo airport, in Moscow.
Not only could it speak your height and weight, but it would do so in your own national language, and make a personal comment about your appearance.
Its installation was observed by a baboushka, a typical Russian woman, who’s job it was to clean the floors. She was fascinated in this wondrous machine.
An Air France flight arrived, and a young lady walked up and stood on the machine. The machine said, in flawless French, “You are 152 centimetres tall, and weigh forty five kilos, you are the perfect weight for your height, and the scarf you are wearing matches the colour of your eyes perfectly”.
Then a United Airlines flight arrived, and a sophisticated lady walked up to the machine to measure her weight. The machine said, in a perfect Boston accent, “You are five feet four inches tall, and you weigh one hundred and twenty five pounds, that is slightly over your ideal weight, but that is probably due to your cosmetic surgery, which looks wonderful.”
The babushka watched all this in fascination, from her kneeling position on the floor. As the airport emptied, she looked around and then walked over to the machine and stood on it.
The machine said, in colloquial Muscovite Russian, “Would one of you please get off?”.
10
Is just on my computer or isn’t there a bit of a problem with the link to the PDF document?
I take that it should have been something like:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/mystery_solved.pdf
Besides that, nice article. Do you remember how the British authoritative powers freaked out the even smaller kids as described in:
http://klimabedrag.dk/Engelske-indlag/shameful-exploit-of-uk-children-in-climate-propaganda
On the other hand, I don’t recall any on the more sceptical/investigative being that sinister. I have sometimes written comments on a so-called scientific website, http://videnskab.dk/ and every time there I am confronted with threat of exclusion, name calling and other stupidity, including reference to IPCC, and if IPCC says so, I cannot suggest conflicting sources of information.
It’s a bit like when school children come into argument and one of the parties cannot find any convincing argument, he or she will use biff as argument.
[Yes Karl, you are right about the link. Fixed. Thanks –JN ]
10
I have always been a sceptic, since in primary school I found that I knew things that teachers didn’t. ‘Deniers’ is just an insult used by people who fear sceptics because they question authority at every level, and want answers that satisfy. at least to some degree, their powerful curiosity and desire to know and understand. That’s why they became scientists, not for the big grants – many work in low-paid, non-popular fields.
10
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Cary D Conover, Joanne Nova. Joanne Nova said: Mystery Solved: Why the PR hacks exploded their credibility — 20 years of being namecalling bullies set them up http://tiny.cc/np5we […]
10
‘Scientists to engage with skeptics’
Don’t you just love phrases like this ? i.e Skeptics
are not possibly scientists.
Even the media almost without exception describe non
CAGW believers as ‘skeptics’, regardless of their background.
They are all accepting public funding as scientists on the
premise that they are SUPPOSED to be skeptical, are they not ?
10
This is great article . The comments provide a lot of extra information.
It is obvious that the Climatic Research Unit (home of Climategate) is nothing but a PR agency for the gas, nuclear and biofuels industry.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020304/climategate-peak-oil-the-cru-and-the-oman-connection/
AGW isn’t about sloppy science. It is a systematic and carefully managed fraud that has been running for 40 years.
10
To summarize the argument: “It is outrageous that people dishonestly use the word ‘denier’ to dismiss people like us just because we disagree with THEIR opinions. They should only dishonestly use it to dismiss people who disagree with OUR opinions”. Most people who write on this site and others like it aren’t too bothered that anyone who questions any aspect of what YOU consider to be ‘a self-evidently certain thing’ can be imprisoned or firebombed (actual examples) for their skepticism about SOME aspects of that thing. You are certain that they are motivated by bad intentions, but are outraged when the greenshirts use the same logic to try to delegitimize you. You accept the establishment version of history, which conveniently makes Britain, Australia and the USA the good guys, ignoring the crimes by which one of those countries created the other two. Then, when the hint of repression by ‘green supremacists’ appears on the horizon, you whinge like a… is the word ‘pom’ banned yet? “First they came for the deniers, and I didn’t speak up…”.
10
as always, i would stress CAGW is not a partisan issue.
in fact, if it were not for the Tea Party (Parties), the US would still have the bipartisan effort by John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman to get a cap & trade bill passed.
here’s a nice job for a former Minister in the rightwing Aznar Govt in Spain? note E&Y alone have “700 professionals in the area of climate change..”!
4 Nov: Ernst & Young: Juan Costa Climent appointed Ernst & Young Global Leader for Climate Change and Sustainability Services
Former Spanish Government Minister and Ernst & Young Tax Leader in Spain rejoins the organization and enhances global sustainability competencies
Juan will lead a global team of more than 700 professionals in the area of climate change and sustainability across the firm’s core services of Assurance, Advisory, Tax, and Transaction Advisory Services…
From 1996 to 2004 he held senior positions in the Spanish Government, including Minister for Science, Technology, and Industry, Secretary of State for Finance, and Secretary of State for International Trade and Economic Cooperation. .
Juan has dedicated a great part of his professional career to working on sustainability and climate change issues and has recently published a book called “An Unstoppable Revolution” that looks at the benefits for the world economy of protecting the environment. He has also worked for the International Monetary Fund as an adviser.
Commenting on his new role, Juan says: “Every twenty-five years the global economy doubles in size. This rate of growth places great strain on the planet’s climate and significant obligations for the business community, governments, and the general public to support sustainability initiatives…
Jim Turley, Ernst & Young Chairman and CEO, said: “We are delighted that Juan is rejoining Ernst & Young. His experience of our business and of international public policy ensures he is well-placed to help our clients respond to new global requirements and expectations on sustainability reporting and other challenges associated with climate change. We believe there are demonstrable economic benefits if the right approach is taken”.
http://www.ey.com/GL/en/Newsroom/News-releases/Juan-Costa-Climent-appointed-Ernst-and-Young-Global-Leader-for-Climate-Change-and-Sustainability-Services
the CAGW PR game, framed as right against left, is a fool’s game. keep your eye on the bigger picture, the attempt to build a carbon dioxide bubble to pull Western economies out of recession, at the expense of us all. no prisoners taken.
10
A quote from Lord Kelvin comes to mind:
“The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.”
The “hockey team” may not be “caught” yet but they are certainly “caught in the headlights”.
10
The biggest problem is separating climate change, from what is causing climate change. The overwhelming majority of these scientific experts are simply researching actual climate change. The political activists are then hijacking this and saying that scientific proof the climate is changing, is the same as scientific proof that mankind is causing it.
This is the main modus operandi the political activists, they continually turn the debate back to whether the climate is changing, and dodge any debate on what is causing it.
10
No they aren’t. Climate scientists are very deliberately manipulating data to show climate change that doesn’t exist. They are doing this by systematically eliminating any data that shows shows cooling, using computer algorithms that give false results and wilfully ignoring the Urban Heat Island effect.
10
Who will take up the challenge:
$10K Climate Challenge
Peter Laux, Locomotive Engineman from Australia, “will pay $10,000 (AUS) for a conclusive argument based on empirical facts that increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel burning drives global climate warming.”
read more here, http://climateguy.blogspot.com/2010/11/10k-climate-challenge.html
signed stat dec here, http://ia700200.us.archive.org/0/items/PeterLauxsStatutoryDeclarationFor10kClimateChallenge/Pete-s-stat-dec3056for-post.PDF
10
Reneke @ 7:06am
Reneke, my impression is this is a fairly serious blog and we must be careful not to undermine its gravitas by telling favourite cold war jokes or at least not too many. I think I’ve only told one so far so I’m probably within the joke tolerance limit to tell another, but you never know about these things though.
