... always good for a laugh or two
Now I’d be the first to admit that Hitchens is a bit of, OK a lot of, a wanker much of the time
But not all of the time
Peter was on Question Time last night and answered a question on global warming
I’ve stuck a clip on Putfile rather than YouTube (fascist bastards) here
The reaction of the London based audience was depressing to say the least...
The global warming agenda, as is currently being advocated, is a colossal con.
And hats off to the energy industry for convincing ordinary people that it is somehow opposed to global warming activism.
Actually, the oil companies fucking love global warming activism
Fuck me, they're funding a large slab of it.
The easiest way to rig a match, or a debate, is to have ringers on both sides.
And if a point of view is widely promoted by mainstream politicians and the mainstream media without any significant disagreement or dissent amongst them you can bet this year's Christmas Club money the fix is in.
And you don’t have to be a George Bush loving Christian Fundamentalist Despoiler of the Earth to have issues with the global warming ‘debate’
Five minutes of thought and a little common sense will do that. Put simply...
- There is no such thing as a ‘correct’, stable global climate. The Earth’s climate has always changed and always will
- Whilst it is perfectly possible that the Earth is warming there is absolutely bugger all direct evidence that we have anything to do with it
- The rational, logical response to the risk of global warming is to prepare to deal with the consequences of climate change. A course of action rarely, if ever, advocated by the enviro-arse lobby
Humanity is going to look pretty stupid if/ when the weather does change drastically for natural reasons, wipes out all those millions who’ve settled in coastal and marginal regions and all we’ve been doing is titting around ‘trading’ carbon emissions and insulating our lofts for the preceding 40 years.
Or maybe I'm just bitter because I toyed with, and discarded, thoughts of doing a Geology Phd on a climate change related topic 20 years ago and am pissed off because I thought I wouldn't be able to make a living out of it. All the big bucks seemed to be in dinosaurs back then.
How very wrong I was.
Anyway, what was the audience reaction to Hitchens trying to raise some criticisms of the global warming bandwagon?
Forced, mocking laughter
Ladies and Gentlemen - it's the Muppet Show!Watching the ignorant, classicly dissonant, reaction of a large group of my fellow citizens to somebody imploring them not to be sheep and to use their critical faculties was the single most depressing thing I’ve seen, outside of a hospice, for weeks
6 comments:
Your pictures show what happens when critical faculties have been eroded by years of educational indoctrination. Also, from the link above, "Under-subscribed science degrees at universities could be forced to follow the lead of Reading University's physics department which announced it was to close earlier this month." (Better to close than to be manned by muppets).
I watched QT last night myself. While I don't entirely agree with the Hitchen position on Climate change I will grant him that its a valid POV which deserves respect; something which the audience was not willing to grant him. This says a lot for the modern standard of manners and understanding of what democracy really means. I was more impressed with Heseltine's arguments regarding resource depletion because this is not reliant on complex climate research but simple logic. That is that resources are by definition finite and should be managed intelligently.
Notwithstanding, recent presented "solutions" have been laughable and dishonest and while I disagree with your position I admire and respect your healthy scepticsm on this topic.
@wolfie
Personally, I abhor waste of any kind and Heseltine's resource conservation argument has merit.
Nor do I deny the fact that the climate is changing. After all, the Earth is not a static system
As you say, my real area of concern is the nature of the 'solutions' currently being put forward. They are dishonest and simply won't work
There are other, undisclosed, agendas at play here
another point from 9:28 am
Well done for attempting to hold to account "the Muppets" ... hope this catches on with other blogs.
I don't understand Stef,
How is the limiting of carbon emissions dishonest? And why are you so sure that wouldn't work?
We may not KNOW if we are to blame for global climate change, but when you can directly correlate the rate at which humans have contributed to the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, to the rate at which glaciers are melting isn't that a good clue?
If we "do nothing because we aren't sure we're the cause", wouldn't this be alot worse than trying to do something and failing? I mean, you can't go back and fix a mistake due to lack of inaction. Its probably not a good idea for us to add CO2 to the atmosphere in such large quantites regardless of the fact that we might be destroying the climate by doing it. Correcting that imbalance makes a great degree of sense regardless of how you look at it.
Frank
And what makes you think we are able to correct any perceived imbalance?
There's a good chance that we'd be living through a mini Ice Age right now if our Bronze Age ancestors hadn't deforested huge swathes of the globe. Should we be putting those trees back?
The Earth has sustained a habitable atmosphere for a minimum of 650 million years. It's been hit by meteorites, volcanic erruptions on a scale we can barely imagine, Ice Ages and God knows what else. A few extra parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere for a few hundred years has absolutely fuck all significance
Things could get potentially tricky for Humanity but not the Earth
The conceit demonstrated by equating Our future with the future of the Earth is impressive.
Fun developments we can look forward to if the climate change debate continues to be 'developed' in the way that it has been...
- Justification for further intrusion and control of our personal lives
- Lots of lovely regressive green taxes which enable the rich to continue doing what the fuck they like whilst the povs won't be able to afford to do anything
- We'll have to pay more for our energy (the oil companies will hate that)
- We'll be driven towards one world government
- It will be a justifcation for war with China/ India/ whoever once we've cleared all those Muslims out of the way. Our system always needs an enemy
- Sooner or later some eco Nazis will start talking about forced population control
What it won't do is stop climate change.
Even if CO2 is the trigger for climate change the proposed measures are too little and too late
And if elevated CO2 is a symptom not a cause that means we'll have been wasting our resources on bullshit and won't be prepared to deal with the consequences of climate change when they occur
http://tinyurl.com/yc4jtf
We should be talking about helping countries like Bangladesh build flood defences or finding non coercive ways to limit the number of people who settle in marginal, risky areas, stuff like that - not titting around trading carbon credits. The mismatch between the nature of the threat and the measures being proposed to deal with it speaks volumes about our smug, pampered Western Whiteboy attitude to things
The Global Warming debate isn't about science or rationality. It's about well meaning people being 'had' and distracted/ diverted by forces and interests that can think a couple of moves ahead
See also Global Poverty Relief = exactly the same shit
But that's all by the by. What really depresses me is not that people think differently to me - it's the way they deal with information that doesn't fit in wth the prepackaged world view that has been drummed into them. Dissonance is ugly
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