Global Warming Hysteria (cooled)

So how did it all go, Al?  Did it warm the cockles of your heart? Try going here for a 'live take' of the whole event, why don't you?.  I say 'live' but its not really the word that springs to mind. (If this doesn't warm you up this cool summer - in the UK at least - then nothing will...enjoy!)

Here's a taster:  

10:48: Because Al Gore promised concerts on all seven continents, a bunch of British climate researchers living in Antarctica formed an indie/garage band Nunatak, named after the word for a peak on a glacier. They are fortunately disposing of their performance before too many people are watching, because they’re terrible. Earnest, but awful.

Not that I’m surprised. If you don’t have a subscription to Modern Drunkard, you’re a) missing out and b) you probably didn’t read their cover story a few years back “Soused at the South Pole.” Supposedly, being a researcher stationed in Antarctica is “like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, but with more geopolitical significance and fewer axe murders.” All that’s left to do is drink yourself silly.

Some highlights of how scientists while away the time Antarctica:

A few weeks ago we had a party where someone took a big block of ice and carved little “ski trails” in it down which kamikazes were poured into the eager mouths of those wearing ski goggles and holding ski poles. This was called Liquor Mountain. Women gave prizes to any man who showed up in a dress, so there was much cross-dressing. Myself, I wore a nasty leopard-print number with the nipples cut out, drank one too many kamikazes and barfed up corn dogs in the snow … this one guy came up with the idea to have a bunch of Depends adult diapers sent down so that everyone could stand around drinking beer and pissing themselves. I didn’t make it to that party, but a friend of mine did. He hooked up with this amazing woman after the party. He picked up a chick while wearing a diaper!

Even skipping the part about “Boozy the Clown,” I believe this article does more to explain climate researchers than the results of every global-warming study thus far.

 

Source: National Review Online - with thanks to Robert Bryce, Texas, for the pointer.  

If Gore believes "global warming is a moral issue" than just how is parading the world's leading hedonists going to help win over public attitudes? It has always been a paradox that the anti-establishment 'music can change the world' generation tends to be the first to line up and parade its anti-intellectual gullibility, buying into the latest mass media 'establishment's' populist and scary propaganda.  Live Earth is just the latest naive manifestation.

Even parts of the mainstream media are beginning to grasp the irony of the situation. Here's is a key excerpt from a recent piece at Reuters: 

GLOBAL warming alarmists actually make a great deal of sense. That is, once you imagine that every time they open their mouths they're talking not about the environment but about Islamic terrorism.

Put that particular informational adjustment in place and suddenly even Tim Flannery begins sounding wise. Bob Brown? You'd vote for him in a heartbeat.

And Al Gore's hard-hitting documentary about the Islamist threat - An Inconvenient Faith - might face the occasional bombing attack, but would otherwise be crucial viewing for those wishing to be informed on the great menace of our age.

Let's work through several typical greenoid statements to see this process at work, whereby formerly irrational and fear-mongering comments on global warming (confirmed kills: exactly zero) become entirely reasonable and defensible when framed as statements on Islamist terror (confirmed kills: many thousands and counting):

"It doesn't make sense for us to sit back and wait for others to act. The fate of the planet that our children and grandchildren will inherit is in our hands, and it is our responsibility to do something about this crisis." - former US president Bill Clinton.

For the rest of this article 'Just swap the weather for terrorism' by Tim Blair in The Daily Telegraph (Australia) go here.  

Spinal Tap are to reunite for a series of concerts in a bid to bring to the public's attention something called 'Global Warming'. Apparently the real world isn't doing a good job of publicizing it, so they've sent for these guys. Here's an excerpt from the report: 

Spinal Tap, the band immortalized in the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, will reunite on July 7, 2007 as part of a worldwide series of rock concerts aimed at promoting awareness of global warming. Spinal Tap will be playing live at Wembley Stadium in London. As part of the Spinal Tap-mania that is expected to sweep around the globe just like rising sea levels if the policies of George W. Bush aren't radically changed, there will also be a new 15 minute film that covers Spinal Tap's reunion.

 If the movie of the tour doesn't have a name yet, can I suggest: 'A Convenient Way of Making Money'...?

There is some how a perfect symmetry to a phoney group reuniting to fight a phoney war against a phoney enemy, is there not?

A few months ago, Taylor Francis went to Nashville. It wasn't for the music.

