I’ve always believed the the global warming crowd was a little out there. With their frequent predictions of global catastrophe that never seem to materialize, they seemed little more than modern re-incarnations of Chicken Little. The scandal involving East Anglia University’s efforts to cook the books only confirmed my observations. People like Al Gore and his ilk seemed interested in using the “crisis” of global warming as an excuse to expand government power. Not exactly a noble mission, but not something I would classify as evil, just misguided.
However, a rather gruesome video making the rounds of the internet is causing me to re-evaluate my assessment of the global warming movement. The video, entitled “No Pressure”, was produced by the group 10:10, one of those international global warming outfits. According to their website,
10:10 is a global campaign to reduce carbon emissions by 10% in a year- starting in 2010. Any person, family, business, school, or other organization can cut 10%- and by working together we can make sure our actions count.
Given their desire to live my life for me, they’re just like any other environmental group. Yet, there’s this “No Pressure” video. In the video, various types of carbon-reduction strategies are promoted to “save the environment.” However, those who are unwilling to adapt these strategies or otherwise change the way they live are summarily executed. Even school children who refuse to live their lives according to the mandates handed down by this group are blown to bits. Even the woman who does the voice-over for the video is blown up at the end of the video, because she does not demonstrate a commitment to change her life. Those who agree to adapt their lives, are of course spared.
But what message does this send? Do what we say or we’ll kill you? Is there not something a bit Hitlerarian about this video, a purging of those who refuse to conform? To me, it seems like the Green version of “kill the infidel.” Just how widespread is this feeling in the Green movement? I find it shocking that such a mentality even exists, but how many people out there would just like to kill skeptics like me who refuse to conform their lives to a standard developed by people who have shown a considerable disregard for truth? According to the group, the video was supposed to be “funny.” But under what circumstances is the savaging of another human being funny?
In the past, I have been bemused by Greens’ attempts at using polar bears, etc. in attempts to play to people’s emotional side in trying to make their point. Again, not evil, just wrong. But I think it is clear that the No Pressure video is not only wrong, it is pure, unadulterated evil.
"The scandal involving East Anglia University’s efforts to cook the books only confirmed my observations."
You're observations must have stopped, then, at the point in time in which the media ceased confirming your personal prejudices, and started retracting all the silly, hyped stories they were writing about scientific misconduct. All of the allegations have been retracted.
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/06/…
Chicken Little has a symbolic counterpart, coincidentally also a bird, that gives an accurate and unflattering picture of those who do everything they can to ignore what they can't disprove. It's an ostrich with his head stuck blissfully in the sand.
Also, it's not "Evil." It's British humor: dry, inappropriate and outrageously irreverent, even to its own cause. It's good to know that British comedy in the vein of Monty Python and Eddie Izzard is still alive, regardless of how off-color the ad is.
I think that the Chicken Little remark is oddly appropriate: the sky *is* falling.
Greenhouse gasses trap heat in the troposphere, preventing it from moving into the stratosphere and beyond. This causes stratospheric and thermospheric cooling, which has been observed (here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climat… ) Keep this in mind next time the CR or some other antiscience outlet tries to tell you it's the sun- an increase in solar energy input would warm the whole atmosphere*. (Advanced antiscientists will tell you it's due to ozone depletion, but that's because they don't understand that ozone depletion is geographically inhomogeneous, while stratospheric cooling is not.)
Now, when gasses cool, their pressure drops. That means there's less pressure holding up the 'top' of the atmosphere- and as a result, it drops. This has been observed, and even has affected the orbits of satellites.
The sky really is falling!!
* they'd also have to contend with the fact that nights are warming faster than days and winters are warming faster than summers – the opposite of what we'd expect from an increase in solar energy. Oh, and the fact that late 20th century temperature trends are not correlated with solar irradiance.
"The scandal involving East Anglia University’s efforts to cook the books only confirmed my observations."
Your observations must have stopped, then, at the point in time in which the media ceased confirming your personal prejudices, and started retracting all the silly, hyped stories they were writing about scientific misconduct. All of the allegations have been retracted.
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/06/…
Chicken Little has a symbolic counterpart, coincidentally also a bird, that gives an accurate and unflattering picture of those who do everything they can to ignore what they can't disprove. It's an ostrich with his head stuck blissfully in the sand.
Also, it's not "Evil." It's British humor: dry, inappropriate and outrageously irreverent, even to its own cause. It's good to know that British comedy in the vein of Monty Python and Eddie Izzard is still alive.
My observations became increasingly skeptical when the group of researchers involved in the scandal effectively cleared themselves of any wrongdoing. Heritage has a piece that sums it up nicely: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/08/uk-climategat…
The American Thinker has a piece that delves more into the science: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understand…
I agree that the ostrich is also a fitting analogy. Given the tendency of the Global Warming scientists to ignore any data that contradicts their theory (see the American Thinker piece above), the image of an ostrich with its head in the sand is quite fitting. I guess my Chicken Little analogy is better reserved for Global Warming's non-scientist supporters (i.e. Al Gore).
Did you even watch the video? There was nothing remotely dry or irreverent in it. While I don't consider myself an expert on the subject, my experience with British humor has not yet involved the exploding of children's bodies and the throwing of their gore all over their fellow classmates. While British humor is often a little out there, I tend to think that the British people are above laughing at the savaging of children.