Two heavily armed VoPos (Volkspoleizi) with a big and particularly nasty looking Alsatian were standing on a street corner in East Berlin glaring at passer-bys when a small child approached them and lifted up a hind leg of the dog and peered up its bottom intently. The dog of course went mad and it took all the strength the two VoPos had to stop it tearing the child to pieces.
When they’d got the situation under some sort of control, one of them shouted at the child “What do you think you doing, Junge?”
“My Mutti said, look at the dog with the two a**holes” replied the child innocently …
Pointman
10
I see Ross Garnaut is at it again pushing for an ETS:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/garnaut-warns-against-squabbles-in-carbon-price-debate-20101109-17m2m.html
I particularly enjoyed this paragraph:
Firstly I find it interesting that Ross Garnaut is happy as long as the science is “broadly right”, and secondly because he seems to think that an increase in global temperatures means there will be less rainfall in the Murray-Darling catchments.
Would he think the science is “broadly right” if the scientists are correct about there being feedbacks, but they are wrong about the signage (i.e. whether they are positive or negative)? Is that close enough for Ross?
The real shame is that there’s no option for reader replies. Ross is now shamelessly out of touch with reality. I also find this paragraph interesting:
He has called “Austrlian scholars” to lead the debate to avoid having “vested interests” causing squabbles? I trust I am not alone in finding this amusing… you’d be hard pressed to find a more vested interest than the scholars who depend on that huge Government slush fund trough for their research and prestige.
Once again… this man is thoroughly out of touch with reality. Years upon years within ivory towers can do that to otherwise intelligent people.
10
Toh! Blockquote fail…
[Ahh fixed… JN]
10
bulldust –
here’s garnaut again – “saving grace”?
10 Nov: Australian: Sid Maher and Christian Kerr: Price carbon, keep lights on: Gillard
The speech came as Labor’s former top adviser on climate change, Ross Garnaut, said public pressure had forced them to reconsider a price on carbon.
Professor Garnaut referred to the “saving grace” of a much stronger base of support for reform and change on the issue of tackling climate change “than on any other big question of structural change in recent decades”.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/price-carbon-keep-lights-on-gillard/story-fn59niix-1225950390990
also from the article:
– JULIA Gillard has attacked claims that pricing carbon will force up electricity prices, as she launched a spirited defence of her government’s ambitions on long-term economic reforms.
In a speech in Adelaide, the Prime Minister yesterday warned that the lack of a price on carbon would distort investment in the electricity industry and lead to high prices.
Conceding electricity bills had risen by more than 40 per cent across the nation over the past three years, Ms Gillard said: “I understand how much pressure this is putting on families.”
“Anyone who tries to pretend to you that the choice is between higher electricity prices with a carbon price and lower electricity prices with current arrangements is not telling you the truth,” Ms Gillard said, taking aim at Tony Abbott’s attacks.
Ms Gillard called the Opposition Leader’s direct action climate approach “picking winners. Paying subsidies. Special deals.”
“There are real price pressures in current arrangements — a future of uncertainty and under-investment, energy insecurity with the real risk the lights will go out, pressure on prices and then a spurt of catch-up investment,” she warned.-
the Australian’s “journos” are just as much PR hacks as the ABC crowd. why not state clearly that gillard promised no carbon tax for 3 years if she got voted in.
yes, we know she quietly went back on that promise just as we voted, but that isn’t what the voters understood to be the case.
as for garnaut claiming the public are forcing the issue back on the agenda, i don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
10
it never ends. which Coalition is being referred to in this? the Lib/Nats i presume? what is going on?
10 Nov: Herald Sun: AAP: Calls for carbon price to be implemented by 2012
ENVIRONMENTAL groups are calling for a national carbon price to be implemented by 2012, ahead of parliamentary climate change talks in Canberra.
A second meeting of the federal government’s multi-party climate change committee, set up to discuss the prospect of an Australian carbon tax, will take place on Wednesday
In a statement released to coincide with the talks, the Southern Cross Climate Coalition has called for a national carbon pollution limit and price to be legislated for in 2011 and instigated the following year.
The coalition also wants better support for low-income and climate-vulnerable households, improved energy efficiency programs and the identification of clean, green industry development opportunities.
It said Australia’s domestic pollution levels will be declining by 2013 and are able to be reduced by at least 25 per cent by 2020 from 1990 levels.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/calls-for-carbon-price-to-be-implemented-by-2012/story-e6frf7l6-1225950595586
10
pat @ 55:
Gillard doesn’t know a deadweight loss from a hole in the ground. If she doesn’t understand that a tax on a highly price inelastic good like electricity pushes prices up then she has rocks in her head. This is first semester economics basics… it really doesn’t get any simpler than that.
She is unwise to make comments on the economy because she is clearly clueless in that field.
Time to move forward and dump this loser of a “leader”… the polls for Labor are now lower than when Rudd was backstabbed. I wonder who is waiting in the wings… Here’s the latest NewsPoll:
http://www.newspoll.com.au/image_uploads/101103%20Federal%20Voting%20Intention%20&%20Leaders%20Ratings.pdf
Labor is down to 48% on 2PP with the Coalition on 52%.
10
Gillard and her carbon tax/ETS are about as popular as a dose of HERPES!!!!!
10
ross GUANO (garnaut) is both a HYPOCRITE and a FRAUD!!
Garnaut’s dirty secret…….
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/garnauts_dirty_secret/
10
Poll from Alan Jones website:-
http://www.2gb.com/index.php?option=com_homepage&id=1&Itemid=44
Carbon Tax poll results…..
Question: Do you want your federal MP to vote in favour of a carbon tax?
yes 1.3% 274
NO 98.7% 21,091
10
The UN and Climate Change – Ten Fateful Words………..
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/bthe-un-and-climate-change-ten-fateful-wordsb/
10
Eddy Aruda @ 11:
Very early in the pice (ClimateGate that is) I remember an article at WUWT in which someone looked at the email headers and explained that the liklihood that they were hacked rather than leaked was highly improbable. Let me find it…
Here it is … December 7 last year:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/07/comprhensive-network-analysis-shows-climategate-likely-to-be-a-leak/
10
Gillard leads Labor army to Moscow.
A LINE has been crossed at last in the great global warming scare. The public is revolting and politicians retreating.
Saving the planet from our evil emissions has suddenly become too expensive for everyone from the NSW Premier to the American President.
And if the Gillard Government doesn’t sniff the winds soon and drop its emissions trading scheme, as did Kevin Rudd, it will be as dead as the former prime minister’s leadership.
MORE:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_gillard_leads_labor_army_to_moscow/
10
Imagine one kilometre of atmosphere that you want to clean up. For the sake of the discussion, imagine you could walk along it.
The first 770 metres are Nitrogen.
The next 210 metres are Oxygen.
That’s 980 metres of the 1 kilometre. Just 20 metres to go.
The next 10 metres are water vapour. Just 10 metres left to go.
9 metres are argon. 1 metre left out of 1 kilometre.
A few gases make up the first bit of that last metre.
The last 38 centimetres of the kilometre – that’s carbon dioxide.