Taylor, a 15-year-old from Menlo Park, is one of 1,000 "climate change messengers" around the country. Trained in Tennessee by Al Gore, they are taking up where his Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," left off, giving slide-show presentations about what global warming is doing to us and how we can fight back.

They are popping up everywhere -- in churches, synagogues, Rotary Clubs, ski lodges, design firms, museums, senior centers -- and California, with 111 trainees, leads the pack.

They include Wal-Mart employees, a winemaker from Carmel, actress Cameron Diaz, biologists, housewives, a circus juggler, football player Dhani Jones of the Philadelphia Eagles, a beauty queen, Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr and teenagers such as Taylor, one of the three youngest trainees.

"I think that the climate crisis is going to be the defining issue of our generation because it defines the world we live in and every element of the way that we live," Taylor recently told about 400 students and teachers at Hillsborough's Crystal Springs Uplands School, where he is a freshman. "But this is also an issue we can define, because what we do every day can contribute to the solution."

A new Rasmussen Report national telephone survey of 1,000 adults has revealed that around 24% of Americans consider Al Gore to be an expert on global warming - with 47%  saying that he is not an expert on the subject.

35% believe that Gore "knows what he's talking about" (gosh, as many as that!). Women, by a 2-to-1 margin, say Gore knows what he's talking about, men, by a similar margin, say he does not.  Oh ladies...come on...

 Given the popularity of Gore' An Inconvenient Truth this perhaps does show that truth is stranger than fiction. Some kind soul ought to tell Gore though.  

In the sixties it was the bomb that kept teenagers awake at night. Today it is climate fear. You might think the sixties generation was the more 'out there'. But that would be wrong. The bomb or WMD was, is and remains a very real threat. The argument over what has caused the minimal amount of GW we have experienced is far from settled on any serious scientific level - and thus can only be classed as a theoretical threat at best. Thus it is the rising angst among today's teenagers over the state of the planet which is the more 'out there'.

But the evidence in consistent reviews over recent months is without doubt that fear of GW is causing worry and even a lack of sleep for our young people.  The suffering this is causing is thus yet another 'unseen' cost of the alarmism being spread by GW hysteria.

NB. But all is NOT lost among our youth!  After a sixth-grade debate where the evidence on both sides of the global warming 'humans are to blame' debate was heard, a 'jury' of peers concluded that humans are NOT to blame for the earth's warming.

Gallup here has an interesting take on its latest poll on 'concern over global warming'.  It poses the very real question: just how influenced is modern culture  by the 'science' and 'fiction' that comes out of Hollywood and its ideological (liberal left) mindset? That's not quite how they put it, but it is what they mean.

Interesting, is it not?  

Is there finally some hope that the public square debate and the reasoning mind may be "warming" to a higher degree of logic?

Well the latest evidence from the New York Times Bestseller List (Paperback non-fiction section) suggest it may be so. Avery and Singer's Unstoppable Global Warming (at no 18) and Chris Horner's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (at no 20) - see my 'Key Books' page for reference - are both outstripping sales of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (at no 29). (Paperback non-fiction section)

Former U.S. Vice President and environment crusader Al Gore still has some pull in Washington, D.C. — getting a venue for a rock concert. The former Democratic presidential candidate had wanted to highlight the need to address global warming by staging one of seven worldwide "Live Earth" concerts on the National Mall in the U.S. capital on July 7.

But two events already are scheduled for that day on the Mall so Gore reached out to a close friend in Congress, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to use the front lawn of the Capitol - albeit a much smaller area. Reid of Nevada and Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine have introduced a resolution in the Senate offering the Capitol grounds for the event. It would also have to pass the U.S. House of Representatives.

Source: Newsmax article.

Ed. This should help the environment - except around the seven sites where these concerts will be held of course.  

Allah Gore receives revelation - while the real GW culprit skulks in the backgroundAustralian health experts are claiming that the current obesity epidemic is as big a social issue as climate change.  But I can think of something even worse: Fat sorry, 'Pleasantly plump' eco-alarmists who tip off the Enviro-police to start litigation when we emit beyond prescribed limits.

And the EU has suggested the need for speed limits on German autobahns to stop drivers over-emitting, too. So the worst of all emitters then would be a Fat German speedster?

Personally, I believe the Aussie-Muslim cleric who blames the current drought on a lack of faith in Allah. Does he mean Allah Gore??