I’m curious as to why you think the exonerated scientists “cleared themselves,” or, for that matter, how they did it. Are they conspiring with review committees and independent investigators as well as each other? Are they successfully using “tricks” to “hide” their misconduct from people who are actually qualified to judge issues of academic and scientific misconduct (i.e., other academics and scientists), as opposed to the headline-hungry media and over-zealous partisans whose humble opinions you rely upon? I’d love to hear you explain how these quasi-scientific scoundrels managed to pull off such a bold feat of self-exoneration.
The Heritage article you sent me is laughable. Seriously, it’s hardly worthy of consideration. I base this conclusion on three points.
First of all, the post claims that “the main conclusion [of the Independent Email Review], buried under pages of rhetoric, confirms that data was presented in a misleading way.” It then goes on to quote part of a paragraph on the infamous WMO tree ring graph. Nowhere, however does it substantiate why that isolated claim of “misleading data” in the one specific tree-ring graph (of which there were different versions, both in IPCC reports and WMO reports) is the main conclusion of the Review. Anyone who opens the link that Heritage provides to the Review’s report can clearly see that, as one paragraph out of a 160 page document, the tempered accusation of misleading data is by no means the most important in the document. On the other equally important charges, such as subverting the peer review process and many others, the scientists in question were all exonerated. Not to mention the fact that Heritage’s claim that this ‘damning’ conclusion was buried under “pages of rhetoric” is in itself misleading: the paragraph in question is on page 13 of 160. I would actually call that cutting to the chase.
Secondly, as previously mentioned, this so-called confirmation of misleading data is itself very tempered. Let’s quote the full paragraph from the report, which Heritage truncates:
“On the allegation that the references in a specific e-mail to a “trick” and to
“hide the decline” in respect of a 1999 WMO report figure show evidence of
intent to paint a misleading picture, we find that, given its subsequent iconic
significance (not least the use of a similar figure in the IPCC Third
Assessment Report), the figure supplied for the WMO Report was
misleading. We do not find that it is misleading to curtail reconstructions at
some point per se, or to splice data, but we believe that both of these procedures
should have been made plain – ideally in the figure but certainly clearly
described in either the caption or the text.”
Notice, please, that the misleading nature isn’t even described as an aspect of the science, but as an aspect of the context in which the science is taken. The graph is not misleading because it is egregiously inaccurate with its numbers or facts. It is misleading because the acceptable curtailments of reconstructed data simple don’t come with a clear explainer and happened to become very “significant” as a result of the graph’s widespread distribution. This is hardly a rousing indictment of the scientist’s integrity. In fact, as the Review formally declares and Heritage tries to ignore, it is specifically such an indictment that the scientists are all exonerated of. “Misleading” does not mean “deliberately inaccurate” or “falsified.”
The third point is simply this: the Heritage Foundation has no business accusing people of spreading misinformation as long as it is partially bankrolled by the Brothers Koch, whose entire existences seem to geared towards doing that very thing with their very, very, very large bank accounts.
[this was all supposed to be one post.]
As for the American Thinker article, I looked online and couldn’t find an academic curriculum vitae for Marc Shepperd. It’s one thing to have written many articles skeptical of global warming. It is quite another to be scientifically trained in the relevant fields. If you can proffer some evidence of his expertise in the area, I would be more inclined to take him seriously.
And yes, of course I watched the video. I would identify the use of off-color humor in a cause that they take so seriously as irreverent. As for dry humor, or deadpan, Wikipedia defines it as such: “Deadpan is a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or body language, usually speaking in a casual, monotone, solemn, blunt or matter-of-fact voice and expressing an unflappably calm, archly insincere or artificially grave demeanor. This delivery is also called dry wit when the intent, but not the presentation, is humorous, oblique, sarcastic, or the effect is apparently unintentional.” If this isn’t the video in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.
As for exploding bodies in British humor, that’s a dead ringer.
If you can’t understand why it’s funny to have kids blow up instead, its because, as I said the first time, you don’t really understand British humor. The point is, you’re being terribly hyperbolic by calling it evil. Really, have a sense of humor.
I can't combat conservative misinformation if you won't let me. Any idea where my phantom posts are going?
Here's some more source material for your education in british humor:
More reasons not to take Marc's sources seriouslys:
(AT): "First and foremost — contrary to what you’ve likely read elsewhere in the blogosphere or heard from the few policymakers and pundits actually addressing the issue, it was not the temperature decline the planet has been experiencing since 1998 that Jones and friends conspired to hide. "
The planet has not been experiencing a significant temperature decline since 1998.
AT: blah blah blah MWP was really warm
I don't think that Mssr Shephard understands what he's arguing for. We also have some idea of the net climate *forcing* as well as the temperatures going back ~1kyear. And based on the forcings, if the MWP was as warm as the 'skeptics' claim, then climate sensitivity is much larger than anyone has seriously claimed- in other words, if the MWP is as large as Shephard says, we are EVEN MORE SCREWED than the most alarming of the 'alarmists' have predicted.
Should I send my reply down the tube again?
I would get an IntenseDebate account so that your posts are auto-approved after a while. Sometimes the approval system doesn't work correctly for guest posters, which is super annoying.
Good call.
The "Global Warming crowd" that you think is insane includes the US National Academy of Science, pretty much every climate scientist, and every major political party in the the developed world — except for one, the consistently anti-intellectual and anti-science Republican Party.
For another example of the CR's contributions to the Republican War on Science, consider this article, and comments:
http://crdaily.com/2010/04/the-coming-eco-pocalyp…
The author, who should know better, apparently repeats whatever malarky the antiscience clearinghouses provide.