A bit over one foot.
97% is produced by Mother Nature. It’s natural. It has always been in the atmosphere otherwise plants couldn’t grow.
Out of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12 millimetres left. About half an inch. Just over a centimetre.
That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.
And of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in .18 of a millimetre.
Less than the thickness of a hair. Out of a kilometre.
So in every kilometre of atmosphere, complete with green-house gases regulating the climate – in every kilometre reflecting back and retaining the sun’s heat on earth, just .18 of one millimetre is contributed by Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Now Julia Gillard’s Great Green Tax, the Emissions Trading Scheme is designed to reduce Australia’s contribution by 5%. That’s what it’s designed to do. Gillard wants to reduce our point .18 of one millimetre by 5%.
That’s what all the pain is about.
It is simply madness. It’s not based on science. It’s a tax. Finally, a tax on the air we breathe.
10
Wendy, liked your comments, it does show how miniscule our attempt is at reducing CO2 by 5% of four fifths of F*%$ all, please excuse French.
10
@ Bulldust 62
Thank you, oh coiner of climategate, for the link! It was the link I could not remember. They say, “The mind is the second thing to go and I cannot remember the first.” 😉
10
bulldust: Subscribe to Climate Spectator. The Garnaut lecture was written up there this morning and you can comment. I’ve been making a nuisance of myself over there for a while. Wouldn’t hurt if more of us did so. There seem to be as many sceptics as there are greenies there.
The sheer head in sand (or somewhere) attitude of Giles Parkinson is unbelievable. He continues to extol the virtues of all sorts of green scams.
10
Good to see everyone here at Jo’s struggling to shed the bright light reason into the dark regressive ignorance of human hatred! 😉
The dark shadow of paleo-humanity is always with us. Always running from the light. Always shape shifting as we identify it…This dark shadow of human nature can never be wholly defeated as it reinvents itself anew for each generation.
“The Mystery Solved” diatribe is historically accurate. The first thing that all wannabe totalitarians must achieve is to dehumanize their opposition by appropriating the language of the political debate. Thoughts can only be formed within the framework of language. Control the semantics and you control the ideation.
What was a perfectly reasonable scientific hypothesis, regardless of its accuracy in describing observations – Anthropogenic Global Warming – becomes ubiquitous “climate change” a tautological proposition that no one can logically contest. (The climate by definition is always evolving.) The rational debate hereby ends. Those who would put empirical tests to the AGW theory become “climate change deniers” and so their arguments are a priori not just false, but evil lies. For in science an argument can only be true or false, but once the debate shifts to the politics of wealth appropriation then it becomes a morality play. The terms of the debate – the meta-debate – has already be settled and decisively won by eco-zealots.
After all, the word “denier” was first applied to CAGW skeptics as a smear to morally equate them with the Holocaust denialists, a form of resurgent neo-fascism. Ironically, (or perhaps as a Freudian slip) the eco-authoritarians never saw that dehumanizing their intellectual opponents was the same thing the Nazi’s did with the Jews when they forced the Jews to wear yellow stars. The eco-zealots even created a Wikipedia black list to “out” prominent “denialists.”
Black listing, dehumanizing labels are a form of hate speech. It’s what a culture does to a minority sometime before the pogrom or the ethnic cleansing begins. The “righteous” tribe must clearly identify “the other” as a form of sub-human in order to justify appropriating their right to an opinion, or property or even liberty and life in the Final Solution. This is called “climate justice.”
The 10.10 video is a Final Solution wet dream. Everyone at Jo Nova.com is a marked soul. We all wear the yellow star of denialism. We’re all marked to be hunted down and “neutralized” should the eco-zealots ever gain the fantasy political power they dream about.
Sadly, the 10.10 snuff fantasy could only be produced by a group of people so ignorantly naive of the history of ideas and events that they lacked the intellectual fortitude to resist the ever present dark shadow of pre-humanity which lurks within each of our reptilian stem brain (basal ganglia). The eco-zealots would-if given the chance- repeat the worse of human history again without the slightest glimmer of self-awareness. This is how far we have fallen as a civilization. Our supposedly best and brightest artistic and media talents are illiterate goons drooling to impose a medieval inquisition upon our once modern, rationally enlightened democratic society.
God help us all.
10
Pointman: #52
Well, yes and no.
Yes, we are in danger of becoming self indulgent, which might irk some people, and distract from the thread.
But, on the other hand, something that has always set the sceptic blogs apart from the alarmist ones, is that the sceptics feel confident enough in their knowledge to joke with each other, whereas the alarmists are so frenetic about staying on-message that they never tell a joke or show other forms of spontaneity (apart from half past four on Sunday afternoon when they have fifteen minutes to be spontaneous, if they so wish).
There really is a lot of similarities to the cold war, in this saga.
Finally, I am sure that the Editors will very politely let people know if the silliness has gone too far.
10
Bulldust:
November 10th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
I would estimate it to be extremely unlikely that the emails were ‘hacked’. It was almost certainly an inside job.
Pointman
10
Hey All, what do you think about his idea?:
On a crowdfunding site (say like kickstarter.com), start a crowdfunding drive to raise USD1,000,000 in prize money. This prize money will be awarded to the first person or team that can provide conclusive empirical proof showing manmade CO2 is responsible for global warming. This competition will run for 2 years. All submissions will be checked and verified by statistical experts.
Once and for all, let’s settle this global warming argument. At the end of the competition, we will get a conclusive answer one way or the other.
If one million people contribute $1 each or 100,000 people contribute $10 each, we will have the needed prize money.
10
Eddy A, Mark d and our other US regulars:
The recent power shift in US politics may not be enough to save you. If they cant get you through the front door, they instigate a siege at the back door.
10
Mike @ 67, You are absolutely right about Giles Parkinson. He either lives on another planet, or has a significant amout of money invested in the scam as he seems to be getting increasingly desperate. There can be no other reasons for his lack of touch with reality. And it is quite fun over there.
10
@wendy
The same Ross Garnaut who is a member of the Trilateral Commission?
http://www.augustreview.com/knowledge_base/getting_started_with_globalism/trilateral_commission_membership_-_2008_20081010103/#
He’s just towing the global elite’s line for a special place in their New World Order.
10
On a more serious note. This CAGW is just a battle. The war is really with the statists/collectivists or socialists who have taken over the environmental advocacy groups such as greenpeace and the wilderness society and have also managed to inflitrate the government bureaucracies and the universities.
There are numerous books, “The Road to Serfdom” by Frederick Hayek as an example, which detail the transition from expanded government intervention through socialist policies to totalitarian policies.
We are seeing the transition to the totalitarian policies within Australia with the vegetation and environmental acts being targeted at the agriculural industries and now with the development of energy policy. First the use of “green energy” was voluntary. When nobody wanted it the retailers were forced to buy a certain amount. The major users were then included in the cohesion. Next we were forced to buy crappy compact flouros that are difficult to see by. Next more and more “green energy” is being forced on us by increased Renewable Energy Targets, forcing up our electricity bills while degrading our quality of supply and destroying the competitiveness our productive industries, while passing larger and larger amounts of our money across to the government’s mates and rent seekers in the totally unviable renewable energy businesses.
