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March 12, 2007
The Great Global Warming Swindle
I had already written several pieces about ecological matters, but my superhero concept filled me with a concern that ecology might be the next banner for demagogues and would-be-heroes, for the power seekers and others ready to find an adrenaline high in the launching of a new crusade. Our society, after all, operates on guilt, which often serves only to obscure its real workings and to prevent obvious solutions. An adrenaline high can be just as addictive as any other kind of high.
- Frank Herbert, Dune Genesis
I want to start with a number of caveats: The following makes no comment on the merit of taking on the coal miners, reducing particulate emissions, or the virtues of nuclear power (even if the last is the choice of the government of France). The problem with science and politics is the latter almost always trumps the former when it comes to rhetoric. Given it was broadcast on Channel 4 and not, say, Fox, one would hope the The Great Global Warming Swindle would be given the slightest chance to make its case. Perhaps this once reason may triumph over the logic of pyramid schemes and airport lounge cults.
I link to a lot of videos, and this one is being linked across the smarter bits of the blogosphere, but please, do try to watch it regardless. The science of carbon dioxide related global warming makes less sense than the economics of the South Sea Tulip Bubble and is much simpler to refute; historians yet to be born will regard it as the great stupidity of our age. Sadly, the "science" of global warming - repackaged as climate change to cover all bets - is most often anything but. Best of all is its genesis as a union busting move on the part of that Great Satan to the left, Margaret Thatcher. Truly irony and ideology have been made to rhyme. Anyone who thinks Conservatism and environmentalism cannot take the same harness does not understand the hunting, shooting, fishing set and has not had a look at Stephen Harper's new play-book.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 12, 2007 07:27 AM
Comments
Don't crush me by saying that global warming won't happen. I've been hoping for that horrible F10 tornado to permanently run amuck within Texas and Oklahoma, akin to Jupiter's great red spot.
It would spice things up a bit, since we have a drastic shortage of stompity stomp boots twisting in the reddish wind around these parts.
Posted by: agent bedhead ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ghostofaflea.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 12, 2007 02:28 PM
Whenever someone says: The time for debate is over, I tend to think it is not. I'm glad this video is being so widely viewed, but are the right people watching it? I doubt it.
Posted by: Temujin at March 12, 2007 02:36 PM
The good news is we may very well be at the beginning a warming trend. Certainly, the Victorians had it so cold it would be nice to get back to some proper Viking weather. As to the audience... if all this documentary does is arm sane people with some facts it has been well worth it.
It is frankly astonishing to watch al-Gor peddle the carbon lie as science to people too credulous to wonder if cause is meant to precede effect. But such are the anti-rational times we have come to inhabit. I used to think the free world had narrowly missed Dark Ages catastrophe with the by a whisker election of President Bush. If I was American I would have voted Democrat in that election and regretted it for the rest of my life. Now I wonder if the greater catastrophe from which we were saved was not a weakling in the face of al-Qaeda but a man prepared to sell out his country - and his obligation to reason - for this tissue of lies.
Posted by: Ghost of a flea at March 12, 2007 02:54 PM
This blowbal goreming thing has been around for a while. Years ago -- back in the early 90s, or it may even have been the 80s, I saw this British miniseries on tv that was a wacky mishmash of spy thriller and nuclear/eco-thriller scifi. The plot was, as far as I can recall, about this British secret agent whose daughter is shot to death. He finds out she was into anti-nuke stuff. Then along comes Joe Don Baker as some sort of wild Texas assassin/CIA agent/crazy man messiah. Then the British guy gets exposed to radiation but before he does he not only manages to uncover the disastrous plot to, er, something with nuclear weapons (something bad), but also has several conversations with his daughter's ghost, who shows him these weird black flowers growing in Scotland or somewhere and tells him that Gaia, in order to punish polluting, nuclear-power-using humanity, is making these flowers grow all over the earth, and when they cover the planet the heat will rise (because the color black absorbs heat, see) and all the ice will melt causing a new cleansing Flood.
I swear by the bones of my grandmothers I saw this on tv in the real world, not in some sort of psilocybin-induced hallucination. It was real.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 12, 2007 10:24 PM
I have to say its a delicious irony they have Thatcher to thank. That is probably the bit of the doc that most annoyed the envirofascists.
Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge at March 13, 2007 05:49 AM
Yeah but GW can be hazardous!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070312/ap_on_sc/polar_trek_1
Posted by: The_Campblog at March 13, 2007 07:34 AM