The next step will be to promote a voluntary use of smart meters. When people resist it will become compulsory to have a smart meter. At first it will be voluntary to only use certain appliances at certain times of the day. When a significant number of people do not comply the Government will take further control of the system and begin to forcibly limit when people can use electricity and for what. At this stage a significant number of people will begin to bypass their meters. The police (Green Shirts) will then arrest them and send them of to Re-education camps, sorry, prison. You all must be able to see the danger.
It is this we must fight. I am unsure of how to do this but we can take heart from the Tea Party movement in the US. If they can hold true then we may be able to rely on the Yanks to pull us out of the s**t again. We also need to start to fight the next battle/scare which is biodiversity. There are atready a few programs on the MSM on this. The target is shifting.
10
Always they try to do these things by stealth. If they let the people know what’s going to happen to them the result is always a resounding, “No!”
Again I rejoice in the fact that a more sober and thoughtful attitude is in control of the purse strings come January. If they want a dirty fight I’m ready to support giving them one. Let’s see how the EPA can operate without any funding at all. The House can literally do that and newly elected members are already calling attention to the fact that they will control the money.
10
Jo, moderators,
The SPPI link from the image of the report is broken. I tried both yesterday and today. All I get is an error message saying the requested URL was not found.
[Roy — thanks, next time please email support AT joannenova.com.au, so we fix it faster! Sorry… — JN]
10
A+ for sentiment, but C- for historical research and accuracy. Laurence Duggan (the “simple Liberal” driven to suicide by mcCarthy, and made out as a martyr in the movie) was, in fact a Soviet spy (see here and here) in the State Department. Not only did he copy and send to Russia thousands of secret documents, but at least one person was killed by the KGB to protect his identity. This is known from decrypted KGB files, as documented in the book “The Haunted Wood”.
It’s not even certain that he committed suicide — he might have been “terminated” by his KGB handlers to avoid more disclosures. The risk he represented was certainly larger than his worth, as he had resigned from State.
Don’t depend on Hollywood for your history.
10
RE: “Good Night and Good Luck” (Post #78)
Everything about Duggan was known and public knowledge for many years before Clooney made “Good Night and Good Luck”, which made Duggan out to be an innocent martyr driven to his death by mcCarthy.
This should tell you something about Clooney.
10
Rod, we are not remotely the same. When we discuss the evidence — they use Denier. Sure we throw colorful terms back sometimes too, but you’ll notice we can justify our descriptive terms. They can’t. They use orwellian misnomers. That’s name-calling.
Go on, name a paper we deny…
Did you notice the one thing most commenters here fight for — your right to say dumb things. No one here espouses violence for expressing opinions.
I don’t think you mean “logic” the same way we do.
When they cheat, we call them cheats.
When we point out flaws in their evidence, they say we’re paid by big oil.
Spot the difference?
One is a statement (which I back with substantiated info)
The other is an ad hom.
A Hint? Hint of repression? Are you kidding? Greens want to change our energy infrastructure, make a whole new fiat currency based on their decree, force us to pay for it all, and create international courts to try people for environmental crimes above and beyond our sovereign courts and electable governments.
In return, …we want greens to work for money in a free market like the rest of us do.
The greens want to censor us, and will use any bullying tactic to do it, but we don’t ask for them to be silenced. We know we only need a fair debate to win…
10
A statement in the story explains perfectly why people like this are going to crash and burn.
News story on front page of Colo paper yesterday:
I guess they haven’t learned any lessons from the shellacking they get every time they try to “debate”. Should be interesting to watch.
DailyCamera.com
10
Rod McLaughin: #46
And in case you didn’t clearly understand the points that Joanne is making at #80:
I have spent a considerable part of my “four score years and ten” participating in the conflict that exists between personal liberty and centralised control – between capitalism and communism if you want to put specific labels on it.
The methods of that conflict have shifted from military posturing to playing mind-games, but the conflict continues. And its nature is more covert – it has changed to become a conflict between self-determination and socialism – if you want specific labels.
The battlefield is now in the mind, over the opinions and the belief systems adopted by the majority. It is now a war of rationality versus propaganda (the 10:10 debacle can only be classed as propaganda, there is no other word for it, and in military terms, it was a failed operation).
But hear this: Propaganda has only ever been an instrument of the state. It was conceived and paid for by governments, as a means for government to “persuade” a population into doing something they would normally not do.
You can believe what you want to believe – it is your right. But we do ask you to question why you believe what you do; and when you do that, you may be surprised.
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Roy Hogue:@76
November 11th, 2010 at 1:43 am
Roy I envy you, when we had a chance to set our country on a new path in August we let it slip. Americans now have a chance to bring sanity to government.
Below is an out-take from our unBIASED national broadcaster, it comes from Q&A a weekly panel show where the audience gets to ask the questions, the panel usually has a ratio of two to one in favor of the left, mondays show was no different. The piece below focuses on the Tea Party influence on you election.
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Having talked to some people active in the Tea Party movement, their politics are really quite diverse. It appears to me that they represent an ever larger proportion of the electorate who don’t feel properly represented either by the political templates of the ‘Left’ or the ‘Right’. The common message from them to politicians of any stripe is quite simply – “Listen to me”.
Times are hard and people are starting to hurt. They care now about their job and putting food on the table. If that happens to be roast Polar bear, tough.
Their numbers are growing and will continue to do so until politicians reposition themselves to what this unrepresented section of the electorate want them to be. It’s Democracy in action. The GOP candidates in the mid-terms did so and reaped the reward; elected to office and control of the House. That’s a change in the political climate that I’m sure has not gone unnoticed by politicians in other countries.
Pointman
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Rod @ 46
So the Brits invaded North America and Australia centuries ago dispossessing and killing most of the indigenous population.
Naturally, it logically follows that if threats – or in this case fantasies – of genocide to the modern American and Australia societies present themselves, we would be hypocritical to plead for our lives and liberty.
This is a wonderful exposition of the kind of morbid self-loathing that has replaced the old cultural cringe among the fashionably shallow of our age. Rod loathes modern Australia so much that he imagines we have no moral right to defend ourselves from those who would liquidate us. Because, obviously, we have no right to exist at all! Descendent or benefiting as we are from the work of murderers and thieves.
What Shakespeare understood as primal blood revenge with its roots in envy and malice Rod elevates to “social justice.” and conflates it with “climate justice” to rationalize the spilling of yet more new blood.
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
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11th Nov 1918
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX84ObSqtCQ&feature=related
Pointman
10
Bob Malloy @83,
The win on November 2nd didn’t happen on that day. It was in the making for a year and a half or more. It takes leaders standing up and getting people organized locally. A lot of hard work was done behind the scenes. Your chance is not over with one election. But you must start the fight. A Tea Party like movement is possible anywhere.
I notice in your quote that just like here, the left lives in its little imaginary world and refuses to give it up. That’s your ace in the hole. They won’t take you seriously soon enough, not even with the warning of what happened here. For instance,
Complete denial of the truth.
The discontent can be about anything but the bottom line is that the people want those they send to the halls of government to work in the people’s interest, not their own and not the UN’s.
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Pointman:@86
November 11th, 2010 at 11:59 am
R.I.P. Lest we forget.
Bob.
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Question without notice:
Does anyone know what Baa Humbug is up to I’ve missed him.
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‘wendy’ of post 64, I hope you don’t mind but I have put your illustration of the impact of emissions target on the atmosphere in this blog post: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/11/10-minute-trainer-walk-your-class-along.html
I think it could be invaluable for any teacher looking for ideas on how to calm things down a bit in amongst the febrile materials created by teachers and others driven apparently half-demented by being in perpetual crisis mode over something or other to do with ‘the environment’. We don’t really want to make children just as demented and dismayed as they are, not least because there is no justification for it.
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Great website you have here
I hit back at 10:10 with this.
http://artco-artco.blogspot.com/2010/11/art-lesson-for-europe.html
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Right on cue, the German government has started thinking about what to do with ‘climate change deniers’:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/11/germany-gets-ugly-with-skeptics/
Naturally, climate change skeptics see ominous parallels with German political repression in the past – under the Nazis. Not one of them notices that the proposed repression of climate change ‘deniers’ is a logical continuation of POST-WAR German politics – it’s an extension of the laws agains holocaust ‘deniers’. It’s not fascism. On the contrary.
And that is the whole point I was trying to make (Nov 10, 9 am, above). The climate skeptic community says, in effect, “don’t dishonestly call US ‘deniers’ – save your misuse of the word ‘denier’ for THOSE people”. “Don’t persecute US for our opinions, claiming that we are motivated by bad intentions – save that political repression for holocaust deniers, whom WE ALL KNOW are motivated by bad intentions”. This is a moral and tactical error. One should support freedom of speech.
The point I made about our holocaust vs. their holocaust is not ‘self-loathing’ as Wes George thinks. I defend Keith Windschuttle’s right to deny the Tasmanian holocaust. I defend Fredrick Toben’s right to deny the German holocaust. Guess which of the two has been imprisoned in Australia for his views?
My post was deliberately obtuse, as I didn’t want to have to spell it out as clearly as this – I’ve learned from bitter experience how arguments like this can be distorted. As a result, Jo misunderstood what I was saying. I’m not saying climate skeptics want to persecute green supremacists. I’m saying they are complacent about the persecution of people like Toben – this is made clear by their whingeing about the word ‘denier’ for one kind of skeptic, but not the other, their silence on imprisonment and other forms of violence against that other kind of ‘denier’, and their failure to see that repression for one kind of denier is a perfectly logical development of repression for the other. The establishment thinks your ideas are wrong and dangerous. If they can persecute one kind of wrong and dangerous idea, why not others?
Finally, thanks for the responses and the freedom to post controversial arguments.
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It’s been a great year for AGW sceptics! Climategate, although the emails didn’t actually contain any “smoking guns”, was a great humiliation to the pseudo-science gravy train. Then Patchauri’s possible exit… man, if the corrupt old dog had been replaced by a less tarnished figure the crazed end-of-the-world brigade might have begun a fightback. And then the APPALLING 10:10 video with its unsubtle threat of violence, “Well KILL yer…. ha-ha, only joking!” The PR cock-up of the century indeed.
My question is: how do these slick well-heeled, well financed bastards get all that dosh? Yes, I know they’ve tapped into British taxpayer money, and Sony etc., but how do they get access to that money-tap in the first place? (Money-torrent more like.) This is quite a big organization, with many employees, many of whom are media luvvies, with international contacts and influence. Is there anybody out there with insider knowledge? Who are the Mister Bigs? What kind of lifestyle do they pay themselves?
And…..er… can I have a go?!!!
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Rod@ #46.
You said that the sceptics are hypocrites because we’re happy to use the word denier against Holocaust Deniers, but then get pissed when the Greens attempt to use the same term on sceptics.
Nonsense. That’s like saying we’re hypocrites because we’re happy to call a dog a dog, but object to being called dogs ourselves!
As for freedom of speech. We’re all for it.
The Greens have manipulated the language of what should be a scientific discourse to bring the term “climate denialist” into use… not because to be sceptical of the CAGW theory is the same kind of speech as denying the Holocaust never happened, but to smear their opponents by morally equating them to mendacious apologists of Nazism. That’s hate speech, because the Greens are purposefully and maliciously inciting hatred against anyone who dares to consider the scientific sceptical position.
In fact, Rod, it seems like what you are really on about is not just defending the right of the holocaust deniers to deny the holocaust without prosecution (I’ll back that much) but also to suggest that holocaust deniers have a reasonable position worthy of consideration in a civil society, hey, it’s just another intellectual position, you know, just like being sceptical of the AGW hypothesis….NOT.
Holocaust Denial is not a scientific opinion, but a kind of grotesque pornography or hate speech. This is why the Greens attempt to create a dialectical connexion between Holocaust Denial and the sceptical critique of the AGW hypothesis.
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Wes George – thanks mate. First you said I am a guilty white liberal, now you slyly imply that I am the exact opposite. I hope your comments don’t get deleted, because they confirm my argument down to the last detail.
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NO PRESSURE? TELL THAT TO THE GERMAN GREEN PARTY!
Looks like the GREENSHIRTS and the BROWNSHIRTS are trying to RE-UNITE, just as they did during the Third Reich.
Is this the tip of a German Thousand Year Green Reich?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/11/germany-gets-ugly-with-skeptics/#more-27710
Germany gets ugly with climate skeptics
http://notrickszone.com/2010/09/20/german-parliamentarian-under-massive-fire-for-skepticism/
German Parliamentarian Under Massive Fire – For Skepticism
http://notrickszone.com/2010/11/11/branding-of-science-dissenters-has-begun-clearing-the-path-to-a-climate-science-pogrom/
Branding of Dissenters Has Begun – Clearing The Path To A Climate Science Pogrom
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/11/pogrom-against-german-climate-realists.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LuboMotlsReferenceFrame+%28Lubos+Motl%27s+reference+frame%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Pogrom against German climate realists
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I’ve just heard Bjorn Lomborg’s new book, Cool It, advertized on a local LA radio station, complete with a rather blunt broadside aimed right at the AGW camp and their excesses. The momentum is shifting.
If Germany wants to commit economic suicide that doesn’t mean the rest of have to follow them. There are many battles left to fight but the enemy gets more and more desperate all the time. That will eventually be their undoing. There have been many skeptical books but they aren’t being pushed on a prominent talk radio station. This is a first as far as I know.
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Actually, Rod, I said you were “self-loathing” because you think Australian culture is the result of “crimes”, therefore we have no right to resist any threats since the basis of our very existence is illegitimate to begin with.
I said you were “fashionably shallow” because you lack the self-awareness that the implications of your dialectic ends in the projection of your self-loathing upon whomever is the fashionable vessel of scorn for the moment… Oh, yeah, that would be those evil “climate deniers” funding by Big Tobacco and The Single Flush Toilet Cartel.
The gestalt that animated the 10.10 snuff fantasy and Green hate-speech against scepticism and that which fuels real totalitarian nightmares is identical.
In other words, the extreme left and the extreme right are not at opposite ends of the political spectrum, quite the contrary, they are simply different paths to the same old dystopian place deep in the heart of human darkness.
Maybe that’s why you deliberately, if obtusely, sought to exonerate Holocaust Denial as just another legitimate intellectual position held by a well-intentioned minority?
— Voltaire
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The article is a logical conclusion of the ad that they produced. It is good to see some still use analytical reasoning – even if one side does not seem to be able to bring themselves to consider they just might not be gods.
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What a great piece of writing Joanne – thanks.
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[…] 12, 2010 Australian blogger Joanne Nova has written an essay on the violent 10:10 video released by a UK green group on the first day of October. (Due to the […]
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Lomborg’s book “Cool It” is now a movie, opening today. Good reviews at National Post and NY Times!
IMDB
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Wes George – I don’t try to ‘exonerate’ holocaust deniers. But I defend your freedom to be one. Your perspective IS a ‘legitimate intellectual position’, though your self-righteous attempt to leverage politically correct terms like ‘hate speech’ to legitimize just the positions you happen to believe, casts doubt on your claim to defend freedom. It’s a tactical error, as well as a nauseating piece of hypocritical whining. You can’t support the ‘hate speech’ narrative and then complain when the pc police come for you! Anglo Saxon culture HAS committed crimes – but it has made great achievements too – it rates arguments on their merits, not on how they make people feel. It’s your views which are a contradictory cluster of the worst elements of left and right, not mine. Most climate sceptics are more coherent.
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What the supporters of the CAGW meme have never grasped is that how one characterizes one’s opponent ultimately defines who and what one is…
* * *
Gavin over at realclimate has posted a rambling diatribe on “narrative and heresy” in science.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/science-narrative-and-heresy/#more-5308
Yup, heresy in science. That would be an oxymoron…since a heretic is someone who doesn’t accept an orthodoxy, usually a religious orthodox. Gavin drones about the qualities of “heretic scientists.” Of course, what he’s talking about are sceptics and scientific scepticism.
But maybe the idea of “climate heretics” isn’t oxymoronic at all…Gavin seems unaware that by labelling those sceptical of the CAGW hypothesis as heretics to a climate orthodox that he’s admitting what sceptics have been protesting for years now. That the promoters of the CAGW meme behave more like religious evangelicals than proponents of a rational scientific theory subject to testing by the application of the scientific method.
He concludes his sermon on heretics by explaining why the CAGW orthodoxy is failing to attract converts among hoi polloi:
Gavin is cluelessly delusional. He’s saying that the problem isn’t the obvious corruption of the CAGW science, but that warmist literati are so above providing simple explanations that it’s difficult to communicate CAGW in a way all the vulgar-minded little people can understand…His solution— more and baser corruption of the science, to accent “compelling narratives over substance.” You know, kind of like the 10.10 eco-snuff fantasy was trying to pull off. Double down on a failing strategy!
Where have we recently heard this sort of delusion recently? Hmmm. Oh, yeah…President Obama who recently told reporters that his party got bashed in the mid-term elections because his terrific policies are so complex that he failed to adequately explain them to the rather dimwitted American people. Obama’s solution – keep Nancy Pelosi on as leader of the house and double down on a failing strategy!
Because… if you repeat a lie often and loudly enough eventually it will become the truth?
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Rod,
People should have the right to say dumb, even hurtful things. Free speech allows those who are hateful to freely announce their hatred or incitement to hatred to the whole world to judge accordingly. Suppressing someone’s right to make a fool of themselves only protects their foolishness from being fully exposed, analysed and ridiculed as it rightly deserves and promotes ambitions of martyrdom in those so prosecuted, while leaving the public ignorant of the morbidity that exist within their midst.
That said, there are different levels of protection for different kinds of speech.
Obviously, shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre is a problem. So is distributing homemade bomb making pamphlets. So is false accusation of a crime. So is perjury. So is false advertising…Nor is pornographic or hate speech the moral equal of normal cultural, political or scientific discourse. For instance, pornographic or hate speech has no place on free to air radio or TV where it might cause hurt to under-age or sensitive media consumers.
But Rod is saying that all speech has exactly the same moral, social and intellectual value as Holocaust denial.
Hey, Rodney! It’s time for One of These Things is Not Like the Other Things! 😉
Mendacious Nazi apologists denying the Holocaust is not morally equal to scientific scepticism. As American legal expert and senator Daniel Monyihan said: “You have a right to your own opinions, but NOT your own facts.”
By this he meant that a statement which is obviously false – such as the claim that Nazis didn’t commit genocide against the Jews – does not deserve the same level of respect that an even highly controversial statement does. But it gets much, much worse if the obviously false statement is also concocted primary to be hateful – such as the Nazi claim that Jews sacrifice children as part of their religion – then we are entering a very dark place where demonstrable mendacity intersects with palpably incitement to violence under certain conditions.
Reasonable people can argue under what circumstances it is appropriate for the state to intervene in such cases. But Rod sez NO:
Moral equivalency nonsense. Rod lacks the ability to discern between legitimate dialectical speech and utterly false, deliberately hurtful, defaming, designed-to-incite-violence or hate speech.
So let’s try it one more time, Rod. You got: 1. Jo Nova asking where the tropospheric water vapour warming is. 2. Watts questions the surface station T-record. 3. McIntrye finding hockey stick errors and 4. A neo-Nazi account of WWII which purports to show the Holocaust never occurred…
Let’s sing it all together, Rod! 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZIvgQ9ik48
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Joanne,
that is a great essay. The warmists have almost succeeded in creating a new political correctness that makes it unacceptable to voice any doubt. I experienced this attitude first hand in early 2007.
Originally posted here
Healthy scepticism, questioning and critial thinking should be an easy sell to the population generally. What we have to fight against is the warmist criticism that scepticism is delaying the ‘necessary and urgent’ action. They’ve been creating this urgency meme since before Hansen’s testimonies to US congressional committees in 1988. In 22 years the science hasn’t become any more settled so they are just getting increasingly desperate and 10:10 is an example of this.
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Verity, thanks, what you write is so true (and Wes above as well).
The vitriol and derision that you and so many of us experienced end up working for us… I wrote about that here.
It’s like a viral switch. There are lots of passive skeptics out there — then one day they meet one of the trained bullies and suddenly the passive get switched on.
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Um, Rod: Wes’s views are based on facts, logic, and evidence. He is prepared to lay out those facts, logic and evidence to support them. That’s what this web site is about (which you should know if you have bothered to read any of the background info). What are your beliefs (on AGW) based on? Orthodoxy and belief in authorities?
I seriously doubt you have read any of the background — otherwise it would be hard for anyone with normal logic ability to conclude that we believe that skepticism about the CAGW claims is ‘a self-evidently certain thing’, as you have maintained (without any evidence).
Blatant claims about other’s beliefs, like yours above, get exactly no traction here. If you haven’t figured out that what counts is logic and evidence (and especially if you have none to offer), it’s no wonder you are suffering some cognitive dissonance.
Perhaps, as an exercise, you could lay out just how Wes’ beliefs are “contradictory”, using factual arguments. I guarantee your arguments will be responded to based on their merits.
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Well, I was most impressed with the description of “brain snaps”. An award winning study is explained in the book Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change [1978, 1979, 1995, 2005] by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman and it basically explains the process of what happens amongst the most zealous cult members. This has to be the underlying reason for what happened here.
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Don’t forget what they did to the US. 9/11 and Israel, here:
http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000190526
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Steve, the book you link to is fictionalized 9/11 “truther” nonsense. The author has apparently (based on his own review) given up on any attempt to marshal facts and now is relying on his imagination to bolster his hypothesis that 9/11 was a US government operation.
I watched the 2nd tower get hit live on TV — my first reaction (from being a pilot for 40 years) was that the plane almost missed — it was being flown by an amateur, not the airline pilot. (Only people who are not pilots, and have not tried it, think it is easy to hit something with an airplane.)
9/11 was a conspiracy — by Al Qaeda: They took credit for it, remember? There is no credible evidence of US government involvement and massive amounts of evidence that it was an Al Qaeda operation.
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For those who want more, Popular Mechanics has compiled the evidence that debunks the 9/11 truther myths:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842
Steve, this is seriously O.T. and doesn’t belong on a fact based climate change site.
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It wasn’t all that long ago that the term “sceptic”, when applied to a person questioning the CAGW orthodoxy, was clearly a significant insult, and vigorously defended against by the sceptics so accused. I remember experiences similar to those related by Verity (#106), where the word “sceptic” was used in such a way as the word “denier” might be today. Of course, it doesn’t carry that extra emotional burden via the association with the holocaust, but nevertheless, I am sure it is true that most sceptics did not like being called sceptics. True? But in time, this changed, and now the word is worn by many as a badge of honour. Do you think that sometime in the near future, this connotation of “hate talk” will dissolve, and we will casually start referring to ourselves as deniers? The process is already well under way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-t9k7epIk
So what will be the next term to be used for this purpose?
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With the 9/11 remember NORAD was stood down. And during the 7/7 attack on London questions are NOW being asked about the timing. (When London was then supposed to be on an anti-terrorist exercise). This gives fuel (excuse the pun) to those that believe in the various conspiracy theories.
It reminds me of when Pearl Harbor occurred. The USA Congress were against joining the war in Europe, although happy to help fund it through Lend Lease and selling arms and ships to Britain and the allies.
It is believed that MI6 or the equivalent told the yanks the Japs were sailing their way. The Naval and Army US Intelligence had been
told this but did not communicate with one another then. When Churchill found out that Pearl Harbor was bombed, he rejoiced, “Now they will join us and we will win the war” Did the Brits because they needed the US to join the war, lighten up on their intelligence exchanges to really allow the attack to happen to bring the Americans into the war? We’ll never know for certain.
I often believe that history will tell a clearer story about 9/ll
Let’s say for now ‘They bloody stuffed up where their domestic defense was concerned’. Somewhat a complacent arrogance about their
(USA and Britain) intelligence to fend off domestic attacks. Well Britain should know more considering the IRA bombings on home soil.
But Mossad clearly announced, Osama bin Laden had not been the initiator of 9/11. He supported it though. It was Saddam Hussein who financed it, but both men didn’t like each other at all! Although training camps in Afghanistan were clearly part of the Islamic extremist’s jihad promoted by bin Laden.
Anyway glad to be back on this group, keep fighting (peacefully) for the truth.
luv
From Oz
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Bob C, with great respect, conspiracies are now part of the human
experience. Non worse than climate change I agree, and its possible
manipulation of the human development. Particularly those that would equalize financial developments of the developed industrialised countries on a myth, we are causing devastation to third world countries and should compensate those who are through their own government’s negligence aren’t as wealthy as us. (Through our effects on climate change?)
But we are getting recognition, but we are not winning the argument. While there are those that have billions invested in carbon trading and green or clean energy, sitting on the wings, with their investments looking grim, something has to give.
I think the developed nations know this. Spain’s Green energy seems
to be broke. Now solar rebates in Australia have dropped from 60 cents per megawatt to 20 cents, makes investing in solar look a bit dull (excuse the pun).
Now Country Energy are cutting out ‘off peak’ electricity for hot water. Meaning my hot water usage price has gone up 25%!
We are in a political and social crisis. Don’t forget this.
Kind regards
Bush Bunny from Australia
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Hi Bush Bunny;
I would go further and claim that conspiracies have always been part of the human experience. I don’t doubt that there are conspiracies involved with climate change — most probably among the “dead handers” (current statists, left-over Communists and followers) in governments. I don’t think conspiracy is needed to explain “climate scientists” — they are just what you get when you pay lots of money for a specific result. Scientists with too much integrity to play along are selected out and marginalized; What you are left with is the people who will play along for the fame and money.
(There’s a reason why they are always accusing skeptics of being in the pay of oil companies — it’s called “projection”.)
My posts to Steve at 111 & 112 are because I don’t think we should be discussing conspiracy theories that are unrelated to AGW on this forum — especially not those that have been, IMO, adequately debunked.
For Reference: To debunk a conspiracy (or other) theory, you need to take all the data that is used to support the theory and show that either:
1) It is not factual, or
2) It doesn’t support the theory (or it supports equally well other theories).
Popular Mechanics has collected exactly this kind of analyses on the 9/11 “Truther” theory, and IMO again, it is complete and devastating.
Also, it is not necessary to have a “competing” theory to show that a theory is false — “We can’t think of anything else” is not a logical argument for anything except lack of imagination.
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Lomborg’s “Cool It” is now a movie and set to open soon here in the states. I see from reviews of the book that only the middle section is really very interesting so I hope the movie does better. He debunks every bit of Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in the book and the movie.
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Bob C, Wes, and Joanne:
I know that climate sceptic views are based on logic and evidence. The Nazi holocaust (and numerous others) happened. But political power isn’t based on truth. My point is that it is complacent, craven, and ineffective, to stand up to political repression by saying “don’t call US deniers – call THEM deniers”, and implicitly, “don’t persecute US – persecute THEM”. It’s no good repeating how right you are and how wrong they are – asking the establishment to allow your ideas on the grounds that they are true is like talking to a a brick wall. You have to stand up for freedom.
Missing the point as ever, Wes George says “Rod is saying that all speech has exactly the same moral, social and intellectual value as Holocaust denial”. I don’t talk like that! I don’t dispute Wes’s denial of aspects of Australian history on the grounds that it lacks ‘social value’. Statements like this give a clear signal to the enemies of freedom that you are prepared to negotiate with them about what is acceptable.
Propositions are either a. meaningless, b. true, or c. false. There is no room in science for p.c. categories like ‘hate speech’ It is wrong for Keith Windschuttle’s critics (Whitewash) to mention how aboriginal people feel about his arguments, and it is pathetic for Wes to try to use his feelings about Australian history to argue against Robert Hughes’ account of ‘genocide’ (The Fatal Shore).
Thanks Jo for allowing such an off-topic discussion – but it is crucial that climate change sceptics stop trying to meet political correctness half-way.
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Rod, if the only way you can hope to proceed with your argument is to create straw men to bash, run off with non sequitur and assign opinions to me that I have in no way stated, then there is little point to continuing on.
I have never defended Windschuttle over Hughs or denied Australia’s shameful treatment of indigenous people. That’s your strawman. That’s your non sequitur.
All I have ever claimed is that to compare Australian history OR scientific scepticism to the Nazi holocaust is stupid beyond belief and leads to some rather morbid socio-political behaviour. It’s something that only the ethically challenge could ever do.
However, while we are on the topic of debasing meaning in language, your insistence on the existence of an all powerful, vague “establishment” which will never “allow your ideas” seems a rather hackneyed model of the relationship between our polity, media, the people and science in a democratic system. Perhaps if you were more precise in your use of language, you could think more clearly and profoundly about the great issues involved. Otherwise your use of terms such as establishment, genocide and “enemies of freedom” and Holocaust become so drained of meaning as to be useless.
Actually, the destruction of true meaning in language is worse than useless. I understand that pundits in the American media have so abused the term “racist” to mean just about everyone who opposes the agenda of president Obama. I can imagine that the few true racists are filled with glee as their notional ranks swell so deeply that they become rhetorically and thus cognitively invisible.
Stupid is as stupid does.
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Now for the real argument !!!
The FUTILITY of Man-made Climate Control by limiting CO2 emissions
Just running the numbers: watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy0_SNSM8kg
On average world temperature is ~+15 deg C. This is sustained by the atmospheric Greenhouse Effect ~33 deg C. Without the Greenhouse Effect the planet would be un-inhabitable at ~-18 deg C. The Biosphere and Mankind need the Greenhouse Effect.
Just running the numbers by translating the agents causing the Greenhouse Effect into degrees centigrade:
• Greenhouse Effect = ~33.00 deg C
• Water Vapour accounts for about 95% of the Greenhouse Effect = ~ 31.35 deg C
• Other Greenhouse Gases GHGs account for 5% = ~1.65 deg C
• CO2 is 75% of the effect of all accounting for the enhanced effects of Methane, Nitrous Oxide and other GHGs = ~1.24 deg C
• Most CO2 in the atmosphere is natural, more than ~93%
• Man-made CO2 is less than 7% of total atmospheric CO2 = ~0.087 deg C
• the UK contribution to CO2 is 2% equals = 1.74 thousandths deg C
• the USA contribution to CO2 is ~20% equals = 17.6 thousandths deg C
So closing all the carbon economies of the Whole World could only ever achieve a virtually undetectable less than -0.09 deg C. How can the Green movement and their supporting politicians think that their remedial actions and draconian taxes are able to limit warming to only + 2.00 deg C?
So the probability is that any current global warming is not man-made and in any case such warming could be not be influenced by any remedial action taken by mankind however drastic.
So if the numbers above are even close to the right ballpark, the prospect should be greeted with Unmitigated Joy:
• concern over CO2 as a man-made pollutant can be discounted.
• it is not necessary to damage the world’s economy to no purpose.
• if warming were happening, it would lead to a more benign and healthy climate for all mankind.
• any extra CO2 is already increasing the fertility and reducing water needs of all plant life and thus enhancing world food production.
• a warmer climate, within natural variation, would provide a future of greater opportunity and prosperity for human development and much more food for the growing world population. This has been well proven in the past and would now especially benefit the third world.
Nonetheless, this is not to say that the world should not be seeking more efficient ways of generating its energy, conserving its energy use and stopping damaging its environments. It remains absolutely clear that our planet is vastly damaged by many human activities such as:
• environmental pollution.
• over fishing.
• forest clearance.
• industrial farming.
• farming for bio-fuels .
• and other habitat destruction.
And there is a real need to wean the world off the continued use of fossil fuels simply on the grounds of:
• security of supply
• increasing scarcity
• rising costs
• their use as the feedstock for industry rather than simply burning them.
The French long-term energy strategy with its massive commitment to nuclear power is impressive, (85% of electricity generation). Even if one is concerned about CO2, Nuclear Energy pays off, French electricity prices and CO2 emissions / head are the lowest in the developed world.
However in the light of the state of the current solar cycle, it seems that there is a real prospect of damaging cooling occurring in the near future for several decades. And as power stations face closure the lights may well go out in the winter 2016 if not before.
All because CO2 based Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming has become a state sponsored religion.
And now after “Splattergate” thanks to the 10:10 organisation everyone now knows exactly how they think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skW6krOLL20
Splattergate is classic NOBLE CAUSE CORRUPTION. It is probably the most egregious piece of publicity ever produced in the Man-made Global Warming cause. This short film shows doubting schoolchildren being blown up and having their entrails spread over their classmates because they may have been less than enthusiastic about the CAUSE.
So any misrepresentation is valid in the Cause and any opposition however cogent or well qualified is routinely denigrated, publically ridiculed and as we now see literally terminated.
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Wes George says he has never ‘never defended Windschuttle over Hughes’, then goes on to do precisely that. He still insinuates that I equate holocaust denial and climate change skepticism. Not true. I said the establishment might do this, and I gave an example – the German government. And that it’s no good telling the government that you are right, and those other guys are wrong. As I said, if the government can persecute one set of ideas it thinks are wrong and dangerous, why not another? Wes’s defence of his particular view of history, that any other perspective is ‘ethically challenged’, would fall on deaf ears.
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You’re absolutely right that asking the establishment to change based on truth is useless — because the government establishment mostly is interested in increasing government power. Those are the people who are attracted to government, that is why the government funds research that says we are in dire straights and only more government power (and less personal freedom) will save us, etc.
HOWEVER; In democracies, the people can turn the (current) government out. Convincing the public that you are right and the government apologists are wrong can result in significant change (like just happened in the US — the House of Representatives is preparing to hold hearings on climate science early next year, and it is the science that will have to be defended. Ad hominem attacks on “skeptics” won’t cut it.)
When CAGW is clearly established as wrong (and supported by fraudulent acts, even), it will be politically impossible to implement the anti-freedom “cures”.
It is not a futile exercise to continue to point to the flaws in current climate science — it is just this effort (by sites like Joanne’s) that has resulted in the statists being on the ropes.
Interesting that places that already are tyrannies, like China, aren’t interested in AGW — they already have the power over the people, and can see that the AGW fantasy will only hurt their economy.
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I’ve been silently watching the posts between Rod and Wes and I get the odd feeling that you are perhaps both reading each others words but not “hearing” them. Rod makes several philosophical points that are hard to discount. Wes makes counters that also are hard to discount. In the end I can agree with both. Rod says free speech can’t be restrained, I agree in principle. Wes says of course it can we do it all the time. Again I agree, yelling fire! is dangerous. Rod makes a good point about use of “denial” (if I can summarize his position; it is only perspective that changes and everyone that disagrees with your personal position is potentially a denier. Wes counters that you can prove some people are wrongly using “denier” (as in the NAZI Holocaust) because there are more and better facts to back the non-denying side. Isn’t that still perspective?
In the end, I am still trying to determine if Rod stands as an AGW skeptic and I think Rod would fiercely agree with Wes insofar as precision with use of language is important. Oddly (maybe ironically is better) I think it is imprecise INTERPRETATION of language that is causing your disagreements?
PS If I have misread either side here please help me resolve my misunderstanding.
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Excellent essay; I take just one small exception – to the induction that the 10:10 folk’s blindness came from their completely dehumanising the two school children (& office workers) as Deniers. My guess is that, in their comprehensive & clueless arrogance, they actually thought their little snuff flicks were funny, and given the gore that is now routinely shown even on evening “family time” television, I can’t 100% fault them. It’s more a sign of times than anything else.
What’s really upsetting is that their membership only fell by 23%. What are the other 77% thinking? Are they thinking at all? My tiny contribution to sanity is to plead with friends, family & anyone who will listen to not in any way support the environmental lobby. It may have been good and neccessary 40 or 50 years ago, but has grown fat, complacent and harmful; it should be boycotted out of existence. At the moment I’m undoubtedly just pissing in the wind (snip if you must, but it’s really the only phrase that will do), but if a few more people pick up the cudgel . . .
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I agree with paddikj boycott the enviromentalists and there products and productions,hit them where it hurts ,in the pocket and they will soon be as financially bankrupt as they already are mentally bankrupt….
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